#when he scraps his claws across the stone and they spark

[justmaghookit]

the monster design in Van Helsing 2004 rewired something in my brain because to this day it just fucks SUPREMELY

[theladyofbloodshed]

A Court of Tangled Flames - Chapter 29 (It's Prison time)

The Prison seemed to swallow them whole. The heavy, bone gates closed behind them, sealing them in with a clang. It knew they were there, treading down the ancient pathways. Eris kept a hand resting on his belt in easy reach of the sword. He kept another arm around Nesta to ensure she stayed close. Although his wife had increased her training with him, and physical training with Niamh, in recent days, he was never one to be complacent with her wellbeing. Especially not in this festering pit.  

‘If it’s here, it will be warded,’ warned Cassian. His eyes flicked to them, landing on the way Nesta leaned into Eris’ body. He turned away. ‘We’ll just talk a wander, see if anything calls to you. In and out.’

In a low voice, he added, ‘Guard your words. The inmates will trade scraps of information for anything.’

Nesta said nothing, only gave a tight nod to signal that the words had even registered with her.

The sconces came to life as they walked. It cast flickering yellow light onto the path. The fire called to Eris, recognising him as one who wielded flame. Perhaps an ancestor had been tasked with creating light in this abomination. Eris had his theories about the place. He’d been enthralled with it since he was a boy when Maceo had told his class of dutiful, young students that such a place existed. They had all been entranced by the magic of the place – an ancient Prison that had seemingly always existed. New cells appeared by themselves, it was said. The Prison had ears and eyes and could whisper into the void. The sentries were nothing more than shadows that took refuge within the walls, yet they held every inmate in place through some unknown power. If Eris wasn’t so worried for Nesta, he’d have been giddy with excitement – and already could not wait to tell Maceo what he had seen.

‘This is Blue Annis. She was a terror to behold. She had cobalt skin and iron claws that shredded through my chest. Would have killed me if Azriel hadn’t intervened.’

Shame, Eris wanted to say. By an intervention of the Mother, he managed to hold his tongue.

Nesta gave nothing, no concern or surprise, just kept shuffling along with her brows pressing together. Faintly, Eris could make out soft noises whispering through the rock. He could have sworn nails scraped against the door. He spared a glance to the Illyrian that had imprisoned the creature; even his face had paled as he guided them on with a sweep of his hand.  

They came across another cell with foreign markings above the sealed door. The air here was warm and dry with a faint scent of salt.

‘The seven-headed Lubia,’ announced Cassian. ‘She surfaced from caves of the deep ocean to prey on girls. She’d drag them into the water to drown them. Lubia ate them quicker than Blue Annis at least.’

They passed another which Cassian said belonged to Bara Iaga, another monster that enjoyed seducing males then unhinging her jaw to devour them whole. Eris had been about to tell him to stop trying to scare Nesta when she spoke of her own accord.

‘Is everything in here a female?’ Her lip curled with disdain.  

‘Not everything.’

She raised her brows. ‘And which cell did you think of putting me in when I squandered your high lord’s money?’

Eris tightened his hold on Nesta to guide her a couple of paces away from Cassian. The tunnel wasn’t wide enough to allow for much distance between the three of them, not when Cassian was the size of a mountain and the talons of his wings scraped against the dark stone. There had been a worry in the back of Eris’ mind that the lure of the bond might spark desire between the two of them. What Eris hadn’t anticipated was that when Nesta was in Cassian’s proximity, she might want to rip his throat out like the creatures he had imprisoned here.

‘We would never put you here.’

‘Oh, no. Just lock me in a house instead.’

‘It was for-’

‘No. Not for my own good. Don’t you dare tell me it was for my own good. I knew what was for my own good. I knew the things I did were not good for me. I’m not a fucking idiot, Cassian. I knew I was hurting myself, but I hated myself so much that I did not care – and what I needed was somebody to be patient with me. I needed somebody to hold my hand through the storm. Not somebody who made me hate myself more.’

‘Nesta,’ Eris warned, cutting in before either of them could say anything else.

He placed his hands on her trembling shoulders, turning her away from Cassian to face him. Wrath swirled in her eyes like a tempest that Cassian wouldn’t be able to outrun. Eris cupped her face, holding her still, even if she appeared as if she wanted to strike out at him next because she was hurting. And that was what Nesta did when she hurt. She struck out at anything that was close so the pain was shared because she couldn’t bear to be alone with her agony.

Eventually, her harsh breathing calmed and she turned her eyes to the ground, but Eris kept on holding onto her.

‘These are words that deserve to be known. I’m not trying to hide them or stop you from expressing your pain – but we must be cautious about our surroundings.’

Eris would have sorely enjoyed watching Nesta give Cassian the verbal lashing of his life, perhaps even unleash her beautiful fire on him, but not in the Prison. It gave too much information to monsters who’d use it to hurt her. One day though, Nesta would have that opportunity to air her grievances with the Night Court. He would stand at her side.

Nesta’s hand gripped his tightly as they continued walking past the dozens of cells on the spiralling path downwards. She had every right to be hurt. Life had never been fair to her. Eris would go through hell for her, bleed for her, but he’d remove her fingers from the blade too to stop her from using it. Whether it was waging war or brokering for peace, Eris would do it all for her. 

In a terse silence, they continued their descent. The air grew heavier, practically pressing down on their bodies. Only the soft scuff of their boots over the stone filled the silence. Eris could not tear his eyes away from Nesta. He knew his wife well enough to notice her little tells. Her brows pinched occasionally or her lips parted briefly as she concentrated.

‘What are you listening to?’

She gave him a surprised look. ‘You can’t hear it?’

Cassian’s jaw tensed as Nesta pressed forwards down a tunnel with purpose. The way she moved suggested to Eris that she knew exactly where she was going, and that worried him. She came to a stop before an iron door with a single rune etched into it. Eris glanced to Cassian who stared with horror at whatever foul beast lay behind it.

But it wasn’t the door that Nesta reached for. Her fingers touched the bald stone next to it. She gave a gasp then her hand sunk through the stone as if it was an illusion.

Eris yanked her back, heart in his mouth. ‘Don’t do that!’

‘It’s there. It told me.’

‘What told you?’ Cassian pressed, eyes going wide.

Nesta shook her head as if trying to clear it. ‘I can’t say.’

When Eris tried to follow his wife’s movements, he was met only with stone. It was impenetrable to either male, no matter what they tried.

‘This is a bad idea. You are not going through those wards.’

At Cassian’s command, Nesta’s nostrils had flared. She turned to Eris, expecting him to say the opposite to prove Cassian wrong, but Eris couldn’t. It was not about Cassian’s control now. He knew this Prison best out of the three. Anything could be luring Nesta to it. There were enough nefarious creatures here that it wouldn’t have surprised Eris if one of them was calling to Nesta. Her sinking into wards that nobody had discovered before was a recipe for disaster. What if they couldn’t get her back out?

‘It’s there. I can feel it.’

‘Good. Then we leave it there,’ replied Cassian, throwing up his hands.

There was nothing more stubborn than a female who knew she was right. Nesta had folded her arms across her chest, refused to move a step unless she could pass through the stone and examine what lay beyond it. Eris had snagged his fingers into her belt, just in case she tried to give him the slip. The Illyrian’s siphons were pulsing with red light.

‘We’re at an impasse.’

‘No, we’re not. It is beyond those wards. I can take care of myself. Let me do this.’

The battle was lost. He had to trust his wife, trust she could look after herself. Eris pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. ‘If a single hair is out of place, I will kill everything in this Prison.’

‘I expect nothing less.’

With muted horror, Cassian and Eris stood as Nesta passed through the stone as if she was moving through water. A few moments later, she re-emerged to announce that there were no monsters then she was gone once more.  

‘How could you let her go there?’

Every moment in the Illyrian’s company had Eris wanting to punch him squarely in the jaw a little more. How had Nesta put up with him for so long? Then again, they locked her in a house so she couldn’t escape him.

‘My wife is her own person. I’m not her keeper.’

‘You have no idea what might happen to her in there.’

Eris blinked. ‘Isn’t this the same male who left her alone in the Bog of Oorid with no training?’

‘That was different,’ he spat.

The lies that the Night Court told themselves to soothe their conscience was truly a wonder to behold. Eris wondered if they earnestly believed the drivel that they spouted. He supposed if they said it enough times, they would eventually take it for fact.

‘You shouldn’t have brought her to this place. It’s too dangerous for somebody like her. She shouldn’t be anywhere near your court. Nesta belongs with her sisters. She belongs in the Night Court. She belongs-’

‘If you say “with me”, I will run you through with her blade. If I was your high lord, I’d be concerned whether you had taken too many blows to the head – or if your skull is so thick that you cannot comprehend that where Nesta belongs is exactly where she chooses to be.’

Eris let each word land, harder than the last. His tone was even. Sometimes it was more effective to keep a measured tone rather than rage; he’d learnt that enough times from Beron. ‘Nesta is not yours. Don’t think because there’s a silly, little bond connecting you that it gives you any sort of ownership over her.’

Cassian snorted. ‘But as your wife, she’s your possession now?’

‘Not in the slightest. Nesta chose to be my wife. Chose to be my lover.’

That one wounded him. Eris saw the flash of a grimace on Cassian’s face.

‘I bet you fucking love getting one back over me and Mor.’

Eris fixed him with a stare then looked away, disinterested. ‘When I’m with wife, I don’t think of you at all.’

The general’s face was darkened by shadow. ‘She is my mate. It is a Cauldron-blessed bond.’

Maybe.

‘The Cauldron hates Nesta, doesn’t it? You are not a blessing, Cassian. Only a curse.’

The brute’s hand went the hilt of Ataraxia, but before he could react, a shudder was felt through the stone Prison. Eris braced a hand on the wall to steady his quaking legs.

Then they heard a shrieking. Not Nesta. Something other.

***

The metal sconces hammered into the wall did not illuminate as they had in the main Prison. Cautiously, Nesta allowed the beast from its cage so crisp, silver light danced in the torches. Her eyes adjusted quickly.

She was in a circular chamber. The walls were lined with seven arches that were painted white and decadently carved. The room was so at odds with the rest of the Prison. Nesta glanced down to the floor; it was pale blue, almost grey in colour but there were also raised, black symbols spiralling the way to the centre. And in its centre was the golden Harp. It was a pretty, delicate thing covered in intricate embossing and set with thin, silver strings.

The enchanting music that had been calling to Nesta had ceased since she entered the chamber. It was only now that she registered its absence.

Before Nesta stepped onto one of the markings, she halted. This was Prythian. Ancient Prythian, maybe. Using techniques that Eris had taught her, she let her magic slither across the ground. Some of the symbols seemed to absorb her magic, others were unchanged. That was the path she would take then.  

Swallowing against the dryness in her throat, Nesta took a hesitant step towards one of the markings that her magic hadn’t reacted to. It was similar to wading through mud as deep as her knees. She couldn’t raise her foot, only drag it to the next marking.

Just a test, she told herself. The Harp wouldn’t be so easily taken.

With every step closer to the instrument, movement became more difficult, but she could still breathe, still think. They were only spells to protect the Harp. And Nesta had no plans to use the Harp. Just to keep it safe from Briallyn or Koschei.

The magic seemed to ease out a breath then as if it had recognised Nesta as a protector rather than an enemy. Her path through the etchings became easier until her fingers were poised to touch it. The Harp rested on the heart of an eight-pointed star. Its cardinal points stretched longer than the others.

Her fingers brushed the icy metal. The Harp hummed against her skin, as if it still held its final note, from the last time it had been used-

Fae screamed, pounding on the stone that hadn’t been there a moment before, pleading for their children’s sakes, begging to be let out let out let out-

Nesta had the sensation of falling, tumbling through air and stars and time—

It was a trap, and our people were too blind to see it—

Eons and stars and darkness plunged around her—

The Fae clawed at stone, tearing their nails on rock where there had once been a door. But the way back was now forever sealed, and they begged as they tried to pass their children through the solid wall, if only their children could be spared—

Light flashed, blinding. When it cleared, she stood in a white-stoned palace.

A great hall, where five thrones graced a dais. The sixth throne, in the center, was occupied by a pointy-eared crone. A golden, spiked crown rested on her head, blazing like the hate in her black eyes.

The Fae crone stiffened, blue velvet robes shifting with the movement. Her eyes, clear despite her wrinkled face, sharpened. Right on Nesta.

‘You have the Harp,’ the queen said, voice like crinkling paper. And Nesta knew who she stood frozen before, what crown lay on her thin, white hair. Briallyn’s gnarled fingers curled on the arms of her throne, and her gaze narrowed. The queen smiled, revealing a mouth of half-rotted teeth.

Nesta backed up a step—or tried to. She couldn’t move.

Briallyn’s horrible smile deepened and she said conversationally, ‘My spies have told me who your friends are. The priestess and the broken Illyrian. Such lovely friends.’

Nesta’s blood churned, and she knew her eyes were blazing with her power as she snarled, ‘You come near them and I’ll rip out your throat. I will hunt you down and gut you.’

Briallyn tutted. ‘Such bonds are foolish. As foolish as you still holding on to the Harp, which sings answers to all my questions. I know where you are, Nesta Archeron—'

Darkness erupted. Unmoving, solid darkness, slamming into Nesta as hard as a wall. Her hand wouldn’t dislodge its grip still around the Harp.

Let go, she thought desperately.

As if hearing her plea, the Harp seemed to cling onto her harder.

Let me out, she begged.  

It has been a long while, sister, since I played. I shall need time to remember the right combinations, a beautiful, haughty voice answered, full of music so lovely that it broke her heart to hear it.

The Harp was answering to her.  

The small strings are for games—light movement and leaping—but the longer, the final ones … Such deep wonders and horrors we could strum into being. Such great and monstrous magic I wrought with my last minstrel. Shall I show you?

No. Just open up these wards. Let me out of here.

As you wish. Pluck the first string, then.

Nesta didn’t hesitate as her fingertip curled over the first string, grasping and then releasing it. A musical laugh filled her mind, but the weight lifted. Vanished.

The spells that had been holding her in place – holding her there at that window to the mortal queen – had released. She tossed off her cloak and wrapped the Harp in it so it wouldn’t stick itself to her hands again.

With shaking breaths, Nesta followed her magic back through its chosen path, but it was livelier somehow, bolting towards the walls and fizzling as if it was excited. It had been encouraged by the horrible memory the Harp had shown her. It bolstered against the sides of its cage, wanting to be out, more, more, more.

Nesta pushed against the stone then her body began to slip through it, as easy as breathing.

She’d come out through the wrong wall into an empty cell. There was no light within, but faintly, Nesta could make out the flicker of amber light through the open door.

A cold sensation slithered down her spine.

‘Ah. I see what you hide in that cloak, daughter of the sea. Long have I wondered who would come to claim it. I could hear its music, you know. Its final note, like an echo in the stone, ringing out through eternity. I was surprised to find it down here, hidden beneath the Prison, after all that time.’

It was a male’s voice, cool and cunning, running over her skin like silk in the darkness. Nesta could not make out any figure within the cell. She took a step back, ready to enter the previous chamber, but the wards would not allow her through again.

A mist swirled about her feet, which felt like a cat brushing against her shins.

Nesta unsheathed her dagger. At the sight of it, the mist recoiled. It was sucked away towards the cell door where it writhed and contorted into something solid that bloomed with colour.

A naked, golden-haired male stood before her. His golden skin was sculpted with muscle, like a statue of a God. He was beautiful, so beautiful that Nesta let out a soft breath of air.

‘That is not Narben. What is in your hand, daughter of bone, daughter of blood and the sea?’

Her grip tightened around the handle as she crossed it across her body, ready to strike if the male came closer.

The male sucked in a breath through his nose, letting his eyes close. ‘Not a witch. Not fae. Not truly. Which death-god are you? Who are you beneath the flesh?’

‘I am nobody.’

‘Tell me whose fire burns silver in your gaze.’

‘My own,’ she spat.

A dimple pressed into the male’s cheek as he smiled at Nesta, as if completely enamoured by her answer. ‘I galloped at the head of the Wild Hunt. I summoned the hounds whose baying had the world cowering. Fae and beast bowed before me. Lanthys, they call me.’

Lanthys took a step closer to her and Nesta wished she had never come to this place.

‘I know what you are. Who you are. You are the one the sea, and the wind, and the earth whispered of. You are a female of death and decay and bone and blood.’ His golden eyes closed. ‘Nesta.’

The sound of her name on his lips was like a song. One that was more beautiful than she had ever heard before.

‘You do not even know what you could do. Come. I shall show you.’ He smiled again and it was a warm, loving thing. He reached out a hand for her. ‘Come with me, Queen of Queens, and we shall return what was once lost.’ The words were a lullaby to calm her erratic heart. ‘We shall rebuild what we were before the golden legions of the Fae cast off their chains and overthrew us. We shall resurrect the Wild Hunt and ride rampant through the night. We shall build palaces of ice and flame, palaces of darkness and starlight. Magic shall flow untethered again.’

Nesta could see the portrait Lanthys wove into the air around them. She saw herself on a black throne, a matching crown in her unbound hair. Enormous onyx beasts—scaled, like those she’d seen on the Hewn City’s pillars—lay at the foot of the dais. Ataraxia leaned against her throne, and on her other side … Lanthys sat there, his hand laced through hers, a golden ribbon tying them together. Their kingdom was endless; their palace built of pure magic that lived and thrived around them.

Slowly, Nesta reached out for his hand.

The vision shifted, and they writhed on a great black bed. The golden skin of Lanthys’s back shined as he moved inside her. Soon his seed would take root in her womb and the child she would bear him would rule entire universes—

Lanthys made a choking sound.

The tip of a blade was thrust through his stomach. 

The magic inside of it had turned the blade a scorched copper.

‘Do not touch my wife.’

Eris, bloodied and pale, withdrew the blade then struck once more, hard and sure through Lanthys’ body.

The immortal gargled then spluttered on black blood. It sprayed across Nesta’s face, so close she had been standing to him, poised to take his hand into oblivion. Her hand went to her abdomen that she had just seen swollen with a child. Lanthys’ child. He continued to writhe on the floor, torn between a male and smoke, until only ash remained.

Eris hauled Nesta to him with one arm. His other still held the sword that was black with Lanthys’ blood. ‘Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?’

‘No. I. I think I opened all of the wards. I opened his cell.’

‘Yeah, you opened every cell on the lower levels, Nes,’ puffed Cassian from outside of the cell. He also had blood on his cheek, but it was a strange, iridescent green.

‘We’ve killed three. But another eight are still loose.’

‘Eight. Can’t we get help?’

Cassian shook his head. The Prison was designed that way. It was an oubliette where monsters were sent to be forgotten about. And Nesta had let them out of their cage.

She pressed her forehead to the stone, whispered to it for help, whispered to those she saw in her vision who were trapped here to help in some way.

‘I’ll go first. Nesta behind me. Eris at the rear.’

Cassian wasted no time in ploughing forwards. All three of them kept their weapons readied. With Cassian’s wings in her face, Nesta had nothing to look upon so her efforts were spent coaxing her magic back inside of its cage. It had never deliberately tried to hurt her before, but now it had taken on a different character entirely. It wanted to be used. Wanted to cause destruction. And it was growing cross with Nesta that she wasn’t unleashing it. But she couldn’t let it out here when Eris and Cassian were so close to her.

‘Stop,’ Cassian murmured. She didn’t hear it in time and shuffled squarely into a wing, stinging her cheek.

The comforting weight of Eris’ hand against the small of her back stopped her from swearing at Cassian.

The Illyrian peered over an edge then nodded his chin to Eris. Before she could even blink, a tidal wave of flame scorched the sheer drop. There was a strange, shrieking then a sound like a pot boiling. Eris touched her shoulder to signal that they needed to move again.

‘Four,’ Cassian murmured.

Her terror dragged her down into a pit of despair. If there hadn’t been a male leading the way, and another encouraging her to continue, she might have given up. She tried to think of good things, of Cotton-tail bounding around the room and leaping over Safera, of Gwyn and Emerie laughing together, of Feyre holding her child, but the images turned to ashes. She saw Cotton-tail’s neck snapped by Beron’s hands, Briallyn coming for her friends, Feyre dying with the babe still in her womb.

‘Something’s here,’ said Eris. ‘It’s scraping at my mental shields.’

‘Nesta, run.’

The words barely registered then a wing clipped her again as Cassian turned, she felt his rough hand shove her forwards. There was a flash of light as Eris’ fire scoured the wall. Red light blasted the other side, shaking the whole Prison. She ran. She kept running and then, in her fear, her magic leaked out. Silver flames spilt across the floor, up the walls, across the arched ceiling threatening to devour anything that stepped into its unrelenting path.

‘Stop,’ she begged of it. ‘ Please stop.’

Over the roar of her magic, she could make out the clang of a sword, the crackle of Eris’ flames, the rumble deep behind her as both males used their power against whatever monster had been released by her.

Eventually, her flames subsided. Enough had been spent that her magic had grown weary and slunk back inside of its cage willingly to rest. Nesta fell to her knees, tearing the cloth on the rough stone.

‘Nesta?’

Blue light filtered down the tunnel. She let out a sob of relief as Azriel hauled her to her feet then checked her over quickly for injuries.

‘You came.’

‘The sentries told…’ His voice trailed off as the shadowsinger heard the cacophony from the lower levels. ‘Stay here.’

‘Don’t leave me.’

‘Nesta, stay here.’

Her breaths came in cold shards as Nesta remained with her back pressed against the stone. The Harp was still bundled under her arm, safely wrapped in her cloak, and her dagger remained in her hand.

It felt like an eternity that Nesta waited there. Tears ran in ribbons down her cheeks. How had Amren survived so long in a place that could invoke such fear?

The scuff of boots pounded up the stairs. Azriel’s blue light bled across the tunnel first, but Eris had jostled him out of the path to get to Nesta. He cupped her face briefly then his lips met her own, not caring if the Illyrians saw.

‘I was so scared.’

‘I know. I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I brought you here. A little further and we’ll be home. Can you keep going for me?’

Nesta touched Eris then pulled her bloodied fingers away. ‘You’re hurt.’

‘It’s only a scratch, my love. Stay by my side. We’re nearly out.’

 Their group did not linger for long. Their steps hurried over the stone, eager to be rid of the Prison and its inhabitants. Eris’ steps came sluggishly, his breaths ragged. Nesta put her arm around him to support some of his weight.

Finally, the great gates swung open.

‘About time,’ came Rhysand’s voice though it was too bright to see him clearly, only his winged outline.

‘Some are loose. Two more. A bukavac and the vodyanoy from Oorid.’

‘Loose?’

The gates shut behind them and Nesta had never been so glad to feel the fine spray of mist from the sea before. She took great, gulping breaths of air into her lungs.

‘The Prison might deal with them itself,’ suggested Azriel.

‘No, I will. See Eris and Nesta down the mountain before they winnow.’ Rhys jerked his chin towards the path they needed to take.

After their day, the last thing Nesta wanted was to hike down the cliff. She turned to Eris, but he was as pale as snow, even his lips. A dark stain had bloomed on his shirt. ‘I’m alright.’

‘Do something,’ Nesta shrieked, pressing her hands against his abdomen. Her fingers were soon covered in his blood.

‘Get him to Madja,’ commanded Rhys.

‘Orla,’ Eris managed. ‘Take me to Orla.’    

@owllover123 @rarephloxes @fanboy7794 @sugardoll22 @kitkat-writes-stuff @this-is-rochelle @sv0430 @embersofwildfire

[saltineofswing]

EVERY WAKING MOMENT

Destiny 2 || 3500 Words || Pt. 1 || Pt. 3

In Another World, In Some Ways Like The One We Know…

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t stab you until you’re dead,” Sai Mota said with a measured and even voice that did not betray the extreme rage boiling in her chest. Toland, with the closest approximation of meekness he could muster, accepted that he had erred in leaving Sai out of his rescue plans. He panted on the metal floor of Sanctuary’s medical ward, his nose broken, his lip split, his left eye swollen.

“I’ll stay that way,” Toland croaked.

His blood was slick and black as it drooled down his chin, and dripped from the knuckle-plate of Sai’s gauntlet. Eriana-3 and Vell watched, arms folded, from the doorway and the far corner respectively; they seemed disinterested in intervention. Toland felt rage of his own ooze up from a place in his throat. The judgement of others was like coins prickling his bony armor to him, but the fact that they dared to judge him for his mistakes – his transgressions against Sai – when their betrayal was so much greater overwhelmed even his even temper. No… it wasn’t that, he decided.

He hated them in this moment for the fact that they had even bothered to show their faces at all. No matter that he had called them, that had been as much a formality as anything. Eris Morn’s body slumbered in Sanctuary’s recuperation suite as her closest friends tore each other apart less than a hundred feet away.

Sai strode forward three large steps and buried the toe of her boot into his gut before he could stand back up; Toland grunted as he was thrown back to the ground. He rolled, dragging the jagged bone claws of his glove across the stone until green sparks lit flame across his knuckles. Sai kicked him in the face with the flat of her boot – as he floundered backwards she drew a knife from her belt and nailed his hand to the floor with it. 

Toland screamed as he saw that it was the blade that had been Yuka. 

With his off-hand he drew the blade that had been Guren. At this, Eriana drew the blade that had been Jax, and Vell drew the blade that had been Razor, shifting from looming passivity to be prepared in case one of them gutted the other. Sai dove on top of him and he ran the edge of Guren across her cheek to her ear, leaving a deep groove that immediately spat the same tainted, maroon blood across his face. She hissed and battered her fists against his already-bruised cheekbone, his broken nose, tried to pin his head to the ground so she could continue to bludgeon him with more ease. With one hand indisposed, Toland was forced to make a choice. Even now, even with the threat of death igniting an ancient bloodlust inside of him, even though she had just done something unforgivable to him, Toland chose Sai. He dropped Guren to the ground with an unnaturally clear clatter and slammed the side of his fist against the opened gouge in Sai’s cheek, making her yelp in surprise and pain.

They fought like Thrall over scraps of meat, while Eriana and Vell watched like Acolytes. 

No words passed between them. In this way the Hive had changed them all, the speed and savage escalation of violence, the quiet and dispassion of it. The room held only the sound of Toland and Sai’s ragged breathing, their grunts of pain, the sounds of bone or metal clacking together or thudding against flesh. 

Then the double-doors to the ward slammed open. Ish-Mulmir darted into the room and drew herself to her full height; Toland, alone, knew enough to clap his free hand over his ear and flatten his head against his other bicep when she drew in one sharp, whistling breath.

Eriana, Vell, and Sai Mota still had enough Guardian in them – and Ish-Mulmir enough Hive – to recoil with shock and grab for their guns. But before they could, Ish-Mulmir barked out a single, shrieking note that rang like the peal of a bell through the entire building. Her eyes, dilated to massive pale discs of glowing Ascendant light, flashed with the power of a bolt of lightning, and the same light burst from her mouth and glowed in her neck and chest, illuminating her alien veins and internal structures for a brief moment. Eriana and Vell were thrown back against the wall with breathless grunts and collapsed in heaps. Sai jerked back away from Toland as if she had been bodily struck, and grabbed her head with a cry of pain. Ish-Mulmir stepped forward and swatted her, sending her crashing through a nearby sick bed into the far corner.

“ENOUGH!” Ish-Mulmir boomed with a voice that now rattled all of Sanctuary. Her wings whipped off of her back, suddenly filling the entire room with her stature. Toland stayed low, curled into a ball, with blood trickling from his ear. “COWARDS! ALL OF YOU! Fools! This is your hour of victory! You spend it on selfish bloodletting!” Her triplicate gaze burned into Eriana and Vell. “Or, at least, the more driven among you do!”

“We didn’t come here to get engaged in these two trashing each other,” Vell said with a shakily affected dispassion; he gestured with a dismissive wave at Toland. “These two chuckle-heads haven’t kept us in the loop on any of this.”

“Oh, fuck you!” Sai groaned from the corner, rolling clumsily onto her elbows and knees.

“You came at all, and that is enough,” Ish-Mulmir said; her ire waned and her wings folded themselves back down into her cloak. “You came because you held hope in your heart, and that hope was vindicated. I allow you no room for dishonesty, Vell Tarlowe.”

“We don’t have to take this from you,” Eriana snapped. “You aren’t involved in this any more than we are.”

“You do, and I am,” Ish-Mulmir hissed. “For I am right, and also, it was my spellwright that took Eris Morn from Savathûn’s clutches. So you will listen. You are listening. You have no choice.”

There was Sword Logic in that, Toland thought. But he also knew Eriana; she would burn herself to ashes before she allowed Ish-Mulmir to get the last word. Thankfully, Ish-Mulmir was through speaking to her. She turned to him, now. “Toland,” she said, and her voice was soft and almost pleading. “You must let them in.”

“Sometimes,” Toland managed, though he could barely hear it through the blood pounding in his head, “bloodletting is necessary. To relieve… pressure.” Even in this state, Toland’s voice was unshaken. 

Ish-Mulmir looked down at him with an expression that Toland could not read; the intricacies of her biology sometimes escaped him. It was withering, certainly, though it held also perhaps pity. 

“I am tired of you, Toland,” she finally said, with a laborious tone of surrender. Toland felt the acute agony of this more than anything else that had been wrought upon him. She looked at Sai, then Eriana, then Vell. “I am tired of all of you.” She turned, now diminished, and began to slip back through the doorway, shutting the doors she had thrown open behind her. Even Vell hung his head. Toland wanted so dearly to call to her, to ask forgiveness, to apologize, or to beg her not to give up on him. Instead, he was silent.

“Ish-Mulmir, wait!” Sai said, and some part of Toland was glad for her desire to be loved, or how willing she was to display it. “I –“

Ish-Mulmir silenced her with an imperious glance over her shoulder. Toland allowed his face to sag as the Thief of Moths left them to themselves.

Toland rolled fully onto his side and stared with dull disinterest at his hand and the blade that had been driven through its center. The blade was aligned parallel to his hand, artfully planted between the bones of his fingers without breaking or shearing any of them. All of their blades were different; his was a spade of a dagger, neither too long nor too short, but broad and courtly. Sai, the only Hunter left of them, had fashioned hers into an artful, narrow finger of death. The pain, of course, was excruciating, and radiated through his wrist, his elbow… he could even feel it in his navel. His fingers twitched, unsynchronized, with the beat of his heart. 

Sai pushed herself out of the corner and loped across the room to him. He tensed, not because he was afraid she was going to attack him again, but because he knew what she was about to do. She stooped and yanked the blade ungracefully from his hand; he felt the edge slice through the narrow inch between his second and third knuckles and emitted an involuntary, clipped groan. “Damn you, Toland,” Sai spat, wiping the blade clean on a nearby curtain.

“You attacked him first!” Vell cried; finally, Toland thought with a bitter sneer, their two betters joined them in the muck. Though it was, in truth, more like Ish-Mulmir had broken a spell, and Vell had remembered that he actually cared about the other people in the room.

“You didn’t stop me, so obviously it didn’t bother you too much!”

“Would you have listened to either of us?” Vell shoved her aside hard enough that she stumbled, and stooped to help Toland up. Eriana caught Sai and steadied her, and Toland allowed Vell to take his upper arm and lift him to his feet; he was thankful, in brief seconds, for the gentle hands of a Titan. He was unsteady on his feet after his drubbing, and folded his punctured hand to his chest. He smoothed his uninjured palm across it, and there was a sizzle of hot green magic; though he winced at the sensation of his skin burning itself back together, his wound closed up. The rest, he would let heal on their own. As penance.

“You didn’t even try.” Sai’s anger turned on Eriana and Vell, now, and Toland withdrew to the least-bright corner of the room to watch like an animal and lick his wounds. It wasn’t that Eriana or Vell felt emboldened to defend him, he was sure; rather, there had been a breach of social contract, and that meant someone was the ‘bad guy’ in the situation. Toland was used to it being him. “Honestly, I’m shocked you bothered to be here.”

“That’s not fair,” Vell puffed out his chest and set his fists on his hips. “Of course we came! You – you think we just forgot about all of this? You think we wouldn’t have helped, if we knew you two and the Young Wolf were trying to pull this off?”

“You abandoned us!” Sai bit out. “You gave up on Eris! Even when Omnigul and Crota were killed! Where were you when Toland and I were guiding the Young Wolf through the Dreadnaught? When she killed Oryx? I’m surprised you even bothered to keep your knives with you. Thought you would’ve thrown them away like you did us!”

“FUCK YOU!” Vell bellowed, his moodnoise suddenly roaring in the small room.

“YOU WEREN’T HERE!” Sai screamed back at him. Her voice was ragged and broke when she could not sustain its volume. She was mostly laconic in temperament; Toland wondered if he had heard her speak more in the last ten minutes than in the last ten years. “I never gave up on her! Toland never gave up on her! We and Ish-Mulmir have been grinding ourselves into PASTE trying to wrench her out of Savathûn’s grasp!”

“How is this about us, all of a sudden?!” Vell said, with a genuinely flabbergasted lunacy in his voice; he threw his arms out to either side and almost struck Eriana, who had been standing motionless, her posture attempting to evoke detached grace. Toland knew better. “Now you’re defending Toland? Two seconds ago you were trying to smash his skull in!”

“You stabbed him with Yuka,” Eriana said, accusatory and arch and unaccepting of any fault. Bitter. Spurned. “That’s unforgivable, Sai.”

There was a pause, then, a moment of quiet with a tensile strength insufficient for the weight it bore. Toland quailed at it. “Then he and I, at least, are even,” Sai snapped, with such breathless ferocity that Eriana was stymied for a response. Eriana turned her gaze away. The quiet glint of shame in her throatlights made Toland feel, amidst his agony, the faintest satisfaction. It was enough to unlock his throat and allow him to push words out of his mouth, though it hurt his lip. At last, an unimpeachable opportunity to condescend.

“None of us emerged from the Hellmouth whole,” Toland said, and marveled that he had not struck Eriana down in her moment of weakness. The others, too, seemed struck by this, and turned to look at him where he hid in the corner. He had eased himself down into a chair, and leaned his elbows heavily on his knees. He was so tired. The quiet stretched for a few moments more. Toland was a master in the art of choosing his words; he knew how to pick words to embarrass, to make small, to snidely placate or disparage. None of those ends would serve him here, and so he was required to truly think. With his head split as it was, the order was tall. 

Sometimes, the truth was the most effective weapon. “… We have been too shy of admitting it. We are all dead, and do not know it. We have not been as one since we dragged ourselves from the Hellmouth.” He looked at the puddle of blood and the hole in the floor where Yuka’s metal flesh had bitten him, and squeezed his injured wrist. “For better or worse we are bound, the four of us. Five of us. Tethered, but straining in opposite directions. Pulling ourselves thin and spiteful. Narrowed and strained. Mistaken for power. Briefly we were close, and so the tether was mighty.” He looked up at them. “Now thin like threads of silk. Perhaps broken.”

“… No.” Eriana stepped forward, touching Vell’s shoulder, brushing Sai’s forearm. She looked meaningfully between the two of them and then approached him; he looked up into her face, ever stoic and unmoving, devoid of the blistering fire he knew roared inside of her. Or, had, once. She crouched down until she was at his eye level; he closed his eyes, and so did she, and he felt the coolness of her metal forehead press against his. “Never broken.” He heard Vell’s lumbering footfalls, felt the Titan’s hand on his shoulder, and then Eriana’s on top of his. “You are right. We should never have given up on Eris. I just…” She stood now, unable to be both physically and emotionally vulnerable in the same space. “… I was so tired of losing people.”

“We all were,” Sai said, though her voice still quavered with anger.

“I know,” Eriana said quickly, and turned to her. When she took Sai’s hands, it was with a softness and affection that she could not display to Toland. They’d never been quite that close. “The truth is… the truth is that Toland is not the only one who failed you. I did, too.”

“I mean, I think I did okay,” Vell muttered, though when Toland looked up at him with an arched brow, he squeezed Toland’s shoulder and scratched his scruffy chin in an unconvincingly noncommittal way.

“I am better than that,” Eriana said. Her tone ignited with passion. “I will make it up to you all.” Vell strode to her and patted her firmly on the back with enough force that Toland would have been jerked out of step, but Eriana took the blow in stride. She smiled at him in her mouthlights, still holding one of Sai’s hands, and then looked to Toland. He dipped his chin cautiously at her. She gave him a resolute nod, and her eyes shone with a respect that made him feel a twisting knot of different emotions.

The room was silent once more. Toland wanted to stand and go to the three of them, standing in contemplative, quiet togetherness. Comforting each other with their closeness. Recommitted to one another. Instead, he remained apart, and convinced himself that it was not in his nature to require acknowledgement, or respect, or togetherness.

“I have business,” Eriana finally said. “With the Hidden. I… I cannot stay.” She looked to Toland again. That same, new, smoldering respect was in her face. “Will you tell me when she wakes? Send for me, when she is strong enough for visitors?”

“Yes,” Toland said simply. She turned, murmured something he could not hear to Sai, and gave Vell one more affirming nod. She paused only briefly at Sai’s gaze, which still prickled with betrayal and anger. Eriana sighed. Some things, Toland thought, could not be fixed with a rousing speech. But Eriana had already dedicated herself to the task. And then Eriana left them. Just as before, but now, with the promise of return. 

Vell set his hands on Sai’s shoulders. She hugged him, briefly, and tightly. “I uh… I should get back to Earth,” he managed, though his voice was awkward and uncertain. “The blueberries on the wall have been alone for almost a day, so I’m sure something’s been destroyed.” He glanced between her and Toland, then picked up his helmet from where it lay. “… The second call you make is to me,” he said meaningfully, and Sai nodded without responding. 

And then there was only Sai Mota and Toland, once-shattered. She turned to face him. He did not have the strength to stand, and so she approached him cautiously. Her face was tight and pale with frustration, but he did not see loathing. She dragged a nearby chair over and plopped down in front of him, folding her arms and appraising him, the damage she had done to him. He snorted in through his broken nose; a glob of coagulated blood and mucus slid out of his sinuses and into his throat, which he swallowed thickly. 

“Why?” She finally asked, and the hurt and anger in her voice made Toland close his eyes for a moment, so he could indulge in the pounding ache of his injuries. 

“I didn’t trust you,” he finally admitted, and she let out a wet scoff. “I knew the architecture of the thing we were attempting. I knew that… we would need to back the Witch Queen into a corner she did not realize was there. I knew that we would need our machinations to escape Mara Sov’s imperious eye. Weaving two spells, but really three, but really, one.”

“More plainly,” Sai said, her voice clogged and her cheeks red. “Or I’ll stab you again.”

“It is as I said. I did not trust you,” he said soberly. “I didn’t trust that you would be able to… keep up. Or understand the precariousness of what we were doing.” He dragged his hand down his face, wiping blood from his lips and chin. “I thought that I was all we needed. I am sorry, Sai Mota, for underestimating you. I failed you in this way, and many others.” He lowered his head, and sneered to himself. “And I used my own angst over that to fuel the spell. I told myself it was necessary to complete the Lament. So I kept pushing you away.”

“So,” Sai said slowly, her eyes red and wet, “this was all for you, and your ego. To prove that you could.”

How true, in some ways, that was. But it was more than that. Proving he could was nothing next to having Eris back. He would have burned his soul out of his body, if it meant re-tethering Eris to hers. And more than that – he couldn’t risk that Sai would have done the same. That, in truth, was where he trusted her the least. Her compassion. If anyone should have been wasted away by the weight of their Spell, it should not be Sai Mota. He could not possibly lose Eris and Sai, after everything he had done to keep her alive.

“No. I did it for you, too,” Toland rasped. “Oh, Sai, I did it for her.” Sai’s face finally crumpled, her eyes streaming, and a sob escaped her. She threw her arms around his shoulders and cried for a time.

Toland, exhausted, bloodied, denied the relief and exultation and, yes, love he found that had wanted so badly, closed his eyes tightly and quietly allowed himself the same. He wondered, selfishly, if Ish-Mulmir would ever speak to him again – he felt bound to her, too. He hoped she would. 

But only if he changed. He thought of Eris, and decided that it was a sacrifice he was already willing to make.

[draconic-ichor]

If I might make a request, could we be graced with something fluffy, like Mohg playing with Morgott's tail when they were kids?

Yessssss!

Some art to go with too!

Always Loved

Young Morgott/Mohg dabble

Warning: strong language, blood/gore, mentions of animal death, light mentions of wounds

It had been a hard few weeks: scraps from the surface dwindled now that the seasons became cold, and the bitter chill twisted down into the darkness of the shunning grounds.

The omen twins grew desperate, having to hunt more dangerous game for food. They were not opposed to eating rats, but here the creatures grew giant and deadly.

Their hunt was fruitful, but came at a cost. Mohg, the younger of the two, had a chunk taken from his arm during the fight.

Morgott had patched him up, using bits of his own robe to bandage his forearm. Mohg watched him with wet eyes, a little grimace from the pain creasing his face.

Morgott frowned, insides ate up with guilt. He softly touched his twin’s face, “It’s alright…”

Mohg gave a little nod.

“I’ll cook for thee.” Morgott soothed, standing to drag the rat back to their makeshift home. It was slow going, the young boys careful to mask the trail of blood so no unwanted visitors would be had.

Morgott knew a small bit of magic, taught by the older omen that roamed the pipes, just enough to make sparks. After the fire was made he roughly butchered their kill and began to cook bits of it at a time.

Mohg ate everything handed to him ravenously, sharp teeth making short work of the charred flesh. Morgott watched him from across the meager fire. He took a few small bites before handing the rest of chunks to the other.

Once full, mohg retreated to their nest to rest and heal. Morgott tended the fire for a while longer, watching the shadows dance over the stone. He eventually joined his twin, sharing warmth and comfort.

~

Morgott sat, looking over his little collection of dried erdleaves, some still held small hints of a golden glow to them. He picked one up, turning it over in his clawed hand. His tail began to flick a bit, horns scraping hollowly along the stone floor.

Mohg rolled over in their makeshift nest, rubbing at his injured arm absentmindedly. His orange gaze locked onto his twin’s tail, following it back and forth. He slowly rose to all fours, crawling forward as silently as he was able.

Morgott heard him instantly, but decidedly didn’t react, keeping his eyes on his leaves.

Mohg crept closer, tilting his head to the side to study the movements. His pupils expanded, butt wiggling a bit in his excitement. Morgott’s lips curled, swishing his tail enticingly, still pretending not to notice.

The other’s muscles bunched before he pounced. He grabbed Morgott’s tail, falling heavily on his side to gently bite at it.

Morgott jolted a bit, giggling and trying to pull his tail free. The movements spurred mohg on, kicking and rolling around, playing like a young kitten.

After a particularly rough bite, Morgott gave a little squeal, pulling his tail away. Mohg huffed, sitting up.

“Thou art feeling better.” Morgott laughed, rounding on the other.

Mohg went back on all fours, dropping into a position akin of a playful hound. He smiled with too many teeth, wiggling. Morgott mimicked the stance, tail fluffing up. Seeing the other join in made the younger twin’s eyes sparkle.

He made a little growl before jumping. The twins wrestled a bit, all playful bites and rolling about the cobbled floor.

They scuffled for a time before chasing one another. Morgott dove into their nest, Mohg hot on his trail. They shuffled around until comfortable, Mohg giving the other a headbump.

Morgott smiled, returning the gesture. They began to settle, bodies a tangle of gangly limbs and a long tail. Mohg huffed, cuddling into the other’s warmth. Morgott softly pressed his lips to the other’s forehead before tucking into sleep.

History would record that the Omen King was never loved: not by his gods or the Greater Will, that his curse alone branded him a pariah. But that was all a lie, for he was always loved. For no one loved him more than his dear brother, Mohgwyn…

[yandere-wishes]

MONSTERS

👹 Yandere Ryomen Sukuna x Reader

👹Summary: Monsters aren’t born they're made, but Sukuna stumbles across the rare exception...

👹Warning: dehumanization, mention of gore, blood, slight dub-con mentioned in passing, death, past trauma, and abuse

👹 Edited: By the lovely @tealyjade-libran !

👹 Wordcount: 2,480

👹Alternative Tittle : If Roxanne ( from the Police song) lived in ancient Japan.

👹First Jujutsu kaisen fic! I hope you guys like it, please let me know your thoughts! Likes and reblogs appreciated!

Monsters were made. 

Slowly created as once blazing ideals, withered and died under harsh strokes of reality. Stitched together with broken promises and the ashes of rotting memories. 

Monsters were made

whisked into a role they once dreaded, once feared. Beaten into the role of the villain, the reprobate, the sinner. 

If anyone ever asked Sukuna when was the exact moment he turned his back on the laws of "good" and "evil", shedding his human skin to regrow a pelt of hate and destruction,

He would simply answer, "Never".

Because skin is skin no matter how much it decays. Even if the epidermis turns into a rotting orange shade, littered with eyeballs and teeth that shouldn't grow there.Even if the blood from all those he's slain has finally stained his dermis, tainting it in a permanent crimson that all the waters of Lake Biwa could never wash off. Even if his hypodermis is no longer made of fatty tissue but rather spiritual energy sucked from the atmosphere. It's still skin, the same old skin he was born with.

Sukuna had never shed his skin, he'd only perfected it, enhanced it, molded it into its perfect form, until he was no longer held back by foolish human limitations.

He'd never been "reborn" only recreated; only perfected. 

Spike, talon and teeth covered arms sprouting from oozing, bleeding scars, charred over by begriming infections that burned worse than the strikes he'd endured as a child. Knuckles and bones cracking over and over and over again until they grew as solid as the rocks that were thrown at him when he was all too little to understand the malice behind the insults and threats. Breaking until they could break no more, until they'd become strong enough to split a boulder with a mere flick.

There had come a time when he'd given up licking his wounds, leaving them to be kissed by the mold-covered worms who left an urticating sensation he'd soon come to associate with victory. Rotting flesh growing covered in thick layers of black tar tattoos that hid every cut he'd endured when he'd once been too weak. 

Monsters were created from quarter truths buried neck-deep in fables that snipped like red-eyed scorpions. 

Until the blood dancing through their veins was as black as the void they now called home. 

Sukuna knew the exact moment he realized he was a monster. The day he realized he liked the crunch of skulls beneath his feet, the pitiful spark in mortified eyes staring at the heavens for a scrap of mercy. Mangled mouths barely held together by fractured jaw bones, uttering prayers and pleas that died in the scorching air. 

Sukuna knew he was an abnormality, patched together by broken heirlooms and shattered family traditions. Sitting on a throne made from skulls of those who thought they could ever kill him. 

You can't kill a monster, for you can not kill that which was never born. 

You can't slay something made from good intentions with malevolent methods, something so vile that it might actually be pure. At the end of the day, no monster really admits that it is a monster, a nightmare that should have never existed. 

Yet...

Tattered hearts and cruel orbs are never quite enough. No monster is complete until they dive off that last edge, plummet into the sea of nothingness, and finally, finally break their souls on the spiked soil. Monsters, spirits, curses any malicious being that had been mended together like a half-done ragdoll was not complete until they truly let go. Until they erased all the former humanity that they had been born with. Until their eyes reflected nothing, no emotions, no malice, no want, no need. Just the absolute emptiness. 

The void in all its glory.

that was the symbol, the true markings of a real monstrosity. The void that took over their existence, that had replaced every inch of their former self. Only then could it be said that you were above all other beings, the true perfection of this world. 

There are worse things created than monsters, things that are made from nothing and everything. Things above "Yin" and "Yang". Things that have no scrap of humanity, monstrosity, or anything in them.

Things that are just empty.

So maybe -just maybe- that's why when Sukuna's rotting orange eyes landed on the epitome of emptiness, a...girl, whose face was sculpted to disreflect emotions and intents. Someone who was the void of darkness itself. The true personification of nothingness. 

His heart -for the first time in countless centuries- began to throb.

a truly dead face swarmed by a sea of buzzing ants, chasing their routine happiness. Smiles of delight and carelessness carved on their aging faces with sunlight knives and the melody of golden coins. The lust for life leaking from every pore of their bodies. 

With every face being a carbon copy of each other it was no wonder yours stood out.

There was a silver chain of attraction, dragging Sukuna towards the village girl. Not love, never love, the king of curses was beyond certain, that neither you nor he could feel such a honey-laced sensation. It was more like....something. Something paranormal, inexpiable. Some magnetic force outside of everything's control. 

It was easy enough to explain why he liked you. Why you stood out from the other insects of this middle-of-nowhere-village. 

You had dark matter for blood and dead seas for brains. 

Your eyes radiated an endless abyss. Making others shy away from your lifeless gaze. Scared to look into the void in fear that it may respond. 

You were a thrown away doll,

A living dead,

A dying star,

You were the daughter of the number zero,

The monster that had no maker nor mother. 

Something not born nor created. 

Just an entity that roamed the earth, with no desire nor hope, no wish nor dream. Not leaving, not dying, just existing in the space between today and tomorrow. 

There'd been no need for pleasantries, for hiding behind ghostly tree branches and frozen windows. There'd been no need to kill or ravage for you. No competition to eliminate, because no one ever came near you. Humans don't like what they can't explain, Sukuna knew that all too well. 

Sukuna watched from a close enough distance to almost touch. Lingering around like a phantom begging to be noticed. Orbs trailing over you, but never approaching. Until one day he'd just stood still. Waited for you to turn your head just a fraction to the left, just to see him in all his menacing terror. To finally notice the clawing, crawling sensation that had been creeping up your spine like a hoard of spiders. 

And when your dead eyes did finally land on him. Sukuna could swear that his breath hitched in his throat for the first time in his seemingly endless life.

You weren't human. Humans didn't have hollow faces or marbles for lips. 

You weren't a curse. Curses didn't lack venom dripping from their souls.

You were something better than a monster. You were the divinity of monstrosity, the void itself. Black holes for eyes, answerless paradoxes for hands, and an endless maze where your torso should have been. 

 Exploding suns danced around you, burning, burning, till they died out, leaving behind no trace that they once lit up the universe. 

The space after the end, that's what you were.

Perfect, to Sukuna you were perfect.

You hadn't run, hadn't screamed, hadn't even bothered to talk. You didn't care about him, couldn't care about him. That's what made him want you, made his mouth salivate with the thought of your flesh between his teeth. 

That night the world stood still, as Sukuna's claws penetrated your flesh like twirling needles. You were as light as a feather. You weighed nothing, were nothing. All so easy to pluck and throw about. You never made a noise when your body collided with the bamboo walls, just letting gravity and Sukuna play a twisted ball game with your lump of a body.

You hadn't protested when he violated you. As his lips bit every inch of your body raw. For some unearthly reason that even the gods couldn't understand, would never want to understand, you had found the Curse's violent actions rather...adoring. Taking every slap and slash with the earnest pride of a small child getting praised for a day of relentless chores. letting the dawn-tinted-haired monster adorn your body in blue and purple jewels. It felt right, in a  pathetically, nauseating, twisted way...it just felt right.

 It was disastrous, sure, but it was right. Like two universes crashing. Destroying each other with every kiss and every bruise. 

But...

For the first time in your meaningless life, you had truly understood what "happiness" felt like. 

For the first time in his endless life, Sukuna had truly understood what "intimacy" felt like.

///

Was it wrong to kiss you? For a fraction of a second Sukuna hesitated, blood tinged lips hovering millimeters away from your own stone-set ones. The moon's cursed rays acting like an unnoticed barrier, keeping two things out of each other's grasp. His lips curled back revealing two rows of knife-like teeth. The last resort, a final hope that you'd run away, that you'd act somewhat normal. The king of curses, the evil among men, didn't mind your lack of regularity. He didn't mind how you leaned into every bitter strike, every painful display of fading affection . He adored how you merely giggled as he slashed open your uncharged skin, creating slits for your blood to spill through, onto his waiting tongue. He admired your lifelessness, the way you radiated death. 

Oh, how you filled him with a startling aftershock every time he touched you. Every time his tongue lapped at your bleeding skin he'd feel the sort of electric shocks that came after the storms had passed. Your body had no shape, it molded to his touch, turning his favorite shades of red, with just a little pressure. 

But sometimes, in fleeting, endless seconds. He wished he had a name for what you two were. You weren't his per se, you could never be his. Being his would indicate that he cared about you, or heck even loved you and that could never be true. The king of curses did not love, nor care. He merely tolerated you; you fascinated him, that's all. 

It had been many moons since he first found you in that no-name village. Months upon months since you'd been by his side. You'd watched as he'd destroyed cities, helped him even. Eyes never shedding a single tear. Mouth never uttering a single protest. 

The two of you had become the best, the King of curses and the Queen of nothingness. With the dying speed of laboring bees, Sukuna had carved himself inside of you. Twisted emptiness into flower-covered destruction. Into molten gold lava. 

Leaving you with wounds that were stuck in a cycle of healing and opening. Until they began to harden like his. Until the need for spilled blood lingered on your tongue like the burn of boiled tea. Until under your nails were coated in a decaying crust of dried blood. Sukuna hadn't turned you into a monster, he'd simply showed you the powers that came with your apathy. With a heart as torn and cold as yours, it was a shame to let it go to waste. 

"You're not half bad," his tone is never approving. It's always laced with a strictness that keeps you nailed into place. His words are oxymorons sounding like praise, but once you peel back the lather layers they're just taunts in disguise. 

You don't answer, words die on your tongue as quickly as they are born. Sukuna can't even remember what your voice sounds like outside of small whispers in heat filled nights. 

 However, to the two of you, things like that didn't matter. Your lack of being even semi-alive and Sukuna's endless abuse had become a norm for the two of you. Where else were a two-faced monster and a lifeless girl going to find love anyway? 

Sukuna was all you had, all you ever had. You'd die for him, kill for him, turn into anything for him. Because he gave you life. 

A purpose to life, made out of raging fires and endless screams. A life fabricated from the pain and suffering of others. That was what the king of curses had given you, all wrapped in a human skin parchment. Maybe that's why all logic withered away the first night he kissed you, maybe from the first second that you sensed his presence you had finally gained a reason to be alive. 

///

Whoever said the end of the world was beautiful? Whoever said the final days would be bright and glowing and pure? 

It's just a blaze of stray flames and red crystal droplets that may or may not be your blood. Funny, Sukuna had always thought that your blood would be as black as the moonless sky, not a mundane red like everyone else's. He'd expected a grander death from you. Some sort of black hole opening to swallow the world whole. Not just another corpse motionless in a pool of their own blood. 

Although he's not one to talk. His own 'death' is lingering on the horizon. Sukuna's head tilts back looking for the flashing jujutsu sorcerers. 

"S-sukun-a..." 

He smirks, fangs sticking out at odd angles. Your voice is sweet, for the first time in forever he'd even dare say it held some semblance of emotion. 

What that emotion is, he doubts he knows or even really cares. He'd long since stopped trying to identify all those "feelings" and their associated names. 

His orange eyes lock with your fading orbs, one last time. No, not the last time, just the final time in this lifetime. He's sure he's going to see you again. In any other life, Sukuna knows he'll be able to recognize you despite whatever flesh suit you'd be wearing. 

"Shh little one," he's halfway gone before he finishes his sentence, leaving you to relish in his memory in your final moments. "We'll see each other once more, someday in another life..."

His four eyes lock on the approaching sorcerers. He finds it humorous how desperate they look. How alive and ready they seem, such a stark contrast to your ever lifeless face and dead eyes, it repulses him. 

"Or maybe in one of the circles of hell." 

The flames encircling his fingers remind him of the heat your body radiated in the dead of night. The crack from bones hum as they meet his knuckles, flash memories of your days wasted together doing nothing and everything. 

The two of you will meet once more, he's sure of it. After all...

Monsters never die. 

How could something that was never even born in the first place, ever die?

[dumbgothbunny]

Just a taste (Kanato x Reader)

Authors note: So I had this idea brewing in my head for a few days. I never have time to write but I managed to do this on the notes in my phone during my down time. I haven’t written actual years so I really hope it’s not total ✨garbage✨ also I hope I did Kanato’s character justice 😭

TW’s under the read more <3

TW: Non-con, Lactation, fingering, smut, sorta losing your virginity to fingering,being drugged by Reiji

 ~ * ~

The door pushed open with a creak, cool night air burning your aching lungs. With heavy limbs you manage to stagger down the stairway, bare feet scraping uncomfortably against the stone. You had to keep running, or else he’d find you.

You were a fool for accepting his drink, for thinking that maybe he’d show you some mercy, that the notion had been pure. Yes, you were complete moron for trusting any of the Sakamaki brothers, Reiji included.

Your legs carried on, heavy and weak. Further, just a little further and you could hide in the bushes of the garden and collect yourself.

Your body was burning inside and out, your nerves aching with pain and pleasure. The buttons of your blouse felt tight around your chest, the cotton constricting and rubbing uncomfortably against your stiffened nipples. Whatever Reiji had put in your drink was strong, it was doing things to your body you’d never felt before. Every movement sent your nerves aflame. You round the corner of the mansion, relief flooding through your body. Almost, you were almost there just a little bit more. Pushing yourself farther into the garden on heavy legs, you’re almost to a thick row of bushes-

A small Yelp bubbles up in your throat, your body falling forward and onto the grass. Crumping into a ball, the tears that had been threatening to spill over finally release.

“Ne... Teddy.. look... I knew I smelled something sweet...”

Your body instantly stiffens, the scratch of the grass sending electric shocks down your heated skin. Kanato Sakamaki stands, his favorite teddy bear clutched in his arms. He tilts his head, amethyst eyes wide with curiosity.

“Say, Why are you out here at this time of the night?”

There’s a sharp pain in your side, the force of Kanato’s shoe enough to roll you over onto your back. You gaze up at the full moon, chest heaving. What had you done to deserve this?

“ Don’t ignore me!”

You whine, your eyes moving to settle on the lavender haired vampire who is now straddling your leg, his prized possession resting against the headstone of his late mother. You’re painfully aware of his knee, which is shoved up between your thighs. Through harsh breaths you manage to whimper out.

“I-I’m Sorry”

He smiles. It’s not a sweet smile, but a smile of a predator who has just stumbled upon the most delicious pray.

“I’m thirsty, ne... Teddy what do you say we get a drink?”

Your heart pounds against your chest, another whine passing your lips as he leans over you, nosing your neck. The heat flooding through your body heightens, the pleasure of skin to skin contact overwhelming you. Your mind is muddled, tongue thick. The vampire presses his leg upward, knee digging into the fabric of your underwear. You yelp, nails gripping at the dirt beside you.

You’re painfully aware of his chest, pressing down against your own, of the way his fingers toy with your collar.

Kanato continues to nuzzle your flesh, hands roaming from your collar to play with the sides of your shirt.

“Smells so sweet... I’ve got to...”

Your body arches as he sinks his fangs into your skin. Kanato shifts on his knee, allowing for one of his hands to groap at your aching breast. You gasp, arms moving to wrap around him, fingers desperately clawing at his back.

“P-please Kanato-Kun S-St-“

You’re cut off by the vampire digging his fangs in deeper. Against your will, your body reacts, grinding up against his knee. The motion sends sparks of pleasure surging through you. Everything was heightened, so much so that it was almost painful. Kanato squeezes your chest. The dirtiest moan you’ve ever heard spills from your lips.

Abruptly, the vampire pulls away from you, his eyes filled with fury.

“What the... What did you just do to me!?”

Your vision, which had started to double, returns. For a moment you’re confused, until you see something slick coating his fingers. You push yourself up on your elbows, looking down at your chest. Your blouse was soaked; two distinctive wet stains against your nipples, trails leading down to stop at your stomach. Your face flushes, heart sinking. There was no way.

Kanato’s disgust quickly turns into something else. Whatever you’d just done- it smelled almost as good as your blood. You watch in shame as the vampire moves his fingers to his bloodied mouth, licking at them, smearing the blood against his pale skin. He lets out an animalistic moan, something you thought you’d never hear from him, of all Sakamaki brothers.

“More... I want.... more.”

You try to fight him back, but he overpowers you, ripping your blouse violently. Buttons fly across the garden, rolling through the dirt. He doesn’t bother with your bra, tugging it down over the soft flesh of your breasts. You look away, cheeks burning in shame. You’d managed to make it a week without any of them seeing you like this- but to think Kanato would be the first...

“Ahh...Teddy. Look how sweet her skin looks.... I want to paint it red...”

His eyes trace every inch of your exposed flesh, the look on his face enough to make your skin crawl. The hardened flesh of your nipples grabs his attention, rose pink and weeping with a sweet smelling white substance. It’s thick in the air, mixed with the scent of your blood. You try to cover yourself, but Kanato is quick to smack your arms away, his knee grinding up into your soaked panties.

“DON’T”

You flinch at his shout.

“Dont try to hide it anymore! Or else I -I ‘ll really hurt you!”

You stop struggling, biting your tongue to keep the tears at bay. The night air is cool against your exposed, supple skin. You whimper as the vampire traces your nipple with the tip of his tongue, collecting the oozing liquid from your breast. He moans softly, the sound almost a purr.

“Ne.... put your hands in my hair....”

You do as your told, trembling fingers weaving through silky lavender. Kanato shudders, his lips encasing your swollen nipple. You arch into him against your own will, the pressure in your chest slowly relieving itself. His tongue twists, a fang scraps against the sensitive skin of your areola.

“K-Kanat-ohhh-kun”

He chuckles against your nipple, the vibration sending sparks down through your nerves. You’re all too aware of his hand, which is slowly making its way down your bare ribs, cool skin soothing the heat that’s burning under the surface. Your fingers grip at his hair, not to harshly. You don’t want to make him angry, not when he’s acting like this.

“So sweet...Hey, Doll. Do you think it’ll taste sweeter mixed with blood?”

Your captor looks up at you, milk dribbling down his chin. The sight is alone causes your legs to tremble.

“I -I don’t-“

He doesn’t let you finish your thought. Not that you could anyway. The fog of drugs makes it almost impossible for you to form thoughts or words now, the only thing in your mind is Kanato. There’s a familiar sting as his fangs puncture your breast. You shudder, bucking your clothed sex up against his leg. You’re desperate for him, every nerve in your body is screaming for his touch. He sucks you, drawing in not only your blood, but the sweet nectar leaking from your nipple. It’s too much, this sensation is driving you wild. The noises your making are shameful and the way you’re dry humping against his leg is equally as degrading. He doesn’t comment on this though, Instead he unlatches from your breast, moving to the other.

Your head is swimming, pleasure and pain and heat sending you into delirium. Your head lulls to the side, eyes clouded from pleasure. Kanato punctures your other breast, his tongue lapping and sucking against your weeping nipple. The cool touch of his fingertips travels lower, skipping over your waist line and right up your thigh, below the fabric of your school skirt. A moan hitches in your throat. He couldn’t possibly be thinking-

“Neee... girls like it when you make them feel good, right? You’re rutting against me so shamefully.. I should make you feel good, so you’ll let me drinking more of you, right?”

His voice is velvety smooth, the sound alone enough to coax your legs apart. Kanato moves his knee, which is slick with your juices.

“P-please don’t I’ve never-“

Your pleas fall on deaf ears. The vampire above you slurps against your skin, his cool fingers slipping under the already drenched cloth of your panties to delve between your thighs. It stings.

Your legs flail weakly, your cry of mixed pleasure and pain echoing into the cold night. Kanato grunts as your fingers dig into his scalp, but he doesn’t say anything. You’re too delicious to be separated over something so small. His other hand, the one that’s not knuckle deep in your cunt, is gripping at your own hair. A garbled sob passes your lips, but you’re not sure if it’s from pleasure or devastation.

A man has never held you like this before- has never violated you in such a way. Eventually Kanato growls against your skin, letting your breast go with an audible pop.

“Stop squirming! I’m trying to make you feel good! If you keep it up I’ll stop and just let you suffer!”

You do as you’re told, the look in his eyes alone is enough to let you know he’s absolutely feral right now. He begins moving his fingers, scissoring you open eagerly. Kanato’s lips trail along your nipple, a fang poking at its tip. You jerk involuntarily, the movement pressing your cunt up into his fingers. Your head falls back, body arching into him. He laughs. The sound is cruel and if you weren’t so far gone it might send chills up your spine.

“The better you feel the sweeter your taste gets... I’m the first one to do this to you..?”

You nod your head, eyes closed.

Kanato grins, pressing a third finger into your weeping heat. He begins to stroke his thumb against your clit, the movement soft and gentle. Your eyes widen, fresh tears trailing down your cheeks. The vampire looks up at you, watching your every expression as he strings you along.

“Nee~ yes Teddy, I agree... she’ll be perfect for my collection”

Your heart is pounding in your ears. With each heave of your chest milk cascades down your breast and onto your ribs. Kanato presses his tongue against the fallen droplets, licking back up to take one of your once bitten nipples back into his mouth. You try to focus on anything but the sensations bursting through you, try to still your hips against his fingers, but it’s no use. You’re riding him, letting him take you in to the knuckle. The pad of his thumb circling your slickend nub.

His fangs pierce you again, the pain quickly turning into pleasure. Your eyes fixate on the small bear sitting atop a headstone. Shame twists in your gut. To be doing such a thing here...

The drumming of your heartbeat gets faster, your vision slowly going dark around the edges. Ecstasy is close, your body threatening to melt around Kanato’s fingers despite your better judgement.

“K-Kanato-Kun please. Please d-don-“

Your toes arch, digging into the dirt.

No. No no no this can’t be happening.

Your captor hums against your breast, drinking down both of your delicious essence. Kanato isn’t the least bit surprised when your walls spasm around his three fingers, nor is he surprised when your juices violently push against his hand, only to drip out of you like a leaking faucet. He’d read about that in one of Laito’s books. The fact he’d made you feel so good was more than pleasing to him. It awakened a sickening obsession.

You slouch back onto the ground whimpering, mind pleasantly numb. The fingers that had been tangled in Kanato’s hair were now resting on the ground beside you. The vampire unlatches from your body and pulls his fingers from your throbbing heat. He kneels back, licking each one from knuckle to tip. You look completely spent, tear stains marring your usually perfect skin. He nudges your legs apart, curiously peaking at what he’d just been assaulting. Kanato licks his lips, then stands.

“Get up. It would be bad if my brothers found you out here. You’re my favorite toy and they’d break you.”

When you don’t move he scowls.

“Tch. I said get up!”

He bends to the side, curiously looking at your crumpled form.

“Eh~ Teddy. I think she passed out.”

After a few moments the vampire nods at his companion.

“You’re right Teddy. It would be a problem. I dont like my idiot brothers playing with my toys. They always break them.”

Kanato picks up your limp body with no problem, swiping Teddy from the tombstone of his departed mother and gently, every so carefully setting him against his abs and on your tummy. He hums delightfully as he practically skips inside. The door had been left open, making it easier for him to get in. He kicks it closed before making his way to his room.

Your head is pounding, your limbs feel heavy and tired, but your body is no longer overly hot and sensitive. The first thing that registers in your sleep-fogged mind is the tenderness of your chest. The next thing you’re aware of is the cool body pressed against yours.

Your eyes flutter open, adjusting to the dim daylight that peeks through purple blackout curtains. The silky sheets draped over your body feel amazing. You try to move carefully, unaware of your surroundings.

“Mmnnn...”

The soft snore makes you stop moving. Your heart leaps out of your chest. Suddenly everything from the previous night comes rushing back. You’re overly aware of the fact You’re no longer in your own clothes. A soft cardigan has been buttoned around your body, loose and inviting. It smells like Kanato. Tufts of purple peek out from under the comforter and you feel like you’re about to scream. He’s latched onto you, arms tightly holding you against him. His cool cheek is pressed in between your breasts. You don’t risk trying to get away. If you were to wake the sleeping vampire no doubt he’d be ill.

After the shock subsides you try to get comfortable again. Your body is aching, sore from the previous trist you’d had in the garden. Your fingers gently comb through lavender locks, your eyes slowly closing once more.

“Just relax”

You tell yourself silently.

“Just go back to sleep. You need to recover”

After a few moments you drift back off, nuzzling your nose against the top of Kanato’s head.

[monstersandmaw]

Female tiefling guard x human princess (nsfw)

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

This has been up on Patreon for a week, and now it’s time to share it here!

Contents: a short, fiesty, gives-no-fucks female tiefling guard, some anti-tiefling sentiments from the other guards, a soft but 'don't mess with me' princess, an army of attacking demons, a minotaur best friend, and an nsfw scene to finish. Wordcount: 6756

A dull rumbling startled Salanei from her bed and set her reaching for the deep well of magic inside her in a heartbeat. The castle was shaking.

“Impossible,” she hissed, but other guards were tumbling out of their bunks all around her, some scrambling to draw weapons, others calling sparkling magic to their hands, though there were admittedly fewer of those. The castle was built on a promontory of black rock, harsh and stark against the chill morning light, but it was as old as the land itself and nothing should have been able to make the foundations shudder like that.

Unless…

Tilting her head to one side, letting her thick, messy, black braid slide down over one shoulder, Salanei opened her core of magic a little to the surroundings. At first all she found were the life-sparks of the other guards, but then, like a murmuration of birds on the horizon, she felt something far more sinister. “We’re under attack,” she yelled, stuffing her boots on and sprinting for the door. “Demons.”

The tiefling ignored the way the others dismissed her or scoffed at her - whether through deep-rooted prejudice or uneasy disbelief at her cry of ‘demons’ - and she bolted through the palace like a rabbit through its home warren. She didn’t think, she didn’t stop, she didn’t pause; she raced up back stairs and along half-forgotten passageways, and emerged, gasping, in what had once been an upper, open-air walkway that connected the main part of the castle to the residential wing. Her boots skidded on the rough stonework, grit and dust slipping beneath her soles, and she barely stopped before the gaping abyss into the courtyard below swallowed her.

Where a thick buttress of stone had arched across the space for centuries, now a smoking, singed stump of the bridge remained and the walkway was completely gone. “Shit.” Across it, she could see more of the royal guard backing into the part of the castle that would lead to the residential quarters of the princess after only a few staircases and passages. From the looks of it, they’d only just escaped back along the parapet in time.

Looking out at the landscape around the castle, she froze, horror icing over her veins.

Demons swarmed down the hillside and pooled around the outer walls of the castle to form a seething, foetid moat, their shapes as varied as the horrific noises they made; some with wings, some with horns, some with lashing tails and glinting claws. One or two of them breathed gouts of flame into the dawning sky, and from somewhere deep below at the curtain wall of the castle courtyard, the bellow of a bull in a blooded rage made her ears ring. A second later, the whole castle trembled again and a rain of fine particles and chunks of stone clattered down around her.

They were going to breech the wall.

“Fuck.”

The span across the gulf of empty air wasn’t so big that she couldn’t use a little magic to propel herself over it, and so, summoning a gust of air to spring her forwards, she leapt lightly off the stonework behind her and let the updraft catapult her onto the far tower. She landed hard but rolled through it and came to stand smoothly on her feet, finding herself face to chest with an enormous, familiar guard.

“Brandon, it’s…”

“Bloody chaos,” he said, falling into step beside her as they moved through the shrapnel-scarred archway and into the tower beyond.

The huge minotaur was about as broad across at the shoulders as Salanei was tall, and his huge war axe was cradled gently in his massive hands; ready. He was the only person who had ever treated her with any genuine respect at the castle, and the two were somewhat unlikely sparring partners more often than not.

“Who’s behind it?” she asked as they trotted down the stairs and a pounding, dolorous bell began to sound from the heart of the castle.

He shook his shaggy, black head, the patch of white at the front of his forelock dancing in the low light. “Not sure. Reports suggest they came from the west.”

“Dorhul?” she asked, steady pace stalling in time with her horrified, faltering heartbeat.

Brandon shrugged. “Seems likely. He’s always wanted to add the kingdom to his collection. With Ria’s father so ill…”

Salanei’s black eyes narrowed and she fought the urge to ram her hard horns against a wall with the wave of bitter spite that washed up inside her. The minotaur, clearly seeing the echo of a familiar urge bubbling up in the tiefling, laid a hand on her shoulder. It was so big, it engulfed the joint completely, and the weight of it steadied her. “Easy. We’ll get through this.”

“Where is the princess now?”

“The Elite Guard took her down to the undercroft.”

Salanei’s heart lurched and she stopped. “They’re taking her out by boat? Bran, that escape passage only leads to one place… if she’s caught out on the open water…”

“Dawn’s not far off. The sun rises over the lake,” he explained, but she could tell he was as unhappy with the plan as she was. “If the demons can even bear to look at the sunlight as it hits the water, they won’t see her. The glare will be too much. I think they expected to have broken through by now, but this castle’s a hard nut to crack, even with those numbers. It should buy her time to escape.”

He had a point. It was a flimsy hope and a prayer, but it was all they had.

They made it two floors down before the ring of steel and the snarl of demons reached their ears, and Salanei swore again, drawing deep on her reserves of magic so that it lapped like a vast lake a the very forefront of her mind; ready.

She flung a conjured talisman at the nearest demon’s head and the creature exploded into a mist of gore and black ichor. Not pausing to get splattered, she ducked low and aimed another spell - a lancing spike of ice this time - at a twin-headed monstrosity, one half of which was occupied with the head of a guard in its maw, the other half of which had just spotted her. The spike went through both skulls and pinned them to the wall before Salanei had even finished dancing lightly around them.

Quick and light as a mouse in a hay barn, she dodged and struck, until finally she was at the far end of the corridor. From behind her, she heard Brandon bellow a warning at her, asking her to wait, but she was gone like a weasel. Protect the princess. That had been what the old king had demanded of her in return for the shelter and comfort he had offered, and she had gladly accepted the trade.

Shouldering the door at the end of the corridor with a little extra magic behind the gesture, she burst through in a barrage of splintered wood and iron studs as the ramming spell cloaked around her shoulders made short work of it. Instantly, she found three spear tips at her throat, and she froze.

“Stop!” came familiar voice, and were it not for the glinting blades hovering so close to her pulse that she could see her blackberry-purple skin reflected in them, she might have gone slack with relief. “Let her go.”

“Highness,” Salanei said, bowing gratefully from the waist. “They’ve breached the castle from above, and they’re trying to get in from below. They’re only a floor above you now.”

She watched the princess’ freckled cheeks blanch, and she swayed ever so slightly before rallying her courage and pushing back her shoulders. “I have been advised that the undercroft is the safest route out of here, all things considered. Do you disagree?”

Before Salanei could reply, a guard stepped directly in front of her, his deep, maroon livery blocking her view of the princess. “Highness, we must leave. Now. Let the gutter rat fight the demons, but we have to get you to safety.”

Salanei’s lip curled back off her sharp canines and she snarled a warning at the soldier who ignored her completely.

It was a miracle that she even heard the soft tread of slippered feet on the stone floor above the clangour outside, but when the guard’s spine straightened and he shifted awkwardly back to where he’d been standing, Salanei almost snorted with laughter.

The princess’ face seemed carved from marble; all softness had shattered into hard lines, her eyes blazed green, her strawberry blonde hair falling behind her like a shield made of silk. “Repeat that,” she demanded in a voice low and deadly. When the guard stuttered himself into silence, she blinked. “Repeat that.”

“Highness,” he grunted. “Please, we cannot waste any more time! We must leave.”

“Repeat. That.”

“She’s a gutter rat, Highness. Everyone knows it.”

Stepping so quickly that no one saw her move, the princess darted forwards and backhanded the guard across the cheek. “I will not have someone spoken of like that, either in my presence or elsewhere in the castle. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Highness,” he nodded.

“Salanei, come here,” she said, turning away. Before Ria had gone two steps, a demonic portal began to open in front of her. The flickering purple and red edges were ragged as an old scrap of fabric, and a vile, sulfurous gas billowed out of it.

“Shit! Get back!” The tiefling dodged in front of the princess and brought her hands together, calling a binding incantation to mind and willing the strands of the spell to stitch the portal together again, preventing it from opening. The wielder on the other side was strong, their will like iron, but Salanei’s was stronger. Years of being whittled down until she was nothing but muscle and magic and sheer force of will had made her almost unbreakable now, and she knew it. Knowing it was half the struggle with magic.

I am stronger than you, she chanted in her head. This portal will not open.

“I knew having a magic wielder in my guard would be a good thing,” the princess muttered in her ear. “I’m just sorry my mother was so against it.”

Salanei could only grunt with the effort of closing the infernal portal. Behind it, straining against the glowing strands of her spell, a rabid demon snapped its jaws, trying to slice through the counter spell. The mage on the other side didn’t have a spare ounce of concentration to tell the beast to get back. Where was the High Mage when you needed her? Probably bolstering the wards on the castle walls, trusting that the Elite Guard would protect the princess for now.

“Get out of here,” Salanei finally rasped, sweating with the effort. The portal was almost closed.

A hand landed gently between her shoulder blades, fingers splayed wide, palm pressing securely against her skin through the fabric of her dirty shirt, and Salanei gasped as a rush of fresh magic and strength washed into her. With a snap, the portal sealed shut and she whipped around to find the princess smiling softly. “Come with me,” was all she purred.

Salanei nodded, winded and mute, and still dizzy from the surge of golden life that had poured into her from the princess and mixed so easily with her own magic. When had she learned to do that?

The path out of the princess’ chambers was littered with demons. Salanei used every trick and spell she knew, darting here, warping there, slicing, slashing, stabbing, to clear the path while the guard huddled close around their princess and picked off any stragglers who got through. The guards encircled the princess as though she were a jewel and they the setting. Nothing was going to touch her.

Out on another vulnerable, spun-sugar walkway that would lead them directly to the tower that sat atop the cavernous undercroft of the castle, a cloud of tiny, winged demons - which Salanei recognised with horror as having once been harmless forest pixies - swarmed towards them out of the lightening sky.

“Shields!” she screamed back over her shoulder, preparing another spell. Her vision swam from the speed at which she was hemorrhaging magic in the princess’ defence, but she blinked the daze away and focused on creating a wall of fire. Momentum sent the first half of the swarm ploughing straight through it, incinerating their fragile bodies to cinders, but the rest of the flock doubled back and regrouped. With a second flurry of flaming hands, Salanei danced through them until nothing remained but broken, blackened wings at her feet like campfire ashes.

One floundered uselessly at her boots, and while the princess was herded towards the safety of that final tower door by her retinue, Salanei scooped the wounded creature up in one hand and heard its infernal language as little more than a hoarse whisper, like wind through the grasslands. Tapping two fingers to her temple, she directed her magic at the creature, and connected a blue thread with its own yellow spirit thread, and demanded of it, “Who made you?”

A flash of images swirled through the connection, but she had seen enough. “Dorhul,” she spat when she saw the tall, slender figure of the most hated man in the four kingdoms. The connection sputtered, and the creature that had once been a pixie fell limp in her hand. Dropping it, she spun and trailed after the princess, blinking black spots from her vision.

Down staircase after staircase they plummeted, until finally they burst out into the echoing undercroft. Groin vaults stretched away into the darkness like the canopy of an endless stone forest, and Salanei shuddered. It reminded her of the dank dinginess of the slums so viscerally that she almost heaved.  

“Don’t stop now,” Princess Ria whispered, pausing to find Salanei staring off into the darkness with wide, black eyes. “We have to keep moving.”

Nodding silently, the tiefling fell into step beside her, scanning the shadows for the faintest hint of movement, but it was still as a sepulchre down there.

The lap of water eventually reached her keen, tapered ears, and she looked up to see three small rowing boats bobbing in the shallow, underground dock up ahead. A narrow canal of water led out towards the lake, and as they all climbed into the boats, Salanei took a moment to admire the calm presence of the princess. It was a miracle that Dorhul hadn’t known about this entrance to the castle.

Ria, still clad in an incongruously soft, pastel pink gown that was spattered here and there with the evidence of their desperate escape, somehow looked as regal as she had sitting in the great hall in her father’s stead these last two years.

She had remained a steady, reassuring presence in the kingdom even as the king’s health faded away despite the High Mage’s efforts to heal him. In his absence, Ria had taken over the rule of the kingdom with the grace and justice that her father had instilled in her from a young age. The queen had died only a few weeks after her father’s sickness had presented, and Ria had mourned her for the appropriate weeks before getting on with the governance of the kingdom. Beautiful, refined, and achingly gentle, it was no wonder that the kingdom was in love with her.

Salanei swallowed thickly. Half the kingdom, and… her too.

Now, although there was the air of a frightened child about her delicate shoulders, she sat in the centre of the small boat as her guards rowed her away, her green eyes fixed on the retreating castle as they skimmed across the lake. Just as Brandon had said, the morning sun glanced off the surface, glinting like a cut gem as the castle burned behind them.

Salanei uttered a quick prayer under her breath for the minotaur who was presumably still inside the castle.

Halfway across the lake, the guards’ oars faltered with a splash. A vast wave of power pulsed from the heart of the castle and spilled out across the land in all directions, sweeping demons off the walls and parapets, scattering them to ash on the wind. The sheer, raw magic made Salanei’s ears ring and her chest tighten, but when she’d mastered herself again, she found Ria staring wide-eyed at the castle with a look of unbridled horror on her beautiful face.

“Highness?” Salanei croaked, barely resiting the urge to grab her shoulder and shake her gently. “Highness?”

“Father…” she choked. “My father is dead…”

Three thoughts raced through Salanei’s mind before it went perfectly blank again: ‘that means you’re the queen’, ‘if the king is dead it means he used a purging spell so powerful that it obliterated himself as well’, and ‘the castle is free of demons now’. “Should… Should we go back?” she finally croaked.

Ria just sat there in the little boat, her breathing shallow, her face ashen.

“Highness?”

Nothing.

“Ria?” she asked, reluctant to use her familiar name. She leaned forward to touch her arm, but one of the guards - a huge, leonine rakshasa - growled at her. Salanei bared her own canines at him and hissed like a cobra.

The sound of her bickering guards drew the princess out of herself, and Ria turned to them. “Please,” she whispered. “Not now. For the goddess’ sake, not now. Let me think.”

Chastened, they fell silent, though Salanei’s black eyes never left her princess’ face.

“We go back,” she finally said.

The leonine rakshasa’s ears pricked up and he growled softly as he said, “Highness, we only just got you out of there…”

“Look,” she said, her voice eerily calm as she pointed a trembling finger towards the castle.

A cloud of sparkling, fluttering sparks had risen like butterflies above the remnants of the highest tower, and Salanei recognised Maeva’s magical signature immediately. “The High Mage,” she whispered. “You think it’s a trap?”

Ria shook her head. “No. We have a code in case such a signal is ever used. Green with gold is a trap. Pink and pale green is all clear. We return. Now.”

The rowers turned the small craft around, and Ria sat with her jaw set and her fists clenched in the fabric of her dress, eyes intense, mind working. No one spoke or grumbled, despite how the guards’ shoulders must have been burning from the effort.

The princess ground her teeth, and muttered, “This is taking too long. It’s not your fault,” she added as a guard’s expression flickered momentarily. “You’ve all been wonderful.” Snapping her head up suddenly, the princess said, “Salanei?”

“Highness?”

“Can your tiefling magic teleport me from here?”

Salanei tilted her head thoughtfully to one side as she examined her reserves of magic. “If I do, I won’t have much left in the tank when we get there,” she said. “I’d rather not…”

“Do it,” Ria said. “That’s not a request. Get me to my father’s chamber, and Maeva can take care of the magic from there if needs be.”

Jartyn, a gnoll with half his ear missing and a huge burn scar on his face, interjected, “I really must object, Highness -”

Ria’s eyes flashed and he sat back, teeth clacking as he shut his mouth quickly.

However, she got control of her frustration and spoke in a gentle, if tense, voice. “I appreciate your concern, and I owe you all my life,” she said, gathering them all into the praise with a sweep of her emerald green eyes. “But my father just sacrificed his life to cleanse that castle, and now I must return to protect his legacy. If I don’t, there’s still a window of opportunity for Dorhul to step in and claim the crown and the kingdom amid the chaos. Do you understand?”

They did, and they all bowed as one.

“You will follow in the boat and attend me back at the castle.” Ria turned her gaze to the tiefling, and held out her hand. “Now, Salanei.”

Taking the princess’ hand in hers, Salanei concentrated every drop of will and magic on the king’s chambers. Teleportation was not something many could do, and it wasn’t something Salanei particularly relished. The familiar sensation of blurring at the edges announced that they were ready, and a heartbeat later, it felt like two magical grappling hooks had yanked them by the spine and guts and had torn them away to somewhere else.

The princess landed awkwardly beside her with a cry, collapsing against Salanei as they arrived in the bedchamber of the king, and the tiefling caught her. “I’m going to be sick,” Ria hissed a moment before it happened.

Salanei supported her and held her beautiful, long hair back, and then magicked all the mess away with an easy flick of her hand.

Clearly grateful, Ria straightened and turned to her. Her eyes were pink and her cheeks were pale, but she still looked so regal that Salanei’s heart twisted in her chest.

Then Ria’s eyes slid from Salanei’s face to the bed in the middle of the ruined room. The glass in the windows had been obliterated, blasted out into the courtyard below. The twisted remnants of the lead work hung like the gnarled roots of a ripped up tree from the casements, and the rest of the room was reduced to splinters and tatters.

On the bed, there was no sign of the old king at all, but where his head would have rested on the pillow lay the golden crown, and where his heart would have been was a glimmering opal. Salanei gasped when she saw it, following at a respectful distance, a pace behind Ria.

“That’s…”

“The heart of the Lunar Forge,” Ria whispered. “Yes. Imagine what hell a necromancer like Dorhul could raise with a focus like this… That must have been how he was able to wield so much magic just now too…”

Salanei shuddered, not wanting to think about what could have happened. The Lunar Forge sat at the heart of the castle, and beneath the light of a full moon, any weapons quenched in the pool of spring water had the power to destroy demons utterly. The focus of the power was that opal. It was the size of Salanei's fist and it thrummed with power. That power did not have to be used to focus the powers of the Lunar Forge though; it could be used at the heart of any ritual, to add unfathomable power, and if the necromage had got his hands on it, who knows what he could have brought into this world.

Ria picked up the stone and the crown and then sank onto the bed. When she looked up at the tiefling, another pang went through Salanei’s chest. Tears flowed silently down Ria’s face and the urge to embrace her surged inside Salanei. “Highness,” she whispered, her heart going out to the young woman.

Her face twisted, and sobs wracked the princess then, and her guard didn’t hesitate. She stepped in close and the princess folded forwards, throwing her arms around her wiry torso and burying her face in the filthy fabric of her shirt. Her tears dampened it until the flow finally stemmed as Salanei stroked the coppery hair and just stood there, taking her grief and fears in her stride.

“I can’t do it,” Ria whispered, still plastered to her chest.

“You will. You’re not alone. I know he’s gone, but you’re not alone. You have Maeva, and your guard, and… for what it’s worth, you have me.”

It took another few minutes before Ria leaned back to regard Salanei and drew in a deep, unsteady breath.

Taking a chance, Salanei reached out and thumbed the remaining tears from the princess’ blotchy cheeks. “You have me,” she repeated as her golden eyelashes fluttered softly. A moment later, the tiefling let go and spun, adopting a defensive stance as footsteps rang on the floor outside and someone burst in.

She relaxed instantly, adrenalin dissipating when the familiar red robes of the High Mage swirled to a halt and the older woman appeared to go through a similar gamut of relieved reactions upon seeing the tiefling. “Thank the goddess,” she breathed, leaning heavily on a long, slender staff. “Ria, child, are you alright?”

Mutely, the princess nodded and stood. She touched Salanei briefly on the arm as she passed, and sent a tiny rush of her innate magic into the tiefling. The tenderness of the affection made her sway on the spot where she stood and she smiled at the princess, bowing her head.

The Queen, she corrected, forcing herself to make the mental adjustment. That’s the queen standing there now, you dolt!

The severe figure of the High Mage was made all the more stark by the harsh daylight now flooding in through the empty windows. The wind at this altitude whipped right through the room, tugging at tatters of cloth and blowing papers around like dry, rattling leaves. Maeva drew the queen to one side and the two proceeded to talk in hushed voices, leaving Salanei with nothing to do except keep watch.

She crossed to the door at the sound of — she tilted her head and strained — hooves. Demon or friend…? Brandon’s telltale white forelock and black pelt drew into view as he trotted up the staircase and she relaxed.

“You’re alright,” he smiled, tugging her into a quick hug before stepping back. “Thank the goddess. When you disappeared like that — And… the princess?”

“Queen now,” Salanei murmured. “She’s fine.”

“Goddess shelter his soul, and long live the queen,” Brandon said under his breath.

“What’s the rest of the castle like?” she asked, jabbing her thumb over her shoulder and adding, “It’s a fucking mess in there.”

“Same,” he said, leaning on the door frame and suddenly looking extremely tired. “It’ll take weeks to clear the demons and the rubble, but whatever that was, it purged them all in one go. Damned powerful magic.”

“It was the king,” she said. “He sacrificed himself to save the castle.”

“Not just the castle then,” Brandon said darkly. “Saved the whole bloody kingdom with it.”

It in fact took just over a week to get the last of the ichor and demons out of the castle, but it did take much longer to clear the rubble.

Ria insisted on being crowned in the goddess’ temple at the castle, despite the fact that half the roof was missing. Maeva and anyone with even a scrap of magic had been drafted in to weave invisible supports over the roof timbers and pillars to stop it all from tumbling in and crushing the congregation.

Salanei stood at the head of the guard of honour, her blade raised as the queen passed beneath, and she winked at one of the kitchen girls’ daughters whom Ria had selected to be one of the four train-barers. The tiny child could hardly lift the heavy material of the excessively long gown, but she valiantly did her best, along with the other children who had been chosen from the families of the castle staff. It was a lovely touch, and it had only endeared the young queen more to her people.

As the queen drew level with Salanei, she didn’t stop or break her step, but she shot her a fleeting look in passing, and the tiefling’s heart leapt. Over the past few weeks, the queen had shown her a remarkable degree of affection. She’d raised Salanei to the prestigious position of the Queen’s Blade - her personal bodyguard. But where the two had hardly interacted before the attack on the castle, now Salanei found herself often being admitted inside her private study to discuss security and plans to bolster the castle’s and kingdom’s defences with magic and boots on the ground. On such evenings, it was not uncommon for their hands to brush or their gaze to meet, but whatever swirling emotions Salanei felt, she kept her thoughts to herself. This was the queen after all.

The coronation service went on and on, but finally the oaths were taken, and the queen, now formally crowned, processed out into the courtyard beyond to thunderous cheering and applause. Maeva sent a rain of enchanted petals down around her, and she addressed her people as their new leader. All the while she spoke, Salanei scanned the crowd, but to her relief, she found nothing but adoring faces and cheering people. She met Brandon’s eye from the front row of guards keeping the crowd back, and he nodded at her.

It wasn’t until Ria was back in her chambers, again with Salanei at her side, that she showed the faintest sign of her exhaustion.

She was silent while her maids undressed her, their nimble hands undoing the regiments of buttons. Finally, they removed removed the ridiculous gown from the room and found something more comfortable. In her humble, ignorant opinion, Salanei thought that the queen looked much better in plain dresses anyway.

Ria had decided, upon Maeva’s advice, to take the rest of the day to herself, and just as Salanei was preparing to stand guard outside her door, the queen took her wrist in her gentle, firm grip, and halted her.

“No, Salanei,” she said in a hoarse, tired voice. “Stay. Please.”

“Of course. What do you need?”

“I… I don’t know,” she said with heartbreaking honesty. “I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Feeling her body go slack as her heart went out to the young woman, Salanei said, “Shall I run you a bath, Majesty?”

On the point of replying, the queen paused and changed her mind. “Call me Ria,” she said. “Please. When it’s just us two in these rooms, please… call me by my name. I’m… I’m afraid that I’ll forget the sound of it now that I’m queen and there’s no one left to call me that…”

Bowing her head under the weight of that gift, Salanei nodded. “As you wish… Ria.”

With a smile, the queen reached for Salanei's other hand and squeezed her fingers in her own. “You’re so strong, Salanei,” she said, running her thumbs over the rough, scuffed knuckles and feeling the calluses from weapons training on her palms and fingers. “You… You’re so beautiful…”

The breath left Salanei in a rush as if she’d been punched in the solar plexus. “Majesty,” she protested, embarrassed and trying to pull away, but the queen held firm.

“I mean it,” she said with a fierce light in her eyes. And then she went soft with a sigh and said, “But yes, a bath does sound nice.”

“I’ll run you one,” Salanei offered, glad for an excuse to leave the room. Her heart was thudding and her skin felt hot all over.

“You’re not my servant,” Ria barked as the tiefling made to stride away across the room towards the chambers. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I’d like to,” she said. “Please.”

With a nod, Ria accepted, and ten minutes later, a steaming hot bath stood ready for her in the adjacent bathroom, the scent of jasmine heady in the air. When Salanei emerged, she found the queen undressing again, and struggling with a button right in the middle of her back.

“Help me?” asked the queen in a surprisingly shy voice.

Silently, Salanei crossed to her and freed the tiny pearl button from the back of the dress, revealing the smooth, warm skin of her back as the fabric parted and fall away. She had three freckles just to the right of her spine. The urge to brush her fingers down the length of the queen’s back from the nape of her neck to the waist of her dress was almost overwhelming, but she forced herself to step back. “Anything else?” she asked in a croak.

With a knowing, almost playful smile, the queen looked over her shoulder and said, “Fetch me a robe?”

Licking her lips, Salanei swallowed. Had Ria’s eyes always been so bright? Her hair so golden? Her lips so…

“Salanei?”

“Of course,” she chirped and turned abruptly to fetch a robe from the back of the bathroom door and bring it. When she found the queen standing completely naked in the middle of the room with her dress pooled around her ankles, she nearly cursed. Her feet stopped and she stood there, slack-jawed and staring.

“Are you going to pass it to me or not?” Ria giggled.

Flushing hot, Salanei handed it to her and looked away as she extended her arm.

“Don’t,” Ria breathed. “Unless you want to, of course.”

She had no answer for that.

“Salanei…?” the queen asked, sounding suddenly unsure. “What is it you want? Answer me honestly.”

You.

“I can’t,” she hissed, turning completely away.

Oh gods, I want you so much, she thought. I want to make you forget everything. I want to kneel between your legs and taste you. I want to sink my fingers into your heat and feel you let go. I want to give you what no other can give you.

The queen’s voice was steady as she asked, “If you could speak freely, what would you say to me?”

“Tell me I’m not out of line,” Salanei breathed. “Tell me —” she couldn’t finish it. It felt… blasphemous even to begin to voice her desires. This was the queen. And she was a gutter-rat tiefling from nowhere, with no family and nothing but her magic and her fighting skills.

“I want you, Salanei,” the queen said unflinchingly. “I want you, but I don’t want you afraid.”

Her lips parted when she heard those words, and she turned to face her queen properly. Ria still hadn’t done up the bath robe, leaving a column of perfect skin exposed between her covered breasts, and a soft nest of golden hair between her legs. Salanei’s fingertip ached to touch her just there and see if her knees would buckle at the contact.

Without a word, the queen turned and walked slowly towards the bathroom, leaving the door open. An invitation? Salanei stood there for a long time, listening to the slosh of the water in the huge copper bath as the queen got in and then lay back. Steam billowed out of the room, coiling along the floor like crooked fingers calling.

Swallowing, her heart thudding, Salanei padded into the bathroom and came to an uncertain halt. The bath stood in the centre of the small chamber, and the queen had her back to the door where she reclined in the steaming water. “Come here,” she said gently.

“Would you like me to stay?”

“I’d like you to do more than that, if you feel comfortable…” she purred, and as Salanei drew level with the bath, she looked up at her, features sharpening. “Don’t do anything you don’t want to, alright? I’m well aware of what I am, and what your station is. If… If you feel as though you’re… obliged in any way to… to…” tears filled her eyes but she refused to let them spill, and in a rush Salanei knelt on the cold marble beside the bath and put her left hand on the rim of the tub.

“No,” she said fiercely. “I want this. Trust me, I want this…”

“You can touch me,” the queen said in a low voice, tilting her head back. The bubbles just skimmed the surface of the water, but as she moved, fragrant waves lapped at her chest and Salanei glimpsed the roundness of her breasts beneath the water and the dusky pink of her hard nipples too. “Please…”

Salanei slid her right hand into the water, her plum-purple skin in sharp contrast to the warmth of the queen’s own, and she found the inside of the queen’s thigh, letting her palm play up and down it for a moment. Ria let out a long, broken moan and arched her back a little, and it suddenly occurred to Salanei that she probably hadn’t ever been touched like this. Aside from being dressed by her maids, she was always apart, always unreachable, always kept safely at arm’s length.

“I…” Ria faltered, her eyes still closed. “I never thanked you. I never found a minute, but… I should have made time. You’ve given everything to me, and you helped to save my life.”

“I made your father a promise,” she said, still just cupping the curve of her thigh in her hand, hardly daring to believe that this was happening. “And I grew to love you years ago. Your goodness, your grace, your kindness… You won me heart and soul, Ria. I’m yours. Always.”

A tear slid from Ria’s eye and disappeared into the dampness on her skin at her neck. “Touch me,” she whispered, voice intense, and Salanei complied.

She moved her hand further up her smooth thighs, feeling her tail coiling around her own ankle as her body heated up and she began to get wet from the sheer anticipation of touching the queen like this at last. How many nights had she touched herself with thoughts of the queen’s pleasure ringing in her imagination?

At the smooth glide of fingertips over her folds, the queen’s legs fell apart and she bucked weakly, sloshing water almost over the rim of the bath. Another moan escaped her and she let her head loll as Salanei repeated the gesture on the other side before circling her swelling clit and then nudging just beneath it.

A shudder ran through the queen and she gripped the edges of the bath as Salanei brushed against her, teasing and testing, finding out how she liked to be touched, where was too sensitive and what garnered her the most vocal reactions. Slow and firm seemed to drive her closer to towards her peak, while tentative and teasing made her buck and gasp, shivering and grunting with satisfaction delayed. Naturally, she drew out the process for as long as she could, and oscillated between the two.

“Please!” Ria finally gasped, curling forwards, knuckles white on the rim of the copper bath as Salanei ran one callused fingertip back and forth just between her clit and her entrance. It was far too slow and far too teasing. “Oh goddess… oh goddess…” she chanted, her whole body winding tighter and tighter. The water could not disguise the slickness that eased Salanei's attentions either.

In a single motion, Salanei slid two fingers deep inside her and crooked them, pressing against her walls while circling her clit with her thumb, and the queen shattered. Salanei was fairly certain she’d soaked through her own underwear, but nothing could distract her from the tight, clenching heat as pleasure ripped through the other woman and swept her away with it. She gave herself completely to it and convulsed, water slopping over the edge of the bath and onto the floor and drenching Salanei's loose trousers too.

“You’re so beautiful,” Salanei crooned as the queen continued to come. “Goddess, but you’re so beautiful…” She kept the pressure inside the queen’s body with her fingertips, easing her through it until finally Ria slumped back against the bath, her chest heaving, her eyes closed, and the softest, sweetest look of joy on her face.

When she’d caught her breath, she opened her eyes with a flutter of golden lashes and whispered, “I want to do that to you.”

“I’m yours,” Salanei replied with a wry smile, withdrawing her fingers and tracing a fond touch across her sensitive inner thigh without removing her hand from the water.

“Give me a moment to feel my legs again,” Ria said, “And then help me out of here, and I’ll return the favour. I do feel bad that you were on the floor though,” she said, a tiny frown pinching her eyebrows together.

Salanei laughed hoarsely and said, “If you knew how wet I was, you wouldn’t have said that.”

The queen went still, a surprised smile on her face. “That got you wet? Doing that to me?”

“You have no idea.”

With that, Ria stood somewhat shakily, water cascading down her perfect body, and, with her eyes practically glowing, said, “Show me.”

___

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[libermachinae]

Fault Lines Under the Living Room

Part IV: Touch - Chapter 12: Stumble and Lost His Grip

Also available on AO3! Summary: Knocking on the front door didn’t work, so time to try the back. Word Count: 3,437

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Scorch might have been as pleasant as the rust ruined dregs at the bottom of an oil can, but damn if Spur wouldn’t mind feeling that arrogant crackle of a laugh at the other end of his spark. A few jabs about how he’d teamed up with Autobots just like Grrder always warned he would with too-easy remark about how he got distracted by a smooth tread. Anything but the emptiness of stasis lock chilling him from the inside out. Add in the fact that they were racing narrowly by a straight plummet to a grisly death and this could easily rank among the top five worst days of his life.

He clung tighter to Drift’s roof, optics offline. If this was the end, he didn’t want to see it coming.

“Watch it,” Drift warned. Spur ignored him.

He’d had an alt-mode once, so long ago it was hard to remember now. He and Scorch had worked in construction setting up new plumbing infrastructure and had hated it. Even though he couldn’t remember what form he’d taken to do the job, he could still smell the insides of those tunnels and feel that wet heat weighing down on him. When the representative for Triple M had shown up on site, it hadn’t mattered that the foreman dragged him off before he could introduce himself. Spur and Scorch had been among the handful to roll up to the ramshackle unformatting clinic.

He justified the decision with a simple fact: everyone did stupid slag when they were young. His dumb idea also meant they weren’t in Ultrix when the sinkhole opened under the Ioreian neighborhood, and that they were among the first to know when Triple M leadership decided the Decepticons had the right idea. Or at least were on a better track than the Senate. Spur hadn’t paid much attention to the politics, that was more Scorch’s thing. Spur was more interested in survival, a simple goal that had become more complex the moment Drift had realized he didn’t have any wings or wheels of his own. That was how he found himself now with his fingers tight around the edges of Drift’s roof, squished flat with the wind tearing at his back plating, wishing for the untold time that he was about to wake up in his closet-sized hab back on the lunar base.

“Acknowledged,” Drift said. 

“What’s happening?” They hadn’t offered to patch Spur into their comm channel, and he hadn’t asked.

“Rodimus says we’ve got incoming.”

“Pitslag,” Spur muttered. He was so tired of getting shot at and beaten up and chased—

“Just keep your optics open.”

Which sounded like an awful idea, except Drift was very much in control of the momentum of Spur’s poorly armored body. He brought his optics online slowly, peering through a staticky haze, but nothing could disguise the depth of the canyon’s shadow, nor the sheer drop, which Drift’s tire edged along like a battlefield medic’s torch across a wound.

Against the ludicrously powerful engine underneath him, Spur failed to catch the moment the echoes started up from behind them, only realizing he was hearing something when Drift briefly slowed for a tight turn. The sounds overlapped, feeding into each other, but when he listened close he picked up a pattern: the ripple of a spring releasing, followed by the harsh thunk of a metal body hitting stone. He twisted, trying to catch a glimpse, but the darkness of the canyon hid its secrets well.

“On their way,” he said.

“I know.” Drift pulled a tight corner faster than he should have and started to tilt toward the edge; Spur felt his spark seize and threw his weight in the opposite direction.

“Gonna fraggin’ kill us!” he snarled.

“If not me, then it’ll be them. You want to choose which one?” Drift asked.

Another day, Spur might have considered the Decepticons. With the ground under his pedes and a blaster in his grip, he could handle himself. He might not have been able to fight so well, but he could make a stand, which was often all his superiors had asked of him. Something had happened to Scorch, though, and since Spur wasn’t about to reveal his biggest weakness to a bunch of pseudo-Autobots (even  one had saved his life), he was stuck with them until he could find somewhere to slip away.

The first blaster bolt that pinged off the wall behind him had him wondering if there were any right choices in this mess.

“Slag!” Drift swore as the second shot clipped his side mirror. “They’re on us!”

Spur twisted again. He mistook them for Insecticons at first, with their twisted bodies and spring-loaded legs, but as one dug its thick claws into a wall with a heavy thunk, it revealed a small pilot crouched within.

Bang!

A pilot with a decent aim.

“Scrap, scrap!” he swore, his voice tilting up as he felt Drift slow further. “No, what are you doing? Speed up! They’re shooting at us!”

“Get off.” Drift didn’t wait and transformed as he pulled to a stop, dumping Spur onto the ground. Both took evasive actions as the plasma bolts rained down, Spur wedging himself behind a boulder while Drift took up the annoying hoppy thing he’d done to evade them back on Vitrious.

“Rodimus!” Drift barked. “I know, but we’re getting shot right now!”

Spur wanted to know why that was only an unimportant detail when he was the one pointing it out, but his attention was quickly grabbed by another sound pushing into their canyon, drowning out even the blasterfire: an interstellar speeder descending directly on top of their pursuers.

The Decepticons, startled by this new development, broke formation. One released his hold on the wall and dropped out of sight, apparently uninterested in dealing with Drift’s reinforcements. The others regrouped, one continuing his assault on Drift and Spur while the second twisted in his perch on the wall, apparently with the intention to latch onto the ship itself.

“Down!” Drift shouted.

Instead, the speeder tilter up and to the side, slamming into the assailant before he’d engaged his claws. He went tumbling end over end after his teammate, which would have felt more like a win if Spur wasn’t still ducking from blasterfire that rained shrapnel down on his helm.

“Will you do something?!” he demanded.

“I’m—trying!” Drift’s words were labored, popping between bursts of gunfire. Spur questioned, not for the first time, what he had done to earn luck so bad his captor was a swordsmech. “Rodimus, watch—”

Spur was still ducking, so he didn’t see exactly what happened, but there was a bang accompanied by the shriek of tearing metal. The engine swung closer before it dipped away again.

“No!”

And then the sounds of the battle fading, falling. Spur stayed frozen, hands clutching his helm, waiting for an explosion or another burst of gunfire that never came. After several minutes, he brought his optics online and peeked over his shoulder.

Gone. The lot of them all disappeared.

On legs that were still trembling from the force of the gunshots, Spur stood and stepped out from his cover. His tiptoed to the edge of the canyon but stopped before he was close enough to look down. He hadn’t heard a crash yet, which implied they were still falling; that was a long, long way down.

He hesitated, listened close. He took two steps back and turned aside, walking, at a much more reasonable pace, in the direction he’d already been headed. It was very quiet, down inside this lonely canyon on this almost empty hunk of rock. He tugged again on the thread tied to his spark, hoping that this would be the one that revealed he wasn’t alone anymore.

~*~

Drift had been accused in the past of not thinking before he leapt. It would have looked that way, had anyone been watching as he sailed through the air folded into the jet stream of the plummeting shuttle. The assumption overlooked the fact that he had considered all of this well in advance, and he had decided, regardless of their easily broken promises, he would do everything in his power to get his friends out unharmed.

Despite the damage, the shuttle’s engines were still functioning, and it was fighting to stay airborne, bucking against its unwanted passenger. Drift almost shot past but managed to grab a service handle, wincing as the shuttle’s violent movements wrenched his delicate repairs.

“Rodimus!” he shouted, not sure comms would cover up the roar of the air and the shuttle’s engines. “Calm down! I’m taking care of this!”

“Slag, Drift, hurry!”

Drift startled. He wasn’t used to hearing Rodimus like that. As if sensing his confusion, Ratchet chimed in.

“That thing’s nearly punctured through the shuttle’s inner walls,” he said. “Rodimus is scared the rider’s going to find his way inside.”

Which was, of course, the one thing they could not allow to happen and the entire reason Drift had told them not to come. It was only concern for Rodimus’ safety that got him to withhold his anger for later, focusing on what he could do instead of what he wished he’d done. The shuttle stopped its thrashing, which gave Drift an opportunity to pull himself against its side and start climbing the short ladder. He was almost to the top when he ducked, just avoiding a blaster shot between the optics.

“Frag off!” he yelled.

No response from the canyon crawler pilot. Drift didn’t understand why he hadn’t disengaged yet and wondered if it was a mechanical failure. The rigs weren’t designed to bore into spacecraft, and it was possible he had accidentally fused it to the shuttle.

“Rodimus, what’s he doing?” Drift asked.

“I don’t know; I can’t see! Half your cameras are busted!”

Drift switched to his other channel.

“Calm him down,” he demanded.

“I’m trying,” Ratchet said. “The kid’s stressed.”

Drift bristled.

“He’s not a kid,” he snapped, then cut the comm and launched himself over the shuttle.

The tick wasn’t expecting another attempt so soon or so suddenly. His shot landed somewhere behind Drift, the gun ripped from his hand before he’d finished releasing the trigger. He cowered within his metal exoskeleton, the entire contraption shivering as it tried to pry itself from the inner workings of the shuttle.

Drift didn’t stop to think about it. He wrapped his hands under the upper jaw of the crawler and wrenched it open, griding its fangs back through the punctures it had made. Freed of his captive, the small Decepticon immediately tried to reengage, snapping the crawler’s trap shut and almost crushing Drift’s fingers in the process. Drift tried to hold on, but in his effort to save his hand, he accidentally aimed the crawler’s spring legs at himself. They kicked into his abdomen, causing him to stumble and lose his grip entirely.

“No!”

The metal cage went flying, sucked into the air current before tumbling down into the abyss, Drift watching it go from his place atop the shuttle.

He hesitated a nanoklik. Then it was too late to do anything. Drift stared at the place the bot had vanished and turned on his comms, but he didn’t know what to say.

“Drift?” Rodimus said. “I kinda saw what happened. You alright?”

It was a long drop, and the shuttle wasn’t moving slowly. If the crawler came with an eject function, the bot might get lucky and land on something pliable, but more likely he was riding it all the way down. Drift tried to muster up an answer to Rodimus’ question, but nothing came to mind. The exhaustion that dogged his frame came back in full force, but that was so normal he doubted it was worth mentioning.

“Are you injured?” Rodimus pressed.

“No,” Drift said honestly. He sunk down, reattaching himself to the side of the speeder. “I—I don’t know what I’m doing.” He had spent months practicing the most rigid self-control of his life, keeping slavers and imperialists and megalomaniacs alive long enough to deliver them to justice. He’d made every thrust with precision, every grapple a little less than his full strength, and now that it appeared his efforts were at an end, he felt nothing. He’d thought that his first kill—because it had always been inevitable that he would go back to his old ways eventually—would provoke guilt or grief. But he didn’t feel anything.

“You’re going to get Grit,” Rodimus said. “You’re protecting Vitrious.”

Allegedly. If he didn’t care about this, had he ever cared about Vitrious? Was all that scrap about slavers and the betrayal of the Cause just an excuse for him to indulge the anger he had kept hidden under a red badge?

“Why are you here, Rodimus?” he asked. “Forget Ratchet and the Enigma. Why did you agree to come?” He wasn’t sure that answer would matter any more than the rest, but he was tired of being in his own head. He needed something else.

“To bring you back to the Lost Light,” Rodimus said.

“But why?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Rodimus.” If there was a growl in his voice, it was because he couldn’t be bothered to hold it back anymore.

“W—what do you want from me?” Rodimus asked. Despite the stress in his voice, the shuttle kept on a smooth course. “Do you want me to say that it’s for some selfish reason, that I was doing it for myself and my personal glory again? I’ve gotten a lot of practice with—I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

“I want you to be honest with me,” Drift said. “If we’re going to risk our lives for each other, I need to know why.” Everything had a price. He’d learned that years ago, and that the only way to get anywhere in the world was to set your own as high as you could. This was probably the most he could ask of Rodimus, and he still didn’t know if it would be enough. And yet for a moment, it didn’t seem like Rodimus would be able to pay. The silence stretched out, waiting, until Drift very nearly told Rodimus to carry them back up to the ledge so he could drive himself the rest of the way.

“I thought about being a hero,” Rodimus said. His voice was quiet. “I had dreams about bringing you back to the Lost Light and telling you everyone had forgiven you and giving you everything you deserved afterward. I would give you your life back, with interest. Anything you wanted. But it wouldn’t be like that, and I knew it. So then, I was afraid.”

Afraid simply of disappointment, or something more specific? Drift didn’t have a chance to ask, because Rodimus barreled on.

“That’s why I didn’t come to get you sooner,” he said. “I was scared. Getting you back would mean facing up to all of my mistakes, when before you were always the one who let me feel like I was doing everything right. When Ratchet told me he was coming to find you, it made me realize that I needed to get over that. Much as I appreciate what you did for me before, I wanted you back more than the things you did for me.”

“I already told you I didn’t leave for you,” Drift said, because Rodimus sounded sincere, but it wouldn’t mean anything if he was still sequestered in the fantasies Drift had built around him.

“I know,” Rodimus said, “but I’m talking about all of it: the Lost Light, the speeches, just telling me that I was doing a good job. You did so much for me.”

“I didn’t,” Drift insisted. “It was—it wasn’t about you, Rodimus. It was about everyone else. They needed you to be someone and I did everything in my power to make sure you were that person. I…” Fear and shame and something like self-loathing curled inside Drift, but he shoved past them because fuck it. He couldn’t go back to the Lost Light under more false pretenses, and if that meant he couldn’t go back at all…

He already knew better than to rely on himself first.

“I needed you to be that person,” he said. “I did it for me.”

A longer silence descended over the comms. The canyon was narrowing around them; Rodimus would need to ascend soon.

“Ratchet’s right,” Rodimus finally said, apparently unaware that Drift hadn’t been privy to whatever conversation the two had just shared. “I don’t have any room to complain when I was doing pretty much the same thing. You were doing what you had to, right?”

“I’m not sure how you want me to answer that,” Drift said honestly.

“Right, never mind.” Rodimus still sounded nervous. “What I really want to say is that, um, I get it. I think. We all set off on this quest for our own reasons, and most of them don’t really align at all. And—Prowl aside—it’s because our goals were so different that we—us two, but I guess Ratchet also a little bit—that we ended up out here. If we want to find the Knights, or save Vitrious, or just watch out for each other, I think we could stand to be more honest with each other about why we’re doing those things.”

Rodimus sounded reasonably confident about that, but Drift wasn’t so sure. He had no way to know whether Rodimus could handle the version of him that was more honest. Rodimus cared about his crew; Drift had seen that and knew it to be true. But he also cared about himself, and his tendency toward inflating his own ego wasn’t something that would be fixed by promise alone.

“You could start by answering my question,” he said.

“Question?”

“Why you came out here.”

“Oh. I mean, I think it’s straightforward: it’s because I missed you.”

“You don’t really know me,” Drift warned. Rodimus had asked for honesty.

“I’ve learned a lot recently,” Rodimus said. “And I want to get to know you more. Even if it’s not what I was expecting, you’re still my friend and my crewmate. No matter what. You could tell me you step on organics for fun and you’d still have a place on my—on our ship.”

Drift pulled a face.

“Ew.”

“Yeah, bad joke, bad timing,” Rodimus agreed, so casual Drift knew it had to be an act. “But that’s the other thing: Ratchet’s going to be on my aft this time. He’s looking out for you, too, and he’s not going to let me make the same mistakes twice.”

Drift and Ratchet might have only come back on speaking terms in the last few years, but Drift had trusted Ratchet for just over five million. Maybe it tipped the scales unfairly in Rodimus’ favor, but when Drift imagined the scenario Rodimus was building, it sounded good. Good enough that it was risky to trust. Good enough that he might never stop watching out for signs of the end. But maybe, if they were working together, he could trust the three of them to try.

“Okay,” he decided. “I can try. That’s all I can promise, though. I’ve got all the same hangups you do in making a commitment. That’s going to mean a lot of different things, and some of them aren’t so easy to manage.” It was possible that just stepping back onto the Lost Light would cause him to try to fold back into the third in command role he’d built for himself, though he didn’t know for sure; it was rare for him to be able to return to a life he’d left behind.

“Have you met me? Or Ratchet?” Rodimus asked. “None of us are ‘easy to manage.’ Doesn’t mean we’re not worth the effort.”

“You’re starting to sound like him,” Ratchet cut in. “Drift, you staying back?”

“I’m fine, Ratchet,” Drift assured him. The shuttle had begun to rise, bringing them back up to the level they’d been on when the patrol found them. They were nearly within sensor range of the base. Soon enough, he’d be on his own again.

“Stay that way,” Ratchet warned. “Don’t need you getting wrapped up in this mess.”

In a way, he already was, Drift mused, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Not yet. As the ship crested near a reasonably drivable cliff, he stood, preparing to dismount.

[herpronuonsarefemslash]

TEASER - Topsy Turvy - Chapter 17

A new chapter of “Topsy Turvy, Switchy Witchy, Bottom’s Up Buttercup!” See it here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/49834752 and read below for some teasers. ----- Harry's eyes flick between them. "So you veela can really tell if someone's Polyjuiced by...er...if they're randy?" Fleur shrugs.

"Go to ze end of the row, 'Arry Potter. You will find that Mr. Thomas and Mr. Finnegan just came in to zee library. Zey are kissing. Ze girl named...Vane, is it?She is watching. Look closely. She just realized she likes watching two men kiss." "Bloody hell," Harry whispers. "You knew all that from over here." ----- The statue by her office door is styled after a German Shepherd she had as a young woman. Better to have a dog of stone than a say goodbye like that. The transfiguration was not easy, and the yelps haunt her nightmares. She's not sure she ever wept as hard as when the cold shale tongue licked into her palm when she was done. Galahad whines and noses the doorknob. "Thank you, girl." She flicks her wand and sends a scrap of quartz sailing across the room, which Gally catches in her stony mouth. Her old friend settles to the carpet, crunching it into shimmering powder. A young man in an overlarge trench coat sails into the room, propelled like a troll's club had hit him. He lands crumpled up against her desk. Tangled around his thigh by the straps is a peg leg he doesn't need and a twitching glass eye is stuffed in his jacket pocket. Huffing with rage, a naked Fleur Delacour stands in the middle of the hallway, soapsuds and water dripping from her gleaming skin. Pale blue flame licks along her right arm, which wears a stripe of feathers and the fingers are clawed. Her left arm is pulled in tight to her side, bringing the wand closer to her core and steadying her aim. "Professor McGonagall! Zat man is an imposter!" she huffs. "So I can see. Do put your tits away, dear. I'll handle him." ----- DONG! DONG! DONG! DONG! "Count, my love." Five...six...seven...at last, it strikes twelve. "Happy Birthday, Hermione." Fleur curls down to press their lips together. It's a quick, upside-down thing but Fleur nips and shivers and moans. Long fingers bury themselves in Hermione's curls and hold her so Fleur can take her pleasure. She catches her lip between gleaming teeth. When they pull apart, Fleur's irises are sizzling rings of white fire, licked with gold sparks.

[decalinethespacecat]

The Games that We Play-Ch.1

A simple exploration.

That's all this mission was supposed to entail.

Well, in a sense, perhaps they had accomplished such. Stranded on a new, foreign world, brimming with energy, and teeming with organic life. And with that, it was the very life that they had been forced to alter themselves to, the very lifeblood that dwelt on this strange sphere in too great an excess, and thus, should they not adhere to the laws set by this new world, it could mean the loss of their functionality, or even more, their own sparks. Of course, ironically enough, it hadn't just been themselves that had to follow this code: the very ones that had caused their stranding here had also been subject to it. And even more, one amongst their former pursuers had, albeit forcibly at first, integrated amongst their numbers. Now, as the two parties faced each other atop this mountain, five against five, the playing field had been leveled.

The two heads of the opposing sides made direct eye contact with each other, the differences between them evident in far more than just their conflicting ideals and ambitions. On one side stood the stalwart, strong form of a darkly furred primate, leaning on his knuckles as the species he had scanned were inclined to do. His eyes were dark, yet soulful, and in the minds of some of his fellow explorers, dare they say, they appeared almost akin to the small creatures that had aided and catered to their ancestors. On the other was, for all intents and purposes, a complete antithesis of everything the primate was. He bore the outer flesh of a large theropod coated in a sheen of violet with a series of green ridges trailing along his back, ending at the base of his tail. Rows of sharpened, ivory teeth lined the inside of his powerful jaws, small, yet menacing red eyes full of intent glowering back at the primate opposite of him.

"Across the galaxy," the ancient reptile spoke, voice low and smooth. "It has come to this, Optimus Primal." The primate stood his ground, along with the other four organically based Cybertronians with him. "Face to face," a smile crept onto the theropod's features. "Tooth to claw...yesss." Oh yes indeed, he had been clamoring for this very moment! "Have you anything to say?"

The primate's face grew stern. True, he had not set out on this expedition with the intent to seek combat. Yet ultimately, Primus, it seemed, held other plans for them. "I'd say, that's prime." he simply stated before bearing his elongated canines. "Let's do it!"

...

"YEAHHHH!" a chorus of young voices cried out, five to be exact, as they charged in unison at a collection of five pieces of notebook paper held up by a used popsicle stick glued onto the back, each of them stuck into the ground so they would stay in place. The owners of the voices came forward and did 'battle' with the pieces of cut-out paper, lightly striking and flicking the fragile, crudely drawn depictions of their current 'adversaries'.

This was the third time they needed to be redrawn, and frankly, no one was wanting to have to do all five Predacons all over again. Especially if one of them was a young adolescent with questionable drawing skills. If anything, at least they LOOKED like how they were supposed to this time. Sort of.

One amongst the five, a boy with tannish skin and a darkly colored buzz cut, grabbed the cutout of Megatron (at least, it was supposed to be Megatron) and purposefully fell to the ground, bringing the piece of colored paper on a stick close to his face, raising one hand to keep it back, as if it weighed a good deal of weight.

...

The jaws were close. So insultingly close. Just a few centimeters more, and that slagging ape's head would be firmly in his jaws! "Admit defeat, Maximal!" Megatron bellowed, Primal not wavering, yet it was evident that he was struggling against the Tyrannosaurus' massive head. "The Energon shall be ours!"

The silverback needed to act fast. He held no intention of obeying the violet Predacon's demand, yet he needed some leeway. He needed to at least get the larger beast off of him! "Not if I can help it!"

...

"Yah!" the tan boy hollered, behaving as if he had just flung a two-ton boulder off of him, yet the paper cutout landed in the grass with little more than a soft crinkle. "Surrender, Megatron!" he proclaimed, his voice far from the authoritative, triumphant Maximal he was imitating. "You're scrapped!"

'Megatron didn't retort back, the boy realizing then what kind of corner he had just put himself in.

"Uh, guys?" he called out, the other four children ceasing their 'battle' against their respective Predacons and turning towards him. "Who's not fighting at this part?"

One boy amongst them, African and with a top of short, black curls, turned to him. "They all are!" he answered back.

"Yeah, but who's being shown fighting?"

"Uh…" the other boy paused, thinking for a moment. "I think it's just Optimus and Megatron."

"Ok." the tan boy went over to pick up the Megatron cutout, his dark eyes taking notice of a nearby tree. "You mind? I can't really chase myself."

...

The impact was immediate, and even if it had been mere seconds, the shock that came with the splintering rock formation behind them both clearly affected Primal more than his adversary.

A fact that they wasted no time in taking advantage of.

With one swift, precise bite, Megatron put the jaws of the mighty beast he had donned as his alternate form to proper use, the premaxillary teeth that once belonged to the likes of the extinct predator tore through the alpha primate's thigh, right above the joint. Primal released an involuntary wail of agony, the sharpened instruments having torn through his alt mode's synthetic flesh and down to the fragile circuitry and wiring underneath. Not feeling satisfied with just one sample of the Maximal's mech fluid lightly bathing his tongue, Megatron bit yet again, only this time, Primal seemed to have better prepared for it. He was still in a great deal of pain, yes, yet now he could better channel it, using the horrid sensations and transferring it into an unquenchable need to fight back, beginning with delivering a hardened chop with both hands to the top of Megatron's scaly dome.

This blow had put the behemoth reptile in the same position Optimus had been mere seconds prior. And due to the blow he had delivered, it took the Tyrannosaurus a moment to realize that, surprisingly enough, the foolish ape had somehow found it in him to up and began swinging him around by the tail! As soon as the world had begun spinning for him, it stopped, only to then realize he was flying right into the ceiling of the mountainous structure, crashing down with a resounding thud that shook the entire landscape.

"Gah!" Optimus cried out, hissing as he analyzed the injury done to his leg. True, he had managed to stand to deliver that rather 'creative' maneuver against his aggressor, yet it now dawned on him that there was no way he could walk with a tear like this. And internalized repairs wouldn't be able to undo damage such as this. As if to add insult to injury (literally in a sense), the reptile had somehow managed to get up. "It…" Optimus stammered, forcing himself to rise. "It's over, Megatron!"

"It is NEVER over! Nooo!" He could scarcely believe it at first, yet given how the brute's forces traveled all this way to engage them, perhaps anything was possible. After all, what other Cybertronian before them had been forced to adopt a secondary skin of organic flesh? Despite the painful surges the multiple Energon crystals sent through his true form, Megatron did not waver, aiming and sending a missile right in the direction of the wounded Primal. "For if I must die...I shall take you with me!"

There was no way he could avoid this. Its proximity was too close. The urge to flee was great, yet Primal stood firm. He would stand tall and accept this. He had begun to shut his eyes, awaiting the inevitable. 'Till all are one…'

Yet one, he was not yet to be.

The missile had never come to meet him.

...

"Wait, you want me to do what?" one amongst the group questioned with a quirked brow, this time the child, despite the role, a young girl with skin slightly darker than the boy roleplaying as Primal, her thick, black hair tied back in a low ponytail. In her hands was a wooden sword, one that she had made sure to bring each and every time she met with the others. Yet now, the African boy was asking her to do something a little...odd with it.

"Well, in the episode, Dinobot blocks it with his tail."

"So, what? You want me to put this on my butt?"

"Uh...well, it'd be accurate."

It sounded absurd, not to mention difficult to pull off. Sure, she didn't really know how to properly use the sword, yet at least she could make use of it as something of an improv baseball bat. But nooooo, when she batted the "missile" away like that, they had to stop so that they could do it 'the right way'.

"Fine." she moaned, rolling her eyes and tossing the crumpled piece of paper (Waspinator got stepped on, AGAIN) in the African boy's direction. "Throw it again."

...

The one that had once been under Megatron's command, the one that had blocked their way and saw fit to end his life on the stone bridge, allowing the Predacons to catch up with them, had just been the one to strike the incoming projectile with his striped, reptilian tail, sending it off course and away from them both.

The former Predacon and his would-be usurper had just miraculously saved him from certain death.

This revelation was given no time to truly be dwelt on at the present, for the missile had found itself a new target, the explosion sending a chain reaction that soon caused the entire mountain to shake.

"It's going to blow!" a brown rhinoceros bellowed, the once battling Predacons quickly realizing the danger they were all in and making a hasty retreat, leaving their downed leader behind.

"Time to fade, heroes!" one amongst the Maximals shouted, a green-eyed cheetah, he making himself scarce along with Primal and the rhino, a large, grey rat also atop of the horned creature's back, a velociraptor racing alongside with them off of the mountain. None dare to look back, lest they waste precious seconds before the entire formation exploded.

Thankfully, they thought as they now found themselves a good distance away, all of them had managed to make it out of that close call in one piece. All four...no, all five of them.

Optimus turned his gaze towards the newest member of their group, his pale eyes gazing back into the silverback's own. "Thanks." he simply stated, the ancient reptile somewhat taken aback by this gesture.

"My actions did not imply loyalty, Optimus." the striped theropod clarified, momentarily averting his gaze, his voice low and raspy, yet strangely enough, sincere. "I owe you my life." He admitted the act, even if he dare not openly say it, was rather humbling. "Now we are merely...even."

The silverback took no offense to this. In fact, to the raptor's befuddlement, he simply presented him with a satisfied grin. "I'll accept that."

"Yeah, well, uh.." The rat, having long gotten off the rhino's back, wasn't exactly ready to allow this saurian into their ranks, no matter what Optimus declared. Orders or not, he'd make his opinion on "Chopperface", or rather, "Choppahface", known for a long while. Still, there was a burning question on his mind. "At least Megatron's gone, and so is the Energon!" he declared, voice rising in hope. "Can we go home now?"

It was too good to be true. The shaking of his leader's head cemented this fact. "No, Rattrap." the gorilla solemnly stated. "For now, we're stranded here with the Predacons on this unknown planet." the situation sunk in for all of them now, truly. "Megatron may be back, and there is still more Energon. If they ever get enough, they could conquer the galaxy." he could see the trepidation etched into their features. Indeed, he would be a liar if he said he did not share in their collective concern. Still...there was no other way. Their opposition had to be stopped. And whether it be here, Earth, or even Cybertron, his conviction would have remained the same. "So for now," he began, looking towards the endless, blue horizon above. "Let the battle be here, on this strange, primitive world. And let it be called," he shouted, extending his fist towards the skies. "The Beast Wars!"

...

"YEAH!" The five shouted in chorus, full of nothing short of absolute triumph and exhilaration, the sight of the untamed, unconquered canyon and mountainous landscape the Maximals stood upon at the forefront of their mind's eye.

Of course, after a few moments of this, said landscape steadily began to fade, the mowed, fertile, green lawn of the African boy's yard coming to consume the place stationed in their imaginations.

"Uh, ok." a voice amongst them spoke, said voice belonging to another girl in the group, though contrary to the other young lady with them, she bore lighter skin and a head of long, red locks. "So...do we go over the toy fund now or later?"

"I think we've got a more immediate problem than that." the African boy said, picking up the crumpled-up piece of paper. "Somebody's got to redraw Waspinator. Again."

The skies had darkened, the sun just beginning to set. Yet in the small, packed enclosure of the cubical-shaped treehouse, none of the five children paid any mind, a serious and passionate debate taking place amongst them.

"No way! I did it last week! It's Tim's turn!" a blonde boy with scruffy hair protested, crossing his arms.

"Last time I checked," the African boy clarified, gesturing an accusing finger back at the blonde. "You only did it last week because you skipped out on the last time it was your turn."

"Hey, I was sick that week!" he protested.

"Yeah, that was boring." The black-haired girl admitted. "I was tired of acting out that episode where Cheetor got kidnapped by Tarantulas."

"You got tired?" another girl questioned, she of lighter skin and a head of fiery red hair, even if her voice was meek and smooth. "I had to make sure the cutout we made didn't get too messed up."

"At least Rattrap got to do stuff in that episode!' the other girl retorted, looking to her wooden sword. "Dinobot was barely in that one!"

"And we can only do so many with just five of us!" the blonde added in. "Soon, it's going to get to where we're going to have to start making up our own episodes!"

"Ok, look!" the tan boy interjected, the other four quieting down. "We're getting off track. The point is that Waspinator got messed up, again, and somebody's got to make another cutout-"

"Again." the other children finished for him, he somewhat startled by how quickly they picked up on what he was about to say.

"Right, so one of us is going to have to do it. But we've got to find out who's turn it is to make a new one-"

"Timothy Leblanc!" each and every one of the five adolescents jumped at the voice piercing through their private space up in the crudely constructed, yet still standing treehouse. And whilst the feminine, rather irritable voice called out for just one of them, each didn't need to ask what this also meant for them. "It's thirty minutes past five now, and you're STILL up there?! Your father's going to get here in less than five, and your dinner's had to be heated up twice already!"

The African boy winced, looking at his friends with a rather sheepish expression. "I've got to probably get going too." the red-haired girl confessed.

"Me too." the blonde added. "Mom's going to kill me if I don't do the dishwasher before the day's done."

"And my mom wants me to help her with the...the…" the black-haired girl paused. "I think she called it a…bistek tagalog?"

"A what?" Tim questioned.

"Your mom always makes the weirdest stuff." the blonde added.

"Whatever it is, she wants me to help mix the sauce and put the onions in."

"So, who's going to redraw…" the tan boy began, only to find that all eyes were on him.

A few hours later

"Thanks a lot!"

"Yeah, totally!"

"You're always so thoughtful!"

"Yeah, the best!"

Even now, he was STILL seething mad at all of them.

True, there really wasn't a rush, and he could probably get it done during study hall tomorrow, but still, once again, he had been sacked with the task of redrawing Predacons (correction: one particular Predacon) AGAIN, when the rest of them knew well and good that it was someone else's turn! Still, in a way, he sort of knew why he got this particular task the most, mainly because he was the only one that could actually make them LOOK sort of accurate. As accurate as a fourth grader that had a decent enough grade in Art could get.

'Yeah, well, let's see them when we act out 'Starscream's Ghost'!' the boy thought, scribbling a green crayon in the thick pencil lines that made up Waspinator's outline. 'I'll be Waspinator on that one! And...oh wait, no.' he just remembered. 'We don't have anyone that can be Tigetron or Airazor.' let alone did they have anyone that could've filled in the role of Blackarachnia or Inferno.

'And we can only do so many with just five of us!' the blonde boy's words echoed in his mind.. 'Soon, it's going to get where we're going to have to start making up our own episodes!'

"Inuksuk!" a man's voice said from the other side of the door, the young boy ceasing his doodling. "Don't tell me you're still up!" the child inwardly groaned at hearing his full name. Culture and heritage aside, he still hated it. "Have you even brushed your teeth yet, young man?"

Brushed...oh shoot!

The older, far taller adult standing outside of the boy's room was knocked back by the door, quite literally, slamming in his face, a small figure rushing out and into the bathroom. "Well, at least you know to stand out of the way next time." a woman shouted at the bottom of the stairs.

"Y-Yeah...guess so…"

Bathroom

Not so much brushing as he was grinding the bristles in and around his teeth, yet from what he could see in the mirror, his mouth was foamy enough for it to count! Speaking of which, he took a moment to eject said foam from his mouth and into the sink, washing it down and getting out the dental floss, tearing off just enough (just as mom showed him) and tying the ends around his fingers (just as mom showed him, though he struggled more with that particular step). Inuksuk looked good and hard in the mirror at his still growing teeth, a couple of empty spaces from recently pulled ones serving as areas he needed to keep extra clean, this particular tip from his father (of whom he just realized he might've just slammed in the face with a door).

He'd have to apologize when he got out. Assuming he hit him hard.

Still, as the young boy garbed in a simple, grey t-shirt and worn down, dark grey sweatpants navigated the floss through his available teeth, he found one thought running through his mind on repeat as he went on with his (very belated) nightly routine.

"Soon, it's going to get where we're going to have to start making up our own episodes!"

...

"...making up our own episodes!"

Making up their own episodes...hmm.

Perhaps the better term for it would've been 'making up our own stories, as really, how were a bunch of kids going to get ahold of anything better than a handheld camera, let alone, by some miracle, contact Mainframe with a stack of papers detailing these new exploits and adventures of the Maximals?

Still, Tim thought, as he spit out the strong tasting, even stronger stinging Listerine, it could work.

Yeah, they'd have to go through the process of deciding on a plot, a script, who'd be the 'star', all things that, frankly, he would've been more than content to leave for the fine folks who were in charge of the show to decide. But, seeing as it was evident that they'd probably be playing out these reenactments with just five, Timothy couldn't help but entertain the potential Mathis' proposal brought with it. What if, just if, they did go through with it...what could they do? Or perhaps the better question was, what COULDN'T they do?

Oh man, oh geez, oh gosh, oh man! He had just meant it as a way so that they wouldn't have to act out the same stuff over and over again! But thinking about it now...oh geez, he was near slapping himself for not suggesting it earlier!

...

"Mathis, bed!"

"Ok, mom! Just a minute!"

The blonde boy heard the door to his room open, a hand setting itself on his shoulder.

"It's been ten." a low, feminine voice told him. "And unless you want to go through the ritual of me setting the radio on at max volume for you in the morning...and also, did you even brush, let alone take your pills yet-"

"Ok, fine." Mathis groaned, getting up from the dining room table and to the foot of the stairs.

"Clean up first."

He turned back to face his mother, she bearing his blonde locks, yet not his chocolate brown eyes. "But didn't you just say-"

"It's going to take you five minutes to get all these crayons and pencils up." she answered, a small, curt grin coming to her lips. Once again, she foiled him. As the young boy went back over to the table and began putting the art supplies back in their proper boxes, correctly, as she was watching him, the woman couldn't help but notice what her child had been drawing. "Who's that?" she asked, picking up the piece of lined paper. "One of the characters from that show you and your friends watch? Um…" she tapped her finger on her chin, trying to recall whom exactly her son fawned over. "Cheetara or something?"

"That's Thundercats, mom." Mathis moaned. "It's Cheetor from Beast Wars." well, technically, that wasn't what it was called over here, yet he and his friends were in mutual agreement that 'Beasties' sounded ridiculous, not to mention stupid. Besides, Optimus outright even said that the fight they were in was called the flipping 'Beast Wars'!

"Ah, right. He's the...leopard, right?" This earned the woman another groan. "Kidding, kidding." She scanned the crude markings meant to resemble the computer-generated robot cat (at least she thought that was what he was, she only saw the show in brief intervals), and found a strange, new figure beside him. "Who's this?" she questioned her child, gesturing to the right of (what was supposed to be) Cheetor.

"Oh, that's…" Mathis began to answer, stopping before he could finish. "Well...I don't really know what his name is, but he's somebody I made up."

"Ah, like it's supposed to be you in the show?"

"No, it's not me. It's someone I made up." the boy affirmed. "He's a Saber-toothed Tiger."

(AN-I know it's more accurate to call it a Saber-toothed cat or Smilodon, but being a kid in the 90s, and in general, a kid, everyone I knew, both other kids and adults around me, just called it a Saber-toothed Tiger.)

"Oh, ok. That explains the teeth." his mother nodded.

"Yeah," Mathis confirmed. "There's only five of us, so we only have so many episodes we can act out as the Maximals. So I got to thinking we could maybe make up our own episodes."

"And in turn, make up your own characters?"

"...yeah. Yeah, I guess so."

"Yeah, well," the woman ruffled the younger boy's hair. "You have all the time in the world to do that tomorrow and on the weekend. Right now, everyone, even Saber-toothed Tigers, need to get up into bed. And they definitely need to keep their teeth clean"

"Before they have pills in some ice cream?"

She smiled, going over to the freezer. "I guess that can be arranged. Though, I'm not sure how you could eat anything with chompers like that."

...

'Making up our own episodes…' she wondered, as she climbed on into bed, her long, red locks contrasting greatly with the ivory fabric of her pillow and pale pink of her sheets, as well as a majority of her room, of which followed in a similar color scheme. 'How are we going to do that when we can't even save up enough to get some actual toys?'

Indeed, before the whole discussion involving who was going to be tasked with re-drawing Waspinator, she had collected what everyone had to offer that week to the 'toy-fund'. Inu (of which she and the rest had called Inuksuk, seeing as his name was somewhat difficult to pronounce) was the only one to have actually brought a full dollar along with herself. Everyone else ranged from fifty to no more than five cents.

'Five cents?!' she remembered losing her cool at that. 'Really, Mathis?!'

'Hey, it was hot out!' he in turn retorted to her. 'And Dr. Pepper was RIGHT there in the machine!'

She was still more than a little peeved about it, but ultimately, there was little that could be done now. 'We've gotten up to twenty-five, but if each toy costs around ten dollars, each separate toy, then…' her hand traveled to her forehead, realizing in horror what this meant. 'We're going to have to get around fifty dollars total! And that's not even with tax!' she flopped onto her bed, her red hair fanning out underneath her. 'We're going to be stuck using paper cutouts for the Predacons forever!'

This pessimistic musing, however, was cut off by the cracking of her door, her blue eyes watching as a large, furred, quadrupedal creature squeezed through the opening it had created and made its way to her bedside, sitting on the small, white floor mat stationed beside it.

"Hey, Zoe." The young girl greeted the massive Main Coon, this vocal utterance being all the greyish-brown feline needed to act, hopping on her bed and planting herself at the footboard, curling up and tucking her head under her tail. She folded her hands underneath her head, still more than a little perturbed that it'd be even longer before she and her friends would reach the desired goal of however many dollars before all the Predacons could be purchased. Assuming they would even be able to find any at a Wal-Mart or Toys R' Us. "If anything," she spoke aloud to herself, Mathis' words coming back to her. "Making up our own episodes would probably mean that we'd have to do even MORE work. Because then, we're going to start making up our own Maximals and Predacons!"

...

'Which would be so cool!' The Filipino, black-haired adolescent mentally declared, having been warned already to not be too loud, and that she had school to look forward to in the morning. 'Looking forward to school...yeah, dad, that was a REAL good one.'

'It'll be even better if you get in those eight hours. Now haul yourself up to bed.'

Frankly, she wasn't sure she'd be getting any sleep tonight. Not with this running through her head.

'Like...like there are already characters that are toys that aren't in the show yet! Like Claw Jaw, or Armordillo, Wolfang, and…' as she continued on, listing each and every Maximal and Predacon she had seen on the shelves (Dinobot WOULD be hers! Eventually.), her brown eyes surveyed her environment before she got out of bed and locked the door to her room, then went back to her bed and cut on the lamp stationed on her dresser. She then opened the single drawer on the small, wooden dresser, an even smaller, black notebook, and a single, number-two pencil residing in the compact space, the label 'Lulu' stuck on the cover via a small piece of paper and tape.

'Ok,' she mused to herself, grabbing the two objects and flipping open to a page with just enough room. Then, she began writing. 'Now...there was Claw Jaw, Armordillo, Wolfang…'

...

'...some guy that's a German Shepard...don't know how that happened.' indeed, he didn't, but lo and behold, it WAS indeed a toy. Inu rolled around on his left side. 'Maybe we could start with something a little more simple. Like...like after they left the mountain, they got the ship up and running better.' Despite his eyes being closed, scenarios and 'what ifs' began playing out in his mind. Yeah, that could work. Lulu could maybe play out how Dinobot settled in...and Mikaela could come up with some stuff to throw at her as Rattrap does in the show. Granted, that in itself might've been a little difficult. The Filipino girl could play out her role well enough without much assistance, yet the redhead kind of needed some 'coaching' on how to be snarky. Bizarrely enough, she could channel the rodent-based Maximal quite well whenever the subject of the 'toy fund' was brought up.

Inu continued to ponder and think, drowsiness steadily beginning to creep in, the faces and forms of his small circle of friends steadily transforming into the characters they portrayed in their reenactments.

'Hey.'

Yet...as he drifted off, the smallest bit of his mind that was still conscious noticed that despite the boy himself playing the role, the transformed silverback in his mind seemed to be paying attention to something or someone ahead of him. Something or someone that clearly wasn't present there before, yet he behaved as if they had been there all along.

'Thanks for the help back there.' Inu took a moment. This had to be a dream, yet...he certainly wasn't complaining. 'If it wasn't for you clearing out that path for us, we probably wouldn't have gotten off that mountain at all.'

"Oh, uh, no problem, sir." the young child answered, standing to attention like a soldier, salute and everything. He was far from a Maximal in this developing vision, let alone anything that could've ever had the potential to supposedly clear out a path, yet such details were trivial and minute to him. This was getting good, and he wasn't about to risk spoiling it.

"Despite your size, I'd be more than willing to allow you into our, heh," Primal chuckled, looking at the variety of fauna around him that were his comrades. "Ranks. Besides," he continued, extending one large, darkly colored hand. "I've always been curious about humanity and their culture."

...

Normally he'd totally be against this.

"Ah, here are some nice ones."

Here he was, some kid, in a time where people didn't exist yet, riding upon a talking rhinoceros as if it were the most mundane, normal thing in the world!

"Tim, you mind getting a few samples of these also?"

And even more...he didn't have a single problem with it.

"Sure thing. Just a second.'' The boy addressed both his transportation and 'favorite', hopping down from the Maximal's back and to the fertile, grassy plain below, said plain coincidently teeming with flowering specimens of all kinds. Some of these he had never seen before in his life, let alone in the pages of any book he could potentially check out from the school's library. Thus, he wanted to get the best one. The most fascinating and intriguing, not to mention definitely alien specimen…"Aha!" he cried out, wasting no time in plucking the desired flora from its place and bringing it to the brown rhinoceros. "Here.'' He presented his 'present', a strange, budding thing with fanned-out petals of primary colors.

"Now THAT'S one I might have to keep for myself," Rhinox admitted, the human boy in turn put the flower in a glass compartment he (somehow) had on his person. Dream logic, but he wasn't willing to spoil this. "Truly though, Timothy, sometimes I feel like you, aside from Optimus, are the only ones that can understand and appreciate the majesty of this place."

It was then that the child swore his heart had stopped. True, it probably hadn't, as he certainly didn't feel like he was dying in his sleep, yet to hear those words from the disguised robot, his 'favorite'...well, he was quite ready to go and pick every single thing that was growing in this imaginary field, should the rhino wish it.

...

His two legs carried him forward, the grassy plain and clear, summer sky nothing short of a picturesque perfect day. The slim spotted big cat with vibrant, green eyes that ran beside him was far from allowing the blonde boy to catch up. Far from it.

"Awesome!"

Impossible as it was, Mathis was actually catching up with HIM.

"You're almost as fast as I am!"

"Wait, almost?!"

"Yeah, almost!" With that, Cheetor gave himself a little bit of a boost, propelling forward and leaving the blonde a short distance behind.

Oh, it was on now.

The boy wasn't even getting tired. His legs were burning, his entire body drunk on adrenaline and whatever other chemical that flowed through his body (he'd have to remember to copy the notes off of Tim for Science class again), but by God, he was in absolute nirvana.

"Whoa, you actually caught up?!" the younger Maximal exclaimed to the human child, more than a little surprised at this.

"Y-Yeah!" Mathis shouted back. "Yeah, guess I did!" who cared about being a Sabertooth Tiger or whatever other animal, he was killing it just being an ordinary, boring….well, kid!

...

"..."

"..."

"...ok, look kid, you gonna stare all day?"

The red-haired girl giggled at the grey rat's annoyance. Even if she was the current source of such, she found she didn't particularly mind it. "I guess I just never realized how…"

Rattrap quirked a brow, taking another bite of the rotted blue apple (another indication this was no more than a dream. Not the giant, talking rat, oh no). "How what? You said it now, you can't leave me hanging."

Her teal eyes shifted. "I don't think you'll like it."

"I reiterate my prior statement."

"Fine," she said. In truth, she was somewhat anxious about how he'd react, yet all the same, a part of her hoped it'd be something he'd react to. "I never realized how fuzzy you are."

Any contents that once rested inside his mouth were promptly spat out. "Wh-WHAT?!" he exclaimed, scarcely believing what he had just heard. "What'd ya just say?!"

"I said you were fuzzy!" she repeated, a part of her somewhat fearful she offended him, yet another just as excited. "Right now! Your fur's getting all ruffled up!"

"It-it is not!" it clearly was. Robotic at spark he might've been, his outer skin was still a slave to its species' "quirks".

"Yes it is!" she chortled, fear finally gone and replaced with total amusement.

"It is not, kid!"

"Yes!"

"No!"

"Yes, it is!"

"No, it ain't!"

The vocal back and forth continued on and on, his growing frustration and embarrassment seemingly only channeling more and more humor for the human child, she then actually having the gall to come over and stroke him. Actually stroke him, as if he were some pet she had owned! Even worse, as he came to see as she continued to do it over and over, her hand traveling through his grey fur, Rattrap didn't entirely seem to mind. Daresay, it actually felt kind of...nice.

"Still don't know which of yous is worse. You or Choppahface."

"...you're still fuzzy."

"...it's you."

...

Block.

Thrust.

Block.

Swing.

Block.

Upward swing.

How she had managed to conjure up this particular kata in such a small amount of time, mattered not to her.

"Come now!" all that mattered was whom she was doing it for. "You're surely more capable than that!" Twisting herself around, the Filipino girl lifted her wooden sword and brought it down on the winding blade of Cybertronian origin, the wood miraculously not splintering upon impact. The azure features of her idol transformed into something of a curt grin of amusement. "You really believe you have a chance against me?"

"M-Maybe?" she answered. How she was doing this, she didn't know, yet frankly, she didn't care. And now she just up and made herself look like an idiot in front of him. Great.

Their weapons continue to strike and hit against each other, Dinobot outranking her in strength and size, yet she found that her smaller frame led to her gaining some clear advantages. Ducking under his legs, she aimed to stab upwards, he, in turn, whirling around and leaping forward, away from her strike. She got up, ready to go at it again, yet on the transformed Maximal's azure features, she beheld something that, had she not been so determined to keep her composure in front of him, she could've died happy right then and there in her sleep.

A smile.

A smile that echoed nothing short of absolute pride. Pride for her, of her, of one that had called him her favorite.

"You're far from ready to be partaking in any battle." the transformed velociraptor told her. "Yet...I will say this: there is a degree of potential in you."

...

Despite the distance between each of them, some greater than others, the same consensus was shared among all of them that night. And for many more nights to come. If their fantasies could either become their reality or better yet, have the ones they fantasized of step into the one they were unfortunately stuck in, then their young barely lived lives would be nothing short of absolutely perfect.

Primal's best soldier.

Rhinox's number one assistant.

Cheetor's best friend.

Rattrap's favorite (though he'd never say it).

Dinobot's best student.

The ideal scenario, should it ever be granted to them.

Though even in their young minds, they all knew such things, and their idols were regulated to the television and their own minds. True, it far from curbed or starved the desire to wish and hope for it, yet ultimately, it would be for naught.

For now, they had to make do with what they had at their disposal, regulated and limited to the simple, partially fulfilling games that they played.

[arotechno]

The Heartless: Chapter 8

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Chapter VIII: in which sometimes we surprise ourselves

After being recognized in my hometown—and tearing through it screaming in the most conspicuous way possible—there was no way I could stay there any longer, so I fled into the northern woods to consider my next course of action. It was only once I was alone with only the trees and creeping undergrowth that I let the tears begin to flow, initially white-hot with anger before sinking into unrestrained grief.

Maybe this was what Bertrand had meant when I said I would only end up getting hurt. But there had been a part of me that was hoping against any kind of rationality that I would return to find my parents alive and well. Even if they had rejected me, being able to chew them out for it would have been far more cathartic than the pain of only reopening a wound that could never be healed. A small part of me may have even been hoping I’d find Basil still here after all these years. But the idyllic notion of even having a home to return to had been a fantasy. Maybe people like me were only ever meant to be transient, like any home we’d ever have could only be temporary unless we built it for ourselves, clawing at the earth trying to create something out of nothing. Maybe this was the natural order of things, like if I tried to fit any sense of permanence or belonging into the caverns of my ribcage it would only ever inevitably be swallowed into dissolution by the empty space.

When I had finally wept myself dry, I reassessed my options. The easy answer would be to head back to Bertrand’s house with my tail between my legs and continue on as if nothing had changed at all. But I had reopened an age-old wound that left a sharp pain in my chest, as if I’d been cut open and left out in the woods to rot until the soil and the trees moved in through the gash that’d been left behind and made a home in the vacant space between my ribs. I concluded, perhaps foolishly, that the only path remaining was forward. No matter the costs, I had to press onward for answers, all the way to the far reaches of the kingdom if that was what it took. I would keep moving, leaving my hometown and the Village of the Heartless in the dust. I vowed that I would not return until I found answers, whatever that ended up meaning; no matter what, I refused to return home empty handed.

In spite of myself, I pulled the portrait from my room out of my bag. I had not seen my parents’ faces since the day I left, but their fading memory came rushing back clear as day as I wiped the dust and decay from the old frame—my father’s stoic kindness, my mother’s impish but steadfast guidance.

When the oppressive feeling returned, I went to put the picture away, but hesitated as I saw the afternoon sun reflect off something clear and shiny at the bottom of my bag. In disbelief, I reached in and pulled it out—three little glass vials of familiar red liquid, tied together with a piece of fraying string. There was a note attached:

Ace,

I have no use for these anymore, but perhaps they may help you on your journey. I do not know if they work, though I suppose you may get desperate.

Please take care, Ace. It is not a kind world out there. Though I suppose you know that better than most.

Bertrand

“Foolish old man,” I muttered to myself bitterly, though I was unable to keep a fond smile from creeping onto my face. Of course Bertrand had sent me with love potions, and nothing of actual use. I figured he must have slipped them into my bag at some point before I left. It was typical of him; ever insistent on his efforts to break the curse, no matter how futile. Nevertheless, I slipped the parcel back into the satchel carefully, followed by the picture frame that had been laying discarded at my side.

With a newfound resolve, I pushed myself to my feet, wiped the dirt from my pants, and began stumbling weary and bleary-eyed eastward.

* * *

As I traveled further from home, the quiet pastoral villages blurred into bustling small towns that made me hyper-aware in a hollow sort of way of the few measly coins jingling in my pocket. The evenings sang not with the quiet chatter of families and children’s rhymes, but with raucous laughter and live music that spilled out of taverns and large, ornate homes. The roads were all paved with neatly cut bricks or stones that clacked pleasantly under the dusty worn-out soles of my boots. The streets were always well-lit and well-maintained, lined with diligently trimmed bushes of sickly-sweet smelling flowers set against yellowing foliage. The trees still held a little greenery, as though summer were taking its last breath before giving way to the fall.

The further east I traveled, the more I stuck out like a sore thumb, though people seemed more content to simply brush past me in the streets rather than pay me any mind. I’d heard stories of the eastern towns as a child, tales of opulent mansions six stories tall and streets paved with gold. There, where the rich nobles and all sorts of other important folk lived, the wells never ran dry and the cellars were always overflowing, even in the longest winters. This, of course, had been a fairytale, nothing more than an over-exaggerated pie-in-the-sky dream of a life of wealth and bounty that was always going to be out of reach.

Seated in the shadow of an alley beside a lively tavern, stomach rumbling at the smell of freshly fried meat emanating from the open doors, I reckoned that the myth and the reality may as well have been the same, for all it was worth.

The night was cool, a light autumn breeze pushing the fallen leaves across the dirt floor of the alley. The only light came from the full moon and a flickering oil lamp that hung in the window above my head, casting my quivering shadow against the opposite wall. The sound of drunken laughter and clacking cups reverberated off the bricks, echoing in the empty night air.

The window flew open and I pressed my back as far against the tavern wall as it would go, sucking in a breath and holding it. An arm swung out and tossed a dirty canvas sack out into the alley, and then the window snapped shut again. After a moment of still silence, I exhaled and leaned forward on the balls of my feet to get a closer look at the bag. I pulled back a corner of the fabric; the sack was full of food, what looked to be burnt scraps and almost-rotting produce, the leftovers that paying customers didn’t want. My stomach growled, so loudly I feared it would alert half the town. Desperate, I leaned in closer—it wasn’t stealing if the food was being thrown out, right?

“Hey, get back!”

A figure jumped out from the other side of the building, sending me stumbling backward onto my butt. I clambered to my feet and reached instinctively for my bow, the figure for a knife on their belt. We both froze, squinting in the dim light of the alley.

“Wait a minute,” the figure hissed. “It’s you!”

“Knife Boy?” I blurted.

“Arrow Guy?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” The hand at Knife Boy’s belt moved to rest on his hip, and my eyes were drawn to the glint of moonlight off the dagger’s blade. “Wow, what is with you Heartless and scamming other folks’ food?”

My grip on the bow at my back tightened. “Keep that word out of your mouth before you get me arrested, or this time I won’t hesitate.”

Knife Boy raised his hands in surrender, taking a step backward. “Right, listen, I’m not going to attack you. I’m better than that now, I promise.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What are you doing all the way out east?”

“I could ask the same of you. Pretty risky for you to be traveling this close to the castle, no?”

“I asked you first. Do you live out here?”

Knife Boy stifled a laugh. “Do I look like I live around here?” He gestured down to his clothes, which even in the poor lighting I could tell looked more or less the same as mine. “I’m just here to steal, and you were about to take my loot that I waited hours for.”

I finally released my grip and lowered my hand back to my side. “Wait a minute. If you’re a thief yourself, why did you chase after my friend for stealing food back west?”

“You and I both know that had very little to do with the food,” Knife Boy replied bluntly.

“I—Fair enough.”

The tavern kitchen window opened brusquely, startling me back onto the defensive, and a deep voice bellowed, “Hey! What are you rotten kids doing out there?”

Knife Boy made a hasty dive for the discarded food and shouted, “Let’s get out of here!”

“Why should I trust you?”

He tossed me a burnt roll from the bag and urged, “Let’s go!”

Juggling the offering in my unexpectant hands, I took off after him out of the alley, halfway across town, and into the moonlit woods that lay beyond. Eventually, we reached a small clearing with a clear, bubbling stream. The leaves had been pushed into a pile like a makeshift bed, and a circle of stones and charred wood comprised the remains of a campfire. It looked as though Knife Boy had been camping out here for at least a few nights, perhaps longer.

Panting, Knife Boy dropped down clumsily onto his leaf pile and began rifling through the sack of food, appearing to toss away anything he deemed entirely inedible. I sat down cross-legged a cautious several feet away from him, drawing my cloak tighter around myself and taking bites out of the bread he had thrown me in the alley. The resolve and courage I’d had back there had disappeared into the quiet night, settling into an unfortunately familiar sense of danger and otherness. Seeming satisfied with his inspection of his (our?) loot, Knife Boy passed me a bruised apple and set the bag aside before he began gathering kindling.

“Why are you helping me?” I found the strength to ask, hating the uncertainty in my voice.

Knife Boy did not look up from where he was trying to start a fire. “Do you want the honest answer?”

“I certainly don’t want you to lie.”

“Wonderful, you’re going to make me admit it.” As a spark finally took hold and ignited a small flame, Knife Boy wiped the dirt from his hands and sat back down on his bed of leaves. “To tell you the truth, the way you stood your ground for that girl made me realize maybe I was wrong about you bastards. I didn’t think you could act like that.”

“Like what?” I prodded.

“Like a person.” Knife Boy turned to me and the firelight shone bright against his face. I had never seen him this clearly; he couldn’t have been any older than 15, features still soft around the edges, but there was a glimmer of something in his eyes, something familiar and sad.

“Can I ask you something?” I found myself saying.

“That’s mostly all you’ve done since I ran into you, so I don’t see why not.”

I chose to ignore his pointed comment. “Where are your parents?”

Knife Boy’s expression shifted into something unreadable and he quickly looked away. “They’re dead,” he whispered tersely, picking up a twig and dragging it through the dirt in front of him. “I’ve been traveling mostly on my own for a few years now.”

“Can I ask how they died?”

“You can ask, but I won’t tell you.”

“Right, sorry.” I turned the apple over in my hands, still uneaten. “I don’t know what happened to my parents, but I think it’s safe to assume they’re dead as well, or otherwise rotting in a cell somewhere. Either way, I doubt I’ll ever see them again.”

Knife Boy hummed in acknowledgement. After a moment, he looked back up at me, the unease in his eyes glinting in the firelight. “You knew your parents?”

“Now you’re the one asking questions?”

“It’s only fair,” Knife Boy muttered brusquely. “But you don’t have to answer.”

I shrugged. “It’s fine. I did know my parents, I lived with them for ten years. I had a friend, too, also Heartless, but when he was discovered, he was attacked by the other kids in the neighborhood. My parents sent me away, and that was the last I saw of them or him. I recently returned to my old home, only to find that both my parents and his parents were detained by the royal guard soon after, and nothing was ever heard from them again.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged again, even though Knife Boy was no longer looking.

“So that’s why you’re traveling. What are you hoping to find?”

“I’m not sure anymore,” I admitted. “Answers, I suppose.”

Knife Boy reached across the distance between us to snatch the apple out of my idle hands and took a king-sized bite out of it, and I saw no use in chastising him over it.

“What you want is revenge,” he countered with his mouth full.

“I’m sorry?”

“If you want to get to the bottom of this, then aren’t you headed for the top?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the question, earning a puzzled look from Knife Boy. The idea of infiltrating the castle grounds had crossed my mind on several occasions since I left the empty house. There was a voice in the recesses of my mind that said this entire journey was futile, but until the rest of me could accept that possibility, admitting defeat would simply never be an option.

“I have considered that,” I responded. “But I don’t think I’d make it very far.”

Knife Boy nodded and set his gaze somewhere far off beyond the trees that surrounded us as he continued devouring the apple. He said nothing more, leaving only the stream’s gentle gurgling and the crickets’ chirping to fill the void our voices had left behind. As the minutes passed in relative silence, I assumed the conversation had died, as Knife Boy didn’t seem eager to say anything more.

Then he chucked the remains of the apple core far into the woods and offered, not at all helpfully, “On your own.”

“Sorry, what?” I prompted, unable to hide the bewilderment in my voice.

“You wouldn’t make it very far on your own,” Knife Boy clarified in a biting tone, as if saying it out loud were physically painful.

“Are you… saying you want to come with me?”

Knife Boy groaned petulantly. “Ugh, when you say it like that it makes it sound like I actually like you and don’t think you’re weird and gross!” He huffed, not meeting my eyes. “Look, let’s just say that I owe you, okay? For sparing my life, twice now actually. And for showing me that I was wrong about you.”

Admittedly, “weird and gross” was one of the less scathing remarks I’d had directed at me or my kind before, so I let the petty insult wash over me like the rushing water over the rocks in the stream.

“And what do you get out of helping me?” I prodded.

“Let’s make a deal. You stop asking me personal questions, and I’ll help you sneak into the castle to find answers or avenge your formative childhood tragedy, or whatever.” Knife Boy reached his fist out towards me. “How’s that sound?”

With a smile, I returned the gesture; however, Knife Boy pulled back before our fists could make contact.

“Deal.”

[diabhals]

CAMP NANO 2020 ― BENEATH

genre ― low fantasy target ― 20k (at least!) pov ― third person limited themes ― trauma ; coping mechanisms ; found family ; crime ; justice ; morality ; love

SYNOPSIS ―

they say baia valontiu was a city of opportunity, once. before the fires came. 

the first fire was two hundred years ago. no-one remembers exactly how it started, whether it was an errant spark or an act of arson; what everyone agrees is that it was devastating. three out of four buildings reduced to ashen shells, far more grief than a city could handle. but they rebuilt, covering over their losses and starting anew ― and they almost made it.

the second fire was fifty years ago. two years after the first greatship returned to baia valontiu’s harbour. still, no-one knows quite how it began, only that the only surviving buildings were the stone ones. everything else, simply hollow ― but once again, they rebuilt. they raised their city higher, yet again burying the ghosts and grief. this time, though, they left people behind: the people beneath, the lost and forgotten. this time, something was missing from the city above; this time, the city had grown claws.

the third fire hasn’t come yet, but they say it will. smaller blazes break out across the city, each stopped, each one lending venom to people’s whispers. maybe it’s this poisoned speculation that turned the city sour, cut-throat, only offering its sweet opportunities to those willing to spill blood for them. those like beatrice vulpes, a child of the ashes, orphaned in a boat fire. her surname means fox, but they don’t call her that; if they have to address her at all, they call her dog. clever, but dangerous too: she leads a gang of thieves and swindlers, running just outside the reach of both the law and the iron circle. it isn’t enough.

when a stranger offers her the reward of a lifetime, bea finds herself tasked with a suicidal mission: to venture into the bowels of the city, to venture beneath, to kill the most powerful man in the city. and maybe, just maybe, to find it in her shrivelled heart to save her city.

CHARACTERS ―

bea vulpes ― a career criminal, hardened and angry. you might call her arrogant, cold, but you’d have to acknowledge her ruthless genius. all she wants is to spite the world that took everything from her by taking it all back, consequences be damned. and yet ― the people she loves might just supersede that. ( she/her , 23 , pan , autistic )

matei giurescu ― an alcoholic engineer, the heir of a greatship family. he drowns his trauma in liquor and adrenaline, turning his back on his craft in favour of scrapping in alleyways and collecting bruises. what he doesn’t want to acknowledge is his role in bea’s past, the ties that used to bind them ― and the debt he owes her. ( he/him , 23 , gay )

valleri apostol ( vall ) ― the secret in bea’s cellar: an unpicker with the gift to rip apart the very fabric of the body, and a disgraced ex-doctor. his twisted experiments belie a gentle, curious soul ― but that belies a hunger unable to be satisfied. he longs to see the world, longs to know, yet is confined to the cellar by agoraphobia. ( he/him , 24 , gay , autistic )

kiriya el-salah ― a stranger in a strange land; she hails from across the sea, from tahran, disgorged onto the baia valontiu docks as a child. bea’s second, a staunch and loyal fighter with a secret hurt. she’s proud and vicious, but she wishes to be soft, calls for a homeland that doesn’t answer. ( she/her, 25 , lesbian , trans )

kit dimitru ― the city above calls him king of the underside, prince of the sewers, slime snake. the people beneath call him home. leader, amputee, mystery: no-one knows his full name, or what stokes the fire of his anger. what they do know is that he’s kind, too; his own smoke chokes him, his own promises breaking his back. ( he/him, 23 , bi/ace , disabled )

TAG LIST ― ( tagging some people i think might be interested! ) @onhou @holotones @semblanche @energydeficient

[lizzy-bennet]

Once Upon a Dream Fandom: Doctor Who Pairing: Whouffaldi Length: 3,500 words Warnings: None   Also on Ao3

They say there’s a princess who sleeps in death behind a diamond briar, that she’s been asleep for billions of years and she’s doomed to sleep for billions more. And there’s a man, an ageless knight, the last prince of Gallifrey, who’s spending an eternity trying to reach her. (A Heaven Sent x Sleeping Beauty Retelling)

There is a princess, they say, filled with the light of the sun. She’s kind and she’s wise and they claim that she’s led thousands of lives. And there is an ageless knight, the last prince of his realm, and they whisper that he’s worn a dozen faces, that he’s been alive longer than half the stars in the sky, and can win wars without even raising his sword. And they are always together, this princess and the Knight, their fates intertwined like constellations or vines. There are hundreds of poems and thousands stories and millions and millions of songs, and each one of them say that together, they can shake stars and burn suns and save worlds. And here is the best part: He loves her more than anything else in the universe. And here, here, here is the worst part: He loves her more than anything else in the universe. # They are in Trap Valley. There’s smoke filling the sky above and snow-white ashes burning below, and in the space in-between, the Knight stands, and he thinks: This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. Because the black mark of the raven is burned onto the princess’ wrist, and she’s telling him something that sounds like goodbye, and he’s finding that his heart feels like a stone and that his throat has gone dry. “Don’t run,” the Knight whispers. “Stay with me.” And she wants to. Oh, how she wants to. But that’s not how their story goes. ”This is as brave as I know how to be,” the princess, Clara, says, as she looks into his eyes and rests her hand on his cheek. “Please, be a little proud of me.” The Knight nearly laughs at that, because how could he not be proud? She’s saved his life so many times, and she’s courageous and wise with a spark in her eyes that suggests that she’s so much bigger than the body the universe has given her. And now, to save a village full of people, she’s walking toward a sleeping death. She tries to slide her hand away, but he catches it midair, presses it against his lips to kiss, and against her skin, he murmurs, “I’ve got duty of care.” She laughs, and it sounds broken and sad, and he hates it. “No,” she tells him. “You don’t have duty of care. You’re free from it.” She’s wrong, he thinks. He’ll never, ever be free from it. But he loses his hold on her and she slips out of his grasp, turning toward the waiting spinning wheel with the raven’s beak spindle. “Let me be brave,” he hears her whisper, over and over, like the words are an anchor, something she’s holding onto as the world’s washing her away. “Let me be brave.” And he can do nothing but watch as her hand hovers right above the spindle, one breath and a brush away from eternal slumber, and she says, one last time: “Let me be brave.” Then her finger hits the needle, and she screams. And she screams and she screams and she screams, and his two hearts are twisting and he’s crying, thinks he’s dying, because there’s nothing, not a single sound in this universe or the next that could possibly hurt him like this sound does. And he’s frozen to the spot, staring as her eyes flutter shut and she falls to the ground, fast asleep in a crumpled heap, fated to sleep forevermore. He tries to run to her, to fall down beside her, because once, a very long time ago, he heard a story that said that true love’s kiss can wake one from this. And it’s a only a guess, a mere hunch, a desperate wish, but he’s got to try. (And if true love really is the key, well, the one fact he knows without question or pause is that there’s no one - no one - in the entire universe who loves her more than he does.) But before he can reach her, he feels hands on his shoulders and metal chains around his wrists, and though he tries and he thrashes and throws himself forward, he can’t wrench free. And as guards drag him away, the last thing he sees is her and the last thought he thinks is: I promise I’ll come back for you. # He’s trapped in a maze. There are thousands of walls and hundreds of halls and who knows how many stairs and they all lead him nowhere. He knows, somehow, that the princess lies beyond all this, that if he can break free of the maze, he can find her, wake her, save her. He has duty of care to complete, after all. And what are mazes and chains and eternal slumber compared to this vow he holds in his heart? But the maze keeps him trapped and runs him in circles, always resetting, always placing him right back at step one. It’s like the universe is telling him: You can have eternity, but you can’t have her. Never her. Don’t you understand that yet? And he tells the universe: No. # He is in the maze, in midair, falling from a stained glass window, with nothing but the grey sky above and the blue sea below, and he closes his eyes and then - Then she’s there.

(This is what the Knight does, what he has to do. When he’s a breath away from death, he dreams he’s out of the maze and he dreams he’s not alone. And it’s always her he sees. Who else could it possibly be? The curve of her smile and the sound of her laugh mean home.) He knows that this is only a story in his head, a tale that starts off with once upon a dream instead of once upon a time, that the real Princess is out there somewhere lying wakeless in the dark. But here in his head, she is awake and alive, and fire and wonder and stars fill her eyes. This is how she looks to him - how she will always look to him: like she is someone who holds a thousand worlds in her soul. And she looks over at him, and says: “How are you going to win?” # He discovers the maze is sealed off from time, its own little sphere of eternity encircled by a briar of pure diamond. He thinks it will take years upon years just to break a single jeweled thorn off the briar, and he thinks there’s thousands and thousands of thorns. And that’s not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the dragon of death. It’s scales are as black as a starless night sky and it’s curled horns curve across its face like a veil of lace. In it’s mouth burns red-hot flames, and when it roars, it sounds like rolling thunder. It is like every one of his deepest and darkest fears, something that clawed it’s way out of his childhood nightmares, and he is scared. But, he reminds himself, as his breath shakes and his hands quake and heart pounds like a drum: She was scared too. And before he can change his mind, he spins, slams his fist into the briar, and screams, just like she did: “Let me be brave.” And then the dragon burns him up with glowing fire. # When he wakes up, he wakes up with a gasp, and his lungs feel full of shattered glass. He is back at the start of the maze, miles and hours away from the briar. He can still smell phantom smoke in the air and feel heat from invisible flames and he’s left with a terrifying, twisting, sickening feeling that this is not the first time he’s died in that very same way and lied in this very spot and had these very same thoughts. And as his head spins and his heart pounds and he tries to pull himself up off the ground, all he can think is: He needs to try again. # Here is the thing about this maze: It always ends in death. Whatever path to the briar the Knight takes, whichever way he turns, the black dragon of death will always find him. He’s tried to run and he’s tried to hide, but no matter how far or how fast he goes, the dragon is always there, just a few steps behind, it’s claws curling against the cobblestones and its scales smelling of smoke. And that’s not even the scary part. No, the scary part is, it knows him. It’s beaten him before. It knows the fear in his eyes and the sound of his cries and the way his blood tastes on its tongue. (That is what happens when something kills you every single night for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. It gets to know you intimately, terrifyingly well.) The knight knows that the black dragon guards the briar, that if he just avoids the diamond thicket, goes anywhere else in the maze but there, the dragon won’t interfere. But the princess isn’t anywhere else but behind there, so the Knight slams his fist yet again into the briar - And the dragon burns him up in fire. # He has lost track of how many times he’s bled in front of the briar, of how many times he’s been consumed alive by dragon fire. But love is a promise and a duty of care and the vow to come back, to always be there, and he’s died every day for a million years for that promise, and to keep it, he’ll die for millions more. There’s not a single second where he doubts that she’s worth it. # “I’m going to tell you a story,” the Knight tells the dragon. “But be warned, I don’t think you’re going to like how it ends.“ The dragon opens its jaws, ash and bone falling from its lips and grey smoke spiraling out of its nose. “There was a princess, and when she was born, they called her Clara, for the name means ‘bright,’ and she filled the world with light,” the Knight recites, before suddenly turning, punching the briar, “and there is a prince, who will always come for her, for -“ And the dragon burns him up in fire. # “- Love is a promise,” the Knight says, ripping away at diamond shards, the jagged edges tearing at his hands and ripping his cloak and scrapping his boots. “The princess lies in eternal slumber, and to break the spell, the prince must take his sword of truth and his shield of virtue -“ And the dragon burns him up in fire. (And this is all he ever does: tells stories and breaks thorns and burn. And when he burns, he dreams of her, and he finds he can’t regret the choice to die.) # He wakes up at the start of the maze for what might be the billionth time. His skin is unburnt and his bones are unbroken, but he can still feel it, feel it all so deeply. Every single second that goes by. Every single scorch on his flesh and painful twist in his chest and the cuts on his hands as he breaks through the briar and the way that he dies again and again and again. But he can still see it, see her standing in front of the spinning wheel like it was yesterday, even though that yesterday was so, so many years ago. That one, unbearable, unforgettable, terrible memory replays in his mind over and over and over again, like a music box that just won’t stop: Her finger above the spindle, the look in her eyes and the way her cries got caught in her throat and how she fell where she stood: too young and too good and gone. And this is why he rises, and runs toward death again, and continues his story, whispering: “But first, the prince must escape from his chains and cross the forbidden mountain to the twisted briar....”

# “Why are you telling our story?” The Dream Princess asks, as he’s dying again, with a broken wrist and a bleeding lip and burn marks on his skin. “It doesn’t end well.” He laughs. “Oh, Clara Oswald,” he says. “Our story hasn’t finished yet.” It can’t have. He won’t let it end like that. Stories can’t be over unless you let them go. And he’ll never let her go. # “- And the prince was told he must climb to the highest room of the tallest tower,” the Knight continues, as he grinds another diamond thorn to dust between his fingertips, and it sparkles sharply against his skin before he sprinkles it carefully in a half-circle at his shoes. “And with true love’s kiss, the sleeping beauty will wake. But before he can reach her, he must face the deadly dragon, and the dragon -“

And the dragon burns him up in flames. # When he lives, he thinks of her. (When he dies, he thinks of her too.) “Why?” He exhales, feeling embers on his skin and ashes in his lungs, and he knows that he’s dying and that he’s dreaming, and above him stands Clara, with a silver crown on her head and a shield in her hands, because even in his dreams she’s still standing guard over him, just like she always has. “Why?” Dream Clara repeats, her voice breaking, her hands shaking, “I’ve been asleep for half the lifetime of the universe. Why, why would you do this?” He stares up at her, his vision going hazy, the seconds slipping away with his breath, and he says: “Duty of care.” And when he says it, he says it like a promise, because that’s what it is. It is a promise he carries with him through each of his deaths, a vow that’s woven into his mind and written into his bones, because she is Clara Oswald, and he is her knight, and he’s never letting her go. # The stars are strange, the constellations changed, and he’s dimly aware that he’s aged. He is older than so many moons and songs and suns. And he is only halfway through the briar. But the Knight pushes this thought away, pushes forward into the glittering bramble instead, the branches scraping painfully at skin as he breaks what he thinks is the hundred-thousandth thorn and tosses it to the ground and grinds it beneath his boot. “The dragon fought fiercely, with a belly full of flames and a heart full of war,” he says, panting as he speaks, as he waits and anticipates what he knows must come next, “But the prince’s -“ The dragon burns him up in flames. # He’s lost count of how many thorns he’s crushed, of how many diamond splinters have scarred his hands, of how much of his blood has been left on the briar. But that doesn’t matter. Because there’s a trail of diamond dust beneath his boots and a path to the end of the maze and a single thorn is all that’s left to break. So the knight runs, runs across the glittering shards and slams his hand into the final thorn with all the force in his body. And it hurts, hurts like a hundred knives cutting into his skin, but he doesn’t care, doesn’t care at all, because the crack in the diamond thorn spreads, splintering out like a spider’s web, and then and then and then: The thorn breaks off, falling from the branch like a single, sparkling teardrop. And he is free. One by one, the remaining thornless branches turn to jeweled powder and scatter like snow, spreading out on the ground and blowing away on the breeze, and before him, stands the princess’ tower. But there’s no time to celebrate. There is still the dragon to deal with. Out of the corner of his eye, the knight spies sparks and smoke, and he feels heat on the skin of his neck and down the back of his cloak. He hears claws against the cobblestone, and a glance behind is all he needs to see the dragon approaching, it’s jaws ablaze with bright fire as it walks. “Ah,” says the Knight, and there’s blood on his fingers and bruises on his arms, but for the first time in what feels like an eternity, he’s smiling. “Here for the rest of the story? I might remind you that all those years ago, I told you you wouldn’t like how it ended.” Undisturbed by his words, the dragon roars, teeth gleaming, fire glowing, ready to defeat and devour, but the Knight stands tall. “But,” the knight recites, finishing the story he started so many times, so long ago, “the prince’s sword of truth flew swift and sure.” And with those words, the dragon spits down fire, except this time, unlike all those other billions and billions and billions of times: The briar boarder is gone. This time, the Knight is free to leap out of the maze and out of the way, throwing himself safely to the ground. This time, the dragon’s flames hit the shattered diamond dust the Knight has spent years and years and years spreading out in a sphere shaped mirror. This time, the dust glitters and reflects and deflects, throwing back the dragon’s own fire, and finally, finally, finally, after all this time, instead of burning him: The dragon burns itself up in flames. The Knight rises, lets out a deep breath he feels like he’s been holding for billions of years, and he says, “I did warn you that you wouldn’t like the ending.” # There’s a sky full of rain falling on a land full of flame as the maze burns itself up from the now slayed dragon’s fire. It’s been billions of years since the knight’s seen the world beyond the maze, and the universe has changed, constellations been made and broken and rearranged, and the tower she sleeps in has weathered with age. But still, there the princess lies, suspended between one world and the next, looking exactly as she did all those years ago, like she’s simply paused in the timeless space between heartbeats and spans of breath, as if, at any moment, she will awaken to go back to protecting the realm. Which, if he knows her, is exactly what will happen. (And he does know her. He knows her like he knows the beat of his own two hearts.) He kneels beside her, holds his breath and closes his eyes and kisses her softly, waiting and hoping and pleading let this work, let this work, let this work, let this work, and then: For the first time in what feels like forever, she’s awake. Her eyes flutter open and she gasps against his lips and gently, he pulls her up to sit, each of his hands curling around both of her wrists, the pads of his fingers pressed in the place above her pulse, where he can feel each beautiful, breathtaking beat of her heart and how it hammers him out a rhythm that says: She’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive. He thinks there isn’t a better sound in all the world. Clara reaches out for him, slowly but steadily, as if she’s testing to see if he’s a mirage or if he’s real. Her fingers curl around the folds of his cloak, and he keeps holding onto her as she holds onto him because he’s fought for four-and-a-half billion years and died every day just to get her back and he’s not letting her go. Not ever, not again. “Don’t be a dream,” she orders him sternly, her dark eyes locked onto his light ones, gaze unwavering, as if she’s afraid that if she looks away, he’ll dissipate and disappear. And he smiles, because Clara - his Clara - has just woken up after having been asleep for billion of years and she’s already back in command. “Not a dream,” he promises. “I’m real. I’m really here.” “I’m not asleep,” she whispers in wonder, and then she’s gasping and laughing, overwhelmed and overjoyed and wrapping her arms around him and asking, “How, how, how can I possibly be awake?” And he laughs, because it’s a very long story. Four-and-a-half billion years long, in fact. But when it comes down to it, the answer is factual and simple, merely a handful of words. So he gives her the short version. “I had duty of care,” he whispers into her hair. “Did you really think a little thing like death could stop me?”

[xxpadfootxx]

🐾Won’t Leave You: Chapter 5 (Into the Unknown)🐾

Izuku shot away from under the villain’s outstretched arms, green lightning flashing around the room as he activated One for All throughout his entire body. At the same time, Tsuyu shot her tongue out and wrapped it around the villain’s midriff, the tension causing the villain to be yanked backward. Aizawa sent his capture weapon after Izuku and Ochako, the metal bindings just barely missing the pair before they hit the wall. Just before impact, Izuku turned his body so that his back felt the full force of the collision as his power threw him around the small room, which did not give him enough space to use his quirk effectively.

Ochako whimpered softly as Izuku’s arms jerked at the sudden impact of the collision. Izuku glanced down and softly shifted his arms but leaped away from the wall where he knew he could be cornered if the villain recovered faster than expected. He finally skidded to a stop beside his classmates. Todoroki and Iida quickly moving to stand in front of the pair, Iida shielding them with his arms outstretched on either side of him while Todoroki stood in a more aggressive stance with both arms raised in the air, his hands curled into fists as fire exploded from his left side.

The villain had collapsed to the floor and was tangled in Tsuyu’s tongue but he was trying to stand, his many bionic arms attempting to untangle themselves from each other. All of the students stood around their friends, Shoji and Kirishima holding onto Tsuyu’s shoulders so that she would not get dragged down with the villain while the other teens set themselves up to protect Ochako and Izuku. The villain propped himself up on his flat palms, his hair dangling in his face as he strained to lift the bottom half of his body off of the floor.

“It’s over, villain,” Aizawa said, his eyes flashing red and his hair raised above his head as he activated his power-erasing quirk.

“Give up this fight, we are here to claim back one of our top students,” He said, his voice filled with icy fire. “And you will not mess with U.A. ever again.”

The villain paused in his efforts to stand to look back at Aizawa, his eyes narrowing and his smile starting to falter. His clawed arm tips snapped in frustration, the metal arms still trying to untangle themselves fruitlessly. His eyes darted to his metallic arms, back to Aizawa, and then settled on the students. He saw the frog girl being supported by her friends but standing strong all on her own, the half and half teen standing guard over his friends along with a bird boy who stood with a dark, shadow-like creature covering his entire body so that he looked almost twice his size.

Then he began to laugh.

His laugh filled the entirety of the chamber in a chilling echo that rattled through the bones of the students assembled and made a small trickle of doubt worm its way into their minds. Bakugo whipped around to face the villain, his eyes wide with a bright fury that seemed to match the heat of the room.

“WHAT ARE YOU SO HAPPY ABOUT?” Bakugo spat.

The villain merely continued to laugh until he could hardly breathe, his chest heaving up and down as he bellowed.

“Back down Bakugo,” Aizawa said. “This guy is insane.”

“What do you mean?” The villain asked, twisting his head around to look at Aizawa directly in the eyes, his laughter ending so abruptly it left the students stunned.

“I mean you are a psychopath,” Aizawa said cooly, his scarf whipping around his face as his gaze intensified on the villain. The villain’s face had turned to an expression of stone, his features hardening so that they barely resembled that of a human face anymore.

“That is a matter of perspective,” The villain said. That was when one of his arms shot out towards Aizawa, catching him and restraining him in its iron grip. Everyone had been so focused on the trapped villain that they had not even noticed that one of his more hidden arms had freed itself.

“Aizawa!” Shoji called, running towards their teacher who was beginning to cough as the strength of the metal claws began to make it difficult for him to breathe, his ribs cracking painfully under the pressure.

“Shoji no!” Kirishima called out to his friend, one hand releasing Tsuyu to reach out towards Shoji. That was when the villain noticed the weak spot and reached around with his other untangled arm, grasping Tsuyu’s tongue and yanking hard.

“Ribbit!” Tsuyu cried out in surprise as she was whipped from her spot on the ground and was slammed into the wall behind the villain. Detangling himself from her tongue the villain was able to fully stand up, rolling his shoulders back until they satisfyingly popped.

“Now this is much better!” The villain called out happily just as Tokoyami rushed over to Tsuyu.

“Tsu! Tsu, are you alright?” He asked frantically, kneeling beside her and placing a hand on her arm.

“Yes, I’m alright, ribbit.” She said, allowing him to help her stand up. Although Tsuyu was recovering, the loss of Tokoyami’s position brought about more positions for the villain. With his metal arms acting almost of their own accord, he twisted to avoid a fire attack by Todoroki and focused all of his energy on Yaoyorozu, who had created several small metal guard walls and a shield. About six of his arms struck out at Momo, their teeth snapping as the creativity girl twirled and twisted to avoid his attacks. Even with the guards, it was just too much to focus on. Finally, the arms broke through the walls and rained attacks down on Yaoyorozu, never pausing in their strikes so that Momo could not recover or even create more shields.

“Yaoyorozu!” Todoroki yelled, leaping forward with a fresh fire attack that enveloped the villain entirely. No sound came from the burning villain, and so after a few moments, Todoroki relaxed his body and allowed his quirk to die out. Once the fire had ceased into nothing, Todoroki and Yaoyorozu were shocked to find that the villain was gone.

Just gone.

The pair frantically looked around, their eyes scanning every corner for the eight-armed villain. Nothing stirred in the room except for the metal arm that was still trying to crush Aizawa. The end of the arm was lying on the ground, the exposed wire ends sparking feebly while the rest of the arm worked as if it were still attached to the body.

“Todoroki,” Izuku said, still cradling Ochako to his chest. “Did you just…?”

Nobody responded and still, nothing stirred.

That was when Izuku felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The green haired boy whirled on the spot, careful not to stir Ochako too much even given the situation. That was when he saw a glimmering form of liquid metal rising from the ground. It twirled and twisted and rose far above Izuku’s head. Then the metal started to take form, a head, and body shaping from the liquid metal as if it were being carved in real time just before their eyes. The figure finally crashed to the floor, his body entirely solid metal. Although his form slightly resembled that of Tetsu Tetsu from class 1-B, he also looked much more terrifying with completely flawless metal face features but sharp edges that coated his arms, chest, and legs. He looked as though he were made of knives and swords everywhere except for on the face. His hair was non-existent in this form, only a shiny bald head was exposed, gleaming even in the gloom.

This transformation happened in only a few seconds, giving Izuku just enough time to set Ochako on the ground behind him before the enemy was on top of him, his remaining metal claws raising in the air menacingly. Izuku dropped his body over Ochako, using himself as a human shield as the villain clawed at him in an attempt to get to her. He screamed as one of the metal claws sliced through his side but grit his teeth and curled his arms around her body even tighter. Suddenly the weight was lifted from his back and he glanced up to see Shoji, thrusting himself forward as his many arms wrestled with the metal claws of the villain. The villain snarled like an animal and viciously tried to slash at Shoji only for metal to meet metal as his claws collided with Iida’s hero costume.

The hit should’ve sent the engine hero flying to the side but Iida had prepared for the attack by firing up the engines in his legs so that when the hit collided with him, he did not go far. As soon as Iida stopped sliding to the side, he used the remaining power in his legs to sprint at the enemy, locking arms with one of the claws while Shoji fought with two more.

“Run Midoriya!” Shoji and Iida both shouted as they swung around the villain, twisting around his attacks and using their shared strengths to outpace him. Izuku was already ahead of them, his quirk sending him shooting across the room. He had picked Ochako back up again and had carried her quickly away from the fights that had sprouted up throughout the room; various students fighting his many robotic arms. Tokoyami, Kirishima and Tsu were trying to help pry Aizawa from the death grip of one claw while also trying to fight off another arm at the same time. Yaoyorozu, Todoroki, and Bakugo were fighting two more together, using more of Momo’s shields and a cannon as well as Bakugo’s and Todoroki’s fire powers to fend them off.

Izuku looked around frantically, his mind a whirl of decisions and consequences. He wanted so badly to help his friends, to give them the upper hand, but at the same time, he refused to leave Ochako as it was his fault she had been captured in the first place. His eyes finally locked on a shaded corner of the room, sheltered by many of the broken cabinets and scrap metal that was piled on the floor. Jumping at the opportunity, he made a decision that he hoped he would not regret later. Using his quirk, he bounded to the spot in just two strides and immediately shut off his quirk, not wanting the flashy lightning to attract attention to the spot. Once he was sure he was hidden by the rubbish and the narrow walls, he leaned Ochako against the wall and shrugged off the top half of his hero costume. It was torn and caked in dust but it was better than nothing. He folded the jacket into a thicker, more comfortable object and set it on the ground between two dull pieces of scrap metal. He realized how lucky he was that it was hot in the room rather than cold as he didn’t think he would have been able to keep her warm if it had been obnoxiously cold instead. Picking Ochako up once more, he held her close to him for a fraction of a second, contemplating his decision.

“I can’t lose you again.” He whispered into her ear, a few stray tears sliding down his cheeks as he held her, one hand on her lower back and the other on the back of her head so that she was completely snuggled up against him.

“Never again.” He said. Then he lowered her gently onto his jacket so that it served as a makeshift pillow. After making sure that she was as comfortable as she could possibly be, he stood up.

She would have looked peaceful if not for her wounds, he reflected.

Then a determined light entered his eyes and Izuku spun around, pretending to ignore the fact that his best friend was lying helplessly in this corner behind him. He got to the edge of the wall, his bare back pressed against it as he prepared to leap out when something made him freeze in his tracks.

“You won’t lose me.” A small, weak voice floated to him from behind the debris.

[whumpqin]

Bad Things Happen Bingo - Panic Attack

(Fresh blood = requested, dried blood = finished!) Requested by Anonymous! Also a @badthingshappenbingo​ prompt! I was hit with a burst of inspiration for this one, so you guys get a little treat! This one features Elisha/Caleb in the future, though I won’t say how far! :3c

Elisha Tag! @faewhump​ @imagination1reality0​

CW: Panic attack, references to torture, references to abuse, references to trauma, brief mention of eye torture, pet whump, dehumanization, some fantasy racism, slight hallucinations brought on by distress, and perhaps some others I do not remember!

Word Count: 1,987

He wakes in the darkness, to the sound of clanging all around it.

Caleb’s hands flew out to either side of him, hitting metal, the following sound echoing all around him until he couldn’t tell what was where anymore. Suddenly awake he lies in silence, only taking terrified, fast breaths until the sounds died down. There must have been something else, his ears straining to hear what sounded like a voice, but his ears are ringing so loud that it made his head ache.

The dark, cold surface of where he is closes in. The walls shift, for just a brief moment, from metal to stone and wood. In that moment, Caleb forgets entirely where he is, his mind trading darkness for darkness, and for that moment he hears the banging sounds again but this time they come from upstairs, following shouts that have become commonplace. He grits his teeth under the mental strain, under the feeling of his chest tensing so tightly that it hurts.

Everything in him wants to fight. Claws scrap against the metal or stone - it’s hard to tell what it is - as he draws further into himself. Caleb’s fangs bare, a defiant echo that goes unseen by his assailant.

But his bark is worse than his bite. Tears line his eyes, a dry ache that settles as he finds breathing more and more difficult to bear. His mind is startled and scared, and the feeling of aggression fades until there’s nothing left but him.

I thought I was safe, his mind cried. It’s an all too familiar thought, one that sparks memory of the now but also of the before, of them. He feels the weight of the thought echo much like the sounds from before, all around him. Repeating. Then, there was another voice, one familiar and screaming.

I’ll find you wherever you go. You’ll never be safe again.

Caleb reaches his hand to his mouth in an effort to stay quiet, tears barely kept at bay suddenly busting their dam and streaming down his face in a torrent. It’s getting to be nearly impossible to breath as those spat words become so real that he can almost hear the voice next to him. He wants to fight against it, like he’s been taught to, but the intensity is stronger than his will can bear, and Caleb finds himself curling inwards, arm wrapping underneath his horns and around his head.

He needed to be quiet. That’s how he got away the first time. That he could do, at least, that he had been taught to do upon command.

But the walls were caving in faster, closing in on him like a hawk diving for its prey. The wall’s metaphorical wings beat against him as he feels the coldness of the stone, of the filth that clings to him so desperately that he can never get it off anymore. He wants to breathe even though he knows if he does they’ll find him again, but can’t when his chest is so tight he feels like he might explode. He’s suffocating underneath the weight of it all.

And it’s almost as if the hands are wrapped around his neck again. He can feel their gaze, sharp and devoid of emotion and so much more a devil than Caleb ever was. They laugh, like a light among the darkness that draws all the moths to its flame so that it can destroy everything it touches. Caleb, obedient as ever, is hopelessly locked to walk towards it.

Then suddenly, the light is real. He can see it through his aching, blurred vision, skewed to one side as he becomes aware of the bandages that had been lazily wrapped over one side. The voice is real, too, a different cadence but still laughing all the same.

Caleb’s world shatters as two reach out, one crying for subjugation and the other screaming for freedom. He’s not sure what he wants anymore when he reaches the light, but he knows that he can’t be in the darkness anymore.

As his hands draw away from his mouth it opens in a gentle, soundless plea as something crunches underneath his weight. Caleb reaches for the light like a child wanting their mother.

Just let me out. I’ll be good. The words are on the tip of his tongue but he can’t breathe enough to get them out.

Hands touch across the stone, splaying against it as they travel upwards. He wants to get out. He needs to get out.

Please. I’m so sorry I ran. I’ll be good now, please don’t take the other one.

Hands curl over the exit, a platform above the basement. A twisted smile finds Caleb’s grief-stricken face and he lifts, wrapping his limbs around the exit to get away.

He tumbles out into the sunlight. Caleb curls inwards as he lands on the stone, feeling the scrape of metal against his arms as he falls forward. When his eye opens, he sees the morning rays basking the house in dapples of orange and pink, corners still shadowed in blue and purple as the sun lazily rises through the dawn.

Thank you, Masters, he whispers, the words never said. A gentle sob racks his body as he whispers praises to the phantoms, feeling their looming presence staring down on him. Deep gasps of air followed suit, desperate as his thick tail banged on the ground for some relief. His clawed hands lay over his face as he curls into the fetal position, protecting himself and finding comfort in it all the same.

The air is putrid around him, but fresh all the same. Caleb slowly peeks his eyes open and still sees the stone below, and his eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

He sees a car down the street zoom past the opening between two buildings.

It wasn’t real, his head whispers, resounding all at once. It was just in my head. It wasn’t real.

It’s a force of relief and sadness all the same, the coiling uncertainty wrapping and unwrapping in his belly. He manages a few more sobs out of himself, and he can’t even tell what they’re about.

Reality slowly shifts back into place as he gasps, breath coming in and out in forced, slow drawls. Memories drift back, of the alleyway, of the night before, and Caleb breathes a final sigh of relief. It wasn’t real, he repeats a final time, mouthing the words for good measure.

“U-uh… Devil?” a voice says, and Caleb’s gaze sways until he finds a man standing next to a dumpster. The one he crawled out of. The one he had been sleeping in. “Were… did you? I… John..?!” The words seemed to be dripping with fear, and even though they were picked carefully they still weren’t said right.

His pitch black eye finds another human, one stepping from a large car, staring at him with the same amount of shock. Suddenly Caleb realized what it was about. He had forgotten that many people don’t see Cambions in a given lifetime, especially one that had just crawled out of a dumpster.

Caleb looks again to the first human. He’s a young man, slight beard and short hair that are both a chestnut brown. His gray eyes were widened in bewilderment, and from the way that his hands were clenched he could tell there was barely contained fear that lie underneath his skin.

And it was almost certainly clear that he was wondering if his job really pays him for this.

Another man, older with salt and pepper hair, steps from the large car. His hands are put up defensively.

“Now devil, don’t get all up an’ arms, alright? We’re just doin’ our job.” His voice is a slight southern drawl, and it’s clear that he’s talking to Caleb like he’s some feral animal they had just found.

Despite the heart-wrenching fear and humiliation, he manages a laugh. It’s hysterical, filled with sobs in between, and for a moment he wonders whether he looks like a mad homeless man or not. The idea of finding someone literally living in a dumpster is just stupid enough for him to finally lose it.

Tears run down his face, and Caleb takes a dirty hand and smears them across his hand. The wide grin finally falls. He reaches a hand down to the blurry ground and feels the stone and the coldness that seeps into his fingers. It’s real.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, voice hoarse, as he struggles to his feet. Caleb’s legs felt like jelly, shaking and barely able to hold his weight at the moment. “I’ll, I’ll… I’m sorry.”

Stop fucking stuttering, a voice that’s not entirely his own whispers. Caleb reminds himself the blow won’t come and he still doesn’t manage to hide the wince away from the first human as he steps closer to him.

His eyes are laced with pity and concern. “Are… are you alright? You don’t look… well, you look like shit.” The human glances back to John, who’s shaking his head.

“Just stay away from him,” the other warns. “Thing looks like he’ll bite ya quicker than you can blink.”

The first human shoots him a wary glance, and Caleb can’t stop the crooked smile that works its way to his face. He has so much power here, and he’s probably the weakest of the bunch. It’s a strange feeling, and the way it goes to his head definitely makes him feel like he’s going crazy.

Typically, the Cambion inside twists greedily, ready to soak up that sliver of power until there’s nothing left to be gained. Once, Caleb would have fought it, but now it’s like second nature.

“I always look like shit,” he finally says to the man. “Why do you care so much, garbage man?” His tail flicks, and the human flinches back. He sees the human’s gaze falter for a moment, and the words sour immediately on Caleb’s tongue. From the way they both look at him with that same, pitifully wary gaze he knows that his intimidation tactics aren’t working like he wants them to. He tries, anyway. “You should listen to your friend. I’m just a feral thing that could bite you. You don’t want that, do you?”

Caleb takes a step forward, and the humans take a step back. He tries to force the bile that rises in his throat down, tries to silence the voice that tells him to be kinder.

It has to be like this, he reminds himself. You can’t trust humans.

“That’s… that’s not… Listen, there are better places to sleep than a dumpster. There are, y’know, homes for your kind of people-” 

“Shut the fuck up.” The surge of anger is sudden and welcomed. “I don’t need to listen to you feel like you’re trying to help. Just leave me alone.” He glances back, out to the street, feeling an irritable, hungry fire spark in his belly. “I know that’s what you want, anyway.”

Before the man could say anything else, he turned away. His tail waved behind him in false anger, trying to work out the feeling of wanting to wrap his tail around his legs.

“Hey, wait!”

His feet pick up into a trot as he hears the man call out for him. The pity was palpable, and it made Caleb sick. Or perhaps it was the way the fear still rests in his chest, how he can still hear those awful, whispering words like they were right there, telling him how bad he was being even though he hadn’t seen either of them in months.

Caleb begins to run, destination unknown. He finds that it’s much easier to run from people. It’s safe.

He tries not to feel how snakelike his skin has become. How much it imitates the devils he’s trying to run from in the first place.

[bxcksdoll]

The Snap

Pairings: Thor x reader

Summary: Set in infinity war. Thor shows up in Wakanda to help defeat Thanos but sadly he doesn’t go for the head and Y/N doesn’t survive the snap...

Request by @xmarveled : Holy shit your trust series absolutely wreckked me. There’s not enough Thor fics in this fandom and yours are some of the best ive ever read!! Can you write an angst fic about the reader dying in thors arms? Wether or not the death is permanent is up to you.

Warnings: hella angst, swearing

A/N: I’m not gonna lie, I teared up when writing this

There you were again; surrounded by aliens from some far off galaxy. You had no idea how you’d gotten into this situation twice already in your life. First the battle of New York and, now, the battle of Wakanda.

“God, I just can’t catch a break...” you mumbled under your breath, stabbing the freaky-looking creatures charging at you, with a spear Okoye lent to you.

“Y/L/N! Heads up!” Bucky shouted. You looked behind to see another jumping in mid-air towards you. Seconds later, it was shot down by the super soldier.

“Thanks, Barnes,” you nodded, moving quickly towards some more aliens.

Herds and herds of the creatures continuously crashed through the force fields, like powerful, destructive waves. They seemed to go on forever, infinite killing-machines.

You breathed a sigh of frustration, sending your spear piecing through another three creatures, lined up close together. As they gradually surrounded you, you put in more and more power into your spins and points - impaling many at one time.

Looking around the battlefield, you noticed that they were enclosing some others; Steve, Bucky, Natasha, Okoye and Bruce were all surrounded, fighting with all of their might.

Frustratingly, you were unable to get to them due to your own problem. The fight seemed never ending. The herds began to stack further and further up.

Then, whoosh a stinging, throbbing pain was felt on your right leg. Glancing down, a fresh cut was clear - painful but not very deep. Crouching slightly, you carried on fighting, not stopping to take any chances of getting clawed again.

More obviously now, the aliens closed in and trapped everyone in their own seperate circle. But no one gave up, denying that it appeared they were losing. The fight was excruciatingly painful and tiresome; at this point, you were crouched on the ground. You still carried on, though.

Suddenly, an enormous beam of light appeared; lightning struck across the field, electrocuting all of the creatures around you and eliminating them from existence. Quickly, you stood up, breathing heavily.

There he stood. Thor. You two hadn’t seen each other since he last left for Asguard; all this time, you had been wondering what was taking him so long and when he would get back. Here he was, standing before you.

His appearance was slightly different - hair much shorter and, instead of wielding mjolnir, he carried an axe-like weapon. The corners of your mouth turned upwards, a sense of pride rushing through your chest.

“Bring me Thanos!” his deep voice boomed, sending chills through your body, head to toe.

Next, he leapt up, dark clouds surging over his head. As he came down to Earth, lightning sparking in his eyes, an even bigger lightning bolt struck through Wakanda, reaching unbelievable lengths.

This time, you continued to fight but a different feeling ran through your veins; desperation, you thought, to get to Thor or maybe complete belief that you wouldwin this fight.

The battle went on for much longer but that didn’t stop everyone from fighting with every last bit of energy within them.

At one moment, you managed to have a very quick catch-up with Thor. You commented on his haircut, telling him he looked good and told him you missed him but that short convocation wasn’t enough to express the loneliness and emptiness you had felt without him for the past couple of months.

After more time had past, you all ran to one particular place in the forest; where Thanos was. One by one, you tried to take him on. As you ran towards him - spear positioned just over your shoulder - you took notice of how easily the purple giant tossed Rhodey aside with the powers in his gauntlet.

“Shit,” you thought to yourself as he locked his eyes on you just before sending you, effortlessly, into a tree.

On the ground, you saw more of the avengers charging towards Thanos. Each one looked like a rag doll in his power - he tossed them away with the blink of an eye. That is until, he punched forward, aiming for Steve; Steve caught the gauntlet in his hands, holding him from causing anymore damage.

Thanos seemed to be struggling, surprised at the strength of the Captain. However, Thanos got out of his grip and continued to toss him away.

Attempting to sit up, you discovered that Thanos had enclosed the tree around your body. You sat there unable to move. Helpless.

Thanos finally reached the place where Wanda and Vison were but he was, thankfully, too late. Wanda had destroyed the stone.

Thanks looked unfased, to your surprise. He spoke to Wanda, something unaudiable to you. Then, all of a sudden a scream came from Wanda.

“No!”

Panick hit you like a bullet to the chest; witnessing Thanos use the infinity stones to turn back time.

“Oh god,” you whispered, tears brimming in your eyes.

With a few twirls of Thanos’ hand, Vision was back in his previous position - as if he was never destroyed. Then, Thanos picked him up, tore the stone from his head and flung him to the side, like a piece of unwanted scraps.

He placed it on his gauntlet, power visibly surging through his body. Your whole body shook with fear, unable to express the unrelenting physical and emotional pain you felt and dreaded.

Unexpectedly, a bolt of lightning struck. You looked up, with a pang of hope, to see Thor flying down. Thanos shot up a beam but Thor deflected it with his new weapon.

You gasped, witnessing the axe hit Thanos clean in the chest. This was it; you had won, you knew it.

“I told you,” Thor sneered as his feet touched the ground, “you die for that.” He pressed his axe further into Thanos’ chest, causing his to yell out in pain.

Thor, stopped - allowing Thanos to feel every inch of pain and suffering. Thanos appeared to be trying to speak but you couldn’t make out what he was saying, it looked as though Thor couldn’t either.

“You should have gone for the head,” he finally came, lifting his hand to snap his finger.

Suddenly, you broke free from the tree that previously secured your body from moving.

“What the...” you mumbled, standing up slowly.

“What did you do? What did you do?!” Thor demanded, glaring into Thanos’ eyes as you looked confused at the destroyed, melted gauntlet on his hand.

Instantly, Thanos opened up a portal and disappeared. Leaving all of you confused and unable to know what to expect next.

Thor looked at you, eyes wide and glossy. You opened your mouth to speak but a voice was heard before you could.

“Steve?” sounded Bucky. You glanced back, to where Thor and Steve’s attention was and saw bucky walking over, his hand fading away.

Pain hit your gut as you watched him fall, turning to dust; you were unable to act quickly, completely distraught and confused as to what was going on.

Steve rushed to where Bucky fell, clutching the dust on the ground. He looked up at you with desperate eyes as tears began to brim in your eyes.

“What the hell is going on?” you questioned, turning to meet Thor’s fearful gaze.

Turning around to the rest of the landscape, the three of you witnessed other people fading away. You felt a heart aching feeling at your inability to prevent the devastation in front of you.

Soon, dust began to float into your vision; you looked down, in fear, to see your hands fading away.

“Thor!” your voice cracked. Thor snapped his head to meet you, tears already welling in his eyes.

“Y/N, no! Not you! Please let it be me, not you!” he cried, clutching onto you as you dropped to the ground.

“Thor, i-it’s going to be okay,” you breathed. He clutched you in his arms as your head lay on his lap.

“No, Y/N...” the feeling of Thor’s tear drops hit your cheeks as you felt your body disappearing.

You brought your hand up to cup his cheek one last time, before fading away to dust...