#the landscape is so intricate my jaw dropped

[buckets-and-trees]

Chosen, Part 1: Arrival

Characters/Pairings: eventual Bucky x curvy Millennial Female!Reader, Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark Word Count: 3.4k Summary: After surviving three rounds of interviews, you have been invited for a full-day to tour and interview at the estate and headquarters that belong to the Winged Heritage Foundation.

SERIES Content Warnings: SOFT!DARK STORY, cult themes, explicit smut, dubious consent and enthusiastic consent, veiled truths, gaslighting

CHAPTER Content Warnings: none

Notes: I started writing this story with the intention for it to be a long one-shot, but after it shot past 18k, I realized I would need to break it up into installments, so ... expect sort of a slow burn for the plot? Installments will be posted on Mondays and Thursdays.

Shout outs to @stargazingfangirl18, @witchywithwhiskey, @biteofcherry, and @vonalyn for helping me get my ideas sorted out for this trip!

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

You scroll through the note in your phone with questions to ask during a final interview as the car pulls off the interstate and starts down a country highway lined with trees.

At least you hope this is the final interview.

You had applied for a basic administrative assistant position with the Winged Heritage Foundation, but after your first interview you had been called by a recruitment officer and asked if you would consider a different position with the organization, one that hadn’t been posted publicly.

You still don’t know what the position is you’re being considered for, but after two more interviews, you had been notified that you were a finalist and invited to a full-day interview and tour of the Foundation’s headquarters – an estate outside of the city. They had even arranged for a professional car service to pick you up and take you there. The offices in the city, where your previous three interviews had taken place, evidently handles most of the business operations for the Foundation, and the estate is where the more focused work takes place.

You are naturally a bit nervous for a fourth - and full day - interview, but you feel you like your nerves are at a healthy level - present but not paralyzing, a small buzz that will keep you focused.

The car slows as it approaches a break in the trees, and your driver signals to turn. As you round the corner, your breath catches in your throat. A wrought-iron gate stretches across a wide driveway, its intricate scrollwork spelling out "Winged Heritage" in elegant script. The gate swings open silently as your car approaches, as if by magic.

The driveway stretches before you, a winding ribbon of pale gravel cutting through a verdant landscape that takes your breath away. Ancient oaks and maples line the drive, their branches reaching across to form a dappled canopy overhead. Bright morning sunlight filters through the leaves, casting dancing shadows on the ground.

As you travel deeper into the estate, meticulously manicured gardens unfold on either side. Vibrant flower beds burst with color - deep purple irises, sunny yellow daffodils, and blood-red roses. The gardens give way to rolling lawns of emerald green, dotted with sculpted topiaries in fantastical shapes.

As the car rounds another bend, a shimmering pond comes into view. Its surface is like polished glass, reflecting the azure sky and fluffy white clouds above. A family of swans glide gracefully across the water, their long necks arched in elegant curves. At the far end of the pond, a delicate bridge of white marble spans the narrowest point, its railings gilded with gold.

The driveway begins to climb a gentle slope, and as you crest the hill, your jaw drops at the sight before you. A magnificent mansion rises from the landscape, its pale stone walls glowing warmly in the morning sunlight. The architecture is a stunning blend of classical elegance, with graceful arches and intricate stonework that seems to ripple and dance as you approach.

The central facade is a masterpiece of symmetry, with wide steps leading up to a grand entrance flanked by towering columns. Ivy climbs the walls in artful patterns, as if guided by an invisible hand to accentuate the building's most beautiful features.

The car follows the curve of the driveway as it sweeps up to the grand entrance before coming to a stop. You take a deep breath, steadying yourself for what lies ahead. The driver opens your door, and you step out onto the gravel, the crunch beneath your feet grounding you in the moment.

A figure emerges from the ornate double doors at the top of the steps, and your heart skips a beat as you recognize her instantly. Natasha Romanoff, the Chief Recruitment Officer, descends the stairs with astonishing grace. Her vibrant red hair catches the sunlight, creating a halo effect that seems almost otherworldly. She's dressed in a sleek black pantsuit that exudes both professionalism and an air of mystery. As your eyes meet hers, you're struck by the intensity of her gaze - piercing green eyes that seem to look right through you.

As she draws closer, you notice a subtle smile playing at the corners of her mouth, a mix of confidence and what you suspect to be mischief. Over the course of your brief interactions up to this point, she had been nothing but professional, but you could feel some alluring pull or energy that seemed to run deep beneath the surface of her controlled demeanor. She had been present in your second interview, conducted the third with one of her associates, and had been the one to schedule you for this.

"Welcome," Natasha says, her voice smooth as silk. "We're so pleased you could join us today." She extends her hand, and you shake it, noting the firmness of her grip.

"Thank you for having me," you reply, proud that your voice doesn't betray your nerves. "The estate is absolutely breathtaking."

Natasha's smile widens slightly. "It is, isn't it? We find that beauty inspires greatness. But come, let's not linger in the driveway. We have a full day and much to show you."

She gestures towards the entrance, and you fall into step beside her as you ascend the stone steps. The massive doors swing open silently, revealing a grand foyer that takes your breath away. The ceiling soars overhead, at least three stories, adorned with an intricate fresco depicting a beautiful sky, birds in flight, and towering trees, bringing the beauty of the grounds into this entry.

Natasha guides you through a doorway off to the side of the foyer, leading you into a small sitting room. The space is elegantly decorated with plush couches, rich mahogany furniture, and intricate paintings on the walls.

"Please, have a seat," Natasha gestures towards one of the couches as she takes a seat in an armchair across from you. You sink into the soft cushions, trying to take in everything at once - the opulence of the room, Natasha's presence, and her piercing gaze.

"First things first,” Natasha says, a professional smile on her face, “the nature of what goes on here is very sensitive and so I'll need you to sign this NDA before we continue." She hands you a stack of paperwork and a pen.

You quickly skim through the document before signing it, feeling slightly uneasy about signing something so quickly without fully understanding what the day ahead of you will entail. But your curiosity outweighs your hesitation and when Natasha takes back the signed document, she slides it into a briefcase by her side.

"Now that's out of the way," she says smoothly, "let me tell you more about our foundation."

She proceeds to give you an overview of the Winged Heritage Foundation – an overview of its history, mission, and values. It's all very intriguing and impressive - but although what she shares is engaging, outside of supporting initiatives identified as important to its founder and possibly something to do preservation of history or historical places and artifacts, you still feel you don’t have any clearer of an idea of what the Foundation’s actual purpose is. But since you have an entire day here, you don’t press the point now, assuming some part of the day will be dedicated to diving deeper into the work they do.

"But enough about us," Natasha says with another enigmatic smile. "Let's talk about what brought you here today."

She pulls out your resume from her briefcase and goes over your experience and qualifications with sharp attention to detail. She asks probing questions that make you feel like she's reading between the lines of your professional achievements.

"Impressive," she comments once she's finished going over your resume. "Your professional and personal character references also speak very highly of you."

Your brow furrows slightly. “Sorry,” you interject, “I don’t remember giving personal references?”

“No, you did not. But we do a lot of work on our end to vet candidates at this point for positions like this. Surely you understand.”

You nod slowly and train your face back into a smile. At least whatever homework they seem to have done on you came back with a positive result.

She leans forward slightly, and you can feel the intensity of her gaze. "We need someone who's truly suited for the responsibilities, but personnel fit is also incredibly important to us.”

“Of course,” you respond. “And what responsibilities exactly would you be looking for me to fulfill?”

Natasha presses her lips together and seems to scrutinize your face more closely. “You’re being considered for two opportunities. Until later in the day when I’ve made a determination on which I’ll recommend you for, I won’t be disclosing that information to you.”

“Oh,” you’re a little surprised at her directness, but you suppose her reason for withholding the information is logical.

“As the Chief Recruitment Officer, I’m very good at what I do, so I’ll know your future with us by the end of the day.”

Natasha rises from her chair with fluid grace. "Shall we begin the tour?" she asks, extending her hand to help you up. You take it, noting the surprising strength in her grip. “I'm eager to show you the wonders of our estate."

She seems to hold your hand longer than necessary, or maybe it’s just your nerves, maybe you looked unsteady standing up and she was only ensuring you were okay.

As you follow her out of the sitting room, you're once again struck by the grandeur of the foyer. Natasha notices your gaze lingering on the fresco above. "That was commissioned by our founder," she explains. "It's said to depict the view from the highest peak of a mountain range that no longer exists."

She leads you down a long corridor, its walls lined with portraits of distinguished-looking individuals. "Our benefactors and notable members throughout the years," Natasha explains. "Each one has contributed significantly to our mission."

The corridor opens into a vast library that takes your breath away. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stretch as far as the eye can see, filled with leather-bound tomes. The air is heavy with the scent of old books and polished wood. Sunlight streams through tall windows, casting a warm glow over the room. The library is a bibliophile's dream, with rolling ladders affixed to the shelves, gorgeous wooden tables for spreading out books for research, and cozy reading nooks tucked into alcoves.

As you walk between the towering shelves, you notice that some of the books look ancient, their spines cracked and faded with age, some even appear to be bound in unfamiliar materials. Others appear to be in pristine condition, despite clearly being very old.

"Our collection is quite extensive," Natasha says, running her fingers along the spines of nearby books. "We have texts dating back centuries, some of which are the only surviving copies in the world."

"How do you preserve them so well?" you ask, unable to hide your fascination.

Natasha's lips curl into a mysterious smile. "We have our ways. Mostly it’s all down to our librarian Jarvis.”

She leads you through a set of double wooden doors at the other side of the library. Once you exit, Natasha leads you through a series of grand hallways, each more breathtaking than the last. The walls are adorned with tapestries and paintings that seem to come alive as you pass, their subjects' eyes following your movement. You could swear you see a figure in one portrait shift slightly, but when you look back, it's perfectly still.

"This wing houses our main offices and research facilities," Natasha explains as you walk. "We have state-of-the-art equipment for analyzing artifacts and documents, as well as a world-class conservation lab."

You pass by rooms filled with people working diligently at computers, their screens displaying what look like ancient texts and complex diagrams. In one room, you glimpse a team carefully examining what appears to be an old manuscript under specialized lighting.

As you continue down the hallway, you notice a door that seems different from the others. It's made of dark, heavy wood and adorned with intricate carvings. Unlike the other doors which are open or have glass panels, this one is firmly shut.

Natasha catches you looking at it. "That area is off-limits, I'm afraid. Some of our more... sensitive projects require absolute secrecy."

You nod but can't help feeling a prickle of curiosity. What could be behind that door that requires such concealment?

Natasha guides you to an elevator at the end of the hall. As you step inside, you notice there are more floors than you would have expected from the outside view of the mansion.

"We have quite extensive facilities underground," Natasha explains as she presses a button for one of the lower levels. "It allows us to maintain the historical integrity of the mansion's exterior while having all the modern amenities we need for our work."

The elevator descends smoothly, and when the doors open, you find yourself in a sleek, modern space that contrasts sharply with the ornate decor above. The walls are a pristine white, and the floors are polished concrete. The lighting is bright but not harsh, giving the space a clean, almost clinical feel.

Natasha leads you down a corridor lined with glass-walled rooms. In one, you see people in lab coats hunched over microscopes. In another, a group is gathered around a large touch screen, manipulating 3D models of what look like ancient artifacts.

"This is our primary research facility," Natasha says, leading you down a wide corridor. "We have some of the most advanced technology in the world at our disposal here."

As you walk, you pass by rooms with glass walls, allowing you to see inside. In one, you spot what looks like a holographic projection of a complex molecule rotating in mid-air. In another, a team of scientists in white lab coats huddle around a table, examining something you can't quite make out.

You pause for a moment, trying to take it all in. The contrast between the classical architecture upstairs and this futuristic facility is striking. "This is incredible," you say, unable to keep the awe from your voice. "I had no idea the Foundation had such advanced capabilities."

Natasha's lips curl into a satisfied smile. "We pride ourselves on being at the cutting edge of research and technology. It's essential for some of our work. We’re also one of the few science labs in the world that still is granted an affiliation with the nation of Wakanda."

As you continue down the corridor, you notice a few doors that aren't made of glass like the others. These are solid metal, with keycard readers and what look like biometric scanners next to them.

"What's behind those doors?" you ask, curiosity getting the better of you.

Natasha's expression doesn't change, but you sense a slight shift in her demeanor. "Those are our most sensitive research areas. Access is strictly limited to senior researchers and leadership."

As if orchestrated for this precise moment, the doors slide open, and two men emerge, engaged in a heated discussion. Or, rather, one of them is heated, and the other is shooting back casual, sarcastic comments.

Natasha clears her throat, “Gentlemen.”

They both stop.

“We have company,” she says, gesturing to you.

The two men turn to face you, and your jaw nearly drops as you instantly recognize them. Standing before you are none other than Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, two of the most famous figures in the world and certainly at the Foundation.

Tony Stark, looking every bit the billionaire genius he's known to be, is dressed in an impeccably tailored suit that probably costs more than your current yearly salary. His goatee is perfectly trimmed, and his hair is styled with just the right amount of casual messiness. There's a faint blue glow visible beneath his shirt - the arc reactor that's become his trademark.

"Well, well, what do we have here?" Tony says, his eyes sparkling with curiosity and mischief. He steps forward, extending his hand. "Tony Stark. But you probably knew that already."

As you shake his hand, you can't help but feel a bit starstruck. Tony Stark's grip is brief but firm and confident, his smile charming yet slightly calculating as he sizes you up.

"And this strapping specimen of American values is Steve Rogers," Tony adds, gesturing to the man beside him.

Steve, standing tall and broad-shouldered, offers you a warm smile that seems to light up the room. He's dressed more casually than Tony in khakis and a fitted blue shirt that barely contains his muscular frame. His handshake is strong but gentle, and his blue eyes radiate sincerity.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Steve says, his voice deep and reassuring. "I hope you're enjoying your tour of our facilities."

You manage to find your voice, introducing yourself. “The tour has been nothing but fascinating and impressive so far,” you affirm.

Tony's eyes gleam with interest. "Oh, you’re the one they’ve been wooing, eh? I was sent no less than five reminders this morning that I was to be on my best behavior,” he discloses with a wink.

Natasha rolls her eyes, and you have the suspicion Steve only barely restrains himself from doing so.

"Anyway, welcome to the Foundation," Tony says.

"Stark is supposed to be one of our most valuable researchers," Natasha explains.

"Eh, that’s why you send Steve down to get me back in line when I’m pursuing tangential projects."

This time Steve does roll his eyes.

You can't help but chuckle at the banter between Tony and Steve. Their dynamic is exactly as you'd imagined from what you've seen in the media - Tony's quick wit and sarcasm playing off Steve's more serious demeanor.

"So, what do you think of our little operation so far?" Tony asks, gesturing broadly at the surrounding facility. "Pretty impressive, right?"

Before you can answer, Natasha interjects smoothly. "I'm sure our guest is finding everything quite fascinating, but we should continue the tour. I'm sure you both have important work to get back to."

Tony raises an eyebrow at Natasha, a silent exchange seeming to pass between them. "Right, right. Important work. Can't keep the world waiting, can we?" He turns back to you with a grin. "It was a pleasure meeting you. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you around."

“You’ll at the very least be seeing me,” Steve says. “I believe I’m scheduled to join you for lunch.”

“And I’m not invited?” Tony protests, but he sports an unrepentant grin rather than any genuine offense.

Steve puts a hand on Tony’s shoulder to steer him away, “You’re not the Executive Director of the Foundation, so, no.”

Tony shrugs out of his grip, “And remind me why that is?”

“‘All administrative, no science,’ as you aptly put it so many times when you remind me why you don’t want to listen to what I say.”

“Right,” Tony replies, but does fall into step with Steve heading down the corridor.

As they leave, you can't help but feel a mix of excitement and bewilderment. Meeting two such prominent figures so casually during your interview process only adds to the surreal nature of this experience.

Natasha gently touches your elbow and guides you away from the metal doors and continues down the corridor. "My apologies for that interruption," she says, though her tone suggests she's not entirely displeased. "Mr. Stark has a tendency to... make an impression."

You nod, still processing the encounter. "It's no problem at all. I'm just surprised to see them here. I knew they were involved with the Foundation, but I didn't realize they were so hands-on."

Natasha's lips curl into a knowing smile. "The Winged Heritage Foundation values the direct involvement of all its key members. You'll find that everyone here, regardless of their public status or their position in our organization, contributes actively to our mission.”

She leads you through more state-of-the-art laboratories and research facilities, each more impressive than the last, before returning to the elevator to bring you surface-level again.

As the elevator ascends, you find your mind racing with questions. The encounter with Stark and Rogers, the glimpses of cutting-edge technology, and the air of mystery surrounding certain areas of the facility have only heightened your curiosity about the true nature of the Winged Heritage Foundation is, showing you so much, but not truly illuminating any answers.  

NEXT PART: LUNCH

Welcome to the Winged Heritage Foundation, lovelies. This is only the beginning... Where will this day take you? And what is going on here?

↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

I do not do tag lists, but FOLLOW @buckets-and-stories and TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS to be updated any time I publish a new work!

[stardystly]

Mini Golf

( Hey everyone! I’ve been really into FNAF and had a bunch of stories complied in my notes. I thought maybe for once I will share them, although don’t expect them to be the best. And don’t expect me to post everyday, I will try to write and keep them consistent as much as possible and don’t mind criticism or suggestions so please leave comments. It helps me improve. Now onto the story <33 )

❀•°❀°•❀ ❀•°❀°•❀ ❀•°❀°•❀

Me and Monty entered the whimsical gates of the mini-golf center, my senses are greeted by a symphony of laughter, upbeat music, and the excited chatter of fellow players.

The course itself is a riot of color and creativity, boasting vibrantly painted landscapes and intricate obstacles. From towering windmills to whimsical tunnels, the course is a playground of fanciful challenges that spell endless fun and friendly competition.

As we make our way around the course, the atmosphere buzzes with excitement. We strategize how and where to putt the ball while cheering each other on, as I guide the colorful golf balls through twists and turns, attempting to sink that elusive hole-in-one. The sound of clubs gently tapping against balls creates a rhythmic symphony as we navigate through the maze-like greens.

Surrounded by lush greenery and meticulously crafted sculptures, and lose track of time, focused solely on the playful banter, shared chuckles, and gentle brushes of hands as we playfully help each other fine-tune our shots. Every swing and miss becomes a moment for laughter, turning what may seem like a simple game into an unforgettable bonding experience.

I putted the ball and make a hole-in-one first try, which seemed nearly unbelievable as my skills in mini-golfing wasn’t the most experienced. I snapped my head towards Monty with glee in my eyes, my jaw dropping and Monty giving me a thumbs up along with a toothy grin. Luckily it was the last obstacle course, we totaled our score and of course Monty won. Which I expected, after all this was called Monty Golf. Although I did expect Monty to go easy on me, perhaps it was his pride that kept him from doing so. Monty proceeded to tell me how good of a player I was, too keep up my hard work, and I’ll get there. Although they weren’t much, they meant a lot to me, I just couldn’t wait to kick his ass next time.

❀•°❀°•❀ ❀•°❀°•❀

(Hello!! I really hope you enjoyed the story! I made sure to leave it up to the reader if you wanted this to be platonic or romantic! It could be a fun hangout session or a romantic date! Either way I hope you enjoyed!)

[market-spy]

The Printed Electronics Revolution: A Rollercoaster Ride into the Future

The Numbers Game: 

Let’s dive straight into the digits because who doesn’t love a good stats party? The global printed electronics market, valued at a modest USD 8.66 billion in 2021, is gearing up for a Netflix-worthy plot twist. Hold on to your seats; it’s predicted to soar to an eye-watering USD 53.01 billion by 2030. That’s a jaw-dropping CAGR of 22.3%. Somebody pinch me; I must be dreaming.

Why the Hype? 

So, why all the hype? Picture this: lightweight, flexible electronic components gliding seamlessly into industries like consumer electronics, healthcare, and automotive. It’s like the Beyoncé of electronic evolution — versatile, cost-effective, and always stealing the spotlight. And don’t get me started on the reduced material waste and flexible forms. Mother Earth would give us a high-five if she could.

Market Dynamics: 

The Good, the Bad, and the Durability Challenge: But, my dear readers, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows in the world of printed electronics. The Achilles’ heel? Ensuring the durability and performance of these high-tech wonders. You know, the kind of challenge that makes you appreciate the sturdiness of your old-school Nokia phone. Nevertheless, advancements in printable materials, coupled with the rise of IoT applications, are throwing in some plot twists.

Taking a Regional Rollercoaster: 

Hold on tight as we traverse the globe on our printed electronics rollercoaster. The Asia-Pacific region, led by powerhouses like China and India, is flexing its economic muscles. With a booming electronics manufacturing sector and a knack for high-tech wizardry, they’re taking the front seat. Meanwhile, Latin America is sprinting into the future, embracing technological advancements like a kid in a candy store.

For More Information: https://www.skyquestt.com/report/printed-electronics-market

Printing Technologies: 

The Cool Kids on the Block: Let’s talk tech. Inkjet printing, with its flexibility and precision, is like the superhero of the printed electronics universe. It’s the Tony Stark of printing technologies, creating intricate designs at a microscopic level. Screen printing, on the other hand, might be the underdog, but it’s gaining traction, especially in applications like solar cells and touch panels. It’s the comeback kid, proving that simplicity and cost-effectiveness never go out of style.

Components Stealing the Show: 

Now, let’s give a standing ovation to the real stars of the show — printed sensors. They’re the MVPs, dominating industries from healthcare to automotive. Their ability to play nice with flexible substrates and the constant evolution of materials and manufacturing processes make them the undisputed champions. Oh, and printed displays? They’re the cool kids bringing innovation to wearables, smart packaging, and flexible electronics. Talk about a dynamic duo.

Competitive Landscape: 

Heavyweights vs. Underdogs: In the red corner, we have the established industry leaders flexing their experience, distribution networks, and brand recognition muscles. In the blue corner, the underdogs — innovative startups and niche players — bringing fresh ideas to the ring. The battlefield? Ongoing advancements in materials, printing techniques, and strategic partnerships. It’s like a tech-themed UFC match, and we’re here for it.

Player Profiles: 

The Avengers of Printed Electronics: Meet the Avengers of the printed electronics world — E Ink Holdings, DuPont, Jabil, LG Display, and more. These powerhouses are fighting the good fight, pushing the boundaries of innovation. From liquid metal 3D printers to divesting research centers, they’re keeping us on the edge of our seats. The printed electronics universe is in good hands.

Conclusion: 

The Future is Flexible: As we disembark from our printed electronics rollercoaster, one thing is clear — the future is flexible, both literally and figuratively. From inkjet printing to the rise of wearable tech, this is a revolution that’s here to stay. So, grab your popcorn, folks; the show is just getting started. Who knew electronics could be this entertaining?

About Us-

SkyQuest Technology Group is a Global Market Intelligence, Innovation Management & Commercialization organization that connects innovation to new markets, networks & collaborators for achieving Sustainable Development Goals.

Contact Us-

SkyQuest Technology Consulting Pvt. Ltd.

1 Apache Way,

Westford,

Massachusetts 01886

USA (+1) 617–230–0741

Email- info@skyquestt.com

Website: https://www.skyquestt.com

[atiquzzaman2218]

Exploring the Vast Visual Universe: Alamy's Treasure Trove of Creativity

Hey there, fellow wanderers of the digital world! 🌍 Have you ever found yourself lost in the mesmerizing maze of stock photos, vectors, and videos, searching for that perfect image to make your project pop? Well, let me introduce you to a place where creativity knows no bounds, and imagination finds its canvas – Alamy! With a staggering collection of 343,358,457 stock photos, 360° panoramic images, vectors, and videos, this is your ticket to visual wonderland. And hey, did I mention you can save up to 30% when you upgrade to an image pack? Buckle up as we embark on a journey through Alamy's expansive universe of creativity!

Unveiling the Alamy Universe

Picture this: a universe where pixels weave tales, vectors sketch dreams, and videos bring stories to life. Alamy isn't just a platform; it's a canvas of endless possibilities. With 343,358,457 assets at your fingertips, finding that perfect image or video is like searching for stardust in a galaxy of creativity. From the ethereal glow of sunsets to the intricate details of macro photography, Alamy houses the world in pixels.

The Art of Diversity

Diversity isn't just a buzzword here – it's a way of life. Alamy's collection mirrors the rich tapestry of our world, capturing cultures, landscapes, emotions, and moments in every corner of the globe. Want a snapshot of bustling bazaars in Marrakech? Or perhaps the serene landscapes of New Zealand's rolling hills? Alamy's got you covered, my friend. Whether you're creating content for a blog, designing a website, or crafting a presentation, diversity is the spice that Alamy sprinkles generously.

Navigate Creativity in 360°

Who needs a plane ticket when you can journey across breathtaking landscapes from the comfort of your screen? Alamy's 360° panoramic images are like portals to another dimension. Imagine standing atop a majestic mountain peak or strolling through a bustling city square – all without leaving your chair! These images aren't just pictures; they're experiences that awaken the traveler in all of us.

The Vector Wonderland

Vectors are the unsung heroes of design, and Alamy knows it. Whether you're whipping up a logo, designing a poster, or creating a jaw-dropping infographic, vectors are your trusty sidekicks. With Alamy's vector collection, you'll find lines that dance, shapes that sing, and colors that tell stories. It's like having an artist's palette at your fingertips.

Lights, Camera, Action!

Videos speak louder than words, and Alamy's video collection knows how to make some noise. From heartwarming family moments to gripping action sequences, these videos aren't just clips – they're windows into emotions, stories, and adventures. Whether you're producing a marketing campaign or crafting a video essay, Alamy's videos will add that cinematic flair that's bound to leave your audience in awe.

Upgrading to the Alamy Experience

So, you've fallen head over heels for Alamy's creative wonderland? Well, hold onto your hats, because upgrading to an image pack is like getting a VIP pass to the most imaginative party in town. Not only do you get access to jaw-dropping visuals, but you'll also save up to 30% on your purchases. It's like unlocking a treasure chest of inspiration without breaking the bank.

Navigating the Alamy Universe

Now that you're armed with the knowledge of Alamy's colossal collection and the perks of an image pack, it's time to dive in. The search bar is your compass; just type in your keywords, and watch as Alamy unfurls a tapestry of options. Refine your search with filters, explore related categories, and maybe even stumble upon a gem you never knew you needed.

The Alamy Community

In the vast expanse of the digital universe, finding a community that shares your passion is like discovering a rare comet. Alamy's community is a constellation of photographers, designers, and creators who are just as enthusiastic about visuals as you are. Connect, learn, and share – because creativity shines brighter when it's shared.

In a nutshell, Alamy isn't just a stock photo platform; it's a gateway to a realm where imagination meets pixels, where vectors weave dreams, and where videos capture emotions. With 343,358,457 assets to explore and the opportunity to save up to 30% with an image pack upgrade, Alamy is the visual playground you've been waiting for. So, my fellow explorers, gear up to dive into a universe of creativity that knows no bounds. Happy browsing, happy creating, and may your imagination forever run wild amidst Alamy's treasure trove!

[angelicmichael]

God is a woman

(Fem!Michael Langdon x reader)

Summary: After being stranded a few days before Halloween, Reader resorts to going into the forest to look for help and instead runs into our favorite blonde antichrist and instantly becomes infatuated.

Words: 5.5k+

Warnings: This fic gets rlly fucking dark and this is lowkey dark! Michael, very detailed sacrifice scene in the beginning, stepping on someone’s neck, manipulation, neck bruises. No smut but LOTS of sexual tension hehe.

A/N: I’ve never written anything this dark before so I’m lowkey nervous to post 👉🏻👈🏻 also this is my first wlw fic! 🥳 plz reblog or heart if you enjoyed and let me know if you wanna be on the taglist! I saw a prompt about where a main character hates Halloween so that inspired me to write this. Also, romance doesn’t rlly happen until the second half of the fic so I guess this could be considered slow burn haha.

It was exactly three days away from Halloween night. In the past, you and your friends always had a ‘get together’ right before Halloween but by the looks of things; you weren’t going to make it. On the car ride over to your friends you had gotten lost, and when you stopped to look up directions on your phone - your phone died. And then.. as if the night couldn’t get any worse, your car refused to start either. You were fucked, in the middle of fucking nowhere, scared out of your mind.

So now - here you were. Lost and left only with the choice to test out your survival skills. You went into the forest to try to go find help or maybe find a house.. After all, you heard rumors about how teenagers would often go into these woods to conduct rituals, but those were just rumours.. right? Those rumors were especially prevalent near Halloween and it was only a mere three days away. It was nearing on midnight too which only seemed to make things even more creepy and set you even more on edge.

The gentle breeze that shook the trees and the brush almost made it sound like as if you were being followed. Everytime you swore you heard footsteps behind you - you would see nothing execpt a nearly black, dark green landscape instead. Shadows started to dance in your peripheral vision, you felt as if you were going crazy. You breathing quickened and you took faster steps, wanting desperately to find any signs of life or to run into another main road.

The sound of your heavy breaths and the leaves crunching under your feet seemed to be the only thing that occupied your senses; until you saw a light. In fact, it wasn’t one light but several little lights - you counted about ten of them. They seemed to be spaced out strategically, it almost looked like a circle but the shape seemed to be more intricate than that. The flames stayed low to the ground, and as you cautiously took steps closer and closer, it was easy to tell that the flames were attached to small white candles.

It wasn’t until you slowly crept forward when you noticed that in between the candles were several hooded figures. You couldn’t make out faces or any distinct details, but you could tell the robes that were a silky red satin, and that all the figures appeared to be holding hands around the odd circular shape with.. something that almost resembled a body in the middle of the circle.

You brushed that thought off about quickly as it had came; there was no way that could be a human body.. right?

You took a silent deep breath before taking more quiet steps toward the mysterious individuals.

You finally stopped venturing forward and settled on leaning on a tall tree that was only a couple feet away from the group; just close enough to see what was happening but - still concealed by the leaves so that they couldn’t see you.. unless you made a sound of course.

You jaw dropped once you realized your suspicion was right, it really was a fucking body that the group seemed to be huddled over. Trying to breathe quietly was now more a struggle and you could feel your body start to shake like a leaf once you started to get a horrible idea of what was happening here.

The genders of the small congregation was mixed but, the leader - the one who previously had sat in the center or tip of the ‘circle’ and had now sat crouched next to the civilians body - was female.

There was no denying how beautiful she was. Her hair fell to about her shoulders in perfect golden ringlets, it was as if she had curled her hair but it seemed to looked natural - like it had just happened to naturally fall down her shoulders in that way. Her eyes were a light crystal blue and were framed with thick black eyelashes which were angled down; staring at the body that lay in front of her. And finally, another unforgettable feature she had were her lips. Her lips were full and you couldn’t stop yourself from daydreaming about how soft and plump they looked until you were brought back into reality - when you saw this woman grab a dagger that was lying next to the random civilian.

This random person; whom you knew was random because unlike the other members of this odd ‘cult’, they wore normal street clothes - like how you did. This made your blood run cold, you could be next. What made you different from this person who - by the looks of it - was about to be killed in cold blood? Absolutely nothing.

You knew it was cowardly to just hide and watch but you felt terrified, and in denial. This person was tied up with their hands and ankles bound with some kind of cloth, along with a cloth gag around their mouth. Although they looked to be unconscious - so maybe the woman was grabbing the dagger to free them? You could only hope.

You couldn’t help but think back to the rumours that always seem to float around this time of year about a local satanic cult, but those were just rumours.. stupid fucking rumours. And you were just paranoid because of the fact that it was literally midnight and you were stranded.

You tried to shake away these irrational thoughts as you remained at the tree; holding your breath as you watched the woman hold up the knife. She let out a slight giggle, and you swore for a second she almost looked childish - the way her eyes lit up and how the corners of her mouth turned in a small closed mouth smile. For a second she looked genuinely happy and excited, and then she did the unthinkable.

All it took was three seconds for her to plunge the knife right into the center of the persons chest cavity, blood instantly spurted out from the mans chest and if he wasn’t dead ealier.. He certainly was now. she ran the knife up a bit in his chest before quickly throwing the knife out of the way, somewhere in the forest. She quickly plunged her hand into the persons chest with no hesitation - it was obvious by the way her armed moved that it was as if she was searching for something or a certain organ?

Your reaction was immeadite, you couldn’t help but to gasp and let go of the tree in shock - shaking harder than ever. But yet; you still stood and watched. Like a idiot. You could slowly feel your body succumb to shock and you knew you only had so much time to move and get the hell out of there before you passed out but you felt frozen in place. You couldn’t bring yourself to move your legs or any other part of you. Maybe it was some kind of fucked up fate or destiny that you were meant to be here and witness this.

You flinched at the awful squishing sounds that omitted from this woman’s victims body, it was clear to you now what she was looking for in the chest.

The heart.

You started to shake with fear as you watched her forcibly rip the heart out of the chest cavity and away from the blood vessels that previously connected it to the body. Blood continued to ooze off of it as she slowly raised it up closer, and closer to her. She wore a sly smirk but her eyes seemed to be turning darker and darker; which made it impossible to read her emotions but for some reason; you felt if you could see her eyes - that they would still hold the same wonder and excitement you saw in them ealier.

That thought made you dizzy.

“Ave satanas”. She spoke.

Her voice was clear and smooth, the murder and this horrific dissection didn’t seem to disturb or affect her in any way, or any of the members that were witnesses.

The rest of the members watched her as diligently as you did, their eyes daring to not leave her body for a second. They also repeated her sick mantra.

She swiftly raised the heart up to her lips and took a bite, blood instantly staining her porcelain skin and cascading down her mouth and neck. Her eyes rolled back into her head - her entire pupil was now pitch black, even the whites of her eyes seemed to turn black as well.

This image was almost seductive to watch. Your not sure if this was your way of discovering you had a blood kink, or if it was the way she bit into the heart.. or maybe it was how content she looked after the bite.

But, you knew that this was fucked up and that if you wanted to make it out alive - you had to leave NOW. It was a human heart, she was a fucking murderer and possibly a cult leader at the very least. It didn’t matter if she looked like Aphrodite - she was a fucking killer and you would be next if you didn’t start to think logically.

You turned to leave; your intention was to walk away as quietly as possible but as soon as you moved your legs - it only took a couple seconds for you to break out into a clumsy sprint. Very clumsy.

It felt as if your heart had temporarily left your chest when you tripped (a stupid tree branch had fallen onto the pathway), and you felt scared out of your mind. Your breathing turned heavy and erratic as you opted to lie on forest floor; too terrified to get up.

You weren’t that far away at all from the tree you were previsoily standing at, you knew there was a good chance they had heard you fall.

You could hear hushed voices.

“Did you hear that”? You heard a male voice ask and immeaditly you heard a quiet chorus of voices that seemed to affirm his suspicion.

You listened as he offered to go look but a female voice spoke up again.. for some reason you felt as if it was the woman you saw ealier and you don’t know if that excited you or scared the shit out of you.

“No.. I’ll go”. She replied.

You heard a subtle rustling of clothes and a distant crunching of leaves as she approached and your heart leapt in your throat. You couldn’t breathe. You screwed your eyes shut; fighting every single instinct you had that was screaming at you to stand up and run for your life. The earth underneath you seemed to grow extensively more uncomfterable, the rocks, mud, dirt and the scratchy grass made your urge to leave even more stronger.

For a second; this state of being uncomfterable made you forget about the predicament you were in and how a literal cult leader was approaching you. It wasn’t until you smelt something new; a slight musky scent with a hint of floral that you knew she was nearby even though you couldn’t hear footsteps anymore.

The sharp, blowing pain you felt on the back of your neck threw you off guard so much that you couldn’t help but let out a soft scream - choking on air, your lungs grasping for more of that sweet delectable oxygen. You thought you were dying at first but you quickly realizing that she was stepping on your neck. You could feel her body weight shift as she crouched down, closer so that she could talk to you.

“Your not a very good actress. I know your not dead; I can hear your heart beat.. pathetic”. The woman above you mused, you could hear it in her voice how she was smiling.

You continued to wheeze for air desperately and you let out a weak, “please”! And miraculously, you felt her shoe slightly let up. Just enough so that you could breath but the agonizing shooting pain still remained.

“Please?! That’s all you have to say for yourself? Use your words. Beg”. Her voice stayed cool and confident as she spoke.

Meanwhile you could feel tears at the edge of your eyes as you gasped at the relief of finally being able to breath properly again. Your voice came out as rough and you stuttered at first as you struggled to find the right words.

“P-please, I just need help. I’m stranded - I only came out here to look for help. I don’t want any trouble”. You said.

You tried to push yourself back up - to see if she would let you atleast sit back up but you felt the pressure remain, even come back a little more forceful than before.

“Why should I let you go? You really think I didn’t notice you the second you started watching? You didn’t just happen to stumble upon us - you watched for a solid fifteen minutes”. Her voice held rage and fire as she started to speak, however by the end of her statement she maintained to retain her cool tone.

However there was a hint of urgency in her voice, as if she knew that her members would be coming back any second to see what was taking their dear beloved leader so long.

This entire time you were looking at her shoes - and the forest floor. You crained your neck in a way that was awkwardly painful just so that you could make eye contact with her before you spoke. Sure enough, it was the same woman who you had watched eat the human heart of the poor civilian ealier. The same.. undeniably gorgeous woman.

Most of her forefront was still stained a messy daunting red, most notably from her lips down to her chest. You also noticed how some of the ends of her hair was also dipped a messy matching red.

“Look - I couldn’t help it. When I saw you, I had to stay”. You replied dumbly as you continued to make eye contact; praying that she would pick up on your cue of what you meant.

You knew how fucking stupid it was to even try to flirt with her when she had the perfect opportunity to kill you. Out of all the stupid stunts you had pulled off in your life this had to be the worst - you didn’t even know if she was gay. Fuck, you didn’t even know her name but to be honest - you didn’t really care. You were simply enchanted and enthralled by her presence alone.

You two continued to make eye contact until you could hear the voices of the congregation start to grow louder and louder.. she didn’t looked exactly panicked by this but she looked bothered and annoyed.

You felt the pain on your neck subside as she retracted back her foot; standing up as she turned around and quickly left. You took that as your cue to get the fuck out of there, and that she wasn’t going to hurt you.

You laid on the forest floor for a couple minutes as you gathered your bearings and mustered up the strength to stand up, and attempt to find a way back home away from this hellish nightmare.

~

That horrid night of your run in with the satanists not only plagued your dreams to turn into nightmares, but it also become your go to story to tell at parties.

You knew telling ‘rumours’ of a satanic cult (espically around Halloween) was incredibly cheesy and you doubted anyone really believed you, but it always made people laugh and kept them intrigued. Hence why you were at currently at your own party on Halloween night, telling the same story yet again but worded a bit

The party you decided to throw remained somewhere in the middle between a casual friendly house party, and a frat party. This left you (and your friends) with a cup of alcohol in hand, in a somewhat revealing angel costume. You wore a silky white dress along with a cheap pair of angel wings and a halo to go along with it; along with makeup to match. Right now you just happened to be conversing amongst some acquaintances but more and more people seemed to be filing through into the house; people you didn’t know.

You knew you were just borderline tipsy because you couldn’t help but laugh at every line that this person whom you were talking too was saying but they seemed to look amused too.

“No way that happened”! The person you were talked too replied.

“Yes way! Why do you think I’m wearing this scarf? The number she left on my neck wouldn’t exactly go with the rest of my outfit”. You said with a small giggle at the half truth you told.

That definitely wasn’t a lie. When that woman had stepped on your neck she left a trmendous amount of bruising on your neck. Your neck was painted dark blues and purples, the real tone of your skin barely peeking through. Luckily you were able to pin wearing scarves on just the cold weather, and no one really think twice or seemed to question you over it.

You took another sip of the beverage you held, preparing to tell more of your notorious story before you heard the doorbell ring. You excused yourself as you walked through the dense crowd, wondering who the hell it was.

All of your dearest friends and everyone else that was invited was already here.. you could feel fear and anxiety start to nag at you but nevertheless you quickly opened the door without a second thought.

And you were speechless.

It was her. The woman who was the main character of the horror story you were previously telling stood in front of you, and she looked pissed.

You immeaditly felt in shock as you stepped outside with her and shut the door. You would’ve invited her inside but who knows what the hell her intentions were; you knew what she was capable of.

“How did you find me”?! You asked, the words came out as if you were angry but you really weren’t - just in shock and a bit scared.

She looked amused when you said this, like she could almost laugh but she just smirked at you instead.

“You made it too easy. It was common knowledge you were throwing a party this weekend, all I had to tell them that I was some relative of yours and I got your address just like that. Do you like my outfit”? She mused, throwing her hair over her shoulder as she did a quick spin for you.

It was obvious she was attempting to dress as the devil, she wore a headband that had small devil horns on them along with a beautiful red dress that clung tightly to her skin, showing off the best parts of her body. She also wore a black cape on with two metals clasps on either side with a chain connecting them; she looked beautiful. Although this did nothing to the fact of how confused and mildly annoyed you were at her appearance.

“I know your not here for the party. What do you want? If you wanted to just see me, or find another victim - this is not the place or time to do it” You said.

You two stood outside by the front door, the air was just cold enough to make you want to go back inside but not to the point where you were uncomfterable. The sounds of halloween filled your sense, the vague smell of pumpkin and the sound of kids roaming the neighborhood for candy was a comforting distraction. However it wasn’t enough for you to forget about the woman standing in front of you. She lost her smirk and amused look completely before she replied to you.

“Who exactly do you think you are to know what my wants are needs are? And what makes you qualified to fulfill them?” She asked and you stood there.. utterly speechless.

She took a step toward you and looked at you directly in the eyes - clearly not intimidated or scared of you at all. It was almost as if she was teasing you; taunting you.

You felt so fucking stupid, you didn’t have a good answer to her question. In fact you don’t really know why you even asked her that. You took a deep breath and even though she was a mere foot or two away from you; you refused to back up and look as if you were intimidated.

“It’s just, I don’t even know your name. I don’t know the first thing about you or how you even found about this party. I just.. don’t know what your intentions are”. You stated dumbly.

You had no expectations or guess for what she would do next but you felt your soul leave your body for a split second as she advanced toward you even closer - almost like she was going to kiss you only for her to just brush up past you and open your front door. She got so close to you to the point where you felt her soft blonde hair brush up against your face for a moment.

“I can’t talk to you about it out here”. She stated and grabbed your hand, pulling you inside behind her. You held onto her hand as walked you into the house, not even letting you shut the door which stayed open ajar.

You couldn’t help but blush at how soft and smooth her hand felt, yet the feeling also made you shudder since her hand seemed to be ice cold.

You were worried about getting weird looks from people about holding another girls hand but everyone seemed to preoccupied to notice, or merely just didn’t care.

She led you into one of the first rooms that was visible from the front door, clearly not caring whether it was a bedroom, bathroom or some other kind of room. She quickly opened the door and closed it after nearly pushing you in. Almost immeaditly she pulled off her headband and took her heels off, throwing them carelessly in the room as she rolled her eyes.

“I’m so glad I don’t have to wear that shit anymore”. She said with a slight chuckle.

“Why dress up then if you hate it?” You asked, genuinely curious.

“Because I had to look the part in order to come to this party to get to you. Anyone not dressed up on Halloween always looks suspicious, I thought you knew that”. She answered.

You blushed at her first sentence but out of being shy you decided to ignore that part, assuming she was probably referring to something else - there was no way she would’ve came all the way here just for the sake of asking you on a date. The thought was stupid and irrational.

“You could’ve just dressed up in your satanist outfit, you did look beautiful in it”. You said.

As soon as the words came out of your mouth you felt stupid for even admitting that you thought of her as attractive let alone beautiful.

“Beautiful? Even with blood dripping down my neck you think I looked beautiful”. The second part was said as if it were a statement.

She took a couple steps toward you, putting her fingers lightly on your cheek as she gently pushed her thumb under your chin - forcing you to look up at her. It didn’t hurt by any means but it definetly felt uncomfterable. You waited for her to make a move; either to kiss you or say something but she did neither. She merely stared at you. To break the suffocating silence you spoke.

“You know, you never answered my question ealier”. You said as she still held her face gently on your face. She looked at you as if she was studying you, observing - waiting for you to do something.

“The one about why I came here? I already told you - I came for you. I’ve heard all of the crazy bullshit rumours you’ve been telling - and if you were anyone else I would’ve just slit your throat and sacrificed you by now but.. I think I’ve already tainted your beauty enough with those delicious bruises I left on your neck”. She said, she eyes traveling down to the scarf that you wore that covered the bruises.

You felt beyond bewildered and as if the air had been completely knocked out of you once again. The fact that she was trying to gaslight you into thinking that what you saw that night wasn’t even real was the most shocking. The next was how she commented on your beauty, was she returning back your feelings or was she just trying to lead you on before she murdered you? Under your own roof? You wouldn’t put it past her.

“Take it off”. She spoke, her hand that was on your face slowly traveled down to the end of your scarf, giving it a gentle tug.

You gave her a slight smirk, you figured you might as well flirt - who knows how this night was going to end after all.

“Your not even going to buy me dinner first”? You teased.

Your hands gently started to unwind the scarf that you had tightly wrapped around your neck and she watched intensively, almost like she was in a trance.

“Sorry angel but I’m not really the type who likes to go on dates, or let alone has the time or patience for them”. She said, making eye contact with you again.

A darkness gleamed in her eyes but you still tried to stand your ground and not let her intimidate you.

You threw the scarf on the floor. You still were fully clothed but you couldn’t help but feel naked and exposed, your embarrassing bruises on full display. She pushed your chin up and got even closer. Taking a finger and very lightly traced the outline of one of the more prominent bruises. It didn’t hurt but you felt on edge, and scared at the fact that your neck was on full display for basically a cannibal. What was stopping her from pulling out a knife or doing something crazy such as biting into your throat?

The idea of your life ending so suddenly with this woman you didn’t even know the name of made your heart start to beat rapidly, and you felt sick.. anxious.. you needed to get out of this room but you stayed put.

It was almost as if she could sense this and she drew her hand back, as you lowered your head back down in its normal position.

“You look divine, beautiful isn’t even the right adjective to describe your beauty. You would put a real angel to shame with your looks”. She said. For a second, you completely forgot it was Halloween or that you were even in a costume to begin with.

She only strayed a inch again away from your face now. She slowly approached closer and closer, you felt her cold hands gently grab at your waist - and you couldn’t help but jump just slightly at the suddenness of it. You couldn’t help but breathe faster when you felt her nose gently bump against yours - knowing what was about to happen.

“Are you okay”? She asked you, barely whispering.

You swore you could almost taste her breath and feel her lips moving at how close she was. Close but yet not close enough.

You wanted this; you wanted nothing more than to close the gap between you two but you also knew deep down this was wrong. This woman was a murderer, she didn’t deserve love.. right?

Everyone deserves compassion and acceptance - sure. You could offer her that but you knew certainly it wasn’t your place to forgive her for her acts but.. after all that’s not why you were currently in the posistion that you were in. You weren’t about to kiss her because you felt sorry for her, it’s because you felt hopelessly drawn to a woman you barely even met. A woman you didn’t know the name of.

Like a moth drawn to a flame, you knew she was dangerous but yet.. that almost made you want her more.

It felt wrong to speak out loud so you merely nodded your head very slightly, the posistion you were in made it hard to move but you were still able to move your head a little bit. You doubted her eyes were open to see your movement but you were hoping maybe she felt you move instead; and that was when you heard her soft sultry voice ask you,

“Can I kiss you”?

You swiftly wrapped your arms around the back of her neck and you moved in a inch closer, just enough so that the distance between you two was finally closed.

The kiss was wet, and short lived. The taste of her lipstick lingered as you pulled away rather reluctantly. The way how her lips lingered on yours told you that she didn’t want to stop but you knew you should pull away; this chaos had to stop.

This was a dangerous fucking game you were playing, what were you thinking? That you would somehow be different and that she would decide to spare you for some reason? You removed your hands from her shoulders as you awkwardly stumbled back. Your heart started to race and you could feel yourself start to turn backwards, getting ready to open the door and just dip. You could never explain how you feel, how would she understand? More importantly - why would she care?

Just as you felt your feet move to turn your heard her voice, it was soft yet still held onto her confidence that her voice typically held but.. she sounded a bit defeated.

“Your scared”. She stated.

You froze as you took a deep breath, now facing the door with your back facing her.

“Scared of what?” Your words hung in the air for a few dense, quiet moments.

Scared of what she would say, yet scared of the thick silenceness that seemed to be your only other option. You decided to muster up the courage spontaneously to turn around and face her and that’s exactly when she answered your question.

“Of me. Your scared of me. I can hear your heartbeat, I can tell your terrified of me”. She stated.

Her words felt like they cut you as if she had thrown knives at you; you immeaditly felt embarrassed for how you felt, the urge to just leave was stronger than ever but you had a feeling she wouldn’t just let you go so easy.

The mention of her hearing your heartbeat seemed to fly right over your head, you didn’t give it a second thought.

You wanted to move to leave, or to hug her but you did neither. You stood frozen, as you felt tears start to well up in eyes and run hotly down your cheeks.

I’m sorry. I-I don’t want to be scared of you but it’s not fair for you to assume that I can just ignore what I saw”. You answered.

Taking another deep breath you looked up and met her eyes, she looked at you curiously - still as if she was studying you.

She took steps toward you, up until her hand gently rested on your cheek and you couldn’t help but foolishly lean into it ever so slightly.

“Baby, I’m not expecting you to ignore it - all I want is for you to keep quiet about it. I can’t have the entire town thinking I’m a satanist anymore darling”.

You wanted to argue but you merely giggled and smiled.

“That’s understandable. Speaking of.. your hobby.. shouldn’t you be elsewhere on Halloween? Like at some elaborate death ritual or some kind of Halloween ceremony”? You asked.

You felt completely shocked when you felt her hand suddenly pull away and you felt her tongue lick a stripe directly from your chin up to your cheek, licking up your precious tears. She kissed the side of your mouth before pulling away.

“Halloween was never my favorite holiday. My job.. requires a lot out of me. Some of which you’ve seen but celebrating a holiday that practically mocks who I am and makes it into entertainment just isn’t my style”. She explained.

“Then who are you”?

She gave you a smirk, and just as you heard a crack of thunder (or lighting, it was impossible to tell) you swore you saw her crystal blue eyes turn a jet black, before returning to their typical appearance. You swore maybe it was just your mind playing tricks on you or maybe a trick of the light.. you supposed you would never know.

She wore a shit eating grin as if she wanted to say ‘if only you knew’. She swiftly walked past you once again and opened to the door to let herself out;

“Call me Mikey”.

The door slammed shut and there you stood, feeling defeated, hopeless but determined. Determined to find her again, even if all you had to go off was a appearance and a nickname.

You were going to be this woman’s girlfriend whether or not it killed you.

[unnameablethings]

sunlight and allegiance

The bone-king, tall and shadowed, comes to the knight and asks, “Will you aid me?”

The answer is no, of course, will always be no, should always be no. Sunflor is the last shining bastion of what came before the god-king, and she will not bow her head. Her sun-king is dead, and the bone-king killed him, and only his seat on the throne and her oaths prevent her from taking his head off. She stands in the doorway of her quarters (inside the bone-king’s castle, inside the home that has been conquered,) and she knows that “no” is not an answer she can give, so instead she says nothing. Her face, however, betrays her. 

The bone-king winces, just the slightest twitch of his sharp-angled face. 

“Please. Lady Knight. They will listen to you, if they listen to none other, and I am so weary of bloodshed. Are you not weary?”

“There would be no bloodshed,” she says, very carefully, “If you had never come here.” 

The bone-king’s expression is… tired. Old, and drawn. She doesn’t know how old he is - he seems ageless, ancient and young all at once. “Of course there would be. Why else did you exist? A king doesn’t keep a land-blessed knight of sunlight and death unless he intends to use her for the slaughter. Are you telling me you had never killed before I came from the west?”

Sunflor says nothing, again, stubbornly silent. It’s not the same, she wants to say. That was keeping the peace, not war. I only slaughtered things like you. Threats. Monsters. Instead she drops her gaze to the floor, avoiding his old, dark eyes. 

“Need I make this an order?” the bone-king asks, very gently. Sunflor’s jaw clenches, works in a convulsive scowl. She is sworn to the throne, not the man who sits on it. It was meant to make her a peerless, unbiased warrior, but it feels, now, like a weakness. She wants to throttle him, wants to reach down his throat and tear out the way things used to be, as though he had swallowed it whole and unharmed. But she cannot disobey an order from her king, however little he has earned the title. 

“No. What do you need?”

“Thank you,” the bone-king says. He sounds relieved. She does not look at him, though the oath-bond pings with the righteous satisfaction of her fealty. It used to be one of her favorite feelings - it makes her sick, now. “Some parts of my land are still restless under my touch, and the kingdom loves you so much it burns. Come and help me coax it? Let us settle this gently, and with peace. I dislike the thought of having to stamp it down into fearful submission.”

“As you wish, my lord,” says Sunflor, because she is bound, and because she recognizes, through the haze of her rage and her grief, that it is better this way. Her king is dead, and a part of her is dead along with him, but no one else need die unnecessarily. 

He brings her first of all down into the labyrinths of the castle, where Sunflor would follow her sun-king when he did his rituals and his prayers. She knelt by his side, gave him her strength when he faltered, let him pull draughts of power from her like blood. She is almost nostalgic for the dizzy, giddy emptiness of being drained, of being filled instead with sunlight and the slow earth-love of a country. Not enough to want the bone-king to do it, though. She has no choice. 

The bone-king exhales, when they’re down in the wide, circular ritual-room, with the map of the kingdom stretched over the floor. There’s sunlight shining into the room from a window in the ceiling, though they’re dozens of feet below ground. The bone-king looks up at the sunlit window, inquisitive.

“A lovely working. Do you know the spell?” he murmurs, and stretches his fingers out to let the sun shine on them. Sunflor wishes for it to burn him, but it doesn’t. Just filters through his scarred fingers, making the webs between them glow faintly red, beams of light in the gaps. His flesh is slightly translucent, only the bones and the scars solid and pale.  

“It is a place of the sun,” Sunflor says, shortly, and kneels in the place where she always kneels, where generations before her have knelt. Had they ever knelt here and hated like she hates the bone-king? Stupid question. Of course they have. The kingdom is nothing if not ever besieged by conflict. They hardly go three or four generations without an upset - her own sun-king was only a second-generation dynastic king, and she knows the knight before the knight before her had ended up falling on her own blade, distraught by the loss of her queen. There is a strange comfort in the solidarity of a generational anguish.

Deep breaths. In. Out. The sunlight is warm, golden. The room is ritually hushed, and the scent of old blood and incense and dust fills her nose. It’s familiar, reassuring, down to the faint grooves in the stone from where thousands of years of knights before her have knelt in the same place. She has a duty to her country, not only to her king, and she will fulfill it until she can no longer. The kingdom cradles her in its stone, and she draws strength from it. 

The bone-king, watching, turns at last to stand over the map, closes his eyes, holding his hands out like he’s feeling along the top of a table. His hands are not callused in the way of one who wields a weapon, but blackened in forking patterns like lightning, from magic overuse. His fingertips are all scorched to a charcoal black. Those are recent - when she had battled the bone-king merely months ago, he had had much less prominent scarring. They are scars likely acquired in the battle against the sun-king, then. At least they managed to scar him.

“Here,” he murmurs, finally, hands poised above a part of the map like invisible strings tug his fingers down, and he crouches to touch a particular region on the map. He opens his eyes, and studies the landscape painted intricately beneath him. The knight watches him, looking from his face to the map and back. It does not surprise her that that particular demesne is giving him trouble - not when the forest loves its lady so much.

“What are your thoughts, lady knight?” the bone-king asks. 

“That is the demesne of Lady Lily-greenery,” the knight says. “Her sister, Violet, was slain at your hand.”

“I see.”

“She was one of the sorceresses in the king’s guard, and they were very close,” the knight says. “Not as close as some-” close as he and I- “but. Close.”

“I see,” the bone-king says again, quieter. “Well. There’s not much I can do about that, now. I’ll play bloodgold to the lady, if you think it will help?”

“She’ll consider it an insult. The gold you bought with her sister’s death? No.” 

“Mm. A wise consideration, Sunflor.”

“Do not use my name,” Sunflor snaps, and hears her voice break. “You haven’t earned it. Don’t you dare.”

There’s a long, fraught pause. “Apologies, Lady Knight,” the bone-king breathes, almost a whisper. It’s a concession she hadn’t expected from him, and she breathes in deep, breathes out the anger and sorrow. 

“If you want her to support you, then you need to show her respect, and show her forest respect,” she says, as though nothing particularly interesting had happened. “She lost a lot, in the war effort. A lot of her forest’s vitality was drained to shore up the borders and strengthen the soldiers.”

“I’ll send her some of that power back, then. Weakens the remaining military resources that are undoubtedly brewing dissent, and strengthens a possible ally. And helps me fix the absolute mess my predecessor has made of this beautiful thing,” the bone-king says, and runs a gentle hand along the map. 

“He didn’t,” Sunflor says, but it sounds like a lie to her own ears, a childish protest. It is not as though she hasn’t lain awake at night for years, hearing the kingdom in discomfort and weakness, knowing that it was stretched too far. She shifts in her kneeling, feeling herself sore to the bone though the kneeling hasn’t bothered her since she was knighted. “He did his best,” she amends.

“His best wasn’t very good,” the bone-king says, and looks steadily at her, eyes dark. His expression is opaque, unreadable. “He sought conquest and glory and didn’t have the means to manage it. I would never have bothered coming if he had not tried to conquer me in the first place, and I never would have succeeded against a kingdom as powerful as this if he had not already overextended it and strained its power and its patience.”

“The kingdom loves him,” Sunflor says. Her throat feels swollen and thick, and her hands fist in her lap. “It gave all it could for him because it loved him.”

“The kingdom loves you.” The bone-king’s stare is nameless, uncomfortably tender. “You gave all you could for him.”

“Not enough, clearly.”

“His weakness is not your fault.”

“His death is yours.”

The bone-king acknowledges this with a tilt of his head. “I am sorry.”

She laughs, ugly and shattered. It sounds wrong in the peaceful stillness of the ritual room, like a crow’s broken cackle. “Are you, my lord?” 

He stands from the map, shrugs off his cloak and holds his hand out over the ugly seething of the forest’s magic. The trees sprout up from the map, the flat surface rising to give way to infinitely small trees, a mass of greenery. The sunlight in the room goes strange, and she feels magic brewing, simultaneously familiar and repellant. It is the comforting kingdom-magic at the same time as it is the cold, dark grave-magic of an enemy she has been fighting for years, now, and it itches at her like a scabbing wound. 

It curls from the god-king’s fingertips, twining into the forest’s magic and settling in it. She feels it resist, struggle, but he does not fight back, even as it reaches for him in violence and fury. She watches his hands - he flinches, barely, when the magic sinks thorns into him, but he does not pull away. He merely offers the gift in open palms until the forest finally swallows it, and settles down. 

“My condolences for your loss,” he speaks, into the whispering of the forest. “And my utmost respect and honor for your sister’s battle prowess. She fought well. I regret her death. I hope this goes some small way towards amends.”

The forest takes the message, and subsides back into the map, smoothing out. A discordant note in the kingdom’s magic quiets, turns a little further toward the main body of it. 

“I regret that I caused you pain, lady knight,” the bone-king says, without looking at her. “I do not regret the sun-king’s death.” 

“What could I possibly matter to you?” 

“I underestimated the effect the kingdom’s power would have on me,” the bone-king says, instead of answering. 

Perhaps, however, it is an answer after all. 

The bone-king’s face is creased, sweat beading on his forehead. There are new pinpricks of red scars on his hands, and this is the point at which Sunflor would usually lend her power and her aid, let her king brace himself against her as the sturdy anchor-point of might and magic. She does not offer. The bone-king does not ask. 

“May I go?” Sunflor asks, at last.

“...You may. I will need you again, though.”

“I am aware.” 

Though her fealty-bond keens when she turns her back on the bone-king, alerting her he is in need of aid/strength/his knight, she does not listen. She climbs the stairs away from him, and does not look back. 

(I FORGOT I HAVE AN @ LIST... it’s from 2018 so it’s very probably outdated rip. sorry if you get mentioned when you did not want to be! @trishaloach @toastyglow @acefruitloop @skye07 @m1sosazai @yoyoendlessstring @blue-tomatoes @catsfeminismandatla @lady-redshield-writes @alhena09 @emanonnosrep, @je11yfish-queen @gingerly-writing @dramaticvoiceover @writingmyselfintoanearlygrave @authorisada @reciclingbin @lushprocrastinatrix @timeenoughforamasterpiece @tedrakitty @haphazardlyparked @kiwisoap @silver56 @pacifiedperoxide @kooncat @severe-fangirl-syndrome @startledserpent  @50-shaeds-of-fae @stritte @dorianelle @dhawandyke @churchyardgrim)

[unstoppableforcce]

golden

CHAPTER ONE: simplicity

pairing: Poe Dameron x oc! Anya

next part | masterlist | oc art

a/n: this is set before the Force Awakens and is a rewrite and expansion of one of my first fics. it’s a big one, this part is 6.7k which might be the longest thing i’ve ever written lol, but i love my oc and the relationships and the plot of this, i hope yall do too bc i can’t wait to write more!!! 

He had forgotten how beautiful the galaxy could be. 

Before him, through the clear windshield of the dilapidated transport ship, laid an expanse of towering mountains of green, thick like the jungles of Yavin IV he knew so well, and vast like the breath of the galaxy he was only beginning to familiarize himself with. In the valleys that sat between the intimidating heights of the jungle were ponds and lakes, illuminated by the contrast of their soft pink hue and the sunlight from three suns beating down on them overhead. And within each jaw-dropping landscape they flew over, the lanky jungle trees stretched high and interwoven with each other and the depths of the gentle pink lakes, he caught glimpses of the hidden civilization. 

Stone buildings of dark brown granite hidden beneath the twisted green vines and thick, overgrown tree trunks, windows of reflective glass cascading like waterfalls built back into the shape of the mountains. From as high as they were, flying above in the shaky transport ship, he could make out the movement of the people through the trees and on wooden crescent boats out in the milky pink water of the lake, working as the suns bore down on their backs. 

Flying in his X-wing, he had mission objectives and responsibilities. He travelled from point A to point B and never lingered in one place for longer than he needed to, not with the First Order patrols cracking down across the galaxy. He couldn’t remember the last time he had travelled so slow, the last time he got to truly see the colors of the universe around him which normally passed in hyperspeed blurs. 

He had forgotten how beautiful the galaxy could be. 

“Wow…” the awe fell from his lips unconsciously as his eyes stayed wide, scanning the horizon not only out of necessity given their flight path, but because he couldn’t look anywhere else. The D’Qar jungle was said to be beautiful, as beautiful as this, but for the past months he had been tasked with growing their new base there, he saw the inside of buildings and the burn of haunting fluorescent lights more than he did the real greenery and sunlight. 

It was… breathtaking to say the least. 

“I thought I misremembered,” the calm and collected voice of the General sounded off over his shoulder as he slowed his speed to navigate a lofty bit of cloud cover that surrounded the tops of the mountainous valleys he navigated between. “I convinced myself somehow that no place in the galaxy could be as beautiful as I remembered but I was wrong.”

He couldn’t blame her. If he wasn’t seeing it with his own eyes as his hands gripped tight to the controls of the ship, he wasn’t sure he would have believed it either. 

Waterfalls of the lightest pink hue, the sparkling of the natural granite deposits in the rock which shined equally as bright as the city construction as they continued over it, the polished rock made into skyscrapers which rivaled the surrounding mountains in height, the natural overgrowth of green vines and thick canopy tree tops… the more he saw, the more Poe found himself overwhelmed by the beauty. 

“How far until the palace?” He hummed with a brief quirk of his jaw back over his shoulder to Leia as his eyes stayed trained on the intricate habitational design and fields woven between towering structures which shadowed over smaller homes which led to more fields and rivers, rocks and jungle. 

“Not far, it’s impossible to miss.”

It hadn’t made sense at that moment, but he refrained from asking her to expand, trusting that whatever she meant would be clear to him as they kept going. Within the following minute, his trust proved itself. 

The nose of the ship lifted slightly to get them over a particularly tall mountain top, and as the clouds cleared away while he nosed back into the valley below, he found the most gorgeous architectural and natural displays he had ever laid his eyes on. Built, like the hidden structures he had seen earlier, into the most commanding mountain of sparkling brown granite in the landscape before him, the palace was a delicate, yet proud masterpiece with spires as high as the clouds and a bustling marketplace pouring out the front of it, spilling towards the shore of the pink ocean before it. 

Banners of colors brighter than he even knew existed fluttered in the wind coming in off the coast throughout the marketplace, and as he brought the ship in to a stop at the surrounding rim of the mountain above the palace’s top spires where all the other ships sat, he began to notice the vibrant crowd which flowed from the boats in the water all the way through the palace gates. He loved his home with all his heart, but this was the most beautiful place in the galaxy. It had to be. 

He and Leia quickly unloaded from the non-descript ship, and Poe made sure to leave his blaster secure in the cockpit as Leia had instructed him earlier, taking only his jacket and communicator with him. A jacket he quickly realized he would not be needing as the two of them stepped out amongst the ships atop the mountain and felt the overwhelming heat from the suns above them. 

“Don’t be too in awe, we are here for a reason.” He glanced back from where he stood near the edge of the flattened mountain top to see Leia stood as regal as ever with her hands linked behind her back and her stare that of a careful mother. “An important reason,” she minded once more and he had no choice but to nod. 

As he reluctantly pulled away from teh edge and joined her at her side while they drew closer to the nearby lift and the mindlessly chatting guards stood around it, he couldn’t help but voice the one thought he couldn’t get out of his mind,“I can’t imagine a place like this ever allying with the First Order.” 

With a voice lowered closer to that of a whisper while they passed the guards, Leia carefully minded him again, “There is a complicated history to Haiki, as beautiful as it is.”

“All the briefing memo said was that they were great allies during the war, pacifists, but great allies.” He responded in an equally hushed tone until the doors to their lift shut and they began descending deep into the dark, sparkling rock. “You said their leader was a friend.”

“Their King and Queen were friends of mine while I was still living on Alderaan and fighting with the rebellion, unfortunately the queen died shortly after the Empire fell and their king has been sick for almost as long.” She explained as the thick walls of granite passed quickly by them as they continued to descend. 

“Who are we here to meet with then?”

The lift came to a stop at the bottom and the doors opened to a dense crowd of people, all dressed in vibrant colors of thick woven fabric, skin decorated with thick strokes of black ink in intricate designs that varied from body to body. But as much as Poe wished to step forward and immerse himself into the lively crowd of the market, Leia’s firm grip on the elbow of his jacket pulled him in the opposite direction, towards an open doorway outlined by beautiful branches and bright flowers as her words quickly pulled him back to the reality of their mission there. 

“We’re meeting with the Princess,” Leia answered as they continued down the hall illuminated by windows which brought cascades of bright light into the halls as they travelled in a direction which seemed to Poe as if it were going deeper into the rock of the mountain. “I’ve met her before, but she was young, now she runs the whole planet and, from what I can tell, is not as eager about our alliance as her parents were.”

“You think she’s fielding threats from the First Order? You said they were pacifists--”

“It’s not about weapons or defense, it’s about supplies.” Leia sighed as the two of them came to a halt in the middle of the hallway, allowing the few locals who were walking behind them to pass in front and leave them alone with the bright sunlight. “We need their support, the medicine they create, the food they grow… If we don’t get it, I don’t know how much longer we can survive.”

Poe nodded, his overgrown curls bouncing with the nod of his head as he glanced around the empty hall and began pulling his jacket off his already sweat-slicked back. 

He knew they were there for support, but the briefing memo had been vague on purpose. No one else could know they were there, no one could know why they were there. If there was a leak, if the First Order somehow found out that the Resistance was reliant on Hakian support to survive, they’d decimate the entire planet, strip mine them for their resources and slaughter their peaceful population. 

He trusted their people, and he knew Leia did too, but he also understood why he had to be kept in the dark until now. This was just too important. 

“When we get in to see her, you’ll call her only ‘princess’ or ‘dekka’, never by her first name unless she gives you permission. And make sure you keep your distance, be respectful,” Leia warned as they slowly began walking again, turning a corner and entering another well-lit hall still travelling deeper into the mountain it seemed. “They are sticklers for tradition here and we can’t afford to play around.”

“What does ‘dekka’ mean?” 

“Respected one.” She answered quickly, keeping her voice close to him as another person came into view at the end of the hall. 

The man towered just like the mountains they flew through did, taller than any human man Poe had seen in person, nearly wookie height if he was being honest. But there was nothing intimidating about him, he merely flashed a bright smile and opened his arms in a welcoming stance. 

“Princess Leia, it is an honor to see you again.” The man bellowed out, meeting them at the end of the hall where it let out into a gorgeous room of tall ceilings and windows that stretched from the polished granite floor all the way up to the tallest rafters of twisted vine and tree root, letting in an electric amount of natural light. 

Leia quickly unlinked her hands from behind her back and wrapped them around the man, who stood at nearly twice her height, in a solid embrace. “Elias, it’s an honor to see you as well.”

“I had no idea you were coming, whatever can I help you with?” His thick accent continued to cut through the air, louder than Leia could muster by several dozen decibels. His command over the basic language wasn’t too strong, but he certainly made up for his shortcomings with heart and confidence.

However, no amount of strength of heart could overwrite the confusion outlined by his words, leaving an unsettling feeling in Poe’s gut. Judging by the slight deflation in Leia’s commanding stance, it was clear he wasn’t the only one. 

“No idea…” Leia chuckled nervously, trailing off with a brief shake of her braids. “We were meant to meet with Dekka Anya-Va, is she not here?”

Elias’ chuckle was equally as unsettled, something was wrong. 

“She hasn’t been in all day,” he added as another rough chuckle escaped his lips, “I didn’t know she had schedule, she didn’t tell me…”

Seven hours. That’s how far away Haiki was from D’Qar when travelling as fast as possible in the only non-resistance ship available, an old, deteriorating transport ship. He spent seven hours behind the controls on a trembling, shaking ship, and the Princess they were supposed to be meeting with to secure necessary supplies for the resistance was not there? Was this some kind of joke?

If it was, he didn’t find it very funny. 

Leia glanced back over her shoulder, finding the waiting confusion that covered Poe’s face and turned back to Elias wearing a very similar look. “She hasn’t been in at all?”

“She’s been… cutting me off, isolating herself from her advisors… I don’t know…” He stuttered over each and every word, clearly pulling them from a particularly painful place in his chest. 

And on any other day, Poe might have cared about the way the towering man’s intimidating voice trembled in his explanation. The overwhelmingly empathetic heart that beat steadily in his chest was accustomed to feeling for anyone from anywhere across the galaxy, but in this moment, the weight of the resistance was too apparent on his shoulders. 

If Leia said they needed this Princess to save the resistance, then that was that. They needed this Princess, and hearing that she was circumventing her advisors as much as she was avoiding their meeting only increased the nerves in his unsettled stomach. 

“You are welcome to wait for her in the throne room, I will send her your way whenever I find her…” Elias made a desperate attempt to relight the smile that had fallen from Leia’s diplomatic lips, but it only succeeded somewhat, as much as Leia could muster, feeling the same weight that Poe felt sitting heavy on her shoulders. 

“Thank you, Elias.” Leia bowed her head, and Elias quickly did the same. 

But the second Leia turned away from him and began nudging Poe back in the direction they came from, her diplomatic disposition fell away, returning her harsh, commanding stare. 

“She’s avoiding us?” Poe was quick to question as their pace hastened back down the brightly illuminated halls leading back to the busy marketplace. 

Leia shook her head, keeping her voice low as the two of them walked, shoulder to shoulder. “Remember when you asked if I thought she was fielding First Order threats already? I think we just got our answer.”

“What do we do?”

As the two of them entered back out into the dense crowd of the marketplace, Leia gave a brief shrug, still tugging him along with her as she fought against the flow of tattooed people. “Now, we have to find her.”

“Do you know where to look?”

The stare Leia gave him was one he was all too familiar with. It was the same look he got when he asked questions about procedure he already knew the answer to, the same look he got when he asked questions he knew she wouldn’t answer. It was a look that meant one thing. The simplest answer, the easier answer, the obvious one that was punching him directly in the face, was the answer he should be looking for. 

And with Leia, when it came to asking if she knew anything, the answer was without a doubt, a resounding ‘yes’. 

Following the banners, each one a color more vibrant than the last, Leia continued to push him through the marketplace. As they exited the front gate of the palace, the market grew impossibly larger and the crowd more dense, every soul moving with a specific purpose, from stall to stall with shoulders carrying heavy bags and faces bright with electric smiles. 

Poe couldn’t remember the last time he saw so many smiles in such a densely packed region.

The sun was beating down hot on his back, slicking his curls to his forehead in a light coating of sweat, but everyone around him seemed oblivious to it, either too distracted by the spices piled high in the booths, wafting a plethora of new scents around the beautiful square, or the swaths of fabrics covered in intricate stitches and designs. Was this what life was like where the war didn’t touch? 

People could walk around, fully immersed in their own vibrant culture wearing smiles brighter than the multiple suns which hung above them, seemingly without a care in the world when it came to the slaughtering and genocide happening around the galaxy at the hands of the First Order? Did they even know? 

Did the parents who let their kids run around with tightly woven baskets piled high with spiky blue fruit even know about the children across the galaxy who were stolen from their families and conscripted as nameless troopers? Did the elderly who sat off to the side even know that just last week, a village of respected elders on Nantoo were mowed down indiscriminately by First Order officers looking to set up base on their sacred land? Did any of them even know about the war?

If he lived here, maybe he could understand it. Maybe… 

But Stars, was ignorance really bliss when millions were being slaughtered? 

“I knew she’d be here…” Leia sighed, pulling Poe’s attention back to her pursuit as the market began to thin out closer to the pink translucent shore packed with crescent shaped boats of dark wood unloading at the docks. He didn’t know where to let his stare fall however, the water immediately took his attention, but as Leia kept walking, he fought to both find her stare and follow it in the same direction. 

The shore wasn’t packed, but there were just enough bodies to keep him guessing even as he followed Leia’s focus. Where was she looking--

He found her.

Nothing had changed, he still didn’t know exactly where Leia’s stare was directed nor did he have any verbal confirmation that he was looking in the right direction, but he was sure of himself, overwhelmingly sure of himself as his stare landed on the detailed tattoos that covered the back of the lone woman sat on the damp shore, isolated from the crowd. 

The thin interwoven fabric of the maroon dress that cascaded down her form was exquisite in it’s intricately stitched details, but nothing compared to the thick, jet black ink stripes that crested over her back and arms, the extent of the skin he could see from the angle they were approaching with. Everyone he had seen so far on this planet had some form of similar markings, be it extensive designs sprawling up their arms or small delicate images drawn on their hands or necks, but none compared to what he saw on her skin. 

It was like the dark ink was woven around her, like a vine crawling it’s way up a tree. Or maybe more aptly, it was a web, drawn by a diligent insect or maybe even claw marks from a creature, thick where the wounds ran the deepest and thin at the start and ends of each mark. 

Haiku itself was one of the most beautiful planets in the galaxy, but the woman before him was more beautiful than even that. 

It took an elbow in the side from Leia to snap him back to reality. 

“Why don’t you let me do most of the talking, yeah?” She countered, a knowing quirk to her brow as she nudged him again with her elbow. 

He wanted to argue back but Leia had already begun walking ahead of him and the second he moved to catch up, a large guard stepped up to block their path. 

This man was tall, like Elias back in the palace was, but he didn’t wear his intimidating height the same way. He was much broader in the shoulders, much wider in his stance, effectively blocking any line of sight either Poe or Leia had towards the princess. Yet unlike Elias, there was no friendly greeting, no real acknowledgement at all besides his narrowed scowl down towards the two of them. 

For a planet of self-proclaimed pacifists, Poe wasn’t really feeling at peace. 

Not until the soft hum of her voice flowed in from the gentle lull of the shore. “It’s alright, Xia, let them through.”

The wall of a man quickly stepped aside on her orders, revealing the exhausted collapse of her shoulders while she began to pull herself back up to her feet. The languid pull of her muscles was obvious with the delicate cut of the maroon dress across her skin, which contrasted the blood color of the fabric with a dark brown glow, not unlike the sparkle of the magnificent granite mountains under the overhead suns. 

“Dekka Anya-Va…” Leia addressed carefully but was quickly cut off by the return of her coarse hum of a voice. 

“I was hoping by not being at the palace that you would get the impression I didn’t want to meet with you,” her accent was thick, much like Elias’s but her comfort with the language was much more evident as it flowed much smoother from her lips despite the natural raspiness to her tone. It was a mesmerizing sound, complemented by the dulcet tone of the gentle waves, making it something he could easily get lost in if it wasn’t for his ability to still hear the words for what they were. 

Condescending. Nearly mocking if he was being honest. It just didn’t sit well with him, not when directed towards Leia. 

“We got the impression, we just ignored it,” Leia countered, pushing her careful tone to the side in favor of the tone she used when addressing her Commanders, a tone that commanded respect, even if the Princess seemed too aloof to provide it. 

She let out a rugged chuckle at that, jagged at the edges where it seemed to have fought through her throat and out from her perfectly shaped lips. “We…” she hummed, “I wasn’t aware you were bringing friends.”

The pointed tips of her words were sent like daggers with her stare as she turned from Leia to where Poe stood right beside her, hands linked behind his back and still holding his jacket in a tight grip. But as personal an assault it seemed, when he opened his lips to respond, Leia was quick to cut him off. 

“I--”

“This is my pilot, Commander Dameron.”

As unamused as the princess seemed to be, she still did a lot of stone-faced laughter, and that theme held true as her stare held on Poe’s furrowed and focused face. “Does the Commander have a first name?”

With a quick glance to Leia, then back to the Princess, he finally spoke for himself, answering “Poe,” simply. 

He didn’t know what he thought throwing his name into the conversation would add, but he couldn’t determine any reason why not to add it, not until the Princess turned her stare back to Leia and shuddered her shoulders back into a steady stance with her chin raised. “Would you mind telling Poe he can go wait by your ship, I don’t imagine it will be a long conversation.”

There it was again. Aloof, condescending, mocking even. Poe couldn’t stand it. 

“Excuse me--”

“Actually, Dekka Va, I brought him so he could join our talks,” Leia explained, one of her hands shooting up quickly to keep him in place by her side as she felt the heat of his temper rise with her words. 

“He doesn’t seem like he’d be much for conversation.”

He realized his natural disposition may not have been the most diplomatic, he also realized that hot-headed and cocky weren’t necessarily the best qualities for negotiating delicate alliances, but if she was allowed to talk to him with the tone she was taking, he was having a hard time understanding why Leia was keeping him silent. Why even bring him along?

It was infuriating. She was infuriating. She wouldn’t meet them in the palace, she was hiding on the beach, she was biting back with each and every one of her responses. He understood the alliance between her planet and the resistance was important, he really did, but why in the kriff was he even there--

“Dekka Anya-Va, I assure you, Poe is one of my most trusted Commanders and when our discussion eventually turns to shipment methods, he is the only one I trust for routes and numbers--” Leia began, still holding her hand out carefully in front of Poe only to drop it the second the Princess shrugged her shoulders and cut her off the same way she had been cutting Poe off. 

“There will be no shipment discussions.”

“Dekka--”

“I apologize for avoiding the meeting, but it wasn’t accidental, I truly have no interest in meeting with you, General.” She continued, using the brief second they stood silent and frozen in shock to navigate around them and back towards the market. 

Leia was the first to break out of it, Poe trailing behind, but he still remained quiet, holding back his boiling temper as the General continued to argue. 

“It’s a rather important conversation that we need to have.”

The princess continued forward as if she barely noticed them following, and as the density of the market's population began to increase the closer they moved to the palace, she made no move to slow her careful and practiced step through the crowd to accommodate their trailing. Again, condescending and aloof.

Leia broke his train of thought again as she fought with a quickened pace to find her way to her side and continue her argument just within range of Poe’s ears. “A face-to-face meeting will allow us to discuss our deal more intimately, take away any fears you may have and--”

If she cut Leia off one more time, it wouldn’t matter that she was the most respected being on this planet, Poe wasn’t going to be able to keep quiet for much longer. 

“I’m not afraid of anything, General.”

Before either Leia or Poe, with his temper steadily boiling over, could mount another argument, the princess pulled one of her guards aside, retrieving a small pouch of golden coins from him and turning back to the stall that had caught her eye in the first place. It was the stall they had passed earlier, filled with children and the spiky blue fruits which had caught his eye as he thought about the rest of the galaxy. 

And it was exactly where the princess was kneeling down. 

Her rough tone of voice, coated in it’s natural raspiness, flowed out much easier in her native tongue as she let a genuine smile take over her lips. The kids running the booth were bouncing out of their boots as she lowered herself to their level, and their excitement only grew as they began talking to one another in the Hakian language. It would have been heartwarming if Poe weren’t so frustrated. 

He didn’t understand what they were saying and it was clear as he glanced toward Leia and saw her focused brow that she didn’t understand the words being spoken either, but from the shared interactions, he had a pretty decent idea what was transpiring. 

She asked a question, the kids nervously responded, shaking their heads and trying to offer their product for free before she convinced them to accept her coin. Again, a heartwarming display that he didn’t have time for. 

The sun was hot, boiling hot down the back of his neck, and the anger bubbling from within his chest was heating him up from the inside out, making the whole experience ten times worse. He didn’t need to see any heartwarming display, he needed to say something, and he was becoming increasingly overwhelmed with the feeling that when he did, things wouldn’t go well. 

Yet the moment seemed to be drawing closer and closer as the Princess stood back to full height with a bag full of the spiky fruit, passing her coins back to her guard. He was ready to open his mouth, to unload on her with the same hot-headed cockiness that Leia feared he would lead with, but he was again denied the chance as she silenced him by turning her back to the two of them and reentering the crowd, heading back towards the palace. 

It wasn’t until they were down an isolated hallway of the palace that she turned back, opening the bag of fruit and pulling three of the spiked fruit out easily. 

“Dekka--” Leia tried, but the princess silenced her, sticking one of the fruits into her hand before carelessly tossing one in Poe’s direction. 

She was making a point, and they had no choice but to stand there and take it. 

“This is Mewe, one of our planet’s sweetest fruits,” she hummed, holding up one of her own and turning it gently for them to admire even if all Poe could manage was a subtle roll of his eyes. “They cannot grow anywhere else, they require massive amounts of sunlight, and they are one of the most versatile fruits that exist anywhere in the galaxy, edible on their own, full of health, easily fermented, their juice can soothe sore throats and upset stomachs...”

Puncturing the tough, spiky skin with one of her nails, the vibrant teal juices began to drain quickly out of the shell, too quick for even her quick mouth to catch as she brought the fruit to her lips. The following bite she took was effortless following her brief struggle with the dripping juices, and as much as Poe hated whatever point she was trying to make with this display, as Leia followed her lead and took a bite, he had no choice but to do the same. 

And as desperate as he was to stay boiling with anger when he looked at her, even with teal juices dripping down around the corner of her mouth, his mind was flooded with a delicious distraction the second his tongue touched the inner meat of the vibrant fruit. It wasn’t enough for Haiki to be the most beautiful planet in the galaxy, nor was it enough for her to be the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in person, they also needed to have the most overwhelming natural fruits. 

Each hesitant chew he took sparked flavors across his tongue, wild, exotic, unlike anything he had ever tasted before. It wasn’t just that his diet had consisted of bland ration packs for the past few years, the taste was truly sweeter and more complex than anything he had ever had on his tongue. 

As much as he hated giving her the satisfaction, while he looked up from the greenish inside of the skin to find her careful stare, he could see that he was doing little to hide his overwhelming satisfaction with the flavor given her increasingly smug smirk. 

“Haiki is a special place, I don’t think you realize that.” The Princess continued carefully, shifting her stare back to Leia directly. 

“We do, Dekka, however--”

“I don’t think you do.” She was quick to counter. “You would have me pledge my sponsorship to your futile movement and sacrifice my planet and the millions of souls who live here to the wrath of the First Order with nothing to offer me in return. You must think my planet worthless.”

Leia shook her head, taking a brief second to swallow the rest of the fruit she held in her mouth and regain her composure in order to fight back, “We can offer your planet protection from the First Order--”

“Because that worked so well for Alderaan, Raysho, Cardota and Courtsilius?” Again, the princess, without hesitation, cut her off. And this time, Poe was done holding his tongue, the heat finally sending his anger boiling over. 

“And pledging your allegiance to a sociopathic regime of murderers is preferable?”

It was exactly what Leia had feared. It was the exact reason she had tried so hard to keep him quiet. Not because she feared he would shoot and miss, but because of his tone. 

Each word drenched in a level of disrespect he hadn’t earned with her, stepping over a line he didn’t even realize, but one Leia couldn’t help him back from, even as she reached up to grab hold of him to prevent his anger from carrying him closer to the Princess and making things worse. 

“I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my planet.” She held her stance even as Poe stepped up, making no move but the slight uptick of her chin as he got closer. “As a peaceful planet, we have no options to arm ourselves outside of diplomacy and the First Order is being far more convincing.”

“Whatever they’ve said is lies, you can’t seriously consider trusting them.” He spoke like a man with no knowledge of his actions, entirely oblivious to the way her guard tightened their stances the closer he got, too blinded by his anger as she continued to argue back against him. 

“Because the resistance has never lied to us? Because you can be trusted implicitly on your word?”

With another step forward, eliminating any space between the two of them, Poe effectively cut Leia and her futile attempts to get him to back down out of the conversation. “What have they promised you? Safety? Isolation from the war? It’s only a matter of time before they are enslaving your people and stealing your resources--”

“They’ve promised me protection and have been nothing but cordial, unlike you and your failing resistance.” She scoffed, shaking her small bun of greying hair enough to let loose a few strands as she refused to back down. “So you’d do best to mind yourself before you overstep a boundary you can’t walk back from.”

There was a sense of finality to her tone as she ended her sentence, one Leia picked up on immediately, but even as she moved to grab more forcefully at Poe’s arm to pull him back to reality, he continued to fight his way out of it. Hot-headed, stubborn, cocky. She should have known better than to bring him along. She should have known things would go the way they were going. 

“You want me to play nice? People are dying.” 

Everything that happened next happened all too fast. The words came spewing from Poe’s lips and as the Princess turned away, no longer requiring herself to be subject to his cruel intonation, he reached out and grabbed her arm before he could be stopped. 

In the back of his mind, he could still hear the echoing warning Leia had provided him, telling him to keep his distance and speak with nothing but respect, but the flashes of war echoing in his head and the fire burning in his chest were crackling too loud for anything else to matter. A part of him knew it was out of line, that same part of him was begging for him to stop, and yet his hand still found the smooth, tattooed skin of her forearm, holding her in place as she moved to turn away in frustration. 

Leia took a strong hold on the sweat-soaked back of his shirt and yanked him back, but the damage had already been done. “Stand down, Dameron,” she tried out but by the time he released her arm, the guards had already descended upon him, gripping him by each arm and kicking the backs of his legs in to drop him to his knees. 

“I think the damage has been done, General.” Her voice was firm in her resolve and equally firm as her language switched and her tongue released a flurry of orders towards the guards who held the stubborn, fighting Dameron on his knees. 

“What the kriff-- I barely touched her--” He fought as their grips grew tighter, forcing him frozen where they held him. 

Leia tried again, this time not to hold Poe back but to carefully convince the princess, “Dekka Anya-Va, please…”

But her mind was made up and nothing either of them could do would change that. 

“We’ll let him think himself over with a sleep in our cells,” she explained to Leia as her stare then fell back to the squirming form of the curly haired and now defenseless pilot. “You can leave with him in the morning.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“No, but it seems you might be.” The rough, raspiness to her tone which had been so distracting as it filtered out her accent shifted to something nearly playful, as if the whole display before her was amusing. He was being restrained by a towering guard of thick muscle on each side and she had the audacity to chuckle so plainly in his face, only making him fight more even if he knew it was futile. 

Leia stepped forward carefully towards the princess but before she could muster any last defense, the princess gave a wave of her hand and the guards, with shoulders wide in intimidating bulk, heaved the fighting pilot to his feet and began backing him up, dragging him in the opposite direction. 

“Dekka Anya-Va, let me apologize for his actions--”

“Mensha?” Her raspy voice interrupted the General before any real defense could leave her lips, ushering a young maid out from the small crowd which gathered around the display. “Please escort the General to a room where she can wait, give her anything she needs.”

“Dekka Anya-Va--”

“I’m not my mother, General, the sooner you learn that, the better for all of us involved.”

The long walk back into the depths of the granite palace was all too lonely as the Princess dismissed each and every member of her staff which approached her, even waving away the genuine concern on Elias’ brow and leaving him in the halls as she continued to the throne room. Her back was screaming out from the straight form she maintained with each and every step, but she held her stance and walked on, shoulders firm and chin up, just as she was taught. If anyone passed her, they had to see her as what she was, their leader. 

And leaders didn’t waver, no matter how strong the vacuum of emptiness swirling within their chest was, not when there were eyes to see. 

But the second the towering doors of intricate dark oak shut behind her, leaving her alone in the expansive and empty throne room, her shoulders fell in, collapsing her perfect form as her chin fell to her chest. The weight which settled there was too great, and the hollow gorge that tore through her heart was too powerful. 

Did he really think it was that easy?

Her throat burned with the heat rising out of her chest and her legs grew weaker with each step until she collapsed back against the exquisite throne of dark, sparkling granite consumed by overgrown vines, the words from the hot-headed pilot echoing through her mind, latching onto every thought. 

Did he think it was all that simple? Did he think she saw the blood on the hands of the First Order and so easily ignored it? Did he think it was that easy?

A sociopathic, murderous regime… did he really think she didn’t realize what they were? 

The bubbling in her gut continued on as her thoughts swarmed with a buzzing around her mind and her head fell forward into her hands where her elbows rested on her knees. Her fingers made furious circles of her temples but it made no difference, his words were there, haunting her mind and inescapable. 

Did they really think she didn’t know right from wrong? 

With the responsibility for millions of souls resting heavy on her back, the fate of her kind in her hands, it just wasn’t as easy as good versus bad. No matter how badly she wished it was. 

“Dekka Anya-Va,” the faint voice of one of her staffed maids entered her thoughts as the small woman carefully tiptoed into the room. “The prisoner is… angrily shouting for a meeting with you.”

Her back straightened on instinct, sending a shooting pain up her spine with the quick pace of the change. A pain she could barely mask with her regal tone as turned her stare towards the young woman, “we’ll leave him to calm himself down for now.”

“Of course, Dekka.”

As the door shut again, leaving her alone with her thoughts again, a sigh of insurmountable exhaustion fell from her lips and she collapsed back into the uncomfortable shape of stone. 

If only things could be that simple...

tags: (open)

@cammisanders @rogueonestan @blacksquadron-rougetwo @videogamesandpoorlifechoices @trust-dreamcatcher @mistermiraclee @witchyavenger @randomness501​ @buckstaposition​

[writing-the-end]

LoL Chapter 23- the Labyrinth

Masterpost

A Wizard Hermits tale (AU and Red belongs to @theguardiansofredland )

So close to the end, so close to winning the entire championship. Only one more challenge, one more maze- and one more corrupted beast to prove themselves as the best in the entire kingdom. 

________________________________________________

“Are you sure Magistrate Dolios is the dark wizard?” Keralis questions, tilting his head. “I mean, what he did was pretty mean, but...to practice dark magic?” 

“It’s him.” Zedaph hisses, his fingers curling in the fabric set on his lap. “He had a crystal in the antichamber, he had a horrible collection of parts used for spells.” Zed clenches his fists and jaw, struggling not to burst out. Tango and Impulse try to ease their friend’s worries. “He… I read through his log. He killed our guild. We were just the first, the opening act. He used our friends, our family, to start his path of destruction.” 

“But why? Why would he need dark magic? He’s the godsdamned Magistrate of Lairyon!” False looks around, leaning forward in the tavern they’re huddled in. It’s not the inn, but one closer to the stadium. They have a labyrinth to defeat soon. 

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Doc growls, tapping his fingers together into a triangle shape. “Regular magic just wasn’t enough. Regular power just wasn’t enough.” 

“So he’s using the crystals to gather energy. Like what we saw in Gildara, with the grey landscape. And when the crystals sap energy for him to steal, it leaves those husk monsters behind.” Cub is slowly piecing together the puzzle, coming to understand everything he saw with the others in the heist. 

“And he’s using the Chimaera’s championship to sap more energy. That’s why we feel so tired when we finish an event. He’s stealing our power, my dudes.” Ren shivers at the thought. His energy being drained, taken by some creepy crystal and fueling Dolios’s insatiable thirst. 

“And we’re going back in soon.” TFC hums. “We have the labyrinth challenge.” 

“We don’t have to go in- we got what we needed. We can leave, make a plan with this knowledge we have. Tell the king, tell the people. They’ll take care of it.” Etho leans back in a chair, tipping till it nearly dumps him backwards. 

“But we’ve come so far!” Grian whines. “We could win the whole games, prove to Dolios that he never should have messed with us! Wouldn’t you love to see that smug smile of his wiped off when we win?” 

Agreements rise around Grian, and even Etho can’t help but want to prove that bastard wrong. Xisuma steps in. “At least we know why we’re getting so exhausted. We’ll know to rest, calm down while we’re in the labyrinth. And...we can warn Team Crafted.” 

“And then we’ll tell the king, tell the people. They’ll have to listen to us, we’ll be the champions!” Iskall grins. They’ve got this labyrinth challenge in the bag. 

The group rises, walking out of the tavern and back to the stadium. All around them, Milliara is buzzing with excitement. The final challenge of the Chimaera’s championship, the end of the games, has come. A river of people flow along the raised streets, flowing like the canals beside them. Rushing towards the stadium. They pass by other guilds, who sneer and turn away. Angry they lost, especially to a team. Do any of them know that the Magistrate practices dark magic? That he’s killed entire guilds in his search for power? For what? Surely he doesn’t keep all of it. 

It’s no matter to the hermits. They found the truth, and once they pass on this knowledge, it’ll be out of their hands. Entering into the bowels of the stadium, the locker room they sit in is empty. Once full of dozens more teams, now only two teams remain.

The entire guild sneers at the sound of Dolios’s voice welcoming the crowd. It’s muffled by the thick stone walls, but they can hear him tell of the harrowing journey ahead. And the grand prize that awaits for the team that defeats the labyrinth. All they need to do is pour a single bowl of water over the statue at the center of the labyrinth. 

But between that and both teams were beasts, traps, and spells designed to slow them down. Perhaps even kill them, if they aren’t prepared. Across the way, Grian can see nerves crease across Quentin and Jerome’s faces. He can hear Mumbo muttering next to him. Anyone can walk into the labyrinth, but only the best teams can walk out. Grian isn’t going to let anyone die- not on his oath as a healer. Not from the hermits, and not from Team Crafted either. 

Grian stands, walking across the locker room and coming face to face with Sky. The leader looks up, an easy and golden grin meeting Grian. “Hey, you here to wish us luck?” 

“Not exactly.” Grian wrings his hands, looking over his shoulder, before dropping his voice. “Listen, Sky, we hermits discovered something… the reason we’re always exhausted?” Sky leans forward, his eyes looking out over the rim of his sunglasses. “The magistrate is doing something dark, and he’s taking our power for his own. If you see a crystal that’s pitch black, or a creature with soulless white eyes and ash grey bodies- run. It’s dark magic.” 

Sky’s eyes widen, and behind him Grian sees Jerome and Mitch coil and look out at where Dolios’s voice can be heard. But Jason looks less convinced. “Why should we trust you? You’re trying to get us to fail, huh?” 

Grian’s sighs, collapsing his head into his hands. “No, we’re trying to help you. Us illegal guilds have to stick together.” 

Team Crafted’s faces all exhibit a mix of shock, surprise, and hints of defiance at Grian’s suggestion. But he’s smarter than he lets on. Jerome is the first to speak up. “Thank you for the warning, I knew that man wasn’t to be trusted. Good luck, hermits.” 

With that, the stadium erupts in a roar. Team Crafted stands, and disappears into the field, disappears from view. A few moments later, the hermits are called into the spotlight. Just like the opening ceremony, TFC leads them out onto the pitch. 

Or, what was the pitch. Massive hedges of writhing vines and ivy twist around the guild, engulfing them into a thicket that fills the once open arena. A dark, misty haze swirls, thickening where the hermits know the crowd is watching. Despite no eyes, no bodies visible, they can feel being observed. And yet the entire field is eerily quiet. They feel alone, no voices or light, only the sensation of sight. 

In the distance, a grumbling roar pierces the mist. Captured by the damp air, it hangs and echoes around the hermits. Iskall hides behind Stress while False, Wels, and Etho draw their blades. But TFC is the one to break the silence. “No use standing here. Team Crafted already has a headstart, and I’m not letting them get any further. Cleo and Jevin, take point. If anything looks suspicious, or even if it doesn’t, Cleo can search for a soul. Jevin, can you whip up slime warriors to be our...ahem, bait?”

“You got it boss.” Jevin draws his circle, blue light dappling the misty grey and green. Blue bodies of slime morph to shape, awkward steps pushing the hermits forward. Deep into the maze. The mist engulfs the comforting stone wall of the stadium, and they were only among hedge and haze. 

They push past traps set off by the slime warriors, around chimaeras and banshees soothed by Zedaph and Cleo, and over illusionary spells meant to turn them back. At each intersection, Scar marks off the way they came by plowing a giant X in the ground. When they reach a dead end and turn around, he blocks it off completely. 

“I don’t remember the field being this big.” Impulse groans, feeling his body ache at the feeling he now knows to be the work of dark magic. They haven’t seen a crystal or a husk, which only makes the feeling worse. It’s coming from everywhere. 

“They must’ve used expansion magic to make this place bigger.” Xisuma hums, kicking his boot at the feeling of something on his head. And again. He turns around, glaring at BDubs. “Would you quit trying to flat-tire me? It doesn’t work on boot, ya know.” 

BDubs’s face causes X’s head to spin and his heart to drop. His eyes are wide, confused as to why X is yelling at him. “Tha-that wasn’t me, X. That was-” 

One moment, BDubs is clear in Xisuma’s vision through his mask. The next, he’s disappeared. However, it’s not hard to find him with all the screaming. Writhing on the ground, mist and vines wrapping struggling in a fight with the plant mage. No matter how many times he casts his magic, it doesn’t shake off the ivy that crawls and drags him towards the hedges. 

“Help! Help it’s got me!” BDubs screams, digging his fingers into the ground and rooting himself there He groans, the vines still pulling on him despite being an immovable object. “It’s gonna rip me in half!” 

False swings her sword, the sharp steel biting into the vines and severing it from the briars snaked around BDubs. From the split branches, a red ochre spills out. Blood. The entire hedge rumbles to life, two eyes appearing in the mist. A branch breaks through the fog, colliding with a shield held aloft by Wels. The limb of the plant monster crushes the steel, tossing the shield aside and depositing the paladin onto his rear. 

Glowing white eyes draw closer, and the twisted grey vines of the plant monster’s face appears in the dark mist. Vines grab for any limb the hermits aren’t watching, engulfing arms, pulling on tails, wrapping around heads. Xisuma traps a few of the thousand limbs in a blackhole, rolling away from the beast. Grian takes to the sky, dodging around the shoots that threaten to skewer him. He whips a blast of air, clearing the fog to get a better view below.

It’s not the whole labyrinth, but the beast has spread it’s vines in an intricate system among it. All which are slithering over the ivy, like snakes in search of the hermits. What he also sees in the sky, beneath the plant monster’s perch and dug into the ground beneath the pitch, was the one thing he’s learned to despise. 

A dark crystal. It’s controlling the plant monster, black smog wrapping around the roots of the beast like chains. It’s practically bursting with energy, all the power and strength taken by the crystal during the entire course of the games. Even flying this high, he can feel the effects of his magic being siphoned from his body. “There’s one of those-” 

Swatted from the sky like a bug, Grian crashes into the ground with a sickening thud. Scar and Mumbo race to help him up. Mumbo nearly throws up, hearing the sound of bones cracking under Grian’s feathers and skin. But nothing can keep the sky angel quiet. “The plant thing...it’s protecting the crystal, or powered by the crystal, I dunno.”

“Where is it?” TFC questions, eyes flicking across the battling guild. Stress freezes the blood and vines solid, while Cub severs the limbs with portal after portal opening and closing. 

Grian grabs his head, trying to steady the spinning sensation. The moving hedges of the false maze, the limbs of the beast, don’t help to ease his confusion. He points a shaking finger at about 2 o’clock, relieved to have support from Mumbo and Iskall back to his feet. 

“Should we run away from it? Obviously it’s going to try and take our energy- shouldn’t we stay as far away as possible?” Joe raises an eyebrow. His quill rushes across the pages beneath the tip, a rushed spell spouting forth. A million beetles emerge from the aged paper, tiny pincers digging into the plant monster and ripping it apart. Keralis plucks one from the sky, swallowing the beetle whole and feeling reinvigorated by the bug.

“If Dolios placed that there, he obviously intended for us to get close to it. If he knew we’d be going that way, that means the statue must be this direction.” Xisuma proposes, sending a ball of void into the chest of the many limbed vine creature. 

“We should...we should destroy the crystal.” Grian hisses, grasping at his ribs and gasping for air. “So he can’t steal any more magic from here.” 

“How?” Doc growls, despite plowing ahead. Towards the monster. Towards the crystal. “We could hardly put a dent in it last time!”

“We’ll figure it out. We’re pretty clever.” TFC hums, hopping over a whipping vine. He grasps a thin rod of corundum, steeling himself when another attempts to toss him into oblivion. The hermits battle their way through the shifting maze, but with each vine they cut down, more seem to spring from the bloody limbs and misty air. The attacks only grow more aggressive as they near the body of the beast, near the dark crystal controlling it. The air grows thick, hard to breathe and pressing down on the team. In the distance, they can hear the roar of a chimaera. Team Crafted. Hopefully they’re safe, as far away from this beast as possible. 

The crystal comes into view. Ashen roots are planted firm around the massive crystalline structure, the gem pulsing with energy. Energy it’s stealing from the hermits and Team Crafted. Right on cue, black mist swirls around the opaque crystal, natural defenses going up. The hermits leap aside, avoiding the crushing blow from a twisted cable of vines by a narrow margin of time and air. From across the writhing greenery, TFC’s voice booms out commands. “You guys on the other side distract the monster- or better yet, try to kill it! Us over here will do our best to break the crystal.” 

A cacophony of acknowledgements lets the guildmaster know they heard him, and he wastes no time scrabbling to his feet. He ignores the sound of fighting behind him, the cracks and groans of the beast or the screams of his guildmembers. He needs to focus on this crystal first and foremost. 

TFC is a mineral mage. He knows gemstones- but not corrupted gems. His stomach clenches as his fingers brush against the smooth surface, and his head aches at the mere thought of how it controlled him before. He still feels horrible, snapping at his friends. It’s too dangerous to use, even in regular magic. This twisted, barbaric magical conduit needs to be destroyed. 

But if there’s one thing he knows, all gems can only take so much energy before they cleave. And this crystal is practically brimming with stolen magic. “Let’s feed the beast then.” 

“Have a snack, you mega crystal of doom!” Iskall shouts, bolts of radioactive energy crackling from his magic circle to the crystal. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow his attack until he can hardly stand. The gemstone remains standing, half buried in the dirt. But then False steps up, the multitude of cinquedeas summoned around her imbued with magic by Wels. A flick of the wrist, and the blades dig into the crystal. Rusted, but protruding from the gem like spines from a dragon. 

“Yes! Focus the strikes on False’s swords! Use them like conduits!” TFC grins, leaping free as a rooted foot rips from the ground beside him. For a brief moment, he turns his attention back to the fighting hermits. He clasps his hands over his ears, the telltale shriek of Cleo’s banshee scream almost rupturing his eardrums. Impulse is on his back, protected by a weak bolt of lightning shot from Mumbo’s stuttering magic. But otherwise, they’re holding their own just fine. 

“We’ve almost got it!” Wels cheers, noticing the cracks forming along the gem’s surface. Black smoke pours from the fractures, grasping at their feet and attempting to steal their magic. Attempting to keep control of the plant monster that protects it. 

The ground beneath their feet rolls and rumbles, the dirt and hedges shivering and bucking against the hermits’ feet. Wels turns around, grinning when he sees what- or who- is the cause of the earthquake. Like a geyser of stone, a spike of rock pierces through the heart of the dark crystal. The mist around the hermits’ dissipates like morning fog chased off by the sun. Above the team, the plant monster erupts into ash, raining flakes of the husked creature with one final creak of wood and vine. 

And the dark crystal shatters. It blows the hermits back, sending them tumbling among the shards of gemstone. The black aura fades with the color- it’s just a regular quartz crystal, albeit destroyed into a million tiny conchoidal pieces. The depressing weight on their bodies, that left them struggling to breathe and their magic weak, falls away like shed skin of a snake. None of them have felt this invigorated since the start of the games. 

“Guys, there’s the statue!” Grian prods Mumbo in the back, both wincing as pain ricochets through both wounded hermits. A lush garden at the center of the labyrinth, gardenia and lilac flowers growing around a tall statue rising from a fresh, crystal clear spring. Carved in stone from the Lionheart mountains, the statue features each and every god in the main pantheon of Lairyon. From Echol to Limal, and Artyne- god of water.

Water, the symbol of life and magic in Lairyon. Water flows fresh, clean, and pure from the spring surrounding the stone gods. Two bowls rest untouched at the spring’s edge, carved from the very cyprus trees that inspired Milliara to be founded. Ren steps up, pausing and looking back at his teammates. Bruised, battered, broken. But urging him not to waste another second. This is it. 

Ren dips the bowl in the spring. He swears he can feel energy, deep ancient magic within the cool water, chasing away the aftereffects of the crystal. In the distance, he can hear shouts of encouragement from vaguely familiar voices. Team Crafted is almost here. He doesn’t waste a second, wading across the water and pouring the bowl over the stone statue. 

The mist disappears, and the statues move, as if brought to life by the mystical spring. Merkal, the god of mischief, moves his cloak to the side. Deliss brushes away the lilacs and gardenia. And the stone rendition of Artyne smiles, revealing the chalice. Crowning the hermits as victors of the Chimaera’s Championship.

[ravenvsfox]

Rockband AU Chapter 11

we’re back and badder than ever, join me in the latest instalment of the band au in which there is no actual music unless you count screaming as music :) 

The first slit is paper thin, a fissure in the centre of his tongue. Even superficial, his mouth fills instantly with ripe, oily blood. He swallows painfully, and peers up at his father though one eye. There’s sweat at Nathan's temple, just a brush of it, as if daubed on with a dry brush.

Nathaniel puts his hand around Nathan’s wrist, like he used to when he was a very small child, too young to understand why he was being hurt.

“Stop,” he tries to say. Blood wells past his lips and bubbles down to his neck. He’s smudging red so bright it looks orange, ketchupy, all down Nathan’s sleeve. The knife clicks across his teeth and slips down into the gum.

“I won’t have you biting anymore,” Nathan says. He starts to wedge the knife into the bed under his molar until Nathaniel hears a crack. It feels impossible, this shard of his jaw knocked out of place, like a whole continent drifting away.

Someone pounds on the upstairs door. The perspiration on Nathan’s brow accumulates into a single droplet, and Nathaniel waits for it to fall, holding his breath.

All of the pressure is removed from his mouth at once.

Nathan sits back on his heels. “Someone deal with that.”

DiMaccio cracks his neck, agitated.

“Police, open up,” a muffled voice says, raised over the din of the pounding.

“For god’s sake,” Nathan says, rolling his eyes and standing. “Lola,” he says silkily. “Keep him warm for me.” Nathaniel melts back into the concrete. He licks blood from his lips, staring hazily into the overhead light so he doesn’t think about the changing landscape of his mouth.

“With pleasure,” she says. She’s holding her ribs, and Nathaniel knows he’s done some damage. Even her robust good mood has been dented.

She kneels. Nathan sheds his over-shirt and washes his hands at the sink in the corner of the room. DiMaccio climbs the stairs. It’s like they're tinkering around at the office, while he’s smeared out on the floor, pulsing with blood and pain and hatred. He remembers what Lola said before, that Nathaniel’s indiscretion had boosted him to the top of his father’s to-do list. He is a task. He will be crossed out.

“Open wide,” Lola says. Her head is just blotting out the light.

“Open up,” the cop upstairs reiterates.

Nathaniel’s face is so soaked, and so swollen. He doesn’t recognize the feeling of his own features.

Once, the band had been trapped in an endless soundcheck at a sweltering venue. Andrew had been spread out at the lip of the stage, foot dangling over the edge and arm over his eyes, tattooed ‘yes’ turned delicately towards his face. Nicky had maneuvered himself under the piano, and the rest of them wilted to the ground after him, glad to be off their feet. For a while, they had all been breathing the humidity in together, dropping off to sleep or looking up at the lights.

He hears DiMaccio open the door and gruffly say “not a good time”. Lola’s claws hook in his lower lip. He thinks — sleep? Or follow the lights?

Nathan’s at the top of the stairs now too, and he’s playing charming.

“Something I can help you with?”

“Wesninski,” the cop says familiarly. “I know you’re not causing trouble again.”

Nathaniel’s thoughts race and fall all over each other. Is this another dirty cop? Is Nathan paying him off? If Nathaniel screams, and the cop knows to look the other way, Nathan will only be more enraged, only kill him slower.

“No more than usual,” Nathan replies.

“Glad to hear it. We’re just investigating a tip-off. I’m sure you won’t mind if we have a look around?”

“Like my assistant said, you caught us at a bad time,” Nathan says, less smoothly.

“It’s funny how many times I hear that on house visits.”

“No, really, I can’t entertain any more guests.”

Nathaniel can hear him moving to block the door, and there’s a sound like weight scuffing against wood. He’s coming inside? He can’t believe it.

Lola pulls his lower lip even harder away from the gum. Her composure is a little wrinkled, which is how he knows that this wasn’t in the plan. He can hear his father talking intricate circles around the officer, but he can also hear the voices getting closer.

He swallows. Swallows again, and closes his eyes, thinking of the domino line-up of threats stacked back as far as he can remember. Don’t you dare cause a scene. Holler and I cut your tongue in half. Tell them how well I treat you. You can either be useful or dead, your choice Junior.

He twists out of Lola’s grip, rolling gracelessly onto his stomach. She grabs his hair with both fists.

“Help!” he shouts. It comes out thick through his warped lip, wobbly tooth, and all the blood, but as soon as he’s opened his mouth, he can’t stop screaming. He wants to live so badly.

Lola wrestles with him, pressing her forearm to the side of his destroyed face. He thrashes against her, sobbing, “please, they’re killing me, please, please, please.” It’s not even a performance. He can’t stop.

“Shut up,” Lola hisses.

There are fast footsteps coming down the stairs, and Nathaniel’s heart claws for his throat. Lola puts the gun to his mouth and the metal knocks painfully against his front teeth.

He looks up just in time to see Nathan following the cop down the stairs at a clip, teeth bared. He reaches back towards DiMaccio and comes away with his favoured cleaver. As it crests in the air, Nathaniel is hit with the cruellest deja vu imaginable. He knows what has to happen next.

“No,” he whispers.

“It’s okay,” the cop says. His eyes are wide as he takes in Lola, crouched over him like an animal, Nathaniel’s skin split open and spilling.

“Don’t—“

Nathan cuts the officers throat, so quickly that Nathaniel’s not sure if he really saw it happen. He falls awkwardly on the stairs, his knees folding and his head drooping forward like it might slide clean off.

Lola makes a noise that might be a laugh, and stops fighting Nathaniel down. It was barely a fight anyway, he’s so weak now. The hand with the gun in it goes lax.

“That was close,” she trills. Nathaniel wraps his hand around the barrel of the gun. She doesn’t even look down. She’s so delighted by the spectacle of senseless murder that she can’t see him.

“That was unacceptable,” Nathan corrects. He tosses the cleaver to the ground next to the officer, who is crumpled up like a scrap of wet paper towel. “You—“ his eyes float to Nathaniel and settle.

He’s holding the gun.

For a long moment, they stare at each other.

“How cute,” Lola says.

Nathaniel turns and shoots her in the chest. The sound of it is muffled—too quiet, certainly, to come from a pistol. Her mouth is round and wet with surprise. Her chest blooms.

Impossibly, she looks down and spreads her own wound like she intends to perform surgery. She laughs giddily at her own pain, wheezing, then falls backwards. When she hits the floor, it’s the loudest thing he’s ever heard.

No one moves. A pale cloud comes over Nathan; he looks thunderstruck, washed out. Nathaniel’s never seen him look this way before. It’s—his gun-toting hand starts to shake—It might be pride.

He can’t stand it. He fires the gun again, and it clips his father in the neck. He watches him stumble, sees the blood splatter and froth. He’s unable to wrap his head around the reality of it. He shoots him again in the stomach, then the chest. He clips his hand, and a finger flies off.

Der Ausreißer, he thinks wildly. The stray bullet.

DiMaccio lunges teeth-first, like a panther, and Nathaniel shoots him too.

He spasms violently, squeezing the trigger even after the bullets are gone. Eventually, the gun drops like a stone, and he slumps to his hands and knees.

He’s not sure how long he stays like that, head hanging down between his caved-in shoulders, panting. He knows, distantly, that he needs to leave. There’s gore streaking out around him in every direction. Inevitably, there will be more police, somewhere out there in Baltimore, mobilizing.

He feels like two separate people. Everyone in the room has been ripped in half, and he will always be one of them. He was staring a death sentence in the eye for so long, and just as he eased into the electric chair, his jailer dropped dead. His path cleared. His wrung-out body was suddenly his own. He was Nathaniel, and then he looked up and he was Neil again.

He staggers to his feet.

His sneaker skids sideways in Lola’s blood, and he windmills, touching the ground to steady himself. He looks at his handprint in all that red.

I’m an orphan, he thinks. He starts to laugh. His tooth is still trying to escape his gum. The sweet iron smell of blood burns his nostrils, and the silence rings like alarm bells. Somehow, all of his senses are intact. He is the only surviving Wesninski.

He limps to the metal cabinets on the far wall, and riffles through the meticulously organized shelves. It’s been years, but he remembers watching Lola lining up cleaning products, sheets of plastic, sharpeners, and ammo. It’s difficult to see without the use of both eyes, but he quickly finds the vital red of the jerry can. He laughs again, merrily.

He shakes gasoline out over the perimeter of the basement, not lingering on anyone, not really looking. He doesn’t know what it would mean if he did.

He pointedly ignores his failing body. At one point, he feels an unhealthy crunch beneath his heel and realizes he’s squashed his father’s stray finger.

He takes the stairs one at a time, hands on both bannisters, hair hanging down into his panting mouth. It’s a herculean effort, staying on his feet. The gasoline is wedged under his arm upside-down, trailing a path up the stairs. As soon as he reaches the plateau of the still-open side door, he lets the jug droop from his grip. He wrings the doorknob, redoubling his efforts to stay vertical.

The digital clock in the living room blinks at him, and he blinks back. 6:38 AM. He was on stage not even ten hours ago.

He breathes in and out, fast, bracing himself, then limps onward towards the kitchen.

He knows there used to be a blowtorch in the drawer next to the oven, and he heaves out a sigh of relief when he finds it there, untouched.

He tries not to linger on the familiarity of the living room, furnished with self-satisfied plum and mahogany. He blinks, and for a moment he sees his mother at the window, holding her dressing gown closed over a broken collarbone. There was a crescent of Nathaniel’s blood hidden by the heavy coffee table before his father had the good sense to rip up all the carpet. He remembers crouching in the walk-in pantry with his mother, hands over each other’s mouths. He can see them in all the saddest corners of this house.

Burning it down won’t be enough. He could raze and build and raze again, and cruelty would still live here.

He drags himself back to the door, which is blown wide open now. It’s like the whole wide, breezy night knocked it aside to get a look at him.

He stoops, sets the end of his gasoline trail alight, and ducks away from the roar.

Nathaniel walks out of his childhood house for the very last time.

Looking blankly at the police cruiser still parked in the driveway, feeling the brutal, burning heat at his back, he thinks,

I’m going to be Neil for the rest of my life.

_______

He’s wandering the freeway when a minivan slows to a crawl on the shoulder next to him. A petite, greying woman rolls down the passenger side window.

“Hey, are you okay?” she calls.

Neil squints at her, woozy. She recoils when she sees his face, then reaches for her seatbelt. It’s a testament to her strength, really, the way her disgust hardens into resolve.

“Oh my god. Wait right there,” she says. He shouldn’t have stopped; he’s drooping to his knees. “Jesus.” She wrenches open the driver’s side door and leaves it hanging there, cocked into oncoming traffic. “Jesus,” she insists, her moccasins skidding through uneven gravel.

She crouches in front of him and takes hold of his upper arms. Her grip is as gentle as the snuffling wind.

“I’m an orphan,” he tells her. He’s not sure why he says it. He wonders if it will ever not be the most focal thought in his head.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly.

“Oh, no,” Neil laughs. “No, no. I killed him.”

She looks disturbed for a moment, and her mouth twists reproachfully, like he’s telling a joke in poor taste. “I’m sure you didn’t.”

Neil shrugs.

“You—you really need to go to the hospital.”

“Yes,” Neil agrees.

“Are you strong enough to stand?”

“No,” he says, coughing. It’s too much for his body to withstand, and he doubles over. When he looks back up into her concerned dark eyes, he thinks abruptly of Dan. Then without pausing, he hurtles over that thought, and straight into Andrew.

“Hey,” he pants. “Uh…”

“Mary-Anne,” she supplies.

“Mary-Anne. I need to borrow your phone.”

_______

The drive to Baltimore is endless.

The road is a jammed zipper, and Andrew is forcing it. He doesn’t care what breaks.

“No, he’s—no. Maybe 5’3”. No, that’s not him. Call me back if—okay. Thanks anyway.” Nicky hangs up and throws his phone at the windshield so hard the battery pops out. “We’re never going to fucking find him.”

“Call Saint Agnes,” Andrew says.

Nicky hesitates. “It’s the last hospital in the city,” he says. “If he’s not there—“

“Call.”

“Andrew, I’m worried you’re—“

“Keep your worry,” Andrew hisses, “for the man with a serial killer for a father.”

Nicky flinches. “I’m scared too, you know,” he says, stricken.

Andrew wants to say, I’m not scared. I can’t be. I’m the bar where the four horseman of the apocalypse come to drink themselves stupid. I’m a vessel for tragedy.

“Call,” he says instead.

Nicky sighs and passes the phone back to Aaron. “I can’t hear no again,” he says. “It’s killing me.”

Andrew watches Aaron’s furrowed face in the rearview mirror, his endlessly puckering brow. He’s surprised to see how scared he looks, as he reunites battery pack and cell phone. Kevin is nearly catatonic next to him, face pressed clean to the side window even though every bump in the road rattles his skull against the glass.

Wymack is driving Abby and all of his Foxes in the van, while the Monsters took Wymack’s fast little car. They all fit neatly, without Neil.

“I’m looking for someone named Neil, or maybe Nathaniel,” Aaron says into the phone. “About 5’3”, dyed brown hair, blue eyes. Has anyone come into emergency tonight—Yeah, whatever, I’ll wait.” He holds his hand over the receiver and shakes his head.

It’s impossible, to feel any worse.

Then Andrew’s phone rings in his pocket.

For a suspended second, his eyes flit back to Aaron’s, and he knows the thoughts in their heads are precisely the same. Aaron’s expression is a forgery of Andrew’s, snagged with panic.

“Andrew.” It’s Kevin, looking suddenly alert in the backseat, flushed as if with fever. “It might be bad news.”

“Who cares,” Nicky says, reckless. “It’s news.”

Andrew finds himself nodding, or shaking, he can’t tell. He lets go of the steering wheel and fumbles for the source of the buzzing.

Nicky grabs hastily for the loose wheel as they coast towards the ditch at unfathomable speed. He just barely manages to swing them back into their lane before the gravel crunches into grass, and they topple out into the darkness.

Andrew’s fist closes over the phone, and it splits open like a fortune cookie in his grip.

“Neil?” he asks.

“Um,” A woman says.

His disappointment is quicksand; his foot sinks reflexively down onto the gas pedal. Nicky has to grapple again with the slippery steering.

With crushing effort, he asks, “who the fuck is this?” The words hit with the compact burn of splattered fry oil—he can hear her flinch through the phone.

“Sorry, is this um—Andrew? I’m not sure I caught that right, before he…”

Before he—what? Andrew’s imagination rips itself in half before he can take the thought any further. He is so tightly braided with terror and relief.

“He’s with you?” he chokes, but she’s still half-talking, high and traumatized.

“I’m sorry, I really—I don’t know where to start—“

“Andrew, pull over,” Aaron says.

“Put him on the phone,” Andrew says faintly. He is leaden, and his foot is pressed flat to the gas. They’re screaming along at almost 100 miles per hour, and it still doesn’t feel like his body is moving as quickly as his thoughts.

“I can’t,” she wails. “He passed out. I don’t know what to do, there’s—he’s—I don’t know his name, I don’t even know if this is the right—“

“It’s Neil,” Nicky says, from where he’s already pressed close to copilot the car. “Brown hair, blue eyes, right?”

She shifts around noisily, and there’s a soft, muffled curse. “I—I can’t tell.”

“What do you mean you can’t tell?” Andrew asks sharply. Headlights flash and swerve out of their treacherous path.

“Slow down,” Kevin says.

“There’s… so much blood, I don’t know. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, he’s not in good shape.”

Nicky meets Andrew’s eye miserably. “That’s Neil, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t reply. His foot sags off of the gas altogether.

Nicky has to wrestle them to the side of the road, half-crying, and by then, Aaron has plucked the phone from Andrew’s loose grip.

“Yeah, no, not the first time. Is he breathing? No. Right. Oh. Do me a favour, don’t call the cops yet, okay…? Mary-Anne? Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Maybe two hours? Okay. Thank you.”

He hangs up. The car is quiet and crackling, like they’ve just survived a wreck. They breathe and blink owlishly at one another, and Andrew knows they’re waiting for his next move.

He can’t feel his hands. He’s so singularly, mind-numbingly enraged.

“She told me he said—” Aaron swallows a couple of times, then continues, “—he said he killed his father.”

“Jesus Mary. Just offering that up to passer’s by, is he?” Nicky says. “I guess Jean wasn’t lying.”

Andrew feels his anger transform to account for new, more vivid colour. He can’t keep up with it. If he felt out-of-control fast before, now he feels slow; he’s being rewound, paused, and randomly scene-selected, an overworked VHS. He needs to fast-forward. He needs to unravel all the way to Baltimore. He needs to reroute his fear into violence or he’s going to be torn up.

“If the butcher’s dead, then everything’s—okay, right?” Nicky continues.

“Sounds like he got in some last minute butchering before he died,” Aaron says darkly.

Andrew turns the engine over, and it whines thinly. “Where is he?” he asks.

“Someone else should drive,” Kevin says.

“Where is he,” Andrew repeats. He keeps picturing what kind of damage would have to be done to make Neil’s striking colouring unrecognizable. How fragile his untrusting body would have to be to droop unconscious in front of a stranger.

He needs to thrash this highway to death. He won’t believe Neil is alive until he’s in front of him. If he never touches him again, he knows, he knows his hands will ache for the rest of his life.

“Passed out on interstate 83, right now,” Aaron says slowly. “She’ll call back when the ambulance comes.”

He pulls brusquely away from the shoulder, threading the car back into the middle lane. “Call her back first.” He feels like it’s all he can say. Call him. Find him. Bring him back. I will not be here while he is there. It is my responsibility to slosh above deck, through the twitching eye of the storm, and toss a line out for him.

“What good is it going to do? You want to listen to your boyfriend bleed out from a hundred miles away?” Aaron says it to be mean, but he looks upset. He twists the ring on his thumb, the one he thinks Andrew doesn’t know Katelyn gave him.

Nicky looks nervously over at Andrew. Usually, he wouldn’t take the bait. He would barely notice it being laid out for him.

“Aaron,” he says, and there’s no room for argument. “Call.”  

He doesn’t say please, but Aaron flinches anyway. He shakes it off, as always, and begins to click back through to the disconnected call. Before he can dial, the phone rings again in his hands.

He blinks dumbly at the caller ID, then hits ‘answer’.

“Wymack?” Aaron asks. He looks up at the others while he listens, then recites, “half the block Neil grew up on is on fire.” He waits, brow furrowed, then adds, “at least four casualties.”

Kevin fumes. “God, exactly the kind of visibility we don’t need.”

“Don’t think it was a publicity stunt, Kev,” Nicky says thinly.

“Self-defence,” Andrew murmurs.

“Overkill,” Aaron say. “And now the cops are going to be looking for him, because they just got eighteen panicked long-distance calls about the Butcher’s son.”

“They will not find him,” Andrew says.

“You think he’s gonna bolt?” Nicky asks.

“What other choice does he have?” Kevin asks.

Nicky shrugs. “He’s got us.”

Aaron covers the receiver. “Even if he could physically run, he wouldn’t,” he says, looking at Andrew. “He’s selfish.”

Andrew ignores this and keeps driving. He can’t stop. He feels—underwater, parched and disoriented, and if he doesn’t break the surface soon, he never will. Behind him, Aaron tells Wymack what they know, then hangs up.

“He’s alive, Andrew,” Nicky offers, in the quiet. “He’s okay.”

“Don’t,” he chokes. He looks at his hands on the wheel, the way the inked yes and no are both distorted when his fists are clenched. They haven’t looked clear since Neil was taken.

The closer they get to Baltimore, the more everything else starts warping to match, and his vision narrows to a pinprick in the deep, dark horizon.

_______

Neil half-rouses in the ambulance, enough to understand that his injuries are real, and many of them have reopened in transit. The medicinal tang in the air is crisp and pungent. The sheets beneath him are streaked red; his hands struggle for purchase in the slickness of them. His chest feels watery and full.

“Where’re you taking me,” he demands hoarsely. “I need to go to Columbia.”

“That’s a little outside of our jurisdiction,” a paramedic says. There are two of them looming over him, passing supplies back and forth over his prone body, taping him into a cats cradle of wires and machinery. “Can you tell us your name?”

“You have to let me out,” Neil says, suddenly frantic, sitting up until his injuries cramp and hiss and push him back down.

“Oh-ho, okay, we’ve got a runner. Can we get some soft restraints on him please?”

His chest is a whirlpool, spinning and devouring itself. “No restraints,” Neil begs. “Don’t, please.” His wrists are wreckage already. “Don’t tie me down.”

“Okay, okay,” the other paramedic says gently, her hand to his chest. “Then you’ve gotta calm down, kid. You’re gonna undo all our hard work.”

Neil looks down at her dark hand on his bare, scarred body, the gauze encasing both freshly maimed arms, the productive pinch of the IV. Embarrassment crushes him, chased hotly by fear.

“My hands—“

“You’ll keep ‘em,” she assures him.

“I’ll be able to play piano?”

“Don’t see why not. Most of the cuts are pretty superficial.”

He can’t believe it. They are taut with agony. He tries to hunch over the jungle of wires to get a look at them.

“Woah, easy,” the first paramedic says. He’s very pink and very blurry, and Neil can’t focus on him. He can focus on sitting up. It should be easy, and it’s all he can think to do to take control of his body.

He falters when the pain in his ribs whines and holds him at a distance again, and he puts a hand loosely over his eyes as if it will block out his feelings.

“I need to speak to my band.”

“You need to stop moving around so much.”

“I need to speak to my band,” he repeats. “Let me borrow a phone.”

“Look, from what I hear, your friends are already on their way. Ms. Thomas took care of that for you.”

“Ms. Thomas,” Neil repeats dumbly.

“Yes sir. Sounds like you owe her a hell of a gift basket.” 

He vaguely remembers those dark eyes swimming above him, her little red phone drooping out of his hand, his temple colliding with gravel. He feels robbed, furious at himself, and wretchedly grateful.

“She spoke to them for me?” he whispers.

He hums, flicking at a syringe so the bubbles settle. “She did more than that. Might have singlehandedly saved your life, you know?”

Neil disagrees, quietly. Not singlehandedly. He’s been saved in almost as many ways as he’s been hurt, now. He sinks back into the messy sheets. Somewhere, outside of the antiseptic rattle of the ambulance, his family is coming to find him.

“Don’t—let me sleep,” Neil says, disjointed.

The paramedics exchange a meaningful glance. “Uh-huh.”

“I have to—I can’t—I have to see—“ he swallows dryly. His consciousness is slipping out from under him like loose bedding. “Don’t let me sleep.”

“Neil,” one of them says. “You’re safe. Sleep.”

_______

Andrew leaves Wymack’s car strung haphazardly between two spaces, the driver’s side door flung open, keys in the ignition.

Afterwards, he couldn’t tell you what the hospital looked like, who he spoke to, or how long he was running.

The flimsy hospital protocols try to catch at his clothes and hold his hands behind his back, but he keeps sprinting, floor to floor, stairwell to stairwell, and everything else is inconsequential. He feels like he’s been chasing after Neil’s shadow for twenty-four hours. Maybe longer. Maybe he’s always been trying to keep pace with shadows.

He keeps saying Neil’s name to strangers and waiting for the flash of recognition that will mean he can stop. He reels in orderlies for questioning and ducks into private rooms. He can hear the others toppling after him, joining the hunt, straightening out altercations with hospital staff before they can drag Andrew down.

“You’re them,” someone says.

Andrew slows, and the others jog up behind him. There’s a mousy woman just beyond a wall of windows, standing in the world’s saddest waiting room, clutching a red phone.

“Mary-Anne?” Nicky asks.

She nods, swallowing.

Andrew prowls towards her, and Kevin grabs ahold of the back of his shirt.

“He’s okay,” she says quickly. “They’re worried about infection, but he’s—he’s.” Her face crumples.

“What?” Andrew demands.

“Nothing, nothing, I just don’t know who would do something like this.”

Andrew bucks forward in Kevin’s grip. “Like what,” he repeats, red-hot.

She trembles, trying not to say whatever she’s so obviously thinking. “Rip—rip someone apart—like—“

Andrew makes a choked, gummy noise, and Aaron and Nicky instantly crowd him. It’s disorienting, that they are for once trying to protect him and not someone else from him.

“Andrew,” Wymack’s voice calls. When they turn to look, he’s down the hall, Dan is hugging Neil’s duffel bag and looking murderous, and the rest of them are scattered on the floor or in green vinyl seats. With their phone-call detours and near-accidents, the van must have skipped ahead of them. “Stop terrorizing everyone in the damn hospital.”

“This is the last time I will ask to see him,” Andrew says, striding over to meet them all, “before I lose my temper.”

“I’d hate to see that,” Wymack says, somehow sarcastic and regretful at once. “From what I hear, they’re still bandaging him up.”

“What room?”

Down the hall, on cue, there’s a clattering sound like an overturned gurney, and then a calamity of raised voices.

“… fuck, again? Where’s—somebody stop him—”

“Lie back down, Mr—hey, come on, turn off the—no, I’m serious this time, I’m calling security.”

A metal basin skitters out into the hall, and a wooden door pops and splinters.

Someone skids sideways out of an exam room, and catches himself heavily on the opposite wall. He winces, slides down half a foot, then braces himself to keep running.

Andrew’s terror falls to the ground and covers its ears. His anger puts up its fists. The whole sickening mess of his feelings for Neil won’t stop bleeding; he’s not sure they’re going to make it.

Neil looks up, and between one laboured breath and the next, he spots them. His face comes alive.

“Andrew,” he breathes. He takes a pitiful step forward. Andrew hates him so desperately for what he’s done that it loops all the way back around and becomes obsession, the kind that drives the wayward eagle to swoop down for Prometheus, day after day.

Neil is drenched in bandages. The blood has been recently and imperfectly scrubbed away, but he’s obviously been tortured, tumbled and sliced and spit out different. The reality of it sends Andrew lurching forward stomach-first. He can feel the others scrambling behind him. Two strangers in scrubs grab for Neil’s arms, and it corrodes Andrew’s brain to think of someone else touching him; he hisses with smoke.

“Don’t,” he snarls. He is sharpened to a point, sailing over the squeaky tile as if released from a bow.

“Just let them... do this,” Wymack is saying. “Okay?”

The nurse puts his hands up and steps back, and the shrewish medical student follows, at length. “Just don’t let him go any farther. The cops want to talk to him, and I’m not going on another wild goose chase through pathology.”

As soon as they’ve surrendered, Andrew forgets their presence completely. He doesn’t have the capacity to care about them when Neil is in front of him again, wounded and haughty.

He reaches him, finally, and puts his hands to his neck. His thumbs come up naturally to bracket his jaw. Neil sinks almost involuntarily into a stray waiting room chair, and Andrew follows him down, crouched between his knees so that they’re level. Neil blinks at him. One glacier-blue eye, the other swallowed by tape and gauze.

At the sight of it, he crushes his left palm to the back of Neil’s neck, and with his right he traces the bandage, searching for a seam.

“You, too, huh?” Neil says, ghosting a hand over Andrew’s bruised eye. “Percussion is a dangerous sport.”

Andrew doesn’t respond.

He peels the tape back, and finds Neil’s face in pieces. He was braced for it, but it draws and quarters him. His eye is moving sluggishly under the paper-thin lid, but something has nearly pierced through it. The deep gauge in his brow forks like lightning over his lid and sweeps down to his cheekbone. It’s difficult to imagine sustaining an injury like this and staying conscious.

Behind him, Dan gasps, “Oh my god, Neil.”

Andrew steadies his breathing. A panic attack puts a gun to his head, and he fights to disarm it. He puts the bandage down on the chair next to them, bloody side up, then reaches for the smaller tan patch over Neil’s chin. Underneath there are little abrasions mostly, criss-crossing down to his neck. The bulk of the damage is obviously to his eye and wrapped arms, and when Neil licks his bloodless lips, he can see that there are cuts inside his mouth too.

“Open,” Andrew commands.

Neil does, and Andrew holds his chin aloft, index finger nestled in the corner of his mouth. He’s missing a molar, and his piercing. His tongue has some loose pale skin at its heart, where the stud was clearly yanked on and sliced around, but it will heal quickly.

He probes the stitches under Neil’s eye, and Neil’s clean white-bandaged hands come up to hang off of his wrist.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Andrew’s thumb presses down too hard into the bloody seam of Neil’s skin, and he has to snatch his whole hand back before he rips something. He’s shaking with fury. He knows now that he dissolved their deal while Neil’s feet were dangling over the shredder; as soon as he let him go, he was torn to ribbons.

“Don’t.” It’s all he can say. He puts his arm to Neil’s throat threateningly. “Don’t ever—“ His vision is ruddy, red. He could put Neil in the ground for what he let them do.

Neil’s head lolls backwards; his gaze is ice you can jump up and down on without breaking through.

Andrew imagines himself as a wick that curls and blackens and liquifies everything around it, and then he lets his arm relax. When he does, it smooths down Neil’s chest and comes to rest across his lap.

“Careful with him,” the med student complains. “If we have to stitch him up again, you’re paying for it.”

“Oh, go to hell,” Allison says. At the same time, Andrew jerks towards the whole crowd of gawking hospital staff with intent. In pieces, Neil coaxes his attention back where it belongs. Both of his swaddled hands are raised close enough that if Andrew turned, his mouth would press flat to Neil’s wrist.

“If you continue to interrupt us,” Neil says, “You will be paying for it.”

“Don’t threaten—“

“Don’t bother,” Neil counters. “You can keep pretending that you have any authority and see what happens, or you can get out of our sight and keep those delicate physician’s hands of yours intact.”

To her credit, she bares her teeth before she turns tail, shoving the nurse ahead of her and marching them both down the hallway.

“Ten minutes, or we call security,” she calls behind her.

“I don’t think so,” Neil calls back. It’s such a relief to see Neil’s wounded mouth still spitting. He’s righteous as always, larger-than-life without meaning to be, beautifully bitter.

Andrew keeps being struck by the haunting, muffled feeling that finds you when you’re watching footage of the dead. Neil’s here, in motion, but for the last twenty-four hours, he’s been dying in Andrew’s imagination.

“Threats, threats,” Andrew says flatly. “You are your father’s son.”

The jab lands. Neil’s jaw works, and he looks down at the hands still hovering about Andrew’s neck. His fingers are always finding the heads of Andrew’s hydra when they kiss, each digit eclipsing a ravenous mouth.

“Not anymore,” he says. Without ever making contact, he lowers his hands to his lap. Andrew’s fingers twist immediately in the loose bandaging at his wrist. He is angry, but he needs to be close to Neil so the cold, lucid nightmare of today can warm into a pipedream again.

“You have a knack for killing him. Resurrected and struck down again in 24 hours.”

“I was going to tell you,” Neil says lowly. “The countdown—“

“Do not lie to me.” He thinks of Neil tossing feverishly in bed, waking often, holding his face with the root of both palms. Neil catching his own reflection in the hall mirror and flinching back painfully into the doorframe. All along, it was his father. It’s always family. He should’ve known.

Neil looks vicious for a second, and Andrew is relieved, again, at his fire. “I told you more than I ever thought— I gave you all the pieces but one. You don’t get to—“

“I get to,” Andrew hisses. “I get to ask you whatever the fuck I want.” He doesn’t elaborate, and Neil doesn’t look at him.

“The security, at the show, they worked for my father. They were in the audience, backstage, everywhere. I was trying to keep you safe by going quietly.”

“Quietly,” Andrew repeats.

“I didn’t know they were storming the stage,” Neil says. “If I’d known they were going to hurt you anyway…” he touches the very edge of Andrew’s injured eye. “I might have stayed and fought.” Even as he says it, he doesn’t look like he believes it.

“Your self-sacrifice is getting very old.”

Neil smiles. It’s a hole-punch expression, there and gone, but it leaves a perfect hole. Andrew peers through it and into his racing thoughts.

“I know. But I’d do it again.”

“If you try, I will kill you.”

“I’ll risk it,” he says, lifting his jaw. “How did you find me?”

“Jean Moreau,” Andrew replies. Neil obviously wasn’t expecting it, and he squints, waiting for an explanation. “You told me Riko knew things about your past. Turns out it’s common knowledge among Ravens.”

“You talked to Riko?” Neil asks, hushed.

“You disappeared,” Andrew reminds him. Then, because it’s as unbearable to avoid as it is to look at, he asks, “what happened to your eye?”

Neil shakes his head, so slightly that Andrew’s not sure he knows he’s doing it. “Vegetable peeler.”

Nicky gags, somewhere behind them, and Aaron mutters something low and disgusted.

“They didn’t,” Matt wonders aloud. “Neil—“

Neil swallows, then looks properly towards the sound of his voice. Matt reels back a step, covering his mouth. He and Dan are holding onto one another, and she has to squeeze his shoulder to keep him from falling back further. Kevin makes a small, sad noise, and turns around completely.

“Jesus. What the fuck. Can you see?” Matt asks.

Neil taps his right eye. “Some.”

“Gnarly.”

Andrew is quickly growing impatient. From the periphery of his vision, he can see that the med student has returned, and she and Abby are speaking in hushed tones. They keep glancing sideways at where Neil and Andrew are tangled together. His fingers loop tighter on Neil’s wrists.

“Neil,” Abby calls softly.

“No,” Andrew says.

“Please,” Abby says. Andrew puts a hand on the unblemished side of Neil’s face, gathering his focus again. He looks into that unchanged eye and breathes. “He has bruised ribs. He should be in bed.”

She moves delicately closer, and his anger spikes, hits a ceiling, and sloshes back down over him.

“Get away from us,” he says clearly.

“They’re not done with him,” she says, nervous but insistent. “We have to let him get treated or we have to leave the hospital. Those are the rules.”

“I don’t care,” he says, “about the rules. Come closer and you will be glad you’re in a hospital.”

“Andrew,” she tries. “Neil needs—“

“Abby,” Neil says. “I need this, first. I’m not going to be any less hurt when this conversation is over. I’m not going anywhere.”

“But—“

“It’s okay,” he says firmly. Then, softer, “we’re okay.”

Andrew hears Abby melt back into the rest of the Palmetto crowd, and there are some more restless murmurs exchanged between her and the hospital staff. His thumb swipes through the grey space under Neil’s good eye.

“You know what happened?” Neil guesses quietly.

“You tempted a butcher to violence.”

Neil turns his face just a little into Andrew’s hand. “Whatever I did or didn’t tell you before,” he says, “I’m an orphan now.”

“Self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“I didn’t think—I never thought he could be killed like that. They kept me on the line my whole life and all I needed was—a second—just—one second with the upper hand, and they’re gone.”

“All of them?” He thinks of the woman in the pencil skirt, the shadowy security.

Neil hums. “A police officer, too. Wrong place, wrong time, I guess.” He shrugs, like he’s not talking about a macabre parade of casualties.

Andrew shakes his head. “Right place, right time.”

Neil searches his face, then sags with understanding. “You called them,” he says. It’s obvious that this thought hadn’t occurred to him before—that his friends could have risen up to save him, could’ve guessed right, could’ve been in that house with him all along.

Andrew doesn’t answer.

“Thank you,” Neil whispers.

“They’ll be after you, now.”

“Someone always is,” he says wryly. He looks smudgy and sad for a moment. “I’m glad I got to see you again.” It’s such a pathetically earnest goodbye.

“We won’t let them take you,” Andrew says.

Neil’s face droops, and Andrew can tell he’s fighting through all of his pain and exhaustion for composure. They’re both doing it, poorly. 

When he speaks again, it’s in coarse German: “I don’t understand. My father was a big enough player to orchestrate the riot that give you that black eye. It’ll be Riko, next. He assured me he would come for us, and you know he doesn’t care who he puts in danger. I’ve been a liability since day one. I stayed in the band even when I knew what damage my visibility could do.”

“You’re on our contract for a reason,” Andrew says.

A laugh bubbles from somewhere helpless and acidic in Neil’s body, and it seems to hurt his mouth on the way out. “What possible reason could you have?” he asks. “You’ve always, always known I was a runaway.”

“Exactly,” Andrew says. “We knew, and we wanted you anyway.”

They both wait, but nothing breaks, once this heavy truth has been splattered out between them.

Neil says, in jittery English, “I want—I know it’s ridiculous, I know what I’ve done, and what it cost, but I want to stay with you. I want to keep this for as long as I can.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Andrew agrees. He thinks of him ebbing out from where Andrew has him pinned, floating out of this hospital, snipped and slippery as a stray balloon. It’s impossible. Losing him doesn’t make any sense. The thought tries to keep its balance but it just slips and falls and slips and falls.

“What are they gonna do, arrest you?” Dan asks. “It’s pretty obvious to me who threw the first punch.”

Neil shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t know. I covered my tracks back at the house. There’s not much evidence.”

“Then we’ll find witnesses,” Matt says. “Fuck, I’ll testify.”

The corners of Neil’s mouth twitch. “We’ll see,” he says quietly. Andrew knows he’s thinking of Riko, the whole other lobe of this problem that no one else can see well enough to dissect. He looks warily towards Wymack, who scoffs.

“Don’t look at me if you want off the hook. I signed you knowing full well how much of a mess you’d be. Palmetto is richer in problems than it is in talent, look around you,” he says.

“Misfits,” Nicky says winningly. His arms are crossed in such a way that Andrew can tell he’s trying not to reach out to them. “You’re Ausreißer’s frontman, remember? You’re our family.”

“And you still have a tour to finish,” Wymack says. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is,” Neil says quietly.

“Then that’s it,” he says. Neil slumps, fatigued with gratitude, and Andrew fists his hospital gown.

“Get patched up, okay?” Dan says. “Tell the police what a bastard your father was. Come home with us. We’ll figure things out.”

“Thank you,” Neil says. He taps Andrew’s shoulder, and Andrew shifts his hands to Neil’s waist to maneuver them both to standing. “I’ll—you deserve the truth, all of you.”

“We’ll channel all that hurt and betrayal into lyrics,” Allison says, waving a hand. “Seriously.”

“Worry about explanations later,” Wymack says, rolling his eyes. “I don’t want to be getting into the nitty-gritty when security comes.”

Neil nods once. He’s remarkably steady as he walks through the tunnel of living, thrumming worry his friends have made of the hallway. Dan passes him his duffel bag and swipes an affectionate thumb over his bandaged wrist. Nicky reaches for his shoulder, can’t decide where to touch, and gives him a thumbs up instead. Matt tugs on a lock of his hair as they pass.

Andrew walks alongside him; he will not leave until he’s been asked. He’s been searching for Neil with such single-minded intent that keeping pace is all he can do.

“Going with him, are you?” Allison asks Andrew snidely. There is a brown bruised shadow on her cheek where Andrew slapped her.

Renee jostles her good-naturedly. “Take care,” she says, to both of them. To Neil, she reprimands, “you scared us.” She’s tugging her cross back and forth so it cuts into her neck a little, an uncharacteristically nervous gesture.

“Sorry,” Neil says dumbly. All of their affection is unfamiliar to his palette, but especially Renee’s. He usually swirls it in his mouth like wine and spits it out, but this time he considers its vintage, finishes the glass, then buys the whole bottle.

They reach the end of the hall together, stepping over the discarded basin and scattered instruments. Andrew watches Neil compensate for his pain, favouring one side so his posture can’t crush his ribs, reaching out to the doorframe so his depth perception doesn’t fail him.

There’s almost nothing about Neil in tatters that is easier than Neil, missing.

Together, they look out on his kicked over bed, toppled IV stand, and overturned plastic bag of unwearable clothes. There’s a pill bottle and stout tub of ointment on the bedside table.

“Did you find my key to the house?” Neil asks.

Andrew swallows. He imagines he can feel the shape of it against his thigh through the denim. He often grazed it, in passing, over the course of their rabid, nighttime chase, thinking of how many times Neil had done the same. “It’s how I knew,” he says simply.

Neil breathes out, easing himself onto the side of the other bed in the room. “I thought so. You know I wouldn’t—“

“I know.”

Neil unzips his bag and produces a soft, blue shirt. He looks at it for a long moment, and then he starts to cry. “Oh,” he says. “Don’t let me,” he reaches for his ruined eye, and clenches his teeth, choking, “I can’t—cry.“

Andrew crosses briskly to the bed and slides a hand over the back of his neck. “Breathe,” he commands. He plucks the shirt from Neil’s loose hands and holds it to his eye like a compress. “Breathe.”

The uncovered side of his face is flushed and twisted. “I never thought they’d let me come back.”

“Then you haven’t been paying attention,” Andrew snaps.

He frowns, looking somehow fierce and leonine in his grief. “No,” he admits. “I was afraid of getting attached to—to Neil, to everything he represents.”

“Well I’m not interested in Nathaniel,” Andrew says, watching Neil’s face travel over complicated hills and valleys with words like interest and Nathaniel. “He is long dead. It’s always been Neil who nobody could touch.”

“Not nobody,” Neil whispers. Andrew closes his eyes. They sit together, in the windowless white room, hip to hip.

“Neil Abram Josten,” Neil says, wondering, perfect, like he stole the name from a fantasy.

Andrew opens his eyes, and it’s like waking up from a bad dream.

[imaginetings]

the winter witch - welcome to the fun house, blackwood.

Y/N - Your Name

Word Count - 1512

Prologue - Welcome to the Fun house, Blackwood.

Warnings - Death, filicide, swearing, all around shitty situation considering family beforehand.

Moving 5.3 thousand miles at sixteen wasn’t exactly my plan but it’s what ended up happening. No GCSE taking, no getting drunk in a field on the last day or after prom. Instead it’s a flight to California to live with my older sister. Although I guess it was bound to happen given the circumstances and the only place, I could realistically go without being put into a bad situation was here, Beacon Hills in the Golden State. As if being a 16-year-old isn’t melodramatic enough, being one with issues and a fish out of water creates melodrama for a good year or so. The drive from the airport to Beacon Hills itself wasn’t too bad considering I fell asleep whilst my sister drove, there wasn’t much conversation, I guess she’s still in shock considering she had a much different experience in comparison to the one I had, not that I blame her. I think something simply snapped in them, mum was always murmuring to herself in a different language, it seemed as if it was Latin and dad would randomly snarl at people. I guess everyone has their points, but theirs led to them filicide, whereas others just simply have a breakdown and they have a support system. Not killing three of the four children in the home at the present time. Although Bea has been living in our great grandparents’ old house since she inherited it and done it up. Yet I have a feeling with her being a successful author helps to pay the bills.

It’s only when Bea pulls up in front of the house that I feel myself to get choked up. “How can you sit there so calm Bea? After what they did to Alastair, Blaze and Harry, how can you not be a bit more of a mess?” I question my sister, tears rolling down my face.

“Because Y/N, I didn’t see it like you did, it hasn’t processed in my head like it has for you. But I’m here for you now and I am going to be the big sister you’ve missed out on since I left.” Bea explains and she puts her arm around me across the centre console and I rest my head on her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry Bea, I should’ve done more to save them or to stop them.” I sob out.

“Hey, Y/N listen to me, it’s not your fault one bit now how about you come inside and meet Apollo, he’s dying to meet you and I am sure he’d love to give you all the cuddles in the world.” Bea tries to cheer me up and I sniffle and nod.

I hop out of Bea’s grey Toyota and grab my bags from the boot of her car and follow her up to the house after locking the car behind me. Bea is already at the door and after unlocking it and opening the door, a Pit Bull comes darting out the door and jumps up on my front and starts licking me. “Aw, hello little fella. Aren’t you the cutest guy around here huh?” I say dropping one of the bags so I can stroke him, and I can hear Bea laughing. “Okay, Apollo! Come here!” He gets down instantly and retreats to her and I pick up my bags and follow suit to the house. It’s only when I get inside, I really grasp how big the house is. “Jesus Christ Bea, when you said that the house was a bit bigger than what I’d be used to, I didn’t expect this. Fucking hell!” I exclaim in amazement and the scale of the downstairs area and how cosy it is at the same time. All Bea does is laugh.

“Hey, follow me, I’ll show you your room.” Bea suggests and I follow suit and gaze around the house as we walk and how the walls look so clean and modern with different prints from artists around ranging from simple line art to intricate landscapes. There are few photos, but I assume she has a majority of them in her room. That’s when we stop in front of an eggshell white wooden door. Bea ushers for me to go inside the room and it has a little corridor before opening up to the room which is simple and has a double bed with a wooden frame and white bedding. To the left there’s a door that leads to what I presume to be my bathroom which also doubles up as a wardrobe as well. I find myself gobsmacked. “Like it?”

“Like it? I love it!” I exclaim and hug her.

“I know it’s not much right now at least until your stuff from England gets here but you can decorate however you want it okay?” I simply nod at Bea.

“Thank you, seriously Bea.”

“It’s fine. Anyways, whilst I am working tomorrow, I need you to run some errands for me and when you are done with them, I’ll teach you how to drive and maybe we can watch some movies? You’ll be having to start school when it starts up again in January, so we have three weeks for you to adjust here.” I give her a small smile and that’s when she leaves me to my devices. That’s when I lie down on my bed and stare up at the ceiling, what adventures will come to me? I don’t know. Will I meet new people? Indefinitely. Do I have a feeling that this town has something to it? Yes. Am I going to find out? Now that is an answer that I don’t think anyone knows or would be willing to answer.

--------

Falling asleep in my clothes from the day prior was apparently a bad idea since it made me feel dirty as soon as I woke up. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes I quickly shower and get into some clean clothes. Wandering through the house I end up in the kitchen and I find a list of errands for me to do today and underneath is another note to give to someone called Deaton? I shrug and put them in my pockets so I can get some breakfast before leaving.

Just as I am about to put the bread in the toaster, I hear Bea shout my name. “Yeah?” I question. “I’ve got a friend coming around so let him in when he gets here please!”

“Sure!” I reply and turn back to the toaster and push them down.

Yet just as they pop out of the toaster the doorbell rings. “I’m coming!” I pull the toast out and drop it on the plate before sliding towards the door and slipping back as I open the door due to wearing socks on a clean laminate floor. I fall on my ass as the door swings open to reveal a dark figure in a leather jacket and seems to have a case of resting bitch face to me. He looks down at me. “Hi.” He awkwardly greets and offers me a hand up.

“Hi, I’m Y/N, Bea’s younger sister. You must be…” I trail off.

“Derek. Derek Hale. It’s nice to meet you Y/N, can I ask where’s your sister?” He questions and I step away from him due to the proximity.

“I think she’s in her study, I’m sure you’ll know where that is because I sure as hell don’t. Now if you don’t mind me, I’ve got some toast with my name on it. It was nice meeting you Derek.” I explain and give him a sincere smile.

“You too Y/N” he returns with a smile and heads down the nearest corridor presumably to Bea’s study. I close the door behind him and head back to the kitchen. As I sit there eating my toast I notice my iPad lighting up with messages from Facebook messenger from my friends back at home. I elect to ignoring it and go back to eating my food when a shiver runs down my spine. Ha, it must be somebody walking over my grave. That’s how the saying goes right?

I finish up my food and head out to do the errands that Bea has requested. I stop by the animal clinic where I am met with a boy my age with an uneven jaw. “Hi, is Deaton here? I have something for him from my sister.” I explain to him and he explains that he’s just gone to pick something up from the shop, or store as he called it.

“So, are you new in town?” He questions.

“Let me guess you could tell from the accent?” I return and he chuckles.

“Just a bit, do you know your way around town?” I shake my head. “After Deaton gets back, I’m meeting with my friend Stiles, if you want we can show you around.” What sort of a name is Stiles?

“You know what I’ll take you up on that offer…”

“Scott. Scott McCall.”

“Nice to meet you Scott McCall, I’m Y/N Blackwood.” 

[inheritance-cycles]

Thorta Du Ilumëo

Trigger warnings for canon-typical graphic violence and torture.

Following the Siege of Dras-Leona, Murtagh and Thorn launch a successful attack against the Varden. During the fight, Eragon falls from Saphira’s back, and Thorn uses the momentary distraction to both wound Saphira and knock Arya unconscious. Murtagh, who originally planned to capture Nasuada, decides to take advantage of this rare opportunity, and during the chaos, Thorn and Murtagh manage to seize Eragon and spirit him away to Urû'baen. Canon non-compliant fic detailing Eragon’s capture, trials, and eventual rescue.

First chapter based heavily on Nasuada’s capture. 

Part 1 || AO3 (parts 2-6)

Eragon opens his eyes.

The first thing he notices is the pounding in his head; an almost percussive agony that brings him more fully to awareness. His thoughts, however, feel thick and slow, as if he were drunk with exhaustion. Turning his head makes the pain worse, so instead he stares with detached interest at the roof above him.

Tiles cover the dark, vaulted ceiling, and upon the tiles are painted angular patterns of red, blue, and gold: a complex matrix of lines that trap his gaze for a mindless while.

The soft crackle of a smoldering fire draws his attention, and at last he musters the will and energy to look away from the intricate designs. A simmering glow emanates from a source somewhere behind him, and he senses more than sees that the illumination is due to a brazier nearby. The glow is just strong enough to reveal the shape of the octagonal room, but not so bold as to dispel the shadows clinging to its corners.

Finally, he looks down, and notices the surface upon which he’s been restrained. It’s cold, smooth, and uncomfortably hard; the rough stone chafes irritably against his exposed hands and legs. A chill creeps into his bones, and he finds himself wishing for something warmer than the tattered tunic and loose trousers he had been wearing whilst drinking with Arya. Eyeing his lower half, he also realizes that he is weaponless, a fact that is unsurprising but disappointing all the same. Chances are, both his bow and Brisingr still lay on the grassy knoll near Dras-Leona where he fell.

But where am I now?  

With immense caution, he pushes his mind out- or tries to- but to his alarm, he only feels a soft, indistinct pressure surrounding him. It’s as if bales of wool are packed around his mind, and he finds that he can neither extend his consciousness outward, nor access the part of himself that houses his magic.

He’s unsure if he’s been drugged, but if this were done by magic, it was a magic that was completely unknown to him.

Eragon shudders, then tries to sit upright, but the padded manacles that he now sees encircle his limbs prevent him from moving more than a fraction of an inch in any direction. He furrows his brow and realizes that a thick leather belt holds his head firmly against the slab as well, preventing him from turning it more than a few degrees.

Even though he knows it’s futile, he strains against the bonds with all his strength, but they are too secure for even him to break. It’s this realization that causes him to truly panic.

Eragon allows himself a few moments of chest-heaving, muscle-trembling terror before he forces himself to calm, one carefully-controlled breath at a time. The only power he has in this situation is self-control, and he is not about to relinquish it willingly.

The pace of his breaths slow further. The regular, smooth flow through his throat and nostrils begins to crowd out all else. Then, once he’s reasonably certain he is not going to come undone, he allows his gaze to wander once more.

Turning his head what little it can, he glances out the window beside him, neck muscles straining with the effort. To his shock, he actually recognizes the landscape from a fairth he had studied while in Ellesmera.

He’s in Urû'baen.

His heart rate spikes once more, and he quickly loses what little hard-won composure he had gained.

Eragon is still working to calm his erratic breaths when he hears the footsteps in the hallway. His sensitive hearing picks them up easily: a group, some marching in rhythm, some not. The cacophony is so great that he’s unable to determine their exact number, nor their exact distance from him.

The second query is soon answered when the procession approaches, stopping directly outside the doorway to his chamber. There’s quiet murmuring, followed by two sets of clacking footsteps- the product of hard-soled riding boots, he guesses- then a single man enters the room.

The door closes with a hollow thud, and Eragon flinches.

Down the stairs the footsteps come, steady and deliberate. In his arms, the man carries a chair and places it somewhat near the brazier, his body only visible in Eragon’s periphery.

Silence reigns as he fills the copper brazier with charcoal, but then he moves it closer to the slab, closer to Eragon, and the motion produces a painful screech that drives into his ears like nails. Being well-restrained, all Eragon can do is cringe inwardly and watch, transfixed. The man takes flint and steel from the pouch on his belt and lights a nest of shredded tinder in the center of the brazier. The sparks smolder and spread, and the tinder glows like a ball of red-hot wires. Then, he bends, blowing on the incipient fire, and the sparks spring into lambent flames.

The man is not large: not fat, but broad-shouldered. A long black cape hangs draped around his well-built frame. Light from the coals cast his form in shadow, his features too dark to make out, even with Eragon’s advanced senses. Still, the shadows do nothing to obscure the outline of the sharp, pointed crown resting upon his brow, and they similarly fail to conceal the three long irons now resting in the heating coals.

Finally, the man drops into the chair with a near-silent exhale.  

One by one, he tugs on the fingers of his gauntlets, then pulls off his gloves. Tossing them carelessly aside, they land with a soft thump of hide on stone. Underneath the gloves, Eragon notices, the man’s hands are the color of tarnished bronze.

Then, the man speaks. His voice is low, rich and commanding, and Eragon shivers again. His skin prickles uncomfortably and he finds himself thinking of Elva, of all people, and her authority over people’s minds. He has no doubt that he is now in the presence of the king.

“Welcome to Urû’baen, Eragon, son of Morzan,” Galbatorix intones. “Welcome to this, my home, ‘neath these ancient piled rocks. Long has it been since a guest as distinguished as yourself has graced us with their presence. My energies have been occupied elsewhere, but I assure you, from now on, I shall not neglect my duties as host.”

The fire crackles menacingly as if to underscore the hard steel underlying the king’s tone, his words. Galbatorix leans forward, and Eragon can feel the weight of his gaze: boring into him, assessing, scrutinizing.

“You are younger than I expected. I knew you had recently come of age, but still, you are no more than a child.” He pauses for a moment, as if in thought. “Most seem as children to me these days. Foolhardy children who know not what is best for them- children who need the guidance of those who are older and wiser.”

Eragon sets his chin, not wanting to show fear or vulnerability in front of the king.

“Such as yourself?” He asks in a scornful tone.

Galbatorix chuckles. “Would you rather the elves ruled over us? I am the only one of our race who can hold them at bay. By their reckoning, even our oldest graybeards would be considered untested youths, unfit for the responsibilities of adulthood.”

“And by their reckoning, so would you.” With each word, his fear melts away, replaced by pure defiance and bubbling fury.

The amusement in the king’s eyes angers Eragon, but he stays otherwise silent.

“Ah, but I contain more than my share of years. The memories of hundreds are mine, whispering their wisdom in my ears,” replies Galbatorix, smirking conspiratorially. “You especially should understand of what I speak.”

Eragon purses his lips and refuses to confirm what they both know is true.

Galbatorix allows the silence to settle for a moment, then gestures at the room with his gauntlets, continuing unperturbed. “This is a place for truths to be told… and heard. I will tolerate no lies within these walls, not even the simplest of falsehoods.”

The legs of the chair scrape over the floor, and Galbatorix’s breath suddenly wafts, warm against his ear. “I know this will be painful for you, Eragon Shadeslayer, painful beyond belief. You will have to unmake yourself before pride will allow you to submit. In all the world, nothing is harder than changing one’s own self. I understand this, for I have reshaped myself on more than one occasion. However, I will be here to hold your hand and help you through this transition. Although we do not have much time, you need not take this journey alone. And you may console yourself with the knowledge that I will never lie to you. Not within this room. Doubt me if you wish, but in time you will come to believe me. You may ask whatever you want, and I promise you, that I shall answer truthfully. As the king of these lands, I give you my sworn word.”

Eragon’s jaw clenches painfully, and from between clenched teeth, he spits, “I’ll never tell you what you want to know!”

A slow deep chuckle fills the room. “You misunderstand; You were not brought here because I seek information. There’s nothing you could say that I don’t already know. You have no secrets from me, none whatsoever; it is pointless to insist upon holding your tongue, for it will only cause you pain and suffering.”

“Why then?” he growls.

Galbatorix moves to better meet Eragon’s gaze with his own.

“Why did I have you brought here? Because, my son, you have gifts far deadlier than anything magic or man could create. You are here because you have proven yourself worthy of my attention. I wish to have you by my side. A new order is about to descend upon Alagaësia, and I would have you be part of it. Voluntarily, if I can.”

Eragon squints, not trusting the king’s words. “Are you not going to use your mind against me?”

He shakes his head. “I have other ways to break you, my son. I could easily seize control of your mind and force you to swear fealty to me, but instead, I would have you make this decision of your own free will, and while still in possession of your faculties. For now, I am satisfied to discover just how brave you really are, Eragon, son of the Forsworn.”

Eragon clenches his muscles to prevent the growing tremors in his arms and legs from becoming visible.

“The Varden are fast approaching, desperate to rescue their Rider, so I will have to do this efficiently, and in a much shorter time frame than I would prefer.” A wickedly devious smile stretches Galbatorix’ cheeks. “Take this, then, as a sign of my regard for you, Eragon, that I must inflict such suffering to assure victory.” His voice drops to a whisper as he leans in even closer. “I would not, however, wish to exchange places with you.”  

This is my final duty: resisting my interrogation. I will not break.

“Now, before we begin,” croons Galbatorix. “I’ll ask you one last time: will you submit?”

Eragon thinks of Saphira, and his resolve hardens. “Never.”

“So be it. Let us begin.”

[alien-rainbow]

The Princes Of The North and South (2/3)

Solangelo fic, Royalty AU, kinda sad ending, kinda not, Will is betrothed to Bianca 

Word Count: 1,925

Will woke early the next morning to someone ripping open the curtains in his room. Will covered his hand with his arm and groaned not expecting the queen to be the one to wake him.  

"Wake up William," Kalliope scolded turning around to glare at her husband's son. "You will bathe, get dressed in the clothes that will be laid out for you, and meet your siblings and me in the throne room within the hour," with that the queen turned quickly and strode out of the room. Will sighed and pulled himself from the bed and into one of the rooms that branched off from the main area witch held his bed and a large wardrobe. Will pulled off the nightgown and slipped into the warm rose-scented water and took a deep breath. The queen scolded him when he scented his baths but the servants had noticed that he loved the sweet sents. Thought they made an effort to sip something in when the queen wasn't watching.

"Thank you," Will said hoping that whoever's idea it was was still in the room.

"Your welcome," someone responded, Will turned to see Lou Ellen Blackstone smiling down at his as she wiped her wet hands on the edge of her apron. She then grabbed a pitch of warmed water and walked over to Will and poured it over his hair then began to rub something into massaging his scalp. Will felt his shoulders relax in part because of the bath and because of Lou's soft humming. Will could not sing to save his life and he knew it. But he could, Will though thinking again of the boy from ten years ago. He sang like an angel, Will remembered. 

Will ran through the huge castle, he and the raven-haired boy had run off after being scolded by one of the older kids. They were skipping through the rooms gazing at all shinny rooms. Then they came to a small room that was soaked in moonlight that was coming in through a huge window. A piano sat in the middle of the room with a single candle on a stand next to it sending eerie shadows across the room. Will's father had tried to teach him to play but Will wasn't any good. Will turned to leave when the boy grabbed him and pulled him towards the piano. 

"I can play you something!" The boy said excitedly as he let go of Wills's hand and sat down on the bench. "I only know a little bit of it though," the boy looked away sheepishly. 

"I bet you're amazing!" Will said anyone who could play the piano was amazing compared to him.

"It's my mama and sister's song. Mama sang it to -------- and ------- and mama both sing it to me when I can't fall asleep." the boy smiled brightly at will before placing his hands and the keys. He sings, looks, and plays like an angel! Will though as the boy began to play.

“Tu sei il mio soldatino    

la ragione per cui vivo 

Non ti scordar di mi

io veglieró su di te”

Will sat there stunded, the song was short but beautiful even if Will had no idea what it meant. Will heard his father call his name saying it was time to go. He looked back at the boy to see him frowning slightly. 

"Do you have to go?" the boy wined, 

"Yea... My dad doesn't like to ask twice," Will frowned, he had only spent a few hours with the boy but he knew that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with him. "Well, I should go," Will said sadly and turned to leave only for the kid to run up to him and plant a quick kiss on his cheek. Will stood there stunned, his first kiss had been from this really pretty and perfect boy. Will was about to say something when he heard his dad call again. Instead of saying anything to the shorter boy, he placed a kiss on the boy's lips. Will could taste the sweet chocolate from the fountain on the boy's pink lips. By then they were both smiling like idiots, one because of the kisses and also because Will was being a rebel by making his dead wait. Will then turned and ran towards the sound of Apollo's voice while waving back at the boy. Wills smile didn't leave his face until they left the next afternoon, and little did Will know, the ravenett felt the same. 

Will couldn't remember the name of his sister, the meaning of the lyrics of anything of use. It annoyed him that the helpful information was the things he could not remember. Will was snapped back into reality when Lou dumped a small pitch of ice-cold water down his back. Will hissed and turned to glare at the girl though she didn't seem phased. Most people described him mad as a kitten bearing its claws and letting out an adorable high pitched meow. 

"You must get ready quickly today your highness," Lou said dryly, his mother would have been scandalized to see how Will was treated by her but Will had known her forever and was friends with the girl, though neither of them acted like it around others. Will stepped out of the bowl and as Lou wrapped a large towel around him. Will walked back into his bedroom and saw his outfit laid out on the bed. 

"It looks like someone murdered the sun," Lou said turning her head to the side to try and find an angle where the ridiculously gold outfit didn't burn your eyes. 

"Let's get this over with," Will said as he ruffled up his hair to dry it and began to slip into the gold garments with Lou's help. With the outfit on it didn't look as bad. Lou took a step back to regard him with careful eyes. 

"Cape," she said flicking up her finger then walked over to the large wardrobe and pulled out a black cape made from dark animal furs that contrasted well with the bright gold and yellow from the suit. "That's better," Lou said smiling at the prince. "Now it looks like you are the sun and not a murderer." Will laughed at the girl's bold but accurate statement. 

Lou opened the large wooden doors to allow Will to walk through them then she turned and walked down the hallway towards the kitchen while Will turned the opposite way towards the throne room. Six guards had been placed outside his door the night before, four of them flowed him while the other two stayed stationed at the door. Will walked through the cold halls that hadn't yet had the time to be warmed by the sun that streamed in through the windows, the walls were speckled with intricate paintings of the royal members of the family from past years, landscapes, and other beautiful pieces of art.

Two guards outside of the throne room open the large wooden doors on the side of the throne room, to allow Will through. Two of the guards positioned themselves outside of the room while two followed him into the room. Luckily Cecil was always one of the guards who would follow him into rooms. The doors slammed shut behind him sending a draft of air at Will messing up his hair, which, in turn, made the frown on the queen's face deepen. She took a watch out of the folds of her skirts and frowned even deeper when she realized that he wasn't late meaning that she couldn't reprimand him. After gazing at him with loathing for a few beats she turned away from him and stared at the door where their guests would be entring any minute. 

Will then walked to stand on the side of the smaller throne that the queen sat on. She had left Apollo's throne empty saying that she would never take his place. Though she hated Will, she had loved his father with all of her body, heart, and soul. Wills stood alone on the left while his siblings lined up by age stood on the other side of the queen. Eriopis looked extremely uncomfortable at being placed the closest to the queen. Will made eye contact with his sister over his mother's head and gave her a small reassuring smile. Eriopis couldn't help but smile back at her younger brother. Will's happiness had always been contagious. 

The two eldest siblings head snapped back to attention when the words opened and a line of guards filed into the room. They had on all black armor compared to the grays and golds of Papadopoulos. They also all had on wool and fur clocks covered with snow but they didn't seem to be at all bothered by the cold. The guards open ranks to reveal the King and Queen of Olympus. King Hades had a stern and clod looking face that would make anyone start shaking in their boots while his wife queen Persephone, the Prinses step-mother, was gentle and smooth but had been known to be forced to recond with if made angry. The father looked incredibly familiar though he couldn't finger out where he had seen him before. 

"Welcome to Papadopoulos," Kalliope said sanding up and inclining her head to the rulers of Olympus. Will and his siblings followed her lead by bowing shallowly. Kalliope smiled kindly at them, hiding the hatred that was bubbling below the surface. Though judging by the look on Hades's face, he could see right through her and made it quite clear he wasn't pleased. Queen Persephone eased the tension by thanking Kalliope for her kindness and they made small talk and tried to ignore the fact that the princess was not here yet. King Hades cut through the small talk and answered the question they had all been thinking.  

"Bianca and Nico will be here shortly, I hope you don't mind that we have brought my son with us?" Nico, Will thought, that name also sounded extraordinarily familiar. King Hades's comment wasn't exactly a question and Kalliope was in shock at the statement. The queen didn't like things being changed last minute. 

"No, of course not your majesty," Will said attempting to clear the air that was thick with tension. Just as he said that the doors opened and two people walked in. The princess had olive skin and dark brown eyes that sparkled. Her long dark brown hair fell to her waist. She had on a silver dress and had a tiara nestled into her hair. She was definitely pretty but her brother made Will's jaw drop and his brain short circuit. He was paler than his sister and his hair was so much darker than hers it appeared black. It was brushed back and seemed to be held in place with lots of gel. He had on a form-fitting charcoal suit and a black wool cape hung over one shoulder. He had the same look like his father though instead of staring at the queen, he was staring directly at him. Will's breath caught as he realized who the boy was, at the same the ravenett's eyes widened and his eyebrows shoot up. 

"Hi, I'm Nico!" the smaller boy said smiling brightly and sticking out his hand. "I'm here with my big sister Bianca, my mama and my papa. We're from Olympus, well technically we live in the big city, Pluto! Who are you?"

(Song link)

[theforceflows]

The Moon and The Sun

Chapter Two: Husband and Wife

A/N: Please let me know what you guys think! What you like or don’t like about it so far and what you guys would like to see :)))

*Unedited*

Anakin woke to a warm body curled up on his chest, brown curls mused and haloed around a pretty, freckled face. His non-mechanical hand rose to brush a piece of hair away from Padmé’s closed eyes. She let out an adorable squeak, burrowing further into his chest, before squinting up at him drowsily.

“Ani?” He grinned at the way she said his name. It always filled his chest with a soothing warmth.

“Good morning, wife.” His grin was full of mischief, as always, and she couldn’t help but smile back, resting her chin on the back of the hand that was pressed against his toned chest.

“Good morning, husband.” Hearing Padmé refer to him as her husband caused him to jolt. It was real. He was married to Padmé, she was his and he was hers. He grabbed her by the hips and flipped so he was hovering over her.

“A woman of many titles. Queen, Senator, Defender of Democracy, Wife.” He smiled happily at the last one, finger gently tracing over her cheekbone as he studied her tenderly. Her hand came up to cup his, pressing a kiss to his nose.

“The last is my favorite.” He belted out a laugh, knowing damn well that she was lying.

“No it isn’t. Senator of Naboo will always hold your favor.” She giggled, happy to see him so lighthearted and momentarily flashing back to the day they spent rolling around lush green hills. She slid her hand to the back of his head, tangling her fingers in his sandy, loose, curls.

“Perhaps.” She conceded. “But the title of wife to you will always match it.” Her lips gently slid over his in a reassuring manner, knowing that, while he’d said it as a joke, he needed to know he was important to her. Her mouth travelled across his sharp jaw and down his neck, still in shock that she was able to do so, before flipping them over.

Her brown curls separated them from the outside world, from the reality that was desperately trying to enter their little bubble of happiness. She leapt over the side of the bed and slid on a lavender nightgown.

Anakin groaned, rubbing his hands over his face as his wife left his embrace, before propping himself on his elbows to watch her. “What are you doing?”

She looked at him with a grin, pulling her hair out from under the long, intricately decorated, robe she’d pulled on over her sleepwear. “Going to find someone to cook us breakfast.”

He barked out a laugh, fully aware that Padmé had never prepared food in her life. “I can do it, Angel. Just let me meditate and then I can prepare us something.” She loved when he meditated. He could never do it for long, unable to stay still as he was, but he always radiated peace. She loved to sit with him and absorb his presence, watching as the lake country moved with the wind.

Anakin definitely preferred Padmé’s presence during his morning meditation to Obi-Wan’s, she soothed him while his master made him antsy. She crawled back onto his lap and ruffled his hair affectionately. “Or, I can find someone to make us a hearty breakfast while you meditate and I get ready for the day.” He shook his head, hands gripping her by the thighs.

“Padmé, no one can know we’re here together. You know that.” She played with his long fingers in her lap and grinned up at him smugly from under her lashes.

“My Handmaidens know how to use discretion, Ani. Don’t worry, Dormé will handle it all.” She slid off him once more, and gave him one more lingering kiss, before gliding from the room, her gown and robe swirling around her ankles.

Anakin watched her go with adoration, jumping up and pulling on his neutral and plain Jedi pants. He strode out onto the balcony, blue eyes taking in the rolling hills and distant, crashing waterfalls that morphed into the still waters of a lake. He braced himself against the stone railing for a few minutes, soaking in the view, before pulling himself upright and folding his hands behind his back. His eyes drifted closed as he immersed himself in the Force, peace overcoming him. Despite his inability to be still, he did enjoy meditation. It felt like coming home, or being embraced by an old friend.

Anakin knew that he was more deeply connected with the Force than any others, his midichlorian count was higher than ever seen before, and, somehow he knew, would ever be seen in the future.

Even in meditation he could sense her, the way her curls tickled the exposed skin of her shoulders and back, the amusement bubbling from her lips at a comment Dormé had made, and the longing she felt to return to his side. The life forces of every thing around pulsed, but none as brightly or fiercely as hers. His lips curled up in a smile as the feel of heel washed through his system.

The Order would never approve of their union, they would toss him out if they ever discovered just what had occurred on the Senator’s home planet, but Anakin took pleasure in the knowledge that the Force had brought them into each other’s lives and approved of the resulting marriage.

Padmé softly stepped up beside her husband, grinning at how relaxed his face was, eyelashes brushing against high cheekbones. He smiled lightly when he felt her approach, letting her know that he knew she was there, but didn’t open his eyes or speak, continuing to meditate. She watched him, and the landscape, for awhile before moving back into her- their- room.

Her robe was dropped on the bed and, a few more steps later, her night gown pooled at her feet before she stepped into the fresher. A few short minutes later, she was twisting her hair intricately, adorning it gleaming silver bands.

Her curls were swirled atop of her head in loops, slightly reminiscent of Geonosis, and held in place with multiple wide, thick, silver bands that eventually met her hairline, while some hair still fell across her shoulders and was decorated by a crystals only found in Kashyyk.

She moved over to her wardrobe and pulled it open, thankful to be dressing on her own rather than by and with her Handmaidens.

The gown she pulled out was a dusty blue, a nod to her husband’s eyes, with billowing sleeves that curled in at her wrists, causing a plume like bunch of fabric to encircle them. It fell in subtle layers to the ground and clung to her torso, her curves accentuated by matching silver bands starting at her hips and cupping her breasts. It encircled her neck and flowed over her shoulders, a wide band atop each shoulder.

She slid a pin into the loops at the upper back of her head and slid in in. Tucking a variety of other objects under and into her hair and dress before rejoining her Jedi. When she stepped beside him he turned to face her, eyes raking over her, burning with a mixture of love and lust. “You’re so beautiful, Padmé, but now I want to just undress you once more.”

She laughed, kissing him, before tugging him back through their room. “Come along, Ani. Let’s go down for breakfast before we waste away due to you not allowing us out of bed. He chuckled, kissing the top of her head, and then pulled away from her.

He tugged his shirt over his head and strapped on his utility belt, comforted by the weight of his lightsaber against his hip. Once they were both fully dressed, he joined her in the hallway and took her hand once more. “As you wish, m’lady.” She smiled lightly at his teasing tone, eager to show him the meal she’d had prepared. He grinned at the sight of bantha meat, prepared finer than he’d ever seen, and shuura fruit desert. Something from his planet and something from hers. He pulled her into a deep kiss of gratitude and moved to pull her chair out for her. “Senator.”

“Thank you, Jedi Skywalker.” They both chuckled giddily as they served themselves. They were well aware that they weren’t going to get a honeymoon. That not too long from now that they’d both have to return to their duties and to real life. But in that moment, they refused to think about it, they were going to enjoy the time they had together before they had to return to pretending not to love each other.

Anakin knew he’d have to develop a plan to be able to spend time with Padmé discreetly, a path he’d take to her rooms in the Republic 5000 without being followed. He’d be damned if he didn’t sleep with his wife every night they were on the same planet. But right now, he was enjoying breakfast with the love of his life.

Padmé watched Anakin eat happily, thrilled he was enjoying it. Bantha meat wasn’t known for being the most enjoyable meal, so she’d taken a risk and had out prepared in a Nubian fashion. She’d been worried it wouldn’t have gone well with the Tatooine food or that he wouldn’t have liked it. But, Anakin seemed to enjoy it, he was scarfing it down. She grinned at him, finally beginning to eat herself. “Famished due to last night’s activities, lover?” His reaction was just as she’d hoped, he blanched, choking on his forkful of food. His lifestyle had caused him to be rather innocent, albeit a fierce warrior. Jedi, not allowed to have attachments and therefore having no use for it, were never taught about the acts between a man and a woman, and it was certainly never referred to so lightly in front of them.

And as Padmé was raised in a proper fashion, he definitely didn’t expect such comments from her. But they wasn’t in public, and he wasn’t someone she had to be professional around. This was Anakin, her best friend and love of her life. She had no such qualms about making jokes of that nature to him, especially when they made him blush as so.

When he finally managed to swallow the bite of food, he glared at her, aware of what she’d done. “And you’re not?” She smirked up at him, taking another bite before responding.

“Oh, I definitely am.” They both dissolved from heated stares to childish giggles.

After working their way through the main course and desert, they moved out into meadows. Padmé blushed prettily when Anakin tucked a pink flower into her hair. She grinned as she returned the favor, laughing at the sight of a big bad Jedi, padawan or not, with a flower behind his ear, tugging on his padawan braid affectionately. He revelled in her joy, in awe at the way she seemed to be made of sunshine, everything bright as her very core. He kissed her just beneath the ear before gently tackling her into the long grass, making sure to shield her from the impact. The two young lovers spent the rest of the afternoon rolling around and chasing each other, Padmé even going so far as to try Anakin’s joke, scaring the kriff out of him when she hit the ground and didn’t get up, but took quite a bit of joy in getting revenge on him for the same thing.

Anakin had been grumpy over it for about three minutes when Dormé had found them, bearing news from Queen Apailana. “My lady! My lady!” Padmé sat up, Anakin still stretched beneath her, and looked at her handmaidens with wide eyes.

“Dormé? Sateè? What’s wrong?” The two women were breathing normally, despite the distance they’d run, athletic as they were, and they kneeled beside their lady and her husband.

“The queen has sent word, my lady. She requests your presence at the palace as soon as you can get there.”

“Queen Apailana? Has something happened? “ Padmé rose to her feet gracefully, Anakin moving to stand next to her protectively out of instinct.

Dormé shook her head and Sateé peered at Anakin curiously, or having missed the position he and the Senator had been in. “I don’t know, my lady. But we have to get you packed and on a transport immediately. Your Jedi protector as well.” Anakin smiled thankfully at the handmaiden and nodded.

“Dormé’s right. Sateé will go ahead to assist in packing your things while Dormé and I accompany you back to the house, just in case the reason her highness wants you at the palace is because the threat to your life has risen, they might now where you are.”

Padmé shook her head. “If they knew where I was they would have struck already, and Queen Apailana would have sent guards as well as her request. Dormé, go with Sateé. I’ll be fine and Anakin will be with me. The faster I get packed the better, make sure to pack some things for Jedi Skywalker.” The two women nodded in respect and acquiescence.

“Yes, my lady.” They scurried off, Sateé shooting Anakin a look of warning, Dormé and Sabé being the only women who were aware of the marriage that had happened, having served as witnesses to their wedding, as well as Threepio and R2-D2.

Anakin pulled his lightsaber from his belt, gripping it tightly, and opened himself up to the Force, expanding his senses and staying alert for any threats, just in case. Padmé bristled at the waves of protectiveness rolling off of Anakin, remembering the stifling feeling of having her every movement watched when she’d originally been threatened.

She stopped walking, taking his elbows in her hands comfortingly. “Ani, everything’s fine. This place isn’t listed as a piece of property I, or my family, own, and it’s far from anywhere else. The chances of us being found are slim. I’m sure Apailana just wants to ask me to return to my post, let’s not borrow trouble.”

He peered down at her with burning eyes, his body curved over hers as if to shield her from an invisible threat. “You are everything, Padmé. If anything happened to you, I wouldn’t survive it. I know you hate being overprotected, but just give me this, or I will go mad.” She frowned at the thought of him not making it, but nodded, taking his free hand as they continued on their way.

When they entered their room, all of Padmé’s handmaidens were standing there, bags in hands, as well as Anakin’s droids. They looked regal, with long gowns and hooded heads, but the lovers knew that they were just as lethal, with weapons tucked in every available space. Anakin nodded at them in greeting as Padmé picked up a bag and they all nodded in return. Padmé took in the protective horde around her, sighing in annoyance and affection, before striding from the room.

Anakin stuck tightly to her side, lightsaber firmly in hand, as the Handmaidens formed a tight circle around their lady, eye’s flicking around subtly as they searched for threats. “We’re still in the house!”

Sabé tskd at her from her left and shook her head. “Let us do our jobs, my lady. And let us have the peace of mind that comes along with protecting you.” Padmé sighed but nodded, knowing this was fight she wouldn’t win.

They separated to pile into several speeders, knowing they all couldn’t squeeze into one. Anakin stood pressed to his wife as Sabé drove and Dormé kept an eye on their surroundings, a speeder ahead of them and one behind.

When they stepped back onto dry land the formation was quickly reassumed as she was rushed onto the first transport to Theed. People stared at the finely dressed crowd, the Handmaidens sure to keep Padmé out of view, having draped a cloak around her shoulders and made her pull a hood over her face. Everyone on Naboo knew of hero Queen-turned-Senator Amidala, and her face was recognised everywhere she went. The on edge group was already noticeable enough, especially with a Jedi in accompaniment, the last thing they needed was Padmé getting recognised.

The transport jolted to a halt, Nubians flooding out, followed by the obviously rich passengers. Queen Apailana had sent a transport and some guards to take them to the palace, and even Padmé grew a bit nervous at the sight of the royal guards waiting for them. Anakin stiffened farther, if that was even possible, and pulled her even closer. He took the bag in her hands and handed it off to Sateé, freeing Padmé to run or fight without difficulty if need be.

“It’s, fine, I’m okay, Anakin.” She mumbled reassuringly.

He mutely shook his head and nodded to the guards who joined their formation. The large group’s footsteps echoed throughout the ornate hallways of the palace, heavy doors being heaved open to reveal the throne room, Apailana perched regally in front of them. The guards immediately took up posts around the room as Apailana stood, moving to take her mentor and idol’s hand warmly.

“Senator Amidala, welcome. “

“Your highness, it’s good to see you. I’m afraid your urgent message has put my Handmaidens on edge.”

Apailana smile beautifully at the women surrounding her friend, eyes locking on Anakin. “My apologies, ladies. Jedi Skywalker, wonderful to see you again.”

He nodded and smiled stiffly at her. “You as well, your highness.”

“I’m happy to say I haven’t called you here for anything too distressing.” Apailana moved back to her throne and sat, the group moving forward with her. “Simply put, Palpatine, although from Naboo, does not share our values. He has seized too much power in your absence seeing how you are not there to help others see through his charm. If we do not take action, he will render the Senate powerless. I ask that you return to Coruscant. I’m aware that you went through quite the ordeal on Geonosis, but you are needed.”

Padmé dipped into a small curtsy, smiling diplomatically at her queen. “I understand, your highness. I am more than fit, and happy, to return to duty and serve my people.”

“You are an inspiration to all, Senator Amidala. Thank you for your continued service.”

“And you, your highness.” With a final curtesy, she spun around and glided our, Handmaidens and Jedi alike falling into position around her. When they stepped out into the perfect Nubian air, Padmé stopped, turning to her husband with a sigh. “As happy as I am to be working again, I will miss our ability to be together openly.” Anakin smiled sadly at her and took her into his arms.

“We’ll figure it out, angel. Coruscant won’t keep me from your side.” Padmé buried into his chest, allowing herself a few moment there, before pressing a kiss to the clothed planes of his chest and pulling away.

“Alright. Let’s get back to Coruscant.” The barrier of women was enough to keep admirers from his wife, but it did not discourage spectating.

They finally came within the silver coated, H-type yacht ship that acted as Padmé’s diplomatic transport. The silver gleamed in the sun, making the reflective surface difficult to look at. Padmé had once explained to Anakin that the silver denoted her status as a former queen of Naboo, and was the same color of the carrier of the royal household. It was a nice ship, sleek and fast but not nearly as heavily armed as her former ship when she was queen, but still had as strong of a shield.

The lack of weaponry irked Anakin, who wanted his very vocal wife as defended against those who violently disagreed with her politics as possible. Loading onto the ship took mere moments, explaining what was happening to a very inquisitive Threepio took more time than the Nubians and Anakin needed to get settled, especially when he and R2 began bickering. When they took off, Anakin slid into Padmé’s room, who looked at him sadly. The couple crawled into each other’s arms on the large, soft bed, desperate to spend as much time together as a couple, Coruscant, and real life, getting ever closer.

Chapter One

Chapter Three

[hayjeon]

Lavender (ft. Taehyung) drabble

→ painter!taehyung / apollo!taehyung? Honestly idk yet  → 1.3k words, warning for basically only a ton of sexual tension

Wow I haven’t actually written anything for months. I’m super rusty but I got this idea out of the blue while watching videos about teenagers painting on their jeans. I missed you guys so much, and this officially marks my return to tumblr writing. Enjoy, lovelies. 

“Stay still,” he hisses, a large hand splaying over your ribs. Your breath hitches at the motion, his long, cold fingers a little too close to the bottom of your breast for comfort. His eyes flicker up to you, and you frown at his gaze, but tighten your lips in a silent frown anyway and avert your gaze to the other paintings in the studio. The corner of his mouth twitches quickly in a smug smile, before disappearing along with his eyes, which refocus on the task at hand. 

He takes his brush, dipping it into the purple on his palette, perched dangerously on the edge of the bed that also somehow houses your figure, his torso, and a full cup of water on it without tipping anything. One, two. The bristles glide through the lilac oils, picking up the pigment that you had painstakingly mixed and taken measurements of earlier. 

He then lifts up the fine brush, and rubs the part of your rib, just underneath your breast with the thumb of the hand that lies there already. Then he gently presses the bristles to your skin. 

It feels like...you can’t describe it. It’s not just the feeling of a wet brush gliding over your skin. Here, at this particular area he’s chosen to paint on, you can feel everything. The microscopic rocks that you failed to crush completely when grinding the color. The oils gliding over your skin. The other parts of his painting that are slowly beginning to dry in the brisk air of this particular morning and underneath the warm glow of sunlight that filters through the windows covered with white chiffon curtains. The way the bristles aren’t just uniform, but actually truly different in sizes, conformed to create a beautiful raindrop shape only the most prestigious artists can purchase. The way his fingertips press into your skin, not harshly, but firmly enough to make your breath stutter. The way the air filtering through the curtains caresses your skin, creating goosebumps over your ribs, and the way his fingers gently smooth down the area in an attempt to get you to calm down. 

It’s a good thing all of this makes you basically unable to breathe, because, quite frankly, if you took too big of a breath, he would probably glare at you again because you would move your ribs too much. 

He swishes the soiled brush in the clear glass pitcher, and then dips it into a darker purple, repeating the motions over, and over again. 

His hands carefully maneuver your torso, sometimes dropping down to your hips so that he can angle you ever so slightly to the right, or to the small of your back as he asks you to slowly turn onto your stomach. It feathers up to your neck, and sometimes your shoulders, brushing your hair out of the way or pressing a little harder to have you straighten out. But, this....it lighted your insides with a fire you couldn’t describe. 

Your skin prickling with licks of light and darts of heat. The hairs on your skin rising everytime his fingers dance over your body or graze much too softly to be accidental. And your cheeks igniting with a heat caused by the intimacy of the feeling of his breathe fanning over your lower back. 

Brush into the water, paint, then back again. 

You’re basically on your stomach now, and you let go of the blankets you’d been clutching so tightly as you situate yourself so your breasts are completely hidden by the mattress of the bed. Taehyung doesn’t say another word, and continues painting. You’re honestly not sure how long he’s been painting. But you’ve heard stories. 

You’ve even seen some of them, sculptures of naked women or paintings of the nymphs that are too detailed to be a guess. You’d heard the panicked whispers of gossipers in town, those who were bold enough to speak of the god that ruled your entire lives, talking about the way Apollo would seduce hundreds of women with his art and his music, his beauty, and his sweet words.

And you’ve seen it too, in person. Even the slightest movement, the way he moves his hair out of his eyes, or licks his lips when he’s focused. Even his gaze, sharp and dark, yet intentionally gentle, is provocative in nature, whether or not the god is trying to. His jaw and nose seemed to be shaven of marble by the world’s most talented sculptors, hair and eyes so dark even Hades would envy. Hands so beautiful, fingers long and slender, yet possible of so much destruction, and so much blessing. 

Now, resting two inches below your breast, wrapped around your rib. Lovely. 

Time ticks by, and slowly, you become used to the sensations. Your eyelids become heavy. Taehyung continues painting. 

It was a bit odd, too quick and too disorienting the way you ended up here. You had stumbled upon a beautiful field of purple flowers one day, lavender, you think, by the smell of the field. Your parents were elsewhere picking flowers for an event, and then one moment you were playing with the flowers, and then at another, you were whisked into a room of light. 

Chosen, by the gods. 

The highest honor a young woman could ever desire. 

And then, he’d revealed himself, dimming down the luminescence so you could at least open your eyes and adjust to his features. He’d introduced himself as Taehyung, and he told you he’d chosen you because of art. You had no idea then, and you’re still confused now. You were never particularly interested in arts, much less the arts, and had never played an instrument well or sung like your sister. Your interests lay elsewhere. But he’d just smirked knowingly. His beauty captivating you and everyone else. Your parents were ecstatic and your community put on a shrine for Apollo in the center of the town, and it was too late. Everyone was under his spell. 

When he’s in human form, he spends most of his time here, in a studio, in which constant warm sunlight filtered through windows covered with long, cascading white curtains. From wall to wall, lay canvas or hides covered with intricate paintings of history, portraits of other gods, landscapes you’d never seen or heard of before. Everyday, you would come in, mix the list of colors and pigments that he demanded, and you would leave. 

Until today. 

“Let me paint on you.” He suggests, tone light as if discussing the weather. 

“I-I beg your pardon?” you almost drop the bottle of crushed cayenne. 

He sits on his stool, gently running a towel over his brushes. “I said,” he looks up at you, “I will paint on you.” 

“Where?” You blurt, and at his eyebrow’s flicker, you bow your head gently, “where would you paint?” 

He stands from his stool, slowly taking steps towards you, and you inch backwards, step by step, until he’s a hairs-breadth away from you, and your knees hit a bed. 

Immediately, by reflex, you scramble, arms coming up to cover your chest and you screech, “Please! Don’t!” 

He watches you from a standing position with his hands still occupied by the towel and the brush, and an eyebrow raising into his long hair. He laughs lowly, the chuckle sounding throughout the temple. “Human, I won’t do such things to you.” He chuckles, setting down his tools and sitting at the edge of the bed. “I prefer consenting women. Makes it much more fun.” He laughs to himself again, and stands, heading towards his pigments. 

“Take off your shirt, I won’t look. Cover yourself up with the linens there, but I want to paint on your side.” 

You let out a heavy breath, and roll your eyes secretly as you cast off the top of your dress, your back towards him. Gathering up the white soft blankets, you press them to your bare chest and lay on your side, careful to not let anything show. The rest of your skirt remains bunched around your waist, down to your ankles. 

He comes over with his palette. 

“Now. No looking,” he states, and smirks up at you. 

“Wake up.” 

“Human, wake up.” His low voice timbers through the fogginess of your mind, and you blink once, and twice before darting up with the covers pressed to your chest. 

“Be careful,” he hisses, a hand heavy on your shoulder to make sure you don’t move too quickly, “The paint is still not completely dry, and even yet, you can still smear it. Stand.” He holds out a hand to you, and you warily gather as much fabric against your chest out of the way of the painting before standing with him. You can see a glimpse of a few of the purples, blues, and lilacs he’d been dipping into earlier, curling around your side. 

“I want you to see it here,” he murmurs, and you follow him to the huge mirror on one side of the studio. 

You approach it, bundled up in white, and he lays his hands on your shoulders, and turns you slowly so you catch a glimpse of your where your shoulder blade is. 

It’s stunning. 

Swirls of lilac, lavender, purple, darker blues, limes, greens, and even golds and silvers spin together into a marvelous mural of a lavender field. The flowers start from your right shoulder blade, curling up inquisitively to your shoulder and neck, and drops down to your mid-back and borders your ribs and your side there. 

“It’s...gorgeous.” You breathe out, and Taehyung lets out a low chuckle at how breathless you sound. His eyes in the mirror are trained onto your back as well. 

“Do you recognize it?” He murmurs, and you nod. “The field...the lavender field where you...chose me.” 

“Where I chose you.” He echoes, and his eyes flicker up to meet yours in the mirror. “Precisely. Because you are art.” He murmurs, and you finally turn your head from the mirror to where Taehyung stands in front of you. 

He reaches out, eyes fanning your features, and a finger intertwining with a lock of your hair. 

[gingerpeachtae]

Concentric [Prologue]

masterlist

Words: 1.5k

Genres: fantasy!AU, angst, fluff, enemies to lovers, eventual smut (?)

Warnings: blood, violence, implied death

Summary: You had been ready for the end of the semester. You had been ready to spend time away from your best friend, Jimin, and finally move on from the feelings you harbored. Yet, after your friend was forced to reveal a secret, you found yourself in a new world that was chock full of magic, war, and wonder. So, here you were, basically thrown into your own fantasy novel, with your best friend on one side, and six male warriors on the other.

A/N: Hewwo everyone! So this is the very first piece of writing I am every posting! WOHOO! Please read and send any advice, suggestions, or what have you. The prologue does not contain any BTS members, but the first chapter will! (I am SO close to being done with it! So I will do my best to post ASAP) PLS ENGOY :) *revamped/edited on 2/26/20

Winter is a delicate season. Intricate snowflakes, gentle snowfalls, and a good-natured chill to the air. This winter was different, though. This winter was not delicate, gentle, or good-natured. No, this winter was nothing like that. It was barren, savage, deadly. Snow so cold it stung, attacking like sharp needles wherever it found a chink in the armor of winter gear. Wind so violent it shook the world as it screeched and groaned past the skeletal trees. Landscape so blank it became an endless and untouched canvas of black and white. Brutal. Vicious. Unforgiving. A spiteful side of Opitax that had never previously revealed itself.

Amarok had never seen anything like it in his entire existence. He had seen many seasons pass, and although there were times the hunt became quite difficult, there was always game if one truly knew how to look. Truly knew how to see the world. The craft of finding the wild thrumming of energy within even the faintest of tracks. The hunter was innately grateful to have this knowledge during the past few weeks as this season had proven to be a challenge, and while it had not been his best hunt, he was not trudging back empty-handed either.

Amarok was eager to be home, to be in the warmth of his wooden cabin and love of his wife and daughter.  He smiled behind his face mask at the thought of seeing his little one excitedly shouting for him at his return and running to be swept up in his arms. Fond memories of hoisting her atop his shoulders as his wife laughed from the doorway caused him to release a chuckle that barely reached his ears over the rampaging wind. Although he anticipated stepping foot into the small clearing that contained his home, he prayed what he brought back would be enough to last his family the rest of this harsh season.

Stumbling as he crested a hill, the hunter peered through the obscuring white and saw the smoke from his cabin. From where his family was waiting for him. Yet, as he neared closer, the smoke became thick and dense. It was more than what should be puffing out of the chimney. Much more. It was intermingling with the white snow, dancing and curling with the wind. Clogging his lungs. He did not smell the familiar sweetness of gojcha nuts roasting above the fire, as they usually did at his return. Nor did he hear his wife’s lullaby voice drifting through the air or his daughter’s innocent giggles echoing off the thousands of trees.

Instead, he caught the unmistakable and repulsive scent of burnt flesh and dying embers.

Heart dropping, Amarok darted forward toward his home, dropping his kills as he ran. The carcasses of rabbits, fox, and coon left behind like a breadcrumb trail of bloody meat. Without the heavy load burdening him, the hunter reached the opening of land where his cabin stood within mere minutes.

Where his cabin had stood.

Choking as the black smoke invaded his lungs and further blocked his vision, Amarok tripped over a clump of smoldering rubble. The world turned to black and white and nothing in between as the hunter gripped his head in strain and confusion. As he was about to start calling for his wife and daughter, he heard a shrill cry. Hope erupted in his chest as he made haste toward the scream, failing to realize the tone was not that of a female or child.

Following the still-present screams, Amarok quickly found an unknown male covered in soot and torn clothing, cowering among the trees. The confused and worried hunter yanked the stranger upright by his disintegrating shirt and pinned him against the nearest trunk.

“What happened!?” Amarok panicked, his breathing becoming unstable. “Where’s my family!?”

The stranger’s screams faded into blubbering, unable to properly utter a word. “I-I was lost and b-bleeding and she…”

“Gods dammit!” Amarok punched the bark beside the stranger’s head, causing him to yelp. “What happened!?”

“Sh-She offered to let me stay the night. But w-wolves must have caught scent of my blood and they came.”

“No.” Amarok let go of the stranger and slowly backed away, shaking his head and closing his eyes in disbelief as the stranger’s words settled over him.

He knew that predators got bolder when the food supply waned, especially wolf packs. He’d heard stories of them attacking hunters when they ventured too far into the darkness of Opitax’s shadow. But he had never heard of them attacking a cabin.

It was a savage winter indeed.

“They came w-when the little girl was still outside…”

Returning his gaze to the male, Amarok could see he had crumbled to the ground and was desperately clutching the base of the tree.

Gritting his teeth, Amarok stormed back up to the male and grabbed his shivering form to wrench him upright once more.

Tightening his grip on the cowering stranger, the hunter was torn between wanting to physically squeeze the story out of the male’s body and wanting to bring him to permanent silence.

“What in Illai’s name happened?”

“They got the little girl b-before we even realized they were here, then she tried fighting them off with a t-torch, but they got her too. I ran and climbed up a tree to get on the roof before they got me next. They left not too long after that.”

“No. No. No! NO!” Amarok repeated the word over and over and over until his voice grew hoarse, the coward of a man whimpering with each of the anguished wails.

Amarok thought of his sweet Omara, his delicate Sawna. He gagged on a sob that escaped to freedom beyond his lips. He should have been here to protect them. To save them.

His hands dropped away from the stranger’s body and began to tremble.

“The torch dropped on the hay and kindling… th-the house went up so fast I didn’t think I would make it out,” The stranger took his head in his hands, rocking himself back and forth as he muttered to himself. “I-I barely made it out. I made it out. I made it out.”

Amarok collapsed to his knees. His legs could no longer support him with this news, not with this devastation. Oddly, he did not feel lost. All he felt was fury as his world crumbled into ashes and joined the black smoke dancing around him. He began to be consumed by an unspeakable and uncontrollable urge to wreak havoc upon the world and everything that lived on it. Because everything now meant nothing, and he longer cared for it. He had nothing left to protect and hold dear. Where there was once light and warmth was now only the freezing dark and its white emptiness. There was only the smoke and the snow and the charred remains of his soul.

The hunter’s head suddenly jerked back to the stranger who was trying to stumble away from the misery he had caused. Still muttering to himself. Still rocking his body in self-comfort. Still holding his head. Amarok slowly rose from his knees and began to stalk after his new prey, and unlike the past few weeks, it was not a long hunt.

Grabbing the stranger by the back of his neck, Amarok heaved and threw his body onto the frozen ground. The once smooth and flawless ice now jagged and sharp as it fractured outward from the concentric point of a limp body’s impact. Blood slowly crept into the crevices, painting a crimson flower that bloomed fuller with each passing heartbeat.

A little red to join Amarok’s now black and white world.

A sadistic smile inched its way onto the hunter’s face as he kicked the stranger onto his back, placing the blood leaking out of the male’s temple and mouth in full view. Amarok had caught his prey, but the death blow wouldn’t come just yet. He still needed something from the weak shrivel of a male, which is why he did not reach for the dagger attached to his waist.

Surrounded by the splintered ice, the stranger struggled to bring air back into his lungs, chest spasming with his attempts. Not feeling any sympathy, Amarok knelt over the stranger and slowly encased the male’s neck with his hand before asking where the beasts went. He did not yell or hit the stranger, just glared with such cold, empty hatred that the male shuttered as he tried to claw at the hand now encircling his throat.

The stranger’s legs thumped an erratic beat against the icy earth, his eyes frantic and overflowing with small rivers of crimson. With heavy effort, he managed to lift his hand and weakly point eastward before his entire body sagged into unconsciousness. Sighing in disappointment, Amarok released the stranger’s throat and gazed to the east with narrowed eyes. His raw anger and pain still thrashed inside of him like a wild animal, begging to be released. Begging to be allowed the satisfaction of tearing apart the world. But the hunter contained it. At least until he got to the creatures who did it, he told himself.

Letting out a low growl, he gathered the unconscious male on top of his shoulders. Then, with a set jaw, Amarok started on his path away from the setting sun and into the depth of Opitax’s shadow.

next [1]

[popcrone818]

Wicked Games Part 1

Okay so this is just a little something i have been working on. i really need some feedback on it as ill be updating it here and on wattpad regularly. i will take any feedback obviously just nothing too cruel. also if you want to see me write for anyone in particular shoot me a message and i will get right on it. lots of love

Dauntless

Initiation, stage two; fears. My brother wasn’t able to test me so I had the cruel Dauntless leader; Eric. I had 10 fears, 6 more than my brother. Each day was going to be a different fear for everyone. We wouldn’t face all of our fears until stage 3 of initiation.

My first fear was spiders, crawling all over me as I lay there helpless and still, I was able to get out of that fear soon enough though. I left the room and Eric that day only slightly out of breath.

The dark and drowning were actually together I was drowning in the dark and at this time I had no idea which one I was more afraid of. But I got out of there by letting the water engulf me and fill up my lungs.  

Fears 4 and 5 being burnt alive while people judged me had me shaking as the flame licked at my ankles, I could hear people yelling profanities at me as the flames rose on my body, I tried to calm my racing heart and listen in to the words being yelled out to me but I couldn’t hear any of it I just mumbling I just knew they weren’t very nice this being said. That day Eric had laid a hand on my forearm as I came out of the sim, he almost looked like he cared for a slipt second before he realised I was out of the sim and his stone cold exterior was plastered on his face.

My next two fears were clowns and losing Tobias. Clowns obviously wasn’t too bad but as my heartrate was slowing down one of the clowns dragged my brother over to me, his wrist and ankles bound and a gag in his mouth, he also looked unconscious as they held a gun to his temple. I watched as he lifted his head his eyes holding in all of the pain that our past had caused as he mouthed run to me, I watched as the safety was taken off the gun and the trigger pulled. I screamed and fell to my knees as the sim ended and I felt myself fall out of the metal seat to the ground, I didn’t look up at Eric as my eyes continued to leak and show my weakness in front of the cruel dauntless leader. What would he think of me now, I had excelled in the first stage of initiation I was no longer a weak abnegation, I was dauntless but now as I balled myself up on the floor in the simulation room I felt weak again. I knew Eric was looking down at me but I could care less as I picked myself up off the ground and lunged out of the room and rushed into the pit frantically looking for my brother. I saw him from afar talking to the man he had introduced me to as Zeke once before, and I launched myself at his back as tears cascaded down my cheeks.

After my little outburst in the pit the day before I couldn’t even look at Eric when I entered the simulation room the day after. I had been weak and I hated knowing he had been there to witness it. I held myself up and my body strong, my eyes cold and unmoving as he watched me walk to the seat in the middle of the room and readied the serum before placing a hand on one side of my neck and the tip of the syringe on the other.

“This last lot of fears is going to be even worse than yesterdays, stay strong Amaya,” he plunged the syringe into my neck before he finished his sentence and my eyes closed bringing on my last lot of fears.

My eyes opened and Marcus leered above me, “You will never leave me ever again.” He snarled as he started to undo his belt before pulling it out of the loopholes. He flung it and it stung my cheek before he laid it down and started to undo his pants. He used me like he used to causing harm to my small body as his fingers dug into my olive flesh as he thrust in and out of my tiny body. The fear then changed slightly as he raised the belt over his head and brought it down over my back again, again and again before switching once more where Marcus took bids from random men before the highest bidder grabbed my face and lead me into the back room to have his way with me. I couldn’t slow my heart rate and I couldn’t fight back my hands had been tied behind my back and my ankles had been tied to the base of the bed. I was weak I was helpless and I couldn’t do anything about it. I closed my eyes as I tried again to steady my heart and this time managed to calm it down enough to be brought out of the simulation. I looked over to where Eric was sitting as I tried to catch my breath. My hands trembled and as Eric started to move closer to me I shrunk away from him and his touch. I knew Marcus shouldn’t have this effect on me but I also knew that everything he had done to me once Tobias left would stay with me for the rest of my life. Usually I was pretty good at hiding everything that Marcus had done but when being faced with it once again I couldn’t do it. Eric placed his hand on my forearm once again I flinched and I saw something flash behind his eyes before he took his arm off me and disconnected the leads from my forehead. I took one last big breath before I bolted out of the simulation room not looking back at Eric as I made my way to the initiate dorm room. I sat down on my hard plastic bed and sobbed until dinner time.

I made it my mission to find my brother before sitting down as close to him as possible. His arm automatically wound its way around my waist as he continued to eat. He pushes his plate over to me slightly and I pick up his hamburger taking a bite. It was silent between us for a moment.

“Are you still afraid of Marcus?” he nods as he takes his hamburger from me and takes another bite himself. I shrink into his a bit more as Eric makes his way over to us. He stands directly in front of both of us but keeps his eyes on me the whole time. I plead with my eyes for Eric not to say anything to my brother about what had happened in my last fear landscape. Tobias didn’t need to know the full extent of what happened once he left.  

Eric takes a seat in front of us and starts to quietly eat his own meal. “How are you holding up after your last fearscape?”

“She’s fine,” I feel Tobias tense beside me, I look up and notice that his jaw is clenched and he is staring directly at Eric with a look that could kill. I straighten up slightly but still close to my brother, trying to show Eric that I wasn’t afraid that what he saw in my fearscape was nothing and that it didn’t need to be brought up again.

“I wasn’t asking you Four! I was asking Amaya.” Eric’s hands are balled into fists on the table before he slams them down making me flinch.

“I’m Fine Eric.” I tell him as I stand up from the table and he gives me a short unrecognisable nod. I turned around to leave as Tobias squeezes my hand before he drops it. I wandered around the pit for a while contemplating getting a tattoo before I found myself standing out the front of the tattoo parlour I talked myself into walking in and then spent the next 10 minutes looking at designs and thinking about the placement that I wanted. I decided on an artsy intricate design on my forearm. I didn’t have a meaning I just felt drawn to the tattoo and the placement seemed right.

“What are you getting?” I whipped around to face the voice only to find Eric standing by the open door to the parlour, I point to the one above my head as he takes long thoughtful strides through the parlour to get to me, I don’t know how I knew he had been talking to me. I could have been the fact I could feel his eyes in the back of my head before I had even turned around but I’m glad that he had actually been talking to me and not someone else. He pulled the design down off the wall and inspected it before looking up at me with a questioning look in his eyes. “Where are you getting it?” he questions again.

“On my forearm just here.” I point to the place on my right arm where I want it. He nods and takes a hold of my wrist gently and dragging me towards the back where an older guy covered head to toe in tattoos greets Eric.

“Hello Eric! Back for more on your back so soon? I thought another 2 weeks was what we had discussed.” He asks Eric as he starts to set up his station. Eric shakes his head and starts waving his hand around.

“No, today I’m here with her,” he pointed to me.

“Abnegation I see.” He says as he gets up from the chair he was seated in and comes to inspect me in a way. I find myself shrinking away from his gaze slightly, unsure of this man, and find myself closer to Eric than I thought I had been. His grip on me wrist seemed to become slightly comforting.

“Adam, she’d like this one please. On her right forearm.” Eric could sense that this Adam guy’s gaze had scared me slightly, and because he had seen my fearscape he could understand why I had moved away. Adam took the slide away from Eric and back over to his station where he started to get the ink and gun ready. All up it took him about 3 hours to get the design just perfect on my skin. He cleaned me up and instructed me on the proper way to care for it before letting us go. Eric had stayed with me the whole time looking somewhat bored but still never leaving my side. Eric and I made our way out of the parlour and towards the initiate dorms in silence. Before we rounded the last corner Eric grabbed my wrist yet again making me stop as he looked into my eyes. I looked up at him slightly due to the height difference but watched emotion after emotion fly behind his steel blue eyes.

“I just wanted to make sure you were alright after your last fear.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him as my face scrunched up in feigned confusion.

“Marcus? Why is he one of your fears and what was with the bidding e was doing? The screen went black shortly after numbers started to fly out of his mouth.” He said taking a small step forward as I took one large one back away from him. I didn’t want him to know any of it, and here he was asking the questions that I didn’t want to answer. He saw what Marcus had done to me himself but didn’t see what he let others do to me whenever he pleased.

“It was nothing, just something we used to do that had scared me as a child.” I told him as my hands balled into fists thinking about the first time he allowed his friends to ‘buy’ me for the night. Then the first time he had touched me flashed in my mind and I involuntarily shivered.

“That’s bullshit and you know it! But I’ll let you get some sleep. You’ve got a week off before stage 3 starts, use it wisely.” He told me giving my wrist one last squeeze and making his way back in the direction of the pit. I make my way over to my bed and collapse after the big day I’ve had.

I am awoken by a loud banging like metal on metal. I roll over and cover my face with my pillow. I felt warm breath on the back of my neck making the little hairs there stand up.

“GET UP INITIATE!” I flinched away from the voice and almost fell out of my bed. Eric stood above my bed a stupid little smirk plastered on his stupid perfect face. I saw his eyes flick over my body and I quickly covered my body with my sheet as I shot him a glare before he walked away.

“Everyone in the pit in 5!” he yelled as he walked out the door. I was the first in the pit once I had changed and nearly raced down there. I found Tobias and Eric standing by a board and as I walked up to my brother to wrap him in a tight hug I could feel Eric’s eyes watching me while I walked over. The other initiates started to gather and Tobias and I jumped apart before Eric started speaking.

“Rankings are up. Bottom 10 get your stuff and get out, your cut.” He pulled the sheet off the board behind him.

 1.       Chris

2.       Jasmine

3.       Amaya

4.       Jai

5.       Emily

6.       Andrew

7.       Jeremy

8.       Teaghan

9.       Caleb

10.   Josh

11.   Shaun

12.   Alex

13.   Theo

14.   Damon

15.   Dana

16.   Bella

17.   Lindsey

18.   Jeff

19.   Mollie

20.   Alyssa

 The next 10 months went really quickly I ended up ranking first in my class and was offered a leadership job next to Eric, he was seriously pissed off that he had to train me but he got over it and now I would even go as far as saying we are friends, or at least verging on friendship. I loved my new apartment. I was on the fourth floor of the compound where the rest of the leaders had their homes. I was overseeing training for the new initiates that come in tomorrow, I would be watching over my brother as Eric watched over me to make sure that I was doing my job right. I so wasn’t looking forward to seeing the girls sneak out of Eric’s apartment in the early mornings but what can you do when you live on the same floor. He had started to sleep around about 6 months ago after he had a meeting with Jeanine. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that he was just trying to keep up his reputation. It had started to become disturbing watching him with a new girl wrapped around him every day.

I heard a knock at my door. I closed my book and padded over, in my fuzzy bed socks, to open my front door.

“Hey are you ready for tomorrow?” Four asked me walking in and making himself comfortable on my sofa.

“Hello to you too.” I said sarcastically as I close my door and make my way into the kitchen to put the kettle on to make coffee.

“Looking forward to scaring the shit out of some initiates with me today?” he asks as I grab two mugs from the cupboard and start to add the coffee and sugar.

“Hell yes I am, not so sure how I feel about Eric overseeing me though.” I told him as I poured the water for the coffees and brought them over to the sofa where he had his feet on my coffee table. I kicked his foot off and handed him the mug of hot liquid.

“Do you still have that thing for him that you had back when you were an initiate?” I didn’t look up at him as the images of all the girls sneaking out of Eric’s apartment raced through my mind.

“No, I don’t.” I told him as I clenched my jaw and took a sip of my coffee.

“Okay,” he stretched out the word almost like he didn’t believe me, “Get a goodnights sleep, I’ll be here at 8 an hour before they arrive.” He got up put his mug in the kitchen and gave me a kiss on my head as he made his way out of my apartment. I went to close my door when a few doors down I watched Eric’s door open and close and a women in a tight fitting, short black dress exits with her shoes in her hand. I roll my eyes and slam my own door. I feel my façade slip and a tear makes its way down my cheek. I swore Eric wouldn’t do this to me, I needed to keep my head up and not let him get to me. I switched off all of my lights and went to bed.