#spears deserves paws

[doodle-birdo]

RW OSTober

Idk why, but Industrial reminds me of my playthrough with Spears. This was one of my first broadcasts gotten and idk why it stuck with me.

Edit: Retook the pick cuz I didn’t like the “artificialness” of the previous one. Nothing was changed in the art. :)

[lady-lauren]

❥ KENTO NANAMI X FEM!READER

❥ WORD COUNT: 1.6k

❥ WARNINGS/TAGS: breeding, talk of pregnancy (but no actual babies here), power dynamics (boss/assistant), age gap, praise, wrists bound with tie, creampie, Nanami is sweet but mean always, use of "good girl", reader is really subby and so am I

→ Kinktober Masterlist ←

“So this is what you feel like, hm?” 

Nodding against the mess of his desk, you coo, all bubbly and sweet as your nails grip into his tie around your wrists. Nanami runs a hand down your spine, eyes unfiltered by his glasses as he marvels at how you shiver and react to his touch. 

Just the tip of his fat cock is popped inside you, snugly wrapped by the first ring of muscle he’s yet to bully past.

Even as your thighs clench and pussy drools, you stay still, quiet, just like he told you to.

So well mannered.

Would you be this sweet if he fucked you as deviantly as he desires? Would you bat your long lashes and say please every time he demands to fuck you? He’s certain you would—so willing to please and be pleased.

Soft skin and even smoother voice, like a housecat curling around his legs every time you come near. Shy but keen, claws ready for anyone but your owner.

Over the course of a few months, Nanami has boiled down to a singular purpose—to breed his perfect assistant and fill her needy cunt with his seed.

Pussy lips bulge around him as he pushes into you raw. You hiccup at the intrusion, ass arching to accommodate the stretch of him. Desire claws inside his chest and begs to force himself into you, and for once, he listens to the beast.

Jerking your bound wrists, he spears into you while pulling you back, bouncing your cheeks against his pelvis and making you whine behind clenched teeth. 

He uses you for leverage, not bothering to cant his hips when he can simply tug you back and forth along the length of him.

“This wasn’t my intention, sweetheart,” he admits with a deep grunt, “but you’re just such a good girl, aren’t you? I can’t help myself.” 

For weeks he’s imagined you like this, even pictured tucking you under his desk and shoving his cock so far past your sweet lips that he can see himself in your throat. But spilling his cum on your tongue would be such a waste—your body was made for breeding. Doughy in all the right spots, with tits begging to be filled with milk.

A strong hand grabs the curve of your ass and pulls, thumb lifting the soft fat so he can watch how your cunt sucks around his cock. So greedy.

“No more panties, ever,” Nanami groans as his cockhead thrums against the sponginess of your walls. 

“Of–of course, sir.” 

“No more sirs, either. Wanna hear my name in your mouth.” 

He grins at how the first consonant of his name gets stuck in your throat as he fucks into you, a blubbering stutter of k-k-ken~ blended into hushed moans. 

The sky is dark but he knows a few workaholics are still roaming the office. They don’t deserve to hear your melodic sounds. They’ll know your his by the way his cum will leak past the hem of your skirt, smear against your thighs.

Nanami leverages you up, fingers mean against your trapped wrists as he slams your back to his chest. The angle has his cock digging into one of your softest spots.

He bends to run his nose along the length of your neck, tongue licking at the remnants of your too familiar perfume. Over your shoulder he watches how your tits bounce with every plunge of his cock into you, free and unbound, nipples just the hue he imagined. He grabs your breast and rolls your nipple between his thumb and forefinger, groaning when you flutter from the shock of pleasure. 

So young and pliant. 

“You know what your next assignment is, sweetheart?” 

His hand smoothes down to the bottom of your tit, gripping the fat up into his palm so he can squeeze. 

You coo at his actions, bucking down onto his cock. Your cunt squelches as your slick soaks into the blonde curls at his base.

“Answer me.” 

His palm trails down past your ribs, pawing at your stomach. He presses hard, knocking air from your lungs as he catches how his cock thumps, thumps, thumps in your guts.

Your head tosses back against his chest, neck craning as you look for him with watery eyes. Mascara dripping down your cheeks, lips swollen from the kisses he took from you when you came to offer your help with his overtime work. 

“T–to be your fucktoy?” you answer with a breathy, hopeful gasp.

“Even better,” he feels like a sick fuck when the words rolls of his tongue, “to have my babies.”

The way you squirm and mewl in his hold tells him everything he needs to know. 

“Yeah? You like the idea of an older man filling you until you swell with a baby?” 

“Yes, ah, Kento, yes.”

So, so well mannered. You know how much it pisses him off if you don’t use your words. 

He drags your wrists farther back, making your body arch until your knees tremble and your darling high heels scrape against the floor. His hand moves down, cupping the front of your pussy so his fingers can smear along the edges of where he spreads you. 

Nanami ensures that the back of his hand keeps the sharp edge of his desk from pressing into your sensitive body. 

“Tell me exactly what you want.” 

He watches how you try to think, eyebrows pulling together as you attempt to focus on anything other than the sweltering heat he’s stirring with every fast, harsh push of his aching dick into your cunt. 

“Want to feel you cum in me,” you mumble quickly, words splashed together, “over and over again.”

A thick finger pushes against your clit, just barely, teasing enough to make your tummy tighten and thighs shake.

“Hm,” he groans with a smile against your throat as the most pleasant idea comes to mind. “You want me to start taking you home? Let me mount you in my bed to make sure the seed takes?” 

The sound you make is salacious and strained, like you’re trying so hard to be a good girl and not scream. 

“Keep me,” you plead oh so sweetly. Like that was ever out of the question. 

Nanami hooks his fingers harder between the threads of his tie, tangling his fingers with yours behind your back. A small moment of grounding you, reassuring you, before he shoves you so roughly back down to his desk that papers and pens clatter to the floor.

Hoisting your hips to meet his, he puts the hand on your cunt to work, rubbing two experienced fingers over your swollen clit. 

He leans over your body for a better angle, even hikes one knee onto his desk so he can pound you into it. 

“Need you to milk my fucking cock, understand?” His breath fans over the back of your neck and he notices how you’ve bitten your cheek between your teeth. 

You’re such a mess, naked and trembling over your boss’s desk, pussy squishing with every intense bully of his cock into your gummy, abused hole.

“I understand,” you practically choke on your words, “ ‘m so close, K–Kento, promise.”

His lips suck against the back of your shoulder, sharp teeth grinning like a madman. 

He hired you after you told him you never, ever make promises you can’t keep. You’d always be honest, never lie if you felt you couldn’t get the work done. 

“You promise to take my babies, sweetheart? Promise you’ll let me get you pregnant?” 

The picture of you ripe with his baby, hand over your swollen tummy as you bustle around the office, in his house, is too clear. Too inebriating. 

“I sw–swear.” 

“That’s my good girl.” 

You deserve a reward, perhaps even a raise.

Nanami turns all his focus to how heavy his balls feel and how puffy your poor clit is. He becomes an efficient machine, barreling into you systematically as his fingers swirl in tight, purposeful circles. 

Slick is drooling through his knuckles, messing all over the planner on his desk. He has the quick thought of how he will have to start filling his calendar with the days you’re ovulating. How delightful. 

“Please, please, please,” you try to keep your whines smothered by the lacquered wood.

“You don’t have to beg. I’ll give you anything you want, sweet girl.” 

And he does just that, building enough heat in your tummy to make you start convulsing. Your orgasm is the tightest suck he’s ever felt, all desperate and hot and rhythmic like your body took his words to heart and intends to milk him dry. 

Finally he comes undone, loading your body with continuous spurts of syrupy cum. He can feel cum pooling in your snug cavern, squishing against his cock every time your cunt pulses with your bliss. 

He stays still, his weight shamefully falling onto your back and trapping you beneath him. Your heartbeat echoes against his desk. Molten cum bursts from where his cock is still lodged within you, like pasty watercolor smearing across skin. 

Straightening his tired back, he groans and peels himself from your spent body. Before he can pull his hips back, your tied hands start reaching desperately for him, smacking against his thigh. 

Fine. He can keep you plugged up with cum as long as you want. 

“Thank you,” you exhale with the remnants of your pleasure. 

So well mannered. You’ll make the perfect mommy. 

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

imagining Charlie having an Oh moment when she finds Vaggie napping in a chair one day, early on, with Razzle and Dazzle sprawled out over Vaggie like they're trying to cover as much of her small body as they can with their own even smaller ones-

Charlie pulls out her phone and stealthily inches closer for a picture (she's doesn't' wanna wake them she swears) (she's just never seen something so cuuuuute-)

but a floor board squeaks and Razzle cracks an eye open to glower while Dazzle shushes her

and Charlie stops

There's another Oh... moment, because they've never shushed her before. They were brought to life to keep her safe and they've always only cared about that one thing- it took months for them to stop following Vaggie around the house suspiciously, like they always did with anyone Charlie tried having a relationship with, like a pair of silent, plush guard dogs-

(glaring at Vaggie from shadows, from across the table at breakfast and dinner, from the pillows directly over her head when Charlie finally convinced her maybe sharing a bed would help with the night terrors)

-but that'd all changed, at some point. Only, Charlie hadn't noticed until now

now she does. Now suddenly, she wonders

Charlie creeping over on silent, careful hooves, to gently stroke between the tiny wings of her childhood friends, looking from them to Vaggie's relaxed and sleeping face (getting a little lost watching her, for moment) (reaching out to tuck back a strand of the hair Vaggie is growing out long, accidently stroking Vaggie's cheek, forgetting to take her hand away afterwards) (the longer hair is hard not to play with, she excuses)

Charlie leaning in and asking Razzle and Dazzle, in the softest whisper-

"....are you keeping her safe for me?"

a pair of soft little churrs rising up in answer. Two little plush demons, snuggling closer to Vaggie as Vaggie frowns in her sleep, shifting restlessly, stirring-

Charlie freezing bc she has NO idea what to say if Vaggie wakes up and finds her- well. looming kinda?? while Vaggie SLEEPS???

it feels different than just already being there when Vaggie wakes up in the night, different in how waking up like that was normal when they'd gone to bed together, but crouching down to STARE at someone like this, with your hand still on her cheek, scared to move it in case that REALLY wakes her up when she DIDN'T get much sleep last night and DIDN'T wake you up that time for some reason so you couldn't snuggle her or make her feel better and now you might startle her instead or make her feel awkward which you hate- you don't want her to ever feel awkward around you-

it doesn't matter though

because Vaggie settles down again, as Dazzle croons quietly and Razzle reaches out a little paw to gently press her arm

she used to jump and flinch a little every time she saw them

when did that change?

these days she flicks little snacks at them from off her plate, no matter how many times Charlie reminds her they have their OWN plates and their OWN donuts and are just begging to get ATTENTION, the little show-stealers-

(not like Charlie's doing that too by complaining) (noooooo) (not like she grins like an idiot when Vaggie smiles and says cute things deserve a little extra attention, while looking over at Charlie instead)

these days any annoying demon who comes looking to curry favor with Lucifer (or trying pulling one over Morningstar's "naïve" daughter) gets pinned by THREE dangerous glares while waiting at the door for Charlie to hurry downstairs and meet them

(or rather shoo them away before they say something too not nice and Vaggie grabs her spear while Razzle and Dazzle get within ankle biting range)

when she thinks about it, things have been different for a while now

better. They've been better, and Charlie still doesn't know when or how it happened, and maybe that part doesn't matter so much anyway

in the present, Charlie takes the chance to retrieve her hand (reluctantly..) so she can slip off her jacket and tuck it around the three of them- Razzle, Dazzle. Vaggie- her two old friends and one new but very important one-

important enough to be considered part of her, by them as were created to protect her

and that's a new idea too. but she likes it a lot, she thinks

she likes being part of a family again

-

Vaggie wakes up a good solid two hours of nap time later with Razzle and Dazzle draped over her like furry boas and Charlie's head in her lap, a former Exorcist absolutely COVERED in cuddly demons-

she stays completely still for another hour more afterwards, stiff neck be damned, watching the three of them sleep. Smiling.

.... (it's only the three of them, later)

(when vaggie flutters up and finds razzle curled up on dazzle's memorial, the night after the battle. when she tucks him into her shoulder and heads back to her and charlie's rebuilt room. as a relieved and teary eyed charlie scoops him up and the three up them huddle together under vaggie's reformed wings)

(it's only three of them... but part of why charlie cries that night is knowing dazzle did his job- vaggie is still here)

(dazzle did his best. and for everything charlie lost, the old hotel, too many of the cannibals who followed her, almost all the egg bois, sir pentious, dazzle himself, the faith that she could solve all this without anyone getting hurt...)

(she didn't lose the part of herself that'd held her together the night before the battle, held so many other times, through family calls and failed meetings with heaven) (she didn't lose vaggie-)

(and some of charlie's tears that night, for dazzle, are grateful)

(he died trying to keep charlie safe. and he did. he did)

[koiiiji]

fantasy AU series! lookism & windbreaker boys

tw ; supernatural, suggestive, kinda obsessive/yan(?), ooc! everybody

starring ; seongeun, taejin, vinny

author’s note ; okay it seemed that u kinda liked fantasy au, so here u go, with part two!!! i have more ideas so, let me know if u up to read more fantasy au! ps Joker will be in next part bc i was too tired to finish him lol

author's note 2 ; yes, i like obsessed men! like bruh if he is not possessively obsessed what he even doing?? (this all just joke, i don't support such actions irl)

Seo Seongeun

Dragon

the ground underneath him was burnt and black when you found him. the coal-black bones scattered around on the ground should have warned you against approaching him, but huge, black dragon before you was wounded. mighty wings muscles were bleeding, body was full of scratches, arrow and spears sticks out of his shoulder and back.

as a forest nymph, you have not met any other magical creatures except those that lived in the forests. usually your company was made up of your sisters - the same nymphs as you (except that some of them was the same forest nymphs, some was a water nymphs, some of your sisters liked the light of the moon and stars more than the warm rays of the sun). therefore, when you quietly slipped out of the bushes, intending to feed an unexpected guest, your sisters whispered in horror, asking you to go back, fearing what this stranger might do.

of course, you wouldn't have climbed up to him while he was conscious, so after making sure he was asleep, you quietly crept up to him. you had only a couple of steps left, and you could have touched him, when suddenly his golden eyes flew open, and with a loud roar he rushed at you. luckily for you, he didn't make more than one sharp lunge, howling in pain and leaning back again, breathing heavily and hissing. scared to death, your little flock disappeared into the forests, not wanting to stay there any longer. what your sisters didn't notice is that you did leave a small gift for the beast. that night, you made your way back to the burned-to-the-ground clearing, hoping to see the mighty dragon again, but found only a boy who didn't look much older than you. two horns protruded from a shock of black hair, and a clawed paw covered with scales up to the elbows held onto his shoulder, trying to stop the blood. the scaly tail darted irritably across the ground, while the night-black wings were folded behind its back. they didn't seem to have changed in size compared to his dragon form, and were just as huge, quietly able to shelter an adult. the skin that was not covered with scales was completely clogged with tattoos - intricate patterns, drawings and inscriptions decorated the abdomen, chest, legs, forearms and even the neck.

enchanted, you leaned forward, carelessly stepping on a dry twig, giving away your hiding place. golden eyes met exactly with your gaze, and with a squeak you had to quickly disappear into the forest. Samuel, on the other hand just hummed and turned back to his wounds, when he noticed that an apple, a small handful of wild berries and nuts had been left at a distance from him.

after a week of such small gifts, and on the tenth attempt, after he almost bit off your hands, Samuel gave up and let you wash his wounds while your sisters sat in the bushes and giggled quietly watching him hiss in pain, but tries to hide it when you touch his wounds. for the first 10 minutes he condescendingly endured the giggles, but by standing up and growling in their direction in warning, he scared away the annoying nymphs and lay back down, holding out his black leathery wing in front of you. looking at you expectantly with his golden eyes, he hissed, “what are you staring at? do what you came here for,” - he said, falling back onto his stomach. receiving a well-deserved light slap on the head with a wet rag. you both simply giggled and you continued to clean his wounds.

after a while, when his wounds began to heal, Samuel began to follow you through the forest. at first it was just short walks, just to show him around, places where he could find food, water and healthy herbs. not that he was interested - he was a dragon after all, and berries, nuts and herbs were of little interest to him. what really brought him pleasure was your wide, crystal clear eyes. you didn’t see him as a half-blooded dragon and he generally doubted that you understood his true position, but how easily you trusted him, how easily you put your back in front of him was naively sweet of you. your walks dragged on until Samuel found out where you lived, and each time he walked you straight to the door, without accepting any objections. “you know that here nothing poses a danger to me? this forest is the home for nymphs, and you are our big, toothy guest,” - chuckling, you playfully pushed him in the shoulder with your fist, making your way forward, gliding between the mighty tree trunks.

one night, as the forest was bathed in the soft glow of moonlight, you and your sisters had long retreated to their homes, and the nocturnal creatures were beginning their nightly symphony, a beautiful, peaceful night, that doesn’t portend anything bad. although, a suspicious pair of golden eyes watched your home from a distance.

quiet as a shadow, Samuel approached your home. silently, he slipped through the window, carefully folding his wings behind his back, not to make too much noise. he found you asleep in bed, your delicate body curled up under a thin blanket. for a moment, he just looked at you, admiring, when the moon peeked out from behind the clouds, flooding your room with a beautiful cold light, it seemed that his heart skipped a beat. soundlessly, he slid onto the bed next to you. a hot scaly arm wrapped around your waist, a tail slipped between your legs, pulling you closer. groaning, you woke up almost immediately, the unfamiliar heat, on usually cool forest nights, felt strange. turning, you found Samuel, his golden eyes glowing ominously in the darkness. more dragon features were visible now—his scales glimmering faintly, his horns more pronounced, his presence more intimidating. before you could speak, he tightened his grip, his voice a low, possessive rumble. "don't move." your heart raced with fear and confusion. you had only wanted to help him, to heal his wounds, but now you found yourself trapped by his dragon nature. “Samuel, what are you doing? you can’t be here” - you protested, your voice trembling. “silent,” - he growled, a dangerous glint in his eyes. his clawed fingers traced possessive patterns on your skin, sending shivers down your spine. “Samuel, please,” - you whispered, your voice trembling with fear. “this isn’t right. i only wanted to help you.” he hissed on you once again, his eyes glowing brighter.

and before that night turned into a waking nightmare, you realized that the dragon's essence was terribly greedy and possessive. whatever they consider theirs, they will appropriate for themselves. and you were not lucky enough to meet someone like Samuel, someone who had trust issues, but oh, how sweetly you fussed over his wounds, how naively you trusted a stranger, showed him the surroundings and the places where you live… you brought this on yourself - later he will hiss quietly in your ear, running his tongue along your neck and biting your earlobe.

Cheon Tejin

Dragon

dragons wasn’t something unfamiliar in your world, but among heavenly places that was blessed with mother nature, where your elven people lived it was unprecedented. beautiful gardens, water meadows with a variety of flowers, the purest streams, ponds and rivers, white stone palaces, mighty forests with fir trees, it seem to reach the purest blue sky - all this was desecrated when the barbarians from the south appeared in that one night. everything that was dear to you was burned down to the ground. turned to ashes and smoke.

the serene elven kingdom, once a haven of peace and beauty, was now a landscape of chaos and destruction. the night sky, usually adorned with twinkling stars and the gentle glow of the moon, was now lit by the sinister, fiery glow of flames consuming the elegant wooden structures and ancient trees. melodic chimes of the elven bells, which once signaled celebrations and peaceful gatherings, now rang with a desperate urgency, an alarm echoing through the kingdom to warn of the impending doom. the air was thick with the acrid smell of smoke, and the heat of the flames was intense, licking at the buildings with a voracious appetite. dragons with their massive wingspans and scales glistening in the firelight, soared overhead, their roars reverberating through the air, adding to the cacophony of terror. they swooped down with terrifying precision, their fiery breath reducing everything in their path to ash.

watching this hell unfold from your tower, your heart was torn with helplessness. screams of your people seemed to rend your soul, each cry of agony and terror slicing through you. the cacophony of destruction and death was overwhelming, distracting you from the noise approaching your door. you were snapped out of your trance by the sounds of persistent knocks, growing louder and more frantic, threatening to tear the door off its hinges. without thinking twice, you rushed to the sheath, your long, flowing robes trailing behind you, as you unsheathed your blade - a beautiful, delicate piece of elven craftsmanship, a gift from your father. the elegant weapon, etched with intricate designs and gleaming in the firelight, was a symbol of your heritage and strength. you had taken fencing lessons from the head of the royal guard, never imagining that one day you would need this knowledge in a real battle. as the door shuddered under the relentless pounding, you steeled yourself, gripping the hilt of your sword tightly. the door burst open with a deafening crash, and in its place stood a man.

there were particles of something dragon in him, the scales still glittered here and there, the vertical pupil in his eyes narrowed dangerously at the sight of the weapon in your hands. he wast armed, only some kind of wooden stick in his clawed hand was looking threateningly in your direction, but he hesitated. the tattooed tear under his eye narrowed as he examined you searchingly, walking deeper into your room, causing you to retreat. his toned, dark abs were spattered with blood, and his entire posture screamed that your sword posed no danger to him, as he lazily looked around the chambers. and you decided that this was your chance. a fatal mistake to think that the enemy has lost his vigilance. rushing forward, you were about to strike, when he himself put his hand under the sword and… it didn’t even cut him. the man grabbed the blade, looking at you boredly. yanking the sword, you tried to pull it out, but the guy was stronger. a new wave of fear, resentment and hopelessness rolled up to your throat and eyes when you let go of the sword and started to run, when strong hands pulled you back, pressing you to a hot body, and delivering a stunning blow to your head.

you woke up in a different place, something vaguely reminiscent of the throne room when it was a beautiful place filled with freshness and flowers. now, the ceilings of this place were melted, revealing a sky full of black smoke clouds and blood-red shadows from fires. chaos reigned all around - wild screams, squeals, and roars, mixed with the clinking of jewelry and treasure, flowing into the endless noise of fire taking lives. your ears were ringing unpleasantly, your eyes blurred, and your brain seemed unable to function normally. forest elves were not used to such hot temperatures, such barbaric screams, and such an oppressive atmosphere. groaning, you managed to lift yourself up on your arms to look around, when someone suddenly grabbed you by the face, unpleasantly squeezing your cheeks. "she came to her senses," - said a voice behind you, its tone dripping with malice. the speaker was same tall, imposing figure with a tear tattooed under his eye. before you could react, you were dragged to your feet and forced to turn around. there, sitting proudly on your father's throne, was a tall, blond man. almost nothing about him betrayed the fact that he was dragonborn - only vertical pupils and fierce eyes, dangerously shining in the light of the red night. his presence was stunning, it was immediately clear that he was their leader, their king.

Cheon Taejin's gaze locked onto you, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. "welcome to your new home," - he said, his voice a deep, resonant growl that sent shivers down your spine. fear gripped your heart as you struggled against the hold someone had behind you.

looking behind you, Taejin grinned and mockingly ordered, “Isu, can’t you see that the princess is uncomfortable? let her go.” immediately, your hands were released, and you stumbled closer to the throne, your small pieces of jewelry jingled neatly in your hair, their delicate sound a stark contrast to the oppressive, chaotic atmosphere of the throne room. gathering what little courage you had left, you straightened your posture and tried to summon your royal bearing. "you think you can just take what you want, but - " he cut you off with a dark chuckle, standing up and towering over you, stepping closer. "but what? you threaten me? in my own domain, from now on? look around you, princess. your kingdom is mine, and so are you."

you wanted to threaten him, to stand strong, but the oppressive heat, his harsh, hot hands on your shoulders and chaotic atmosphere overwhelmed you. your vision blurred, your strength fading. the air was too hot, the barbaric screams too much for your senses. Taejin leaned forward, his grin never faltering. "you’re alone, princess," - he said softly, his voice dripping with mockery. "and you’re in no position to make threats." the overwhelming heat and the reality of your situation were too much to bear. the room spun around you, and your body gave in to the oppressive environment. With a soft groan, you felt your legs buckle beneath you, and you passed out, collapsing in Taejin’s hands.

Vinny Hong

Royal Guard

Vinny Hong was a man forged in the fires of countless battles. hailing from a destitute family, he had joined the army out of necessity, not loyalty. his prowess on the battlefield earned him many monikers, a titles feared by enemies and respected by comrades. despite his high rank, Vinny harbored a deep-seated resentment towards the nobility, viewing them as detached and indifferent to the suffering of the common people.

his achievements on the battlefield were not ignored, and very soon he took a high position as the head of the royal guard and your main bodyguard. as a princess, your days were filled with constant lessons in literature, history and music, receptions and meetings, and only at night, right before falling into a deep sleep, did you manage to dream about life outside the walls of the palace.

when your first meeting was appointed, he intended to despise you, as he did all nobles. Vinny assumed you would be spoiled and oblivious to the struggles of those beneath your station. however, from the moment he first laid eyes on you, his convictions began to waver. you were unlike any royal he had ever encountered. you possessed an innate kindness and humility that disarmed him. you treated everyone, regardless of their status, with genuine warmth and respect, and Vinny tried to maintained his cold, professional demeanor, determined to remain indifferent, yet he found himself drawn to your gentle spirit and the light you brought into the lives of those around you. over time, simple attraction gave way to sympathy, which Vinny refused to admit.

but even sympathy soon twisted into something darker. the minutes, hours, days, months spent next to you were intoxicating. an obsessive thought settled in his head - no one around knew you better than him, no one around could protect you better than him. he was by your side 24/7, without leaving his post. Vinny’s fascination grew into a possessive obsession. he used his position as your personal bodyguard to justify his actions, denying their wrongness, convincing himself that his vigilance was for your protection. each stolen glance, each lingering look, fueled a fire within him that he could not extinguish. his heart trembled with emotions he had long buried, emotions he did not want to feel. he hated you for making him feel this way, for making him fall in love with you. yet, he couldn’t bring himself to truly despise you. his love was a paradox, a torment that gnawed at his soul.

he found himself loitering near your quarters in the morning. light, translucent white silks on the window flowing in the light summer breeze, creating an intimate look across the wall. you stood with your back to the open windows, maids were fussing around you, helping you prepare for the new day. it took his breath away when from your bare shoulders his gaze slid lower, along the spine, lower back, reaching the very bottom, he forced himself to look away. the softness of your curves, the tenderness of your skin, all this was so alluring and unattainable for him. and that was just the beginning.

next he discovered that he stayed longer than necessary when escorting you to the bath. of course, your maids almost pulled you out of his presence, helping you undress and escorting you to the prepared bath, but Vinnie knew how much you value moments alone with yourself after a long day, so you often called the maids off, promising to take care of yourself. the least you knew was that through the partitions of intricate, carved, wooden patterns there was a beautiful view. your bodyguard, like a predator in the shadows, watched as drops of water rolled down your face, neck, collarbones, straight down into the valley between your breasts. he heard every little moan, sigh, when you once again rubbed your neck, or stretched your legs higher, trying to relieve tension. Vinny's thoughts dark and possessive, wanting to claim what he knew he could never have.

his inner turmoil grew as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months. he began to resent his own weakness, the way his heart defied his mind. he was a warrior, feared and respected, yet here he was, enslaved by his own forbidden desires. he tried to hate you for the power you unwittingly held over him, for the way you made him feel so powerless.

one moonlit night, as the palace lay silent, Vinny made a decision. he couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to you while he could prevent it. so he left his chambers, and went to the main palace, recalling the night guard and taking up the post, deciding to guard his princess himself. he stood vigil outside your door, as he watched you sleep through the crack of the door, your serene face bathed in the gentle glow of the moonlight. his heart ached with a longing he couldn't satisfy, his mind tormented by the sight of you delicate form. he knew his actions were driven by something deeper than duty, yet he justified them as necessary for your safety. he felt a dark satisfaction in knowing that he was the one guarding you, that he was the one closest to you. he knew his actions were wrong, yet he couldn't deny the dark pleasure they brought him. the sight of your delicate, milky skin, the soft curves of your body, haunted his thoughts and dreams. he told himself it was all for your protection, that his vigilance was born of duty. but deep down, he knew the truth. he was a man possessed, enslaved by his own desires, forever bound to the woman he could never truly have.

in that moment, under the watchful eyes of the moon and stars, Vinny made a vow to himself. he would always be your watchdog, your support and protection, if it meant he could at least watch over you. his love for you was his burden to bear, his silent torment. and though he knew his feelings were forbidden and unworthy, he could not bring himself to stop. he would protect you, love you from afar, and remain forever in the shadows, your silent guardian.

fun facts ; sammy can’t have final human form. it’s either full dragon or half human. he have magic to turn, but due to the fact that his parents was different species he can’t hide his horns, tail, and wings, as all other dragonborns can do (ahemJakeKim) so he feels incomplete and that's why he developed an inferiority complex. also, i referred him from Drogon from GoT and Taejin from Smaug.

each story is different verses! for example gun & goo was inspired by kami sama hajimemashita, sammy’s dragon form referred from game of thrones, taejin story took huge inspiration from Tolkien verse, well with Vinny it was enough with that one art.

[1st-star]

★ SYMBOLIC ANIMALS FOR THIRTEEN, MEPHISTOPHELES AND RAPHAEL

I have decided to share my headcanons on the symbolic animals for the new trio. Don't forget to reblog if you find this interesting or want to share your opinion!

★ THIRTEEN

× Death's-head hawkmoth: No doubts about this one, I think it fits her character perfectly: moths are often associated with the afterlife (as they are attracted to the light, and when someone passes away, they are said to "go into the light"). And the skull on its back and the colour of its wings fit with many details of Thirteen's character design (the skull tattoo, the yellow nail polish and the hair tie with butterflies/moths)

★ RAPHAEL

× Lynx: "If not friend, why friend shaped?" I say to myself every time I see a lynx with its fluffy paws! And I think this cute yet fierce feline fits Raphael, who has a calm yet strict attitude and does not hesitate to draw his spear when he deems it necessary. Speaking of symbolism, lynxes are often associated with mystery, secrets and intuition. I have also read that lynxes are sometimes seen as "messengers of the spirit world" but I haven't found anything concrete about this.

Fun fact! There is a scientific institution called ‘Accademia dei Lincei’ and apparently its (original?) emblem had a lynx fighting Cerberus. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any pictures…

× Harpy Eagle: I made this association mainly because of the large and powerful talons of this eagle, as a reference for Raphael's spears. Besides, the feathers on the head match the colour of the angel's hair, don't you think?

★ MEPHISTOPHELES

× Horse: Yes, I know it's a bit cliché at this point, but based on its symbolism, Mephisto being represented by a horse isn't necessarily wrong, after all horses are associated with strength, power, nobility and "readiness to act for one's country". I haven't thought of any particular horse breed, perhaps a Thoroughbred?

My only complaint would be that we already have a unicorn as a symbolic animal for Satan (even if it doesn't make much sense) and Lucifer has his winged unicorn onesie. I think Mephisto deserves to have something more unique.

× Swan: An alternative I'd like to propose would be a swan, as it is associated with grace, elegance, perfection and nobility. And, as swans mate for life, they also represent devotion and loyalty.

[sandersontheside]

Assigning a Pop Diva To Each Side

Based on the common trend of queer men all having a "diva" that they stan. I know not all mlm relate to that, but I do! See if you can guess which one is mine ;)

JANUS: It's Britney, bitch! I'm pretty sure Britney Spears actually wrote Toxic about him. But sure Janus has been toxic in the past, dangerous to listen to even, but how was he supposed to know that something wasn't right? Would you hold it against him? And let us not forget the iconic 2001 VMAs performance of I'm A Slave 4 U featuring a huge, yellow snake.

REMUS: Put your paws up, little monsters. It's gotta be Lady Gaga for the Duke. He wants your ugly, he wants your disease, and he may be a freak, but baby, he was born this way. Plus, her whole brand used to be weird and off-putting. You know he was obsessed with that dress made of raw meat, and the alien egg music video, and the borderline body horror Born This Way cover.

ROMAN: He's a theatre gay, so probably, his chosen diva would actually be, like, Patti LuPone or something. But I am restricting this to pop diva. And none suits a prince like a queen! His pop diva just has to be Beyonce. Who runs the world? This bootylicious prince does! And you bet your ass he knows the Single Ladies dance off by heart, and will do it at the drop of a hat.

LOGAN: Megan Thee Stallion. It had to be a rapper, and given that Megan is such a champion of education, setting up scholarships and finishing her degree even after her career success, it seemed like a perfect match. Plus, we all know Logan can be [checks notecard] savage, at times. I just hope he can relax enough to enjoy a well deserved hot girl summer.

PATTON: Patton's entire Spotify is pop girlies, from Mariah Carey to Olivia Rodrigo, from the summer bops to the sad laments. Picking a favorite for him was difficult. But ultimately, it had to be Miss Swift herself, because if there is one thing that Taylor is good at, it is tapping into nostalgia. And whether it's a past relationship or an old favorite song, Patton remembers it all too well.

VIRGIL: The closest Virgil gets to pop is pop punk, pop rock, and alt pop. Which means the closest thing to a pop diva Virgil has is probably Hayley Williams of Paramore. Sure, Virgil can be angsty and even mean sometimes—misery is literally his business, after all—but he has a softer side as well, and deep down he hopes that one day all of it will be worth the risk.

[littlemisspascal]

New Writers added to The Pedro Library 🐼

@stardustandskycrystals @popcornforone

New Works Added ✨

Many fics aren’t appearing in the tags when searching. If I miss yours, please let me know 💗 Or add me to your taglist cuz I love being tagged 😊

As always, if you would like me to remove your work from the rec list, please let me know and I’ll remove them asap 😊

@musings-of-a-rose Zach  Since Forever / Joel  The Deal

@toomanystoriessolittletime Joel  Break +  Counting Stars

@javier-pena Joel  The Overlook 

@forever-rogue Joel  Jealous +  Swim Lessons / Javi G  Protective

@laters-gators Joel  Do You Think You Deserve My Cock Right Now? +   There's no way I'm gonna let you wear that in public / Din  I Didn’t Know You Were So Sensitive

@ozarkthedog Joel  Morning Delight +  Sweet Days of Summer +  Period Sex +  Every Inch of You

@moonlight-prose Joel  Warm Glow

@lavenderursa Joel  A Matter of Timing

@grippingbeskar Joel  Duality

@the-ginger-hedge-witch Joel  Turn

@mellowswriting Joel  It Will Come Back

@omgreally Joel  Hot Coffee

@mishasminion360 Joel  In An Instant

@criticallyacclaimedstranger Joel  Stonemilker

@supernaturalgirl20 Joel  A Fool For You +  Trying Not to Love You

@wheresarizona Joel  Respite

@psychedelic-ink Javier    Infections of a Different Kind / Joel  Exile + Burning Pile +  Aquatic Rehabilitation / Whiskey  Afternoon Sun + Snap Out of It / Pero  Like That / Marcus M  Black Water Lilies

@foli-vora Javier  Before My Eyes

@oonajaeadira Javier  Nadie Espera un Milagro (No One Expects a Miracle)

@lavendertales Javier  Indecently Dishonest / Joel  Fine Line +  Relief +  New Territory

@spacecowboyhotch Javier  The Sun Also Rises

@saradika Din  If You Send For Me, You Know I’ll Come

@firstofficerwiggles Din  Gimme the Beskar Spear

@oliviajdjarin Din  Dare You to Touch Me—Dare You to Love Me / Joel  Marked Me Like a Bloodstain

@floral-force Din  Apples & Honey

@kingofthebeskargoats Din  Open Arms

@flightlessangelwings Din  Trust and Intuition

@simpingcowboy Din  Full Disclosure / Javier  On The Clock / Marcus M  If It Wasn’t For the Nights

@theredwritingwitch Tim  Tune Your Soulwaves

@something-tofightfor Tim  Black Days

@agentwhiskeysdarlin Whiskey  Labyrinth

@movievillainess721 Whiskey  Pregnancy Craving

@thot-of-khonshu Whiskey  Nightcap

@boliv-jenta Charlie  Charlie’s Birthday / Frankie + Whiskey + Dave  Interagency Cooperation

@frenchiereading Frankie  Shared Breaths

@redahlia-writes Frankie  You Make Loving Fun

@wardenparker Frankie  I Have No Idea What You Just Said to Me

@beecastle Frankie  Paw Prints on Our Heart Rewrite

@absurdthirst @storiesofthefandomlovers Frankie  Landlord From Hell / Dieter  A Fork in the Road / Din The Future of Mandalore / @pedropascalsx Dave  His

@ssuperficialspacecadett Frankie  Through the Scope

@albertasunrise Frankie  Oops Baby

@writer-darling Marcus P  For All the Sad Mad Poets

@whataperfectwasteoftime Marcus P  Spring Fling

@pedropascalsx Dave  The Storm

@wildemaven​ Dave  The Secrets We Keep...

@kayleezra Ezra  A Sunflower and Their Encyclopedia

@pennyserenade Dieter   Only Backwards

[yourcrazyboyokris]

The Artificer

Ever since that day, your purpose has been clear. You must kill them all. All of them. And you won’t stop there. You will kill their leader as well. Countless lives have been taken by your hands, but they know what they’ve done. They know they deserve it after what they did to your children. They were everything and they took them away from you. And after years of death, you’ve killed it. The leader. You rip the mask off it’s corpse and wear it. The crowd of murderers goes silent. You are in control now. Nobody can stop you. You start a rampage, picking up and throwing the multiple spears and grenades and give them all the torture they’ve made you go through. The crowd screams as they trample each other to escape justice, but you got as many as you can. Strangely, you feel as if you are trapped, but you ignore that feeling.

The battle made you tired, so you sit on its throne and stab its drone until it becomes a mangled mess of wires. You sit down, and suddenly, you realize something. You made it your life goal to be at the top, but now that you are there… is there anything left…? And most of all, if your children were to see you now, what would they see? You are not the same slugcat you were years ago. You’re a monster. You killed them all. Would your pups even want this…? They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t even recognize you as a mother. You cup your paws to your face and cry. Is this your fate? To sit on the throne of a fallen king as you sob over lost memories? You can’t do that. There has to be a way out. You remember what that strange, floating, and glowing black and yellow being said atop that high tower two cycles ago.

“An unrewarding battle awaits, culminating in a path of no return.

A perpetuity of struggles begetting more of the same.

Find a way out, if you still can.”

It said you needed to find a way out. It may be a stretch, but you need to do this. You step outside while wearing the mask and go to the toll you saw upon entering the dome. The scavengers turn and freeze, petrified with a pleading look. You don’t care. You kill them all and check until you find the one with the most energy around it, and leave to look for a path to end your cycles.

It’s been so long and you have looked everywhere. The silence throughout your journey to explore has felt horrible. Sure, you weren’t being nearly killed on sight, but the silence haunts you with the side affect of thought, thinking of what could’ve been, thinking of you having a nice meal with your children, playing with your children, your children… the terrified looks of your children as they look at you now… your children… your…

You finally found something that might lead somewhere. A giant drill leading down into the earth. You slide down, grasping the corpse in your other paw until you reach the bottom, a dark, open space. An odd liquid drips from the ceiling. Touching it makes your skin feel a burning sensation. You begin walking, and the liquid you saw seems to become more frequent, and you see large amounts of it reflecting gold light onto the floor and walls. Collapsed structures and monuments are spread around corridors, odd beings wearing masks with an X symbol on the foreheads, torches that seem in perfect condition, and even a shrine. You continue until you come across large, floating beings with black, draping cape-like robes that seem to disappear into nothing the further down the threads go. They have black, rectangular heads with the same X symbol you saw before right on the center of them. You grasp the corpse of the scavenger, still feeling the strong energy, and slowly walk past the beings. Four arms stick out from the robes, seemingly made of pearls that sway from side to side as the beings move their arms in patterns that make you feel dizzy, but nothing happens. You enter the pipe they seem to be guarding.

Before you know it, you come across a giant sea of the odd fluid. Gold intensely reflects onto the walls as the sea ripples. Something tells you that you found a way out. Cautiously, you dip your paw into the fluid to see if it burns, but it doesn’t. You let go of the scavenger corpse and the fluid suddenly burns like it did back there. The grab the scavenger and look into the sea, knowing there’s no way but down. You jump, corpse in hand, and dive into the sea. It shifts between warm and cold like a circle. The cold oddly gives you visions of intense snow, and the warm gives you visions of civilization, alternating between the two randomly, but you have no time to figure that out. You start to swim down, but something makes you let go of the scavenger. Your whole body starts to sting uncomfortably, but it’s manageable. With no other choice, you continue to go down.

You go down until you can see into a void, and not just gold. The void makes you feel like a grain of sand in the garbage wastes. For the first time, you don’t feel threatening. You feel small. In the void, odd and large white worm-like figures swim hastily around. You swim down more. The swarm of worms is like chaos. It feels like they dong know you are there, and they are just moving at high speeds. You find your body being tossed around and pushed like garbage as you swim further down. At last, you make it out of the swarm and swim further. Suddenly, a bright light gets brighter and brighter behind you. You turn around and are face to face with the worm. The odd head at the end of its body seems to examine you, as if it can look into your mind. Suddenly, it’s eyes squint almost as if in disapproval, and it simply swims back up, intentionally or not, knocking you aside in the process.

You swim further and further until the lights of the worms starts to dim. Suddenly, an overwhelming sensation of burning overcomes your body. You frantically swim down, staring into the void as the pain becomes unbearable. You feel parts of your own body dissolving into golden string, before disappearing into the void. You feel yourself crying because of the anguish, but your tears instantly dissolve. You can’t feel your legs anymore, so you move your back back and forth to try to swim better.

In the darkness, you suddenly see two lights. One green and one blue. It almost looks like… oh. O- oh my… you cry more intensely, but not because of the pain. You swim as fast as you can until you see their figures. Two small slugcats with dark eyes and small noses. They turn around and see you as you float face to face with them. You don’t know what to say. You expect them to look afraid, but… they… they don’t. Their softly glowing figures float to you and you shakily wrap your arms around them. They wrap their arms around you as well. After all the horrible things you’ve done, after all the suffering you caused, they forgive you. As your body burns away, for the first time since they died, you finally feel… happy. As you continue to hug them as strong as you can, you manage to stutter out seven words.

"I- I’m so s- sorry… Th- thank you… for everything."

Your body dissolves away, but you don’t feel sad. You die in the comforting silence of the void and the warm embrace of your lost children.

[tenspontaneite]

Assembly (Chapter 5/?)

“Tomorrow,” they murmur, full of a dread and hope that seem wont to choke them. “Tomorrow, SRS-02 should be complete. And the day after that…”

“We go,” Spearmaster signs.

Suns offers a very slight nod. “We will go.”

(Chapter length: 6k. Link to ao3 with workskin)

---

When Spearmaster finds her, she spends only a few moments wary before she sees who it is.

She harrumphs, and sits back on her haunches to begin to talk. “Oh, it is only you, strange one,” she says, easy and fluent with her Movespeak in a way that Spearmaster will probably never be. She eyes its new poncho with narrow-eyed interest. “Masters Spears. Were you searching for me on purpose?”

“Learns,” it greets, and has to suppress its nod. She wouldn’t understand it, anyway. “Yes. I searched.”

This slugcat has always been very direct. She does not waste words. “Why?”

It tries not to tense. “I need ask help from you.”

 [LIVE BROADCAST] PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

SRS: Oh. Spearmaster left my can.

NSH: …Is that unusual?

SRS: No. But it usually tells me first, especially if it might be gone for days. And we’re going to be installing SRS-02, soon…I thought it would want to be around for that.

SRS: …

NSH: Maybe it’s only clearing its mind.

NSH: We did have kind of an emotionally trying day yesterday, and all that.

SRS: Yes.

SRS: …I hope it’s okay.

NSH: Send an overseer after it, just to keep an eye on it. It can’t have gone far.

SRS: I think it deserves time alone to think, if that is why it went out.

SRS: I’ll just wait, for now.

SRS: How are you doing, after yesterday?

NSH: As well as can be expected, really.

NSH: …I do wish you could be here already, though. My self-forks did their best to keep me company, but it feels strange with them, when they’re so new and struggling to consolidate their identities as is.

NSH: I’m wary of pushing my own personal issues onto them. They’re already mostly me, so it feels like they’re at serious risk of internalising anything new that happens to…well, me.

SRS: …A very strange issue. I would be concerned as well, in your place.

SRS: …

SRS: It won’t be long, now, until I can be there.

NSH: Yeah. I know.

 Spearmaster is timid, speaking with others of its kind. It never knows what to say, or how to behave. It ought to be better this time, because it knows exactly what it has come for, and has good arguments pre-prepared. And yet…Learner is a very no-nonsense, straightforward sort of creature. She has always made it a little nervous.

“What kind of friend do you have that could need help?” She demands, which doesn’t help its anxiety. “Don’t you live alone up in the giant structure with the Great Mind?”

“Yes,” it agrees, and hesitates. “I want ask help for the Great Mind.”

She stares, and flicks an ear, then draws close to sniff it over for signs of infirmity. In what Spearmaster has learned is fairly standard behaviour for their kind, she then reaches up and grabs its head between her paws, bapping it several times over the face while she chitters. Suns might say, what in the saints’ names are you talking about? But this is a slugcat, and their incredulity is considerably more tactile.

Its ears twitch with each pat, and it endures a rapid series of five opinionated slaps to the side of its snout before it pushes her paws away. “Serious!” It insists, perturbed, and reiterates. “Help for my Great Mind. Please.”

“It is a Great Mind! What could it possibly need help with, much less from me?” It’s a fair enough question, honestly. Slugcats on the whole know very little about iterators, but they do know that they are huge and powerful. The needs of one must seem incomprehensible, to a creature who was not born within one.

Spearmaster has the answer, though. It has it all prepared. “Soon, I travel,” it says, now a little more confident, because this at least is rehearsed. “I go away, maybe for long time. My Great Mind is lonely when I gone. Learner go visit it?”

She stares at Spearmaster unblinking for several long seconds. “You want me to keep your Great Mind company to stop it from getting lonely?” She questions, incredulous, then reaches out to express the sentiment through face-papping again. “Are you quite mad?”

“Not mad,” Spearmaster says crossly, pushing her paw away, and then: “You are Learns. Name for reason, yes? My Great Mind likes talk. Likes…teach things. Visit it! Visit Politely. It teach you.”

As expected, that is a very compelling thing to say to a slugcat who named herself Learner. “What things does it know?” She asks, warily. “Can it speak to me?”

“Yes, it speaks. It knows: many, many. Knows secrets of Old Dragons. Secrets of world.” It stares at her, expectant.

She stamps a foot on the ground, contemplative. “I do like the secrets of the world and dragons,” she muses.

Spearmaster is quite sure that it has already won. No need to convince her further. “I travel after some rain days,” it offers helpfully. “Maybe three. Maybe four. Visit after?”

“Are you very sure the Great Mind will not kill me for intruding?” Learner asks, suspiciously.

“Very, very,” Spearmaster assures. “If you do visiting Politely.”

She twitches as she thinks. “I am not saying yes,” she warns, although she is definitely saying yes and will not resist the sweet call of knowledge, “But, tell me the Rules of Politeness for the Great Mind. In the case that I go.”

It considers it. “Rules of Politeness: Do not harm Great Mind. Do not break things inside Great Mind. Do not steal things inside Great Mind. Do not eat things inside Great Mind.”

Learner flicks her ears forwards in acknowledgement, absorbing the words. “I am going to see my pups’ colony, and will be gone some rain days. But after that, I will see.”

“Thanking you,” Spearmaster says, and helpfully extrudes a spear for her as a gift before it leaves. She will not appreciate being delayed any longer, and it must hurry if it wants to get home before the rains come.

 [LIVE BROADCAST] PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

SRS: Alright, Spearmaster came home safely, just before the rain. What a relief.

NSH: Oh, good. It just needed to take a little excursion, then?

SRS: I suppose? It wouldn’t say why it left.

SRS: Except it was strangely insistent about explaining wild slugcat body language to me, afterwards.

NSH: In what way?

SRS: Apparently they have a tendency to be very tactile in conversation, and you shouldn’t take being gently slapped or grabbed at as an attack or impoliteness. It was very, very clear that I should not be offended if a slugcat slaps me respectfully on the face.

SRS: I admit, I am truly not sure where that explanation came from. Or why it felt it was necessary.

NSH: …All I can guess was that it met another of its kind while it was out and got ‘politely’ slapped around a bit.

NSH: What interesting social dynamics. I wonder what it looks like when a group of them interact?

SRS: Probably very animated, I imagine.

 It will take three more days to complete the AMP for SRS-02. Seven Red Suns plans to leave the day after successful installation of the AOS. Accordingly, they begin to enter final preparations.

All of their selected data go onto pearls, carefully packed away. They tuck a few discreet, colourful pots into their bag. And they start to tidy things up around their superstructure.

“This is unnecessary, you know,” their puppet says, a little amused, as SRS-01 inspects the corners of the chamber narrowly for decorating opportunities. “Soon, SRS-02 will be online, and they will be staying here to take care of such things. You don’t need to do this.”

“Forgive me, but as I’m disconnected right now, I can safely say that yes I do,” SRS-01 objects, and ignores themself. “I will be dissatisfied to leave the can and keep thinking about this or that banner I should have put up.”

“But decorating the chamber, really?” They fold their arms, sceptical. “It seems a little impractical. We use these walls, you know. If we cover them up too much we will lose projection space. And extensive hangings will interfere with operations around the available area.”

“Well then take it down, if you find it’s getting in the way,” SRS-01 says irritably, and pulls themself towards the exit. “You’re a perfectly capable iterator, that’s within your power. I’ll be back shortly.”

And so they go out and return again, armed with several of the longer, slimmer scarf-like wall drapes with weighted grains sewn invisibly around the edges, and trailing ornaments and beads depending from the embroidered edges.

“There. These are low profile enough that they shouldn’t get in the way overmuch. Now make yourself useful and give me some lift.”

Their puppet sighs, but obliges, and lifts them around the upper corners of the chamber while they aggressively and passive-aggressively decorate the vicinity. Later, when they’re done with the room and re-integrate with themself, they feel a little embarrassed about the whole thing.

It’s not terribly like them, to snipe at themselves like this. But they are…under pressure, in a sense.

Soon, they will leave their can, and that idea is making them increasingly nervous. After all, no matter what happens beyond their walls…it will be a momentous occasion for them. Out there, everything will be new. It is as frightening as it is exciting, and Suns has been safe – trapped, but safe – for so very long. The immediate prospect of breaking that stasis is more stressful than they anticipated, and it’s hard not to take it out on…well, themselves.

“I do hope this isn’t a herald of how we’ll behave with our friends, when things get a little tense,” SRS-01 remarks to their puppet later, a little glumly.

“Let us be honest with ourselves, here: we have always had a sharp tongue.” Their puppet grimaces, as best their unarticulated face can. “For all that Sig says we’re kinder now, I don’t think that has especially changed. We’ve just grown better at restraining it around others.”

Yes, that tends to happen when your careless words and actions lead to the destruction of people you love, they both think, but do not speak. “Better than nothing, I suppose,” SRS-01 concedes, and then leaves to start decorating more of the can. Spearmaster, once it wakes up and figures out what is going on, becomes an eager accomplice.

They drape the most-trafficked halls with colour and fabric and dangling ornaments, then retire for a nice afternoon of painting together in a pre-decided stretch of boring wall. Out of whimsy, Suns paints the extinct gold lizard; Spearmaster sees what they are doing and paints a lizard-like thing as well, but theirs has wings.

When Suns questions them, astonished at this remarkably sound depiction of an extinct true dragon, they learn a little more than they had expected about slugcat mythology.

 [LIVE BROADCAST] PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

SRS: Did you know that slugcats think that the People were dragons? As in, descendants of actual winged true dragons.

NSH: …Are you serious?? That’s amazing. What gave them that idea?

SRS: It’s not too far-fetched, actually. They see all the paintings and statues, and as you know the People were decidedly reptilian, especially with some of the popular mask designs. It doesn’t seem much of a stretch when you think about it that way.

SRS: What’s more entertaining, I think, is that they assume that the People are all gone because they lineaged badly and became lizards. If I’m understanding Spearmaster correctly, the Movespeak word for ‘lizard’ is actually ‘dragon’.

NSH: Oh my iterating hells, can you imagine? Our self-obsessed People falling to that sort of low? Incredible. They’d be frothing at the mouth at the very idea.

SRS: Undoubtedly. I’m sure many would consider it blasphemy.

SRS: It’s interesting how they’re not entirely wrong. The People and the true dragons do share common ancestors. And lizards are the last surviving family of that whole branch.

SRS: Though I suppose you’d know much more about that than me. How extensive are those databanks of yours, then?

NSH: Extensive enough that I have genome blueprints for actual true dragons~

SRS: Really! That’s shocking. Didn’t they go extinct before you were even constructed?

NSH: Yes, but I was quite dedicated to expanding my gene banks when I was new. I was so eager to get to work. Good thing too! I have blueprints for countless extinct species on record. I’ve got things archived that half the world has forgotten.

SRS: Like dragons.

NSH: Like dragons.

SRS: …

SRS: I will be honest, I am extremely surprised you never made one.

NSH: Oh I tried.

NSH: My administrators expressly forbade me from finishing. Later, Moon forbade me too.

NSH: It’s always ‘think about the repercussions, Sig’, ‘they could cause actual noteworthy damage to your superstructure, Sig’ and never ‘that sounds like a lot of fun, Sig, you should definitely try it!’ Everyone likes to ruin my fun.

SRS: I am more glad than ever that Moon was appointed the local senior.

NSH: Now you’re just making me think I should hurry up and make a dragon before we get her back in contact again.

SRS: No Significant Harassment. I say this in the strongest possible terms: No. That would be a terrible idea.

NSH: I make no promises~

SRS: ….

NSH: Oh, relax, I wouldn’t actually do it. The vultures are going to be hard enough to deal with while we’re travelling, we don’t want the People’s ancestral predator in the mix too.

NSH: Besides, they’re very large. I definitely don’t have the resources to make one right now. Even if I hypothetically wanted to.

SRS: I truly worry about you sometimes, Sig.

 “Oh now, that does have gravitas,” SRS-01 says admiringly, after prodding their greater self to modify the lighting in the puppet chamber. “Darker and red like this, it truly does have more of the ambience of the Cathedral. Do you think you could program a sort of shifting tiled pattern, as if light through stained glass?”

“You are going to make us as obsessed with appearances as the People, at this rate,” their puppet complains, but, noticeably, does immediately start tinkering with the projections and lighting. Part-formed patterns start shifting in subtle colours over the chamber walls; a work in progress.

“You know very well that you’re enjoying it as much as me.” They watch with satisfaction, nodding as the light shifts into myriad flecks of subtly different hue, projected over the muted reds of the chamber walls. It looks very much like the dappled, colourful lighting of the cathedral’s stained glass.

“It’s really quite lovely, isn’t it,” their puppet says despairingly, watching the shifting light. “Have we always been this vain?”

SRS-01 considers it. “Yes, perhaps, only without an outlet to express it properly, or the outside impetus to do so,” they decide, and shrug. “Honestly though, Spearmaster is right. This isn’t only our body, it’s our living space too. There’s nothing wrong about making it suit us, or letting us enjoy how we look – puppet or AMP or interior, we should present ourselves how we please.”

“Nothing wrong with it, perhaps,” Suns admits. “But it’s terribly indulgent, all the same.”

“That’s certainly true.” They ruminate on the idea for the space of a few seconds, then conclude “I think Sig is rubbing off on us, though, because I really can’t bring myself to care that much.” From their greater self’s long-suffering sigh, they clearly agree. “Now then. Let’s consider our puppet itself. Is now the time to finally get out the ritual clothes?”

“I really don’t know about that.”

SRS-01 shrugs and accepts it. They’re the same person, of course, so they know the feeling: the ritual clothes are…special occasion wear. It feels uncomfortably like making light of it to make them part of a standard wardrobe. “Very well. Let’s just print out some of the more elaborate silk robe designs in your size, then, and you can change between them as you please.”

“That will do,” says the puppet, resigned. “But let’s not go too far.”

SRS-01 politely does not point out how unlikely they are to hold to any sort of restraint in this regard, and goes on their way. Within a day, they are proven right: their puppet is clothed in some exceptionally beautiful robes, their selfling has taken an outing with Spearmaster to raid Septkai for jewellery, and they’re both accessorised to the fullest extent of their aesthetics.

“I can’t bring myself to regret this,” Suns despairs, flicking their puppet’s left antenna to feel the jewellery move on it. “I really can’t.”

Their selfling, who has availed themself of their own delicate ornamented chains, nods with sympathetic amusement. It might not be the spread of six antennae that their mural depicts, but the chains – affixed near the tips of their antennae and then hanging to their bases in turn – really do suit them far too well to deny. “Now let’s only avoid covering ourselves head to toe in jewels and chains, and we will be fine,” they say.

Suns makes a grumpy noise in agreement. For all that their sense of personal style and aesthetics is running rampant at the moment, the sheer maximalist chaos of Person fashions towards the end might be going a little far.

“Cheer up,” SRS-01 encourages. “Imagine the reactions of our friends when they see us. It ought to be terribly entertaining.”

They consider that. “We truly have been spending far too much time talking to Sig.”

“Probably, yes,” they agree, and head for the chamber exit. “I’m off to see if Spearmaster wants any jewellery. Have fun supervising the final AMP construction stages.”

In the end, Spearmaster chooses a sturdy little amulet of a stylised sun, on a far less delicate chain than the ones Sun is wearing. They tuck its back into the folds of its poncho, the amulet providing a simple bit of ornamentation over their sternum. It’s terribly cute.

“I really should be more embarrassed by all of this,” their selfling muses, observing themself from the superstructure cameras with rueful pleasure.

“Useless,” Spearmaster denies, as cheerful an enabler as ever. “It makes you happy. That is what is important.”

Suns pets its velvety little head, fond. “If you say so.”

 [LIVE BROADCAST] PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

SRS: The AMP is nearly done.

SRS: Soon it will be time for me – my selfling – to leave.

NSH: Exciting! Are you all ready?

SRS: Theoretically. I have everything packed, at any rate, and I’ve been taking care of some things around my can.

NSH: How are you feeling about it?

SRS: …

SRS: I’ll be honest, I’m very nervous.

SRS: It’s such a gift that I’ll have the chance to leave my superstructure in some form at all, and I’m truly excited to meet you in person.

SRS: But the prospect of going out there…it’s frightening. Is it similar for you?

NSH: No, I can’t really relate, honestly.

NSH: As you know, I took my selfling to the surface at more or less the first opportunity. I didn’t especially want to wait to see what it was like.

SRS: It’s the change that’s unsettling me, I think. For all that I’ve always wished I could leave my can to see things for myself, it’s more daunting than I expected to have to face such a new world after all these cycles.

SRS: Aren’t you nervous at all to set out in earnest? For more than just a brief trip out, I mean. It’s going to be so different to anything we’ve ever known.

NSH: No, the unknown aspect of it doesn’t bother me. I just find that exciting, even if it is dangerous.

NSH: …I’m mostly concerned about what we’ll find when we get to our friends’ retaining wall. I don’t think it’s going to be good. I don’t know what kind of state they must be in, by now.

SRS: Yes. I’m worried about that, too.

 Suns has been trying very hard not to think about the state of Five Pebbles and Looks to the Moon. With all of the distractions and personal development of late, they’ve been almost successful, for once.

Almost.

The conversation with Sig brings it all back into focus. They worry about Moon, stuck in that broken chamber, with only a handful of neurons to her name. What if she loses them? What if something eats them? A lone puppet, with none of their defences active…she couldn’t do a thing to protect herself, like that. She is so, so very unsafe.

…And Pebbles.

With their selfling connected, every thinking part of Seven Red Suns falls idle into regret. If only they had done something, anything, different…

But that’s futile, isn’t it. That thought is why they developed the AOS in the first place, for hope of putting a part of themself out into the world where it can make a difference. Surely, surely, in person…Five Pebbles will respond differently. Suns can respond differently, and not just drown him in their own sanctimony yet again. He was so angry, at that last message…

“Sun unhappy?” Spearmaster asks, and with a start their selfling body realises it has gone still and subdued with the rest of themself. Their antennae are drooping, too, in that reflexive expressiveness that was programmed into their puppet first, and then their AMP in turn. “What is wrong?”

“It’s alright,” they say, in the end. “I’m just…thinking about Five Pebbles.”

Its ears flatten back. After the response he gave it once, and then the injury he offered the next time, Spearmaster has been nursing a quiet and pronounced dislike for him ever since. “Oh. Him.” It doesn’t look pleased. “Angry one.”

“Yes.” They lift their eyes to the grey metal ceiling. “I know you dislike him. You have every reason to – he treated you poorly, and you only the messenger. You didn’t deserve that. But…he is my friend, nonetheless, no matter what he thinks of me now. And I worry about him.”

Spearmaster hesitates. “Inside him,” it says, cautiously. “He was not like you, not like your other friend. Damaged. Something evil growing inside.”

“Yes. I know.” A careful pause, to collect themself. “That is the rot. It was created by a mistake on his part, though I don’t know what caused it. But he never would have been able to make it at all, if I hadn’t sent him dangerous information. You were the one that carried it, if you remember. Your first trip out.”

It nods. “I remember.”

“I intended it as a gift to…make him a little less frustrated with his lot, if possible. Maybe allow him to find some happiness, no matter what that entailed. But I only made everything worse. Because of my actions, Moon is barely alive, and he…” Rotting. Rotting, all this time, with Suns helpless to do anything at all.

How bad must it be, by now? How quickly does it advance? Surely, there must be no way for him to rid himself of it, alone in his superstructure with no citizens or allies to aid him. All he could hope to do is flush any cysts present in active water-supplied conduits.

“We are travelling to help him, yes?” It asks, looking a little concerned itself now. Although, why it would be worried for someone it dislikes so much… “Him, and your nicer friend. Moon.”

“We are. We’ll be picking up Sig’s selfling and then all heading there together.” They sigh, and in the midst of these heavy thoughts, even that plan of action isn’t much comfort. “But I don’t even know how much of him is left, after all this time. For all I know, the rot could have consumed him completely…although, no, if his structure had collapsed we would have all noticed. But almost anything short of that is possible.”

“We will see. We will help what can,” Spearmaster says, resolutely.

A laugh, bitter. “You don’t even like him.”

“No. But you love him, so I will try to help as well.”

One of these days, its altruism and kindness will cease surprising them. Today is not that day. “I appreciate it, more than I can say,” they tell it, too quiet for the chaos within their thoughts. “I only hope that there is something of him left to help.”

In an ideal world, they would rip the Rot from him and leave whatever remains…damaged, but at least not being eaten alive. But what are the chances of that? Such a pronounced decay, with so much time to grow…it isn’t as if it’s only a handful of cysts, capable of being sterilised with enough explosives. Enough damage to burn the Rot out might well bring his whole structure down, and then what?

…Though, it’s not as though a superstructure is the only way for an iterator to exist, anymore. But is there even enough left of him to create a selfling?

They stare at nothing for a long time, thinking darkly.

In the end, even if there is enough, and a part of Pebbles could be evacuated to a mobile form like this one, Suns doesn’t want his superstructure to die. It’s him. It’s Five Pebbles. How could they possibly accept letting it rot and die? I could not bear it, they think, but they don’t know what else to do.

At this point, their greatest hope is that there is something noteworthy a pair of mobile iterator platforms could do to help…or that No Significant Harassment will have more ideas than Suns does. Maybe it will be different, when they can see him in person. Maybe they’ll know what to do.

“Tomorrow,” they murmur, full of a dread and hope that seem wont to choke them. “Tomorrow, SRS-02 should be complete. And the day after that…”

“We go,” Spearmaster signs.

Suns offers a very slight nod. “We will go.”

 ---

 The last muscular tissues of SRS-02 spool together in the bioengineering bay, Suns’ manipulating arms in the walls reaching out to fit the external chassis plating back into place on the frame. SRS-01 and Spearmaster are there to watch, with the waiting AOS held carefully in the first selfling’s hands. Installation of their own AOS had necessarily been done by the bay’s arms, but this time…it feels a little more personal to do it themself.

It’s nearly senseless, really; the manipulating arms are theirs as much as the AMP’s arms are theirs, but it does feel different somehow. And Suns is done with denying themself any harmless sentiment that matters to them.

The angled planes of the platform’s torso are just the same as their own. Gently, they ease the broad upper plate into opening up, the seals releasing, and then those of the reinforced system compartment in turn, reaching in to install this fragile, helpless new appendage of their whole self. They connect the neural tissue in a few places, connect the wiring, and – there. AOS-79 senses the connections, reaches out, and switches the AMP on.

SRS-01 withdraws their hands, and watches the thoracic compartment close with a quiet hiss of air as the internal seals take hold. Bearing every driver and software update they’ve produced, their awakening is much easier than this body’s was: their eyes open, they sit up, and they’re done.

“All well?” SRS-01 asks, and watches their counterpart twist their neck and waggle their limbs, checking everything in turn.

“Yes, everything is responding normally,” SRS-02 agrees. “Sending diagnostic report on internal network.”

SRS-01 accepts it first, and has a quick parse through. At their approval, their greater self takes it and looks too. All is within parameters. A perfect, effortless installation. “Welcome to our self,” SRS-01 says warmly, and then they all three merge together: one being in three bodies, effortlessly piloted in unison.

Spearmaster looks between the two AMPs, and remarks “If you make many more of you, this will become to feel strange.”

Their two bodies look at each other, antennae splaying ruefully. “Well, we shall see,” one of them says, and really, it hardly matters which.

They are all the same mind, after all.

 [LIVE BROADCAST] PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment

SRS: SRS-02 is active and awake. The installation went flawlessly.

SRS: There’s now nothing left to do. SRS-01 is all packed, I have a selfling here to continue maintenance on my structure, and…everything is ready.

SRS: Staying any longer would be senseless delay. We need to wait for morning, for my rains to stop, but after that…

NSH: Finally. I can’t wait.

NSH: Isn’t it exciting? You’ll be the first iterator to ever set foot outside your facility grounds! And all because of the work you did on the AOS.

SRS: I couldn’t have done it without you.

NSH: Yes you could. It would’ve just taken longer.

NSH: If I get the biological AMPs working though, I’ll take credit for that~. Don’t think anyone else has my flair for bioengineering.

SRS: Yes, quite.

SRS: …I am afraid to go.

SRS: But staying, that would be worse. So I’ll go anyway.

SRS: Or, at least, a part of me will. It’s strange, to be fretting so much, and know that in a very real sense, I will still be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and the one after, and so on. But part of me will be out there, all the same.

NSH: You get very maudlin when you’re worried, don’t you.

SRS: Please, Sig, I’m trying to work up my courage here.

NSH: Oh, shush, you dramatic thing. You’ll be fine. You’ll see. It’s a big step, but it’ll turn out alright in the end.

NSH: And, of course, you’ll get to see me~

SRS: …

SRS: I can’t even pretend to not be looking forward to that.

NSH: Of course you’re looking forward to it! I’m so charming, after all.

SRS: You’re ridiculous, is what you are.

SRS: …

SRS: The part of me that is SRS-01 is so afraid to disconnect. It’s frightening no matter what.

SRS: …Hah. Spearmaster has advice for me. “Go into the unknown places, and then you will know them, and they will not be so frightening anymore.”

NSH: That slugcat does seem to be good at advice.

SRS: They have a certain wisdom to them, don’t they?

SRS: …

SRS: Whatever happens when I leave my superstructure, I will not come back the same.

SRS: To go out and experience the world and change, like a living thing…haven’t I always wanted that?

NSH: Suns. You are a living thing, with or without an AMP. You weren’t any less a person before you had a mobile platform. Or any less alive, for that matter.

SRS:

SRS: Either way, all that’s left now is to leave.

SRS: Wish us luck.

NSH: Good luck, Seven Red Suns!! I look forward to seeing your selfling arrive in one piece

SRS: We’ll do our very best.

 In the drear humid mist of morning, Seven Red Suns steps from the door nearest the base of their structure, Spearmaster close beside them. The air is so wet that their body disturbs water vapour as they move, visibly rousing that hazy remnant of the night’s rains. Where the mist swirls, tiny droplets collect on the chassis of their bared arms and glitter like jewels; on the cloth about their shoulders, a clinging, heavy damp begins to set in. There is a stirring of noise all around: birdsong and hissing reptile cries and countless other things that live and move in the waking world.

Upon the surface, the landscape is breathing. The plants unfurl from shelter in the soil, leaves greeting the dew like an old friend. Insects emerge from their burrows, and the ground itself seems to exhale a long sigh at the relief of dawn. In the distance, a lizard’s green tail flashes into sight and then away again, in pursuit of something Suns cannot see.

It is a living world. Today, they go out to become a part of it.

Suns lingers through the trepidation, chasing threads of excitement as a bolster to their courage. Then, with a parting message to themself, they disconnect from the superstructure.

It’s time to leave.

    x

---

NSH: You weren’t any less a person before you had a mobile platform. Or any less alive, for that matter.

SRS: I’m going to go ahead and not respond to that

  Shorter chapter this time, since I wanted to stop it at this significant moment etc. Finally kicking this idiot out of their can!!

Learner is my first scug OC. You can find a quick drawing I did of her here. She’ll probs show up from time to time where relevant. https://tenspontaneite.tumblr.com/post/718944143267823616/scug-oc-she-would-like-to-know-where-these-weird

 Some worldbuilding:

You know the in game lineage system? Where if you kill something it has a small chance to come back as a higher tier / scarier version of what it is? Well I’m saying that that’s just one fucky effect of the Cycle sometimes, and it’s responsible for dramatically, stupidly fast evolution. Which is how an entire sapient race of scavengers is already out and about following the mass ascension of the ancients, and how scugs are also very clearly in a very early sapient stage of society, and also how you get weird scugs like Gourmand and Artificer that have special abilities despite not being engineered by anyone, and also how you get dramatic adaptations like Rivulet’s or Saint’s very quickly.

I am saying though that it’s Massively less likely to happen the more karma aware the creature is, i.e. how sapient. You’re only really likely to get a lineaged scug if they die extremely young, too young to have noteworthy karma levels. So for example Arti was probably caught in an explosion, Rivulet drowned etc, all as very small pups, then lineaged. They might not even remember it. Also scans for how the special ability scugs mostly seem to be loners in backstory – I’d expect colony scugs to have a lower pup mortality rate, so less likely overall to get repeated pup deaths leading to lineaging. Anyway, this has been: depressing worldbuilding! Let’s move on.

  Some scug words:

Mind: Signifier of sapience. Scugs will call non sapient animals ‘mindless’ or say that they have no minds. Things scugs think are more personlike can be described as ‘mindful’.

Great Mind: Iterator; regarded as a kind of higher being with an elevated level of ‘mindfulness’ or sapience, whose true nature is nearly incomprehensible. The connection between Great Minds and superstructures is known but not understood.

Rules of Politeness: Diplomatic rules and standards as regards specific colonies/entities who you want to get along with/not be on bad terms with. Ideally, you want to know someone’s Rules of Politeness before you arrive at where they live.

Dragon: Lizard.

Old Dragon: A Person/ancient; believed to be the original and greater form of lizards.

Great Dragon: True dragons, as now long since extinct, and depicted on some run-down murals. Believed to have been the overlords / original and greater form of the People, and a form of higher being.

 The lizard = dragon thing, and existence of dragons in RW, all inspired by Dragon Slayer passage/achievement.

I bet all this dragon mentioning isn’t going to be relevant at all!

 Massively, massively appreciate all the comments people have been leaving, on ao3 or in tags or otherwise. It’s been very important motivation because chapter 7 was being a dickhead to write, and chapter 8 is probs going to be annoying too >.>

Also big thank to everyone who left kudos or bookmarks or likes / reblogs etc. Watching the numbers go up is insane for the brain juice.

[treeofnonsense]

❤️ Wake/Pyrrha

I think I may have flipped the prompt from what you'd first think of.

Pyrrha’s body felt wrong – well of course it did, it wasn’t her body at all. You’d think you’d get used to that after a couple thousand years, but nope, just her fucking luck. Her eyeline was still too high, her arms too long and muscly, and she kept bumping her boots into corners if she didn’t pay attention. And rubbing her chin – Gideon’s chin – because apparently that oaf hadn’t even bothered to shave again. Fine, she’d do it for him after. He was lucky she didn’t slit his throat while she did it.

It wasn’t a long walk to the center of the Mithraeum, and she knew she’d come to the right place when she found flower petals under her feet. Cytherea’s body lay on a pedestal with her arms crossed over her chest, serene as could be. John must have patched her up, and then he’d decorated the room with the whole funeral shebang: flowers, softly burning candles, the works. Cyth probably would have loved it – she’d always been the drama queen. Pyrrha thought it looked fucking stupid, especially now that half the candles had melted into little ugly lumps.

God, I hope they didn’t hold a memorial like this for me. It had taken her a few months to manifest the first time, so she’d never really gotten to check.

Carefully, she maneuvered Gideon’s big body through the petals and coils of smoke, until she loomed over Cytherea’s tiny form. Ever-so-carefully, because Gideon had big meaty paws and Cytherea’s bones looked like glass, she cupped her old friend’s dead face in one hand. “You deserved better than this,” was all she could think to say; it was the only farewell she’d ever managed for a Lyctor. She bent down and gently kissed the body on the lips.

The corpse opened its eyes. One bony hand snaked out and seized Pyrrha by the collar, the grip like iron. Pyrrha froze and instinctively went for her spear, but of course she didn’t have it because Gideon liked to walk around the Mithraeum unarmed when he couldn’t sleep, protected by his magic. Pyrrha didn’t have that luxury, so she stared down into dead, milk-white eyes, the natural color so decayed that she couldn’t tell the soul within. But it wasn’t Cytherea, that was for damn sure. Cytherea could never look so fierce as that.

“I know it’s you, Pyrrha,” the corpse said, with a voice raw and burbling from disuse. She smiled, and Pyrrha’s blood ran cold. She knew that smile, even on different lips in a different face, though she’d never expected to see it again.

“Wake.”

“Yes. This is so much more comfortable than a sword.”

Pyrrha’s shoulders felt heavy with the number of questions she was carrying. She decided on the most pressing first. “How are you here? What are you doing here?”

“I’m finishing my mission.” And just like that the smile was gone. All that was left was the intense look, the burn-the-world-to-ash look. It was dangerous and a million times more attractive, which was what had gotten them all into this situation to begin with, dammit.

“You mean your daughter. Harrow's eyes…”

“Blood is nothing compared to a cause,” Wake said, which was both ironic given her organization and quite possibly the truest thing she’d ever uttered. Pyrrha knew she’d do anything to open the Tomb, and Wake knew she knew it, so she said, “Are you going to try and stop me?”

Pyrrha could, probably. If she got in a sneak attack while Wake was pretending to take a dead nap, or maybe just bodied her now. Wake didn’t have necromancy, but she was in a fragile little necromancer’s body. Granted it would be a risk, and it would mean hell for Gideon once the rest of the Lyctors found out, and who knew what splash damage could be done to the station or even the new kid Lyctors… damn. Damn it all.

“No. Not yet,” Pyrrha sighed. Wake smiled, released Pyrrha, and laid herself back down on the pedestal. “How did you know it was me and not him?”

Wake snorted. “I’ve always known. You kiss different. Fuck different too. Honestly, a lot better some nights.”

“A thousand years of practice does wonders,” Pyrrha said, because it was just instinct at this point. Wake didn’t respond; Pyrrha studied the body laid out before her and felt a pang in her chest. She realized she missed the red hair. “Don’t you touch those kids, Wake. They didn’t ask for this.”

“None of us asked for your necromantic subjugation,” Wake hissed. “If you’re not going to kill me or tell the world the truth, then kindly step off. I have some pretending to do, and I’ve gained a lot of patience over the last two decades.”

Pyrrha left, crunching rose petals into dust under her heels. She needed a smoke, and so she was going to have one, even if Gideon’s lungs paid for it. He deserved it really. Hadn’t anyone ever told them not to fall in love with crazy?

[evenaturtleduck]

1, 2, 3, 4, and 13 for the book asks!

1) How many books? According to Storygraph it's 211! How???? Tbf this does include a lot of graphic novels–I figured out that I could satisfy my need to go foraging in the library for weird new books without committing to a thousand pages of text if I went to the graphic novel section. And I really love books with pictures ❤️

2) Rereads: Boyfriend Material, Husband Material, some KJ Charles, The House in the Cerulean Sea, A Strange and Stubborn Endurance (reread it twice this year because I love them), the Greta Helsing books, several of the big bad wolf books by Charlie Adhara, the Witness for the Dead, and I recently checked out Winter’s Orbit for a reread, too :) Basically if it's the kind of book that lets me have a good cry about a lonely guy getting the love and care he deserves but hasn't gotten until now, I probably want to reread it at some point.

3) Top 5 books: oh dang. This one is hard. Um. Let's say Solomon's Crown, The Spear Cuts Through Water, Going Postal, The Goblin Emperor, and The Archive Undying.

And then some runner ups, because I can: the Raven Tower, We Could Be So Good, and The Charioteer.

4) Any new authors? This one is wild because I look back over this list and realize that there are a bunch of authors I am now obsessed with who I only read for the first time less than a year ago! (Did I really just read Captive Prince in April?!?!) Anyway, new-to-me authors this year (there were a LOT so I'm only listing people who I read more than one of their books this year because I did the thing where I found someone I liked and then read everything by them that I could get my paws on) include Ann Leckie, Charlie Adhara, Katherine Addison/Sarah Monette, Victoria Goddard, C.S. Pacat, C.J. Sansom, N.R. Walker, R. Cooper, Ben Aaronovitch, Catherine Valente, and probably others that I'm missing 😭

13) Least favorite books? eeeeeh ok. So there were a bunch that I DNFed because they just weren't the right book for me, but the one I was most disappointed to not like was Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe. I just couldn't get into it–I like my magical realism weird and my quirky impoverished southern small towns Gothic (if there isn't a fucked up house literally-or-metaphorically eating people what’s the point?). Another one I was sad not to like was The First Bright Thing, for a similar reason–it tried so hard to convince me I loved the characters and was emotionally invested in them when I'd only barely met them, and I just didn't feel it.

There were others that I liked less, but those are the ones I remember because I'd really wanted to like them, and they probably were good books, just not books I wanted to read.

[geostelar5]

Shades of Twilight P1

Link let out a cry of shock as he slammed his Club against the Bokoblin’s head and it shattered, sending the red monster flying to the ground before its body vanished in a puff of smoke like always. Looking around at the other two enemies who were charging him, the young hero gulped as he reached to his back to try and pull out any weapon. A spear, sword...Even a shield would do right now!  

“No!” He couldn't find anything! How had he let himself run out?! Letting out a yelp Link flipped backwards as one of the Bokoblins swung his club at him and the young man had to start ducking and diving around the wooden weapons. Fumbling with his Sheika Slate, the young man started up the Bomb Runes and quickly threw it into his enemy’s face detonating the thing mid air and blasting them back again.

 The young knight letting out a sigh of relief before he heard a sound behind him and saw the Bokoblin’s club raised and swinging down towards his head. Was this it? Was he going to survive those hundred years, getting through the calamity just to be killed by a simple Bokoblin? Because he had forgotten to pack backup weapons? He couldn’t move in time, even if he side stepped. Time seemed to slow down for those few moments before the Bokoblin was tackled away by a Dark Grey form and a growl.

Tackling it to the ground and gnawing down on the throat of the monster, Link let out a loud sigh as he recognized the creature. It was the Wolf...That strange Wolf who appeared to help him now and again. One of his few consistent companions in this strange, destroyed Hyrule.  Smiling at the canine as he finished off the monster and looked at him, Link sauntered over with a hum while pulling out some prime meat, some of the good rare stuff. The pup deserved it for saving his life after all!

“Come here boy! You deserve a treat don’t you?!”  He laughed as the Wolf’s attention was brought to him and he tossed the meat up into the air, only for it to be caught on the way down by the wolf with a jump in the air. 

“Good boy!” As the thing tore into the meat, Link grinned and hummed, going around and collecting the discarded weapons from the camp like usual, desperate to restock his supply of them while the Master Sword on his back recharged, he felt its calm thrumming. It was going to be restocked soon, good. Looking back at the Wolf again, he stared at it while sitting down on one of the stools the Bokobins crafted. Just what was it? And why did he come to help him?

Staring forward, Link traced his eyes along the Wolf for the first time really and noticed it was strange. The thing had a shackle on its front paw and a green...Mane? That transitioned into gray fur. It was odd, looking at it he felt like there was some familiarity. A connection and an itch in his forehead that he couldn’t explain. 

“Well better get going...The Divine Beasts won’t free themselves now will they Wolf? Maybe my sword will last me longer next time eh? Enough time to beat one of the Gannons at least.” Chuckling to himself, he didn’t notice Wolf’s new more vicious stance. 

Deciding to travel his way to Hatteno to rest for a couple days. He had just freed Vah Ruta, which meant he had two more of them to free and he would feel confident enough to take on the Calamity. He had noticed that Wolf was following him at a more wary distance than usual, and that made him frown, had he done something to upset his canine companion? Once there and near his bed, Link set down his equipment with a sigh before turning around to see Wolf there, growling and about to pounce his left paw glowing with a bright light.

“Oh Keese shit!”  Diving for the Master Sword, his hand just barely managed to wrap around the handle as Wolf Pounced right for his neck and everything seemed to fade to white and Link felt his body collapsing backwards onto the bed.

After what felt like hours, Link found himself face down on what felt like the softest grass he had ever touched. It was so soft, so comforting, he just wanted to sleep on it...

“Get up. You don’t have time to spend dreaming do you?” Hearing a gruff voice, Link lifted his head and saw a man, no not a man. A Ghost? A Stalfos? He couldn’t tell, its what little  skin was see through and faded, and the rest of it was covered in a tattered green tunic, with small bits of chainmail clearly visible where the fabric had torn.  He was wearing a pair of riding boots, and the Skeleton...Ghost? Spirit. The Spirit looked at him with expectation in the closest thing Link could approximate was eyes, and the young knight couldn't help but want to live up to them.

[valentinesfrog]

Little Tiger (pt. 2)

“There are my best girls.”

Casey blinks open her half asleep eyes at the sound of her wife’s voice as she enters their apartment. “Hey, babe,” Casey greets, voice hoarse. She clears her throat, and Veronica grumbles as the comfy chest where she’s been resting moves. “Mama’s home,” Casey murmurs to the girl. Veronica just mumbles and burrows further. “The little one’s having a bit of a rough day,” Casey says, rubbing Vera’s back. 

Rita kicks off her heels and tuts quietly as she approaches the sofa. “Are we a little under the weather, sweetheart?” She murmurs, brushing Vera’s hair out of her face. 

“She’s warm. Not feverish yet, but definitely a bit too warm.”

Rita places the back of her hand on the girl’s forehead, or as much as she can reach that isn’t hidden in Casey’s neck. “Did she eat?”

“Barely. She picked at the pizza, I convinced her to get down some applesauce.”

“Did you eat?”

“Hm?”

“You, my… my taller tiger. Did you eat?”

Casey blinks. “Your taller tiger?”

“Casey. Food.”

Casey sighs. “Sort of. She just wanted to be held, so I gave up on dinner and we ended up… here.”

‘Here’ is snuggled on the sofa, watching Moana on low volume. 

“I’m going to get out of…” Rita gestures broadly at her clothes. “And then I’ll take the baby and you’ll eat some food. Got it?”

“You’ve been working all day…”

“All the more reason to snuggle my girl. And you’re looking a bit touched out.” Rita’s already moving for their bedroom. 

Truth be told, Casey is feeling a little touched out, and when Rita returns in a band shirt and leggings Casey does not argue when she wraps Vera in her arms and gently tugs her away. Vera whines in protest at being pulled away from her mommy, but once she realizes who is lifting her she decides that it is an acceptable swap. 

Casey stands and stretches, wandering back to the table where she grabs Vera’s abandoned plate of cut up pizza squares and half empty apple sauce cup to discard. She then returns to her plate to scarf down the rest of her now cold slice of pizza.

“What’s the show with the dogs?” Rita asks from the sofa as Moana finishes. “The tolerable ones? That aren’t public servants?” 

“Uh,” is Casey’s intelligent reply.

“The— they’re Australian.”

“Bluey?”

“Yes, that, thank you. Disney plus?”

“Should be.”

The Bluey theme song seems to wake Veronica up a little bit, who has her dazed attention on the screen. Casey finishes her food and heats some up for Rita, leaving it on the end table of the couch before dropping into a chair across from them.

“You probably like this show more than she does,” Rita says in between bites of pizza and salad.

“Bluey is a great show,” Casey insists. “Fully deserving of its Emmy.”

“It won an Emmy?”

“I don’t appreciate how judgemental you sound of Bluey. Would you rather Paw Patrol?”

“Bingo!” Vera cheers quietly along with the song from Rita’s lap. Her normal enthusiasm sounds dampened, and it worries Casey slightly again. “Bluey!” She wiggles a little along to the music.

“Want a tomato, love?” Rita asks, spearing one with her plastic fork.

Vera considers, attention torn between the animated dogs and her mother. “Coo–cumber?” She eventually requests.

“You can have a cucumber,” Rita agrees, popping the tomato into her own mouth to grab a cucumber and feed it to Vera.

“Work okay?” Casey asks, now observing Rita and Vera more than the TV.

“Mhm. Though the SVU squad still seems to think I’m their enemy.”

Casey smiles. “Give them some time, they’ll come along.” Sometime after Veronica’s adoption Rita had a bit of a crisis of conscience, because ‘Everybody’s entitled to the best defense they can afford’ didn’t hold the same weight when you realized the powerful man you got off a rape charge on a technicality would be walking the same streets as your little girl.

With Casey’s enthusiastic (and not–so–secretly very relieved) support, Rita had made the switch to immigration law with the occasional pro–bono defense.

“I’m helping their witness stay in the country, you’d think they’d relax a bit,” Rita complained, before swallowing an olive. “And I’ve defended their squad before.”

“Liv still has it out for Langan, and he defended her. Don’t take it personally.”

“I do enough favors for Barba and maybe they’ll chill out,” Rita mutters.

“Bingo,” Veronica says again, reaching for Rita’s salad. Rita feeds her another cucumber.

“Bluey,” Casey finishes the song as Vera’s mouth is full.

“Bedtime,” Rita mimics, pushing away her salad and kissing Vera on the cheek.

— — — If you'd like to continue on AO3 :) — — —

“‘Nother,” Vera sleepily demands. 

“I think that’s enough for tonight,” Casey says with an amused smile, shutting the picture book. 

“Please?” Vera asks with big, pouty eyes and Casey defaults to Rita because there’s no way she can say ‘No’ to those eyes, so may as well leave it to the expert. 

Casey is convinced that if you didn’t know Veronica was adopted, you’d think she is biologically Rita’s from her facial expressions alone. Rita and Veronica both know that they can get Casey to do practically anything by giving her doe eyes. They both have the same devious smile they get when they’re plotting something particularly nefarious (Rita: legal loophole. Vera: Sneaky cookie heist.) And (Casey’s personal favorite) they both get the same grumpy little scowl when things aren’t going their way. It’s the cutest thing in the world, but Casey can never tell Rita that, because Rita would probably bite her. 

“Mommy and I have unionized,” Rita states, taking Casey’s spot on the bed. “Our contract reads one bedtime story per night, two on birthdays.”

Vera takes a moment to process that, blinking blearily, before asking, “Lull-bye?”

“Lullaby,” Rita agrees. Casey hangs back and leans against the door, listening to Rita quietly sing in Portuguese, feeling rather doze-y herself. Rita’s voice is soft, and low, and this is the only way Casey can ever hear her sing since she refuses to in any other circumstance. 

Vera is fast asleep very quickly, and Rita leans in to kiss her forehead— and Tiger’s, of course— with a whispered, “Goodnight, my little tiger.” 

She steps back so Casey can swoop in with a “Sweet dreams, babygirl.”

Rita shuts the door quietly behind them. “If she doesn’t sleep the temperature off, I’ll work from home tomorrow and call the doctor,” she says. “You have office hours, right?”

“Mhm.” Casey wraps her arms around Rita and rests her chin on her shoulder. “Hi.”

“Hello there.”

“I missed you.”

Rita rolls her eyes fondly. “You ran into me in the middle of the day.”

“I did. And then I had to take care of the resulting tears that came when Vera realized Mama wasn’t coming with us. She made some very convincing arguments about why you should’ve come home early, I think I missed you more than she did by the end.”

“That was probably because you were dealing with a sick and overtired toddler, dear.”

“That might have had something to do with it.” Casey pulls back to kiss her sweetly. “But can’t I just miss my wife for the hell of it?”

“Flatterer.” Rita rolls her shoulders and relaxes. “Have any student gossip for me?”

“Oh, do I,” Casey groans and Rita laughs, taking her hand to pull her to the bedroom.

— — — — — —

Casey jolts awake, Rita already slipping out of the bed, to the sound of wailing. She quickly follows her wife to Vera’s bedroom. 

“Oh dear,” Rita murmurs as she reaches into the bed to pick up a crying Veronica. “Oh, I think there’s been a little accident. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Casey tugs the sheets of the bed and bundles them to throw in the wash, grabbing some fresh pajamas and following Rita into the bathroom.

Rita had gotten a still crying (but no longer wailing, thank God) Vera cleaned up and into a pull–up by the time Casey enters, and they switch spots so Casey can get Vera dressed into new pajamas and perched on the counter, stuffed tiger beside her. Rita rummages through the cabinet for children’s Tylenol.

“Alright, my little tiger,” Rita says soothingly, brushing the tears off of Veronica’s cheeks as she sniffles. “You have a temperature, but this will help you feel better, okay?”

Vera whines and shakes her head. “Mommy,” she says pleadingly, making big eyes at Casey in hopes that she’ll swoop in and rescue her from having to take her medicine. 

“Sorry, kid,” Casey says apologetically. “I’m with Mama on this one.” She leans over to take the spoon from Rita, and they switch spots, Rita slipping out the bathroom door. Casey hears the microwave start up a moment later. 

Rita may be able to convince a jury of practically anything, but nobody can convince a stubborn toddler to do something they don’t want to do like Casey can. She thinks it comes from years of being surrounded by kids— brothers, nieces, nephews, coaching, camp counseling. She has a very refined skill set.

“Okay, baby,” Casey murmurs, crouching in front of where Vera’s perched on the counter. “Can you tell me what doesn’t feel good?”

Vera’s bottom lip is quivering and she’s very close to crying again, but she’s making a clear effort to hold back the tears. “Not sick.”

“Not sick?” Casey gently prompts when Vera doesn’t continue. 

“I don’ wan’ medicine. Not sick,” Vera repeats, crossing her arms. 

Casey thinks back to the few times Rita insisted vehemently that she doesn’t get sick, pushing through to work until Rafael physically dragged her home after she collapsed or fell asleep at her desk.

She decides she needs to have a discussion with her wife about modeling self care. 

“Then why were you crying, sweetheart?” Casey asks. Vera clearly has a fever, but she really needs to coax the girl into telling her what’s wrong. She’s not throwing up— thank God— and she’s not coughing either. But that just leaves Casey scrambling for answers. 

Vera looks rather lost for an answer to that, rubbing her eyes. “Tiger feels yucky,” she finally landed on. “Tiger had a— a bad dream.”

“I see.” Casey nods sagely. “Tiger must have been really scared.”

Vera nods quickly. “I was so bwave, though,” she informs her, and Casey feels her heart explode with love and protective urges and all the maternal instinct she had been scared she might not have, until she held her little girl in her arms for the first time and realized oh, shit, that’s what it feels like to love something more than anything in the entire universe.

“I bet you were,” Casey murmurs, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Sometimes feeling yucky can make us have bad dreams,” She adds. “Can you show me where Tiger feels icky?” 

Veronica nods again, pulling Tiger to her lap. She pats his head. 

“Tiger’s head hurts?” Casey clarifies. “Does Tiger hurt anywhere else?”

Vera hiccups a little, her breath shuddering as she points at Tiger’s throat. 

No coughing, no sneezing, sore throat. This was looking like strep, in Casey’s opinion, which meant antibiotics and another fun week of convincing a toddler to take her medicine. 

“Okay. Let me consult with Tiger for a moment,” Casey says, picking up Tiger and earning a giggle through Vera’s tears. Casey nods and ‘mhm’s very seriously as the tiger ‘speaks’ in her ear. At some point she starts feeling eyes on her back. She knows Rita is standing just outside the door, watching amusedly but not entering in hopes of not breaking Casey’s little routine. 

“Thank you, Tiger,” Casey says, putting him down on the counter. “Vera, Tiger’s a bit sick, and he has to take some medicine to help make his head and throat feel better. But—  I have a secret.” Casey gestures Vera to lean in and drops her voice to a whisper. “Tiger’s a little bit afraid of taking his medicine.”

Veronica looks up at her, wide eyed, then to Tiger, then back to her mommy. 

“I think Tiger needs a little help being brave,” Casey starts, then feigns having a brilliant idea. “Since you’re my brave girl, do you think you could take the medicine with him? To show Tiger how to be brave?”

Vera hesitates. “Tiger feel better?” She eventually asks. 

“Yeah, baby, you’ll help Tiger feel much better.”

“I help Tiger feel better,” Vera says decisively, reaching to grab at the spoon. 

Casey laughs. “Woah there, Ronnie Rabbit, let Mommy measure the medicine.” She pours out the purple liquid into the measuring spoon, holding it out so Veronica can open her mouth and have it tipped in to swallow. Vera then holds out her tiger, waiting, and Casey pretends to pour a little more of the medicine into the spoon to ‘feed’ him. 

She thinks if you told her five years ago that she’d soon be feeding a stuffed tiger children’s Tylenol in the middle of the night, she would’ve called you crazy. 

“All better,” Vera says, hugging the stuffed animal close. “Tiger’s so bwave.”

“That’s right, darling. You and Tiger are both very brave.” Casey feels Rita slip in behind her, holding a sippy cup. Veronica had outgrown sippy cups fairly quickly, but the poor girl is shivering, and Casey assumes that Rita’s preemptively avoiding spillage. “This tastes better than the medicine,” Rita promises, handing her the cup. “It’s apples and honey, it will feel very good for your throat.”

Vera takes the cup by its handles and starts sipping on the straw, observing her mothers with wide eyes as Casey leans back against the wall and Rita steps up on her toes a little to whisper, “You’re a miracle worker.”

“I know,” Casey murmurs back, wrapping an arm around her waist and pressing a kiss to the top of her head, which makes Vera giggle. 

“Getting sleepy again, baby?” Casey asks Veronica, who’s back to rubbing her eyes with the hand not holding the sippy cup. 

“Cuddle?” Vera requests, and how can Casey say no to that? She gathers the girl up in her arms, Rita swooping in to grab Tiger before he could fall when Vera lets go to wrap her arms around Casey’s neck. 

“Bedtime, little one,” Casey murmurs, nudging the door open to bring her to the bedroom. 

Rita climbs into the bed behind Vera, snuggling up to wrap her arms around her. “She still warm?” She asks, already drowsy again. 

Casey presses her lips to the girl’s forehead. “Not as bad.”

“Mhm,” Rita hums. “I’ll make an appointment for the morning.”

“We’re both gonna get strep, aren’t we,” Casey mumbles. 

“I don’t get sick.”

“Sure, baby.”

Rita shoots Casey an unimpressed look from above Veronica’s head, reaching around to detach Vera’s thumb from her mouth. Vera sleepily whines in protest, but grabs at random until she’s clutching at Casey’s shirt, which seems to soothe her equally as well. 

“You alright?” Rita asks after a moment, when Casey doesn’t close her eyes to try to sleep. 

“She’s so tiny,” Casey whispers, somewhat in awe but also mildly terrified. “She’s so small, and so good— but the world is so big and can be so awful…”

“Visiting SVU again freaked you out?”

“A little.”

“She has two parents who love her to the ends of the Earth, grandparents and an honorary abuelita that would sell their soul for her, and now that she’s met Benson, she has the entirety of the NYPD at her back. I think I trust that woman with our kid more than anyone.” 

Casey sighs. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.”

But all she can do is gaze at that tiny little hand, holding onto her shirt like her life depends on it, Tiger tucked between them, one of Rita’s arms protectively over Vera’s waist. 

“Casey,” Rita whispers. “She’s going to be fine. She’s going to be amazing.”

“I know.”

“Then go to sleep.”

“I love you,” Casey says instead. “I love the two of you more than anything.”

“I know,” Rita parrots back at her teasingly. But then, “I love you too.”

“Goodnight,” Casey murmurs, finally easing into the mattress. “And sweet dreams, my little tiger,” she adds to an already fast asleep Veronica.

[aroaessidhe]

The Art of Prophecy character descriptions for fanart.

Full entry (including spoilers) and database link in pinned post!

significant elements are bolded for clarity in database entry :) as is some art commissioned by the author!

----

Taishi

Taishi shifted her own mangled arm hanging useless by her side.

The peasant woman—the one Jian had originally taken for a servant who had forgotten her uniform

The old woman pulled a peach from her pocket and bit into it. Taishi threw her peach pit over her shoulder and wiped her hands on her peasant robes. She held up a hand as if expecting that to quiet the masters.

Taishi’s weathered face close to his, her rough, scarred hand wrapped around his wrists like a claw.

she lashed out with the Swallow Dances, her family heirloom. The plain straight sword with its unusual metallic blue tint had been passed down from father to son for centuries, the story of its origins much warped by a hundred retellings.

Jian

The hero everyone was fawning over was a scrawny teenager wearing only black breeches cut off just below the knee. His skinny chest was defined but flat, his arms were taut but stick-thin, and his skin was pale as ox milk. His black headband made his dark hair stick out like a bird’s nest, but his round boyish face was clean and manicured.

Her first thought was that it was strange for the hero to be so lightly armored compared with his bodyguards, but of course a teacher couldn’t check a student’s form and technique under several layers of armor. The boy flourished his sword above his head, and then moved his hands apart to reveal that it was in fact two identical blades. He twirled the two swords around his body and loosed a reasonable attempt at a war cry, his voice cracking at the tail end.

When Jian emerged moments later, he had transformed into a glittering, shining tank. He admired himself at the mirror before stepping out of the armory. He was a beaming image of a glorious hero of legend, wearing green plate armor with an illustration of a Pixiu, a ferocious cat creature with long sharp fangs and brightly feathered wings. On his person was strapped a veritable trove of incredibly valuable armaments, so that he appeared not unlike a porcupine of shining, glimmering death. On his left hip sat a golden straight sword, next to two glittering daggers. Across his back, a tear-away bandolier held his bone-carved staff, a diamond-etched spear, and an onyx-gem-wrapped bow with matching quiver. On his right hip hung a glass-etched chain whip. Jian had pondered bringing the horse-cutter as well, but the large sword with the extended handle was so heavy he nearly fell over as soon as he pulled it off the wall. He decided against bringing it and left it lying in the middle of the floor. What he was equipped with now should be more than enough against the savage enemy. The gauntlets and greaves of this set of armor were shaped like sharpened furry paws, which Jian quite fancied.

He ran his hand through his now-short-cropped hair, tied his faded white robes tightly around his waist, and slipped on his fighting slippers.

Sali

long before Sali had shaved the sides of her head and declared her intention as a warrior. Long before she had donned the scale armor and learned how to snap death with her tongue.

Her fingers drifted down to her waist where her weapon, a whip known as a tongue, was coiled at rest. She gripped the familiar curved mahogany handle, feeling the static of its vibration as its thousands of tiny diamond-shaped metallic links came alive.

She sent a jolt through the tongue, stiffening its spine until it became a long spear a head taller than she. /  The woman snapped her arm out, and the looped rope in her hand went taut into a long spear.

“The tailor on Flower Street thought the leader of the Kati Underground deserved clothing befitting her position.” Sali rolled her eyes. Just about every word in that sentence was an abomination.

A new figure stepped from the darkness, this one dressed in dark scale armor. A long cloak hugged her body down to her ankles.

Sali pulled her cloak aside to reveal her bone-scale armor, its dull fossilized pieces identifying her as a viperstrike.

The woman wasn’t a normal Kati, however. The sides of her head were shaved, and her hair rose up and was teased back, resembling ram’s horns. Her ears had a dozen or so piercings each and her skin was rough with scars. Her expression was perfectly tranquil, and she sipped her drink even while several of those silly soldiers goaded and taunted her. What drew Qisami’s attention was the woman’s eyes. They were large, sharp, furious, and black as midnight

a striking Kati standing over him, muscular and intense, with a wild mane of black hair on top of her head, the sides shaved. This person did not seem like someone to trifle with, or to shove in the middle of the street.

The only thing Sali could do was use her forearm as a shield. The blade sank into her flesh from one side and came through the other, its tip managing to keep going and wedge into the gap between three pieces of scale armor. / She had to repeat the agonizing process with the fruit paste on both wounds through her arm. She bit down on a leather strap of her armor as she yanked the blade out and cauterized as quickly as possible.

Sali fumbled for a small sack hanging at her belt. She ripped it open with her teeth, and with two fingers clawed out a dark-green spotted paste,

Kati - unusual hairstyles of bewildering colors to their clothing woven from grass and wood

Qisami

The wisps of darkness drifted off the shadowkill’s body to reveal a young woman with pale, powdered skin, a sharp nose, and painted eyebrows.

Her dark-red hair was ear-length except for two long wisps that curled along her youthful cheeks down to her chin, which made it look like she had fangs.

There was something unsettling about the girl’s yellow eyes, a wildness that glimmered in the lantern’s light.

short

a woman with shoulder-length red hair holding two black knives.

The guards and magistrates at the city and district gates had taken one look at her riding cloak and the dress underneath and assumed she belonged. Commoners did not ride in silks.

obviously rich and intricately embroidered red dress clinging tightly to her body dragging mud across the floor. Her eyes locked on the unbuttoned flap near Qisami’s right shoulder that hung lazily forward before drifting down to the slit that ran all the way up to her thigh.

Qisami checked her knives—she was short three—and then used the sharpened fingernail of her pinkie finger to scrawl on her left forearm, cutting just deep enough to draw blood: anyone dead? The redness faded almost as soon as it appeared.

Malinde

finally Sali caught sight of a lithe figure, a good half a head shorter than most, wearing a familiar pair of blue tinker suspenders.

Malinde, soul of their mother Mileene, heart of their father Faalsa, Sali’s cherished little sprout and last of her blood, stood just on the other side of the street. She was taller than when they had last breathed the same air, longer in face and body, and thinner as well. Her face had blossomed full and womanly, but there were fresh lines around her eyes.

Meehae

The apprentice acupuncturist appeared roughly Jian’s age, with delicate features and pale skin

The girl in the white robe was sitting there, dozing, with her head resting on her arms. Her apprentice cap was resting on its side next to her, revealing cascading curls of black hair splayed across the table.

The apprentice acupuncturist was diminutive, with a young face and typical Zhuun features: a fair complexion, a slightly disheveled nest of curly black hair under her apprentice cap, and a small nose and bright wide eyes accentuated by a pair of wired spectacles. A smattering of freckles dotted her cheeks, and her eyebrows furrowed every time she squinted, which was quite often.

The woman on the other side was also dressed in white, wearing what looked like a matching white cook’s apron. Her headdress was just a plain white wrap holding together a plume of black curly hair that exploded outward in all directions from the top of her head.

Xinde

The young man who walked into the room was tall and broad-shouldered and had an air of confidence. His face was long and narrow, with a distinctly square jawline and strong eyes that seemed to demand all the attention in the room. Jian wasn’t sure if he should be annoyed or intimidated by someone so good-looking, but all he felt was a strange subconscious urge to be the young man’s friend.

perfect teeth, bright smile

Xinde looked like a young noble: clean-shaven with long black hair, a perfectly symmetrical face, and a square jaw

Zofi

A young woman, lean and tall with straight black hair that rested on her shoulders, was standing at the doorway. She was plainly dressed and had a square face with bangs that covered her forehead. Pretty, but nothing particularly interesting, except for her eyes. They were sharp and intense, and moved about as if she was scanning the room, taking everything in. She was obviously the mapmaker’s daughter, but while Chown wore an air of anxiousness, the young woman looked assertive and carried herself with a hardness that belied her age.

Master Guanshi Kanyu

A tall man near Taishi’s age arrived in the room. He was obviously the master of this school, with a plump, soft face and extremely thick eyebrows. His white hair, pulled back and tied in a neat bun on top of his head, matched his white robe.

Keiro

played the part of a ruffian just as perfectly: bald with a long scar running from the crown of his head down between his eyes, an impressive goatee, and a nose so crooked it whistled every time he breathed

Burandin and Koteuni

, walking hand in hand, found her first. Koteuni’s lips were cut and bleeding, and one of her eyes had swelled shut in a purple knot. Her usually perfect hair, parted directly down the middle and pulled into two short ponytails, was a disheveled mess. Burandin looked even worse. Koteuni’s husband’s bulbous head and queue hairstyle had always made his head appear too large for his rail-thin body, which made the two beautiful knots on the shelf he called a forehead all the more conspicuous

Haaren

still wearing the caravan driver outfit, now blood-splattered. The youngest shadowkill in the group was one Qisami had lured away from a rival cell a year ago because she needed someone who could operate in disguise, and she had thought he was cute. Less so now that his face looked like pulverized meat.

[blubushie]

I'm bored so I'm calling back to March/April and pestering you. What's your favorite story in the Bible? I liked Esther when I was little and used to be Christian but I feel that Vashti didn't deserve to be kicked out like that.

Ohohoho.

Ok so my favourite story (besides the entirety of the New Testament) is probably the binding of Isaac and God testing Abraham's faith and loyalty followed by the "OH FUCK OK I WAS JUST JOKING HERE'S A RAM JUST SACRIFICE THAT INSTEAD PLEASE".

Also the brief moment in Exodus where God just. Literally forgot that there were Israelites in Egypt that he'd made a covenant with. God has a lot of "OH FUCK" moments in the Bible and this is one of them. "OH FUCK I LEFT THE KIDS HOME ALONE--FOR 430 YEARS?!"

Also that one scene I mentioned in my shelf. Because that's genuinely... a very big deal for the time period when it happened. Also I love how Jacob immediately shuts up when Levi and Simeon confront him with their response because he knows they're morally justified for their actions regardless of how it affects him. Their sister's safety and piece of mind was more important than their father's reputation and honour--something practically unheard of in that time period.

My favourite verse though?

Job 39:19-24, specifically the NIV translation:

Do you give the horse its strength or clothe its neck with a flowing mane? Do you make it leap like a locust, striking terror with its proud snorting? It paws fiercely, rejoicing in its strength, and charges into the fray. It laughs at fear, afraid of nothing; it does not shy away from the sword. The quiver rattles against its side, along with the flashing spear and lance. In frenzied excitement it eats up the ground; it cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.

That's nothing short of poetry, and it tickles the equestrian in my soul that desperately wants to get back in the saddle. :]

[anxiouswormonastring]

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

An impromptu change of plans (pt.2)

YOUR POV

From his place, the mighty Adeptus took a few hesitant steps towards you, almost completely disregarding the blond beside you. “One does not believe his eyes,” he spoke, stopping in front of you.

Silence followed as you tried to remember his name. Once more, your memory failed you. With a sigh of defeat and a solemn nod, the Adeptus stepped back.

“A cruel fate was bestowed upon you, one knows of. The aftermath of such, you do not deserve,” the stag said, a look of pity plastered onto his face for a brief moment. Then he turned to Aether. “Might this be a friend of yours,” he asked. You nodded. “Friend of Y/N, into the abode of the Adepti you come. Why?”

You watch Aether fumble with the sigil before presenting it.

The stag hummed. “He before you is the mighty and illuminated Adeptus, Moon Carver. Speak, Traveler. What business have you here?”

Just as the blond opened his mouth, another voice was heard.

“It’s the assassins! They dared to flee here to Jueyun Karst!”

The Millelith soldiers had been on your tail the whole time? You made a mental note not to get too distracted while traveling. They bickered between themselves for a moment before brandishing their spears and taking an offensive stance.

Moon Carver merely huffed as if this was but a minor inconvenience. “Disturbing our borders…see them gone. One will not have interruption.”

As Aether summoned his blade, you shifted and bared your fangs. It was the two of you who decided to make the first move, Aether charged straight at the Millelith sergeant while you took care of the others.

You opted for a gentler approach…well, as gentle as you could be given the situation. Assuming Aether felt the same, your goal was only to drive them away, not to kill them. Which, in theory, sounds easy enough. However the growing number of wounds under your fur would beg to differ. It wasn't long before your temper ran short.

Igniting the paws of your forelegs as well as the tip of your tail, you began to swipe and lash out seemingly wildly. Though you were careful not to actually obliterate any of the soldiers you faced.

With broken spears and singed uniforms, the Millelith sergeant finally called for a retreat.

Once they were out of sight (and out of ear shot), you shifted back. Changing forms while injured was an uncomfortable experience. The process of your bones, muscles, and skin moving around would oftentimes agitate the injury and make it much worse. Such was the case for you now. The cuts and scratches from the fight weren’t life threatening, but even so, they were painful.

“Y/N!” Paimon materialized next to you. “Oh, those look bad! Don’t worry, Y/N, Paimon and Aether will patch you up good as new! Whatever you do, just stay with us!” She continued to ramble as she retrieved some bandages from Aether.

Wincing at the feeling of your wounds being touched, you let out a nervous laugh. “Paimon, you don’t have to worry that much,” you began, placing a hand on her little head. “It’s gonna take a lot more than some flimsy spears to put me out of commission.”

“Well Paimon doesn’t care, you’re our friend! Of course Paimon is going to worry about you!” The white haired pixie then whipped around to look at Aether. “If either of you get hurt like this and make Paimon worry again, Paimon will…” she paused, stumbling over her words in an attempt to find a suitable threat. “Paimon’ll eat all of your favorite foods without sharing!”

Aether placed a hand on his hip and raised a brow. “Then maybe we’ll finally have a reason to eat you,” he joked, earning a shriek from her.

Before she could snap out a response, Moon Carver slowly made his way to you and Paimon.

Focusing solely on you, he pressed his snout to your forehead and you felt a soothing wave of energy overtake you. Shutting your eyes, you breathed a sigh of relief as the pain from your injuries faded away.

Even when he pulled away, you felt at peace…at least physically.

“Divine energy from one’s self is enough to heal most physical injuries, rather useless since we Adepti sustain injuries very rarely.” He said. Shaking his fur, he returned to the topic on hand. “We’ve digressed. State your purpose, traveler.”

…

“PREPOSTEROUS!” He bellowed, stomping his hooves into the ground. “The Liyue Qixing…utterly disappointing.” The Adeptus’ gaze hardened. “How could someone possibly assassinate Rex Lapis during the Rite of Descension…” he stomped once more, rearing his head back furiously. “…and then place suspicion upon the attendees!?”

You opened your mouth to interject but, against your will, your hand clamped itself over your mouth once again. The Adeptus didn't seem to notice.

Moon Carver let out a sigh, recomposing himself to speak again. “Travelers, of the unjust accusations placed upon the three of you, one has become aware.” He paused. “The mind knows its answer. Though one must consult with one’s fellows, lest the mind be misguided.” Standing tall, Moon Carver issued your next course of action. “Go. Take with you your Sigil of Permission, carry with you a message.”

Aether gripped the sigil tightly. “Who should we look for?”

“Mountain Shaper and Cloud Retainer can be found here. Only fate can decide if you shall find them.”

The three of you nodded, prompting him to continue.

“There exists a Conqueror of Demons, a Guardian Yaksha. Go to Wangshu Inn. There you shall seek him.”

You could swear you saw the faintest smile across his muzzle.

“One believes that one’s fellows shall be elated to see you again, Y/N.” And with that, Moon Carver bounded off deeper into Jueyun Karst.

A/N:

I wish I could just copy and paste things from my brain onto here but A.) that’s not possible and B.) I think in pictures so I don’t know how that would work out. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this chapter!! And as always, thank you for reading!!!