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herenortherenearnorfar · 3 years ago

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This Tornado Tolerates And Respects You

A little story about Gothmog and orcs that I’ll probably put on other sites later. But for now, a tumblr exclusive! CW for the terrible reproductive politics of evil (implied reproductive coercion, forced childbearing, light eugenics), orc awfulness, disdain for incarnates, radiation poisoning, chemical weapons, Fingon’s fate, mentions of cannibalism, malnourishment, ear cropping, and all of the above with the implied harm to children.

Orcs, Lord Melkor’s special pet project, a blasphemy first and a strategic asset second, didn’t make the best troops. They could swarm over a target in a useful mass of bodies but they lacked skill and drive. For the Captain of Angband’s own force of fire and shadow, spirits sprung free from the tyranny of the Valar, orcs were a sea of troublesome bodies, cluttering up the field of battle. More flesh to whip through, barbed wire quick, more lungs to choke with lime gas. An annoyance, not an ally.

He didn’t have very high expectations of them as a source of soldiers and there were very few individual orcs who he respected. Gorfaunt was one of those rare exceptions.

They’d fought on the same battlefield under the taunting stars, in those blissful days before the heavens changed, and he’d been impressed by the orc commanders ability to marshal troops. Very few in that division ended up trampled beneath Balrog feet. Even the retreat was prompt, almost orderly, without sacrificing that wild spirit which was one of the orcs’ few redeeming qualities.

When it came time to capture the stripling-king of the elves he’d requested Gorfaunt’s orcs in particular. Once again they’d proven their mettle and the commander had become of of the Captain’s favorites. If orcs had to be stationed next to their betters it was preferable that it be Gorfaunt’s orcs, who knew how to comport themselves and could fight near Balrogs without dying in droves.

Now with the latest glorious battle (and another successful collaboration, the Captain still glowed at the memory of the Noldor’s latest king cracking open to spill his red insides over his silver banner) behind them and Lord Melkor demanding Nargothrond and Gondolin, they met once a month to strategize, share intelligence, and complain about everyone else. To an outsider they might have passed as friends. There was less formality between the two of them than another high general of the iron fortress might have demanded, they sat at the same table and spoke freely.

(The Lieutenant still asked commanders to bow before him; that was why even his own troops called him Sauron behind his back. Gothmog was a superior appellation, less insulting, more fearful, but he still didn’t hasten to encourage its use.)

Despite their surface level amicability and the handful of tried-and-true inside jokes—mostly having to do with how enemies had died— they could bat at each other, they knew very little about each other’s lives. Meat and smoke only mixed when making a brisket, trying to relate two such different ways of being seemed impossible.

But when he saw Gorfaunt waddling into their monthly kvetch with a belly round and swollen like a tick’s, the Captain felt driven to say something. He was the marshal of Angband, he couldn’t let his king’s forces go to seed.

“Are you ill? Cursed?”

Gorfaunt managed to pull out a chair, made for a Balrog three times the size of an orc, and hoist themselves into it with rangy arms. “No? Just five months with a baby kicking around in my insides. The little bugger’s finally starting to show itself.”

That took a second to decipher. “You’re having a baby?”

Of course the Captain knew the basics of how incarnates made more of themselves. It was a topic of great fascination in the old days, when Yavanna was first figuring the system out, and of course the Lieutenant would prattle on about warg breeding to anyone who’d listen. They had sex— another thing that did not come naturally to beings of spirits, though some Maiar had made astounding progress in the field, for pleasure was pleasure and even Nienna’s acolytes sought catharsis and comfort—then there was lots of squishy biology on a level invisible to the incarnates themselves, then a little parasite was somehow blessed with Erú’s fire, to be nurtured until it could nurture itself.

He also knew that orcs, like elves and dwarves, had little distinction between men and womenfolk. Useful when it meant you could channel your entire adult population to battle. Startling when you realized that a key ally had been quietly pregnant for months without you, a greater being able to perceive stalactites growing and the scales on insect wings, noticing.

In truth he’d been doing a lot less noticing of late. His senses were dulling. Perhaps it was the light of the cursed gems, which painted everything in blinding, indistinguishable holiness. Or he was just losing his touch.

If he focused now he could see it. It was easiest to sense on the plane of wraiths. There was Gorfaunt, a guttering candle; wheezing, weak. All orcs had that fire, however dim. No one had managed to fully extinguish it though it had been much suppressed. Tucked against her, nearly imperceptible, was a little spark. Not much yet but given tinder and carefully fanned it could grow. “You’re having a baby,” he marveled.

Gorfaunt’s face was… orcs were hard to read at the best of times, bubbling over with noisy pain and anger that obscured their true emotions, prone to skin diseases and horrendous eye infections that muddled their expressions. She didn’t wear her gas mask around him anymore, though most were quick to cover up around any Maia of Morgoth. It helped little, her face was still opaque as the mountain itself. “Yep, Captain.”

“Good?” You congratulated an ally on a new weapon, a new bond, a promotion. Which one was an infant classified as? What was the correct form?

“Hopefully it’ll be over and the little goblin will be in the caves with the old’uns by the time we find either of the cities.” Gorfaunt provided, only barely contextualizing his felicitations. She was chewing on the inside on her cheek; sometimes she would gnaw until she spat black blood. “Terrible time for it. Terrible time. But the high ups are worried about reinforcements down the line, I suppose.”

Orcs came from orcs. It was a fact so simple it barely bore considering. Another department handled it. The new ones just showed up, springy and long limbed, faces still soft and unmarred. “Goblins” he’d heard older orcs call those fresh pale creatures. Barely even monsters, more like stunted, crepuscular versions of the elves and dwarves they fought.

“How much longer?” They had a few good leads on Nargothrond, a promising word about Túrin Turambar. The Captain could not sack that city himself, the honor had already been promised to the sulfurous worm. Apparently they wanted to test the mettle of these dragons. But Gothmog could assign a few good orc commanders to supervise, make sure the worm was not overstepping his bounds.

Dark blood trickled out of the corner of Gorfaunt’s mouth. “Five months, I’m told. Could be more, could be less. Then I have to wait until the thing is independent enough to leave alone, that’s another few months.” She was probably counting months as the orcs had started to, by the moon. Wretched traitor, Tilion, who’d laughed with them at the idea of running away then turned his face when the time came to flee for freedom. They hated it as much as everyone else but in their hatred they were aware of its cycles. They rejoiced when it went dark.

“You’ll still be able to manage your underlings?” Orcs, and freed Maiar, were fractious. They did not respect a leader who lacked the strength to force them to obey. It could be exhausting. And Gorfaunt was already so round. The Captain did not wish to lose her support over one orcling.

“I think so. So far… in old days you’d den up somewhere for a year, avoid everyone prowling for blood, but I don’t want to fight my way up the ranks again. I’ve got an ax and I’m using it.” Despite that she sounded tired.

Long heartbeats stretched between them, that exquisite embarrassment of two coworkers suddenly forced to talk about private affairs.

“This is your first,” the Captain didn’t reach the tone of a question with that one.

“Yes. The recruiters were getting growly so I grabbed a fellow. I’ve been avoiding it for too long.”

“You don’t want a child.” Again, not quite a question. He was feeling it out as he goes along. This is the longest conversation about orc reproduction he’s ever paid attention to, for the Lieutenants diatribes we’re always dull.

It was no matter to him, except that this was the only orc commander he could tolerate working with and she was chewing through her own cheek in discomfort.

“They take something from you,” Gorfaunt admitted. “Dame and sire both, but worse for the dame since she has to carry the clot. You go… stretchy. Bleached like old bone. I’ve seen soldiers and after twenty children they’re not good for anything but shoving onto a line of pikes. Raw meat for the wargs.”

That didn’t make sense to him, but he was never a scholar of flesh or spirit. He knew how a skull split and how a soul fled, how this matter-sprung life withered, how it died. That was all that counted. He also knew how to value a resource.

“There won’t be any after this,” he said firmly. “Not if you don’t want them.” If need be he’d escalate to Lord Melkor, frame it as sapping strength from their command structure and propose making officers off limits from breeding programmes.

“As you command, Captain,” she said with a bowed head, but she looked gratifyingly relieved, and their conversation could finally move on to the latest stories of occupied territories and the search for the hidden cities.

The next few months Gorfaunt somehow managed to get bigger and bigger, until she was no longer able to swing herself into a chair and had to take their meeting standing. Her leather armor no longer fit and with just a thin layer of rags over her distended stomach it was easy to see the squirming creature inside.

Ferocious little animal. It would go so still and then kick out again, as if it could burst free of its creator by force of will alone. The kernel of its mind was forming too, a hazy bubble of sensation and half formed emotion. He could see what had the Lieutenant fascinated. It wasn’t his field but it was morbidly interesting, seeing the shape of something new and moldable come together right in front of you.

But he had not been made a sculptor or a craftsman. He’d been born a wild thing, a tornado, a volcano, every disaster meant to fell cities, and though he had not known the words yet he’d sensed in his core, seen in glimpses in the song, that he was a creature of war. Like many other wild things—Ossë, the simpering coward tied up in Uinen’s tresses, excluded— he’d found his way to Melkor in the end. Oh, he’d idled for a time with Vána, heard Námo’s dolorous call, but it was Melkor who he came back to and Melkor who he picked in the end.

Melkor taught him so many more ways to be. The smoke, the blood, the screaming not in sorrow but in anger. He taught the others who came to him as well. In the Captain’s little squad alone there was one who learned the slaver’s whip and the threat of fire, one who learned the ooze of pus and malodorous air, one who came to appreciate the ravenings of rabid beasts. From the dragons in the treasure-caves to the cat in the kitchen to the vampires in the highest towers, they were all Melkor’s creations.

Gorfaunt, born and raised here in the shadow of his ancient power, was even more Melkor’s than most. This was how the Captain rationalized his continuing fondness for her as she weakened, his interest in her spawn. Works of the same maker might gravitate together. They could see parts of themselves in each other, the way he could once see himself in other Ëalar born of the same bit of song.

When Gorfaunt came in four months after their revelatory meeting with a sagging belly and a bundle nestled against her chest he was excited to finally see what had been made.

It took a bit of coaxing to get her to show him the baby but no orc would outright refuse an order from anyone stronger than them, they knew better than that. The newborn was dutifully unwrapped and presented, though Gorfaunt’s expression suggested that she considered this all a silly waste of time.

It was a rumpled wet creature; mostly skin and bones, with a cranium as big as its rounded torso. Small too, barely bigger than Gorfaunt’s hand, and Gorfaunt was smaller than all elves and many humans; based on overheard complaints failure to grow was an ongoing issue with their kind. When it was unswaddled sticklike limbs flailed out and began batting at the air ineffectually. Despite this wriggling its face remained in a sleepy scowl. It wasn’t until Gothmog moved one cherry-hot finger closer to it that it opened its hazy grey eyes and tried to focus on him. Even then the dismayed frown stayed put.

An unscarred orc was always an interesting sight; for it revealed the scale of their reworking. How much orcishness was self-replicating, as the Lieutenant liked to claim, and how much had to be beaten in? This one had a droopy brow bone and already peeling corpse-grey skin but it did not look much like an orc besides that. It even had hair, which most orcs lacked (aside from a few lank patches). The fine red down covered its whole body, thickest on the head and face and arms.

“It’s supposed to fall out,” Gorfaunt said, “Everyone says it’ll fall out soon. Even the prisoners lose their hair after a while, especially in the deep mines.”

That was probably because of the miasma of decay that emanated from the ores of Angband. Not macro-decay, of skin and bone (that came later) but the infitesimal decay. Every piece of metal— every piece of existence, when you got down to it— was made of little stars. There was a gaseous center of energy and little orbiting specks around that, spinning in probabilistic loops. Like stars some were bigger and some were smaller and some were ready to collapse. Ilmarë loved to speak of supernovas. The yellow and blue metals below the mountain were full of little stars collapsing, reforming, giving off energy in great sums as they did so.

The Captain had noted the negative effects of this energetic output on incarnates some time ago. Elves sickened and humans just died— Lord Melkor had moved the man he hoped would give him the location of Gondolin far from those mines for a reason. A few of the spirits with natures inclined towards metal, salt, and industry had already incorporated the burning energy into their signatures. The Lieutenant doubtless had some wicked little experiment running with it. It was a part of life here, that background hum of a trillion crumbling particles, and the Captain never thought of the effect on orcs, though they were exposed from birth.

Now that he focused he could see the little crumbs of decay glancing off the baby.

Hmm.

It would probably be fine.

It was already rubbing its eyes and going back to sleep, one hand curled next to a crumpled, not-yet-cropped ear.

“Are you recovered?” he asked Gorfaunt.

“I’m fit enough to fight,” she said shortly, defensively, as if afraid he’d snatch her command from her. “I’ll be better soon when this thing is gone.”

The Captain’s huge palm hovered over her infant. He knew better than to touch; his ability to change forms was not what it once was, he could not stop being a bipedal avalanche, to strong, too close, too dangerous. Even just containing the noxious gases— the pustulent yellow and choking green— simmering inside this war shaped body was difficult. If he kept a few feet distance the chaotic heat of his skin faded into the air and the baby wriggled contentedly in the ambient glow, like a little lizard.

“And how long will that be?”

Gorfaunt’s hand twitched. Another few months, till it can manage worm meal and listen to the grands.”

It seemed impossible that anything could be big enough to leave alone in such a short time; but incarnation was not the Captain’s specialty. “And that’s the accepted practice?”

“A little young, but safe now that the master put a stop to the baby eating problem.”

“I wouldn’t want it to be a concern,” the Captain said very seriously, even though his fingers curled slightly around the baby’s limp body. “We can make modifications if the child must stay longer.”

Gorfaunt glanced down at her sprawled offspring. “I don’t— I don’t want this to last any longer. I’d rather have my life go back to normal.”

That, at least, he could understand. It has been a rather troubling experience overall. Revelations are not always useful and though he’s gained some knowledge it’s not very practical stuff.

“One more question, commander, then I’ll drop the matter. What is it named??”

That nascent mind bubble had sharpened with time and experience but was still comprised mostly of sensation. He could not even grasp at a basic sense of self. The child’s mother should know what if calls itself, if anyone did.

(He wanted to remember the name, for forty years from now, when he needed more good orcs. All those rants about the fundamentals of inheritance left him with some ideas about how incarnates develop traits. Another Gorfaunt would be a helpful tool to have on hand.)

The question left Gorfaunt unimpressed. “It doesn’t name itself anything yet, it hasn’t got the common sense. And no one’s given it a name because it hasn’t done anything interesting.”

“It has an interesting look” the Captain pointed out, “Tell them to call it Red Cap,” he slipped into the elf tongue, which had better color words than the one the Lieutenant devised, and in the process accidentally named the child after a former king of the Noldor. “Or something like that.”

Gorfaunt apparently had a better memory for politics than he gave her credit for, or perhaps just a distaste for the elf cant, because she quickly translated it back into Angband’s crackly tongue . “Rotbint.”

“Yes.” A Balrog, even the chief of Balrogs, could not give much to something so soft and incarnadine. A name, incorporeal, existing in the plane the Captain knew best, was the only thing he could offer. “Now, to business?”

Gorfaunt wrapped the little creature away— it woke halfway through the rolling to stare at them once more— then tucked it against her chest.

The Captain was sad to see it go, though he couldn’t say why.

He remembered that he had come to this physical world for a reason once. He had wanted to see all there was to see, to feel and taste everything, chew chunks of Arda up and spit it out new. Disasters hungered as much as anyone. Yet all he’d had lately was war fare; blood-soaked mud and rage-tinged fear.

Deprived of fresh experiences, he clung to the potential, the novelty, of new life.

Perhaps Gondolin would see him out of his funk, he thought. It couldn’t hide forever.

“We’ll find it, Captain,” Gorfaunt assured him stubbornly. “And we’ll tear it down brick by brick, raze their gardens, fill their streets with blood.”

Even with a baby trying to gum her collarbone her firm tone allowed no questions.

Orcs were, as a rule, bothersome, unruly, walking corpses. Fractious, ugly, difficult, bothersome, recklessly stupid. The Maiar serving under the Captain were sometimes stereotyped as simpleminded brutes but at least they were able to perceive the world around them, even if few bothered to use that perception. In comparison orcs were stumbling around in the dark. They were inefficient as well, you needed three of them to take down any decent enemy. But when they were well made they were well made. Those were the ones that made it all worth it.

It had to be worth it. This was freedom, after all.

#the silmarillion #gothmog #orcs #silmarillion fanfiction #angband #fanfic #Sauron gets some mentions

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monstersandmaw · 5 years ago

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Male ice dragon x cursed female reader (nsfw)

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

This is a one-off special story that I wanted to write as a huge huge thank you to a very generous person who supported me on Patreon and also on ko-fi. I don't normally do this, and although this is not a commission, I did chat with them about what they would like, and I've wanted to write an ice dragon for a long time, so that worked for both of us! Thank you, 'The Silent Pariah'! Hope you enjoy it! It's been on Patreon for a week, and went down really well, so it’s time to share it here!

Content: reader is cursed to turn into a more monstrous form at night, and is locked away in a tower, guarded by an ice dragon. There's a bit of a misunderstanding, some angst, a bit of fluff, and some smut. Words: 5124

Dusk drifted down around the stones of the castle, bringing with it that daily, familiar crawling under your skin. Night was a time for monsters and shadows, for creatures less than human, and for hiding away, but you welcomed it with open arms as you had for years.

Your bones started to grow warm, your nerves ringing and prickling, and you knew it wouldn’t be long now.

Turning your back on the courtyard of the deserted castle, you left the balcony and made your way inside through the beautiful, hand carved doorway and into the bedchamber beyond. Sliding your dress off your shoulders, you stepped out of your clothes and felt the change sweeping up inside you, rising like a flood of unbridled power and raw joy. Laughing, you bowed forwards like a supplicant at a shrine, and when you straightened no more than a few minutes later, breathing hard and sweating, the creature that blinked its reptilian eyes back at you from the mirror on the far wall was not the nobleman’s daughter with the blood of kings flowing through her veins.

Blueish black, scaled skin covered your cheeks, the delicate scales leading your gaze towards pointed ears, just barely visible through the thick hair that fell around your now inhuman face. Blinking slowly as your gold, crackle-glazed eyes readjusted, you rolled your shoulders and flexed your taloned hands. With skin the colour of shadows at midnight, and a spine-studded whip of a tail, you slid on a simple linen tunic and turned for the spiral staircase.

Outside, through the walls of the castle, you could hear the enormous wing beats of the only other soul who lived in this vast castle, each flex of his wing strong as a storm wind as he came back to his roost at sunset.

“There you are,” came a deep, sonorous rumbling voice as you stepped out into the evening air, still revelling in the change.

Looking like a thousand shards of moonlight, the dragon adorned the crumbling curtain wall of the castle, delicately perching there with the grace of an ornamental bird.

“Irien,” you smiled. “Good day?”

Polite as ever, he inclined his head, slowly blinking sapphire blue eyes and smiling softly to reveal a maw full of deadly teeth. The dragon stretched out one of his elegant, muscular forelegs and climbed down from the wall, over the old stable block, and into the courtyard like a cat slinking down a flight of steps. His ivory talons barely made a whisper on the slate roofs of the tumble-down old buildings, and with his silky-white wings tucked neatly against his scaled back, he flowed like quicksilver.

“Mmm, yes,” he purred, lowering his head almost to the ground in greeting and closing his eyes again as you ran your hands over the glass-hard scales of his face. Each one was the size of your palm there, but as they slid further down his glacially pale body, they grew large as your whole hand, some even bigger than that. “So warm,” he laughed, nuzzling your fingers playfully and breathing his icy breath against your fingers.

“I’m not that warm. It’s not my fault you’re basically an icicle,” you snorted and he laughed, drawing his neck up like a swan.

Suddenly he scowled and turned serious, his whole body tensing.

“Company?” you asked.

You’d been through this charade together before, and something always sank a little in your chest when you thought about what the arrival of a knight and his little posse might mean. Would they have some magic with them this time that negated the ageless magic of the dragon? Some spear sharp enough to pierce his scales? Some trick he’d never heard of? Perhaps a ballista borrowed from the dragon hunters of the south? Would this be the day that your curse would be broken and you’d have to leave the relative freedom of your castle for the gilded cage of marriage?

Irien looked back at you, his eyes hard and stern as he watched your internal struggle play out in a series of scowls across your face. “Same as usual?” he asked.

“Drive them away,” you snarled. “I have no interest in breaking this curse so I can go and live like a brood mare until I produce the requisite number of appropriately-gendered offspring, thank you.”

With a savage snarl, he beat his wings, once, twice, and launched himself into the air. His ensuing war-scream could have split the night sky in two and it made your ears ring and your vision blur.

Irien was relatively young for a dragon but he was still nearly a hundred years old, and there wasn’t a trick or strategy he hadn’t yet encountered from some upstart young knight, hoping to win fame and fortune at the end of a lance. Oh, and the chance to break your curse. Somehow that always seemed to be an afterthought with these men.

“No one ever bothers to ask if I even want ‘rescuing’,” you muttered bitterly as you watched Irien sail away like a galleon on the unseen currents of air.

He circled the central tower of the old elven castle once to get a measure of how many there were, before spiralling down in a whirling corkscrew, breath blazing shards of ice down on the unfortunate troop somewhere beyond your view below. It wasn’t that you didn’t feel sorry for the way they died - at least it was quick - but you couldn’t help the sour sting of spite that lanced through you whenever Irien announced that there was another lot at the abandoned castle’s gates. Your parents still hadn’t given up on ridding the family of the stain of your curse.

Irien was back within five minutes, landing gracefully beside you, breathing hard from the exertion of flying and drawing on his reserves to create the ice-laced breath inside him.

“Were there many this time?”

He shook his head. “Only six in total.”

“Banners?”

“Grey and yellow field with a black raven.”

You turned away in disgust. “Those were Halvard’s men,” you said. “My father’s closest adviser.” Lifting your shadowy palm, you curled your fingers and inspected the black claws before turning your hand over and watching the way the moonlight glinted on the leathery scales on the back of your hand.

Monstrous. Vile. Cursed.

Lock her away!

True love’s kiss! The only way to break it!

Dragonskeep is the only place for her now. She cannot be seen.

The shame of our family…

Irien’s soft, concerned rumble behind you drew you back from your ragged collection of memories and you turned with a half smile. “I pity you sometimes, you know?” you sighed.

“Me?” he asked with a soft chuckle, falling into step beside you as you wandered off, vaguely thinking of heading towards the rambling rose gardens at the back of the castle. “Why would you pity me? You’re the one locked in here with a dragon who keeps eating the men who come to rescue you.”

“True. I used to think you were no better than them,” you admitted. “Those first few years after they dumped me here…”

Since then, you thought he’d rather come to think of you as part of the castle furniture, or even just another thing in his hoard to guard and protect. It was better than nothing, you supposed, and you had the books in the old elven library for company, and the vegetable garden at the back that you’d been restoring since you were sixteen, and a rather impressive number of stone sculptures ranging from the ‘uniquely abstract’ to something halfway decent. The masons who had abandoned the stone workshops in the gardens of the castle had left their tools behind, like children’s toys abandoned.

He scowled, clearly a little affronted, and shuffled his wings like a chilly bird. “Why? Have I ever given you reason to think badly of me?”

You stopped and raised an eyebrow at him. “You accepted their gold and gems easily enough when they showed up on your doorstep with a newly-cursed thirteen year old and struck whatever bargain it was with you to keep me here,” you pointed out. It felt so long ago now, but you’d never forget the first time you’d seen him. You’d burst into tears and begged your parents not to abandon you here.

Irien had the good grace to look embarrassed at that, turning his snowy head away and grunting awkwardly. “I… Well, I did, yes. But when I asked why they wanted me to take a girl under my protection ‘until such time as her true love can break the curse’, I have to say I was frankly appalled.”

Something ugly twisted inside you at his words. Perhaps it was the recent reminder of the world’s disgust at your ‘condition’, and their determination to change you back, but hot outrage boiled up inside you at his words. “Appalled? So you do think the way they do?”

“What?”

“This!” you blurted, halting and angling your face so that the moonlight glinted on the scales there and on the jaw full of fangs. You stared him down with blazing, inhuman, yellow eyes. “You do think this is disgusting, just the way they do?”

“I thought you didn’t care,” he replied haughtily. “I thought you didn’t care about the curse at all.”

“I don’t!” you practically shrieked. “But I do care about -” you cut off suddenly, feeling as though the ground were rocking beneath you. All these years, he’d just been tolerating your company because of the regular shipments of diamonds and cut gemstones that your parents added to his vault of hoarded wealth in an attempt to keep all but the most determined suitors at bay.

“Care about what?” Irien asked in a softer voice.

“What would you know?” you hissed, turning away and marching towards the tower where he couldn’t enter without bringing the whole lot down around him. “You’re made of ice anyway.”

You left Irien standing in the courtyard and marched up the stairs back to your chambers. You heard Irien lingering in the courtyard, but eventually he took wing and left the castle for his preferred roost on the cliff just above it. It was a long time before you got to sleep that night.

When dawn came the next day, you didn't bother getting out of bed til late in the day, and you clung to the shadows of the library instead of going out to tend to the garden. It was a warm day, and the plants would need a water, but you just couldn’t face meeting Irien now. For all the time that you’d been here, you’d always assumed that he’d seen past the effects of the curse.

It had taken you almost a year not to be afraid of him, but as the months had ticked by after that, and he’d shown you the castle grounds and how to take care of the abandoned elven fortress; how to feed yourself and even how to read ancient elven so that you could access the rest of the books in the library; you’d come to think of him as more of a guardian than a guard. Had he just been humouring the cursed little girl all these years, despite the fact that you were a woman grown now?

Late in the afternoon, just as you started to feel restless again with the gradual sinking of the sun, a faint tapping reached your ears, coming from the far end of the library. The room stretched the full length of one of the newer wings of the castle complex, with light flooding in on either side through huge windows, and at the far end it terminated in a wide balustraded balcony where former scholars would no doubt have gone to get some air during their studies.

You poked your head out from behind the bookshelf where you’d been studying best way to rid a certain garden herb of aphids, and squinted along the clear aisle between the rows of shelves. There, at the balcony at the far end, you could just glimpse Irien, gently tapping a claw on the glass. He was far too large to fit his body onto the terrace, but he could perch elegantly on the rim like a butterfly on a teacup.

Grinding your teeth, you fleetingly considered simply ignoring him, but in the end you straightened and dumped the book on the floorboards. Grim-faced, you marched up the length of the room and opened the leaded-glass door at the far end, coming to a halt in the centre of the balcony with crossed arms.

“I think,” Irien carefully began the moment you were outside, “That we may have had a misunderstanding yesterday.”

Your scowl deepened.

“Hear me out?” he asked, clearly well aware of your tendency to bolt at the first sign of discord.

Reluctantly, you nodded. As far as you knew, he’d never lied to you before.

Out here in the fading sunshine, with the low light flashing in prismatic ripples along those pearlescent scales, he looked… Frankly, he looked like a dream, and something ached inside you the longer you gazed at him. The graceful lines of his lithe, powerful body, the delicate, leathery membrane of his white wings, his ivory claws, the crystal spikes that adorned his head like a crown and continued down his lissom neck to his shoulders, only to start up again at the root of his tail and end in a fractured cluster of crystals around the tip of his tail; everything about him spoke of elder magic and of something ancient, something lost and forgotten from another age, despite his relative youth. He was intoxicating.

With a great inhale as if for courage, he began by apologising. “I’m sorry that what I said came out so wrongly yesterday,” he said. “I didn’t mean that you are appalling in any way. What has always appalled me, however, is the fact that your parents were prepared to abandon their own child to the dubious care of a dragon, and lock her away in an old elven stronghold for something that wasn’t her fault or doing in the first place.”

“Oh.” Well… when he put it that way…

“Oh,” he laughed. “I thought you might know me a little better than that after so much time together…” he added, tone bordering on huffy and petulant.

Even you had to admit that it was true. “Yeah,” you hedged. “I… I thought I did too. Maybe that was why I was so shocked. I’m sorry too… I was still in a strange mood after the soldiers came and I let it get in the way and took what you said the wrong way.”

Irien smiled gently and rumbled a slow, almost juddering exhale that you’d always found strangely attractive. In fact, you nearly missed what he said because your attention was focused on the sound. “I promise that what I said to you all those years ago still stands… the time I found you crying on the roof of the keep.”

Your lips gave a feeble twitch at that. He’d had to fly you down because you’d been too scared to climb. “And what is that?” you demanded though you recalled it perfectly well. Your eyes glittered as the mood shifted palpably between you, both tangibly relieved to be sliding back into your familiar repartee and banter, almost as if you’d not fallen out at all.

Catching the look in your eye, he gave another half-laugh. “That if you like the way you are, then it seems pretty futile to me to try to change you against your will. And personally,” he added, lowering his head a little and turning a tad bashful, “I think you’re beautiful whether the sun is up or down.”

The churning in your stomach that had been gnawing away at you since the previous evening suddenly stilled, and you smiled. “Really? I mean… it doesn’t bother you at all?”

Irien rolled his lovely blue eyes. “Not in the slightest. If anything, your ‘cursed’ form is… well…” He bustled and flustered a little with his wings, turning his gaze away.

That was a surprise. “Is what, Irien?”

“You’re stronger and faster like that; your eyes work better in the dark, and your hands seem to borrow a bit of inspiration from my kind,” he said, holding up one ivory-clawed hand so that the sunlight danced off his own talons for a moment. “And you have a tail…” he croaked.

“Sounds like you’re trying to tell me you’ve got a crush on my cursed self,” you snorted in disbelief, taking a few steps over to the balcony and resting your forearms on it. When he didn’t answer immediately, you shot him a sidelong look. “Irien?”

“I… have tried to tell myself that we are victims of circumstance… That… what I have come to feel for you is only to be expected when two souls are locked away in close quarters with each other for so long, but…” He paused and shrugged as he returned your look askance and exhaled. “Alas, I remain unconvinced.”

“Wait, is that your way of saying you do have a crush on me after all?”

He scoffed, frustrated with himself, and snapped, “When you put it in those terms, it sounds somewhat… cheap and insincere.”

His fingers flexed on the stonework, talons grinding small indents into it and sending a tiny trickle of finely-ground dust to the tiled floor of the balcony. Reaching one hand out you placed it over the leathery scales on his hand - really his foreleg - and squeezed. It was like squeezing stone, but he clearly felt the impact because he jolted a little in surprise and slid a foot down the wall from his perch. His wings flapped instinctively to keep himself in place and you almost laughed.

“So your feelings for me aren’t cheap and insincere then?”

“No,” he growled, and then with a little more grace he sighed. “No, not at all. I can’t stop thinking about you. Whenever I see someone with their troops tramping up to the gate, it’s not my hoard I think to protect.” He turned his head and blinked quietly at you. “It’s you.”

Something caught in your throat at that and tears prickled your eyes. “Irien…”

“Mmm?” he rumbled.

“Will you fly me somewhere?”

“Anywhere. Where would you like me to take you?”

Your eyes drifted over the rambling castle grounds, bathed in the golden light of early evening. Of course, now that you knew he truly cared for you, perhaps you could persuade him to fly you anywhere in the world, although it wasn’t particularly safe for his kind out there. People built cruel ballistae with bolts as thick as tree trunks to fell dragons from the sky like downed swans, but in these parts, he assured you he was safe enough.

When you didn’t answer him immediately, he rumbled your name and lowered his white muzzle to the balustrade, resting it there and watching like a patient hound while you decided. You placed your fingers on his nose and felt the chilly, frosty breath wash over them. The sheer steadiness of his presence was almost overwhelming, like he had his own gravity and was drawing you in and holding you there. You found both of your hands going to his face and suddenly you were leaning over him and sobbing.

“Hey,” he murmured, bringing one wingtip carefully to touch your shoulder. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

You sniffed but the surging emotions refused to let you talk. It was too much. After a lifetime knowing you’d been abandoned here for who and what you were, to have the unwavering acceptance of the only being in the world who had shown you true respect and kindness… it left you spinning.

His pale hand closed around your waist and he pushed off the tower with you delicately in his grasp. You’d done this before, though not often, and the thrilling swoop in your stomach chased most of your tears away, leaving room for little else but wonder in your heart as the world spread out beneath you like a patchwork quilt.

Irien didn’t tell you where he was headed, and you found you didn’t care where he took you. He climbed higher into the hazy, lavender sky above, and soared over the castle wall and out into the pastures beyond where deer grazed and occasionally the massive mountain sheep would come down to enjoy respite in the warmer valley in the winter. Out beyond the open, untamed fields, a huge, glittering lake sparkled, and he seemed to be making for it as he glided along on unseen thermals.

The sun had just begun to kiss the mountain tops to the west, gilding a line of fire along their silhouettes, when he landed on the quartz pebbles of the lake shore, their colour almost the same as his own white scales. He set you down on the grassy bank just above the beach and stepped back.

“Better?” he asked and you nodded.

“Yeah, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he replied, bringing his head back and nuzzling your stomach affectionately, blue eyes rolling closed.

As your hands traced the contours of his massive head, he sank his body down to lie on the pebbles and curled his tail around his legs like a cat. The rumbling of his breathing soon deepened until you had to giggle. “Are you purring? Do dragons purr?”

“Only when we’re - oh - really… ahh…” he faltered as your fingertips skirted around the base of one of his crystalline horns which was, apparently, extremely sensitive.

“Really what, Irien…”

“Ah…” he gasped as you repeated the gesture. “Oh… gods that’s good…” he blurted.

You kept doing it until he rolled onto one side, breathing quickening as a tangible shiver passed along his spine. “I didn’t know you were so sensitive,” you murmured, leaning down to plant a kiss on his smooth cheek.

Half-twitch and half-spasm, his right foreleg raked a huge channel through the pebbles as he groaned long and low, claws flexed.

“Should I stop?” you teased.

“Up to you,” he rasped. “But…”

“But what…?”

He seemed to be having difficulty stringing a sentence together, which was amusing. The fact that he was so affected by your touch was definitely doing things to you as well, and as you felt the sun going down, you realised you were going to shift soon.

“But what, Irien?”

His jaws opened and he began to pant, little crystals of ice forming along his canines and over the pebbles of the beach where his head lay pillowed. His belly was pale as moonlight, the iridescent sheen only beginning on the larger scales of his sides and back, and as you gazed down the length of his body, you saw that the small slit in the sheath on his lower abdomen, almost between his legs, had begun to glisten with a pearlescent fluid. It looked swollen too, and as you caressed that sensitive spot on his head again, you watched as the very tip of his cock began to emerge from the sheath.

“You want me to keep going?” you asked, feeling your own skin heating up, partly from the impending change and partly because the sight of him getting so worked up was affecting you too.

“I didn’t… bring you here for… this,” he panted. “But I won’t stop you if you want to.”

“Do you want it though?” you asked, stepping back as your bones began to creak and shift. “Shit, sorry I’m… I’m shifting…” you gasped, reeling backwards and landing hard on the ground behind you. “I thought I had a few more minutes…”

It didn’t take long, and when you looked up, he was watching you with his steady, sapphire gaze. “Alright?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you change.”

With your new ‘monstrous’ eyes, you had an even better view of him. Where your human sight saw gentle rainbows shimmering on his scales, now you saw refracted light glittering and shattering off his spines, and the sheer depth of colour in his eyes was phenomenal. “How about another kind of ‘first’?” you asked, voice huskier now, and you began to slide the simple shirt up over your head.

The heat of his gaze made you preen a little as you revealed your dark blue, scaled body to him. His jaw parted again, mouth hanging open softly, and his tongue was visible too behind that row of enormous teeth. He was tasting your arousal on the air, you realised, like a predator.

“Gods, that’s hot,” you hissed and he tilted his head, catlike. “I want you, Irien. Is… Is that wrong?”

He shook his head. “If it’s what you feel, then it’s not wrong. I want you too, though I fear I might break you.”

“We’ll have to get creative,” you grinned, feeling your tail lashing behind you playfully.

“Look at you,” he snarled, rearing up a little like a cat about to pounce; a cat made of glass and porcelain.

His cock was not yet fully unsheathed, but you could see it - dark blue at the base, the colour of the heart of the lake behind him, with paler ridges that looked extremely inviting, and fading to pure white at the tip. It twitched and drooled under your gaze and he grunted softly. He was huge. The only way you could think to give him any kind of pleasure would be either to ride him and grind yourself along his length as best you could, or to loop your legs around it and let him fuck the space between them, and honestly, both had their appeal.

A huge drop of pre-come slid from the tip and landed on the pebbles below as his cock twitched again. He was breathing hard now, nostrils flared, and he stared openly as you stepped out of the last of your clothes, moving towards him while he stayed perfectly still. It was as if he thought you’d evaporate if he shifted so much as a muscle.

He whispered your name and you placed your finger on his lips in passing as you stalked along the length of his body. With the slightest pressure of your hands you asked him to tip over onto his side again, and he did without question.

The huge dragon folded his wings carefully behind him and then rolled onto his back as you directed him with little more than a quick touch here or there. His cock began to slide fully free of the slick sheath, and you jutted your chin upwards at his belly. He understood your request and brought his hand to the ground, palm up, for you to step into, and he raised you up onto his stomach. His hand fell back immediately to the beach beneath, limp and weak. You straddled his cock and he gave a huge, low frequency groan that made the water ripple and dance. His tail lashed violently, sending a spray of pebbles up into the air and splashing down into the water.

Slowly, teasingly, you rocked your hips over the tip of his cock and watched him leaking beneath you and all over his stomach. The claws of his hands scrabbled in the stones beneath him and his wings, stretched out on either side like a butterfly on display, flexed to their widest span. His head jerked backwards and he opened his maw wide.

“You like that?” you asked and he nodded, mute with pleasure as you picked up a steady rhythm.

“Oh gods that’s so good,” he grunted after a while, voice sounding wrecked. He bucked his hips upwards and nearly dislodged you, but you grabbed the scales of his belly and ground down harder against him, gripping with your thighs. “I’m not going… to last long,” he panted. “I’m… oh gods… oh…” and he chanted your name over and over as you worked him harder and harder.

You managed to catch a ridge of his cock against your clit and ground yourself into it before bringing your finger carefully there to help you along. When he realised what you were doing, he took one look at you pleasuring yourself and using his cock to help, gave a short whimper, before his whole body tensed up.

He came all over himself, ropes of hot release searing against your clit in a rush as his body clenched and convulsed, mouth open in a silent scream of pleasure, and you found yourself coming a heartbeat later. Your fingers gripped his cock, prolonging and intensifying his orgasm as you came in waves atop his cock.

Eventually he slumped back, head knocking against the pebbles behind him, and he lay there, twitching and spent, apparently dazed and reeling from the force of his orgasm. Your legs were slick and shaky too, but as you moved off him, he managed to raise his hand to help you down.

“I’m going to have to bathe in the lake to clean off,” you grunted, looking down at yourself. “Look at me.”

“I am,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”

Feeling a little unsteady still, you turned away from him and said, “Come and join me when you’ve recovered a bit…”

“Mmm,” he said, making no move at all as you strode into the lake. He was clearly enjoying the view, and it was a long time before he rolled himself over and heaved his body up to join you. When he did, he nuzzled you and let you lounge on his foreleg, half in and out of the water. He brought his tongue to your thighs and carefully laved it up and over your body, honing in on your clit which was still aching and sensitive.

Your legs parted instinctively for him and as he raked his teeth appreciatively over your stomach, bringing you up to his maw so that he could taste you better, you let yourself fall limp in his hands. It wasn’t long before he had you shuddering and moaning against his tongue, gasping his name.

He made you come twice more after that, the last time on the grassy bank above the lake shore, and as he curled around you protectively to let you recover, you rested your head against his side and sighed. “I don’t ever want to leave here,” you murmured. “Can it always be like this?”

“I’ll try,” he smiled, laying his head down beside you. “I’ll try.”

—

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#exophilia #ice dragon #dragon x reader #male dragon x female reader #male monster #female reader

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sweetbunnykook · 5 years ago

Text

Only You (8)

Word Count: 12,827 // angst (mention of physical abuse/harm, mention of child abuse/neglect, mention of forced pregnancy, mention of murder), smut (brief mention of cockwarming and masturbation), no fluff

Photographer!Jungkook X Noona!Reader

Summary: Jeon Jungkook, your wedding photographer, helps you escape on your big day upon learning about a secret your groom-to-be kept hidden. You soon fall for this young, passionate photographer. However, you underestimated just how much he was willing to reciprocate that love. Maybe, you think, he’s loving you just a little too much.

A/N: I’m so sorry this took FOREVER for me to write. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter, please come scream in my inbox so I can scream with you! - 🐰

The red and yellow iron man figurine is snatched away from his clammy little hands, the harsh ridges of the plastic cutting across his palm to leave gashes that burned. Jungkook’s eyes are already glossy with unshed tears as he stares at the beloved toy in her grasp.

“Fucking useless piece of shit!” His mother screams, voice cracking as she throws the plastic figure at the man sprawled on the couch, a small pouch of belly fat pooling over his unzipped jeans. His dark disheveled hair and tattered clothing makes him look older than he actually is, earning a disgusted sneer from the woman. The head of the figurine hits the side of his arm but he simply glares at the child, and then at his wife, before turning away in silence. Iron Man lays on the dirty carpet, feet pulled apart, head dislodged from the neck.

“You think you’re the only fucking man in the world that works!? If I didn’t push out your bastard child, I would’ve left you years ago!”

Jungkook’s face scrunches into a frown, hiccupping as he gasps for air between sobs and hiccups. He knew he shouldn’t cry for the sake of angering his parents further but he couldn’t help it. Catching his mother’s attention, he steps back only for her to yank his small arm through the oversized superhero shirt and drag him across the living room. The child falls onto his knees, unable to help himself as the grip on his arms numbed his little hand in which he held his lunch bag.

“I’m sorry! Mama, I’m sorry! Mama!”

The soggy brown sandwich bag tumbles away from his grasp as his mother drags him into his makeshift room behind the sliding door of a storage unit. The shoebox-sized space is thankfully warm as it’s situated next to the hissing water heater. Jungkook’s mother pushes him onto the futon next to his school bag, empty cartons of milk, and mismatched socks.

“Don’t you dare make a fucking sound,” she spits, glaring down at the shaking boy who’d curled into the yellowed blankets in the corner. “You don’t want to upset mama, do you?”

Jungkook shakes his head, toes digging into the sheets below him. His ears are ringing, but he knew better than to disagree when her eyes become as red as the knitted dragon on his socks. Red means danger, red means silence.

The door slides shut with a bang and little Jungkook shakes and shakes, bent knees knocking into each other as cold sweat forms on his temples. He wipes his moist eyes with the back of his hand and curls into the corner, hunger pains wringing his stomach tight. He struggles to hold in his bladder and cries harder when he tremors once more and his pants turn dark with urine.

The room gets darker, the house falls steadily falls silent, yet there is still no food offered to him. He doesn’t know how much time has passed as the only window in the room is nailed shut with wooden boards; only the small amount of sunlight shining between the rotten wood tells him when to sleep and when to dress for school. Looking at the dark gaps, he’s disappointed to find that it’s well past dinner time.

He can hear his parents screaming at each other between bouts of silence, their voices lowering gradually as exhaustion takes over them. He’s glad that at least he’s left alone. When the screaming ends, there is moaning, sounds of flesh against flesh, and silence once more.

They must have forgotten he hasn’t eaten, he thinks to himself as his frown deepens.

Jungkook knows they are most likely asleep but he doesn’t want to risk disturbing the peace – the silence – that he can finally enjoy. If it weren’t for his hunger, he would be perfectly content staying still. He closes his eyes to the world and wishes on the lonely lightbulb hanging from the ceiling that one of his parents will awaken and at least take pity on him to throw the sandwich bag in the room. The roaches might have gotten to it first but he wasn’t in a position to complain.

Wiping away the dried snot on his face with the back of his hand, Jungkook looks up at the spotted roof and imagines a big studio like the one Iron Man has. When he becomes big and strong, he would have a drawer full of chocolates and another one full of clean and cool clothes like his classmates. He would be so successful and so cool that his teachers will fall to their knees and he will never have to do homework again. Even Iron Man will come knocking at his door to spend time with him – that’s how cool he will be.

Despite the growling in his stomach, Jungkook giggles softly. He discards his soiled bottoms away from the futon, being extra careful not to let the wetness touch his backpack, and lets his big shirt fall over his knees. He then rolls over to cushion his head with the back of his backpack. At least in his dreams, he lived well.

Some days are painful but some days should be better, he thinks.

“It’s a miracle you survived,” Taehyung says one day as he hands Jungkook a bigger share of his rice ball. Jungkook rolls the sleeves of his black Busan middle school uniform up to his elbows, knowing the smell will be hard to get rid of if the loose seaweed falls apart in his hands like last time. The cheap tuna Taehyung stuffed it with smelled like gasoline and they made it a habit to hold their breaths as they chew. The mayonnaise at least helps the mouthfuls of fish slide right down their throats. No matter how strange his lunch boxes smelled, Jungkook never complained.

“I hate them,” Jungkook whimpers as he chew, leaning the heel of his sticky palms against the wet boulder beneath as his older friend rubs the tender sores on his neck with a free hand. Several bruises trail down his spine and Taehyung knows there are more underneath the uniform. “I just want to get out of here.”

Their naked feet, exposed under their rolled pants, dangle from the sharp layer of rock and moss protruding from the side of the boulder. The sound of ocean waves drown their voices and they find themselves shouting over its volume. Jungkook jumps slightly when cold water splashes over his toes.

“We’ll go anywhere you want.” Taehyung stretches his neck from side to side to undo the knots, his steel eyes landing on the grains of dry rice rolling down the rock.

Jungkook looks at his dearest friend, truly look at him, and grabs another rice ball from the canteen. He coughs slightly when the tuna goes down the wrong pipe, taking a swing of the water bottle from his opened backpack laying at his feet. It was hard for him to sit still when Taehyung says such things so frivolously. In fact, Jungkook found himself annoyed – annoyed that these fantasies are way beyond his imagination and annoyed that Taehyung might not mean what he says and Jungkook is just waiting around for leftovers like the rice ball in his hands.

Jungkook kicks the side of the rock as he licks his fingers clean, scraping his heel along the ridges back and forth. His bottom lip sticks out in a pout. “You’re going away to med school later too…we might not see each other even when you get to college. It’s like…ten years.”

Jungkook can just imagine it. Taehyung, the miracle from a small town in Busan who surpassed everyone with his razor-sharp intelligence and sly fox charms. He’ll walk up to a podium for a white coat ceremony to attend the nation’s best medical school. There will be cheers and flowers everywhere; he bet even the president will show up for the ceremony because Taehyung will represent the rags-to-riches fantasy everyone wants. He’ll go on to be a surgeon full of pride and joy. He’ll marry a naïve but rich girl from Gangnam who will pity his hardships and they’ll have five children together and live in a penthouse. They’ll live on the top floor where they can look down at the people passing by like they’re nothing but ants.

And as for him, he might still be sleeping in that same storage closet next to the hissing water heater.

“I’ll take you with me.” Taehyung pushes the half-full canteen towards the younger boy, giving away his share, and wipes his hands on his pants. There are three giant rice balls left and even some pickled radish at the bottom. The food offering doesn’t make the younger boy smile like he usually do, his brain is so full of worries it might explode.

Jungkook shakes his head at nothing. The future seems so, so far away, almost out of reach. He can barely image his life without Kim Taehyung, the only genius the sad little town has produced this generation who ironically became his best friend and caretaker. There’s been rumors that he’d skipped four grades and grew up speaking Cantonese just from watching films. Jungkook hasn’t confirmed these theories himself but he wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. He had a future as bright as the stars while Jungkook knew, deep in his heart, that his kind is bound to be in the sewers. He’s forever looking up at the stars that Taehyung can collect without lifting a finger.

“I won’t burden you, Tae. I’m just trouble.”

“You’re not,” he runs his fingers through Jungkook’s dark cocoa hair with his damp fingertips. The younger boy trembles slightly at the feeling, kicking his feet to hide how much he’s enjoying it. “That’s what they want you to believe…but you’re not. We’ll get out of here together, I promise.”

“N-No, you have to go Tae,” Jungkook puts the rice ball back in the steel canteen set between them and turns, serious all of the sudden. His voice is cracking and his leg shakes up and down as he tries hard to control the rage and grief boiling inside him.

He knows what will happen. When Taehyung leaves, luggage in hand, to whatever top-tier college in the country with a full scholarship, he’ll end his life. He’ll take the kitchen knife and plunge it deep into his heart and bleed out in front of his sad excuse of a mother. His father can join in on the crying, or the celebration, over his corpse once he wakes up from a drunken slumber. Actually, they might not even notice he’s bleeding. With the piles of newspaper and dishes laying around, Jungkook would be nothing but bones underneath all that garbage by the time they discover his body.

Taehyung, gripping the hair above the nape of the boy’s neck, keeps him in place like a bothersome cub. “I won’t leave you, Kook. I swear on my life I won’t. When the time is right, we’ll get out of here together.”

Jungkook doesn’t reply immediately, weighing the sincerity on his ears. Feeling tears sting his eyes, he leans his forehead on the older male’s broad shoulders to hide his face and circles his arms around his biceps. Taehyung nuzzles his chin into the younger boy’s hair and smells the salt of the sea in his scalp.

“I’m useless,” Jungkook says at last. He’d decided that Taehyung was genuinely concerned about him after all and not showing off. Those words were not like the empty promises he’s heard many times growing up. “I’m not smart like you. I can deliver milk and newspaper and that’s about it.”

Jungkook rubs his cheek up and down Taehyung’s shoulder blade, scratching the little wound on his cheek until it burned. He can still feel the buckle of his father’s belt ripping a patch of skin off the top of his cheekbones. He had considered leaving that day without a dime to his name but knew better to stay.

Taehyung reaches behind him and tugs his backpack forward, choosing to instead comfort the boy through a gift he’s been wanting to give for some time. He shrugs Jungkook away, earning a pout as the boy wanted to hear more honeyed words of comfort. His irritation, however, is short lived when he sees a flash of onyx and silver in Taehyung’s hands. He watches as the film camera gleams under the tangerine sun, the cracks on the side oozing a type of charm only antiques have.

“This is grandpa’s camera,” Taehyung says as he sets the camera down on his friend’s lap. “I want you to take pictures of the things you love before we get out of here.”

It’s not a gift, but a promise.

“You’re giving this to me?”

He nods. “Don’t worry, he ran off ages ago. I wanted you to have it…I think you’ll like it once you get the hang of it. There’s already a roll inside, it’s half used. I know you wanted that camera from Mickey’s but…this is good enough for now.”

Jungkook’s cheeks turn bright red as he holds the camera in his hands, brushing his thumbs across the protruding lens and the square of white plastic in the corner. He didn’t realize that Taehyung paid enough attention to catch him staring at things he can’t afford. It was equally humiliating as it is flattering that someone notices his wants and needs. Although the camera in his hands is not as fancy as the one in the display cases, Jungkook is more than grateful for he would not be able to afford the basic point-and-shoot camera on a delivery boy salary.

He can’t help but think maybe this will be Taehyung’s final gift to him before he goes away. Maybe the older boy is just taking pity on him because attachment is an illusion that slowly dissipates as absence takes its rightful place.

That rags-to-riches fantasy happens to those who are smart and sincere like Taehyung and not to boys like him – boys who stupidly spend hard-earned money on Iron Man comic books despite needing money to escape.

“I can’t afford to buy film,” Jungkook complains because he knows he’ll burst into tears if he thanked Taehyung. He peers into the viewer with one eye closed. He takes a shot of the waves dancing under their feet. The cerulean blue, their tanned feet, the black rocks – he can already feel excitement bubbling within him when he’ll make the time to develop the roll at the school photography lab.

“I have a box of unused ones in the basement. I’ll dig it out for you later.”

“Mm…okay.”

He points the camera towards the setting sun, taking a snap just when two birds fly past him. The film inside clicks into place with a satisfying snap, making him giggle. He turns at the waist and points the lens towards Taehyung, who stares into the camera with a disinterested amusement that tugs Jungkook’s heart a little more than he feels comfortable with. To please the boy, Taehyung holds a peace sign over his cheek, shielding half of his face as his eye peers past the ‘v’ shaped fingers. Jungkook takes the shot.

“Happy?”

He giggles louder this time. “Very much so.”

Taehyung takes the camera away, enveloping his large hand over the boy’s fingers. He holds the viewer up to eye level, seeing Jungkook nibble on his lower lip. He knows what the boy is thinking. There’s no way he can look pretty with the wound on his cheek, with the purple bruise blossoming around his right eye, the chapped lips split open from his nervous gnawing. Sensing his discomfort, Taehyung reaches over with his free hand and tugs at Jungkook’s hair tucked behind his ears. His deep mahogany-black locks bounces forward like a curtain, shielding the injuries without effort.

“Perfect.”

The camera snaps once more.

You curse under your breath after splashing your face with cold water in the office bathroom. Work has been absolute hell in contrast to the newfound heaven at home with Jungkook. You swear there’s a force in the universe set out to get you; as one part of your life heals, another part has its wounds reopen. When Jin called in sick for a few days two weeks ago, you did not realize how different he was going to be when he returned. Something about the way he looks at you these days leaves you paralyzed, often times leading you to work entirely in your personal office instead of the open cubicle like you usually do.

You assume that perhaps there is something going on in his personal life that can explain his passive aggression towards you and your coworkers. Taking pity on him through your own self-talk, you complete his share of the paperwork without complaints for an entire week without earning a single ‘thank you’ or even a smile from him. He often walked back and forth in the hallway, dialing his phone with an aggression that leaves you wondering if the screen even works with how hard he’s pressing. Knowing he was the type of person to need distance during hard times, you didn’t push it.

That is, until he’s suddenly calling in the middle of the night and dragging you out of break rooms. The office is already short on staff due to Sora’s absence, you didn’t need to be reprimanded for laziness especially after you carried his entire workload and apologized on his behalf for mistakes in the software he was supposed to fix.

Honestly, you’re not sure why Jin is cold one moment, hot the next, and then absolutely boiling on some days. But you’ve had enough of it and you’ve reached breaking point today when you heard rumors for the first time that your department, usually praised for its performance, has too many unprofessional workers (it did not take energy for you to figure out people are talking about your little cat-and-mouse chase with Jin). Thus, it was a relief when your former assistant shows up at the office and gives you a break from the cycle of avoiding your childhood friend while saving whatever reputation you have left here.

Pleasant and giving as always, Sora brings sandwiches for the people in your department with no pressure to have the favor returned. It’s the first time you’ve seen your assistant since she took her maternal leave; you almost forgot about her despite receiving occasional updates about her condition and even yearning for her when Jin disappears from his cubicle or stares at you from across the room. To you, she’s one of the best persons you’ve worked with so far in your career. Although Jin is great at handling IT issues that arise too many times for you to wonder if the whole job should be thrown away, it was Sora who brightens the atmosphere with her rambunctious laughter and messy desk in which she was miraculously able to get work done at an unmatched rate. Sporting a small bump beneath her floral wrap dress, she greets you with a kiss on both cheeks.

As you take her in your arms, you peer at Jin leaning against the office fridge with arms folded. His public questioning about Jungkook stays fresh in your mind and everyone else’s as they quietly glance between you and him between conversation.

Almost every time he chases after you, the first words out of his mouth was your boyfriend’s name. It got to the point where you wish you’d wake up from this nightmare that will pass when whatever in his life fixes itself. You’re sure his irrational behavior, arriving from nowhere with the suddenness of a car crash, is coming from something else in his life. You are sure, one hundred percent, that this is the kind of asshole behavior that somehow manifested in your male peers back in college, not that you were ever on the receiving end of it. Until now.

Currently, Jin seems to be deep in thought, sporting dark bags under his eyes. His eyes meet yours momentarily before you pull back and gasp at Sora’s belly with the vigor of a seasoned actress.

“Why do I have a feeling you didn’t just come to bring sandwiches?” You tease while your coworkers chuckle, turning their heads towards you for a moment before turning back to their plates. There are only a few sandwiches left on the counter as you couldn’t leave a conference call until much later unlike others. Actually, it was the same conference call from the person who was disrupted when Jin pulled you out of the room for an “emergency” days ago. You were too angry to even listen to him then, and even angrier now that you’re here smiling after apologizing with a bow just moments before.

With the merry atmosphere dancing in the otherwise cold break room, even your boss sitting at the end of the table has a difficult time asking people to head back to their cubicles and corner offices.

“No, I came here because I missed you,” she squeezes your arms, dragging you softly towards the table scattered with sandwiches of all types. How unfortunate the lobster roll – your favorite – is all gone.

“Please,” you scoff and she laughs with that hearty, sweet sound you missed so much.

“Actually,” she begins, “I’ve been thinking of staying at home to be a mother.”

Your jaw hangs. “You won’t be coming back after this?”

Her face falls slightly at your question and you immediately shut all your thoughts deep inside. You don’t understand the first thing about being a mother. It’s only reasonable you hear her out first. From the corner of your eyes, you see Jin walk towards the coffee pot and pour himself a cup in his chipped mug that brings a spark of annoyance in your chest.

“I do,” she sighs, “but…I found out I’m having twins. Just last week actually. This entire pregnancy was a bit of an accident and I needed time to rethink my priorities. My husband is more than thrilled we’re having twins, you know how he is-“

You nod in sympathy.

“-but it’s difficult for me. I already have a toddler and now with two more…I thought about handing in my resignation soon. I just wanted to see you all one more time before I do.”

You place your hand on her back once you see the tears in her eyes, leading her outside of the break room and into the small walkway where sunlight from the open windows gives you a better view of her solemn yet saccharine face.

“You do what’s right for you. But I understand it’ll be difficult for you to get another job if you need one later with kids around. Have you talked it over with Alex?”

At the sound of her husband’s name from your lips, her cheeks redden slightly.

“He’s glad that I’m strongly considering staying at home. He always wanted to have a big family and we’re more than financially stable with his salary alone. It’s just…I’m going to miss work.” She looks up at you, eyes watering even more. “It feels like I have a family here. Especially you, I feel like I have the little sister I always wanted.”

“Oh Sora,” you sigh, bringing her in your embrace once more and letting her cheek rest on your perfumed shoulder. She inhales the scent of soft geranium and jasmine, letting it calm her anxiousness only further amplified by pregnancy hormones. If the rest of your coworkers found out how emotional she’s getting, they all will follow suit and cry along with her. “We’re still family whether you work here or not. I’m always a phone call away and you know the team will be here to help you if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” she sniffles, “I’m grateful…really, for everything.”

“It’s no problem at all,” you smile. “I can’t wait for the babies to arrive. From the bottom of my heart, congratulations on the twins, Sora. It’s such a rare and precious thing.”

She beams at you, eyes glistening, her smile stretching wider as she takes your hands in hers and gives them an eager squeeze.

“I don’t even know how to explain it. Just seeing the ultrasound for the first time was, god I wish you were there!”

“Me too,” you agree, turning your head to the side to see Jin peering at you from between the gap of the door and the column in the corner of the hallway. “Alex must be so thrilled.”

She rolls her eyes. “He wouldn’t shut up about it. He’s baby-proofing the entire house right about now even though I’m not even due for another six months.”

You giggle with her, thinking back to the time you walked into your home to see Jungkook on all fours, rubbing sandpaper to the edges of your coffee table. It’s too dangerous, he said when you stand in front of him with a fist on your hip, you’ll hurt yourself. His strong arms bulge and flex as he works the wood with the ferocity of a mad man. You wonder if Alex is in the same position on the floor, religiously rubbing sandpaper back and forth against the corner of the wooden table.

“That’s so funny,” you muse. “Jungkook baby-proofed the house once and made a mess of the living room…and I’m the farthest thing from a clumsy child.”

Sora raises an eyebrow, elbowing you softly on the side. “Is he dropping hints? You have sex regularly, don’t you?”

“Shhh! Sora!”

She cackles as you turn back and forth between the open door and at her amused face.

“We’re not even married, or even engaged!”

“Well,” she shrugs. “Do you really need to be married to have a child these days? Men can have baby fevers way early in the relationship,” she muses, thinking back to her college days. She seems completely different from the emotional expecting mother just a few minutes ago now that men are the topic of the conversation. Classic Sora move. “I conceived my daughter just a day before Alex proposed.”

You blush, tucking your hair behind your ears. For a moment, you think of your picture-perfect boyfriend on his knees rubbing your lower belly and cooing with his ears pressed up against you. “I guess not but…Jungkook and I aren’t ready for that yet. At least, for the time being.” You shake your head dramatically from side to side, bringing your hands up to your face. “All this baby talk is giving me ideas I don’t like.”

“Alright alright,” Sora waves her hand back and forth like she’s swatting away a fly. “I won’t be one of those annoying office moms that constantly pressure people into pooping out kids.”

You laugh, leaning your back against the wall.

A coworker from two cubicles down peeks his head out the door and urges for Sora to come back into the room. From the ruckus, you can hear your coworkers fighting over the last few sandwiches in a game of rock paper scissors. It seems people are also curious about the picture of her ultrasounds – which you didn’t realize were there before – scattered across the lunch table.

Everyone except for Jin, that is.

You turn towards the door as she waves you off and staggers into the room, just in time to maneuver around Jin who walks towards you while closing the door behind him.

“I need to talk to you about something,” he pleads, peering down at you with a heavy, foreboding stare that wipes the remaining laughter out of your chest.

“Can we talk later?” You move to the side to walk past him, only to be blocked as he steps along with you. You really don’t want to deal with him today when you’re having a good time. You actually don’t want to deal with him at all, at your wit’s end.

“You don’t pick up my calls and you almost always leave before me, if not right away. When I ask, you avoid me.”

Every word out of his mouth is true and you feel sick being confronted with it all despite how valid your anger is with the way he seems to want nothing to do with you when he returned, then wanting to bombard you all five working days last week. However, you’re not sure if the sourness in your gut is regret or anger; regretful that you stayed away from Jin like your boyfriend asked or angry that he is slowly getting on your nerves with his recent behavior. Anytime Jin approaches, it’s never about work or even about your friendship and always about your relationship with Jungkook that he somehow sees as unhealthy and worrying.

“Sora is retiring, Jin. I want to be there for her.” You step around him, only for him to grab you by the elbow and drag you further away from the door. You push him away, glancing at the end of the hallway to see if anyone saw.

“What the hell happened to you?” Jin questions.

“No,” you whisper-snarl, looking back and forth from the door to your childhood friend. “What the hell happened to you? Why do you keep picking fights with me when you know I’m going to react the same way?”

He raises an eyebrow. “With you ignoring me?”

You can feel the anger in your veins making your nerves curl. For the past week, he had been insufferable. You’d never seen someone turn from a friend to a stranger so quickly after you have to bear the weight of his eyes following your every move, leaving you unable to do any substantial office work without errors. Even then, you assume he must have personal business to take care of and needed the well-deserved sympathy. After all, Jin has always been a hard worker and you’ve never once doubted his work ethic, especially in this company where he thrived from your recommendation.

However, his newfound aggression has you thinking back to your boyfriend’s warning about how little you know about men despite living with one. His glare sharpens every time you leave early to head back home or when you take a quick call from Jungkook during your lunch breaks. His eyes seem to follow you across the room as you move back and forth from the copier to your office. You think Jin would be over this little temper tantrum of his until, just yesterday, he’d thrown his cup of coffee in the break room sink while you were on the phone. The sound of porcelain meeting steel and the anger in his eyes was something you couldn’t forget about and in your heart you knew the fury extended past you onto your boyfriend waiting for you at home.

“I know you obviously have an issue with Jungkook.”

“So now you’re ready to discuss?”

“Discuss what?” You scoff. “You claim to be my friend who watches out for me yet you can’t even be happy that I’m finally with someone who cares for me. Jin,” you sigh in exasperation, “look, I know you let your paranoia or whatever get in the way but I promise you Jungkook isn’t a liar or a cheat like Namjoon. You’re overreacting.”

He crosses his arms. “Are you so sure about that?”

“About what?”

“Him not lying to you.”

You didn’t like how serious he looked at that very moment. You’d constantly teased about how his classic poker face he kept from his agent days is the reason why he’s been single since the day he was born. It’s a type of unique hardened face that intimidates anyone smaller than him. Now that this sternness is directed at you, you’re not enjoying a single moment of it.

“There’s no reason for him to lie to me.” You’re confident in that statement and he can sense it by the way your spine straightens and your eyes brighten.

It tugs his heart that you feel so strongly about another man when he knows the truth. It hurts him to know that you’ll be ruined by the files he received from Hoseok and Yoongi sitting in his flash drive. Above all, what hurts him the most is that he risked both of his former coworkers’ safety to verify his intuition, an intuition you easily brushed off to prioritize a months-old relationship against his life-long friendship to you.

On the other hand, you can’t fathom just how much Jungkook can possibly keep from you despite being the most sensitive and loving boy you’ve ever met. A little over two weeks ago, on your balcony, Jungkook had revealed everything you needed to know about him and the reason why he feels the way he feels. He’d trusted you enough to tell you something that affected him the most, that justified his habits you were once annoyed by, and that gave you the reason to become more than just his girlfriend. Sitting on his lap, kissing his scars, and listening to his words, you knew nothing can stop you from loving this boy you met under unwelcomed circumstances.

Really, it was ridiculous that you never noticed the signs before. Jungkook had always cowered to your anger, always the one to put your needs first before his, almost never raising his voice at you except for the few times you were oblivious to your surroundings and endangered your wellbeing.

And here, your friend, belittles you the longer he doubts the validity of your relationship with Jungkook.

Jin’s lips part but you manage to speak before him, stepping closer to him as you crane your neck to meet his unwavering gaze.

“I need to set this straight.” You put a hand on his arm. “I appreciate you as a friend, as someone who has been with me for a long time and looked out for me. I know you’ve always been good to me and I don’t hate you, even if I’m more than angry at you right now. I know you care a lot about the people close to you.”

You see him visibly soften at your words. The tender, loving expression on his handsome face makes you weak for a moment.

“But I need to draw a line here. I’m a woman who can make her own choices about what she wants. I don’t need you to be this…bodyguard stressing yourself to protect me from harm. I know what I’m doing and who I’m with. For god’s sake Jin, I’ve been living with Jungkook for months. If he’d somehow lied to me, I’d know by now. So please,” you beg, your eyes going back to the laughter coming from the closed break room door to your best friend’s piercing eyes. “Leave my relationship alone. Let me land on my feet after what Namjoon did to me. I’m,” you sigh, “so happy now. I’m at peace. So please…Jin,” you squeeze his arm. “Please. Can we just go back to being us?”

For the longest time he stays silent, his eyes moving across your face as if he’s looking for something important.

He finds his voice when you step away from him. “…I understand. I’m sorry…for making you uncomfortable. It wasn’t my intention.” He takes your hands in his. “I’m really sorry.”

You offer him a small, sympathetic smile and bask in the warmth of his palms. “I’m sorry too, for avoiding you when I could’ve said all of this earlier.”

“I just-” he starts and pauses.

Jin looks out the window, focusing on nothing in particular. He can see the top of trees and similar silver rectangle buildings reflecting sunlight. He watches a few cars drive past the swirl path leading to the parking lot situated around the main entrance of the building. He looks back down at you.

“I actually wrote everything I wanted to say and…I was too chicken shit to read it out loud. I,” he clears his throat, looking down at his shoes. “I’m just going through a hard time. I know I’m taking all of it out on you. I’m really sorry, I really-”

“Wait, Jin,” you cup his face in your warm hands, immediately shedding all traces of anger and annoyance you carried for the last few days. Of course, your friend of many years would never hurt or anger you on purpose. He’s overthinking and lashing out when logic hits a wall of emotions, just like you had with Jungkook before. You’ve never seen Jin on the verge of tears until now and it’s tugging your heart painfully. “I forgive you, everything’s okay now, right? You’re still one of my dearest friends, I’m not going to be mad at you forever.”

Jin shakes his head. “No, there’s just…”

He freezes mid-sentence again, leaving you curious as to what his next few words might be. Jin’s eyes move frantically from his shoes to the trees outside. Sweat prickles his scalp as he considers the weight of what he’s about to do next, what he’s about to reveal to you. He’d considered and reconsidered his plans only to wing it all last minute. What good does thinking ever do for him? When Jungkook holds your heart captive, is planning worth the trouble? Or is it easier to play Jeon’s game with his unpredictability? Right now, Jin is convinced it’s the latter.

You watch as he digs into his pocket to reveal a small black flash drive the size of a rifle bullet. “Everything I want to say,” he swallows, “is all here.”

You feel glued to the ground by the weight of the object in his hands and by how intense his gaze is as it sets on you. If Jungkook can see you know, you know he would be furious. Jin takes your hand, revealing your soft pink palm, and places the flash drive in the center before curling your fingers around it. Even though the object itself is as light as a feather, the burden of his words lay heavy against your chest, restricting your ability to breathe.

He whispers your name softly like a prayer, rubbing his thumb across your enclosed fist. “Please read it all for me when you’re alone. I promise I’ll leave you and Jungkook alone unless you need me.”

“W-What’s in it?”

A love confession? Maybe Jungkook was right all along about Jin, about men.

Jin shakes his head. “Just read it. Alone. I went through a lot of trouble to make this for you. If you forgive me and want me to be the Kim Seokjin you grew up with, read it.”

Your fist tightens slightly as you take another step away from him. When you walked to the office this morning and found him staring into his mug of pitch-black coffee, you weren’t expecting anything more than the usual passive aggressiveness or being chased during lunch breaks between your boyfriend’s calls. You didn’t expect to stand here in front of him, wondering if the contents of this flash drive will confirm the doubts Jungkook had about him all along.

Noona, can’t you see he wants you for himself?

You dig your hands into your pocket and tuck the flash drive away, garnering the strength to finally look back into your friend’s eyes. Jin’s eyes are fixed on your pocket before they scour your face once more as if he were searching for something.

“What is it?”

How ironic that you’re the one asking the questions now.

Jin’s lips part just slightly before he digs his fists into the pockets of his black slacks and look out the window. It’s strange that he can’t find the words he wanted to say when he can finally be alone with you for once without raising the suspicion of others or, worse, Jungkook’s. The wind blows gently into the hallway, carrying with it the scent of wet leaves. He stares into the distance as you stare at him until a round of laughter interrupts your thoughts. You look at the break room door and then back at your friend who seemed to have turned to stone.

“I’ll make sure to read it,” you reassure him, unable to bear the silence any longer.

He turns back to you but his smile is sad. You gaze at him longer, unable to decipher anything that just happened in this lonely hallway. One thing for sure, you know the contents of Jin’s flash drive needed to be opened alone and whatever is inside affects you more than it’ll affect Jungkook. Something about the content is going to change you, alter your reality, and take the blissful filter you’ve been wearing for the last two weeks at home. The thought makes you feel queasy as if you have something dirty to hide, as if you’re committing adultery behind Jungkook’s back after he’d spilled his heart out to you.

It was Jin who turns on his heels and heads back into the room.

You dig the flash drive out of your pocket and hold it up to the sunlight. It’s such a small and simple plastic tool costing just as much as a tin of mints.

Yet, it scares you so much you nearly miss your phone vibrating in your back pocket. Jungkook’s name flashes across your screen and for the first time, you hesitate to press the answer button.

Perhaps you thought too highly of yourself all along. How different are you really from Yori or Namjoon when you can keep a man’s secret in your pocket while you live with another?

So far, Jungkook has learned that fear is a strong motivator. It influences you, shapes you, makes you create paths where there isn’t one. It crawls up the walls and knocks on your window as a reminder that there’s always something lurking in the distance. It’s why Jungkook believes in never settling when things get comfortable.

When he asked Taehyung to make placebo pills, he had done so in fear that you would leave him. Yet, this does nothing to settle his nerves. In fact, it makes him uneasy that he’ll get caught somehow as if the birth control pills he flushed down the toilet never melted. In his unease, he can imagine those eggshell white tablets sticking to the sides of the drain despite the chances being slim to none. One call from a neighbor about a clogged pipe and it’s over for him.

This is the nightmare that lingered in his mind before he’d sat you down in his lap and pressed your hand against the dent on his cheek. Three weeks ago, you listened to him attentively as he wraps you slowly around his fingers. He can smell himself on your neck, taste himself on your tongue, feel your touch so agonizingly sweet on his taut stomach. It pained him a little that you, the privileged girl from the world above, might trade love for pity. But you were so accepting and so understanding of his past, his dependency on Taehyung and you, that there was no way someone can come along and convince him you weren’t made for him. Making love to you, worshipping your skin and scent, has never been so otherworldly for him.

Sitting in front of the television and replaying the footage of you from the wedding that could have taken you away from him, Jungkook inhales and exhales slowly. He’d taken the time to clip Namjoon’s footage away so that all that’s left is you in the wedding boutique twirling multiple dresses to your chest, your soft wavy hair pooling over your shoulders as you do so. In a silk robe, you lift a ballroom dress up against the mirror, eyes moving up and down the charmeuse and tulle quickly to take in all its miniscule details.

He loves that about you. The way your eyes glisten and widen when something strikes your heart. It’s the same look you gave him, sitting in his lap on that damp balcony, running your thumb over the scar on his cheek.

It was especially painful for Jungkook to reopen his past wounds but in one way he felt the invisible weight lift off his shoulders. He couldn’t tell you everything – especially not about the strings Taehyung pulled for him to live a normal life – but he was satisfied that you didn’t mind one bit. He swears he could hear you purring and sighing softly underneath his chin, reacting with a slight gasp when he tells you how often he was hurt back then and how thankful he was that Taehyung took him under his wing. Although a small spark of jealousy ignited in his chest when you mentioned inviting his attractive friend for dinner once he’s back in down, Jungkook was more than grateful that you didn’t seem to mind how attached he is to the older man.

He wonders if you’d react that same way if he’d told you he’d lost his virginity to Taehyung a year into high school and that his first kiss happened on that same beach rock. He wonders if you’d react in the same sympathetic manner if you truly knew what happened before he was able to graduate high school before the world plunged into tar.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

Jungkook’s hands tremble as he yanks the storage drawer open and dig out his shirts, undergarments, and jeans into the duffel bag. He has to make sure he doesn’t forget his winter clothes because he would be livid if he finally gets out of this house only to freeze to death on the streets. From between the cracks of the rotten wood plastered against his window, he can see Taehyung standing with a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. Taehyung looks around the house, at the rusted gates connected to the concrete walls that surround the perimeter, and the mailbox slumped over the garbage can. He looks at the messily covered windows and puffs out a smoke. There’s a similar slumped duffel bag next to his feet inflated with clothes and packets of food.

“I’m leaving.”

Jungkook’s mother attempts to grab him by the neck, unable to do so easily as he stands tall after he outgrew his middle school uniform. Her grip slips as fast as it comes.

“You ungrateful little shit!” She spits, reaching up successfully this time to grasp the ends of his hair as she shoves hard enough for him to stumble into the wall.

Relentless, Jungkook continues throwing his clothes, then his lunch box filled with coins and a wad of cash, into the bag.

“Do you have any idea how much I love you?!” She sobs, throwing herself on the floor next to his shoes and dirty socks. She scratches the slits on her arms and proceeds to drag her nails across the floor. A wretched cry falls from her lips and Jungkook feels his throat clenching, his eyes watering. Rather than sadness, it was boiling hot resentment that keeps him silent.

He doesn’t turn to look at her. He knows she’s going to manipulate him, somehow, with her disgusting guilt-tripping shrieks and nail him against the wall to prevent him from moving.

She pounds the sticky floor mats with the heel of her palms, her voice hoarse. “I made you, Jungkook! I took care of you, I fed you, I bought your fucking clothes. And you’re leaving me with this fucking asshole,” she slams her hands down again, her head snapping towards the sound of the back door slamming open followed by heavy footsteps. His hands begin to sweat, causing the toolkit he grabs from the top of the shelf to slip and clatter on the floor.

In the distance, Jungkook can hear his father crushing a can of beer against the kitchen counter and throw it in the sink for him to clean like he usually does. No longer is he going to be yanked around like a puppet for these two sad excuses of a human being. How his mother was able to carry him inside her full term and give birth while smoking and drinking like a sailor is unknown to him. He’s grateful, at least, that he came out sane. He thinks with a sudden surge of anger that perhaps his mother’s need to have a punching bag was more critical than the inconvenience that the pregnancy caused her.

To her, his father coming back with the stench of prostitutes and alcohol always became his fault. It was his fault that his mother’s body isn’t as it used to be. It was his fault their marriage is dead. Above all, it was his fault for existing to remind them that they produced another good-for-nothing trash to add to the pile of garbage that is this town’s desolate population.

“I’m not coming back,” Jungkook grunts as he throws a camera and several rolls of film in the bag. “I never want to see you or dad ever again.”

His mother shakes her head over and over again, arms stretched towards the door as it suddenly slams open to reveal the lean yet pot-bellied figure of a graying man. His father looks down at the duffel bag on the floor, and then at his wife curled next to Jungkook shoes. His face seems lifeless – like a corpse – with bulging black beady eyes that reflect no light and a mouth set in a thin strip. It’s the first time in years that the man came to see Jungkook in the makeshift bedroom, usually taking the couch in the living room as his permanent place of residence. It’s where he drinks, where he watches the same television program about car remodeling, and where he demands weekly handjobs in his drunken stupor.

“You’re leaving?” He interrogates, voice low and tired as if he’d woken up from a slumber.

Jungkook nods, zipping his bag and glancing around the room to see if he missed anything. He didn’t own much but it pains him to leave his heavy stack of comic books behind. There was no way he could carry that with him across the country.

“Why?”

Jungkook looks at his father under the single light bulb illuminating the otherwise dark and swampy room. For the first time, he notices how similar they look. He has the man’s eyes, his soft yet chiseled jaw, and even the mole under the lips. If the man were several decades younger, they would be a splitting image of each other. The thought makes bile rise up Jungkook’s throat.

Why is he leaving? Was that even a question he needed to answer? One night with the Jeons and anyone will run far away. Jungkook has lived here for nearly a decade and a half and at no point during his residency was he able to remember a time when his body wasn’t covered with bruises or scars. It’s a miracle that he’s never broken a bone nor hospitalized after being whipped across his bare buttocks for years like a prisoner. The humiliation was far worse than the pain.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Jungkook retorts for the first time, gaze hardening. “I fucking hate living in this hellhole.”

His mother watches as her husband swings forward and slams his fist down on the side of Jungkook’s temples, knocking the boy against the open drawers. Jungkook splutters a ball of saliva and blood and digs his arms and legs into onto the ground the crawl away. Unfortunately, the room had only so much room for him to move. The stronger male pulls him by the ankles, dragging him back and flipping him on his back for him to see the belt buckle coming undone.

Jungkook crosses his arms across his face and shields his eyes away from the light and those deep black eyes. From the gaps between his forearms, he sees his mother crawling towards him and yanking his pants down, digging her nails so deeply into the patch of skin where his hips meet the waistband that the scratch marks instantly bleed.

“This boy needs to be taught a lesson!” He hears his father say with a voice as sudden and full of viciousness as thunder, the first lash coming down across his arm. He cries out, spine stiffening as a he gasps into the side of the bag. His breath is ripped out of his lungs. The second lash comes down shortly afterwards across his thighs where former bruises had only recently begun to heal.

“He does, doesn’t he?!” His mother encourages, no longer seeming as distressed as she was before looking down at his scrunched and tear-streaked face.

“When I am done with you, boy, you are going to wish you were dead. You ungrateful piece of-”

A stream of thick liquid splatters over Jungkook’s trembling body, a few droplets attempting to seep into his eyelids squeezed shut. His pounding head gifts him with a vision so hazy he might as well stare through a dense blanket of fog. When his arms come down at his sides to hold his temples together, he can feel his veins pulsing beneath.

It takes a full minute for him to even understand what he was looking at. There’s a muscular arm holding his father across the chest to hold the man’s spine straight and another swung over his shoulders as a silver scalpel, following a trail across the neck, stays lodged deep into the trachea. Jungkook sees another splash of red fall over his bare knees as the stream of blood falls to his feet. The smell of iron is thick in the air when his father, eyes bulging out further than he thought possible, slumps to the side.

Pulling himself away from the weight of the corpse at his feet, Jungkook watches the figure rip the knife standing tall from the man’s throat and plunge into the side of his frozen mother’s neck. He watches her pale, skinny limbs thrash as if she’s burned before she slumps down next to the futon.

With a feeling he can only describe as akin to relief, Jungkook looks up at his savior.

“I told you you’ll need me here.”

With soaked hands, Taehyung gathers the boy in his arms and leans him against the wall. He watches as Jungkook’s face scrunches in pain once more and stray tears make its way down his baby soft cheeks. He takes his trembling bottom lip under his front teeth and shakes as he whimpers like a wounded puppy.

He is truly a puppy, Taehyung thinks.

The older boy takes his place against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him, watching Jungkook with the same enthusiasm as one watches a child take its first steps. Jungkook, wiping the splatters of blood from his face, exhales and sniffles loudly before crawling towards his mother. He wraps his fingers around the silver scalpel from her throat and pull until her skull knocks back down to the floor with a thud. Bloods seeps from her wound down to his fingers and, with a sudden strength, Jungkook lodges the sharp end of the tool into her heart. She must have been partially alive as a throaty gasp makes its way out of her mouth.

Her blood is darker than he remembered from the many period-stained panties of hers he scrubbed with his hands over the kitchen sink. It looked like tar, thick and warm yet lightweight as it drenches his clothes. Remembering his state of undress, he curls his fingers around the waistband of his pants and pull it up towards his hips and over the scratches at his side.

Jungkook grasps the knife once more to push further and relishes in the feeling of it hitting bone. He realizes, with wonder, that his parents don’t even look like corpses in front of him but like puppets.

Maybe that’s how they saw him when they were alive – like a puppet they could throw around without a care knowing it’ll live and die under this roof.

Jungkook takes the knife and stumbles over to his father’s body with enthusiasm, puncturing the man’s stomach and dragging the knife up towards the breastbone. More tar-black blood seep into the flooring, flooding the horizontal bamboo until it ran underneath the drawers and the small shelf holding his textbooks in a neat stack. He grips the knife and plunges, again and again, into the side of the man’s head, gasping only slightly when the bone gives away with a small crack like a camera shutter.

Jungkook situates himself on his knees, heels digging into his buttocks, and looks down at his soaked hands resembling red gloves. He examines his nails, the cuticles darkening as the blood oxidizes in the swampy room. He blinks a few times, watching the red glow under the dim lightbulb above him.

He’s imagined this moment many times before in his fantasies, some much more exciting and drawn-out than what occurred like a fight scene from a Bruce Lee movie. But none of those fantasies included Taehyung coming to rescue him like he had many times before. None of these fantasies included such quick and boring deaths. He was hoping he could say everything he wanted to say to them, about how much he loathed them with all his heart, how much he wished he could watch them boil alive like an insect in a summer pond.

They probably knew but didn’t care.

Now that it’s over, now that there will no longer be screaming and tiring cycles of starvation and receiving the belt, Jungkook is rather grateful for Taehyung’s interruption. And he’s grateful that his best friend of years has never really hid his experience from him. Taehyung just merely waited for his slow brain to catch up.

There’s only one thing he could say as the room falls silent and still.

“Is this what happened to your grandpa too?”

It was with a sudden intuition that Jungkook asked such a question.

“This…and a little more.”

Jungkook slumps down to the floor, looking past his shoulder at Taehyung, silently motioning him to come hold him.

Reading the silence without hesitation, the older boy crawls forward and envelops him in his embrace, keeping him tucked beneath his chin as two hands grip the underside of his arms. He shields the boy’s gaze away from the bodies, knowing that the first time is always the most poignant despite him taking it so well.

“They’ll know it was us.”

Taehyung brushes Jungkook’s bangs back and tucks the ends behind his ear.

“They’ll find us even if we left.” Jungkook continues. Without looking, Taehyung can hear the pout in his voice.

“Are you worried?”

Jungkook nods, fingers palming the thick ropes of muscle beneath his grip.

“Don’t be,” Taehyung chuckles, his long fingers brushing over the small sensitive patch of skin just behind the boy’s earlobes. “I’ll take care of you.”

Jungkook decides to take a long, cold shower after ending the call with you. It concerns him that you sounded exhausted over the phone but he expected it anyway as you’ve been working far too much this week. Your voice, so soft and gentle, makes him semi-hard enough that he finds himself palming the length of his cock under the running water to relieve his frustrations. It had taken him a substantial amount of self-control to refrain from asking for more time in the bedroom these days. As sweet as you are allowing him to nestle inside you and nuzzle you when you were too tired and sleepy to move, your exhaustion ultimately lead him to tucking you in his arms and make sure you at least get some sleep. God, how he wishes for you to run your hands over his chest and arms now.

Jungkook twists the shower knob into the wall and ruffle his dripping hair. He slides the glass door to the left, heaving a soft sigh as he examines the surface of the tub, the toilet, and the sink. The smell of sanitizing lemon cleanser still lingers in the air but he knows the scent will be long gone by the time you’re back from work. Next to the polished sink, he prepared a small basket of bath supplies – jasmine-scented bath salts, dried flowers, and a heart-shaped sponge – for you to pamper yourself when you drag your feet through the front door looking like death. Work has been rough on you and he was more than happy to handle all the responsibilities at home that you sometimes habitually do.

He grabs the towel folded over the slightly rusted rack erected next to the shower curtain (he reminds himself to replace that) and wraps the fluffy material around his waist. Stepping out of the shower, he grabs his cellphone just in time for it vibrates aggressively in his grip.

Head tilted to one side to make sure the moisture at the ends of his hair doesn’t drip on the surface, he answers the call with a smile.

“Tae!”

“Is she pregnant yet?”

Jungkook exhales softly, a smile dancing on his lips. The older Taehyung gets, the less he beats around the bush. “Not yet but she’ll be fertile next week, I think I’ll have better luck soon. How’ve you been? Jimin told me you were in Cuba…and Hong Kong too.”

He hears a sigh over the speakers and chews on his bottom lip. Oh, Jimin is going to get an earful for sure for blabbering his business around.

“I had to deal with a few people…listen,” his voice lowers suddenly, “has anyone approached you or your girlfriend recently?”

Jungkook walks into the bedroom, turning off the bathroom lights with his elbow on the way out. He sits at the edge of the bed, combing his hair back until the droplets trail down his spine and shoulder blades.

“Not that I know of,” he shakes his head, “why do you ask?”

When Taehyung doesn’t reply immediately, a pang of anxiety wraps his heart in a vice grip.

“I-is there someone after me?” He grips his phone.

A few thousand miles away, the older man shakes his head, re-evaluating what he needs to hide or reveal. He wants Jungkook to be prepared for emergencies but after discovering that this Kim Seokjin person is in the same city and, out of a strange coincidence that may not be a coincidence, worked in the same building as you, he’s come to a logical conclusion that makes the situation unpredictable. A basic background check tells him that Seokjin no longer works for the government nor does he have permission to access private health and criminal records of strangers. It explains why the man needed to contact Hoseok and Yoongi. The motive behind such an unethical behavior could also be because of you, Taehyung guesses when he scrolled through Seokjin’s social media profiles to see more than a few pictures of him and you at cocktail parties and birthday gatherings. It did not take much deduction to understand that Taehyung is staring at the jealous male figure that his closest friend complained of lingering around his precious noona. Perhaps the man is using unethical means to dig for the literal skeletons in Jungkook’s closet?

However, if Jungkook sees the man as a threat and if Seokjin has evidence in his possessions, why has neither of the men taken drastic action? Jungkook is far too immature (Taehyung admits) to not consider using his services to take care of a male threat. He seems unusually at peace with you now, leading Taehyung into a wall. If Jungkook isn’t truly threatened and if Seokjin hasn’t acted yet, the former agent is probably smart enough to realize you’re not worth the trouble of dealing with a criminal. The contents of Jungkook’s case must have scared him off. Yes, that’s it.

Taehyung mentally slaps himself on the forehead for not thinking through before calling and worrying the boy.

“Tae? Are you still there?”

That bug he planted in the software used to track juvenile criminal cases lent him more paranoia than relief. There were numerous times Jungkook and his files were accessed by agents that were actively filtering or attempting to study old cases to his annoyance. Maybe the pictures scared Seokjin off for good. Two weeks is too long of a wait to expose a man when there’s an abundance of evidence.

“You don’t have to worry. I was asking because someone messed up a shipment and my customer isn’t very happy. Sent some threats that sounded a little too serious than the usual.”

Jungkook exhales a breath he doesn’t know he’s holding. “…I mean…it sounded serious enough to worry you. Should I keep watch? Should I tell Jimin?”

“No, no need for that. I called to check, just in case. You know nothing is guaranteed in our line of work.”

The thought makes Jungkook upset. Nothing is guaranteed, but he hopes your devotion and Taehyung’s safety is. He doesn’t know what he’ll do without the both of you.

“Okay…” Jungkook looks down at his toes clenching into the floor. “You’ll tell me if there’s anything wrong, right?”

To that, Taehyung replies quickly. “Of course. We’re brothers after all.”

He smiles to that, brushing his locks back and standing. He makes his way towards the closet, fishing out a pair of black sweatpants and a matching cashmere shirt.

Hearing the ruffle of clothes through the phone, Taehyung makes the decision not to tell you about Kim Seokjin after all. With the expectation of pregnancy and Jungkook’s proneness to jealousy, he didn’t need more work on his plate. Despite the brotherhood, they each had their own lives after all and constant surveillance of the past would do more harm than good, reopen wounds that have longed healed.

“I’m catching a flight, I’ll call you later.”

“Okay,” Jungkook beams. He suddenly looks forward to the day he’ll introduce Taehyung to you if there’s business that needs to be done in the city. “Bye, Tae-”

The doorbell rings, prompting Jungkook to turn towards the opening where he can see past the living room to partial front door. By the time the bell rings a second time, Taehyung has already dropped the call. Jungkook makes his way out of the bedroom slowly, keeping his feet light.

Taehyung has already reassured him that there was nothing to worry about. Being approached by someone seems unlikely if this customer of his had expressed similar threats in the past. Yet, somewhere in his gut, he couldn’t fight the feeling that there’s something he isn’t noticing. And the answer to that feeling might be on the other side of the door.

When he reaches the panel, he presses the button next to the monitor to reveal the image of a neatly dressed middle-aged woman carrying a small, wrapped box in her hands. He can tell just from her clothes that she belongs to this part of the town – her posture itself reflects wealth and respect.

It took a few more blinks until he realizes who he’s looking at.

Mother-in-law!

The door opens with a loud clang, causing the woman’s head to snap upwards at the tall man smiling down at her. She notes his damp hair and handsome features – doe eyes, a button nose, pink shapely lips and aristocratic cheekbones. You sure know how to pick your men.

“Are you…Jungkook?” The woman inquires.

He nods eagerly, stepping to the side. “Yes, you’re noona’s mother, right? Please come in.”

He notices the hesitation followed by a pair of Celine heels clicking against the polished floors. He mentally rewards himself for dedicating the morning to polish the bathroom, the kitchen, and the parquet. The house smells a bit like lemon but the balcony carried the scent of orange blossoms that masked the unpleasant sharp notes of artificial fruit.

The woman’s eyes move across the living room, eyebrows slightly raised as if she was bracing herself to witness a pig sty instead of a home.

“What time does she get off work?”

Jungkook closes the door and hovers an arm across her back to lead her towards the sofa. She’s about the same height as you, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulders. He silently hopes the furniture doesn’t smell like sweat as he’s been melting there with the television on for the first half of the afternoon.

“A-about nine, she’s been working overtime for this week.” His knees hit the side of the couch but any hint of pain is overridden with the need to impress. “Please take a seat, I’ll bring you some water.”

“Thank you,” she smiles, although the light doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

Jungkook backs slowly towards the kitchen and then jogs to the fridge, yanking the door open and fetching a cool bottle of water. His hands shake when he fishes a glass from the dish rack, making sure he chose the glass without the uneven bottom. He should have refunded the entire set months ago when it came with such a frustrating defect.

He quickly pours into the cup and wipes any stray droplets on the side of the glass with the back of his hand. She thanks him under her breath when he sets the cup in front of her with a wooden coaster propped underneath. She takes the glass in her hands and take a small sip, smacking her lips together as if she’s tasting wine.

Jungkook struggles to look for the right words to say.

“I brought marinated crabs,” she thrusts the neatly packed box towards him, “I think you’ll enjoy it.”

Jungkook’s smile couldn’t have been any larger as he takes the wrapped box from her with both hands. “Thank you so much…I’m sorry I don’t have anything prepared. I wasn’t aware you were coming.”

At that, your mother clears her throat. “I came to talk to you about my daughter. Without her knowing, you see. I’m sure you know we…haven’t been on speaking terms for a while.”

Jungkook nods, placing the box on the table and gathering his hands in his lap. Despite keeping close watch on your every move, he’s kept in the dark about your family situation. He only remembers you shaking with laughter and tears when hearing about your mother maintaining close ties with the Kim family after what happened. Even though the woman hurts for her daughter, financial ties are hard to break.

“…Yes, I’m aware.”

The older woman sighs softly, dragging her gaze across Jungkook’s expression and posture. The boy certainly is polite but it was obvious he was not from the kind of world you’re from. She can tell by the way he fidgets and seem too eager to please; it was endearing but also pathetic to watch. He’s extremely sweet and charming – she admits – and overwhelmingly so. Unlike Namjoon, he seems to be much more expressive and sensitive.

She can understand why you took such a liking to him, why you could overlook the not-so-pleasant behavior that reveals his poor upbringing.

“I wanted to come to tell you…I found someone for her.”

He smiles, not understanding the woman for a few moments until her solemn eyes met his. He can feel his belly clenching as his stomach drops. He must have misheard, that’s it. “I-I’m sorry?”

Your mother takes another sip from her glass, looking around the house once more, as if she were stalling time, before planting her eyes on Jungkook’s appalled expression. She seems guilty, at least, that she’s said such a thing to the boy although she’s never once held a high opinion of him.

“I’ve been looking for a suitable partner for her.” She continues. “I am aware she is rightfully upset with me and she won’t listen to me, much less talk. I know she was seeing several men before she became…serious with you.”

Jungkook can feel his stomach churning.

“You must know by now what kind of family she comes from. There are some…things that are expected of her to respect our traditions. I know it’s entirely unfair of me to-”

Jungkook stands, turning away from her as he brings a hand up to his mouth. His temples pulse with nausea as her voice grows louder.

“-come here and ask for you to understand! What you did to Namjoon did irreversible damage to my daughter’s reputation and as a mother,” she shakes her head from side to side, “I can no longer sit still and watch her make a terrible mistake”

“I…” Jungkook starts, his heart hammering in his chest. “What I did to him…I would never do to noona. I’d never hurt her o-or even think about doing such a thing.”

The woman sighs, her eyes devoid of warmth. “I know, darling. I do trust that the incident happened because you were protecting her feelings. I can appreciate your sentient. However,…she’s my only child. As a mother…as her only parent…I have to make sure she’s on the right path.”

Jungkook turns, his eyes glazed as he bores into the box sitting on the couch. This wasn’t a present given for pleasantries, it was brought to cushion her true intentions.

“Jungkook…” The woman stands to stretch her arms out and hold Jungkook’s hands under her warm palms. He’s paralyzed, whether or not it’s from her insulting logic or from her general disapproval of him, she doesn’t care to know.

“I’m not your enemy. I know you love my daughter, I’ve heard of how much you’ve taken care of her. Please understand that-”

His ears are ringing. Jungkook can feel himself shrinking under her gaze. He couldn’t even bring himself to be angry because he knows, deep down, how incompatible he is with you considering the two very different lives you both have led. Did you phone your mother for the first time in months behind his back after he told you about his past? Did you pretend to be okay even if it scared you?

It’s like your mother reached into his core and pulled every shred of insecurity he carried within him. Every night for the last few months, he felt like he was given permission to consume the forbidden fruit that is you, knowing there are consequences to his consumption. Your devotion, your promises, your endless compassion towards him – is it all going to turn into a mirage?

He knows since the very beginning that in many ways he’s incomparable to Namjoon and even some of your rebound lovers he had the displeasure of following around. A glance at a man’s wristwatch and he could tell whether they belonged to your world or not. Jungkook can only hope that the struggles he’d faced would give him the leverage others don’t have. He is willing to risk it all for you and make sure you won’t ever have to experience a single morsel of pain he’d endured.

“Can you give me a chance?” Jungkook pleads, voice small.

Suddenly, anger flashes across your mother’s face but as quick as it came, it disappeared. He could tell she was struggling to keep herself in check after several months of you ignoring her calls, her incessant demands to maintain the family image, and the burn of needing to sneak around your schedule to reach your new apartment herself. It’s the pent-up frustration of having the family pride stepped on again and again by you that has led her to this moment.

If he were your guardian, he’d also be worried too. He can forgive your mother just as he had forgiven you many times.

“A chance?” She fumes.

Jungkook nods. “I promise I won’t disappoint you…I-I have a business and I’m more than willing to be the sole provider-”

The woman’s hand tighten around his relaxed fists.

“Jungkook,” she grits. “You are not hearing me. I don’t want her marrying into a family out of our circle. We have an established tradition of-”

Jungkook scoffs, ripping his hands away. “No, ma’am. You are not hearing me.”

Her eyebrows come together as her foundation-covered wrinkles deepen with a frown. She watches Jungkook walk across the living room to the hanging picture of you and your father. You were a mere child then, staring naively up at your late father with wonder as your little fists reach up to take the glasses resting on the bridge of his nose.

Digging his hands inside his pocket and running his tongue over the inside of his cheek, he turns to the woman.

“I’m asking for a chance because I’ve already decided to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.”

#bunny:fic #yandere bts #yandere fanfiction #bts fanfiction #jungkook fanfiction #jungkook angst #jungkook fanfic #bangtan fanfiction #bangtan angst #bangtan smut #jungkook smut #bts smut #bts fanfic #jungkook x reader #only you #chapter 8 #i had to make a super hard decision to take out the smut that I wrote like over a thousand words for *WHEEEZEEEEE*#there will be smut in OY9 tho i GUARANTEE #pls don't come for me with pitchforks lmfao

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jellyroom · 4 years ago

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Request- Idk how to send a request so imma do it here lol. So I have this HC that the Obey Me brothers have another more demonic true form. Could you write a reaction to their s/o seeing their true form and loving it when all the brothers expected them to reject it?

MC reacts to their more demonic form~

Lucifer

You some how managed to convince Lucifer to show you his more demonic form. It may have taken awhile to get him to trust you brought but he’s finally ready to show you. He told you to close your eyes and when he told you to open your eyes again your eyes widened in surprise. His hair was longer to where it went past his shoulders. His black wings were even bigger than before. His eyes were a deep black with no color around them. At first he thought you were repulsed by his once angelic form and started looking at the ground for once feeling shy. You noticed this and walked to him, placeing a hand on his chest and looking up at his face with a soft smile. “I didn’t know you could get an more handsome than you already were.” You told him he looked at you in surprise before letting a his signature smirk take over his face. He then cupped your cheek with his hand and brought you in for a kiss.

Mammon

It took a lot and I mean a lot of reassurance to get Mammon to show you his final form. He’s kinda shy as it is and wouldn’t want you to hate him at all for his form. He felt very self conscious about showing it to you. He took you to a secluded place so that no one else would see it. He looked at you with fear for a second. Seeing you smile at him, he changed. His wings now had feathers on them and the grew larger. His shoulders down to his fingers looked as if they were covers in shiny black paint. The white markings still on his body shined brighter than before. His fingers sharper than before as well. He kept his face down to the ground not wanting to look at your face in case you looked at him in disgust. You walked up to him and cupped both his cheeks with your hands. You stared into his eyes quickly making note of the fact that his eyes still held thier sea blue color. You smiled at him and brought him in for a kiss completely catching him off guard. He was a stuttering mess when you pulled away for him. “I will always love you Mammon, no matter what form.” You spoke with such sincerity that it brought tears to his eyes and he pulled you close to him.

Asmo

He had wanted to show you his true form since day one but held back till you got closer. Although he loved him self he found him self a bit self conscious around you especially concerning his final form. You were both in his room when he decided to show you. He asked you to close your eyes and when you opened them again. The first thing you noticed was he had had one pair of wings that was bigger. His body on the other hand had gotten slightly smaller. His skin looked broken and cracked as a porcelain doll would. He looks more of the stereotypical ugly. His eyes a deep flush pink, his teeth slightly sharp. His nails became even sharper than before, and the energy around him just seemed more desirable than before.“Do you still love me?” He asked in a small tone noticing you staring but not saying anything. You quickly smiled and ran into him knocking the both of you on the bed, before giving him a kiss. He was fully shocked thinking that you would find him repulsing with how he looked now. “I could never stop loving you, no matter how you look.”

Satan

He had full confidence in his form, but in front of you he felt shy. He didn’t want you to be scared of him at all. He knows his form can be very frightening to some but wanted to show you as a sign of trust. When he switched he was just a figure completely made up of black mist. His eyes in a similar style had turned red and seemed to have red mist coming from them. When he would talk there were sharp teeth. You took a step back at first not having expected such a change and you could see how his eyes had glossed over with fear. You quickly brought him into a hug finding him to still be solid enough to touch. You planted a kiss on his cheek and went on as if he was till in his “normal” form.

Leviathan

He had told you about his form forever ago and you’ve been asking to see it since then. Since you both were busy most days because of RAD the first chance he got to be able to go to the ocean he brought you with him to show you. He say you on a cliff before he dived into the ocean it took a few minutes before you had seen him. He rose up out of the water slowly as to not scare you away. He resembled a dragon except he had gils and fins. His scales were a beautiful purple that simmered blue when the light hit it just right. You stepped back to get a better look at him but he thought you were trynna run away from him. He let out a quick huff in fear. You walked to him slowly before placing your hand on his snout. He slightly leaned into it which probably felt like to him he did even move. You could see the smile on his eyes before he went back under the sea.

Beelzebub

He definitely didn’t want to show you his final form if he could help it because even he didn’t like it all that much. When you started asking him to show you he was very stubborn about it. Finally you had convinced him to show you. It took a lot of work and food to conivece him. When he finally does show you the first thing you notice is a lot of buzzing. The most noticeable thing is all the flies and beetles suddenly around him, some even just sitting there on his body not even moving. You noticed his wings looked even more realistic than before, at the corners of his mouth laid pinchers similar to how a fly would have them. His teeth even sharper than before, clearly able to tear through anything and everything he wanted. He started walking over to you while having a look in his eyes that resembled self hate. You brought a hand up to his face smiling softly at him. “Please don’t hate your self Beel, I still love you so much that will never change for as long as I know you.”

Belphigor

After asking him many times Belphigor decided he had enough and just turned into his final form without warning. He had just wanted to sleep but since you wouldn’t leave him alone about it he finally showed it. His hair covered his eyes his tail still the same. He great a few sizes and gotten a bit bigger. His skin a sickly yellow look. Canine teeth sticking out similar to a boar. He had closed his eyes to sleep but grew worried when he didn’t hear you say anything. He opened his eyes and pushed his hair back to look at you. Seeing your eyes glitter with amazement, he himself was surprised at your reaction

#obey me #obey me imagine #fanfic #writer #obey me fandom #obey me headcanons #obey me asmo #obey me belphegor #obey me mammon #obey me lucifer #obey me beelzebub #obey me satan #obey me leviathan #obey me brothers

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hectabdr · 4 years ago

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Dragon Raja IV - Chapters 13 - 15 + epilogue (Abridged)

Hi everyone, sorry for taking so long to post the last part, I had a lot of work this week.

BTW, since it's over, I put the whole novel summary on a PDF document, which you can download from here.

Previous Chapters

Chapter 13

The nurse at the mental hospital couldn't believe her eyes when Luminous came back and requested to be admitted in his old room. He asked for his usual injection and went back to his not-so-favorite video game level.

In his vision, he kept accelerating far away form the swarm of death servitors, everything went according to plan and they still had lots of time to spare. He made many excuses to Nono in an attempt to justify his incredible performance, in the radio, there was a very strange song, Luminous recognized it, the name was "Daily Growing" by the folk group Altan, it was the same song that Johann and his father heard before they ran into Odin.

Nono was confused, Luminous just seemed to know way too many things. He knew about the damaged tire, about every safe route, the reach of the Nibelungen and the presence of a small, strange building hiding in the distance. It was the Media Asia Group building, according to Finger, this is the place where Nono found Chu Tianjiao's home. If this was a Nibelungen, an exact copy of the room should be there as well, still intact.

There was nothing surprising about the small place, but that was intentional. A person like Tianjiao was probably trained against people with skills like Nono's, so there had to be a secret compartment or a hidden door. He lifted the bed and there it was!

Mr Chu managed to create an underground bunker for himself. There was a bigger, more comfortable bed, a record player with Elvis Presley's discs and leather jackets. Luminous wanted to be more like this stylish man every second he spent there.

He noticed a bunch of pictures hanging from a string. Tianjiao spend a lot of time making copies of photographs from his family, but he wasn't in them, there was another man next to his wife and his son, but he used chemicals to erase him from the images. He also wrote small phrases dedicated to his wife in the back of the photos, like:

"This is the first year since you left me, you look good"

"This is the third year, you're getting fat"

"Fifth year, I don't have time to think of you anymore"

"Sixth year. ...but I still miss you".

The rest of the walls were filled with images and documents connected by red strings. Multiple events were listed in them, including the fall of Black Swan Bay in 1991 and the Greenland incident from November 7, 2002. These events related to dragon sightings and awakenings all led to a specific incident: The resurrection of the Black king Nidhogg. Even to the other dragon overlords, Nidhogg is a god-like existence, and its words are taken as prophecies. Chu Tianjiao was the city's watchman, he came to that place with a special purpose, but he mistakenly fell in love with a young dancer. They got married and had a child, they were happy, but he knew very well that he couldn't give them a peaceful life, so he signed the divorce papers and watched her take Johann away and marry a different man. While that family went to amusement parks and movie theaters, Tianjiao stayed on his underground room thinking about the fate of mankind.

Luminous memorized as much as he could from Tianjiao's investigation and went back with Nono, he kept driving and they entered the empty city, the lights were still on and the amusement park shined like a neon show.

- I always wanted to be in a Nibelungen, but I didn't expect it to be like this.

- How did you think it would be?

- Distorted, scary, definitely not this beautiful.

They looked up and they saw Odin, standing on top of the clock tower, Nono raised a gun and pointed at him but Luminous held it down, telling her not to disturb him, they kept driving silently and the god didn't notice their presence.

Luminous took her to a shopping mall, where they entered a department store and he gave her a dry change of clothes. This was still strange to her, he already knew her size, he never stopped looking at his watch and somehow he also picked an outfit that she liked (a pair of burgundy sports trousers and a fleece hoodie).

He gave her a cup of hot coffee and he suggested they waited on an empty movie theater while they waited for help.

Nono waited uncomfortable in front of the screen, Luminous picked up a random movie from the projector room, it was Wall·E, the second film roll to be exact, so the film started from the halfway point. The movie slowly relaxed her and she started chewing popcorn while they waited.

- I've been here before, haven't I?.

This was the theater where she rescued him from a failed love confession to Wenwen, before taking him to sign his Cassell admission papers. Actually, Luminous was watching Wall·E with his fellow literature club members. All of these were deliberate choices, he only picked the second half of the movie because they didn't have enough time to watch it from the start.

- You have been here, you have experienced all the things we are experiencing now and I have lived this moment many times.

Nono was a profiler, it wasn't that easy to trick her, so he admitted the truth. At 12:00am, Nono was going to die, like every other time.

- This dream will become a reality. I have repeatedly entered this dream just to find a way to save you, but I couldn't find it.

- If you can't find a way to save me, why don't you save yourself instead?

- My senior brother said that he always regretted leaving his father here alone, that feeling of regret is so terrible, it made him want to go back and die right there.

- Don't say such disgusting things, if this is really my end I will accept it.

The answer became obvious, the only way to escape this Nibelungen was for one person to stay behind and die. As the movie reached its climax, a spear broke through the screen, Nono didn't move, Luminous didn't move.

- No, senior sister, this will not be you end, it will be mine.

Chapter 14

Luminous opened his eyes, it was still a quiet summer night, he slid a small knife that he bought at the convenience store and ripped the straitjacket open. The hospital personnel were resting in different rooms so he sneaked out with ease.

His last attempt was the 108th, none of them managed to give him the perfect ending that he desperately chased. The old man with the tricycle was waiting for him outside, Luminous got on the small bike and drove away. The security guard couldn't believe it when he saw the same tricycle pass by for a third time that night, straight into the elevated road.

Luminous reached the old Asia Group building, now flooded and filled with rubble and mud. He managed to find the secret door and found the insides half-submerged as well, but not everything was ruined, he located a small metal suitcase in the corner that was filled with multiple weapons, including a revolver, a tactical shotgun and a Uzi submachine gun.

All seemed to indicate that this equipment came directly from Cassell College, an academy that never bothered to mention Tianjiao's existence.

In his way out, he picked one of the photographs that managed to survive the flood, it portrayed a family of three. Johann was probably five years old and his expression was as emotionless as usual, his robot face wasn't the result of some traumatic event after all, it came with him from the moment he was born. In the corner, Tianjiao wrote some words as well: "Stay like this, not crying, just looking into the distance".

This arsenal was strong, but insignificant in front of a being like Odin. Ming·Z·Lu showed up to offer one last gift.

Something for nothing, 50% fusion.

Luminous was familiar with that sensation, his nerves burned and the depths of his mind seemed to be cracked open, the pain was bigger than any human can endure, but once it was over, there was a feeling of euphoria, a need to fight. His senses increased immensely, he could now distinguish every single drop in the middle of the rainfall. This usually costed him a full quarter of his life but now it was... Free?

He finally heard the distorted noises of the death servitors, it sounded like the crying of babies. The wall of water and wind that protected Odin became visible, the black figure mounted an eight legged horse. He was in the Nibelungen again, this time he didn't plan to turn around.

Luminous approached them and parked the tricycle next to the Maybach, he stood in front of Odin and the god stayed silent. The words "You are finally here" were not uttered this time, he was right, Odin was waiting for Nono, but he didn't bring her this time, Luminous's presence was meaningless to his rival.

Odin kept staring at the end of the road, waiting for Chen Motong to appear and show her face.

- This is the right way to start the game, my senior sister is not here, only you and me, only one of us can leave this place alive!

He was vey happy, he finally played the god. He slowly grabbed a spear rocket launcher from the tricycle, the little devil was as reliable as always. The servitors immediately recognized the destructive potential of the weapon and tried to disperse, but Luminous opened fire first and scattered their shadowy remains on the road.

He saw his face in a puddle, the crazy expression of Ming·Z was now his own, like every other time they fused, it felt like this was his true nature. Weapon after weapon he ran out of ammo, some servitors sneaked behind him and sliced his torso with their claws, if it wasn't for the bulletproof vest that Tianjiao left in his suitcase, Mingfei would have died already.

A shot of his last gun, a M500 revolver finally broke one of the servitor's masks. He hadn't seen one of those faces since his mission in Japan, their skin was covered in scales and their teeth were long and alien-shaped. Odin gave them black robes and masks to use them as his personal servants. Odin was definitely different to every other dragon king he had faced before, they were all savage and aggressive, but this one was stoic and dressed like a figure of mythology, unless...

That was it! Odin wasn't a dragon disguised as a mythical character, Odin, the myth himself has been a dragon all along. The secret party had misread norse mythology, now it was clear that it narrated the history of the dragon clan and it was written by the dragons themselves. Every god was in fact a dragon king, in those myths, the main antagonist of Nidhogg was Odin. This god had already foreseen the coming of the end of the world, the so-called twilight of the gods, where the world tree would wither.

The suppressed Nidhogg will rise in the air, ready for revenge, it will destroy everything and ruin the kingdom of the gods. Therefore, Odin prepared himself for this battle, ordering the Valkyrie goddesses to gather the heroes's souls and place them in the Hall of Valor to assist him in resisting the black dragon. If the norse myths are indeed dragon history, the hall of valor must represent a place filled with countless dragon cocoons and embryos waiting to be awakened.

This information, this great secret was about to be buried there with him if he didn't survive this battle. Nono was probably packing, ready to leave with Finger and go back to Cassell, for whatever reason Odin needed her, she would be out of his reach, he just needed to endure and Odin was still as invincible as ever. Making a deal with Ming·Z was inadmissible, giving the little devil enough power to materialize could bring an immeasurable catastrophe. The boy appeared in front of him.

- Brother, you finally asked to see me, do you want to... Shake my hand?

The multitude of servitors overwhelmed him, he contemplated dying there, it wouldn't be so bad, just very lonely. With a loud bang! the strongest servitor flew out and fell motionless on the mud.

A red BYD car swiftly parked next to him, a hand came out of the window and shot the three closest servitors, that was Finger, of course it was him!

- Drive faster! Why the fuck are you here?

- What do I know? I was eating dumplings with your aunt and the hospital called to tell me you were gone!

Finger placed a tracking device on Luminous just like he did with Nono and saw his trace disappearing in the highway, so he went to investigate and entered the Nibelungen by accident.

- Don't get confused by my F-Rank rating, I started as an A-rank, remember?

Flammel tasked Finger with helping Luminous to prove Johann's existence, he didn't remember the young hybrid either, but he trusted Anjou, and Anjou believed in the importance of Luminous more than anyone. Not everyone on Cassell gave up on him after all.

- Don't drive away, we can't escape!

- I thought you told me to drive faster!

- Yes I did, but I meant towards Odin!

The servitors quickly realized what they were intending to do, so they formed a barrier in front of their master. Finger pressed a button on the car and one mini-gun came out of each side of the vehicle.

- The equipment department makes phones that double as grenades, you think they can't make 007's car?

The gatling guns opened fire on the crowd of servitors, effectively cleaning the way. Finger put the car on self destruct mode and got ready to jump out, Luminous got on the roof, aiming his knife at Odin. The car hit Odin's water barrier and exploded, the shockwave soared into the sky, filled with flames. Luminous jumped and managed to pass through, and with a swift move, he pierced through Odin with the blade, just like Tianjiao attempted to do many years before.

Every servitor stopped their movements, Odin's scores started dropping down immediately and his body got split in two. There had to be something wrong with that, there's no way he would fall to his death so easily. Luminous took the god's skull and removed the mask, under it, the face of a death servitor greeted him instead, the others started crying and laughing at them. Odin's only goal is Nono, it had always been Nono, this was a trap and he was already on his way to get her.

Chapter 15

Nono was sitting next to Su Xiaoyan's bed, peeling an apple. The woman happily ate the bonbons that Nono brought for her as a gift.

- Nono, how is your mother doing?

- She's fine, she's still working and always asks me when I'll get married but I just don't tell her.

Nono had to make up that story, but at that moment she really felt like Xiaoyan's niece. She checked the woman's medical records, apparently the doctors thought she was schizophrenic and amnesiac, as long as Nono played her role well, the medical personnel would think Xiaoyan's amnesia made her forget about her relative.

Because Nono brought Bonbons, Xiaoyan recognized her immediately and happily accepted her gift.

She had been there since her son's death, she lost track of time, to the point where she felt like she had been there for three or four months, when in reality, seven years had passed. Not many people visited her in that time, her husband would take her home for a few days every now and then, but those events became less and less usual. Of course, Nono was there for a reason, without Tianjiao's apartment, her only remaining clue was Johann's mother, but the woman wasn't very open about her life. Nono's ability allowed her to put puzzles together, but Xiaojiao kept messing up the pieces.

- Did your former husband treat you well?

- He couldn't make enough money and he was very unmotivated, playing foolish all day long, I had enough of him!

- But he's handsome, and he's probably still breaking hearts.

- How do you know that he's handsome? You haven't seen him before.

- Of course I have, I remember hugging my uncle!

- Come on, do you really think I'm that broken? I know I don't have a niece.

- Then why didn't you tell the doctor?

- Because you're so pretty, and I like to chat with pretty girls, there's no one else here to chat with me, and you don't look like a bad person either.

Nono was genuinely surprised, so she declared her intentions straight on, she wanted to know more about Chu Tianjiao, but his ex-wife didn't seem to know a lot about him either, he would constantly lie about his past and alternate between multiple versions of the story.

- Sometimes he told me that he was a great spy, and that he came here to complete a task, and I believed him, without a clue of his salesman-like nature!

- And you still married him?

- He was handsome, and I was young.

Xiaoyan didn't express any regret in divorcing him, she'd rather be with someone she could rely on, but there was something else she could not explain.

- But he seems to have left something behind with me, a very important thing, I just can't remember it.

- What is it?

- I said I can't remember it, I've been thinking about it for a very long time.

- What kind of thing?

- A very important thing, I must find it, it would be very bad if I didn't.

A burst of cold wind opened the windows and made them shiver, Nono stood up and went to close them but she noticed something strange, the flowers on the outside were all withered, black petals flew through the room, she closed the window as fast as she could, something bad had happened and the air outside smelled of death.

She took out a desert eagle from her bag and stopped Xiaoyan from screaming, the woman relied on her intuition to understand that Nono wasn't going to hurt her. The place was silent and the lights flickered, the instinctive feeling of being alert that came from true isolation soon got a hold of her. She and Xiaoyan got out of the room, door after door, every doctor and every patient had disappeared.

The rain and the wind rapidly eroded the building. The day was finally here, she had never been in a Nibelungen before, she once regretted not being able to experience it, now Nibelungen came to see her. She didn't knew wether to be nervous or excited.

- Someone, someone is coming. Su Xiaoyan's voice trembled slightly.

The sound of footsteps made an echo in the building, those weren't human steps, that sounded like a few horses were coming their way. The storm, the Nibelungen, the steed, the rider, it seemed to be an ancient king who came with a strong breath of death, and the flowers in the garden withered in front of him. Nono remembered him, she saw his silhouette in the reflection of the glass when she went to Tianjiao's apartment.

The rider didn't seem to know where Xiaoyan's room was and he was checking them one by one. They ran towards the elevator, the rider was on the first floor so they needed to get to the top as fast as they could without the sound of their steps giving away their position. Behind them, the fluorescent lights went out one by one. Nono finally saw the reflection of the elevator's door in a mirror, but when its doors opened, the light of Odin's flames came out.

They ran in the other direction and soon reached the stairs, they ran down but it didn't matter, they were trapped on an endless loop. She shot at the creature but the bullets melted before touching the god's armor. They kept running and Nono kept shooting back but it wasn't buying them any more time, temperatures were rising and there was no way out.

Odin wasn't even in a hurry to reach them, Nono took Xiaoyan in her arms and ran across a hallway, enduring the terrible heat of the floor. She tried to get out through a window, but after opening the curtains she noticed that the whole world outside had changed and she was greeted by the sight of a roman pantheon.

Nono suddenly fell silent, she helped Xiaoyan to sit down on a bench and put her boots on the woman's feet. She noticed something, she was crying, she was remembering.

- There might be a way for you to get out of here by yourself, now tell me, what did Tianjiao left for you exactly?

- It's... A child. I had a son with him, his name is Johann Chu, I can't find my son... I can't find my son!

Xiaoyan was holding a pillow in her arms, the doctor said that she would put this pillow in her belly every morning and happily declare that she was pregnant. Nono took it from her hands and threw it away.

- Since you have a clear memory of him, you don't need this anymore, you will find your son, although I don't know where.

In this world, those who are not lunatics are the ones who were deceived. Luminous and Su Xiaoyan were the craziest because of their link to Johann Chu, to the truth. His mother's mental disorder was not there because she had lost a son seven years ago, a certain god wanted to modify her memory of him and she was resisting. She tied the little pillow to her back because a child is only safe in his mother's body, she sensed that someone was going to hurt her boy, so she wanted to feel like she could protect him.

Nono pushed Xiaoyan into a cubicle next to the ward and told her to keep the door closed until someone came to rescue her. She took Finger's GPS device out of her bag and broke it, expecting Luminous and Finger to arrive there after seeing her signal disappear. Odin arrived, his flames evaporated the strong currents of water and stood in front of her, Nono kept two knives on her back and a desert eagle in each hand.

- Odin!

The creature and his lance were impossible not to identify, the god actually exists.

- You are finally here.

He slowly raised Gungir and a faint white thread appeared, connecting the tip of the spear and Nono's heart. She thought his goal was Xiaoyan, due to her connection to Johann, but she was wrong, Odin's goal was her and only her. No wonder Luminous threw her down in the library, he probably had a foreboding of her death for some reason and tried to save her, his eyes showed a constant state of panic.

She didn't believe him and they put him on a psychiatric institution. She really wanted to tell him that she was sorry, because she had underestimated him.

She had always tried to be there for Luminous, she couldn't deny that she saw a lot of herself in him, this obsession with taking care of her sidekick was so prevalent because she knew how it was like to be powerless, lost and defenseless, but in the most critical moment, she had failed him.

Nono vaguely heard a song, a duet about a father and his daughter, it was coming from somewhere, along with the noise of a car engine. Luminous was coming, that song came from the radio, but how could she hear him? It didn't matter, she felt him presence and she believed it.

- Luminous! Don't you fucking dare to come here!

Nono shot every bullet she had left and they melted on Odin's presence. The lance was thrown and suddenly, the Maybach smashed through the wall, its lights illuminated Nono's eyes. She smiled, the moment she saw him, the cartridge of her gun was empty. The lance had already started its course and Luminous could only see her lips moving:

- I'm sorry

- Ming·Z·Lu! Luminous roared, time slowed down in his eyes

- The little one is here! Ming·Z smiled, Since I promised my brother that I'd try everything!

Come out! Golden saint cloth of the zodiac!, Phase shift armor!, Fierce fist! Seven-fold ring of the blazing sky!, Absolute domain AT Field!.

Every time he yelled a strange name, Luminous froze for a moment, these strange spells were taken directly from anime shows, they were weapons that lined up in front of Odin's lance, even a nuclear explosion could be rejected by them.

- What are you doing?

- I don't really know what tricks would work so I'm doing all of them!

Ming·Z kept casting spells, the speed of the lance was indeed affected but it never stopped nor it changed its trajectory.

- Hurry up brother, run!

Nono tried to yell, telling Luminous to stay away, but her mouth moved too slowly. Luminous ran past Odin and past the lance. The seven-fold ring was the strongest defense against projectiles, every time the Gungir lance pierced through a layer, it made a loud noise. Nono dropped the empty gun, she didn't have the strength to wield her knives. The spear hadn't arrived yet, and she was already like a lamb crucified on an altar.

Gungir hit the final defense, the sound was almost glass shattering.

- I couldn't stop it, even with the last layer. Give her a hug, kiss her! This is going to be your last chance! I'll buy as much time as possible for you!

Ming·Z made another barrier but the lance broke it, the little devil's hands were splashed with blood and they stained his bow tie, but he didn't care and looked at his side as an indifferent Luminous passed by and stood in front of Nono. He never managed to change the events, just the scenery. Gungir pierced through Ming·Z's chest.

- Brother, I tried my best

- It's ok, I'm here as well.

Luminous wasn't going to hug or kiss Nono, he was there to take her place. He could clearly feel his heart being cut open. The spear hadn't even touched his skin and his body had begun to carbonize and turn black, showing a rare struggle, burning it inch by inch.

- No! No! No! Nono struggled to stand up and pull the lance away from him.

- Don't come near me!

The lance tried to go through him, but it only managed to pin him against the wall. Nono shivered slightly and tears slowly ran down her face, but she didn't realize that she was crying. She always wanted him to grow up and go his own way, to use any advantage she might have over him to push him forward, but now the person who was crying on the floor was her.

- Senior sister, are you okay? It's okay.

Luminous raised his head, half of his head and body were carbonized, the cracks at the end of his lips extended all the way to the roots of his ears. He was really happy, because he finally managed to achieve his goal. He didn't want to live with the regret of losing her, he had seen Johann's own regret already.

Odin wasn't pleased, the god roared as he realized he had missed his chance. Luminous whispered:

- Ming·Z·Lu...

- Brother, I am here, you really found a method to stop the lance!

- In this world, only a monster can stop a monster, and I am the biggest monster in the world...

- Yes, you are the biggest monster in the world, brother! You are awesome! Then, are you ready to make the last deal? I can't do much against the lance, but I can take care of the monster behind it, the little devil is good at this dirty work!

Luminous stared at him and asked for two conditions:

- Kill Odin, but also take Nono back to safety.

- Alright but hurry up! That guy is almost here!

Sleipnir's eight legs made a thunderous sound, the dragon subspecies that Odin mounted carried its master into the room. Luminous raised his blood-soaked hand and gave the little devil a high-five. Ming·Z's figure suddenly appeared in the night sky, this time he stopped laughing and opened his arms. He looked like a suspended cross.

- Something for nothing, 100% fusion.

He breathed deeply, as if he wanted to inhale all of the world's air into his lungs. Sharp bone spurs protruded from his body and he was covered in black scales. Huge black wings sprung from his back and he took flight, diving down, his image poured into Luminous's body.

The carbonized skin quickly peeled off, he experienced musculoskeletal growth and deformation and the sound of a glacier cracking was heard across the hospital.

The black wings were opened and Gungir was ejected from his chest. Sleipnir couldn't move a single inch closer to them, because Luminous placed his hand on the horse's chest. Nono stared blankly at him, because she couldn't tell if the monster in front of her was a friend or an enemy, but Luminous stared back at her.

- Sister, don't be afraid, as long as I live, you'll be fine.

After two years, Chen Motong saw the devil that rescued her from the bottom of the Three Gorges Dam once again. She remembered how he held her, his childlike fear and his voice.

Don't die, don't die, don't die... Don't Die!

- So it was you...

But Luminous didn't hear those words at all, he rushed to Odin, at the flash of lightning, the monsters that had been in conflict with each other so many times, leaving countless disasters, clashed once again, and the claws and the sword stained the place red and black.

They roared, they fought, a war between kings that can only be ended by death.

Epilogue

On the elevated road, Finger stopped for a moment to catch his breath. This guy is usually slacking and his posture is erratic. The death servitors are struggling to even reach his clothes.

There should be half a marathon left before he can lose them, however, the physical strength of those things is almost unlimited.

Seeing him stop, a group of servitors suddenly became excited and the baby-like cries they made reached the heavens. A girl in a black outfit and a gauze mask appeared in front of him, a ninja.

- How did you know I was here?

- I have a radar for pretty girls... Can you handle that many servitors?

Mai Sakatoku drew two small blades.

- Those are too many, I'm specialized in assassination, not group combat. It's a pity that the other two girls are not here...

- Then I hope I can help.

He had a sword in his hand, the mirror-like Murasame suddenly turned black, the black blade light soon extended all the way to his body and the rain around it evaporated. Mai was surprised by the brutality of the sword, but Finger remained indifferent.

- What kind of sword is that?

- Murasame, have you never heard of the Dragon Slayer of Fire? Then you are really kind, but a bit ignorant, my friend!

After saying that, he jumped and cut off the elevated road.

#dragon raja #dragon raja novel #luminous #nono #ming z lu #finger von frings #johann chu

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a-libra-writes · 5 years ago

Text

Queens - Daenerys x Dragon Owner!Reader

this was a request! finally got it finished whoop whoop. I took a lot of liberties, sorry about that~ 😅

Summary: Daenerys meets a strange woman who has far more in common with her than most.

Daenerys thought she would feel something. She thought she’d hear something, at least. Instead, there was a yawning opening of a cave, completely silent and dark. Just stepping in a few paces, she could feel the temperature drop in spite of the broad daylight outside.

The sound of Jorah’s armor was close to her. She could hear the knight’s worry without even looking at him. “Khaleesi, we can’t be sure it isn’t a trap.”

It would be the boldest trap she’d ever heard of. While word was beginning to spread about the Mother of Dragons and her three children, each story more exaggerated than the next, it was odd that this particular rumor was kept so quiet until now. She could scarcely believe it, but here she was, wishing it was true.

People said all sorts of absolutes - There are no more dragons, there is no magic, there is no khalasar led by a khaleesi - yet, hadn’t she seen the contrary? The more Daenerys heard absolutes, the less she believed them.

So here she stood, at the entrance of the supposed location of another dragon, and the person who hatched it. A bold rumor, but weren’t the things they said about her even bolder?

It wouldn’t take long to investigate, and Daenerys tried to hide the anticipation pulling at her. She insisted on going herself, throwing some excuse out, in lieu of sending her bloodriders or Jorah. She left the safety of Qarth for just a day to see this for herself.

Daenerys walked into the coldness, her strongest child on her shoulder. Drogon’s lack of fear gave her courage. If anything, he smelled the damp cave air in curiosity. Would he smell the dragon first?

The cave floor was mostly solid beneath her feet, with a few patches of spongy spots here and there. Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and several feet behind her, Ser Jorah was holding a torch. Dark as it was, the light reflected slightly off small piles of bones. Daenerys stopped at one of them and looked at it carefully. Drogon hopped off her shoulder to do his own investigation. The bones were charred black, and brittle. The small dragon happily took one in his mouth and gnawed at it, snapping it into fragments.

“Goat and sheep, it seems,” Jorah said, nudging one of the bigger bones with his foot. “The way it’s broken up, it wasn’t consumed by humans.”

“Nor scorched by them.” The bones still carried the faint and familiar smell of fire. It encouraged her rather than frightened her. “Let’s press on.”

They came to a narrow passageway that opened to a large cavern. Here there were small, makeshift torches and a little burning brazier on the floor. Daenerys squinted her eyes to make out the shapes in the shadows. There were bundles of blankets neatly laid about, some bowls and urns, even a small chest that gleamed with some kind of metal.

She was studying so carefully that Drogo’s sudden movement startled her. The dragonling returned to her shoulder, pressing his talons into her shoulder almost too tightly. His small growl, mighty as he thought it was, only echoed slightly off the wall.

She saw what he was upset with. A form emerged from the shadows, a tall set of wings rising up from shoulder blades. Daenerys steeled herself until the form entered the light, looking more like a woman and less like a monster.

The wings sat at her shoulders, then the dragon’s head rose. Its golden scales glinted in the limited light, yet Daenerys could still see the red of its eyes. Her breath caught as she stared at it, a beautiful creature nearly the size of a dog, perched on the woman’s shoulders. Daenerys forgot about Drogon’s smaller talons pressing into her own skin.

The woman regarded her just the same. “How did you find me, khaleesi?”

The woman spoke with an accent Daenerys couldn’t place. She used the tongue of Valyria, although it was awkward in her pretty mouth. “You know who I am?”

“Most do. You do not hide.”

“As you are?” Daenerys couldn’t believe the rumor was true. She had so many questions, but it was all coming in a jumble. “Why are you here in a place like this? Why aren’t you … For so long, the world thought dragons were gone.”

The woman said nothing at first. While she looked down, her dragon had yet to stop staring directly at Daenerys. “Magic could never be truly gone. People just don’t look hard enough.”

Drogon chirped at the gold dragon, whose response was a deeper and louder chirp. Daenerys watched it in awe, wondering if this is what others felt when they saw her’s. She marvelled at the little things, of course, but in front of her was what they would be, and they were still growing.

“You should go,” The woman said. Her voice had become hard. “You should leave here, khaleesi, and leave Qarth.”

How had she known? Daenerys thought, but a different question got to her lips. “Will you not come with me?”

“Why would I do such a thing?”

“The world believes dragons are dead. When mine are grown, I plan to take back what is mine - the throne my family was killed for. If you came with me -”

“No.” The woman said swiftly. “I know all about your ambitions, khaleesi. I won’t be a part of them.”

“They aren’t mere ambitions.” Daenerys felt her anger rising, and she understood what this woman was saying. “And what do you plan to do with that dragon? Hide away in this cave? What happens when he becomes older?”

The woman cast her eyes down again. She said, “That is not something to concern yourself with.”

Daenerys caught how she touched her dragon’s golden muzzle, and as the shadows danced, she noticed deep marks in the woman’s shoulders, the old stains on her dress. The khaleesi now realized it was dried blood, and the marks patterned into her shoulder and arms were scars.

Daenerys wouldn’t be dismissed so easily, but the woman was turning away from her. Even her golden dragon seemed to share her disinterest, and both the khaleesi and her dragon were left watching them disappear into the darkness. Daenerys realized there was more to the cave than she initially thought.

She stepped forward, but Jorah said, “We shouldn’t.”

The woman disappeared into the blackness of the cave, and only the meager little room and its low burning torches were left. Drogon restlessly flew from Daenerys’ shoulder and away from her, toward the mouth of the cave, where the open sky was awaiting him.

“Khaleesi, we’ve spotted it.”

The chair scratching across the floor echoed through the grand chamber, but Daenerys paid it no heed. She was close on Grey Worm’s tail as he added, “Quickly.”

He didn’t need to tell her twice. Daenerys nearly ran ahead of him as she came to the wide balcony of the grand pyramid. Against the brilliant blue sky, she saw it. Its scales glittered far more beautifully than any jewels that had been laid at her feet. Under the sun, it was radiant, just like her own. She couldn’t mistake that gold color.

It was as large as a small house now. If she were someone with poorer eyesight, or someone more ignorant, she could mistake the dragon for Viserion. However, her youngest mostly had scales of cream, and was not nearly so big. Not even Drogon was this size.

“How long has it been here?” She asked impatiently.

“Only minutes. It came from the clouds.” Grey Worm said. “The people think it is your’s, khaleesi.”

That was for the better. It had been so many moons since she’d met that woman in the cave. Her eyes still haunted Daenerys, but more than that, her calm posture as her dragon dug its claws into her skin. Daenerys visited that cave several times before she left Qarth. Hadn’t the woman warned her about it? But where was she? Why did she hide herself, and her dragon, and for how long?

She hated these unanswered questions. For a moment, Daenerys thought they’d never be answered -- what if that woman had died, and now her dragon roamed free?

No. The way she could control it, as young as it was … She must be here in Meereen.

“Have the streets searched.” Daenerys said. “I’ll have a description given to the Unsullied, even a picture painted, if that’s what they need. She must be here.”

The gold dragon had become a fleck in the sky, gone quickly as it came. Daenerys wondered if her own children had seen it, but they didn’t fly overhead. This was the time they spent hunting, anyway. They’d become more independent, and wouldn’t be back for hours.

It was startling to see the woman in the brightness of her throne room, and not the darkness of the cave. Daenerys had replayed those quick moments over and over so much, she thought she’d memorized the woman’s face, but now she realized how much she missed to the shadows.

The woman was far younger and prettier than she’d initially thought, and the light in her eyes made her look far less apprehensive. Her hair was done simply but neatly, and while she had a proper dress that was clean and well-fitted, it was just as simple. Her only fine accessory was a stylized broach that held the front of her dress together. Daenerys couldn’t make out the shape from where she sat.

“Khaleesi.” The woman gave a polite bow, not looking confident in the gesture.

“There is no need to bow to me.” Daenerys decided as she said it. “Nor should we act so formal here. Will you speak to me in private?”

The woman hesitated a moment before nodding in agreement. She followed Daenerys to a more cozy and private meeting chambers, where all were called out, even Missandei. A young serving girl gave them a large pitcher of water and poured two cups before exiting.

Daenerys was buzzing with too much curiosity. She got straight to the point. “I’d like to have your name.”

“Y/N,” The woman said.

She said it far more easily than Daenerys expected, given how … restrained she was in their first meeting. She hadn’t expected that name, either, but it fit.

“Y/N.” Daenerys tested it out for herself. She looked at the broach and finally made out its shape: A circle of teeth carved like a dragon’s encircling some deep green rock. Perhaps it was an unpolished emerald.

Y/N looked almost lost without the darkness to hide inside, but she still looked Daenerys in the eyes. “I told you to leave Qarth, and then you came to Meereen … With some roads in between.”

“You’ve been keeping track of me?”

“I don’t need to. All of Essos speaks of you now.” Y/N glanced aside, toward the window.

Daenerys followed her gaze, and she saw the faint glittering of the dragon’s wings in the sun. It must have been coming back.

“Yet they don’t speak of you. There’s a fourth dragon in the world, and this is only the third time I’ve seen it.” Daenerys turned back to Y/N. “You can’t tell me you’ve spent all this time hiding in that cave. Where have you been? Where has your dragon been?”

“The same places as me,” Y/N said, a little twinkle of humor in her eyes. “Well, just higher up, I suppose.”

A silence passed between them, one that wasn’t entirely comfortable, but it wasn’t strained, either. Daenerys looked at the woman, she was closer than she’d even been before. She looked tired. With this closeness, Dany could see the partially faded scars running up her shoulders and around her arms.

Y/N noticed her staring. “I can’t control it anymore.”

“... What do you mean? Has it tried to hurt you?”

“No, because I pick my battles. It’s grown too large and strong to keep close.” Y/N sighed and pushed her cup away from her. She’d hardly had any water. “This is why I came to see you, khaleesi. I was hoping to slip away from it, but it followed me all the same. I hope that hasn’t brought trouble.”

“It hasn’t. Why would it?”

Y/N’s eyes were lovely with the sun falling on them like this, especially as she tilted her head and let some of her hair brush across her scarred shoulders. Her eyes were much older than the rest of her. She’d been carrying this burden for years, and Daenerys had a feeling she’d only seen a small part of it.

“One dragon is difficult enough, but you have three of them. It won’t be long before you lose your hold on them, khaleesi.”

“They’re my children,” Daenerys said firmly. “I’ve taught them and trained them since their birth. I know how to control them.”

“You know how to control children. Dangerous children, who will only become more powerful. One human can’t hope to --”

“I’m not one human,” Daenerys’ note isn’t harsh, but it is harder than what she used before. She squares her shoulders and sits upright, a proper Queen all respects. “I’m Daenerys Targaryen, and my ancestors rode dragons to conquer Westeros. I intend to do the same.”

Y/N was not subdued by this. Daenerys should’ve found the obstinate look in her eyes a challenge, a slight, but it was good to see something other than fatigue on the girl’s face and body. She merely nodded. “As you say, khaleesi.”

Five days later, a sobbing farmer dropped a burnt bundle at Daenerys’ feet. Swathes of cattle and sheep had been burnt and eaten whole before, but this was the first time she saw a little charred body. Her dragons didn’t even eat it all.

Y/N said nothing as the father’s body shook with anguish. She sighed deeply when he left, and that was all Daenerys needed to understand.

At Daenerys’ request, Y/N stayed in a guest room. She almost seemed as though she’d refuse the request, and was more or less pushed in and ordered to rest. Her first day, she bathed herself quickly and slept for nearly twelve hours. Then she ate bits of the dinner that was brought to her, and went right to sleeping again.

Once she emerged from the chamber with a new dress, a proper meal and more sleep than she’d had in months, Y/N was radiant. The sun of Meereen seemed to favor her, as everything from her hair to skin shone when she walked the gardens of the Great Pyramid. She was most at peace here, a rare moment when her expression wasn’t cloudy and troubled. Y/N was loveliest like that.

Daenerys felt silly for watching her enjoy the gardens instead of talking to her. Y/N bowed her head as Dany came into her view. “Good morning, khaleesi.”

Daenerys had a sudden wish to hear her name from those lips, not her titles. She pushed the distracting thoughts aside. “I wanted to talk to you. Could I sit here?”

“Of course.” Y/N gave Daenerys room on the stone bench she was resting on. Her new dress was technically a single bolt of soft cloth wrapped around her body and secured in place with a pretty metal belt and fixings on her shoulders. They were a gilded gold, like her dragon’s scales. When Daenerys gifted it to the woman, she feigned that it was something she did for all guests. Privately, Daenerys hoped she liked it. Y/N wore it often, so she must have. That was a pleasant thought.

Y/N tilted her head in curiosity. That’s when Daenerys realized she hadn’t said anything further. “I’ve been thinking about the boy, the one … that was brought to me, and what you said to me. You didn’t want me to chain the dragons.”

“I still don’t,” Y/N’s smile fell just slightly. That disappointed Dany more than she thought it would. “Did something happen? Are you considering it again?”

“No,” Daenerys said quickly. “I was just thinking. You seemed to have experience with this. … I don’t know much about you. I wanted to learn more.”

Y/N’s smile may have left, but the blush on her cheeks was even better. Daenerys hadn’t expected it, nor did she expect the girl’s eyes to flutter down in modesty.

Daenerys took Y/N’s hand in her own, and the warmth of it was kinder than the sunlight hitting her cheek. The gesture had surprised Y/N - she looked up with those pretty eyes, but she didn’t pull away. If anything, her cheeks looked even more pink.

“I want to learn more about you,” Daernerys said, careful with her words in case any more would spill out. “You know about me, after all.”

The smile was back in full force, and it’s sweetness was almost too much. “I said I heard the rumors, khaleesi. If you wish to know me, then I’d like to know you better, too.”

“It’s a deal.”

She squeezed the slightly calloused hand in her own, comforted by the way Y/N squeezed back.

She woke up feeling cold. Daenerys didn’t open her eyes, but she sleepily reached forward to confirm her suspicions. As luxurious as a feathered bed with silken covers was to Y/N, it was still other. Sometimes she struggled to settle in comfortably, especially when she was already kept up with her restlessness.

Daenerys sat up and rubbed her shoulders. A lazy night breeze drifted into the room, and she blinked through her sleepiness as she saw the outline of Y/N sitting at the open window. She’d thrown a robe on and curled herself up on the ledge, looking down at the still streets of Meereen.

“I’d think you’d be looking at the stars,” Daenerys said once she was at Y/N’s side. It was nearly a full moon, and a silvery light was washing over the two of them, like it was made just for them. Daenerys hadn’t had such silly thoughts for some time, but Y/N tended to bring them out in her.

Y/N opened her arms and Daenerys comfortably rested against her, still tired. She patted the khaleesi’s long, curling hair, almost the same color of the moon itself. “I am very familiar with the stars. It’s the city that’s new to me.”

Daenerys closed her eyes and took in Y/N’s scent, fresh from the bath they took hours ago, but the soap was giving away to her own natural scent and warmth. Her skin was smooth now, from months of enjoying the soaps and oils, and her face stopped looking so drawn and weary. She smiled more than ever, laughed even, but there were still nights like these. Y/N had spotted her dragon with Drogon that morning, and since then, she’d be withdrawn.

“They only grow stronger,” Y/N said. Her hand was running down Daenerys’ back now, and Dany shivered pleasantly. “I’m glad they’re fond of each other.”

Daenerys hummed her agreement. It just seemed right, their dragons joining together as a family. It made Daenerys feel like her bond with Y/N was stronger than most, something more binding than a marriage. A bonding of dragons, emphasizing the bond of their hearts.

In the few daydreams she allowed, she thought of this being stronger than any marriage, something more than a queen to stay at her side. They’d be the new Visenya and Rhaenys for Westeros, but without a king. They didn’t need one.

Daenerys didn’t tell these fancies to Y/N. Not yet, anyway.

It was hard to stay tired with such things running through her head. Daenerys sat up and gave a proper kiss to her lover, whose lips she was already missing. The smile was back, so Daenerys kissed her neck.

Y/N was ticklish, but she didn’t attempt to move Dany away. She just reclined further into the the cushioned window sill, and Dany gladly rested against her. She brushed her hands across Y/N’s shoulder and arm, across scars that were visible even in the moonlight.

There were other marks besides those, ones that Y/N hid for years. Dany suspected she was the only person who had seen them. Burns and bites, covered by silken and linen dresses, proof that Y/N’s dragon had become too much for the cave they stayed in for too long.

I don’t begrudge my dragon for it, Y/N had said. I was the one trying to keep a bird in a mountain.

Those were the same words she used when the child’s body was dropped at Daenerys’ feet, more or less. She gently touched Dany’s arm. Khaleesi, please don’t. Don’t keep them somewhere without their sky, without the fresh air.

All three of her dragons had come to be fond of Y/N, as well as they could be, because she understood. She may have only raised one, but she seemed to just know the other three. Rhaegal was especially fond of her, Viserion preferred her dragon, and Drogon was surprisingly steady around both.

Daenerys sighed in contentment and nuzzled against Y/N’s neck, planting a few kisses there before she settled in.

Y/N’s voice was full of sweet amusement. “Love, I cannot carry you back if you fall asleep.”

“You shouldn’t have moved.”

Her response was a chuckle and a kiss to her brow. Sleep was beginning to take Daenerys, aided by the complete comfort and affection she was bundled in. She was well and truly asleep when Y/N began stroking her hair again.

The wind whipped harshly above them as a set of powerful wings flew above their heads. Y/N’s hair was tied back, but several strands still escaped from her braid as Rhaegal took flight. She watched him rejoin his brother in the cloudless sky.

Daenerys was at her side, waiting for her. She didn’t have to ask anything. It had been a long time coming, but Y/N was ready. She’d made her peace with it, and she’d walk forward with no fear or regrets.

She straightened the leather gauntlet at her hand, meant for keeping her hand protected from the harsh scales of her dragon. It had been a trial for the both of them, but they were stronger for it. Y/N looked toward the sky, spotting the dear creature. She knew it was looking down at her, always aware of where its rider was.

“They can smell the sea air, too,” Y/N said. “It’s gotten them worked up. They’re ready.”

“So are we.” Daenerys said. It wasn’t overconfidence or blind bravery in her words, only the truth. They’d been ready for the better of a year, and now it was finally time to realize what she’d been waiting a lifetime for.

“What did you say their names were? The conqueror queens you descend from,” Y/N said, remembering as she spoke. “Visenya and Rhaenys. That was it.”

“We’re greater than conquerors, closer than sisters.” Daenerys took both of Y/N’s hands in her own, facing her with eyes full of power and adoration. An intensity that was unique to a Mother of Dragons, one that Y/N was very familiar with. “We are queens.”

Y/N had heard the word before, but now it held such great power. A new world, a new kingdom across the sea, just waiting for them. They would be kind and just, yielding to no man, constrained by no chains.

Queens and liberators, not conquers and butchers. Y/N could see it in those violet eyes, the ones that always held the world, yet still had room for love and compassion. The ones that belonged to her, just as she belonged to them.

#daenerys targaryen x reader #got imagines #got x reader #daenerys targaryen #game of thrones #libra fics #i know i keep using this gif its just too cute

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giant-sketches · 5 years ago

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Afraid of the Dark

Sorry it’s been so long since I last posted any writing. I got really busy with life and then suffered from a small writing/art block. It’s best not to force these things down after all so I just took some time to relax. This is another one of my short sides, an original as well, so not based off a prompt. It’s super short, but I hope you all enjoy it nonetheless!!!

This story includes 2 sketches.

Word Count: 1210

Disclaimer: shadow beings, insomnia, mentions of hallucinations, nyctophobia

For as long as Patton could remember he was afraid of the dark. Luckily, he had his three brothers to help him sleep on those scary nights. Roman would sing him a lullaby, Virgil would let him wear his hoodie, and Logan would rub his cheeks in a calming motion. All three loved Patton and hated how upset he’d get when trying to sleep. However, that was when they were kids and they weren’t kids anymore.

Patton has now completely moved into his new home where he lives alone. It’s a little place in a semi-rural area where he can enjoy gardening and fresh air. The apartment he shared with his family in the crowded city is now a distant memory as he sweats cleaning up the vacant rooms. Still, this new life is a solitary one. His brothers have found lives of their own in the city they grew up in and while they visit it’s still hard to be away from them.

The hardest part is at night when the moonlight that creeps into the windows isn’t enough to calm Patton's nerves as dark images dance in his mind and shadows swirl around him. Patton would hide and shiver underneath his covers every night, losing more and more sleep as the weeks progressed.

During a family visit Patton’s brothers sat down and talked with him over lunch on possible solutions to this fear of his.

“Pat you need to find some way to help yourself sleep at night. Why not get some sleeping pills or a weight blanket like I have?”

“I don’t find the weighted blanket comfortable and I’ve tried the pills, but my mind just won’t quiet down.”

“How about you get yourself a music box. You used to always love the lullabies I’d sing to you when we were kids.”

“True, but those were your originals Ro...no music box could copy your wonderful voice.”

“Then Patton you leave no other choice then for us to once again bring up the idea of….a nightlight.”

Patton sighed, he really didn’t like the suggestion. “Lo, I’m not a kid anymore. I don’t need a nightlight.”

“I know that Patton, but the way things are going your health is at great risk. In your current state it will be easier for you to fall ill and pass out from the building stress. Obviously, the previous idea we came to of working slowly to get over your fear of the dark has not produced positive results.”

Logan adjusted his glasses out of habit as he shifted his chair closer to his tired brother.

“Needing a nightlight isn’t something to be ashamed of Patton.”

The other brothers followed suit and scooted their chairs closer.

“Also, nightlights can come in pretty colors and even project shapes like stars on your wall and ceiling. Why don’t we go out together and find one for you today Pat?”

Patton thought for a moment. Gosh his brothers really did care about his well-being. Blushing he nodded in agreement. After-all the idea of cute, blue stars on his wall was way too adorable to pass up on! Together they went out to a local store that had a number of hardware products to find the one they needed. They even had the one he wanted! Patton was giddy with delight when he returned home with his new little helper.

“We need to get back Pat, but please let us know how it goes.” Virgil meekly smiled.

“Yes, let us know if this solution works and if not we can have another brainstorming session.”

Roman hugged his little brother goodbye. The other two did the same as they shuffled into Logan’s car. Then they were gone and the night was closing in. Time to put Patton’s new little buddy to work! Plugging in the device, the wall and ceiling was covered in light blue stars as he tucked himself into bed. He could feel his eyes dropping as his anxieties faded thanks to the warm glow of his nightlight.

Yet, later into the night Patton could feel a strange sensation, slithering up his leg. In a calm manner, due to him being half-asleep, he gingerly pulled his covers back to reveal a long black shadow twirling up his leg. “AH!” He yelped as he kicked the figure off and threw his blankets to the ground.

With a small thud the once flat shadow took on a more solid form and laid there un-moving. “What? What is that?” Patton swallowed his fears since the strange creature was much smaller than himself.

“Is it….alive?” Now he was concerned for the strange creature as he poked at it. Suddenly, it snapped its wide yellow eyes open and curled itself frightened. It was pitch black with only a small mouth and scales being highlighted by the glow of the nightlight. The little creature was shaking as Patton reached for it again.

“Shhh, it’s okay little one. I’m not going to hurt you.” The creature’s eyes softened. Could it understand him? “I’m sorry I kicked you off before, you just surprised me is all.” Patton wore a warm smile as he scooped up the shadowy form. It was kind of cute.

Unfortunately, Patton’s cooing was cut short by the sound of the bed creaking as yet another shadow emerged from underneath.

This one was much bigger as it loomed over Patton, staring at him from the bed frame. He gasped at the sight of it. Oh, this one is big! However, taking a moment to realize, it wasn’t moving. All it did was gaze at the shadow in his hand with a worried expression.

Did they know each other? Taking a chance Patton spoke up, “I-Is this your friend big guy?” His voice was shaking a bit.

The tall shadow nodded, it’s green eyes staring curiously at the two. It looked like it wanted to come closer, but was waiting for permission. Patton waved his hand,

“It’s okay. You can come closer.”

Happily, the giant form stretched itself closer, revealing its legs now that spread over the sides of the bed. Patton marveled at its size as he came up to its chest when they were both sitting down. What were they and why were they here? He had many questions, but he yawned finding the adrenaline from before decreasing rapidly. It was late. The tall figure noticed this as it picked up Patton’s covers and handed them back to him with a small smile.

“Oh! Thank you big guy!” Patton grabbed his blankets, but before deciding to lie down he looked to his two new friends. Would they like to stay with him? “Care to join me for a sleepover? I’ve always found it easier to sleep with company around.”

Both creatures jumped at the chance to cuddle with the soft human! The little one twirled up to Patton’s head to nest in his hair while the other curled around him in a hug from the back. They were both surprisingly warm as Patton pulled the covers over himself happily. Since then he never suffered from sleepless nights again. He had made friends with the darkness and the darkness cared for him dearly.

“Good night kiddos!”

The End

@thought-u-said-dragon-queen @sanderssidestrash27 @nomynameisanon @crystalk17 @notkolaidoscop

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writerwile17 · 4 years ago

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Oderria’s Last Light and the Counterfeit Hero, Entry 1

Below is attached a photo of Oderria’s last known haven: Tearkah Fortress

Prologue

Buried within another time, world, dimension, or perhaps simply your mind, there lies a fantastical land of discovery. Welcome to a country filled with empirical magic, infection, and a dying hope. A plain of existence where fantasy and reality entwine. A compilation of unlikely characters bound by insurmountable odds. Welcome to Oderria.

Who am I? No one special. Simply a guide graced with the key to this land. When the gates of wonder are opened, we will, as friends and historians, journey through the mystery, action, and magic. And maybe–just maybe–we’ll learn a few things along the way.

…

I direct you to a moonlit town at the edge of poison’s stronghold. In the confusion of the outburst skirmish, the black-haired boy ran, his pious face held high. Tonight was the last stand, the last plea that would bring restoration from the ashes of a dying hope. The time was nigh.

“In order to bring the true hero into this magical nation,

Journey next to the capital of those with evil derivation.

Gather twenty White Jewels at the Pedestal of Light.

The wizard’s apprentice will find a hero that night.”

The boy repeated these words in a refined melody. They were his only source of encouragement as he fled in a desperate attempt to reach the opening between worlds. His lungs burned, his heart raced, and his legs throbbed. He fled through a crumbling grainery, surrounded by a maelstrom of clashing weapons, armored and hooded silhouettes, and the sounds of warriors bellowing the cries of war. When outside, he witnessed, with a chill, an old mill crumble to nothing as flames and electricity winded unnaturally about it. This was their doing. The boy heard a noise, looked back, and to his horror saw, trailing after him, a savage, sable figure, shrouded by the undulating mass of a cloak.

A Dark Sage.

With determined speed and quavery hatred, the fiend tore through anything and anyone that dared cross his path. The boy would be lucky if he could escape.

His speed and fear escalated as he raced through the disparaged remains of smithies and masonry shops and up the jutting terrain until he was at the center of town. He darted into a violent throng of heroic knights and evil hooded beings with weapons of glowing purple.

While he shoved his way through the thick cluster of people, the child glanced back. The shadowed man had changed. He was now a beast. Glaring at the boy with glowing orange eyes, this monster shoveled people out of its way with its crinite arms, horned face, and earth-shaking hooved feet, heading toward him rapidly.

Choked with dread, the boy’s pace quickened. He darted up a tall hill laden with obtrusive stones and thorns, reached in his leather bag, and pulled out a red gem, which had on it a winding symbol of fire. The monster’s shadow looming over him, he pointed his Erythro Jewel over his shoulder. Mounds of boiling lava burst out of the jewel and onto the monster. In pain, it gave an ear-splitting screech, and as if by the lava, its form began to shrivel and diminish, then it altered and grew.

The animal quickly grew bigger and bigger as its skin turned into rough black scales, some of which were extending out from its back. Swiftly, the creature’s two back extensions formed into umbrella-like wings while the rest of its body turned as big as an elephant and as scaley as a lizard. It grew massive keen talons and, inside its gigantuous mouth, foaming fangs to match the size of the claws.

He tried to sprint away, but he did not get far before the large dragon was directly above him. From the boy’s jewel there emanated a transparent red shield that looked as if it was made of a strange mixture of glass and wind.

The dragon pounced down on the shield and relentlessly clawed at it, slowly fragmenting it.

His heart racing, his breath hollow, the boy struggled to keep the shield standing. “You are failing them,” his thoughts rang out. “You are failing yourself.”

The steam-like shield had little strength remaining. The boy felt a shadow pass over him, and he closed his eyes expectantly. When pain did not come to him, his eyes opened. He saw an immense mass fly above him and ram into the black beast, and next thing he knew, the black animal had plunged down the hill. The child looked up and saw the thing that had done this was another dragon with muscly arms and glistening orange scales. The boy’s eyes were wide with astonishment. He was saved.

As the orange creature began to claw at the black dragon, it said in a distinct low-pitched voice, “Hurry, boy, get to the portal!”

“It’s Chad!” the boy thought aloud, immediately recognizing the comforting voice of an age-old friend.

The boy smiled fervidly as he and the orange dragon’s eyes met. Then in fatherly protection, the creature lunged, swiped, and charged through the other dragon’s breath of flames, the boy’s safety of higher concern than his own.

“Dear boy, this could be our last goodbye. Find the kid, get the gem, and don’t trust anybody, or else they’ll get you!” stated the shape-shifted man as he hardly held back the adversary. Though he had said this in his more casual tongue, he still sounded so unnaturally stoic, as if the message carried the weight of the world. “Now, hurry to the Ingress! Go!”

The child bolted away, tears streaming down his face.

“Goodbye,” he whispered.

Eventually, he stood beside the pedestal filled with arcane carvings and upheld by sculpted gems of dragons. The portal’s source opened before him.

The boy took one final look at his world. His mentor may have been gone, and he would soon inherit a tremendous responsibility. He was at a crossroads between worlds, and from now on, nothing would ever be the same. His hands were trembling. He clenched his fists, glared at the portal, then jumped in.

…

Another dream.

Jeramy struggled against a dark, cloak-like mass that closed around him. His eyes flew open as he jumped out of his bed in a panicky sweat, one foot landing on something soft and the other on something fiercely sharp.

Instantly, his feet returned to his bed as he stared down at the floor, infested with the scattered remains of old school papers, forgotten T-shirts longing to be washed, and action figures with sharp accessories. The latter two were the culprit behind his pain. His hands brushed against his blanket and he then realized this was the item he had just fought against for dear life. He glared at the bedroom window through which there shone the bright-golden glow of a summer day and his mind drifted into its usual ponderings.

The boy, the figure, the violence, the destruction, the seemingly medieval town–it had all felt so vivid, so real. He could smell the plumes of smoke, hear the sound of chaos, he could even feel the wind of weapons just an inch away from maiming him. And, like a tormenting curse, he saw, night after night, through the eyes of the child, the same beast, the same chaotic battle; the same dream. It was yet another question, yet another unknown to leave him in eminent, insurmountable fear. Because of both this and his curiosity, he could not help but wonder, as he had many times before if this dream meant something, and he could not help but feel that—somehow, some way—he was connected to it. He felt accursed, for the reality of this dream would seemingly leave him imprisoned in endless confusion.

He almost accepted the events in the dream as reality, but then, as usual, he questioned the things presented to him.

“Magic jewels? Portals? Shape-shifters? How can it be?” And with this, he had quickly dispelled the thought from his mind, knowing that he was being absurd. Of course, it was not real.

Still, the usual sliver of doubt buried within him kept his mind troubled by his ponderings.

After maneuvering through his cluttered room, he gazed out the window and hardly stirred. He saw blooming spindly trees and savored the warmth of the sun. Because of his pull to nature and the way it seemed to clear his head, he concluded to go on a walk and empty his mind of the dream that afflicted him with unending questions. He headed downstairs and opened the door when, suddenly, a voice rang out from the other end of the house. “Jeramy mu’ boy, you going on a walk? I’ll join ya’!”

The origin of this southern accent was undoubtedly his mother. His mom could hear the tiniest noise from a whole mile away, and like some manic beast, she pounced. Jeramy rolled his eyes and sighed in irritation. He wanted to run out that door right away, but he restrained himself. Of course, he loved his mother, but he hoped his mom would not love him to death, especially when he was in public.

As the boy headed out the door, his mother joining him, his thoughts drifted back to the dream. He remembered the mysterious plea of the dreampt child’s magical protector. It had sounded desperate, yet strong, tense, yet informal. There had seemed to be much behind the creature’s words. What, he wondered, could they mean?

#fantasy #magic #medieval #medieval fantasy #narrative fiction #original story #hobbit fan #lord of the rings fan #top new stories #latest #contemporary #contemporarywriting

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cornerverse-fma · 5 years ago

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Monster AU:

Since it’s Halloween, let’s post this son of a bitch that I’ve been holding onto for months!

So, basically, it’s ‘AU where most characters are some sort of Magic Creature’. Because fuck it, you know? The story itself is kinda canon-parallel, but I haven’t thought out everything.

Anyway, first I’m starting off with tidbits on various creatures and stuff instead of straight into the story!

Ed and Al, and Hohenheim – Dragon

Technically Ed and Al are half-Dragon/half-Human, but due to Human Adaptability, Monster/Human Hybrids come out full monster(Monster/Monster Hybrids are rare, but would have abilities from both).

Ed and Al are also bumped up in age, being 18-ish. (so are the rest of the teens but whatever)

First up is the Monster Lore:

Dragon Magic is remains dormant until Awakened(because would you trust the unbridled chaos of a toddler with the ability to set stuff on fire?). It’s designed to be Awakened by another Dragon(usually a parent/guardian) after hitting puberty-age. Ed manages to find a loophole in this.

Dragons have three forms. Full Dragon, Human Disguise, and ‘Midform’(Human with Draconic features like wings, horns, claws, tail, and some scale freckles). Most Dragons feel most comfortable in Midform. While the Midform is still Human-sized, the Full Dragon form gets bigger with age! Ed and Al are young so they’re about the size of a small horse, but Hohenheim is 450-ish and enormous.

While they have the standard Dragon abilities of flight and fire, they also have general spellcasting abilities. Speaking of, another Dragon Ability is to either resist/deflect Magic, or enhance it, depending on if they want it used on them or not. It can even work subconsciously. For example, Ed and Al trust Winry, so her using Magic on them will always work, but they will resist spells from random people. This is another thing that gets stronger with age, as Ed and Al only have high resistance, but it’s difficult to find a spell powerful enough to get through Hohenheim.

Dragon Hoards are also a thing, but not in the usual gold/jewels way. Think of the Unusual Dragon Hoards art. A Dragon picks an item and creates a collection. When the instinct first kicks in, the Dragon will gather up as many items as they can find and just pile it up somewhere and not let anyone in. It calms down after a day or two. Ed’s hoard is actually friends because he’s a dork like that, but it gets difficult when he suddenly has five people in a cuddle pile and gets Very Upset when they try to get up.

Dragon Magic is Unique in it’s Source. Most Magic has an external Source(Fey have Nature, Witches have Spells, Vampires use others’ blood, etc.) A Dragon’s source is their own Life Energy. Using Magic will use up their Life Energy, but it replenishes itself with time, rest, and food. Despite being tied to their Life Energy, it’s very difficult to die from overusing Magic, as the Dragon will likely pass out from exhaustion before it gets unstable.

Very long-lived, but not Immortal. They age at the same rate as Humans until their twenties, and then aging slows dramatically. For example, Hohenheim is 450-ish, but is equal to a 30-ish year old Human.

Also! Colors! The colors of a Dragon’s scales are not genetic. It’s determined by the emotions they feel when their powers are Awakened. Ed is red, a color of passion and love, Al is green for a sense of belonging, and Hohenheim is white for freedom. (Accent colors like on horns and claws and such are still their usual gold)

On to character-specific tidbits:

Ed and Al

A lot of their story mirrors Canon, in that Hohenheim left for reasons unknown, and Trisha ends up dying. They do kinda get on a ‘maybe we can cook up some necromancy?’ idea, but that’s shut down real quick.

Ed still loses his leg somehow, because that’s constant in all my Aus.

Instead of focusing on fixing their shit, the boys are instead trying to figure out what the hell they are. Because, like, no one really knew that Hohenheim was a Dragon. They knew he was more than just a Witch, but they didn’t know what he was. He did tell Trisha, but neither of them told the boys. And since Dragon Magic remains dormant until Awakened, they’ve experienced minimal side effects. None of which are common Monster traits.

So they’re studying different Monsters in a hope to figure out what they are. The plan if they run across Hohenheim is to ask what they are and also punch him(Ed says punch first then ask, Al says ask and maybe punch.)

This does lead them to working for Mustang.

Hohenheim

His story also probably mirrors Canon. I’m not entirely sure what all goes down or how Father functions in this AU(I think I’m doing the ‘evil twin’ thing again, in which case I’m making him a black dragon for contrast!).

Him leaving is definitely still connected to this, though when he’s not actively working on that he uses the whole ‘Dragons can negate most Magic and are rare enough that people don’t have special defenses for them’ thing to help people out. Especially Monsters that get kidnapped for various reasons.

Hohenheim is also less depressed in this AU! Like, obvs he still has some issues. But being 450 years old is a lot more common so he doesn’t have that Angst™ hanging over him. Nor does he have the Angst™ of said Immortality being gained through a bunch of murder, since it’s just his natural lifespan. So we get to see more of his not-depressed side.

Winry – Witch

Monster Lore is short this time. Witches in this Universe are highly debated about whether they are Monsters or not, as they are basically just ‘Humans with the ability to use Magic’. Different people have different opinions on it.

Winry(and her family) consider themselves more on the Monster side, doing doctor stuff for all sorts of creatures.

Of course Automail is still a thing, and of course the Rockbell family is well known for it. Specifically, they make Automail that also hooks into a Monster’s Magic, and will function as they do. For example, Ed’s still missing a leg in this AU. So when he switches between Human, Dragon, and Midform, he needs his leg to change too.

Ling, Greed, and Lust – Vampires.

So, a few character tidbits before the Monster Lore:

Ling:

Despite being a Vampire, he’s still the same age as Ed. He was only Turned a couple years ago. Reasons for that are… not fun. It involves an abusive ex, becoming friends with Greed and Lust to get out of that, and ends in a ‘only way to save his life is to make him a vampire’ situation.

Before that he was just a Witch. Kinda neutral on the ‘are Witches ‘Monster’ or ‘Human’?’ debate, but Monster-friendly.

Greed and Lust

Much like my Groupchat AU, the Sins Crew and Father are mostly not related except for these two, and the Sins did work for Father for a while but they’ve all kinda fucked off. (The Sins crew do mostly stay in contact though).

Used to be Human(maybe Witches?). They were from a noble family about 200 years ago. Greed was Turned thanks to political drama, and was kicked out of the family. Lust willingly went with him.

While they’re around 200, due to Vampires being a bit frozen in time, they’re only a little older than Ed and Ling.

They operate this Universe’s version of the Devil’s Nest, which is a Montser-friendly bar.

Some Vampire Lore applies, some doesn’t.

They don’t have to be ‘invited in’(But they typically stick to societal rules of ‘don’t break in like a jackass’)

Sunlight and Garlic sort of bother them, but not like in some lore. They’re designed to be nocturnal, so being out in the sun is like ‘wtf???’ to their senses. Same with Garlic, which can easily overload their sense of smell(but so can any strong smell)

They can be burned by silver

The no reflection/can’t be photographed thing is sort of true. Old mirrors and cameras used silver. Nowadays mirrors use cheap metals and photo/video is digital, so they show up.

Religious symbols are tricky. It depends on how much the Vampire and the person warding them off believe in said religion.

Vampires have an ‘Enthrall Enchantment’, but it’s not, like, straight up hypnotism. It just kinda makes the person they’re biting feel a bit good and fuzzy and not really in pain. It also helps heal the bite afterward. I’ll discuss this more later.

Vampires need blood, but it doesn’t have to be Human blood. It’s just safest because Monster Blood can have various side effects.

Werewolf blood causes an effect similar to alcohol.

Fae blood causes a different prank each time(minor stuff, like turning your hair purple for a week)

Blood from Monsters related to Religions(like Angels or Demons) are actually poisonous.

Dragon blood causes a large power boost.

This is the Loophole Ed found for Awakening Dragon Magic.

The blood they drink has to be relatively fresh. ‘Straight from the tap’ is best, a vial of blood is good for a few hours

There is the question of ‘do Vampires need blood to live?’.

Technically? They get very weak if they don’t, especially in the Magic Department. But they usually die from said weakness than outright ‘not getting blood’.

Vampires are Immortal as long as they continue to drink blood. even to the point of self-healing if they have enough.

Technically, a Vampire doesn’t need to eat or sleep if they have a decent blood source. However, it is better for them if they do as they can last longer between ‘drinks’.

Much like the other side effects I listed before, different blood lasts longer. Dragon blood would last longer than Human blood, for example.

Mustang – Faerie (Fire-based)

An odd choice for him, but I’m running with it!

Time for Monster Lore:

All Fae love legal loopholes and the bullshit technicalities.

Usually Faeries are somewhat allergic to metal(especially iron). Occasionally there are ones that have no issue it, but it’s super rare.

A Faerie’s Magic Source is some form of nature. Fire-based ones have the ability to sort of create their own source(they can magically light fire to become their source). Think how stuff works in ATLA. Water users need a body of liquid, earth users need earth, but fire users can kinda make it themselves in decent conditions.

They’re still effected by other Elements though. Mustang’s whole ‘useless in the rain’ thing is still a problem. Even more than Canon. Like, he won’t die if put in water(the man has to shower sometimes), but it does make him very low-energy and overall weaker. He does not like swimming.

Also! Faerie Wings!! Gotta have those! The colors resemble a Faerie’s respective Source Element, but aren’t made out of it, so no literal fire wings. They do glow a lot when using powerful Magic. They can also be ‘put away’ to pass as Human(or just for convenience of not knocking shit over in narrow hallways).

Character tidbits

One of the few Fae that don’t have an issue with metals.

Between that, and the fact that the wings are usually ‘put away’, most people assume he’s just a Witch. He doesn’t correct them as it does make him more liked.

He subconsciously feels a connection to Ed and Al due to his Fire Magic nature picking up on their Dragon Fire. It’s one of the reasons why he tolerates their shenanigans(the other reason being that after about ten minutes getting to know them he was like ‘okay you’re my kids now’)

mini things on other characters that I don’t have story for yet:

The rest of the Sins Crew:

Envy is a shapeshifter(of course).

Pride is some sort of shadow monster(again, of course.)

Sloth is one of those Dream Eater Spirit things? You know what I’m talking about. He spends most of his time asleep in the Dream Realm.

Idk about Gluttony or Wrath yet.

Mustang’s Team!

Idk what everyone is yet, but they’re all Monsters of some sort.

Hawkeye is absolutely something with wings tho because HAWKeye!

Not sure what Mei is. Maybe just a Witch, but maybe something more? (obvs on her mom’s side though).

I also want to put Lan Fan in, but I’m not sure where or what she’d be? I think what happens here is that she was friends with Ling, but then his whole ‘bad relationship and becoming a Vampire’ thing happens. She feels guilty for not protecting him from that, and they end up going separate ways for a while, but they’d end up reconnecting at some point.

Story Plot Points!

The whole thing kinda kicks off because Ed and Ling are dating. Yes. Really.

Like, they get to that point in the relationship where Ling invites Ed over and is like “Okay, so I’m not actually Human?”. Because that’s a talk people have to have at somepoint

Ed’s like “cool me neither?”. He further explains the whole thing of how he knows he’s a Monster of some sort but doesn’t know which kind.

He then proceeds to ask a fuckton of questions about Vampires because he hasn’t studied one in-person before, and he noticed Ling goes against the typical rules(can’t go in sunlight, must be invited in, etc.)

As they’re talking on this, Ling mentions that different Monster blood has different effects.

Ed’s thought process is that he could use this to narrow down the search for what kind of monster he is by seeing the effect his blood has on Ling.

Ling’s… hesitant for several reasons.

But Ed insists and makes it very clear that he’s okay with it.

This is where the loopholes kick in!

As Vampire Magic uses the blood they drink, it also counts as the Magic of that creature. So Ling using Ed’s blood qualifies as Dragon Magic, and since the Enthrallment is in effect, that kickstarts Ed’s Magic.

This causes a panic as Ling’s Magic is suddenly a hell of a lot stronger and the Enthrallment is a lot more intense.

There’s also panic because once they stop that part, Ed’s just like ‘Holy FUCK I feel GREAT!’, but Ling knows he shouldn’t feel that good right now and he’s overheating. He’s like ‘Okay, that good feeling is probably you hallucinating or something so let’s go into the bathroom in case you throw up?’

And then Ed just kinda bursts into flames? Luckily they were already in the bathroom so Ling just kinda douses him in the shower.

Next day they head back to Ed’s place (He and Al live with Winry in this AU?). And they explain what happened. They agree that they have a decent lead here, but they need someone more knowledgeable. And, well, Ling knows some people.

Ling takes them down to the Devils’ Nest. As mentioned, Greed and Lust run the place.

They talk to Greed mostly. After explaining everything, he tells Ed to try something. Said thing ends with the boy breathing fire.

Greed’s just like ‘congrats kid you’re a fucking Dragon!’.

Greed and Lust share various tidbits about what they know about Dragons, but admit that there’s probably a lot of stuff they’re forgetting or just straight up don’t know.

They explain the whole ‘dormant Magic only activated by Dragon Magic’, and the probable loophole.

They also explain that once Ed finishes the ‘Awakening’, he’ll be able to ‘Awaken’ Al’s Magic easily. (Though Greed does offer to recreate the loophole(Al is very flustered but currently declines))

Speaking of, they do warn Ed that there’s a bit more to go through. Mostly that he’ll have three forms, but the first time he transforms will be involuntary and painful. Best way to deal with it is ‘when you feel your back start to itch like crazy, take some strong pain meds and lay on your stomach’.

By the time they get back home, Ed’s starting to feel that. So he decides to just go to bed early, and everyone else just kinda tries to sleep too. (like, he says he’s fine and they don’t hear him screaming so he’s probably good?). Ling also stays, but since Ed wants his space for this he stays on the couch.

Next morning, Ed comes down and everyone is fuckin floored. They’re staring but he doesn’t notice at first because he’s very hungry and raiding the fridge for everything.

Basically, since his Magic was supposed to be awakened years ago, his body kinda stopped growing, resulting in him looking a bit ‘stuck at 15’. Now the Magic is making up for lost time, so it’s a somewhat literal ‘puberty hit him like a truck’ situation. (Ling and Winry are both like hearteyesmotherfucker!

Like, you know that picture comparing Ed in the early episodes of fma:b to the later episodes and being all ‘look how much he grew!’? That, but overnight. Ya boi got kinda tall. He’s still shorter than Ling but he’s taller than Winry. (With the potential to grow taller now!)

One of the reasons for the height is that he’s in his midform, aka: Human with Draconic features. This includes his legs being digitigrade, so it’s kinda like he’s constantly standing on his toes. (His Human form is technically shorter because of this).

They also focus on the Dragon-y features more. Like the wings, and the horns, and the tail!! His eyes are the slit-pupil thing, and while his teeth have always been kinda sharp he now has full on fangs. Then they also notice his arms transitioning from skin to scale, starting at the elbow until his hands are claws. (his regular leg also does this from the knee down). His ears are also pointed and scale covered, and he has a few scale freckles on his cheeks.

They have about five minutes of normal before something goes weird. Because suddenly Ed is being ridiculously clingy but is seemingly unaware of how weird that is and cannot seem to explain why.

They’re like ‘why are you hugging me?’ and he’s like ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’. And like, if they try to step away for a minute he gets very Upset™

Somehow they manage to make it back to the Devils’ Nest to ask Greed. The group finds a seat on a couch and at this point Ed’s in full cuddle mode, just hugging the three of them and laying across them and he’s kinda like a cat on catnip.

When Greed gets within five feet, Ed suddenly shoots up and stares at him. He freezes, waiting for Ed to make a move. When Ed nods, he takes a step closer. When he takes a second step, Ed pounces forward and drags him into the cuddle pile.

Greed is mildly confused, but explains to the others that this is just the ‘hoarding instinct’ kicking in, and he’ll be back to normal soon enough.

Since he’s not allowed to leave(Ed is stronger than he looks and also even if Greed could leave Ed’s fucking face is too much), he kinda tells Lust to take over running the bar for the day.

The whole ‘get within five feet and Ed shoots up’ thing happens with her, but Greed calms Ed down by saying ‘it’s okay she’s a friend’.

Of course, when she goes to leave, she finds that while she was out of range of Ed leaning over to grab her, she didn’t notice the tail around her leg.

She gets dragged in, and while Greed tells someone else to take over(from a distance), he also suggests they take this party upstairs.

Al says a thing about ‘can you stop flirting for five seconds?’. Greed responds with a ‘while I would love to invite you to my bed for other reasons, now is not the time’.

Al gets oddly flustered by this

They’re trying to figure out what the connection is between all of them that makes them part of Ed’s Hoard. Lust asks more directly ‘why the fuck did you drag me into this??’. And Ed just points to Greed and says ‘He said you are a friend.’. as if it makes complete sense.

Turns out that Ed’s hoard is friendship. And combined with the fact that(despite his grumpiness) he gets easily attached, it took little for Greed and Lust to be considered friends.

Everyone does have the freedom to leave, and sometimes they do because they need to get up and stretch or use the bathroom or grab a snack. But whenever they do Ed just sits up and stares at the door until they come back.

By the next morning, Ed’s kind of back to normal. Like, he still has the instinct in there and all, but everyone can do their own thing and Ed’s a lot more calm. He’s also very embarrassed about the whole thing.

Of course, Ed and Al remember they were supposed to drop by Mustang’s office a few days ago. Mostly because they get a call like ‘are y’all okay?’.

Ed shifts into the Human Disguise form to head down there, but everyone still notices something is up because he’s suddenly the same height as Hawkeye.

They’re all like ‘okay kid. Drop whatever tall spell you found this time’. Ed just grins maniacally and says ‘it’s no spell! I look like this now!’. Al confirms it, but is realizing how obnoxious Ed’s going to be about the height.

They explain that they figured out what the hell they are, and Ed shows off both the full Dragon form and the Midform.

Obvs the team asks how they figured it out, and Ed explains that Dragon Magic is dormant until another Dragon Awakens it, but they found a loophole.

‘Wait, a loophole? What loophole?’, “Uh… a Vampire using my blood?’, ‘Did you get attacked by a Vampire?!’, ‘No, it’s a friend and I asked him to because different monster blood has different effects’, ‘and you were okay with a guy just getting all up in your personal space and biting your neck like that?’, “Well, he’s the kind of friend where I’d be okay with him‘getting all up in my personal space and biting my neck’ anyway.’. ‘Oh.’

Yeah. They didn’t know Ed was dating anyone, much less a guy. So that’s a conversation.

When asked why it’s just Ed who went through the whole thing while Al’s still ‘normal’, they say that they’re mostly waiting to see what all happens to Ed and how to deal with it.

Although, Ed does point out that if they don’t do it soon it’ll probably happen accidentally since it’s basically a ‘next time he uses Magic on Al situation’.

Then Ed’s like ‘Or, you know, you could always ask Greed to ‘recreate the loophole!’. Al gets very flustered again and is just like ‘willyoushutthefuckuppleaseohmyfuckinggod’

Overall, they’d like some report on what else they find out.

Next plot goes on to ‘testing out powers’. Specifically. The boys want to test out the ‘resist and enhance’ aspect.

They bring in Ling and Greed for this, killing two birds with one stone and also studying the Vampire’s Enthrallment at the same time.

Of the various things they’re testing:

Resisting the spell

‘enhancing’ the spell

differences between the resist/enhance skill of an Awakened Dragon vs. not Awakened

if the Enthrallment Enchantment is different between Vampires(and between who it’s being used on)

Ed and Al also already came up with a ‘payment method’, since they’ll be asking Greed and Ling to use up a bunch of Magical Energy to do this. Said payment is, of course, blood. Ed will ‘pay’ for Ling, while Greed and Al get to ‘recreate the loophole’.

We’re going to jump right into my Al/Greed Rarepair because fuck it it’s my fanfic and I pick the ships!

So their banter has been going back and forth for a bit. Like, at first it was just Greed flirting and Al getting flustered, but once Al gets into the rhythm he can kinda flirt back but neither really realized it was more than banter until now

Al realizes it because of what they figure out about the Enthrallment. Because it effected them differently and the emotions it brought forth wasn't anything unfamiliar. Like, Al found Ling’s Enthrallment to be comfortable, because he’s a friend. But Greed’s made him fluttery and giddy and all that. Meanwhile, Ed felt the opposite.

So when they are alone and he has Greed biting his neck, Al ends up going in for a kiss.

And while the feeling is returned, it leaves Greed somewhat flustered and confused. He manages to distract Al with the ‘you’re probably gonna catch fire in a minute so maybe deal with that first’ thing.

Next time they really see each other is after Al’s turn with the ‘puberty hit him like a truck’ situation, but Greed’s kind of… he’s still a little hesitant and confused about things so he’s giving Al space, but Al doesn’t know that so it’s like ‘is he avoiding me?? Why??’.

Al even wonders if it has something to do with his Midform, and tends to stay in Human Disguise more often around Greed.

Next time they’re alone for a bit they end up talking that out though. And also making out I guess.

Okay! So! A Lot of other plot stuffhappens.

Like, probably things like meeting other characters and also the rest of the Sins Crew, finding out about various fuckery going on. I mean, I did say that while the Sins Crew all kinda left, Father himself is still an Asshole™ and doing some major villain stuff.

So they find out all that and a bunch of other things too. I haven’t thought all that out yet.

Out of the stuff that I have planned out though, the next thing to happen is Ed getting a little kidnapped. Idk exactly ‘why’, other than ‘some assholes are grabbing random monsters’, but who knows what they’re doing with them it’s not important.

Anyway, Ed’s already on his way to break out, when he happens to run into Hohenheim.

Oh boy is that a trip. I mean, first off we have them just being ‘why the fuck are you here? Why am I here? Why are you here?!’ and just generally being that pointing spiderman meme. After the initial shock, Ed’s kinda ready to punch, but then Hohenheim just says things that Ed didn’t expect.

Like, Ed expected Hohenheim to just be some asshole who never cared. But he’s immediately concerned about Ed and seems to, you know, care about him.

The thing that really hits him though is when he says something along the lines of ‘Let’s get you out of here and back home. Your mother’s probably worried about you!’.

He realizes ‘oh god he has no clue’. And then he realizes ‘oh god I’m going to have to tell him’.

And like, I’m not gonna get too into that Angst Fest™, but there is kind of a minor breakdown because how else do you react to that news?

But that whole thing is enough to make Ed stop and think things through and overall give Hohenheim chance.

They then end up going on their own adventures while Ed tries to get back home.

And of course various strange bonding experiences happen along the way

A lot of that bonding is learning about Dragon Tricks. Especially flying because while Ed kinda figured out a little bit he hasn’t had anyone with wings(or at least the same kind of wings) to really teach him.

During one flight Ed suddenly catches a familiar scent

obvs everyone is looking for Ed, and he manages to find Ling, Greed and Lust

Ed does a literal flying tackle at Ling and knocks him over. There’s a minor fight because Ling doesn’t realize he’s not being attacked but you know.

After hugging the fuck out of Ling, Ed tells Greed and Lust to get down there too. Greed’s like ‘hell no I’m not getting on the ground to hug you!’ but he forgets about the tail. Lust gives in.

They ask what the fuck happened and Ed’s like ‘where do I even begin??’

At some point Hohenheim had popped up and is like ‘maybe start with introductions?”

then you get the comedic thing of the Vampires looking up, and then continuing to look up, and then being terrified of the giant fucking dragon.

Ed’s just all causal like ‘so, uh, I found my dad?’.

Walking into the nearest town is fun

Ed’s kinda clinging to Ling because goddamn it he was lonely!

At some point Ling kinda starts to stumble a little and Ed’s concerned. Greed says ‘he’s fine he’s just and idiot’.

Basically Ling hasn’t had any blood since the last time he drank from Ed. Which was a while ago at this point, so he’s kinda getting a little weak. Not dangerously but imagine the feeling of pulling an all nighter without caffeine.

Ed offers, but Ling brushes it off by saying if he took a drink now, then Ed would be the one weak and stumbling so it doesn’t make a difference, it can wait until they get a place to stay for the night.

Not putting up with that shit, Ed transforms into Full Dragon and offers a ride. Ling’s a little bit like ‘really??’

Greed’s kinda jokingly like ‘why don’t I get offered a ride?’. Ed says ‘well, when we get back home you can ask Al.” Greed opens his mouth to make a joke, looks over to Hohenheim, and decides he really should shut up.

Lust is kinda like ‘hey. Why are we walking into town when we have a large Dragon that can carry all of us?’

Hohenheim’s answer is ‘First of all, I am not a taxi service. Furthermore, if people saw a large Dragon land in the middle of town, they would freak the fuck out.

Ling falls asleep on the way back.

They manage to get a hotel room in the next town they come across. Ed and Ling get their own room, of course.

They go to do the whole ��blood drinking’ thing, but Ling’s still very hesitant.

Ed has noticed this a lot and at first he figured it was the typical ‘I’m new to being a Vampire and hesitant to do something so weird/taboo/etc.’ thing, but now he’s getting the feeling its something else and ends up asking about it.

So, big trigger warning for that whole ‘abusive relationship’ thing I mentioned way back in the beginning. But, like, that’s kind of what’s up. Like, his Ex used to use the effect of the Enchantment to be manipulative. And Ling’s kind of afraid of accidentally doing that to Ed.

Ed just points out that 1. he knows when Ling is using the enchantment and knows how to separate his feelings from it, 2. the enchantment itself doesn’t make him feel all love-y (he brings up the whole ‘testing it with Greed’ thing as proof, since it didn’t spark any romance with Greed.), and 3. Ed is a Dragon. His own Magic can cancel out the Enchantment if he chooses to do so.

The whole thing does get Ling to relax about it. It’ll still take a while for him to get comfortable using it on Ed, but now Ed knows to not try doing anything romantic while under the Enchantment.

Okay! On with that! The group eventually gets back to home base and they meet up with Al and Winry and whoever else is a friend at this point.

Ed fucking tackle hugs them, of course.

After that Al and Winry notice Hohenheim and they can’t even figure out how to process that they just gesture like ‘what the fuck?’

Ed explains what happened and they’re kind of like ‘you know what fine.

Time for more family bonding with Hohenheim talking to Al for a while.

Time for another Rarepair because this is my fic and I choose the ships!

So, like, Mustang meeting Hohenheim.

Mustang’s just like, staring for a bit. And it’s not helped by the fact that Hohenheim has no sense of personal space when he’s investigating other creatures(because he’s a nerd and that’s what he likes to do).

Mustang is flustered to the point that Ed and Al actually notice and are like ‘bruh what is up with you?”

Obviously he lies as tries to say it’s a reaction to a large source of fire magic. Ed and Al are like ‘really? Because you never do that around us.’

Someone (Probably Hughes) eventually calls him out says ‘magic reaction my ass you think the guy’s pretty!’

Ed and Al are confused by this revelation but are kinda chill with it? Mostly they don’t know how to feel so they’re just going to be chill out of confusion.

That’s all I got on the plot so far because fuck it.

#Monster!AU #EdLing #Also some #AlGreed #And a little bit of #Roho #at the end there #happy halloween motherfuckers

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crysta-cub · 4 years ago

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Crysta’s Lamia Experience: A Good Move

After a week of recover, Crysta realizes that some big changes are needed to move forward.

AO3

Oh boy, has it been a long week. I’m not much for being a low energy creature, I do enjoy roaming and going out, but its harder to get away with coming and going without my human form. I was able to get my car returned to me, which was nice to not worry about that.

During this time I observed a few things that began to bother me. The first main issue was that this house just seemed to be just too small for one of our newest members of the family. Hero was struggling to get around. In my soul, I knew he would never complain, but going from free roaming in the forest to being shoved in an older home, built for humans. I knew Guardian also desired to roam and explore, it just never felt safe enough with his age. I was sure that Hero would also prefer to have some territory to explore and patrol. And if Hero was too big for the house, the ever growing Munchkin would also soon be too big.

The second problem, maybe a little to the fact that Butterscotch had become a bit more protective over his twins than originally thought. Alpha would be the only Lamia to be allowed in the room, barring Munchkin when I carried him in. I began to wonder when the older young lamias would want a room of their own.

The third, well Hero pointed it out to me. I’m no longer comfortable living here. The encounter with those hillbilly folks had really unnerved me. If they were able to track me and catch me while I was out in the open… maybe this place isn’t as safe as it once was. I’m finding myself more comfortable in areas closer to the pet shops, where all sorts of creatures seem to be able to live freely. It was like a bubble on earth that melded all sorts of realities.

All week I kept tinkering away at my laptop, using some of my smaller forms with more dexterous toes, ranging from my Black-footed ferret form to my smooth-coated Otter to my Opossum, to manage the keyboards. I had an idea and hopefully the others would allow for this bit of change. I wouldn’t want to do anything that they would be uncomfortable with.

I think I found the perfect solution.

I called all the lamias for a family meeting. There was only a mild struggle getting Butterscotch to finally come out of the room, the twins took a little to be rocked to sleep before he could be carried away to the living room by Alpha. Butterscotch gave an affectionate huff as he was sat upon the cheetah printed throw pillow, I knew all would be fine.

Munchkin wiggled in Hero’s arms, he was just excited to see everyone in one place, calling out to his momma Butterscotch and waving frantically at him. Everyone turned to look at me expectantly. Well, I am the one to call the meeting, guess it’s time to get started.

“Alright everyone,” I shift my paws, currently sitting in my Greyhound form, “I have been noticing for a while that, well, to put it simply, I think this house has gotten to become a little too small for our family now. It’s definitely too small for Hero to get around comfortably and we’re probably going to be needing more rooms. I have been doing some research and I think I found a solution.”

I nudge the laptop around for the lamias to look at. It's a large two story wooden home with a wrap around deck and stairs leading to a trail into a large wooden area. A sizable fenced yard, large enough for Eevee to run herself silly and a fenced in pool, large and deep enough for a growing Twister.

Alpha approached the laptop and began to scroll through the pictures. It was a large lot with practically no neighbors. There were several rooms, a basement and garage. A theatre room that Guardian and Moonstone Oooo’d and Ahhh’d to. A sizable kitchen and not a tight space in sight, even the doorways seemed wider. There was something whimsical about it and the price… “How much isss it?”

“That’s the thing, It’s in the same area as Vex and Selie’s adoption centers and all those rescues we see online. All you have to do is want it hard enough and it’s ours. I just, don’t want to make a decision on it without you guys wanting for it too.”

“you want usss to move? now?” Butterscotch asked

“Well soon, there maybe something we’d have to get done, packing and all that.” I answered. “But only if all of you want to.”

“I think it would be bessst.” Hero commented, placing a hand on my shoulder. “You haven’t felt entirely ssssafe.”

I shrug, “I know I’m safe with you all here to protect me, but I do have a sense of unease. Like something could happen at any moment, and not just to me. But I also want you all to be comfortable and happy. I don’t want to force anything.”

“I really like it,” Moonstone piped up, “It looksss really cool and I think we can all be happy there, Munchkin can learn how to ssswim in sssomething bigger than the kiddy pool.”

“It looksss like there’sss a river along the trail.” Guardian began going through the outdoor pictures. “There’sss ssso much to explore.”

Alpha nodded then looked towards Butterscotch. “What do you think, love?”

Butterscotch took a moment to ponder, glancing from the images, to the teenage lamias to Munchkin. Then he glanced back to the singular lamia room. Coming to a decision, he looked back at me. “i think thisss isss a good idea. you ssshould go for it Crysssta.”

I smiled a doggy grin at Butterscotch, “alright, I should make a call to the agency.”

“Are you able to shift to your human form, not many can underssstand you otherwise.” Alpha ask, giving me a raised brow.”

“Hmmm, let’s see.” I felt for my human form and sure enough it seemed it had healed from the previous ordel. In a puff of red smoke, I shifted from my Greyhound form and emerged Human, still clothed in the clothes I was captured in. “Aside from the need to change, I think I’m doing better.”

Guardian and Moonstone cheer, Munchkin following their excitement a moment after. I can tell Hero is watching me, his relief filtering over to my soul.

“May I asssk sssomething?” Moonstone raised his hand, waving it around.

I smile down at him. “Sure.”

Moonstone turns towards Butterscotch, wringing his hands nervously. “Can I give you a hug, Momma Butterssscotch? I really misssssssed you this week.”

Guardian swept his tail over the floor. “Me too. We underssstand if your not ready yet.”

Butterscotch’s jaw trembled with emotion before throwing his arms open. “Of courssse. I misssssssed you two, too.”

Moonstone and Guardian rushed into his arms and into a deep hug. Munchkin began to fuss and squirm in Hero’s arms. Hero lowered him to the floor and allowed Munchkin to bolt forward. Moonstone and Guardian moved aside to let Munchkin join them. Alpha leaned back, smiling proudly at them before Butterscotch, pulled him into the cuddle pile.

I smile at them, leaning against Hero, feeling him finding joy at the sight. Maybe Butterscotch might ease up on his protectiveness soon, though with a move, who knows how that would change. Well, looks like there’s a phone call to make.

It would take a few weeks to pack up the house, toss or donate things we just didn’t need anymore. But once it was all said in done, we got into the new house with very little stress. No one would let me take any other room than the master bedroom, with a bathroom that had a tub big enough for even Hero to be able to soak in.

I abandoned the old bed, one little queen size bed was no longer enough. I opted for two cal king beds, side by side, creating a colossal bed that would fit Hero comfortably, and myself, especially if I chose to be in my largest snake form, one that has been described to be a 16ft snake with the markings of a Diamond-back Rattler, with the rattle, the hood and fangs of a king cobra, all on a body much to the size and strength of an Anaconda. One of the many species of the universe that hadn’t had a name to it. Hero kindly refused to have his own room, I can feel that he really just wants to be close to me. I don’t mind sharing.

It seemed that aside from the obvious Dragon form, most to all my forms will fit within the house. It was like a dream come true. A dream home. I know we’ll all be happy here.

Alpha and Butterscotch claimed the next room, one with a beautiful bay window, overlooking the forest behind them. There were plenty of napping spaces, most hidden for when Butterscotch needed a little extra space. There was a safe little nursery section where the twins Tempest and Nightwish could be found sleeping and playing. While everything was still being arranged, Butterscotch maintained his stance of keeping the babies to himself. Moving boxes could be dangerous and a certain curious pup wasn’t always great at being gentle.

Moonstone and Guardian’s room was more of a play room than a bed room, still preferring to sleep with me and Hero. Video games and board games, everything in their proper spots as well as cubbies for their collections of shiny outdoor collectibles. Munchkin would be able to pick out a room when he’s older, for now he enjoys drifting from either my room or Butterscotch and Alpha’s room, as well as joining Moonstone and Guardian to play in their room.

Last box put away for the day to be dealt with later. I flop down on the couch, Eevee jumping up to sniff at my face before running off to explore more of the house. She’s been loving it, except for being locked outside when the doors were left open, don’t need her running off in unfamiliar territory. Hero comes over and hands me a glass of water. I thank him and watch as he coils up next to the couch.

“This place really feels like home.” I comment before taking a sip of water. Hero nods, the tip of his tail taps the ground. I can feel a little bit of nervousness coming from him before he slowly wraps it around my leg. I smile, sending a happy acceptance to his forward motion. I motion for Hero to lean closer, waiting for him to be close enough to lean back against him. A pleased rumble resonates from his chest before he wraps an arm around my waist and rests his skull against my head.

I reached up and began to pet him behind his hood. Yea, things are definitely shaping up just nicely. Definitely a good move.

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jinlingspinkiphone · 6 years ago

Text

surface of the water

its still the 21st so take my late submission <# @wangxianweek

2 confessions | reincarnation | fantasy au

The story of the river dragon of caiyi town is not unheard of. Although originally passed through the mouths of the locals, it eventually spread out to the other towns after the story was carried out and retold by travellers. Many come to see the river connected to the great lake of Caiyi Town that is filled with clear blue water and gentle flow.

It is said that there is a river dragon that sleeps under the surface of the clear water. Its scales, white as clouds with the shine of pearls, each the size of a man’s fist, cover its body. With eyes golden like the sun and a mighty jaw of sharp teeth, it watches the mortals of the town by sitting on the tall boulders at the edge of his waters. In a form mimicking a mortal’s, he wears the robes of clouds and a white ribbon tied around his forehead that streams behind him in the wind. A well known anecdote is that he sits on the tall boulders and plays the strings of a zither, the graceful notes bouncing off the water as though they were lanterns bumping into the ground before floating back up.

But only the fishermen that bring their boats to the junction between the lake and river know of the nymph that dances across the surface of the water, one that belongs to no other than the river dragon. The stories vary from time to time; sometimes he adorns the same white robes the dragon wears, saintly as the silken white cascades around him. Sometimes the simple pants and shirt are grey like the warm pebbles of the river banks white other times he drapes himself in muddled black robes. One consistent feature is the inky black hair dripping and eyes of red, deeper than the red rouge on lips of seduction.

One rumor has only been claimed by a single fisherman - he claims they wear red robes, the dragon taking a human form that holds the same elegance of fine silk. Hand in hand they dance to the sunset’s vivid oranges and reds while the clear water twists and swirls around them. With a smile greater than the sun, the water nymph would laugh and spin around, the wedding veil flowing around him. No one believes the fisherman, the idea of these two beings adhering the custom of mortals unrealistic and out of place. What good does it do for such a spectacular dragon to marry?

These stories also land in the hands of said beings.

“Do you know? You are viewed as a god to the mortals.” Wei Ying says, using his fingers to guide the stream of water into the air, twisting and knotting into intricate designs. After a moment of satisfaction, the water drops back down sadly, falling apart and joining the larger body of water.

Lan Zhan’s fingers pause on the strings of wangji, the strum of his note dancing across the water in response. “I am no god. I am the water dragon of this river.”

Wei Ying hums, resting his cheek on his palm. With his free hand he summons the water once more, forming a crystal dragon. It glides across the water, mimicking the way Lan Zhan’s body flows, how he flies just barely over the surface, slithering in a motion that propels him without unnecessary strength. “Yes, that’s true, but they also see you as something greater.”

Playfully, it moves across the strings of wangji, jumping over Lan Zhan’s fingers as he pays no mind, plucking notes and shaking the sounds. After some time of being ignored, both owner and creation become bored. With a flick of his fingers, the water creation flies up, circling the original model until it comes up to perch at the top of his head.

With a gentle breath, Lan Zhan slows the rhythm of his hands, tilting his head upwards slightly despite feeling where the water serpent is situated. At the sudden shift of its ground the serpent startles and releases droplets of water into Lan Zhan’s hair. Not a moment later, the water around wangji rise from the surface, coming up to repair the serpent’s missing spots.

The sight of Lan Zhan paying so much attention to this tiny serpent made from the water of their home makes Wei Ying burst out laughing, a familiar warmth in his chest as he does so. For all the time they’ve lived together, he just can’t get bored of the captivating mannerisms that Lan Zhan pays no mind to.

“Come, humor me Lan Zhan, sit by my side.” Wei Ying pats the surface of the water beside him, making no splashes. Their reflection ripples around him, hitting the hem of Lan Zhan’s outer robes. They aren’t too far apart to begin with, but they aren’t close enough either.

Silently, Lan Zhan complies, drifting slowly over. Usually he does not make disturbances on the surface of the water, not wanting to bother the fish. Unlike him, Wei Ying does it anyway, bothering the fish in his free time and finding excuses to play with the surface whenever he can. He knows Wei Ying does so for his attention, always sending the currents and ripples - but if he asks for reason Lan Zhan’s steps send the travelling circles towards him, he won’t answer.

Wangji is laid on the rock that Lan Zhan was just sitting on, where the water serpent now naps, as if it were the real thing and not just birthed from Wei Ying’s fingers a moment ago. They sit together silently under the clear skies. The clouds that gather around the peaks of the surrounding mountains have disappeared as well.

In his cupping hands is a small pearl, the same sphere that can be made from taking Lan Zhan’s scales and compressing it. It takes time to form one, even with Lan Zhan’s skilled hands, so it means he had already prepared this ahead of time. With slender hands he uses his energy to make the pearl roll in place. With a soft glow, it moves, shrouded in the blue wisps that rise from the body of water beneath them. From the wisps of blue water comes thin white clouds that swirl around it, showing flashes of shimmering light.

Wei Ying glances over, heart tightening at the sight of Lan Zhan concentrating on the pearl. His hands show no difficulty but there is a worrying crease in his eyebrows, golden eyes glaring at the pearl as if it did him wrong. If his glare could become force in a physical form, it would be sure to shatter it! But Wei Ying can see it is not anger, rather hopefulness; he does not understand it completely, yet the warmth of endearment still fills his blood, coursing through his body.

At last Lan Zhan seems content with his creation. He does not touch it and uses his spiritual energy to make it float in his hand. Wordlessly Lan Zhan grabs Wei Ying's wrist and pulls it over, flipping his hand to present his palm. Despite not wanting to touch it, he puts the pearl into Wei Ying's hand gently.

“For me?” Wei Ying asks, curious. Lan Zhan nods. The pearl has grown in size, from being no bigger than a fingernail to become as large as a small loquat. It's a hefty thing in his palm, more solid than he expected. “Why have you given me this?”

Lan Zhan doesn’t look back as he responds, but a slight blush dusts over his cheeks. Years ago, when they first occupied the river together, nothing Wei Ying would do could affect him. Now, they are sitting at the edge of the lake on the water, and Lan Zhan is blushing. “A courting gift.”

This surprises him, mouth hanging open slightly. A courting gift? He looks back down at the large pearl in his hand, then thinks back to all the other little pearls Lan Zhan has given him in the past. Giddy, he exclaims, “I thought you didn’t like the idea of courting gifts! You always called them unnecessary and trivial whenever I brought you something before!”

“I…” Lan Zhan pauses, then the tips of his ears redden. There’s an evident struggle in his voice as he continues. “I had not known those were courting gifts. I had not known of your love.”

The sight of this godly being in front of him, with the robes of the skies draping over his shoulders and flowing like waterfalls, makes Wei Ying’s mind fill with only him. The sight of Lan Zhan’s snowy skin dusting with pink and ears red makes Wei Ying’s stomach giddy, knowing that these are all evidence of his effect on Lan Zhan - that he affects him in a way that breaks out of the guarded walls of unfamiliar emotions. But the pearl in his hand and the fact that it's indeed a courting gift, an object of his love, is what drives Wei Ying to reach over and pull Lan Zhan towards him before leaning in for a kiss.

It’s cold, the way Lan Zhan always is, but comforting as well. Just like the water of their home, it grips at his skin, drowning him gently into an abyss of chilling clearness. If he calls Wei Ying is radiant, then Lan Zhan is the waves of the water, washing over him. There is no need for words to convey his love - it envelops him like the warmth of the sun.

Smiling against him, he takes Lan Zhan’s hand, moving it to cover the pearl in his hand. “Lan Zhan, do you know of my love now?”

With a dip of his head, Wei Ying does not need his answer.

#wangxianweek2019 #wangxianweek #atlas!writes #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian

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morallydraconequus · 6 years ago

Text

Gordon in Wonderland, Ch 3: A familiar face at a Caucus race.

Gordon remembered that one time Thomas wanted to fly. Well, Gordon could clearly state that he hated his experience of flying, and flying in general.

“I have no idea how Harold can get used to this. I'd rather be stuck on rails than this horrid flying.”

The cloud was getting bigger and turning into a dark grey tone. The tiny blue engine - Gordon would prefer big instead of tiny but it didn't seem appropriate in this situation - felt a drop of rain on his face. In fact, his body felt like he was soaked in water.

“If the steam is water that is evaporated, it'll be light enough to form a cloud. If the cloud becomes heavy so will the steam and soon, it’ll turn back into water. Which will mean it will rain soon… and I'll fall along with the rain!”

As he deduced, Gordon began to drop down.

Unlike the hole, Gordon could tell that it wouldn't be such a long fall... but a much harder landing.

Instead of cold, hard earth that would shatter Gordon into pieces - do note that Gordon’s imagination had got the better of him - he landed on fluffy pile of feathers. The pile was actually a bird, however Gordon wasn’t even sure what species it was.

The bird squawked in surprise, causing Gordon to fall onto the ground. Luckily, he landed perfectly on his wheels but Gordon couldn't say that he’d felt any pain. The bird wasn’t as lucky. Distracted, it crashed - not very gracefully - on to the ground. Having realised that he didn’t rely on tracks at the moment, Gordon chuffed up to the animal. His friends barely see Gordon’s sympathetic side, but those feelings did exist in Gordon.

“Are you alright?” he asked, hoping for any sign of life. He would feel very guilty if there were none, but it wasn’t entirely his fault.

“I was, until you crashed into me!” snapped the bird as it struggled to retain its posture. It appeared to be an eagle with navy and indigo feathers but the voice - particularly his accent - made it very easy for Gordon to identify.

“Vinnie?!” gasped Gordon. The eagle was indeed some version of the North-American engine from the Great Railway Show. He wasn’t too familiar with Vinnie, but he had heard enough from the other engines. Specifically Thomas and Phillip, who weren’t too fond of the bully.

The rude bird only responded with a wary eye, staring at Gordon.

“What are you?” demanded Vinnie. If he had asked ‘Who are you?’ instead of ‘What are you?’, Gordon wouldn’t be so offended. “What am I? Pardon me, but would you like it if I asked the same question in that tone? I would’ve said that you’re a brainless buffalo with those manners!”

“How dare you call me a brainless buffalo, you insect!” growled Vinnie - though Gordon wasn’t sure how birds could growl. The eagle’s shadow surrounded the tiny engine as Vinnie prepared to attack. “You’ll pay for that.”

Before Gordon could move, Vinnie was suddenly smacked away to the side, causing another embarrassing fall.

“Vinnie! How many times do I have to tell you to be nice?”

The creature that saved Gordon was an magenta elephant with floral decorations, which reminded him of another engine from the Great Railway Show.

“Ashima?”

The elephant smiled gently at Gordon, as if to calm down a frightened and shy animal. Gordon was more confused than frightened.

“Well, what’s your name little one?” Ashima asked politely. However, Gordon didn’t like being labeled ‘little’.

“My name is Gordon. And if you wish to know what I am, I’m a steam engine.” Gordon explained, so that there was no misunderstanding.

“A steam engine?” asked Vinnie, who was recovering from a hard fall, “You looked like a funny caterpillar to me. Why are you so small? And how did you hit me in the sky?”

Vinnie was going to make a further remark, but he saw Ashima raised her trunk as if she warning the bird to choose his words carefully, and he was wise enough to not say anymore.

“I’m actually very big in my real size,” explained Gordon, “Apparently, I shrink or grow depending on how much water I have in my boiler. And right now, my boiler is empty.”

“Ah, then I can help.” Ashima placed her trunk in a nearby lake to suck up the water. She then withdrew it and sprayed Gordon with water, being careful not to make the tiny engine fly away with too much force.

Gordon did not appreciate how his boiler had been filled, but grateful for the kind action; he remained silent.

Gordon’s boiler wasn’t very full, but he grew until he was half of Ashima’s height. He decided that his current size would have to do for now, but was glad that he was bigger than Vinnie. At least he could have some dignity. The eagle was not intimidated whatsoever.

“Well, we better hurry to the meeting.” said Ashima. “We’re not bringing him along, are we?” grumpily asked Vinnie. Gordon did not like that he was referred in such a grim tone.

“We might as well Vinnie. Flying Dodo might want to meet Gordon.” reasoned Ashima.

“Who?”

“Some flightless bird who’s somehow in charge of our meetings,” explained Vinnie, “If they had to pick a leader they should’ve chose me.”

‘I can see why they didn’t.’ thought Gordon. “If he can’t fly, why is he called ‘Flying Dodo’?”

“He’s actually very fast, surprisingly. He believes that he flies because of the wind rushing through his feathers, thus, he won’t respond to any other name except ‘Flying Dodo’.” Ashima answered.

When the three arrived to the supposed meeting, there were a number of animals who resembled competitors from the Great Railway Show.

Axel of Belgium was a lion with black fur and a red mane with yellow streaks.

Carlos of Mexico was a silver and black hawk.

Etienne appeared to be a blue rooster with a white and red crest.

Frieda, like Vinnie, was an eagle except that she had blue feathers that have a yellow tip at the ends.

Beside Frieda was a small green wolf, Gordon assumed that the wolf was Gina.

A huge, bulky bear with red and blue fur with white stripes seemed similar to the Russian engine, Ivan.

A peacock with blue feathers and white, orange and green tail was wearing a crown identical to Rajiv’s.

Raul of Brazil seemed to be another big cat - probably a Jaguar - with yellow, green and blue fur. The fur colour made it hard for Gordon to tell what exactly Raul was.

The Australian engine, Shane, was a gold and green emu - though Gordon expected him to be a kangaroo.

Yong Bao clearly stood out the most, he was a Chinese dragon with scales matching the colours of his paintwork.

A silver kestrel - who Gordon recognised as his cousin, Spencer - glared at him.

“Ashima, Vinnie, what have you brought here?” Spencer questioned with distaste. Gordon was not happy being referred as ‘what’ rather than ‘who’ again.

“I’m-” “I do not recall asking you to speak!” interrupted Spencer. He was as rude and pompous as Vinnie! Gordon wondered if the other engines saw Gordon as the screechy silver bird.

“Ignore Spencer, he always acts as if he’s in charge without Flying Dodo around,” pardoned Ashima, “He is a steam engine named Gordon. He changes size depending on how much water he has consumed. Vinnie and I found him while we were on our way here.”

“Though I suggested we abandoned him first.” muttered Vinnie. This did not escape Ashima’s ears.

“After I stopped you from attacking poor Gordon! He ran out of water and you tried to attack him whilst he was so small!”

This caused a commotion amongst the herd.

“Silence! What is all the fuss about?”

They all went silent as a new creature joins them. Gordon knew that voice immediately. “It can’t be him.”

The creature is revealed to be a vermillion dodo who strode in with such confidence that even Spencer and Vinnie had shut their beaks.

“Flying Scotsman?!” exclaimed Gordon. The dodo chuckled at Gordon’s shocked expression. “Flying ‘Dodo’, dear lad. A pleasure to meet you, little Gordon.”

Gordon was aware that the water in his boiler diminished by quite a lot, to the point he had shrunk down to be three quarters of Flying Dodo’s height. It had either been a long journey, or the water evaporated faster than usual.

“Excuse me, but I do not take being called ‘little’ very kindly.” “My apologies! And what’s this about Vinnie trying to attack our innocent friend?”

Vinnie straightened up. “He fell from the sky and the vile little thing crashed into me!”

“It was by accident! If I had control of my landing, I wouldn’t have crashed into you at all.” rebutted Gordon.

“He’s anything but innocent! He called me ‘bird-brain’! He’s guilty!” Vinnie claimed.

The members who had wings gasped at the word, ‘bird-brain’. Gordon was very certain he said ‘brainless buffalo’ instead.

“If anyone’s guilty, it’s you for attacking another animal,” scoffed Flying Dodo, Gordon decided to let the fact that he was not an animal to slide, “I made this very clear every meeting. ‘All animals are equal. All animals are our friends and allies. No animal should harm another on purpose.’”

“But let’s not forget that ‘Bird-brain’ is a very awful insult to those who have wings.” reminded Frieda. “Almost like a crime.” said Shane. “It is crime!” cried Rajiv. “A crime indeed!” added Carlos. “Hear, hear!” agreed Etienne.

‘The nerve of him!’ thought Gordon as he saw a hidden smile on Vinnie. ‘He’s trying to frame me for a crime I didn’t commit!’

“Is this true, Gordon?” queried the dodo, “If it is, I’m afraid we will have to punish those who commit crimes.”

“Actually, he didn’t,” interrupted Ashima, “Mind you that I have very good hearing and Gordon did not insult Vinnie with that horrid slur. But I did hear him say a ‘brainless bull’.”

“I think we could let that slide,” said Ivan. “Bulls aren’t very bright so that statement is true.”

“And by the looks of this, said statement was used as a line of defence.” spoke Axle.

“Which justifies the statement.” included Yong Bao.

“But Vinnie’s charges shouldn’t be dismissed.” uttered Raul.

“Time to announce the verdict, Flying Dodo.” responded Gina.

“Well then, by this testimony of Ashima the elephant, I announce Gordon the steam engine innocent and our new comrade. Vinnie the bald eagle, however, is found guilty of attacking another creature on purpose.” concluded Flying Dodo.

Spencer swooped in front of Flying Dodo and landed on Gordon’s funnel, much to his disdain.

“If I may Flying Dodo,” spoke the kestrel, “I’m afraid that Vinnie has some anger issues, thus he wasn’t in his right mind. The proper solution is to help him control his temper and in order to do that, you need to pardon him first.”

“It seems that you’re right,” agreed Flying Dodo, “By this testimony of Spencer the kestrel, Vinnie the bald eagle is pardoned.”

The rest rolled their eyes and sighed as if this had happened frequently. Gordon could see that Vinnie and Spencer were partners in crime, easily fooling the dodo who wasn’t a smart creature.

“Well, that’s settled. Back to the agenda-” Gordon blew his whistle, frightening Spencer as he cried in shock and fluttered off Gordon’s funnel. “Whoops! Forgot you were sitting there, Spencer.” Everyone but Vinnie and Spencer laughed at the embarrassed silver kestrel who haughtily walked on the ground. “Forgotten, my tail feathers.” Spencer mumbled angrily.

“Anyways, time to make a note of those who aren’t present today,” said Flying Dodo,

“Shankar the tiger.” “He sends his apologies but he has to help take care of the cubs with Noor Jehan.” replied Rajiv.

“Tamika the Koala.” “She’s had a rough day so I decided to let her sleep in. She’s nocturnal after all.” spoke Shane. “Aubrey and Aiden the wallabies and Isla the cockatoo couldn’t make either.”

“Hong Mei the Ibis.” “Hong Mei, Lei the crane, An An and Yin-Long the pandas were slowed down by a recent storm. They send their regards.” reported Yong Bao.

“And I of course have come in the place of Beau the Bison.” said Vinnie.

“The last animal who isn’t present is Hiro the pheasant.” “We haven’t heard anything from him,” answered Ashima.

“He’s probably hanging around with that old barn owl in the forest,” muttered Spencer, “This owl himself prefers to not come at all. Vinnie and I barely got his name because of his silly mind games and riddles, only Hiro was able to coax him out. Though we almost never see him outside of the forest.”

“Very well,” continued the dodo, “This weather has been very odd lately, it has rained longer than usual and we’re all still dripping with water.”

Gordon knew that the ‘odd weather’ was from his own doing but remained quiet.

“We’ll have to come up with something to dry ourselves. And no Rajiv, you won’t be reciting that long poem about the crown on your head for us to hear until we’re dry. We all know how you found it.”

The peacock slumped sadly.

“How did he find that crown?” Gordon whispered to Ashima. “He got caught by some thieves but escaped with the crown and he calls that poem ‘The Grand and Wide Tale’ which was named after his own tail.”

“I’ve got it!” announced Flying Dodo, “We’ll have a caucus race! This will definitely help us dry ourselves. And there will be a prize for the winner!”

The interests of the herd had perked up, especially Gordon. In no time at all, everyone was waiting behind the line until the caucus race started. Though, Gordon had no idea what the dodo meant by a ‘caucus’ race. Gordon heard the word once when he overheard a conversation about politics once but what did it have to do with races, he wondered.

Thankfully, Ashima filled more water into his boiler so that he was big enough to race, slightly smaller than his original height but it would have to do. Racing was a part of Gordon’s interests, he did admit that he liked to show off once in a while. Obviously, Spencer and Vinnie would be trying to beat Gordon at his own game, as he could tell from the glares they shot him.

“Ready, set, go!” cried Flying Dodo. On cue, Gordon chuffed as fast as he can, building up on speed. He was half-way to the finish line and didn’t see any other racers come past him.

“This is such an easy race!” Gordon muttered under his breath. But then he saw the progress of the others.

Some were jogging, a few were simply prancing about while chatting and the rest hadn’t even crossed the line yet! They were all going at whatever pace and went whenever they fancied, as if they didn’t care much about getting first place. Flying Dodo was riding upon Ashima’s back and she didn’t even mind. “The wind is flowing through my feathers,” he spoke to Ashima, “I’m flying!” “Yes you are, I can easily see that.” agreed Ashima, who was too kind to point out the truth.

“What on earth…” Gordon was stunned at the sight and slowed down due to the lack of competition in this race. “Maybe this is what he meant by a ‘caucus’ race.” The engine mumbled.

Taking Gordon by surprise, a blur of blue and silver rushed passed him. “See you at the finish line, insect.” mocked Vinnie while Spencer chortled like an entitled, wealthy snob. Gordon had seen many ‘snobs’ in his younger years, ignoring the fact that he used to act like one when he was much younger.

Vinnie’s insult brought Gordon’s attention to his own size, he was shrinking so much. “I must have used a lot of water! I can’t let them win but refilling my boiler will take too much time. When my water runs out, I’ll be too slow!” Coincidentally, Ashima and Flying Dodo were by Gordon’s side, aware of his dilemma. “You can always catch a ride with us.” suggested Ashima. “A wonderful idea! Climb aboard Gordon! You can fly with me!” added Flying Dodo.

Gordon had concocted a plan to beat the two birds at their own game.

“Fly… Ashima, grab me with your trunk and throw me towards the finish line as far and as hard as you can.”

The pink elephant was puzzled but complied. “Are you sure about this? You might get hurt.” “I can take it. I have my safety valve on.” Gordon reassured, knowing that neither of them knew what a safety valve was really for.

“If he has a safety thingy, I’ll allow it.” announced the dodo.

Ashima swung her trunk back and forth to create momentum. With an underarm, or rather undertrunk throw, Gordon was launched high up in the air but not too high. As he zoomed past Spencer and Vinnie, they both lost their coordination for a bit from shock. “Flying steam-engine, coming through!” he shouted with a smile. The two birds flew faster with determination to defeat the engine at the race. “I’m not losing to you a second time, insect.” grumbled Vinnie.

Gordon lost his smug grin as he forgot one part of the plan, the landing. As his body was directed towards the finish line and the ground, Gordon began to regretted his decision and closed his eyes for certain impact. He would for sure shatter in shards like he thought before, or even dig into the earth and be stuck there for the rest of his life! Again, the engine in peril exaggerated his thoughts of his demise.

Spencer flew closer to the ground in hopes of crossing the line first. “I’ll show that shrinking engine-thing who’s better.” he vowed.

“I, Gordon the not-so-big-at-the-moment engine, will leave my express to-” Gordon’s rushed will was interrupted by another familiar landing on feathers. He bounced off and made it across the line safely. The bird that he landed on this time was Spencer, who had unfortunately tumbled the rest of the way after Gordon, followed by Vinnie and the rest of the animals.

They were all waiting for Flying Dodo to announce the winner and the promised prize, especially Gordon who had won first place despite Spencer was moaning how he crossed it first until Gordon made him face-plant.

“I now declare that the winner is…” Flying Dodo made a dramatic pause to the surprise of no one.

“Everyone!”

“What?!” exclaimed Gordon and Spencer in sync. “Everyone’s a winner in their own way.” explained the dodo. The rest aside from Vinnie and Spencer agreed with smiles and congratulating each other. Gordon joined in reluctantly.

“So I literally threw myself to cross the line first for nothing.” “Technically Ashima threw you but it wasn’t for nothing,” Flying Dodo grinned as if he had another position to give, “Since you came first, you can give out the prizes!”

Spencer smirked at Gordon’s nervous expression. “Good luck with that.”

After a minute of mumbling and thinking, Gordon finally spoke.

“As the one who has no gifts or trinkets to give away, I have something better for your rewards. I will grant each of you a title to your name.”

“What good are those titles? What’s wrong with our names?” rudely asked a disappointed Vinnie.

“Having a little object would probably rot or rust away, a title lasts forever.” answered Gordon, satisfied as the rest of the animals agreed with him.

“Ashima, I grant thee the title of ‘Ashima the Kind and Helpful’.”

“Axel, I grant thee the title of ‘Axel the Calmly-Collected’.”

“Carlos, I grant thee the title of ‘Carlos the Happy-Hearted’.”

“Etienne, I grant thee the title of ‘Etienne the Polite and Mature’.”

“Frieda, I grant thee the title of ‘Frieda the Confidently-Strong’.”

“Gina, I grant thee the title of ‘Gina the Sweetly-Swift’.”

“Ivan, I grant thee the title of ‘Ivan the Comedic and Friendly’.”

“Rajiv, I grant thee the title of ‘Rajiv the Beautifully-Caring’.”

“Raul, I grant thee the title of ‘Raul the Spiritedly-Eager’.”

“Shane, I grant thee the title of ‘Shane the Devoted and Carefree’.”

“Yong Bao, I grant thee the title of “Yong Bao the Faithfully-Inspiring’.”

Honestly, Gordon mimicked how the Queen would give someone knighthood, thus he used ‘thee’ instead of ‘you’. He also created the titles based on what he knew about them from the Great Railway Show. He hesitated at giving Spencer and Vinnie’s title, unsure what to give them without offending them in any way.

“Spencer… I grant thee the title of ‘Spencer the Proudly-Egotistic’. Egotistic is a special word for very confident.” Spencer didn’t seem to be offended at all and accepted it. Thankfully for Gordon, Spencer bought into his definition of ‘egotistic’.

“And Vinnie… I grant thee the title of ‘Vinnie the Competitively-Speedy’.”

Vinnie had also accepted his title, but Gordon glimpsed a small smile on his face. Evidently, Vinnie would not have fallen for such a trick.

“What title should I have?” asked Flying Dodo. “I do like my title now.”

“What about we just add something to it?” suggested Gordon, “How about…”

Gordon thought about his own brother, “ ‘Flying Dodo the Grandly-Optimistic Leader’?”

“I like that title very much!” agreed the dodo.

“Flying Dodo, I grant thee the title of ‘Flying Dodo the Grandly-Optimistic Leader’.”

“What title should Gordon have?” Ashima (the Kind and Helpful) wondered. “We’ll give him his title.” Shane (the Devoted and Carefree) proposed.

All the animals, excluding Spencer (the Proudly-Egotistic) and Vinnie (the Competitively-Speedy) who both just remained silent, cheered in agreement.

They all huddled up to discuss the title for Gordon. When they dispersed, Flying Dodo (the Grandly-Optimistic Leader) puffed his feathers with pride.

“Gordon, we, the animals of this meeting grant thee the title, ‘Gordon the Greatly-Wonderful Steam-Engine’!”

After hearing his title, Gordon felt a spark of a rare emotion. He didn’t recall the emotion’s name, but he liked it. He felt thankful. He felt like his fictional heart - fictional because engines don’t have physical hearts - had warmed up.

“My, thank you.” Gordon was basically speechless.

“You’re welcome.” Frieda (the Confidently-Strong) replied.

“I think I can declare this meeting dismissed.” Flying Dodo (the Grandly-Optimistic Leader) announced.

Gordon then remembered why he was caught in this mess.

“Excuse me, Ashima. Do you know Per- I mean, a rabbit?” Gordon stopped himself from saying ‘Percy’ in case that wasn’t his name in this world, or the name of someone else Ashima knows.

“A rabbit? I know a lot of rabbits, but none of them come to the meetings. Could you be more specific.”

“Well, he’s not completely a rabbit. He’s an engine like me but a bit shorter and he lacks a tender. He’s green but was more gold and red the last I saw him and had ears and a tail of a rabbit. He moves quite quickly.”

“Strange… I did see a green creature rushing towards that way when I went to the meeting. Perhaps that’s the ‘rabbit’ you seek.” Ashima answered, pointing her trunk to a path that disappeared into a forest.

Before Gordon left, Ashima filled his boiler until he was about his normal size, slightly bigger to be exact.

“Thank you Ashima. Goodbye!” “Farewell Gordon! Good luck!” Ashima called after Gordon chuffed his way into the forest, following the dirt path beneath him.

Authors note:

The caucus race isn’t really highlighted in the Disney film, however, I couldn’t leave behind the concept of a race where everyone went at whatever speed and whenever they like.

Thanks for @mystarsignisno for editing this chapter!

#Gordon in Wonderland #ttte gordon #ttte #gordon the big engine #alice in wonderland parody

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michaelmyersmalewife · 5 years ago

Text

LEVIATHAN | 11. Apotheosis | MASTERLIST

words: 6k+

A/N: you can probably guess why this chapter hurt my feelings

you can also support this fic on wattpad & ao3

After what felt like forever, lights flickered back on and air began to blow through the sub's vents again.

Jodie's heart was hammering, and she was pretty sure she had hit her side against something, the space just below her ribs throbbing with pain. Gill was standing up from previously being in a crumpled pile on the floor. Serizawa helped Graham up to her feet.

"Damage report." the commander said as everyone got back on their feet.

"Fire in the torpedo room is out." one of the men said. "Atmosphere is stable. We're pretty banged up but we'll make it."

"Make it where?" Mark asked.

"Can't fix our position," one of the control techs said. "But inertial says we're six hundred miles from departure."

Running the numbers in her head, Jodie's brows scrunched together in confusion. No way this sub could make six hundred miles in little over an hour. And the lights had only been out for about 30 minutes since the vortex. Despite everyone else's confusion, Stanton was beaming.

"That's impossible, unless.." Graham thought out loud, grasping her chin.

"I knew it, man!" Stanton exclaimed. "That vortex was a tunnel into the hollow earth!"

Everyone shot him a pointed look. He waved them off.

"Y'know, subterranean tunnel system that connects the entire planet - doesn't matter, I knew I was right - I told you, Chen!" he rambled.

"Shut up, Rick." she said, putting a hand to her throbbing temple.

The Hollow Earth was an old theory, up there with the likes of the Flat Earth theory and whatnot. It had been entertained by scientists back in the 1600s thanks to a one Edmund Halley, but in a few centuries it faded to nothing but science fiction. That is, until Dr. Houston Brooks proposed an updated version of the theory back in the 70s. He had tried to test his theory on the Monarch expedition to Skull Island, but at this point everyone knew how that went. While he had managed to gather evidence of cave systems deeper than usual, it just wasn't enough to prove the larger theory.

Until now, if Stanton was right.

Had Mothra known about the vortex? Was it encoded in the minds of all titans? That debate would have to wait, however, as they still had a mission to get on with.

"One-second emergency blow forward." the commander said.

The sub lurched ahead, dipping down into a crevasse.

"Doctor?"

"Launch probes." Serizawa said.

Ahead of them, a trio of probes flitted through the water, their floodlights illuminating the pitch black abyss around them. In the control room, the feeds from the drones appeared. As the sub followed their lead, they approached strange, twisting shapes that were still too vague to make out through the murk. But even then, it was obvious they weren't natural.

"Lights on, cameras good, range one thousand yards." Stanton said as he pushed the drones farther along.

As the sub and its guides continued through the darkness, Jodie could see the occasional flicker of life dart away from the lights. But one shape loomed, the shape of a woman's face - pale and ghostly - suddenly appearing on the feed. Jodie flinched.

"Jesus," Stanton said in mild shock.

As the probe pulled back, widening the frame, they found it wasn't some waterlogged corpse or a mermaid. It was the figurehead of what looked like a centuries old galleon. And it wasn't alone.

Dozens of wrecks were visible in the searchlights, many piled on top of each other. What looked like an authentic Viking ship raised its dragon-shaped figurehead from the remains of galleys, cogs, and frigates. The rusted cylinder of a submarine, covered in barnacles, lay near the broken remnants of a warship that had probably last seen the surface during the first world war. And they had all been drawn here by the vortex, thrown into the mouth of the abyss. And they could very well be next, just another addition to this graveyard.

But as they pushed forward, Jodie found that analogy had taken an all too literal turn.

Among the wrecks were immense bones - ribs, arms, legs, skulls, bony plates with spikes and spines and anything in between. And beyond that was something else.

"Pan right." Serizawa said.

There was a light in the abyss, but not the artificial blueish green light from the sub and its probes, it was almost a soft orange glow that emitted a reddish fog. It wasn't coming from the surface, but boiling up from a trench. It was lava, pouring out of fissures in the earth and creating a sort of underwater stream, flowing across the seafloor through giant structures that were definitely not natural. Gill leaned closer to the feed, eyes shining with fascination.

Through the muck were dozens of crumbling statues the size of skyscrapers, and alongside them were temples and other smaller buildings - the ruins of a cyclopean city. Breathtaking colonnades reminded Jodie of Roman architecture, but in some places the structure seemed more Egyptian. And in others they were more ornate, like Southeast Asian temples. And illuminating it all was the stream of lava.

"Amazing.." Gill said with a grin on her face.

Passing countless monuments, Jodie could barely make out what might be hieroglyphics, bas-reliefs, and murals of strange creatures and much smaller humans.

"Looks Egyptian, Roman maybe?" Jodie said, coming up from behind Gill to observe the feeds.

Chen shook her head. "No, this is something else, this is much older." She looked closer through the dim lighting. "Can't say what exactly, but it almost looks Mesopotamian at least."

Much larger murals came into view, and now Jodie could recognize what she was talking about. The strange creatures on the earlier hieroglyphics were much clearer now, and they all depicted the same four figures - Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan and Kong. And beneath them, smaller figures were arranged in various forms of respect, service, or worship.

"You were right." Gill breathed, looking over at Chen. "The legends, the stories..all of it. They're all true." She began taking stills of the ancient carvings.

"They really were the first gods." Graham whispered.

This changes everything, she thought. Emma, Chen, Serizawa, they had all been right. Although Emma had royally screwed up and gotten unknowable amounts of people killed needlessly, the link between humans and titans was inescapable.

What caught her attention the most was that there was nothing in the human figures' poses that suggested fear or intimidation. Piety, maybe. But also cooperation. This was the coexistence they had always spoken of. This was the connection.

"After all this time," Gill said, looking at a particularly large mural, depicting Godzilla - in all his glory - defending a city from what looked like MUTOs. "He never forgot."

"But we did." Serizawa responded.

As they passed through the sunken city, the ruins began to tell another story. It was slowly becoming clear that the city hadn't been peacefully abandoned. Nearly everything around them had been scarred, scorched, or blasted to pieces. The sea bottom itself bore the scars of some ancient cataclysm that had undoubtedly sent the city asunder. The last mural was of a familiar three-headed dragon, the wall cracked beyond repair. Seeing Ghidorah depicted on something so ancient sent a chill down Jodie's spine.

And with the wreckage, the murals of man and monster ended - but not because the artists had finished their story, but because their work had been wrecked beyond recognition. Whatever harmony had once existed in this place had been drowned in a single day of misfortune much like the mythical Atlantis. Had this even existed above, Jodie thought. Or was this all one big cave, once filled with air? Either way, who - or what - brought about its downfall was beyond her understanding. It very well could have been a war between titans fought with the aid of humans. If so, given the amount of giant bones, the end result didn't seem to have gone very well for either side.

Except, perhaps, Godzilla's.

"If the stones could only speak, the stories they could tell us." Stanton mused.

"Amen to that." Gill said, continuing to take photos.

"Dr. Stanton, any sign of Gojira?" Serizawa asked.

"Yeah, the probes are picking up a radioactive blob just past past that ridge." he said, pointing to the thermal screen.

"Set a course."

_____

Elena and the others pushed through the woods as fast as they could.

She kept imagining the Controller behind her, gun in hand, that same shock the Regulator had shot her with that first day surging through her whole body. Or maybe this time she wouldn't be stunned. Would she even feel it? Would everything just stop? She was determined not to find out, and she was determined even more so not to let Madison find out either.

After nearly an hour, they finally came across a winding two-lane road with hundreds of cars packed bumper to bumper. Through the windows, she could see people staring at them as they walked in the opposite direction, puzzled but not making any attempt to stop them. She couldn't blame them.

It wasn't long before the road passed into a suburban area where they could no longer see the skyline. The Regulator slowed.

"I suppose I should let you take the reins."

Madison nodded.

She knew Boston like the back of her hand, but it was more than a little eerie seeing all the empty houses. Every now and then they would see a family still packing up. At one point some people in an SUV stopped and offered them a ride, but once they learned they were going into the city, they shook their heads and moved on.

Then the road joined a bigger one, all bodegas, malls, office complexes, and finally an interstate that was just as bad - if not worse - than the road outside the city. It was practically at a standstill, and the drivers were definitely not happy about it. Elena could feel a headache coming on from the constant stream of honking and screaming, but what bothered her most were the people too frustrated to wait, weaving through cars and abandoning theirs altogether. It was like swimming upstream, and the ORCA was heavy. She could only imagine how much the backpack must weigh for Madison. She was already more than tired, and they still had a long way to go until they reached the ballpark.

Every now and then they would take turns carrying the loads, stopping to rest or eat or drink. But never for more than a few minutes.

At least Elena felt a little safer now that they entered the downtown area. The evacuation had already kicked into high gear, sirens wailing near and far. Jets tore through the skies, helicopters and Ospreys filled with military and civilians alike taking off in the distance. The odds of the Controller and his men finding them were significantly lower now, and she could only hope that Emma had kept her word.

By the time they got within sight of Fenway, the crowd had turned, no longer flowing out of the city but within the park. It was one of the evacuation hubs, complete with aircraft lifting hoards of people lifted off every other ten minutes or so. It seemed to be going well. A little too well, perhaps, but a small part of Elena thought maybe there was a chance they could survive.

No. They would. She would see to that. And with the ORCA in their hands, those chances were looking just a little higher.

But with all of the people pouring into Fenway, it was going to be a little trickier than they anticipated. Finding no other way in, they merged into one of the lines where people were being herded into the stadium by cops and soldiers like a bunch of sheep. Every few minutes the loudspeakers above reminded them all to remain calm, that the ships would be departing every fifteen minutes or so. A few places ahead of the line, a little girl was clinging her to her father. She looked terrified, tears streaming down her face as she saw the bustling stadium around her. Madison made a funny face, and the girl cheered a little and turned away. A small, hardly noticeable smile appeared on Elena's face.

Just a moment later, Elena saw their chance. No one official was looking, and the line had gotten as far into the stadium as they could go without reaching the helicopter waiting ahead. The trio sprinted across the field until they reached a door that lead to the broadcasting booth at the top of the stadium. But after jiggling it, she found it locked. She slammed a fist against the door.

"Damn it," she cursed.

Wordlessly, the Regulator nudged her back. Lifting her leg farther than she thought a human could reach, she kicked down like a hammer. Almost as soon as her heel connected with the lock, the door splintered from the impact, swinging open.

"After you."

Madison raised her eyebrows, trying to hide an impressed grin. As they slipped inside, there were stairs that lead to the booth. They had reached the easy part. Despite the massive crowds outside, in there, it was deserted. Madison looked down at her hand as it slid up the railing.

She wondered what her dad was doing, if he was still okay. She remembered coming here a few times with him, just the two of them. Neither her mom or Andrew were big baseball fans. And she had never cared that much about it herself, but she liked the atmosphere, sharing it with someone she cared about.

Please be okay, she thought.

He will be fine, young Speaker, the warm voice echoed. Just worry about yourself

That was going to be hard to do. There was so much to worry about that she could barely begin to comprehend it. And above it all, she hoped her mom was okay too, that the Controller didn't take out their escape on her. She knew there was a good chance he might. She shook her head, not wanting to think about it.

It took them a little longer to find the booth than she would've liked, but eventually they came to the door. This time, it was unlocked. Inside was a large table surrounded by dozens of tv screens and other broadcasting equipment. From there, they had a bird's eye view of the evacuation through the giant glass windows ahead of them. For a moment, she hung there, watching the events unfold. Behind her, Elena and the Regulator placed the ORCA on one of the tables, and they got to work.

Opening up the ORCA, they began hooking up cables to the stadium's speaker system, turning up the volume as high as it could go.

Looking away from the window, she found that whoever was here had left a screen on. Madison listened as the anchor droned on.

"Massive storms and other disasters triggered by the titans have forced millions to flee major cities. And with D.C. hit hard by a category six hurricane that has left the capitol completely flooded, this is the single greatest disaster in human history."

The news footage showed pure pandemonium. Dozens of tornadoes and waterspouts churned through the air and sea, sucking in everything they touched up into a sickly yellow sky. Madison could make out buildings in the distance, but it soon became obvious that only the tops of those buildings were visible, while others were completely submerged altogether. The summit of the Washington monument and the dome of the capitol building looked like they had been dropped in the middle of a lake. And all the while, lightning struck all around the area in thin golden bolts.

"It looks like the sky's alive.." Madison thought out loud.

Looking up at the screen, Elena shivered. "That's because it is."

Another chain of lightning flashed in the bruised clouds, and for an instant she swore she could see Ghidorah's demonic shadow.

"The grim search continues as people around the world sift through the debris of leveled homes in the hope of finding missing loved ones. And though this sight is heartbreaking, it is in no way unique. Cities around the globe have fallen under the wake of what many are calling 'The Rise of the Titans'."

The Regulator cleared her throat as the ORCA beeped to life, its screens flipping open.

"Should be ready for broadcasting. You know how to work it, yes?"

Madison nodded. She scrolled through a handful of signatures until she finally found one that looked familiar. Pulling up the bioacoustic waveform on the ORCA's main screen, the words 'Alpha Frequency Found' appeared beneath it.

Without hesitation, she hit the button.

Turning to Elena, the Regulator hooked up the headset to the ORCA, handing it to her in the same motion. She took it in her hands, turning it over with a contemplative look on her face before steeling herself and placing it on her head.

"Are you sure about this?" the Regulator asked.

Slowly, Elena nodded, closing her eyes as she entered the headspace.

_____

The sub continued to drift through the ghostly city at a steady pace. They were headed toward something large, far larger than any of the other buildings. At first Jodie thought it was a dead end, but as they drew nearer, she saw that it was a massive sculpture carved into a natural stone face. It was a doorway of sorts, but not on a human scale. A titanic one. Carved on either side of the structure's base were two huge three-clawed feet.

Through the chthonic doorway, lava cascaded along a tunnel that rose in a series of large steps, eventually forming a larger fall that poured into the river beneath them. At the far end of the tunnel, a faint but familiar blue glow lined the entrance into..somewhere.

"I think we should stop." Stanton said.

"Why?" Serizawa asked.

"Because I still wanna have kids one day." he said, tapping the top right corner of his screen. The geiger counter built into the drones flashed a dangerous red warning. "Preferably without flippers."

"Full stop. Hover the ship." the commander said.

The drones continued on without them, disappearing down into the tunnel as they all continued to watch their feed.

"Things are getting steamy." Stanton said. "Probes aren't gonna last long, but I'm picking up the big guy's radioactive signature up ahead. It's weak, but it's there."

He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when the feed from one of the probes ceased, quickly followed by another. The third pushed forward, and a moment later it finally entered the vast cavern.

"Okay, we got O2, CO2, and methane - looks like some sort of air pocket in there." Stanton said.

As the probe rose to the surface of the cavity, the red-orange glow became more intense. Illuminated by the falling lava, a vast temple complex was laid out before them. And although the video feed was already beginning to lose resolution from the radiation, they could see him clear as day. Godzilla, splayed out on the temple floor like a fallen deity in the heart of his own temple, lava breaching up from beneath him like ichor.

"Oh my god -" Mark breathed.

"- zilla." Stanton finished.

And with that the video cut out into nothing but static. "Aaand goodnight, Grace." Stanton let go of the probe's controls, leaning back into his chair.

"Pull up the last frame." Serizawa said.

He zoomed into the volcanic vents surrounding Godzilla. It stung Jodie's heart to see the still of the titanic lizard in such a state, a powerful being so beaten like that. Helpless.

"There," he said, pointing to the glow behind his scutes. "It's the source of the radiation."

"He's feeding. Regenerating." Graham mused.

"This is his home." Serizawa said.

The two shared a look of satisfaction. Serizawa turned away, taking his notebook out of his pocket and flipping through the pages while Graham continued to stare at the frame.

"That must be how he's been able to survive so long." Mark said. "Always adapting, evolving, it's incredible."

"Welp," Stanton said. "He doesn't really need our help, dude's got it covered, right? He just needs a nap."

"No," Chen interjected. "After San Francisco he was gone for nearly five years. After the Oxygen Destroyer, this process could take decades."

"We have to proceed as planned." Serizawa said firmly.

"Hang on," Stanton objected. "We're gonna launch a nuclear torpedo in order to revive a giant monster. That's not exactly like jump-starting a car."

"We have one more complication," the commander said. "Our weapons systems were damaged during the crash. We can't launch."

Jodie's heart sank. "Shouldn't you have mentioned this a little earlier?" she said.

The commander was at a loss for words.

"Can it be repaired?" Mark asked.

"I'm afraid not." he replied.

They had come all this way, followed Mothra, journeyed into the hollow earth and found Godzilla - all for nothing. But Graham wasn't discouraged.

"Could we attach one of the warheads to a probe? Set a timer so that it gives us enough time to clear the area before it detonates?" Graham said.

Stanton shook his head. "They wouldn't handle the weight. Besides, they'll barely make it past the cave entrance before the radiation eats it."

"Okay," Chen said, pacing. "So what if we go inside, set a timer, and detonate one of the warheads manually?"

"No way," Stanton said. "If the heat doesn't fry you the radiation will. It might be good for titans but walking in there would be like walking into Chernobyl."

The sub was silent. There were no other options, none that ended in either the death of Godzilla or the deaths of themselves. Jodie bit at a nail.

"I'll go." Serizawa said, breaking the silence.

Jodie almost thought she'd heard wrong.

"What the hell does that mean?" Mark asked incredulously.

"No, I'll go - Serizawa, you're too im -" Gill started before being quickly interrupted.

"What? No, what are you -?!" Jodie was silenced as Serizawa raised a hand.

He didn't speak, but his face said it all. He had skipped to the obvious conclusion: a life for a life. And he would be the one to take that leap. Once he made up his mind, there was almost no convincing him.

"There must be another way." Graham insisted.

"There's no time for a debate," he said. "I'll go."

_____

It's cute -

- That you think whatever trick you pulled can stop us.

We'd applaud your efforts, -

- But we're busy

Elena's jaw tightened, trying to push through the voices in her mind.

Don't feel so down, Speaker.

When we're finished, we'll leave you alive last

So that you may see our wonders in full swing.

It's going to be beautiful.

"He still talking to you?" Madison asked, startling her out of her daze.

She nodded. "He doesn't know about the ORCA. Yet. But even then he's suspicious...he thinks whatever we're doing won't work." she bristled, rubbing her arms of the sudden chill. "Let's hope we can prove him wrong."

"Look." the Regulator said after a beat, pointing to the screen.

For the past ten or so minutes they had been anxiously watching the new stream in from around the world for any sign of change. Now, it seemed, that the tables were finally turning. Madison smiled.

"It does appear as if the attacks have ceased for the time being, with the creatures going from destructive to docile within minutes. Now, no one is sure how or why but this seems to be happening simultaneously around the world."

The titans in the news footage didn't seem docile so much as they did completely dazed, if not confused. Like they had just been dropped in the middle of a city with no prior knowledge of waking up to begin with. The two conflicting alpha frequencies were scrambling their massive brains, and unable to decide who to follow, they couldn't act out at all.

Take that, you bastard, she thought with a satisfied grin.

Somewhere at the front of her mind, Ghidorah laughed. Elena would've rolled her eyes if only his signature cackle wasn't so unsettling.

This is only a minor setback.

They are dull, weak. This was to be expected.

But we will manage.

You just keep thinking that, asshole, she responded.

It's funny, really.

Seeing you try so hard.

It's amusing.

But also sad.

You can't stop a storm, -

- how could you stop us?

Nearly growling from frustration, Elena's eyes screwed shut. Why? What could you possibly gain from all this? A dead kingdom with no subjects?

There was a long, weighty pause after that. It frightened her, but she would rather die than admit that to him.

If you're so confident, Speaker, -

- Then maybe we should pay you a visit.

It's only polite.

Shit, Elena buried a sneer, throwing the headset onto the table in frustration.

Those self-absorbed bastards couldn't be reasoned with, that much she was sure of. But even with the titans incapacitated, it still didn't seem to sway them. She knew it was all far from over, but if the ORCA confused the titans long enough, Monarch would have a chance to do their thing. That is, if they even had a plan to begin with. Madison seemed faithful in their endeavors, and that faith was becoming increasingly infectious.

Meanwhile, on the field below, the crowd had thinned out to almost nothing. Another handful of airlifts and the evacuation would be complete. If anyone noticed the odd pulses coming from the stadium speakers, no one had come to check it out. But they weren't going anywhere. They couldn't keep the ORCA out of their sight, not now.

And even if they could leave, they didn't have anywhere to go.

_____

Captain Ford Brody helped Serizawa into the dive suit.

He had already prepped the bomb beforehand, laughing dismally at the irony of the situation. But now, as he helped prepare the doctor for what was assuredly a suicide mission, there was no sign of humor in him.

It was all happening too fast, Jodie felt like she was slipping down a slope that was now nearly vertical. There had to be some another way, it was just no one could think of anything during such a time crunch. That had to be it.

"We've removed the warhead's lead shielding and inserted a mechanical timer, so it can function in the radiation." Brody explained.

"On first contact you'll start losing your long-range vision." he said, quietly. "After you surface your motor skills will start to fade, but I added a heliox mixture to your tank. It should help keep you stable longer."

Serizawa nodded with an unreadable expression as he took in the specifics of his impending demise. The captain was trying to be precise, clinical. Jodie could see the sadness in his eyes just below the surface of professionalism.

"Once you get inside, you'll have about six minutes," he said. "Before the radiation -" he stopped himself, taking in an unsteady breath.

Jodie could feel her eyes well up with tears. Nearly losing Godzilla was one thing, but losing Serizawa? It was too much. Everyone could feel it. He was part of the very foundations of Monarch, and most of their lives. He was their heart.

Brody sent him off with a quick hug.

"It was an honor, man." Stanton said, reaching out and shaking Serizawa's hand.

Chen grabbed Serizawa in a hug, gripping him like she didn't want to let go. But she did, her arms pulling back slowly. Gill and Jodie both went in for a hug, and as they pulled away with soft pats on their backs, she could hear Gill sniffle just a bit. Mark shook his hand.

"Thank you," Serizawa said. "All of you."

He walked over to Graham, who was standing near the back of the crowd. She was trying not to let it all spill out, Jodie could tell. But as Serizawa pulled his notebook from his pocket, handing it to her, she sucked in a sharp sob.

"I couldn't." she said.

A wistful smile appeared along his face. Insisting, she grasped his notes with trembling hands.

"He fought for us. Almost died for us. He's not only proof that coexistence is possible, he is the key to it." his smile started to fade, but his eyes still held that solemn determination. "Take care of them, Vivienne."

She was fully sobbing as she hugged him, wrapping her arms around him like he was the last person on earth. He reciprocated the embrace, closing his eyes.

"Sensei, aishiteimasu." she whispered.

With that, he turned the airlock, climbing into the small sub. Giving a nod, the doors sealed and the water began to rise. Jodie and the others could do nothing but watch as he entered the fiery tunnel.

_____

Serizawa tried to control his breathing as he entered the tunnel, trying to steady the heart that wanted to jump out of his chest.

It was getting hot. The bottom of the sea had been cold, even through the walls of the sub he came from, but the river of lava flowing down from above was warming the tunnel and sub he was in now. If it got any hotter, he might not even survive long enough for the radiation to kill him.

He had to keep a calm mind.

He thought of the others - his colleagues, his friends, Vivienne - leaving them behind hurt him more than they would ever realize. But if he didn't do this, in due time there wouldn't be any of them at all.

If he turned back now they could easily turn tail and find a shelter, survive until they could come up with some other plan. But he couldn't let Godzilla die. Once Ghidorah destroyed every other threat to him in the world above, he would surely turn his attention elsewhere. With Godzilla weak, it wouldn't take much effort to finish him off. Then it wouldn't matter how well hidden the remnants of humanity were. The dragon would root them out, use his subjects to raise even more destruction. And when he was finished, even the ones that managed to escape his hunts wouldn't survive. And then, perhaps, he would then turn on the titans that followed him as well.

Godzilla was their only chance.

As he entered the tunnel, he found himself becoming distracted by its sheer magnificence. It was hard to imagine how it might have been built, but given its size, it had clearly been made for Godzilla. He wondered how many people had entered this temple. Had Godzilla even been present to see them? Did he even care? At its threshold and up its steps, the architects had carved enclosures that each held statues within them. Each represented strange creatures. Although the style was a little different, he recognized them as Sumerian in origin. The figures were spirits of protection and guidance. Some said they represented the natural order. Whoever built this place seemed to have hoped it would provide the titan solitude, a place safe from the fighting and bloodshed on the surface.

Serizawa found them comforting, encouraging even. Although they couldn't protect him, he could use all the guidance they could offer.

Sweat was pouring from him now, the interior of the sub was unbearable but it wasn't enough to kill him. Not yet.

As he passed the last of the stone guardians, he knew he was past the point of no return. He could already feel his skin buzzing from the radiation, and he knew if he turned back now he would only spend the rest of his shortened life in pain. He had seen people succumb to radiation poisoning. It was no way to die.

As he approached the foot of the long stretch of steps in the temple, the light ahead grew brighter, almost like a sunrise. He was doing the right thing, he could feel it. But he was still human, and that part of him was terrified.

The sub broke the surface of the water at last, and as he surfaced it sparked and sputtered, dying at the shore of the cavern. As he climbed out, bones aching, he found himself surrounded by majesty. The drone's video had not done this place - the palace of a god - justice. Never in his life had he seen something quite like this, and he knew that not many people would. He allowed himself a moment, paralyzed with wonder, letting his eyes drink it all in before his sight would start to fail him. Looking at all of it surrounding him, Serizawa felt small. But in that single moment - the disorientation, the nausea, the pain - all of it disappeared, and his head was right.

He continued on, and as he walked he found that part of the cavern seemed to be natural, but the handprint of humanity was everywhere. Sacred carvings, glyph-covered monoliths, temples, statues - the prototype of civilization all laid out before him. It was fitting, this amalgamation of man and nature, as fitting as the relationship it signified between man and...

Godzilla lay upon a stone platform in the heart of the temple, at the top of a very long, very broad staircase. Rivers of molten lava sprayed up around him, some falling behind him in massive flows. The glow almost gave him an ethereal look.

Taking the first step on that staircase, Serizawa felt the presence of hallowed ground, that sense of being a part of something far bigger than you could comprehend. So many years of his life had been spent searching for him, from carrying on his father's work to finding his own place in the world. And over the years, he had come to understand more and more about Godzilla's irreplaceable purpose, and his own. A purpose he was fulfilling now. Looking up at the staircase, at the pulsing light that shrouded it in a ghostly veil, it felt like ascending to the afterlife.

And Serizawa found that he was no longer afraid to die.

Carrying the bomb in its case, he started up the stairs. He had only managed to take a handful of steps and already he was beginning to feel his limbs tremble, his vision blurring. Putting one foot in front of the other had become a herculean task. Feeling the darkness closing around his sight, the bomb feeling heavier in his arms, he took a deep breath. He had to keep a calm mind, and in the back of his mind, he remembered an old Babylonian poem.

Goodbye old friend. Your peaceful breath slows, Your eyes gaze upon your world. I offer to you My strength.

The lava splashed to the bottom of the cave, and in the encroaching distance Godzilla's scutes broke the flow of the light below.

Goodbye old friend. My hand reaches forth, Striving for divinity. I offer to you My love.

His breathing was getting heavier as the radiation permeated the suit. He stumbled for a moment, tripping over his own feet before getting back up.

Goodbye old friend. At the steps of your kingdom, We become one. I offer to you My life.

When he reached the summit, he did not realize it at first. But then his eyes focused, and he saw Godzilla only a few steps ahead of him. His lungs were burning, and the steam that wafted from the lava was suffocating. With a puff of air from the titan's nostrils, the steam cleared.

Serizawa knelt down, setting the case on the platform and opening the timer. With shaking fingers, he started it. Twenty seconds was all the time he needed.

Feeling around one of the suit's pockets, he took out his pocket watch, looking at it one last time, remembering his father. Suddenly, a vast groan of pain shook the chamber. Serizawa could hardly stand again, but he fought against the ache that covered his body. Using the last of his strength, he removed his helmet.

The air was thick and harsh with burnt stone and water vapor, it was nearly too much, but that was okay.

Up close, Godzilla's wounds were terrible, spanning almost his entire body. His dorsal spines were barely flickering with his signature blue light, but he would heal. And he would fight once again, bringing balance.

Serizawa could barely breathe now, as the slightest movement he took was agony. But looking at Godzilla, he felt some of that strength return. And the titan looked back. He couldn't feel himself move, but Godzilla's form was coming closer to him. Call it a hallucination, call it projecting - call it whatever you like - but as Serizawa came within inches of the titan, there was something intelligent in those eyes. Something so startlingly human. Recognition. Empathy. Heartache.

He stripped off one of his gloves, skin stinging from the contact, and laid a hand on Godzilla's scales.

"Saraba, tomo yo." Serizawa closed his eyes.

And then there was light.

#godzilla #king of the monsters #godzilla king of the monsters #kotm #godzilla fanfic #leviathanfic

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