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generalsdiary · 1 month

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the amethyst siren

Dr. Ratio x Aventurine

warnings: mention of blood, one (1) curse word

word count: 3.3k

a/n: the making of this series was, truly, inspired by my wonderful mutual @kimeoshi and their amazing artwork of siren ratio here

description: siren!ratio x human!aventurine strangers/enemies to lovers, a ship crash forces them to work together for the best outcome for both sides (in this chpt)

Chapter 1: The Crash

Despite the current events the man blessed with luck still had hope, he’d somehow swim up and reach the surface, have his lungs fill with oxygen. Hope is a fragile flower, an anemone, the petals which bruise and break at the lightest touch. and the hope began wilting as Aventurine felt fear. Goosebumps rose on his skin, and if he wasn’t wet already, he’d be covered in a cold sweat. His eyes widened, trying to take in more information upon the sight opposing him. a merman…? a beautiful merman had his gaze set on Aventurine. with a long thick violet tail, his arms and lower torso trailed with small purple scales, and long dark nails, his hair was wet hence too dark to distinguish the color. the merman was a majestic, otherworldly view. The end of his tail was a royal ocean blue and he had many accessories decorating his appearance… along with a piercing glare. Except, Aventurine had human eyes and his vision underwater could only allow him to recognize the tail. Not human. Not a human, nope. The gun left his hand, floating beside him before it started slowly sinking. trembling upon the sight, an unnatural amount of fear kept him frozen and terrified. No escape, no running, no exit. this creature stared down at him and Aventurine’s vision grew dark… finally feeling the sensations in his body again only to sense the burn of his lungs and weakly attempt to swim up before it all went dark.

Dark clouds in the distance covered the horizon, forewarning rain, and the flashes of white, an oncoming storm. Aventurine stepped out on the deck to confirm this information the captain of the cruise told him, he didn’t want the rain. it hadn’t come when he needed it, when his people needed it. the betrayal sits deeply in his bones. the easy line that falls off his tongue “I don’t like getting my clothes wet, they’re too expensive” a superstitious lie that also makes him look shallow which works in his favor. Better than people asking why he dislikes the rain.

thinking about it now, he regrets going onto the deck. The waves were looming high, sending a warning. The ship nearby that had the intention to raid them ended up crashing into them and Aventurine took out his gun in an attempt to defend himself. the water made the floor slick and the ship he was on slowly tilted… crashing, sinking. The pirates weren’t without damage, but Aventurine fell off board. With a scream that died in his throat and a gun that was now useless, he sank under the waves.

the sea was calm below the waves… quiet, not pushing, rushing. Yet the serene peace did not reach Aventurine, the slow burn of his lungs like timber slowly getting stronger and the helplessness isn’t allowing him to appreciate it. although he’d never appreciate it, the ocean is still a form of water. Betrayal runs deep.

Veritas could hear everything. The rumble of the clouds in the distance, the wail of the waves getting stronger, the man on the front deck mumbling and lighting a cigar, the captain laughing, clinking his cup, loading his gun. The sea glided across the sides of the ship, the distant people casually chatting on the ship while the men here were about to raid it. Soft mumbling of a man hoping it won’t rain. with all the noise so diluted in the sea, his hearing outside of it was turned up a whole notch, overwhelmingly so. Veritas tried to meditate, something to not think of the dirty algae-covered glass box he was in, the ropes around his body, the future that was stolen from him and where he may be taken- simply worse than death. So, when the sea whispered to him of the ships crashing, he fought tooth and nail to get out. the sharp sting in his side from the shards of glass, the burn of the ropes on his arms, splinters of the dirty wooden floor, and cuts and bruises as he fell back into the sea- none of it mattered, as long as he got free again. The sea welcomed him in its cold embrace, like a protective parent, pushing him deeper and deeper making sure he was out of anyone’s grasp. Salt on his lips and oxygen in his gills, safe, quiet. If only he didn’t give his voice away. Veritas could’ve sung his way out of this. he didn’t expect to regret his lack of singing ability to bite him back that hard. Back then, what he got in exchange for his song was worth much more. His hazy thoughts were interrupted when he saw glowing blue and pink eyes staring at him. extraordinary… they are shining… Veritas swam closer, this human- how is he human? Is it not another of his species? those eyes are not ones of a human. Impossible. Another train of thought stopped when the human’s eyes closed and Veritas saw the slow rise of his chest, his hand immediately pressed against the human’s mouth and pinched his nose. A line of rose prickly curses fell from his lips as he swam to the surface. Damn you, Veritas. Always helping. Always saving. From his knowledge of humans, inhaling water will kill them, and choking will make them lose consciousness for a few minutes but will keep them alive. Finally reaching the surface, a shiver runs down his spine, he could be captured again. Maybe he could throw this human onto a ship? Yet his captor’s ship ran away and the other one was slowly sinking. Veritas kept the human’s head out of the water and kept himself hidden underneath the small body. watching the ribcage. Come on… contract, expand, come on. you can breathe. I was fast, I was fast enough. Veritas finds the lack of patience getting to him and he lists the information he knows in his mind. Humans cannot stand the pressure of the water and it may also push on their ribs… could that be… with his other hand, he pushes the human’s chest above the surface. Breathe. It is oxygen, you should be able to inhale- and he feels the contraction of the muscles. A sigh of relief.

After a few minutes of swimming, he fails to find a surface to leave the human upon. Turning it into his problem, or a death on his hands. He is a healer among other things, he will not have more blood on them. Veritas spends the next hour or so learning the pattern of the blond’s breathing, also noting the fact the human is still out cold. After the learned pattern he waits for the next inhale and- dives under. His hand covers the mouth and pinches the nose once more, he refuses to jump out like a dolphin- someone could see. but for each duration of a breath, he’d dive under and swim at a great speed in the direction he hoped the waves sounded right. A cave. The way they swished and kissed the walls, it had to be a cave.

Aventurine awoke to a dark area, the sun barely rising to light it up, covered in greenery and small waves splashing his clothes. He sat up, a strange tug around his fingers. a thin green weed. He quickly shook it off and tried to make sense of his surroundings, with a coughing fit scrubbing at his lungs. And a pair of eyes. They weren’t there a moment ago. There it was again. The fear. His breathing sped up, one of the hunted prey and he quickly met the wall behind him with his back, cornered and lost. No pretty words could salvage this, is this a person? Can he communicate? His luck has to be good for something- how did he get here, is it-

“you have awoken.” Frozen. Aventurine couldn’t move, his limbs stilled, and muscles stiffened. Where is his façade? why can’t he…

“I have tied a piece of grass to your finger and connected it to a shell, were you to tug it you would have opened the shell and it would’ve screamed. Which you did and then it, also did. How is your comprehension? I lack in experience of treating humans post accidents. I’m not particularly familiar with… ones that look like you. legs and… lungs only. I, uh. I brought food, it is beside you.” Veritas pointed to a couple of figs. Aventurine had so many questions, and he wanted to take control of the situation yet his mind remained empty with all but paralyzing fear and he takes a bite out of the fig, and only then does the fear loosen its grip on him.

“hello, friend~” he flashes his usual smile, a hand coming to rest behind his back, “I am Aventurine”

“that is a lie. I know of human names, and that isn’t a common one.” Veritas narrows his eyes. Aventurine in hopes of not angering the creature quickly corrects himself, “Kakavasha. I am Kakavasha. Aventurine is my title. Sort of. Anyways, and you, my dear merman are…?”

Veritas glared. A quirk of his eyebrow revealed he was insulted. “I am not a merman. Veritas.”

Aventurine ate more of the fruit. Not a merman… a mermaid? Perhaps he was wrong? It seemed impolite to intrude- but he had to play the cards he was given. “in that case, what is a beautiful creature such as you, my friend?”

An unamused expression Veritas usually had around the little ones came to shine upon the human. “a siren.” Aventurine quickly hid his reaction of shock. He nods as he processes this information- it makes sense. The fear. He is lucky this siren didn’t sing to him. drown him. kill him. jump him off the top deck and drag him under with a sweet, lovely lullaby.

“this was the… closest land I could bring you to. I assume you’re familiar with these waters?” Veritas quickly got to the point, he didn’t want to spend a moment longer in the presence of a human. In the presence of the kind that kidnapped him.

Aventurine slowly snaps out of his thoughts, his eyes meeting the siren’s. “I am not. I… I was here on a business trip, I can’t say that I know the surroundings. Thank you for… saving me.” He came upon the conclusion, it must have been the siren, who else would have it been? The ship surely crashed and sank. And since the siren has an uncanny glare, making Aventurine feel uneasy with shivers down his spine, he decided not to lie.

“I do not need your gratitude, I am a healer after all, and all lives matter.” Veritas says the ever-practiced line, spoken often, falling easily off his tongue. But the underlying edge to it doesn’t escape Aventurine’s ears. The blond tries to switch the power dynamic and make the air light with a flashy smile, “ah, so you’re a doctor~ how lucky for me”

“so, you don’t live here? Like… you can’t just swim back home- I mean dive?” Aventurine inquires.

Veritas shakes his head slightly, a hand reaching out of the water to facepalm. The sharp long nails, a dark purple shade which lightens and turns to scales the higher it goes up to his biceps. Veritas uses the motion to also scrunch his face into the palm, to ease his breath and not wince from the constant pain burning in the various cuts over his body. the cost of his escape was not high, and if he were at his home, or at least in the area he was familiar with he could have… gathered the necessary medicinal plants to treat them. the water around him slowly turned darker while one of his injuries, still filled with glass shards, slowly bled into the sea. In and out. breathe. breathe. The end of his tail, a brilliant blue shade, flicked, Veritas thanked the sea for hiding it- he was in pain, a lot of pain sending white flashes behind his closed eyes. And the density of the oxygen out of the water was much lower, upon the fact he usually uses his gills and not his lungs, adding to the lightheadedness he was feeling. Or is the blood loss? Or mayhaps the fact he struggled to eat anything? Paler in face by the moment.

Veritas removes the hand, a neutral expression again, everything hidden, like a perfect clay mask, one of the sculptures that he swims by in the depths. “a doctor? I- actually, it doesn’t matter, you have no information to give me, yet I cannot leave you here, for you would die. And the nearest land to here is something you wouldn’t be able to swim to.” The dawn eyes meet the watercolor ones.

“do you know every corner of the land, Kakavasha?” Veritas smoothly countered back. and Aventurine hangs his head a bit with a nod, understanding why the siren is still sticking around, and his eyes notice the shade of the water changing, the bruises on the siren’s body; different shades of purple than the ones of his scales and tail, various of red blotches and cuts. “what happened to you? how did you get here?”

“why does it matter to you?” Veritas cautioned.

“well, doc~” another one of those brilliant smiles, “it seems you need to find out where you are and I need help getting to the shore, perhaps we can make a truce? Work together?”

“I don’t trust you” the siren voiced firmly, and sighed. Veritas had no other options. He needed more healing factors, he needed to get home and away from the ship. The pirates. The humans. “I will check if there is any nearby.” And he dived off. Veritas couldn’t speak a word longer, wailing in pain as soon as the water covered his head, desperately he sought for any weeds that had the capacity of healing- anything, I will take anything. Mumbled words, exhausted body, barely holding himself above the sand, searching for a trace of hope.

Now alone again the smile fell off. Aventurine was stuck with the stoic siren, far away, if he wanted him dead that would’ve happened already. All the facts proved to work in his favor, as they always do. Such is his luck. The fresh fruit tasted sweet on his tongue and satiated his thirst. Would the siren value gold? He could give his jewelry in turn for guaranteed protection. The day turned to night, the cave turning dark. It was a chunk of covered rock, with not much room to walk around, Aventurine laid down to sleep, hoping Veritas would show up in the morning.

His pale lips trembled, a metallic taste rested on his tongue, pushing himself closer to a possible shore. Long mossy vines, which were wrapped around his body, swished as he swam. A weak attempt at helping himself. bright lights, noise, little boats, lighthouse. There is a shore. Quite far away. It will have to do. Veritas swam back swiftly to get away from the population and once far enough he slowed down, painfully dragging himself back to the cave. The sting of the incorrectly treated wounds made themselves excruciatingly present in his body.

At dawn, he observed the sleeping human. Seemingly harmless. But his kind did enough harm to him already. “Kakavasha.” The blond stirred, rubbing his eyes, acting relaxed and failing in Veritas’ trained eyes, the flex of the muscles showing obvious tension. The same one the little ones have when he tests their knowledge. “there is a fishing village nearby. It is far away for you, I can take you there the same way I got you here. Might be easier now that you’re awake and conscious.”

“good morning to you too, doc~ no figs today? Awh, how am I supposed to go into the sea on an empty stomach?” Aventurine chirped a melodic tone, wishing he didn’t have to be inside the water. Rain echoing its patterns on his skin. He didn’t want this.

“You can eat amongst your own kind, we shall go. in turn, the truce you mentioned, you can provide me the location of where we are. save your strength I will not go near the shallow water, you will have to swim alone at the part. Now I hope you are ready, we will go now, the small boats always leave early in the day and we should have a clear way to where I can drop you off.” A silence envelops the cave. Thick with tension, the one between predator and prey, yet they were both scared like prey. What will the other do? Who will harm the other one first?

“what happened to you?” Aventurine can’t stop himself from asking, damn his luck, this siren isn’t here because of his luck and to act as his savior, something fucking happened. a simmer of oncoming anger bubbling inside him.

“must you keep pushing that?” Veritas shook his head, the blue gills moving with his indigo hair. “I..” he swallowed hard, will he tell him? should he tell him? Kakavasha could easily do the same thing, take him away, hurt him, treat him like an object to be looked at. “Your kind took me, kept me chained, tied, in a small glass box with dirty water.” Veritas says coldly, an ice knife cutting the tension. “I am not interested in seeing any more ships or people for that matter. I want to do my part here and be on my way. Are you capable of respecting the truce, or do you plan on lying to me again, Aventurine?” Veritas glared, using the man’s title on purpose. if he still had his voice… the things he could do. He would never have to worry about having to trust a frail being which could easily end his life as he knows it. a being capable of crushing the fragile petals of his future days and nights. immortality is a curse if he is taken, experimented on. trust is an expensive thing.

“hold onto me, eyes closed, and breathe only above the surface.”

Aventurine swallowed, he hated it, the simmering anger rising, bubbles popping up on the surface, “I am sorry that that happened to you. humans...” he spat his words, “humans can be disgusting creatures.” Aventurine’s gaze was distant. Veritas quickly caught on, eyes linger on the strange mark on the human’s neck. Ink. Dark, liquid substance. Humans make permanent markings with it. Veritas decided not to push for information, a rare occasion on his side. He recognized that Kakavasha was speaking from a place of pain, darkness and honesty. Trust is becoming less of an expensive thing. “shall we get going?” Veritas softly asked, offering his hand to him.

with a shaky breath, half of his mask off- both of them with half of their masks off, such are the circumstances to establish a crumble of trust, he takes the hand and jumps into the deep water, eyes closed shut at the feeling he despised.

Aventurine nodded, embracing the muscular body of the siren, strangely not cool to the touch as he expected. A gentle warmth, a mixture of smooth skin, silky scales, and a heart beating… he could hear it as he leaned onto him. “I can’t hold my breath for long-“ “I know. I brought you here, remember? I know your breathing pattern.” Veritas adds softly and with a firm grip around the human they dive under.

Sirens, or mermaids for that matter, have the capability of super swimming at great speeds. With a keen hearing and carefully paying attention to the rise and fall of the smaller man’s ribcage, Veritas swam below and above the water level. The small village slowly appeared in his line of sight.

a/n: took a bit longer to write than I planned to, I was busy working on my bacc., chpt 2 should be posted rly soon- within a few days I think. lmk know what you think! and any predictions for the next chapter maybe? <2

#oof what do we think ppl #chronic aventio writer strikers again with yet another AU but this time with a series #i like have the whole thing already planned out ngl #ik the number of chapters and shit ehe #ratiorine #aventio #golden ratio #dr veritas ratio #aventurine #kakavasha #raturine #siren!ratio #merman #siren!ratio x human!aventurine #hsr #honkai star rail #chapter one #new seriese wooo

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hs-transfusion · 6 months

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> ROSE EGBERT

CHUMHANDLE: telepathsTalent [TT] STRIFE: umbrellakind MODUS: Stack LUNAR SWAY: Prospit MYTH. ROLE: Sylph of Mind LAND: Land of Woods and Invention

TT: As they say in my metaphorical neck of the woods: échec et mat.

Rose has perfected the art of being the PERFECT DAUGHTER, with SHARP WIT and almost AGGRESSIVE POLITENESS. She holds her STUDIES in high regard, even if her PERFECTIONISTIC STREAK threatens to burn her out. She has a reputation to uphold, after all. Her love of PUZZLES often has her challenging GAMZEE in duels of wits, though this rivalry is fairly ONE-SIDED.

As is befitting of an intellectual, Rose enjoys BOARD GAMES, holding a particular fondness for CHESS. She regularly takes PIANO LESSONS, striving to play as many songs above her technical level as possible. She primarily aspires to become a RENOWNED AUTHOR, though hesitates to show her work to any of her friends for fear of ANY KIND OF CRITICISM.

Rose's STACK Fetch Modus works exactly as it does in Homestuck proper. She doesn't wish to hassle her dad about buying her a new one, as clunky as her current Modus can be.

Rose's relationship with her DAD seems pleasant on the surface -- she speaks highly of her father figure, and he speaks highly of her. But there does seem to be a BLURRED LINE between how Rose believes she should behave around him, and how she truly feels about his sometimes OVERBEARING PATERNAL LOVE. There is still GENUINE CARE for him in Rose's heart, don't get it twisted, but it can get tiring OVERACHEIVING FOR HIS PRAISE as much as she does (not that she realises that she doesn't even need to).

The Land of WOODS AND INVENTION is a land covered in LUSH FOREST, which is conveniently an ample resource for the consorts of the planet to use for COUNTLESS INVENTIONS. In such a competitive market, it seems that this land's society cares more about UNIQUENESS than FUNCTION. All this TIMBER FELLING threatens to make the denizen EPIMETHEUS upset for some reason...

#homestuck #fosterquest au #rose egbert #hiveswap #kidswap

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fairyofshampgyu · 1 year

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Now live ! Stream: 6

Genre: smut, camboy au, college au, crack

Pairing: camboy! Beomgyu x gn reader (afab when smut)

Warnings: camboy, sub! beomgyu, dom! reader, dry humping, top! gyu, nipple play

Synopsis: Every Thursday night at 8pm, you tune into your favourite camboy: Angel313. What you don’t know is he even goes to the same uni as you, is in the same class as you and is Choi Beomgyu, the campus fuckboy but will you keep his secret?

Word count: 2.5k

You’d gotten a lot closer to taehyun and kai recently, coming over to hangout with them and beomgyu, playing board games and card games drunkenly for hours on end. They were extremely funny and you really gelled with Kai and taehyun, enjoying your new found friends thanks to beomgyu.

The christmas concert was only nearing as well, but you and beomgyu were certain it was going to go more than smoothly, having sorted pretty much everything for it and rehearsals sounding perfect with the ensemble now that everyone was confident on their parts. You were actually really excited for it.

You’ve also still been helping beomgyu film his streams and managing his channel, but you also showing up on his streams seemingly only a one time thing. You hadn’t really spoken about it since you fucked him, thinking it would be a little awkward. It was only a spur of the moment thing, right? But you do know that it had gained masses amounts of views and money since it was the first time anyone else had ever been with him and they all loved seeing him actually get fucked when it had just been him for the longest time. You’d see comments every now and then asking what happened to the other unknown person and that they really wanted to see them both again on a stream together.

“Y/n!! You’re playing against me! Come on!” Beomgyu calls out to you, grabbing the controller and tossing the other to you. You were currently at Kai’s place hanging out for the nth time this week, game chosen first for you all to play, the classic Tekken.

You roll your eyes but take a seat next to him, selecting your preferred character, beomgyu choosing Lee as you pick the map. You both narrow your eyes intensely and side eye each other as the words ‘GET READY FOR THE NEXT BATTLE!” played across the screen and your characters said their little cringey intro lines at each other, huening kai and taehyun whispering and placing bets, giggling behind you both like little schoolgirls as they excitedly watched.

“You’re going to get absolutely obliterated, y/n.” Beomgyu turns to you, cocky grin slowly etching onto his face as he dramatically gestures with his hand about slicing your neck.

“Shiver me timbers. You’re so scary.”

And so the trash talking ensues as you both intensely play the first round, landing hits and dodging attacks until beomgyu evilly and suspiciously laughs and then uses some weird combo and your character is dead. He laughs even more at your shocked face.

“Whatever. It’s only the first round, beomgyu.” You say, rolling your eyes at him.

And you start the second round, beomgyu somehow cornering you and repeatedly hitting blows to your character. “Looks like I’m about to win again, y/n.” Beomgyu smirks, very content and smug. But you somehow get out of it and corner his character instead, repeatedly kicking and punching until the words ‘K.O!’ appears for him.

“HA! Take that, you little bitch!” You turn to laugh now and mock him and kai and taehyun do the same to beomgyu, finding it hilarious.

Beomgyu huffs and sticks his tongue out. “You just got lucky.”

The final rounds seems like it last forever, both of you smashing the buttons at record speeds, tension in the air palpable, visibly sweating and Kai hiding behind taehyun in fear and anxiousness when it’s too tense, both of them letting out commentries and dramatic gasps.

You and beomgyu are on your last legs, either of you could die any second, both of you on the same level of health.

“Ahh! I can’t watch! I can’t watch!” Huening kai puts his hands up to cover the screen and taehyun does the same, screeching, not looking but looking.

You don’t know which one of you dies until the game yells ‘K.O!!!!’ and it’s your character.

Beomgyu dramatically jumps up from the sofa, hysterically screaming and laughing and running around the room that he won, doing a silly little dance and coming up close to you to teasingly pull faces.

He’s so annoying. You don’t know why you find yourself smiling a little instead at his antics though.

“Okay so which one of you bet on me winning!” Beomgyu points to taehyun and huening kai. “Ah really, I’m just too good. I bet both of you did.” Beomgyu flicks his hair.

“Um no one did…We didn’t think you’d win at all.”

Beomgyu gasps and clutches his chest, “I cannot believe this is how I get treated every day. No one has any faith in me!” Beomgyu dabs at fake tears. “I’m just a kind soul and I get bullied everyday by EVIL people.”

“I demand a rematch!” You shout, still not wanting to accept beomgyu won.

“No it’s our turn now! I’m not sitting through that again!” Taehyun says, him and kai taking the two controllers.

You sit close to beomgyu so you could both share the small blanket together, cozying up a bit too much, shoulders and legs touching but you liked it. It was nice and warm. It was only because the blanket wasn’t big enough anyway. You’ve found beomgyu being a lot more clingier lately though. You see huening Kai and taehyun exchange a knowing look. You wonder what that was about.

You were on a bench outside with Chaewon, hot drinks in both your shivering hands as you talked in between your lectures, chaewon waiting for her next one which would start in a few minutes.

You spot beomgyu with yeonjun and a group of people gushing and giggling around him again, watching as he smiled and talked animatedly.

“Y/n, remember he’s a fuckboy don’t fall for him.” Chaewon catches you staring, grinning.

“I’m not!”

“Really? Because it looks like you’re giving him ooga booga heart eyes.”

“What the f…I am not! A-and he’s different-“

“Oh no. You’re not turning into those weird, delusional ‘I can change him’ people are you? Please stop oh my god or I fear we can’t be friends for longer.”

“But he is different!”

“You’re way past the help stage, dear lord. You are delusional.”

You sigh, defeated and unable to try and make yourself not sound weird. It’s little times like these that you’d love to tell your friend chaewon what’s actually happening and that beomgyu is actually Angel but you can’t. You swore to beomgyu you wouldn’t tell anyone he’s a camboy.

“Anyway I gotta go now so see ya.” Chaewon says and you both get up, saying your goodbyes that actually turn into another long conversation and both of you eventually leaving to walk in opposite directions.

As you walk back to your place though, you feel a snowball hurled at your shoulder. You turn around, ready to scold whatever silly teenage boy thought it was funny to do that only to see beomgyu in return, badly hiding behind a tree and laughing and giggling uncontrollably. That’s it.

You chase after him as he shrieks, picking up snow from the grounds to mould into a ball and throwing it at him as he ducks behind trees, cold air shivering your skin but you felt some kind of warmth in your body when you saw beomgyu bounding ahead, his hair bouncing as he laughed, feet sinking into the snow as he tried to run but it was very slow since there was so much of the snow. Goddamn it. Why was he so annoying and endearing.

You both fire snowballs at each other until you make a particularly solid and heavy one, threatening to throw it at him as you grin.

“Y/n, that’s literally just a block of ice. Please. I’m too young and handsome to die!” Beomgyu puts his hands in surrender and fear.

But you throw it at him anyway, he makes a dramatic pained groan before taking his revenge and piling up an absolutely massive and densely packed one, maliciously smiling at you as he chases after you.

He hits at your back and you’re pretty sure it would actually leave some kind of mark, Jesus but see it as a great opportunity, fake collapsing to the ground, pretending to be hurt.

“HA HA—oh shit, y/n? Did you die?” Beomgyu runs to your lying self, feeling guilty and concerned. “Are you okay? I didn’t think it would be that hard I’m so sorry.” He searches your eyes anxiously and helps you up, holding your body close.

Then you let out a short chuckle until you can’t stifle it anymore and laugh manically, holding onto your stomach. Beomgyu blinks at you once, twice until he rolls his eyes when he realises and playfully shoves you back to the ground. “Got me worried over you for nothing, you evil shit!”

“You gotta admit it was funny.”

“Fuck you.” He shakes his head at you, mouth slowly curling into a grin.

As you both took turns showering at your place, ridding yourself of your cold and damp clothes, beomgyu sat on your bed with a serious gaze.

“Y/n. Let’s talk.”

“What about?”

“I know it might be too much to ask and you can say no but ever since we…fucked on that one stream we got a load of money and new viewers. It really blew up and they really want to see us both again, you probably noticed.” Beomgyu pauses, trying to articulate his words. “And…and I think we should do it again. Just doing solo can get boring after a while, there’s less you can play around with than with someone else and I think it’s a strong new direction to take on the channel. We’ll both be getting a lot more money. But you can definitely say no though! I totally get why you wouldn’t want to.” Beomgyu quickly adds, flying his hands in the air.

You know you had thought about it before but you’re not sure if you did actually want to be full on working with beomgyu like that, for everyone to see and open for people to say whatever they want. You know you’ve definitely seen some viewers say not very kind things to beomgyu sometimes and you would just report and filter them out. It could be a lot and also risky trying to hide personal information about yourself. But then again, you’d be making a lot of money and when you did do it, that one time, you have to admit you really liked it. You’d literally be fucking Angel, guy of your (wet) dreams for literal years and getting money for it.

“Okay. We can try it out and see.” Reluctantly, you nod your head.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. we can try and see how we feel about it. We could film it now, it’s a been while since a stream.”

So you both set the camera up, pressing the button to go live, already hundreds and hundreds of viewers swarming in and blowing up the comment section at the sight of you again, all of them excited and already tipping you both.

You straddle his lap and kiss him, trailing hot kisses down his neck as he softly moans at the contact of his crotch with you and starts humping up and rubbing up against you none stop, weakly holding onto your hips and whimpering into your mouth as you both continued to grind, rolling your hips on his and his dick only hardening in his pants as you both rutted against each other.

“Fuck me, baby.” You lay down on the bed and beomgyu stares at you dumbfounded between your legs.

“B-but I’ve never-” Beomgyu sheepishly averts your gaze.

“It’s okay, you’re so cute.” You hold onto his waist to bring him closer and stroke his wet dick a few times before you take it in your hand and bring it your entrance, moving forwards yourself to slowly sheath his dick into you, filling you up and beomgyu yelps at the feeling, body jerking.

He holds on to you tight, his face falling into the crook of your neck and moaning as you grip his hips, guiding him to fuck into you. Hips snapping into yours without experience and no rhythm and you can feel him practically drooling on your neck, already such a mess.

“S-so good…ah ahh…” Beomgyu eyes nearly roll out of his head as you grips his hips again and make him thrust into you so fast and hard and he lets out continuous strangled moans.

You pull at his hair to bring his face back up and away from your neck, he only looks at you with dazed eyes and a slurred groan as you roughly pull him into kiss, biting at his lower lip and he lets you dominate the kiss, still tugging at his hair.

“Can’t you fuck me better than this, Angel? Or are you just a pathetic virgin?” You pull away.

He shakes his head, lip wobbling, “I can, I can!” Beomgyu starts to try and fuck you harder, thrusts and pace becoming entirely erratic, rutting into you dumbly and cluelessly as tears roll down his heated cheeks in embarrassment and you know he won’t last long.

You move your hands up his chest and he shivers, pace staggering and chest heaving as you touch his nipples, flicking and rolling at the buds and he breathes heavily as he cries and moans, movements sloppy and desperate.

“C-can’t fuck you…am p-pathetic…” Beomgyu shakes his head and cries and wails, “close, gonna…”

You take one of his pretty nipples into your mouth and suck, swirling your tongue and your hand going to circle at your own clit so you can cum with him.

Beomgyu hides his face in your neck again, attempting to muffle his loud whine as he spills his cum all in your pussy as you do too, clamping around him and he stills his movements as he shakes, collapsing and holding onto you so tight as he gasps and tries to calm down his breathing.

You grab the camera again to film his pretty post-orgasm face, trying to pry his face and body away from you so you could film him but he doesn’t budge, refusing to let you go and instead, nuzzling his face more in your neck and clinging tighter onto you, whining at you for trying to get him off.

You switch the live off, cluelessly and a little awkwardly stroking his soft hair, “Gyu…we need to clean up.” But the only response you get is his soft snores. You sigh, knowing you’d have to be the one to clean you both up but you don’t have the heart to get him off you just yet, looking so cute absolutely knocked out. You can’t help caressing his soft cheek slowly with your thumb and he leans into it.

Please actually reblog !!!!!! and leave comments !!!! guys 😭 if you like the fic. It’s really appreciated and so nice tysm !<3🙏💕🌷🌷! It’s discouraging and sad when fics have such little reblogs ☹️👎🤨Feedback is always appreciated it makes writers want to actually write :) !

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antiquitea · 2 months

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𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: john egan x gale cleven.

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: the last place that john egan wants to be the summer before he graduates high school is the egan family cottage, a place where time and everyone else seems to have forgotten. having been intent on finding a summer job, spending time with his friends, going to parties, and making out with pretty girls, john is irked that the egan family matriarch has other ideas and wants the family to spend "one last" summer together.

john's sour mood shifts just a little when he meets local, but also not-so-local, gale cleven, a boy his age who works at the small town's one pizza joint. through teenage angst and a desire to break free of the awkward position of not being children anymore but not yet men, the two form a bond that makes their summer a little more bearable. a bond that comes to shock the both of them.

but what happens when more than the summer comes to an end?

𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: teen, though later chapters might have a slightly higher rating.

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 3.1k

likes / comments / reblogs are very much appreciated! thank you for reading! 💚

» mood board. » read on ao3.

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐈𝐈𝐈.

The phone in the hallway rang and both John and John Sr. shared a glance in the living room, back in its natural state for the day since John wasn’t making use of the pullout. It was early, and anyone who would call the cottage was presently in it. John appeared to have a lightbulb moment and got up, wandering the three steps it took him to get into the cramped hallway, and picked up the phone.

“Hello?” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

“Hi. Is John there?”

John immediately recognized Gale’s voice. “Yeah. Speaking. Are you already at the gas station?”

“I really don’t think it makes sense for you to be doing this. By the time you get out here -”

“Shut it, Gale,” John said, hoping that the other boy could hear how he was smiling at the other end of the line. “I’ll be out there in like fifteen minutes. Saves you forty minutes.”

Gale sighed into the payphone receiver, before he said, “You’re a stubborn asshole, John.”

“See you soon,” John said, replacing the phone in its cradle, already in the process of turning back to the living room, looking at his dad. “Can I borrow the truck for like, an hour?”

“Of course,” John Sr. replied, nodding toward the front hallway, where the keys to the truck hung on a hook by the door. “Meeting up with that friend of yours?”

“He needs a lift to work,” John answered, grabbing a Timber Rattlers ballcap that he’d tossed on another hook by the door. “Told him I’d help out now and then.”

John Sr. very clearly thought highly of his son’s kindness, giving him a slight nod. He took a sip of his coffee and then reclined in his chair. “Just make sure there’s gas in it when you come back.”

—

When John pulled up to the gas station just outside of town, he had already spotted Gale standing by the payphone, fiddling with the hem of his t-shirt, looking from side to side, trying not to look like he was waiting for someone. Why was it always so awkward, John wondered. Waiting.

Gale didn’t spot him immediately as John rolled to a slow top across the parking lot from where Gale was standing. He watched the light breeze blow tendrils of blonde hair into his face, and for a moment, John thought he looked incredibly striking, even if striking was not the word that immediately came to mind.

John honked the truck’s horn, startling Gale. John laughed as Gale gave him the finger and began walking toward him.

“Dillhole,” Gale said with fondness, tossing his backpack through the open driver side window to John.

John caught the backpack with ease, though it came dangerously close to hitting him in the face. He tossed it down onto the floor as Gale got into the passenger seat.

“That’s no way to talk to someone who’s giving you a lift to work,” John said, already driving back toward the highway.

“Which I have told you time and time again that you don’t need to do,” Gale said, leaning back against his seat as John drove. “But you’re gonna anyway, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” John replied simply, glancing over at Gale before turning his attention back to the road.

They drove in silence for a few moments, John not even bothering to turn on the radio. There weren’t many other people on the road at this hour, and they both seemed to be enjoying the quiet. Nothing but the sounds of cicadas, birds, the wind blowing through the open windows, and the open road.

“Does anyone else work at that pizza place of yours?” John eventually asked, cutting through the easy silence. “Y’know, besides you and your dad? I just always see you there.”

“Well, it is the family business,” Gale replied with an easy chuckle, bringing one leg up and resting a foot on the edge of the passenger seat. “Yeah. There are a couple of part time kids. Brothers, actually. They’re getting back into town today. So, hopefully I can get my days back again.”

“Mmm,” John murmurs, fingers flexing against the steering wheel. “And what is it that you do during your days?”

“Why? You wanna fill’em?” Gale teased, looking straight ahead at the road through the windshield. Though his gaze did flicker toward John for a moment. John didn’t notice.

John, for a reason he could not figure out, felt his face get warm. He attributed it to the sunlight coming through the trees, amplified through the truck’s windshield. Like it did through a magnifying glass when he had been a boy, testing what he had learned from an older boy at school on some ants.

“Well,” John began, raising his eyebrows, “so far all you’ve shown me around here is bowling. Maybe there are daytime activities you’re more inclined to take part in.”

Gale laughed, shaking his head slightly. He glanced over at John before he turned his head and looked out the passenger window. “To be fair, you’ve summered here all your life. Shouldn’t you be showing me things? I’m new in town.”

“My mom barely let me off of a leash until last year,” John said, pulling up in front of the pizza place. “I imagine you know more of the naughty haunts than I do.”

“You’d be surprised to know I don’t know much about that,” Gale said, and when John glanced over at him saw an expression that he wasn’t entirely familiar with. Not quite sad. Not quite tired (John would go to the library later on in the day and discover that the word he was looking for was weary or perhaps discontented).

They drove in an easy silence the rest of the way into town, Gale looking out the window, breeze in his hair. John doesn’t think he could stand it, hair whipping around his face like that, but it doesn’t seem to bother Gale, his eyes closed, head tipped back slightly. John thought he looked … striking. Like something that belongs in a gallery or museum. One of those pieces where the subject is too androgynous for John to decide whether or not he’d want to fuck them if they were real.

John pulled up in front of the pizza place and killed the engine, expecting Gale to jump out right away, but he lingered in the passenger seat for a moment, before unbuckling his seatbelt and pulling his long hair back into a ponytail. “Will you need a lift home?” John asked, leaning back and throwing an arm back over the bench seat.

“I can walk it, John. It’s nothing.”

John smiled and licked at his lips, starting the engine up again as Gale opened the door and hopped out of the truck. “Pick you up at closing time.”

—

There was a mosquito bite on John’s ass that he had scratched open, to the point if he stretched in a particular way his backside ached. It was a hot day, and he’d elected to spend as much of it as possible down by the lake sunning himself and reading, listening to music on his walkman, taking periodic dips in the lake to cool after. Then he would repeat the process all over again.

While enjoying the sun’s rays slowly drying the droplets of water remaining on his long body with long limbs stretched out, arms behind his head, something obscured the sun rather suddenly above him. John cracked an eye open to find Billie standing over him.

“How may I help you ma’am?” he asked with a slight quirk of a smile.

“Lucia’s dad got her a new bike,” Billie answered, not bothering to move out of the way.

“Great. What does that have to do with me?”

“She now has an old bike that she’s no longer using.”

“Okay.”

“A bike that could maybe be given to someone else.”

“Sure.”

“A bike that -”

“Billie, you’re killing me.”

“Does your boyfriend want it? I heard you mention to dad this morning that he doesn’t have one.”

John sat up, bracing his hands on the damp blanket beneath him. He squinted his eyes as he looked at his sister, committing to looking annoyed rather than searching for his sunglasses. “First of all, not my boyfriend. Stop that. Second of all, I doubt he’d want a girl’s bike.”

“Well,” Billie began exaggeratedly, and John rolled his eyes, “that’s where you’re both in luck. She had her cousin’s old bike, and wouldn’t you know it, he was a boy. So, boy’s bike.”

“How are you so annoying?”

“I learned it from you.”

—

The sun was beginning to set, and the light reflecting pink off the bottoms of wispy clouds made them look like cotton candy against a darkening blue backdrop. John had felt like he was working on one of those dreaded word math problems all day.

You have two bicycles and a truck; how do you get a bike to Gale Cleven while also bringing your own so you can ride bikes together, but also not abandoning the family truck and having your father yell at you?

John eventually settled on throwing them both in the back of the truck when he went to the pizza shop to pick Gale up after work, covering them both with a tarp for an element of surprise. He waited in the truck while Gale closed up the shop, long blonde hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, tendrils still falling into his face as he swept. John didn’t have long enough hair to entertain even the thought of pulling it back, but he didn’t understand the point of doing so if it was just going to fall in your face again otherwise.

Fumbling around in the glove box while he waited, John eventually found a pack of his father’s cigarettes. He held the pack of Lucky Strikes up and waved, trying to get Gale’s attention through the glass. When Gale looked up, John pointed at the pack, receiving a shake of the head.

“Don’t smoke?” John asked when Gale finally came out a few moments later, one already lit and shoved between his lips. “Nah,” Gale replied, shoving his backpack through the driver’s side window. John had reached out for it without realizing that he had. “I’m a bit of a square. Don’t drink, don’t smoke.” “Well,” John began as Gale crawled into the passenger side and then pulled the door closed, “it is illegal for you to be smoking. Which means you physically can’t do it. S’how it works.”

“We’re the same age, John.”

John laughed, blowing smoke out through pursed lips. “Nah, Buck. I’m a regular legal adult.”

“Who the fuck is Buck?”

“You,” John replied, turning his head and glancing over at Gale and smiling. Gale was giving him an inexplicable look, something possibly bemused and possibly affectionate. “The fuck kinda name is Gale anyway?”

Gale snorted.

—

As they drove to Gale’s place, John fiddled with the radio, looking for a baseball game to listen to. Gale had rolled down the window and pulled his hair out of its ponytail, letting it whip around his face as they moved down the highway.

“Hoping to get the smell of pizza off of me,” Gale said, apropos of nothing.

“Why? Pizza smells amazing.”

“Not when you’re around it all day.”

John stopped fiddling with the dial when he heard Spencer Ross’s voice filling the void in the cab of the truck. “D’you like baseball, Buck?”

Gale grinned, looking out at the highway through the windshield. “Not much of a sports guy, Bucky.”

“Bucky?”

“What? I’m Buck but you can’t be Bucky?” Gale asked, still grinning as he tipped his head toward John.

John blinked before turning his attention back to the road, casting out the butt of his cigarette through the open window. “Why Bucky?”

“Captain America’s sidekick.”

John practically honked with laughter. “Are you insinuating that you’re Captain America?”

“No,” Gale replied, voice earnest and expression serious. “I’m insinuating that you’re the sidekick.” He smiled, something big and secret, and looked out through the windshield again. “Although if anyone was going to be Captain America, it would be me.”

“Blonde hair, blue eyes … yeah, okay. You may have a point,” John relented, turning into the dirt road that led to Gale’s home. “Still doesn’t mean that I’m the sidekick. Besides, won’t it get confusing if you’re Buck and I’m Bucky?”

John couldn’t see Gale’s face in the darkness, the moonlight not quite cutting through the trees enough to provide much in the way of light. But he could tell from the other boy’s posture that he was uncomfortable. “Nah. Not like you live here. You’ll eventually go home. Consider it a souvenir that you can take with you.”

John didn’t know why, but the thought of heading back home after the summer suddenly had a knot making its way around his heart.

Once more, John pulled up to the house, no inside lights on, no porch light, and no vehicle in the driveway. He clutched at the steering wheel, looking for any sign of life on the property besides Gal sitting next to him in the cab of his father’s truck.

Crickets. It was just them and the crickets.

“Where’s Mr. Cleven tonight?” John asked, turning toward Gale as he unbuckled his seatbelt and grabbed his backpack. Gale didn’t answer immediately, so John pressed on. “Where was he this morning?”

“Working,” Gale replied, tucking some hair behind his ear before opening the passenger door. “Hey, thanks for the lift. You really didn’t have to.”

“Wait, I got you something,” John said, quickly getting out of the truck to intercept the other boy from departing too quickly.

John motioned for Gale to follow him toward the back of the truck, and once Gale was standing at the other side, pulled the tarp off, revealing two bikes. Although with just the light of the moon struggling to get through the trees that lined the property that Gale lived on, they looked like two misshapen piles of metal.

Gale squinted. “What -”

“Bikes! Well, a bike. One is mine. You can’t have that one. But the other one is for you.”

“Why did you bring out your own bike?” Gale asked, lifting his gaze from the bikes across the truck bed to John.

“... So that we could ride bikes together.”

“It’s pitch black out.”

“Look, Gale. I’m not a smart man.” Gale smiled brightly; that John could see in the darkness. “I dunno why I brought it. Anyway, a bike for you. It’s Lucia’s old one. And it’s a boy’s bike. She got it from a cousin? I dunno. It’s yours.”

“I can’t accept this,” Gale said softly, shaking his head in disbelief. “I appreciate it, but I can’t.”

That hadn’t been the reaction that John was expecting. He hadn’t exactly been expecting Gale to be jumping up and down for joy, he didn’t seem like the type. But outright refusal? Not on John’s list of possible Gale reactions.

“Sure you can,” John said after a moment, reaching into the bed of the truck and grabbing the bike, pulling it out. “This is me giving you the bike. And this is the part where you accept it.”

“John,” Gale began, voice strained. “Thank you, but I really can’t.”

“You can’t accept a bike?” John asked, and before he even finished his sentence Gale was responding with, “No.”

They began speaking over one another, voices rising higher in pitch. John had been glad that there was seemingly no one else around. The last thing he needed was someone coming up the dirt road and asking what was going on, only for John to have to explain that his new friend wouldn’t accept a hand-me-down bicycle.

“But it’s a present.”

“I’m aware of the act of giving entails, John.”

“Okay, so … accept it.”

“John, I can’t.”

“I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

“You don’t have to. Just accept that I can’t accept it.”

“Buck, it’s just a bike.”

“Right. So will you let it go?”

“You’re being ridiculous. It’ll help you get to and from work.”

“I don’t need help with that. I don’t need help in general.”

“Whoa. I’m just trying -”

“Well. Don’t.”

“Will you just -”

“He’ll fucking sell it!” Gale shouted. Gale, who John had known for probably seventy-two hours, had spoken in the same even tone since they’d met. There were different inflections, but his voice had never been raised. And having heard it, John wished that could go back to a few moments ago when he hadn’t. When he didn’t know what Gale sounded like when he was frustrated. Not because it bothered him, but because it bothered Gale. “My dad will see it, and he’ll sell it,” Gale added after a moment, and John watched the other boy’s shoulders rise and fall as he panted, gulping down air as if he had deprived himself of it for too long.

“Buck,” John breathed, exhaling slowly, so as not to startle Gale. “I - I didn’t know.”

Gale let out a shuddering breath, and then inhaled slowly, trying to come back to himself. John let go of the bike, and moved around to the other side of the truck. Gale looked away as John joined him on the opposite side of the truck, ashamed, not meeting the other boy’s eyes.

“Didn’t expect you to,” Gale said quietly. “Not exactly something I go parading around town with. Although, I think it’s the town’s best kept secret that James Cleven is a no good sonuvabitch.”

John swallowed thickly and frowned. He had no frame of reference for dealing with something like this, a friend with a supremely shitty father. A friend that was hurting so bad. He knew boys who had crummy fathers; fathers that smacked them around a little maybe, fathers that weren’t around, but never a father who sold his son’s possessions.

Realizing he hadn’t said anything in a while, John tried his best to make some words leave his brain and come out of his mouth. “Does he hurt you?”

Gale was looking at the ground, kicking idly at too-long grass. “Sometimes. When he’s here. Which isn’t a lot.”

“Where is he?”

“Hell if I know,” Gale replied, looking up toward the sky and letting out a soft sigh at the sight of the familiar stars. John looked up as well, and remembered that he knew nothing of the constellations, other than they looked pretty against the spilled ink sky.

Decades later, John would be able to recall the names of all the constellations that he saw the night that Gale Cleven - Buck - finally began to let him in.

“He can stay there for all I care.”

—

#masters of the air fan fiction #mota fanfic #john bucky egan #gale buck cleven #bucky x buck #john egan x gale cleven #clegan #1980s summer au #antiquitea.fic

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honest-moth-of-silver-grove · 1 year

Note

I can't wait for the next part of the trio saving werewolf!reader it was so good!

Ask: I can't wait for the next part of the trio saving werewolf!reader it was so good!

Ask: Hi! Just read part one of what is hopefully a mini-series of the trio x werewolf reader, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. If you like some suggestions on how to continue: maybe part two could be about the Reader learning how to be free, or perhaps the Trio helping reader recover enough to be able to shift back to being a human? Either way, can’t wait to see what else you have planned. Thank you so much!

[Combining the two asks here.]

A/N: My toxic trait? Answering asks for Part 2s of something I wrote over a year ago and then promptly abandoned lol. (To Read Part 1 to refresh your memory, like I had to do, click here [x].)

✥ ✥ ✥

“Do you think they’ll ever be able to turn back?” Sypha asked from where she stood, in one of the many rows of bookshelves lining the Belmont hold.

Several levels below her, Trevor grunted as he hauled large pieces of shattered support beams to the base of the main staircase. “It’s impressive how sentient they are now, being a were-creature and all.”

“Yes, but they don’t want to stay a creature for the rest of their lives.”

“Well, life isn’t always fucking fair,” Trevor cursed, half-out of breath, as he began lugging the large beam up the stairs.

“I’m fairly certain she knows that,” Alucard intervened, entering the main chamber, having just arrived fresh off the newly built lift he installed. “Speakers see far more suffering than most people, seeing as they believe it is their duty to help the less fortunate.”

“How’s the lift?” Sypha asked, coming over to the railing. “Does it work? Were the calculations correct?”

Alucard nodded. “I needed to modify a few measurements, considering the potential excess weight load-”

“We’re not that heavy,” Trevor interrupted. “Or do you plan to start bringing villagers in by the dozen and give tours?”

Alucard narrowed his eyes at Trevor. “I was considering the repairs that need to be done for all the damage the night creatures inflicted. Unless of course, you’d prefer to drag that thing up yet another hundred feet.”

Trevor huffed, refusing to show his fatigue. “What? This old thing?” He locked his knees to keep them from buckling. “Can barely feel it.”

Sypha rolled her eyes. “Could the two of you stop competing for one second?! We’re supposed to be looking for ways to help our friend!”

Admitting defeat, Trevor dropped the large piece of timber at the next landing. “Sypha, we’ve been at it for months. Every book says the same thing: only the shapeshifter can cause a shift at will. Outside of whoever cursed them with the affliction undoing it themselves. Or killing the shapeshifter and using death magic to alter their form post-mortem, there’s nothing any of us can do.”

Accepting her friend had a point, Sypha took one of the adjoining bridges, healing toward Trevor as he stopped to catch his breath.

“I could freeze that beam and toss it out you know,” she gestured to where Alucard currently stood.

“The last time you did that, we ended up with a giant hole in the ground.”

“That wasn’t me, that was the night creatures.”

“But you did break the castle,” Alucard countered. “All of the gears were melted.”

“I did not! I do not break things. I am a Speaker, I fix things!”

Alucard chuckled, sharing a knowing look with Trevor. For as knowledgeable as she was, she certainly had a hard time admitting when she was wrong.

“In either case, it will take years to repair, even with my vampiric speed and strength. Dracula engineered those cogs and wheels over several centuries, often hiring the best blacksmiths around.”

The trio boarded the lift together, Trevor having decided to leave the broken beam behind for another day.

“They worked here? With him?” Sypha asked.

“The castle’s forge is quite extensive. And no matter their level of skill, I doubt any local blacksmith’s forge would be large enough to mold such immense gears. They could only manage such creation within the walls of the castle.”

Trevor scoffed. “Did they know who they were working for?”

“I’m certain they had suspicions, but I doubt my Fath-, Dracula ever told them the truth.”

“That’s-” Trevor started.

“Sad,” Sypha finished for him. “To be alone all that time. To not be able to tell anyone who you are.”

The ingenious pulley system lift finally came to a stop as it became level with the forest ground outside the Belmont hold.

“Is that why you wish to help them so badly?” Alucard asked, referring to their new werewolf companion. “You feel they’re lonely?”

“Well they were lonely, back in that cage, in that life,” Sypha reminded her friends, as Alucard locked the lift in place.

“They seem better now,” Trevor remarked, being the first to disembark. “After all, you keep bugging them every day, they’re hardly lonely.”

Sypha elbowed him, lovingly. “I do not bug them. They enjoy my company.”

“You keep forgetting Speakers are used to traveling in large groups,” Alucard reminded Belmont, once again, as the trio made their way back toward the entrance of the castle. “It’s shocking how much you've forgotten, the two of you being companions and all.”

“The three of us being companions,” Sypha placed a reassuring hand on Alucard’s shoulder.

The dhampir gave a soft smile at the Speaker’s action before averting his eyes. Stepping out of her embrace, he started to ascend the many stone steps at the front of the castle.

“It’s about time for dinner. Let me see what I can cook up.”

✥

It had been a few months since the trio and their newfound companion arrived back home at Castlevania. Most of that time was spent with Sypha and Trevor bickering over how best to treat their new friend, while Alucard dedicated his time in between assessing the broken mechanisms of the castle to reading all of the tomes his father had collected on shapeshifting. Unfortunately, all roads pointed in the same direction: it was up to their friend to shift themselves back.

At the present moment their werewolf friend, or Wynn, as they liked to be called, was resting in one of the many castle bedrooms. Their furry body was sprawled out over the entire length of the mattress, as they lazily tracked falling specks of dust around with their big puppy-dog eyes.

Despite spending so much time resting, they felt exhausted this evening. It was as if the last few months of recovery meant nothing!

‘I don’t know why I’m so tired,’ they thought, shifting to curl up in a tighter ball.

Finally shutting their eyes, they made one final wish before drifting off to sleep, the same wish they had been making every night for god knows how long.

‘Please let me be human when I wake up, please.’

✥

The sun had barely peaked over the horizon. Trevor and Alucard had woken up early to finally start clearing the major debris from the Belmont hold using the newly designed lift. So far Alucard had cleared twelve large beams while Trevor had managed to remove seven. Not that it was a competition or anything. It was at this point that Sypha had come to join them.

“Well if it isn’t Sleeping Beauty, finally come to grace us humble footmen with her presence,” Trevor ribbed.

“Nice pile,” Sypha gestured to Trevor’s lesser stack laid out next to Alucard’s.

Trevor snorted. “Nice comeback.”

Sypha crossed her arms. “I had a very long night last night. Which was entirely your fault by the way.”

“My fault?” Trevor guffawed. “No no, I believe that last round was your fault.”

Alucard, who had been watching amusedly from the sides, chose this moment to step in. “No, she’s right, I recall you were the one enticing us into that last round.”

“Well, it’s not my fault if- hey,” Trevor suddenly straightened his back, and pointed to something in the distance. “Who’s that?”

Both Alucard and Sypha turned around to see who Trevor was referring to. Almost immediately, Sypha clasped her hands together happily and began running over to meet this ‘stranger’.

“Looks like Sypha wasn’t the last one to wake up,” Alucard nudged Trevor to come along.

“No, but seriously, who the hell is that?” Trevor asked Alucard, keeping his wits about him.

“You’re joking.”

“I’ve never seen that person before in my life.”

“That’s because you’ve never seen them before as a human.”

Sypha, having finally reached Wynn where they stood, proudly and excitedly in their human form, pulled them in for a big hug. Clasping each other in a tight embrace, the two companion’s eyes began to water.

��It’s so good to finally see you, my friend!” Sypha laughed, hugging Wynn closer.

“It’s so good to be seen!” Wynn answered back, clearly overjoyed.

After a good long moment, Sypha finally let go, turning around to face the boys. “Look who it is!”

Wynn gave a polite wave, suddenly overcome by shyness under the focus of all three of their friends. “Um, hi? It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Alucard stuck his hand out for a handshake, which Wynn eagerly accepted. “Likewise.”

Sensing Trevor’s hesitation, Wynn outstretched their hand to Trevor.

Shaking his head, Trevor grasped Wynn’s hand and pulled them in for a hug, nearly knocking them off their feet.

Speechless and touched by Trevor’s gesture, Sypha shot a knowing look at Alucard.

Despite being their gruff, sarcastic, and sometimes slower friend, Trevor really was like a teddy bear deep, deep underneath that jaded exterior. Sure, very few would ever come to know it unless they were close to him, but that made the trio’s relationship all the more special. And it was a very telling sign that Trevor was able to let his guard down for the sake of their new friend.

It was as if at that very moment, the trio had become a quartet. And Wynn couldn’t be happier to finally be a part of it.

#castlevania imagine #castlevania fanfiction #trephacard x reader #trephacard imagine #castlevania trio x reader #castlevania #os #werewolf!reader

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arianatwycross · 7 months

Text

Skinny Dipping Part 2 (Wolfstar)

Read part 1 (jily)

Written for @wolfstarmicrofic February prompt 'Beau'

It's Remus' turn to strip...

"Why am I sensing a case of Deja vu?" Remus questions the group, looking suspiciously at his friends, cuddling each other.

"Because this is how we met," James grins cheekily, giving his girlfriend of 1 year a kiss on the mouth.

"Yes, but there's one thing missing for me..." Remus frowns out at the gleaming water.

"What?" Lily hides her own grin behind a hand, her eyes sparkling with a mischief that Remus has come to recognise and be cautious of.

"Well I don't have a cute boy to swim up and say hi to and then fall sickeningly in love with, do I? There's no one here today," Remus gestures to the empty bay, the weather not quite hot enough to tempt others to join them on a boat day.

"Don't you?" Lily takes her hand away from her mouth and brings her wine glass to her lips.

Giving Lily a suspicious look, Remus looks back out at the water before sighing.

"C'mon Mooney, show Lil where your nickname originated from!" James cheers.

Remus, partly fueled by the 3 vodka shots he was semi-forced to gulp down, takes a deep breath before stripping down. Stepping out of his board shorts, he toes the line of the timber stern timidly.

"James! I found more beer!" Sirius calls from inside the cabin. Remus, upon hearing Sirius' voice freezes, now completely aware of how insane it is to be stark naked standing on the edge of James father's fancy boat.

"Moony?"

Remus, knowing his face probably looks as red as the sunburn that will undoubtedly appear on his shoulders tomorrow, turns slightly to find Sirius looking straight at his bare ass.

"Fucking hell," Remus mutters, before taking the plunge and diving straight into the cold water.

"Lily?" Sirius asks, his eyes still trained on where he had just witness a naked Remus.

"Hmm?"

"Did you just dare Remus to skinny dip?"

"You're welcome." Lily grins, raising her wine glass up at the still-shocked Sirius.

"Would you like me to dare you to skinny dip also?" James chirps up from Lily's side, his grin matching his girlfriends.

"He doesn't need an excuse," Lily looks at James with another gleam in her eye, "go have a romantic moment in the beautiful ocean, Black - your beau is waiting for you."

Sirius blinking at his mates, slowly places the beer bottles on the table before looking back at the water. Remus is treading water, his head resting slightly back, his eyes closed against the warm sun.

He smiles, when he hears Sirius strip but doesn't look up.

Lily, ever the match maker, smiles at her boyfriend beside her, "It's about time..." she comments, making her boyfriend nod his head before kissing her forehead in answer.

#wolfstar #jily #skinny dipping #my fics #wolfstar microfic #wolfstar fanfic #part two #you do not need to read part 1 to read this #just a spin off

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on-a-mechtechnicality · 5 months

Text

Idol

The morning sun illuminated the DropShips towering over the encampment and Sigrid was making her way ‘home’. The mess tent was disappearing behind her and the sounds of the camp faded along with it to be replaced by the din of people working around the towering vessels.

She boarded, finding herself in the small human-sized corridors that made the ship feel almost cramped. The feeling didn’t last as she soon found herself face to face with the cavern that was the MechLab. It looked big from up in the overlook, where she could see the entire area, but from here on ground level she didn’t think she’d ever get used to it.

Every single Bay was lit up and most had ‘Techs working on repairing the damaged machines inside. Despite this, one of them seemed cloaked in shadow. No light reflected onto the walkway in front, and from where she just entered she couldn’t see into the Bay.

The moment she could though, it all made sense.

Sigrid blinked.

Siggy opened her eyes and bounced to the mirror. In it she saw a girl with a great big mop of unruly red hair. She sat down and brushed and brushed and brushed, and then started braiding, just like Mom had showed her. Each strand meticulously on display.

Behind her on the wall hung her dream. On the left of the twin posters an impressive looking ‘Mech stepped out of a blazing inferno. Legs bending backwards, striding resolutely forward with two arms and great big rocket pods on its shoulders.

Beside it was a much more sedate but much more interesting dream. The same ‘Mech, now laid out in excruciating detail in an exploded technical view. Sometimes when she couldn’t sleep, she looked over the poster to read all the things she read a thousand times. Where the actuators were, where the sensors were, every single line on the diagram committed to memory, familiar and comforting.

And then she blinked again.

In front of her, black as a moonless night, stood her dream. A towering and proud machine, dormant but steadfast. Almost… alive.

The engineering on the foot in front of her was masterful, if she looked close enough she could see every piece of articulation, not a rivet out of place despite the well-worn look. Her eyes drifted from the trifold feet to the massive calf actuators and then further up. To the upper legs, the sleek torso and the arm actuators ending in dual hardpoints.

She couldn’t see the missile banks, but she knew them. She could see every familiar component, every single caption from her posters on Utrecht.

It didn’t just live up to her expectations, this machine exceeded it.

Blink. Work to do.

Sigrid synced her tablet with the docket and looked over her assigned tasks.

MechTech: Sigrid Guntran Initial assignment: Timber Wolf ‘Death Knell’ Bay: 8 Work order: right torso; replace armor plating right torso; general maintenance Full systems check Notes: Sigrid, sorry to put this on ya last minute, but I know you can do it! I’m trying to keep low so the MedTechs don’t get me. -Karrie

She looked down at her tablet, and then up at her dream. Part of her wondered if this was real, and another part supplied that she was currently working on an SLDF DropShip, deep in the Rimward periphery, on a hostile planet, under the command of a beautiful avian woman so old that the show she was on with the other Clan totem warriors – who were also here – was considered a historical record.

Working on an actual Timber Wolf didn’t seem so odd anymore.

She climbed up to the catwalk and found the Bay controls. From up here she could see the majesty that was the Timber Wolf from its rear angles, a dark void contrasted against the bright industrial lighting of the MechLab. She knew every angle, every single curve of the machine’s panelling by heart.

As the platform on the ‘Mech’s right side was lowering into position, she moved around to follow it. Panning down from the side she could see where the torso armor had taken the hits. Large chunks were warped or missing, open wounds showing the delicate internals that thankfully seemed to be in good shape. How good a shape she would have to find out later. Right now, the armor needed to come off.

She knew the automated arms could be more efficient, but they weren’t as accurate as handheld power tools. A machine of this caliber deserved those. She let the winch above her come down. Before connecting the straps onto the armor she placed a hand on the wounded ‘Mech.

“We’ll get you fixed up, don’t you worry.”

She hooked the straps to the attachment points in the armor and tensioned the lines. Bit by bit she carefully detached the panel until only the tension from above held them in place. Then it was just a light pull until it started moving.

She slowly guided the crane to move the panel out of the way and safely to the floor level of the Bay, out of the way of the walkway. A tap or two on her tablet flagged it for repairs. A forklift would be along soon.

With the panel out of the way she could see the underlying internals, sleek steel pipes contrasting harshly and beautifully against the black of the surrounding panels. And she knew them.

She knew the coolant from the lubricant from the hydraulics from the electronics at a glance, the labels only confirming what she already knew. Every conduit flowed like a symphony around the frame.

Around the places the armour had been gauged, she looked a little closer. Signs of damage would be hard to spot among the labyrinth of angles, but a visual inspection was part of the troubleshooting process. Her eyes danced over each line, following them from one end of the panel gap to where they snaked back into the ‘Mech’s interior.

All looked clear and secure, Clan engineering ensuring that even in the event of armor breach, the primary systems would not be easy to take out. Let alone the secondary and tertiary.

The systems looked undamaged, so she let the platform carry her down, just in time to see the panel being driven to the manufacturing wing. She followed along, not minding that she couldn’t keep up with the forklift. It’d give them some time to offload before she showed up. The difference in time between walking and driving was significant when dealing with this much space. Sigrid enjoyed the walks though, the Bay in operation was a soothing cacophony of all the different tools interacting with every material under the sun.

The armor repair itself was repetition more than anything. Identify a damaged subpanel. Remove the damaged subpanel. Find a suitable sized replacement. Shape the replacement. Attach the replacement. Repeat.

The capstone was the painting. It needed to match the existing color scheme, and match it well. Fresh paint also looked different from worn paint, but that was nothing they couldn’t handle. In the brochure it had never said that being an artist was part of being a MechTech, but the surprise had been a pleasant one.

The paint fresh but no longer wet, she followed the forklift back to Bay 8. It was already hoisted up and ready to be placed. She considered the automated tools, but for installation the accuracy was even more important than for removal, and handheld tools were king.

The work was honestly calming to Sigrid, alone up on the platform, grafting new skin onto the wounded ‘Mech in front of her. Bit by bit she circled around the edge of the panel until everything looked like she never touched it at all.

She climbed back onto the catwalk where her equipment was stored. She took out her neurohelmet and opened the compartment on her toolkit where she kept her soft tools. She knew them by heart, but looking through them helped remind her which ones she had available should the need arise.

The hop from the catwalk to the top of the Timber Wolf was not a big one. The matte black paint on the armor made it a little harder to judge. What made it really hard to make the jump though, was that Sigrid knew what she was about to do.

She was about to hop on top of a Timber Wolf. She was about to open the latch and lower herself inside. She already knew what it would look like, she knew the view from the cockpit, she knew the exact dimensions of the enclosure.

And that made it all the more daunting.

Gathering her will in her mind and her grip on her neurohelmet, she took the hop.

She was standing on top of a Timber Wolf. She was working on it, it was her work. It was her dream. She unlocked the hatch and allowed herself to slip inside.

Inside the ‘Mech it was quiet. No hum from the reactor, no sound arrived from the outside. There was just Sigrid, trying to calm her breathing, and the terrifying, loving embrace of a dream.

Her mind knew the startup sequence of a ‘Mech. Her fingers danced this dance before. And yet she couldn’t stop trembling as she toggled the first switch.

Bay power to auxiliary generator.

The high-pitched whine of the generator filled the cockpit. It was reassuring, it was terrifying, it was exhilarating.

Flick.

Auxiliary power to emergency lighting.

The lights around her came online. Dim compared to the view through the cockpit, but plenty bright enough to see by.

Auxiliary power to diagnostic systems.

Screens flickered to life. White text flew over a black background as the ‘Mech rose from slumber. Not awake yet, but no longer asleep. Sigrid listened to the whine and the soft clicks performing a symphony of self-tests. The ‘Mech checked its pressures, checked every single one of its connections in a lightning-fast choreography of every system it could access.

The text scrolled by faster than she could read, but she wasn’t looking for text. She was looking for colors. She was looking for the orange that signified a warning, the angry red that signified a fault. Her heartbeat punctuated the soundscape as seconds ticked past.

And then nothing.

No more text flying by, nothing more to focus her attention on. Just a single phrase that was both the best thing she could have read and the most disappointing.

Self-test: 100% Warnings: 0 Errors: 0 System status: OK

No need to diagnose further, it would not be time well spent. It would be time spent with her dream, but that didn’t matter.

She powered down the ‘Mech, returning it to cold and dark status. Ready for when it would be needed again. She picked her neurohelmet from where she set it down and held it in her hands. She stared at the visor.

Reflected in it she could see a woman with red hair in a tight bun, sitting inside the cockpit of a Timber Wolf. Her dream.

She sighed and rotated the helmet around. With trembling hands she placed it on her head.

She wasn’t plugged in.

The ‘Mech was powered down.

She had better things to do.

Siggy closed her eyes. It didn’t matter.

She had her helmet on

Made from an old football helmet, Utrecht Kodiaks logo covered with silver tape

She could see the canopy in front of her

Made from a laundry basket, tipped on its side

She knew exactly where the missile pods were

Two cardboard boxes, placed on the sofa behind her

She was in the cockpit of a Timber Wolf.

The beat of her heart and the sound of her breath were the only things accompanying her for this moment in time, etching itself into her memory as her visor slowly fogged up without the air circulation connected.

She took off her helmet and held it in her hands, staring into the condensed visor one last time. There was work to be done.

She extracted herself from the cockpit and closed the hatch beneath her.

The hop from the ‘Mech onto the catwalk was both easier and harder than the other way. She landed with a soft impact of her work boots.

She placed her helmet with her toolkit and sat down on the upper catwalk, out of sight of anyone working, staring at her dream.

She raised her tablet. Four taps was all it took.

Work order complete

@jaded-falcon

#battletech #mechwarrior #story event

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ironwoman359 · 2 months

Text

A Thief's Gamble - Ch. 10

...Has a Silver Lining

Prev: Ch.9 Every Cloud... || Next: Ch.11 Fic Masterpost

Fic Summary: Brynjolf is certain that the only way the Thieves Guild will return to its glory days is by bringing in new, talented members. Unfortunately, Mercer doesn't agree, and it's not like Brynjolf's latest attempts at recruiting have gone well. But when he meets a stranger in the marketplace one morning, he's willing to take the risk and bring her on board....only time will tell if his gamble pays off.

Chapter Summary: Brynjolf finds Ariene in Falkreath, and after helping her out of a jam, the two prepare to storm the bandit camp at Pinewatch to retrieve a stolen silver mold for their client Endon.

Content: Brynjolf POV, Thieves Guild quest spoilers, game typical violence.

Ships: Brynjolf x Dragonborn OC (slowburn)

Word Count: 4,203

Check the reblogs for a link to read on AO3!

— — —

Brynjolf swore he could feel time slowing as all eyes in the inn landed on him. The few other patrons didn’t bother to hide their stares as they watched the growing drama unfold, and the Legate he’d confronted was glaring at him with enough ferocity to kill a sabre cat. Even Ariene was staring, though she let her shock show on her face for only a moment.

“Now brother,” she said loudly, catching on to Brynjolf’s ruse immediately. “There's no need to cause a scene. Legate Skulnar and I were simply having a…disagreement.”

Legate Skulnar looked back and forth between the two, skepticism written plainly on his face.

“Brother?” he asked, shrugging Brynjolf’s hand off his shoulder with a snarl. “I don’t see much resemblance between the two of you, kinsman.”

Brynjolf silently cursed the fact that Ariene’s features were so distinctly imperial before giving the Legate his best eyebrow raise.

“Half-brother, if you must know. My father took an imperial wife after my own ma died; not that it’s any of your business, sir.”

Legate Skulnar didn’t look convinced, and Ariene stepped forward deftly, standing so that she was next to Brynjolf and no longer backed into the corner.

“I tried to explain to the Legate that I was here on business, but he wouldn’t listen,” she said. “Insisted I was some kind of runaway from the legion. As if ‘Ariene’ isn’t one of the most common Imperial names of the last decade.”

Brynjolf had no idea if that was true or not, but he supposed that if he didn’t, then Skulnar might not either.

“The legion?” he repeated with a laugh. “Ari’s ma is in the timber business. Why else would we come to this little splinter of a city? Certainly not for the hospitality.”

The Legate was still clearly suspicious, but Brynjolf saw the moment that he realized that his catch had slipped away. The gaze of the other patrons had turned from Brynjolf to Skulnar, and while he could arrest the both of them right there, it definitely wouldn’t do him any favors with the locals. Falkreath’s allegiances did technically lie with the empire, but this was due more to the Jarl’s personal greed than the consensus of the citizens, and Brynjolf would be willing to bet that keeping up a good image for the Legion was one of the Legate’s top priorities.

“Fine,” Skulnar eventually growled. “You can move along. But I’ll be keeping my eye on the two of you while you’re here, is that understood?”

“Yes sir,” Brynjolf drawled, his tone anything but respectful, and Skulnar glared.

“Stop antagonizing him, brother,” Ariene said, taking his arm. “Come, let me tell you about the spot I found in the woods. It’s a perfect place to plant our next business venture.”

She led him to a tiny room off the side of the bar, motioning for him to shut the door behind him. As soon as they were alone, she dropped his arm and put her hands on her hips, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Brother?” she repeated, and Brynjolf shrugged.

“I wanted to distract him from who you are. Passing you off as a Skyrim native seemed the best bet, considering the circumstances.”

“I suppose since it worked, I can’t complain too much…” Ariene trailed off, her expression changing as she gave Brynjolf a once over. “By the Nine, Bryn, what happened to you?”

It was then that Brynjolf remembered that his clothes were still torn and muddy, that his hair was a stringy mess falling into his eyes, and that there were still traces of the makeshift blood on his face. He'd probably looked like a madman, stalking up to a Legate and challenging him right there in the inn.

“Oh, right,” he said, wiping a few flecks of the red-stained mud from his cheek. “This is nothing, I just had to pull one over on some bandits camping out in Helgen. No actual fighting was done.”

Ariene sighed, then sat on the edge of her bed, gesturing for Brynjolf to sit in the room’s only chair.

Brynjolf sat, frowning at her.

“Are you alright, lass?”

“I’m fine,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “It’s just been a long few weeks. Gulum-Ei is a stubborn son of a bitch, and traveling in the Reach right now is a nightmare. Those ‘Forsworn’ are around just about every other hill. Then there’s this nonsense with the Markarth job, and to top it all off that Legate out there’s been on my ass for the past three days. I was certain I was going to have to have a mysterious ‘accident’ in the woods and disappear to get away from him.”

“Now that sounds time consuming,” Brynjolf said. “I’m glad I showed up when I did so we could avoid it.” His tone was light, playful, but Ariene wouldn’t look directly at him as she spoke.

“I wasn’t sure you’d make it,” she admitted in a quiet voice. “I worried that the message would arrive too late, or that you wouldn’t understand the code, or…”

She trailed off, but Brynjolf heard the unspoken doubt loud and clear.

I wasn’t sure you’d even come.

“One of the Guild’s best and brightest calls in for backup?” She looked up at him and he smiled at her, causing a faint blush to rise to her cheeks. “Of course I came, lass. And your code was perfect. The little clue about the First of Frostfall was a neat trick.”

“Thank you,” she said, then cleared her throat. “Honestly, I wouldn’t have bothered to encode it at all, but Skulnar was already suspicious of me, and I was worried he’d confiscate the letter from the courier.”

“I wouldn’t have put it past him,” Brynjolf agreed. “But you didn’t even mention him in your note. Which means that what you need help with has nothing to do with the Legion, and everything to do with bandits and this silversmith job. Tell me about it.”

Ariene nodded, and just like that, she was all business, every trace of worry and doubt vanishing from her in an instant.

“I went to Markarth to meet the client, Endon. I was expecting some kind of job targeting a competitor of his, or perhaps a robbery to bring some extra cash flow to his business. But no.” She shook her head ruefully. “He wants us to raid a bandit camp to retrieve a stolen item.”

Brynjolf raised an eyebrow.

“Isn’t that a job for the Jarl’s guards? Or even the Companions?” he asked, and Ariene sighed.

“Apparently, all official channels are too busy with the civil war and Forsworn attacks. I guess he heard that the Guild was returning to power and figured ‘who better to steal back something that was stolen?’ Their camp is at the base of the mountain range just northeast of here.”

“You’ve staked the place out?” Brynjolf asked, and Ariene nodded.

“This is the problem: it’s not a normal camp. There’s this old woodcutter’s hut in the forest, and I’m convinced it’s bigger than it seems. I’ve seen more men go in and out over the past three days than should be able to fit comfortably inside.”

“Maybe it’s connected to some kind of cave system,” Brynjolf mused, and Ariene nodded again.

“My thoughts exactly. But if that’s true, I have no way of knowing how many opponents I’m dealing with until I’m already inside. That’s why I wrote to you for help…though I was prepared to attempt the raid alone if I got no response in a few days.”

“Well, I’m glad I made it before you tried something like that,” Brynjolf repeated. “So when do you want to make your move? Tonight?”

“Tomorrow,” Ariene replied. “I think we both could use some sleep. Besides, the best time to hit them would probably be midmorning. From what I can tell, that’s when most of them come out to do…whatever it is bandits do during the day. Pillage, and so on.”

“Sounds like a plan, lass,” Brynjolf said, getting to his feet. “Now, what kind of drink do they serve here?”

They ordered a small meal, and since talking about business in the open areas of the inn seemed a foolhardy choice, they spent the rest of the evening having a mostly improvised conversation about their imaginary family members back in Riften.

As they talked, Brynjolf noticed the tension slowly bleeding out of Ariene’s shoulders, and he found himself relaxing as well, for what he realized was the first time in weeks. It was fun, sitting by the fire with a drink in his hand and making up stories about how Cousin Joric had fallen into the breeding pool at the Riften Fishery and thus was sentenced to a week of floor scrubbing. Being on a con again– even one as simple as pretending to be a family of timber workers– was energizing, and he couldn’t help but smile as he and Ariene shared a block of cheese and traded tales.

Despite his long day, Brynjolf found sleep that night to be elusive. Lying in one of the inn’s creaky beds and staring at the ceiling, he could feel the anticipation rising in his chest. Tomorrow, they would head into the woods to face down an entire encampment of bloodthirsty bandits. And this time, he probably couldn’t trick his way out of dealing with them.

— — —

The next morning, Ariene led the way through the woods to where the bandits had made their base. Brynjolf realized he’d never actually seen her out in the field besides that first job in the marketplace, and was impressed by how silently the lass moved through the dense underbrush of the old forests of Falkreath. He typically associated thieves with back alleys and city streets, but he supposed that Ariene’s history as a mercenary in her father’s crew had garnered her plenty of experience with the wilderness.

It didn’t take them long to reach what on the outside looked like a perfectly convincing woodcutter’s hut, and they crouched down in the bushes across the road to watch the door. Sure enough, clusters of bandits began exiting the hut, a few at a time spread out across the morning. About half of those who left headed up the road to the east, while the other half took the road west, and Brynjolf could picture them meeting up with their fellows and staging traps for unsuspecting travelers.

“Alright, lass,” he said in a low voice once it had been a good half hour since anyone left the cabin. “How do you want to handle this?”

“If there really is a secret passageway, then they’ve probably left at least one man left inside to guard it,” Ariene replied. “It’s what I’d do. I say we go in through the front here, take the guard by surprise if we can, and figure out our next move from there.”

Brynjolf nodded, and once they were sure there was no one else on the road to see them, they both rose to their feet and made their way to the cottage door. Ariene’s picks made quick work of the lock, and she looked up at Brynjolf, a question in her eyes.

He nodded to her and she pulled the door open by a hair, allowing Brynjolf to peer inside. He quickly scanned the interior, noting a cluttered workbench, a low burning fire in the hearth, and a wooden railing in the corner that indicated stairs.

“You were right, lass,” he whispered. “There is a basement. Up top here looks all clear for now.”

“Take point,” she whispered back, sliding her picks into her pocket and pulling her bow off her shoulder. “I’ll cover you from behind.”

Brynjolf nodded, and the two of them slipped into the house. They approached the stairs, and Brynjolf crouched low, peering down into the basement through the gap in the floor.

There was a single man sitting at a table with his back to them, an open bottle of wine in his hand. Brynjolf slowly descended the stairs, wincing as the wood boards creaked beneath his feet, but the man did not stir. As soon as his feet were on the stone floor, Ariene called out in a clear voice:

“If you scream, you’re a dead man.”

The bandit whirled around, his hand moving to an axe he wore on his belt, but he froze when he saw the tip of Ariene’s arrow pointed at his heart.

“What do you want?” he asked, and Brynjolf smiled.

“Just to have a chat, lad, maybe a look around. You see, we’re looking for some particular merchandise.”

“Endon’s stolen mold,” Ariene added.

“Endon's mold?” the man repeated. He offered a nervous smile. “I'm afraid you have the wrong place, my friends. You'll find no silversmiths here. I assure you, I have nothing of value. I'm nothing but a poor woodcutter just trying to make ends meet."

Brynjolf glanced at Ariene, who had a triumphant glint in her eye.

“I never said it was a silver mold,” she said, and the man licked his lips.

“Oh? Well uh, Endon is a silversmith in Markarth, so I just assumed…”

“Look, lad,” Brynjolf interrupted. “We’d like to avoid a fight just as much as you would. If you just tell us where the mold is, we can all be on our way, no harm no foul.”

The man bit his lip, eyes flitting between the two thieves.

“We can make it worth your while,” Ariene said, and Brynjolf nodded, pulling out his coin pouch and giving it a shake.

“I see…” the man said slowly, his gaze fixed on the purse. After a moment, he nodded to himself and got to his feet.

“Well, I can't say exactly where the mold is, but something does spring to mind,” he said casually. “It seems there's this strange button on the wall opposite the fireplace in my house. Always wondered what it was for.”

Brynjolf glanced at Ariene, and she gave a single nod of her head.

“Fair enough,” Brynjolf said, and tossed the coin to the bandit. The man caught it deftly and nodded to them.

“Thank you kindly, friends. Think I'm going to head out now. Take a long vacation from woodcutting, you know? Good luck.”

He edged past Ariene, who kept her bow trained on him as he climbed back up the stairs, only lowering it once he had left the cottage and closed the door behind him.

“Well, so much for finding it in the house,” she muttered when the man was gone.

“When has the Guild ever had that kind of luck?” Brynjolf pointed out, and Ariene snorted.

“Good point. After you, then,” she added, gesturing towards the button.

Brynjolf pressed it, and the bookshelf against the wall swung open, revealing a tunnel leading down deeper into the earth.

“So there is a cave back here. I wonder if they dug this out, or if it was here naturally?” Ariene mused as they made their way down the tunnel.

Brynjolf opened his mouth to answer, but stopped when he rounded a corner and found the end of the tunnel opening out into a large open room.

“I don’t know, but that doesn’t look like any rock formations I’ve ever seen,” he said, pointing at a scaffolding rig that blocked their view of most of the cave.

“Get down,” Ariene whispered, and Brynjolf immediately dropped to one knee, his hand moving to his daggers.

A second later, he saw the bandit.

Through gaps in the old wooden boards, he could just make out a rope bridge connecting the outcropping of rock they were standing on to another part of the cave system, and standing on that bridge with his arms folded was a burly looking man in iron armor. He was positioned so that he’d see whoever came walking out of the tunnel, but he hadn’t startled at the sight of them, so it was just possible that they were hidden from his sight where they were crouching.

“Let me by,” Ariene breathed, and Brynjolf nodded, letting the lass slip past him.

She crept forward into the cave, angling herself so that the makeshift wooden wall was between her and the bandit’s line of sight. She scanned the room, a frown creasing her forehead as she did so. Brynjolf raised an eyebrow as she made her way back to him, and she shot him a grim look.

“There’s no way around him that he wouldn’t notice and raise the alarm,” she murmured. “But I think he’s the only one on guard in this chamber.”

“Your call, lass,” Brynjolf whispered. “However you want to handle this, I’ll follow your lead.”

Ariene didn’t say anything for several seconds, and Brynjolf almost wondered if she hadn’t heard him, but then she met his eyes, her gaze hard.

“I’d draw your weapon if I were you.”

Brynjolf immediately pulled his daggers free from their sheaths as Ariene turned back towards the bandit. She lifted her bow and pulled back the string, aiming her shot through a gap in the scaffolding. She took a breath in, and on the exhale, let the arrow fly.

The arrow struck the bandit square in the neck, and he fell back immediately with a gurgled cry. Ariene started to straighten, then cursed and ducked back down, drawing another arrow as a confused call echoed in the room.

“Rogjar? Are you alright?”

A moment later, a bandit rounded the corner, and on seeing the body on the bridge, he gave a cry of alarm, drawing a sword from his belt. Another bandit joined him in an instant, his own weapon drawn and his eyes hard. They both ignored their fallen comrade and headed across the bridge, right for where Brynjolf and Ariene were hiding.

Ariene let her second arrow loose, and it caught the bigger of the two bandits on the shoulder. The man staggered, then grunted and shifted his grip on his warhammer. Brynjolf had just enough time to think “Well that’s not a good sign” before a third arrow shot by and caught the first bandit in the thigh, causing him to stumble forward.

Ariene shot one more arrow, but it missed both targets, and then the larger of the two bandits was on the pair of them, swinging his warhammer towards their heads. Brynjolf rolled forward, slashing out at the man’s legs with his daggers. The thug gave a cry of both pain and surprise as the blades sliced into his flesh; no doubt he was used to people trying to move away from his wide, slow swings, not towards them.

Brynjolf spun quickly, jabbing one dagger into the back of the man’s neck before he could turn around. The bandit fell forward, and Brynjolf slammed the hilt of his dagger on the top of the man’s skull, just to be safe. He turned back towards the other bandit, just in time to see Ariene strike him across the face with the arm of her bow, knocking him to the ground. She drew her own blade and followed him down, pressing her knee against his chest and slitting his throat before he had a chance to recover.

She looked up at him, panting slightly, and he nodded to her.

“Alright, Ariene?”

“Fine,” she said, getting to her feet with a grunt and wiping the blood off her blade. “You?”

Brynjolf turned back to his fallen foe and pulled his dagger out of the man’s back.

“Right as rain, lass.”

The two spared a few minutes to roll the bandits’ bodies off the bridge and hide them among the boxes and crates in the pit below. The cavern was far too vast for the bandits to have dug themselves, and Brynjolf spotted a few old burial urns and nordic weapons shoved up against the wall in one corner.

“Looks like our marks here found an ancient burial ground and converted it into a hideout,” he said conversationally as he rolled one of the corpses behind a pillar and out of sight.

“And they’re making good use of it, too,” Ariene said. “Look at this.”

Brynjolf looked to where she was pointing. Crates and barrels full of produce, cured meats, clothing, and other simple goods were stacked along one wall. Beside the crates were entire wagons in various stages of being broken apart, and there, in a shallow pit just off to the side, was a pile of khajiit corpses.

“They’re not just hassling random travelers or raiding villages,” Ariene said quietly. “They’re attacking whole trade caravans. My guess is they overtake them on the road and force them to unload their goods in here, then kill them so they can’t report on their location.”

Brynjolf shook his head at the brutality.

“It’s a damn shame. And Khajiit traders are some of our best customers.” He paused, a fraction of a conversation floating back to his mind. “Tonilia mentioned that there’d been delays along the southwest routes.”

“Looks like we found the culprits,” Ariene said as she stashed a bandit’s body behind one of the carts. “Or some of them, anyway.”

“I’m no lover of law and order, but I’m amazed that the hold guards were too busy to deal with this,” Brynjolf mused. “I understand not wanting to track down one man’s missing shipment, but these are entire caravans disappearing.”

“Well, I’m sure if they were nord caravans then the local authorities could find it in themselves to spare the resources,” Ariene said, a touch of bitterness in her voice. Brynjolf grimaced.

“Aye…you’re probably right, lass,” he said. “Good thing we’re here to pick up the slack then, eh?”

Ariene smiled briefly, then straightened and drew her bow again.

“At any rate, I don’t see the mold with these crates; I’d wager the more valuable cargo is stashed deeper in the cave. Let’s move further in and see what we can find.”

The two made their way back up to the upper level and followed the tunnels through the old burial chambers. In one of the large chambers, a makeshift bar had been set up with a few tables and chairs, though the room was thankfully deserted as they passed through. They found more evidence that the ancient nords had used the caves as a burial ground, with more funeral urns, looted crypts, and carved stone doors around every corner.

True to Ariene’s prediction, most of the bandits were out raiding, leaving the cave system mostly empty. There were a few stragglers here and there, but with the element of surprise on their side, she and Brynjolf had little trouble in dispatching them. Upon entering yet another wide open room set with a few tables and chairs, Ariene turned to Brynjolf and smiled sheepishly.

“I almost feel bad for dragging you all the way out here now, it seems I would have been able to manage this on my own after all.”

“Perhaps,” Brynjolf said, picking up a letter from the table and scanning it with little interest. “But between you and me, lass, even if we don’t draw our blades again for the rest of the day, I’m still glad I came. Just because you can handle a job like this on your own doesn’t mean you should have to without backup. Besides, the Guild’s been terribly dull the last few weeks; it’s nice to get out and about for once.”

They followed another narrow tunnel out of the room, and found themselves in a small chamber with a wooden door blocking their way. Ariene walked up and tested the handle experimentally, then stowed her bow on her back and pulled out her picks.

“Locked,” she said as she began fiddling with the lock, and Brynjolf snorted. ‘

“Never would have guessed,” he quipped, and Ariene rolled her eyes.

There was a beat of silence, then Ariene frowned.

“Odd,” she murmured. “Bryn, give this a try, would you?”

Brynjolf sheathed his daggers and knelt beside her, taking the picks in his hands. He wasn’t as good at lockpicking as Vex, but he was still pretty damn good at it, so he was surprised when, after a minute or so of trying, one of the picks broke inside the lock.

“Shit,” Brynjolf swore quietly as he pulled the broken pieces out.

“This lock is far too strong for a random door in a bandit hole,” Ariene said as Brynjolf pulled out his own pair of picks. “What could be hidden back here?”

“Take a wild guess,” said a gruff voice.

Brynjolf turned, only to find himself on the wrong end of a very sharp looking sword. He looked up to see a bandit woman in plate armor with war paint in harsh lines across her face glaring down at them. Ariene cursed and reached for her bow, but the woman shook her head and stepped closer, pointing her sword mere inches from Brynjolf’s neck. Ariene froze, and a sneer spread across the woman’s face.

“Now then,” she said, looking back and forth between the two of them. “What am I going to do with you?”

— — —

AN: Honestly I love that we've wound up on an entire side quest barely related to the main focus of the story, it feels very on brand for a skyrim story (also I'll talk any excuse to keep having these two dance around each other. :3 )

Prev: Ch.9 Every Cloud... || Next: Ch.11 Fic Masterpost

#skyrim #skyrim fanfiction #skyrim fic #the thieves guild #thieves guild fic #brynjolf #skyrim ldb #fanfic #fanfiction #ldb oc #imperial dragonborn #brynjolf x dragonborn #brynjolf x oc #slowburn #slow burn #a thief's gamble #ariene the dragonborn #pinewatch #my writing

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caxycreations · 3 months

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(Not so) fun fact about Relanian oceans...

There is real, undeniable evidence of the existence of a "ghost ship", called Et Sylia.

The ship's name means "The Sun" in Old Eikirian. It was a common practice for sailors to name their ships using Old Eikirian words (this would be ~2700s or so, with Old Eikirian already being a "dying language" as it had been phased out of common Eikirian use by the year 2200, and the modern equivalent was already in common use by the 2700s) in the belief that they would grant the ship greater luck on the seas with the unpredictable weather.

Despite the happenstance, it wasn't actually named for the sun, but rather the captain's wife, Sylia Mortrova. The captain, Atticus T. Droff, was known by two names; Atticus Droff, who had a reputation as being so skilled at the helm he could sail a ship even in the fiercest Relanian Storms and come out unscathed...

And Atticus the Reaver, most feared pirate in the entire southern sea. A master of Thaumaturgy and a man many claimed suffered from not having so much as an ounce of emotion, he was known for sinking whole fleets without firing a single shot, one of the only people in Relanian history to use Thaumaturgy for such vile purposes, and one of the last practitioners of magic before magic fully abandoned Sentients.

His ship, known for it's white sails with the image of a moth burned into them, lines of black char making up the visage of the insect, and the white oak that made up his ship's body, was nothing special as far as sailing ships go. There were larger, and faster, but the Et Sylia was his, and that was enough to set off alarms in the head of any captain that saw her approaching.

He was known for spending entire years at sea, returning to his home in Arkollin, a port town on an island near the coast of Kanor. However, around the year 2749, tragedy struck.

His home, and the island it sat on, were destroyed. A rival captain, one who'd seen his ship sunk by Atticus and narrowly escaped with his life, had taken a large amount of time to bind the entire island and everything on it to a catalyst, only to light the catalyst ablaze. The island burned to cinders along with the catalyst, leaving nothing but the smallest smoldering hint of what used to be.

Atticus, upon discovering his own life had now been destroyed with the same power he'd used to destroy so many others, fell to his knees at the helm and let out a wail of anguish that, according to reports, was heard as far as several miles inland on the Kanorian mainland...

Nearly 60 miles away.

According to reports from the mainland and Eikirian records from the area, there was, in the words of the reports, "Light, but black as night itself, beaming upward into the heavens like a great pylon, radiating with magic the likes of which have never been known."

Atticus, and his crew, were never seen again. Never again did he set foot on a shore, or the timber of another ship.

But his ship lives on, even into the modern age. Eternally patrolling the waters of Atticus' former home. Any ship that dared enter the waters within 20 miles of his former island is sunk, no matter the make or material and no matter the precautions.

Survivor reports claim their vessels were sunk by a brilliant, ethereally white ship with sails like the sun at midday, with the smoking black image of a moth on the sails.

Attempts to fight back fail entirely, with not a single projectile ever having any effect, leaving nary a scratch on her divinely pristine hull.

Efforts to reach the ship and board it have turned up failures on all counts, but technology advancing has led to a discovery. The ship, despite lacking a crew or captain, still moves, both as a whole and as individual parts, as if still being operated by her old crew...

The ghostly patterns they must have followed for all those years branded into the ship's habits as much as the image of the moth on her sails...

#writeblr #relan #literature #fiction #writing #fantasy #pirate #ship

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whimsicalcotton · 4 months

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I think that telling people you have a boarding school werewolf polycule and sharing nothing else about them constitutes a federal crime. If you check. If you cared.

asfhdgfgsj okay sorry in advance for the long post but. they're my homemade red/blue and pink/purple gays,, here's some quick scribbles

they're very very self-indulgent and based off of both a bunch of my favorite yuri manga tropes & archetypes (sometimes i call them anokiss with werewolves) and also,, songs. ofc

Nat, the pink one, is human and she's the popular girl/Girl Who Knows A Little Too Much and is based mostly on Undone by Greta Isaac

Misty, the purple one, is a werewolf who does not hide it whatsoever and somehow no one suspects it & is the jock/cheerful rascal with a heart of gold kinda type. based mostly on Coexist by Wild Party

Timber, the red one, is a werewolf who tries really hard to hide it & is the Overworked Overachiever/shy awkward protag type. based mostly on Saccharine by Jazmin Bean

Dani, the blue one, is human and they're the Carefree Genius/unintentional prince type and is based mostly on Jason by BONNIE PARKER

everything takes place in another fav trope, the mysterious slightly nonsensical boarding school full of shameless gay activity, and uses what i remember of Wolves Of Mercy Falls rules where the werewolves are just. Living As Normal Ass Wolves for a few months every year (starts at first snowfall and they don't turn back until spring)

Nat and Misty are the school's Intimidating Semi-Delinquent Power Couple but really they're just goofballs off doing their own thing/trying their best to deal with the various Problems that arise w having a werewolf gf.

Timber and Dani are roommates (oh my god they were roommates) and have a horrid will-they won't-they, hardcore pining + never saying anything, category 5 Situationship going on bc neither of them have the balls to ask the other out. they Also have a whole ordeal happening with Timber trying (and failing) to hide the lycanthropy from Dani which ultimately culminates in Dani witnessing Timber wolfing out first hand (a wee bit traumatizing for both parties) and then just having to sit around going ''hey. what the Fuck'' all winter until Timber comes back <3 they yearn and pine and suffer your honor <3

Eventually they all cross paths due to the aforementioned Werewolf Problems and become a big messy wonderful stupid semi-unofficial polycule that effortlessly and painfully blends the lines between romantic&platonic until it becomes a secret third thing. bc i said so <3

also here are some older bonus doodles of Timber&Misty as wolves bc i love them + random old alignment chart for Extra Flavor

thanks for coming to my tedtalk

#sorry i am just foaming at the mouth super normally over the opportunity to yak about my ocs lol. thank u ^^#nova scribbles #timber + dani tag

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perkynurples · 1 year

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Sky's The Limit TEASER

This is the teaser for my first ever short story! I'm literally vibrating with excitement to finally be able to share it with all of you. The rest of the story will be available to read for the general public in due course, but if you're dying for more RIGHT NOW, you can read it over at my Patreon!

“Kippling! KIPPLING!”

There’s several ways one might react to their name being hollered at the top of someone’s lungs, but what your body usually resorts to, in blind shock more so than anything else, is to follow the noise - and so the poor Weathermage’s unsteady feet carry him above deck before the rest of him can protest that course of action.

It’s not a terribly wise one, after all - the storm currently raging everywhere around them is of the rather violent variety, rain and wind whipping the ship’s hull with unceasing intensity, tossing her about like a piece of driftwood, at the mercy of the currents... And the currents currently spell nothing but disaster.

“Do you fucking mind doing your job?!” The Captain hollers, cutting an impressive, stern figure at the helm, tall and broad and solid against the tar-black sky for about the span of one second, before another tremor seizes the deck, and he, alongside everyone else on board, almost topples over the railing.

“Right now!”

And so Ansel Kippling, freshly certified Weathermage aboard his very first officially assigned cloud cruiser, does his level best - it’s just that his best is unfortunately a teensy bit underwhelming.

Oh, he’s practiced enough, he was even lucky to set foot on a ship several times before the real thing came about, not a given for everybody in his line of study, but it’s one thing, anticipating what the weather will do in controlled conditions, with much more experienced mages on board ready to step in if - when - things go awry...

And a whole ‘nother, facing off a storm nobody prepared him for, nobody conjured up to test him, a storm he barely even saw coming, if he’s being honest.

Hiding within the belly of the ship studying and taking notes, when he should have in fact been on board reading weather patterns for the past, oh, couple of hours, certainly didn’t help, but what’s done is done, he supposes.

All that he can do right now, is, against all odds, his actual job.

He closes his eyes. In theory, he's capable of concentrating better that way, reaching out and feeling the weather around him, as well as the ebb and flow of magic emanating from the nearest Source at his disposal... In theory.

In practice, nearly all his senses are assaulted at once - the ice cold shards of rain halfway to freezing hitting his face, the roar of thunder, the smell of lightning like copper coins, and the pull; the pull of the magic itself, emanating from the Source closest to him, which in this case would be the ship herself, and her heart of pure energy captured only as if through sheer dumb luck, how do they keep these things afloat in one steady direction when all they want to do is follow the wind...

He staggers on his feet, then steadies. Time slows down around him. He recalls his training.

It’s an almost physical strain on every single muscle in his body, reaching out for the Source and attempting to steal some of its energy for himself - your job as a Weathermage is, first and foremost, to be one with the ship. To keep her alive, and she will provide you with power in return...

Gods, but it’s so much easier doing this when his feet are touching solid ground.

“Keep her steady!” Ansel hears the Captain’s voice, as if from a great distance, and he really, really wants to tell him to shut up, but he doesn’t have any strength left in him to do that, not when he finally manages to connect - timber creaks and moans as he succeeds at capturing one gust of wind, then two, then half a dozen...

It’s like weaving a tapestry, and despite the elements’ incredible strength, or really precisely because of it, it has to be done slow - this sail meticulously nudged this way, that sail gently pulled back-

“Could you please stop messing with the rigging while I’m working?!”

His voice isn’t his own for a brief moment out of time, coming out rougher, more demanding than it’s ever been, and his eyes fly open to all the proof he needs that he hasn’t found his place here yet - the Captain doesn’t trust him in the least, his people in the ratlines and all the way up the masts, working the sails as they see fit, which really, really defeats the purpose of him even trying at all...

What also defeats said purpose, is him plummeting to his death when his foot slips on a wet plank, but that is fortunately prevented by a strong hand getting a firm grip on his shoulder, steadying him - somehow, even with the rain pummeling them left and right, the Captain still manages to look like that, features like cut marble, hair whipping about his face, like one of those godforsaken paintings in all of Ansel’s godforsaken books...

“Just give us steady wind!” The man hollers in his face, effectively shattering all illusions. “We’ll handle the rest! Do your job!”

And so Ansel does his job. He knows he is theoretically capable of more, can feel it in the wind he only adjusts just so while the crew do their part, can feel it in the droplets of rain already finding their way underneath the neckline of his robe, shit, he forgot a drying charm again-

All things considered, he could be a pretty decent Weathermage, if someone just gave him the time and space to get his mind in order, just a little bit.

But as things stand, he’s running short on both counts there.

‘Piss-poor job’ and ‘Congrats on not getting us all killed’ are his only bits of praise after they’re out of the worst of it, the ship making it out of the roughest of the storm clouds, and finding a comparably clearer patch of sky - she sways in a downward arc so deep it makes Ansel’s stomach flutter, and then the rain is suddenly nothing more than a pitter-patter, the big nasty dark mounds above them now, the cloud cruiser actually, finally, cruising.

Almost sure his knees won’t buckle under him now, Ansel makes it to the railing, and looks down, where the roofs of the hamlets along the main stretch of The Ribbon resemble beads scattered around the aptly named trading route, snaking its way through the countryside this way and that until it disappears in a distant fog, that’s how high up in the sky the ship’s still sailing...

At least he can see solid ground - not for the first time and certainly not for the last, he thinks of his counterparts serving on sea-bound ships, and resolves that he still has no earthly idea how they do what they do, with all that water underneath them.

“Hey. That was pretty good.”

This voice doesn’t immediately seek to disparage him, and he relaxes a little bit - it’s the First Mate, in all her tiny glory, jumping off the ropes right next to him, always surprisingly nice to Ansel where no one else seems to be even distantly familiar with the concept.

“Yeah, right,” he huffs, raking his hand through his hair, finding it miserably drenched. “Not like I did much.”

“You did enough,” she winks at him, then follows his line of sight towards the helm, where the Captain is currently conversing with his officers. “Don’t worry about him. He’s just used to doing everything his way. He doesn’t like deferring to anyone, much less... you know.”

“I know,” Ansel pouts, and she attempts to appear at least a little bit apologetic - which, on her sharp little Arra face, all big eyes and now-damp crown of crimson feathers, looks more like she’s teasing him still.

“I just mean he’ll get used to you. He doesn’t have a choice.”

“Even better. Thanks, Dee.”

“That’s First Mate Dae-Rin to you, chump,” she frowns at him, then giggles, slapping his arm. “Come on. Let’s get dry-”

“Kippling! With me!”

“Rats,” Dee snorts, while Ansel pales - the Captain’s voice booms above everyone and everything else, and already he can see other sailors side-eyeing him, sniggering to themselves.

“Come on, then,” the First Mate ushers him on with as much compassion as she can probably muster.

And so he goes.

“Captain,” he nods after they’ve climbed up to the helm, the small deck a bit overcrowded now, the man’s stern glare far too close for comfort.

“I thought that went pretty well,” Dae-Rin declares cheerfully, and the Captain rolls his eyes.

“It went shit. Don’t cover for him, Dee. You.”

“Yes,” Ansel sighs, sudden exhaustion weighing down his bones - not to mention the rather pressing need for a dry change of clothes.

“What the hell was that, huh?” The Captain demands - up close, Ansel is reminded that he probably isn’t that much older than him, a couple years at best, which is fascinating in and of itself, but the firm set of his jaw and the perpetual frown overshadowing his frankly rather striking almond-shaped eyes, not to mention the slightly intimidating scar bisecting one entire half of his face from brow to cheek, all make him look much older, and much more, uh... unapproachable, for the lack of a better word.

“I thought I was just doing my job,” Ansel replies, his legs a bit wobbly now, but not with nerves, not anymore - asking for so much magic so quickly has left him a bit drained, as it always does, his heart beating slower, his very muscles worn out.

“You and I must have very different ideas of what your job entails, then,” the Captain snarls. “You do not tell my people how to work their goddamn sails.”

“Well, to be fair,” Ansel gestures, feeling just lightheaded enough to be stupid enough to talk to the man this way, “if your people actually let me steer the ship the way I was supposed to, we could have saved everyone a lot of legwork...”

Next to him, Dee snorts discreetly, or maybe that’s just Ansel’s mind playing tricks on him - he is pretty dizzy at this point.

“You can’t even tell a storm is coming, and you want me to leave you in control of my ship?” The Captain says deceptively quietly, but no less sharply. “Do you know why you’re even aboard?”

“Kazan, come on...” the First Mate butts in gently, but the Captain ignores her.

“It’s because I’m required by law to have a blasted Weathermage on my crew. Doesn’t mean I have to listen to you.”

Ansel wants to say something constructive, smart even, he really really does, but his words mostly fail him, and what actually comes out, is a very irreverent: “What happened to the last one, if you don’t mind me asking? The poor sod who had the misfortune of working for you before me?”

“Oh boy,” Dee winces, and Ansel immediately knows he’s misstepped - the storm returns, in the ferocity of the Captain’s glare, and it doesn’t set Ansel ablaze where he stands only because Dae-Rin saves him in that very moment, physically pulling him away.

He stumbles after her, completely at her mercy now because his feet are really starting to betray him, until she pushes him below deck and into his cabin.

“Kiddo, you’ve got a death wish,” Dee announces the second they’re alone, and Ansel, feeling all his leftover energy swiftly deserting him, can do nothing but agree silently, half sitting, half collapsing into his cot.

“If you want to stay alive a day longer on this ship, you do not mention the previous Weathermage, you hear?” The First Mate continues, perching close to him, her large round eyes gleaming in what little light makes it into the tiny cabin - Ansel frowns at her, trying to concentrate, and she takes it to be a sign of defiance, slapping his arm. “I’m serious! The Captain isn’t a bad person, but he’s got his... stuff, alright? Baggage.”

“Don’t we all,” Ansel sighs, currently trying to gauge if he even has enough magic left within him to charm himself dry before he drifts off to sleep.

“Yeah. We do. And just as yours isn’t my business, you leave his alone, yeah? You’ll find your place here, if you just keep your head down and do your job properly. Kazan recognizes a hard worker.”

“Don’t know that I want to,” Ansel mumbles, hugging his arms around his torso tight, feeling the tremors of a proper chill coming, the result of ‘oh I really should have worn my warmer clothes’. “Find my place here.”

She watches him mutely for a moment, her head inclined to the side at an angle only the bird people are really capable of, before sighing so heavily it’s as if she’s suddenly decades older.

“Right. Because you have so many other cloud cruisers to choose from right now. Because the Captain has a dozen other Weathermages lining up to work for him...”

“What?” Ansel perks up a little bit at the distant implications of that last sentence.

“Nothing. Baggage, remember? At the end of the day, neither of you really has a choice. And if that ain’t why we’re all up here in the first place...”

He wants to say some more, but the chills seize him then, so powerfully they make his teeth rattle, and she rolls her eyes at that display of human weakness - the Arra simply don’t get cold. Something to do with being half bird, or what have you.

“Unbelievable,” she judges him. “Get changed, get a cup of hot raftak from the cook, I’m sure he’s already got it boiling. Weather should hold for now, so if you do make it above deck again, just try and avoid making the Captain too angry...”

And really, Ansel absolutely plans on doing all of that, but by the time he’s managed to change, and get warm, he’s also succeeded at becoming so thoroughly sleepy that when he weighs the pros and cons of staying awake just to feel the Captain’s wrath, and the crew’s ire, the only logical conclusion is to give in, and fall asleep.

He dreams of the Academy, because when does he ever not, when do his dreams ever offer him peace - he wakes up in what looks to be the middle of the night, a desperate apology to all his teachers of old still on his lips, and finds that he’s not doing much better by way of getting warm. He wraps his blanket around his shoulders like a cloak, and stands up, sending light into the nearest lantern - as if offended at being disturbed for such a menial task, the ship creaks and groans under his feet, and he almost apologizes to her out loud.

Instead of doing that, he makes his way over to his desk, and considers what Dae-Rin told him, or didn’t tell him. The Weathermage who worked here before him must have left a while ago, or that’s what he’s surmised so far, based on how understocked this cabin is - no notes on the ship’s performance were left behind, no ledgers, nothing to assist him in getting to know the vessel...

Lumm’s sakes, if he hadn’t brought his own pen and paper, he would be carving his findings into the ship’s very timber by now.

His fingers a bit like icicles still, he unwraps the binding of his large leather notebook, and sets about writing down the misery that was today’s attempt at steering the ship - if he closes his eyes, he can still feel her reluctance, the sluggishness with which she lent him her magic.

He can’t really blame her for that, though - he’s studied long and hard enough to know that the fault is always, always with him, not the Source... And what a Source she is. Her name is The Nova, and she’s one of the Emperor’s cloud cruisers, one of the older ones, built way before Ansel even stepped foot in the Academy hoping he might see the likes of her one day - three masts on her, steering sails at her sides sharp as daggers, long, sleek hull meant to not only withstand, but outrun the elements, and her core...

Her core can hold more magic than Ansel could ever hope to use up in one trip, and when they next stop at a proper Source to refuel, it will be embarrassing to watch just how little extra she’ll need, how little she actually let him use.

“You deserve much better than me,” he mutters, scribbling down letter after letter, and a series of crackles reverberates in the walls, as if she’s laughing at him.

As if she agrees.

“I don’t have time for this, Dee. I need someone who can actually handle the ship.”

“Oh, give me a break. We’re not at war anymore. What you need to do is relax, and let the poor kid do his job.”

“As if he’s any good at it,” Kazan huffs. “The damn ship won’t even let him touch her.”

“Wonder why that is,” Dee says meaningfully, and when he glares at her, she only shrugs. “All I’m saying is, maybe if we at least tried writing to Wren-”

“We are not writing to Wren. We’re not even saying her name out loud on this ship ever again. She’s gone, and that’s that. Her loss, remember?”

Dee is now looking at him almost like she pities him, and it makes his blood boil.

“Don’t. She made her choice. She thought she could take Nova away from me, and look where that got her. Never again, Dee. I’d much rather suffer an incompetent Weathermage who’s, I don’t know, barely along for the ride, than... that. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” she sighs. “Just give him a chance, yeah? He might not be as useless as he looks. I feel it in my-”

“If you say in my bones, I swear to god,” he cuts her off. “Your bones are hollow, Dae-Rin. I don’t trust ‘em.”

“Don’t be a dick,” she tells him fondly, patting his shoulder as she leaves him, and he almost, almost turns right back around to apologize to her, but then...

But then, if anyone knows it’s not needed, it’s his good-for-nothing First Mate, who’s also, by some trick of the fates, actually his best friend. His only friend, probably.

It’s not his fault that nobody taught that Weathermage what it’s like on an actual ship, though - Kazan doesn’t know what the lessons look like at that damn Academy these days, but they clearly don’t cover what it’s like to be a part of a living, breathing crew. What it’s like to follow orders, and what happens if you don’t.

Could you please stop messing with the rigging while I’m working...? For a second there, Kazan could swear it was Wren back on board, ordering everyone around like she was the only one in charge, the ship happy to bend to her every whim, as was her crew, as... As was Kazan himself...

But that was then, and this is now - now he’s got some jumped up, skinny little Academy kid on his hands in her stead, and the irony of it all is enough to bring him to his knees, on a bad day.

But without a Weathermage, The Nova doesn’t fly, and without her, Kazan would truly be lost.

He can play nice. He thinks. Correction, he can play nice long enough for them to follow through on their current orders, and then, when the Emperor is oh-so-happy with his exemplary service, Kazan will be able to officially request a proper Weathermage. No harm done to the current one, of course, Kazan was more than happy to show him the ropes, it’s just that he’s not a good fit for the ship, surely you understand, sir...

There. Just gotta weather it a while longer, pun absolutely intended.

First, they have to handle Ammar, though. If it were up to him, he’d never set foot on solid ground except to restock here and there, but it’s where their next orders are, and their next paycheck alongside them...

It’s just that out of all the ports in Wallastera, Ammar stinks the most.

Sitting on the confluence of three different trading rivers, one of them leading all the way to the scorched dirt of S’surkada, makes it an indisputably important trading hub, but it also makes it smell of fish, day in and day out. It doesn’t help that the cruiser port itself is so uncharacteristically low to the ground that the ship risks cracking her hull on the town’s rooftops just approaching it, and people down there are already pointing and talking, talking and pointing.

Been a while since a cloud cruiser was last seen here, Kazan knows, and it’ll only make his job that much more difficult.

“Remember, we’re not selling anything, we’re not buying anything, and we’re definitely not hiring.” He addresses his crew quickly and sternly, all of them, unlike him, eager to get off board for a precious few hours, and receives a chorus of assent for his troubles. He can see the absence of the Weathermage among his people, and although he can’t altogether blame him, it still only adds to his annoyance.

“Dae-Rin has got your shifts,” he sighs, more than happy to hand the word over to his First Mate. “ You know the drill - we leave at sundown, that’s less than eight hours from now. Be here, behave, or we leave you behind.”

“Any chance of some proper shore leave any time soon, Cap’n?” A lone voice hollers from the crowd, and Kazan doesn’t have to look too hard to recognize who it belongs to.

“When our orders allow for it, yeah,” he says casually, adding ever so bitterly: “Don’t know what you’re getting so worked up about anyway, Erik. We all know Ammar doesn’t have any good whore houses.”

Crude but effective, the remark sends the crew cackling, many of them slapping the incorrigible loverboy in question on the shoulder, and it’s enough - enough for now. They like Kazan well enough, but it’ll be short-lived if ever he stops keeping them in check, ever stops challenging them.

That’s what you get, though, for forcing a bunch of pirates to turn into soldiers.

Still, serving on a cloud cruiser is a point of pride for any sailor, no matter their past, especially if you’re allowed to boast about it over a tankard of something strong every now and then, and so he’s reasonably sure that he won’t be losing any people today.

“Oh, is this it? Are we going?”

Certain other members of his crew, though, Kazan could easily see himself saying goodbye to.

“Nice of you to show up,” he grunts, barely accosting the Weathermage with a fleeting glance before taking off, not actually caring if the man follows. He shoots a look Dae-Rin’s way, his First Mate currently in charge of the main deck, and could swear he sees her mouth a pointed ‘Play nice’.

“In my defense,” the mage hurries to say, somehow matching pace with Kazan almost effortlessly, even though he does have trot to keep up, “you didn’t actually notify me we were about to go anywhere.”

“My mistake,” Kazan says drily, bracing himself for the very real impact of making it off the bridge connecting Nova’s deck with solid ground, and suddenly becoming a part of the crowd.

“I’m not that stupid, you know!” The Weathermage proclaims, all but pouts at Kazan. “And you actually do need me by your side in the blasted Emperor’s Office- oh, excuse me-”

Clearly much less proficient at navigating the aforementioned crowds, Kippling has succeeded at colliding with about half a dozen people in the span of the blink of an eye, and Kazan finally takes pity on him, if only to stop him from making fools out of them both, and grabs his elbow to steady him.

“Could have fooled me,” he growls. “That guy almost had your purse.”

“Wha-” The mage huffs, turning back around to look at the foiled robber, long since seamlessly disappeared into the mass of people.

“Yeah. You need me more than I need you, looks like.” Kazan allows himself that, just a bit of teasing, before he’s pulling the short sprout of a man by his elbow in their predestined direction. “When we get to the Office, don’t say a word. Seriously, just stand there and look the part. They’ve got your papers, same way they’ve got mine, and once they see we’re both who we say we are, they’ll lose interest in you.”

“Why, uh... Why wouldn’t we be who we say we are?” Kippling wonders, and Kazan almost, almost leaves him to be devoured by the streets right there and then.

Cushy life at the Academy up until now, he has to remind himself. Petty crime never makes it past those marble walls.

“Just smile and nod,” Kazan almost pleads with him. “You can do that, yeah? No matter what the new job turns out to be, do not comment. Keep your little opinions to yourself.”

“Oh, I’ve had practice, believe me,” the mage utters, and when Kazan shoots him a scorching glare, he has the gall to look a picture of perfect innocence.

“Don’t test me. I can still leave you behind right here.”

“I’d like to see you explain that one,” Kippling counters breezily.

“I have my ways,” Kazan growls.

“Ooh, well color me terrified.”

“I said not to test me. You’re testing me right now.”

“Oh please. I haven’t even started testing you, believe me, you’ll know-”

“Alright, that’s it.” It’s far too easy, reaching forth and grabbing the little whelp until he doesn’t have a choice but to stop, Hey!, the two of them ending up chest to chest as the crowd parts around them like a river around a rock.

“Don’t mistake me for someone who has a sense of humor about this shit,” Kazan says firmly, his earlier mood for teasing dead and gone now. “You have one job here, and you can’t even do that right. I told you when we picked you up that you needed to prove yourself, otherwise you had no place in my crew, and remind me how long ago that was?”

The mage only stares, eyes damnably huge. Kazan won’t be falling for that ever again.

“It’s been weeks. Weeks, Kippling, and it doesn’t look to me like you’ve proven yourself just yet. Doesn’t look like you’ve been doing much of anything, actually. And I don’t have enough room on my ship for dead weight.”

He knows that last blow landed before he even really finishes the sentence - remarkably composed up until then for someone so squirrely in general, the Weathermage flinches at that final sentence, and his eyes (still so huge, still so blue, damn him) glaze over with... oh, great, now Kazan has gone and reduced yet another person to tears. Serves him right.

Deep down, he wishes the man would fight him, argue with him, do anything aside from very clearly swallowing his feelings, his jaw set tighter than Kazan has ever seen it in the aftermath.

“Fine,” he says, voice cold as ice now, looking Kazan up and down with something approaching levels of disdain so piercing it almost gives him pause. “Good luck finding a new Weathermage, then.”

And he walks- no, runs away, quick as the wind he’s so horrible at conjuring, and leaves Kazan standing there all alone.

“Fuck,” he utters, pinching the bridge of his nose, but doesn’t, against what the sensible part of him is telling him to do, break into a run to go catch the man and bring him back.

All that he said was right - he doesn’t have the time or space to mollycoddle this kid, and if this is how they part ways, then, well, he’s just going to have to come up with an acceptable explanation for the Emperor’s Office as to why he’s going to be requesting a new Weathermage much sooner than anticipated, again.

At last, he takes off in the opposite direction than Kippling bolted in, towards the Office, towards yet another boring job, and all the way, he tries and largely fails to silence the little voice in his head that tells him in no uncertain terms that maybe he should have tried a bit harder this time.

Oh, Dae-Rin is going to have a field day with him when he gets back.

You can read the rest of the story RIGHT HERE.

#short story #sky's the limit #wallastera #patreon #my writing

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