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duskandstarlight · 4 years ago

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Embers & Light (Chapter 24)

Notes: Chapter 24 - can you guys believe it?! I have brought you a lot of angst in the last few chapters, but there is a lil fluffy moment in this chapter which I hope you enjoy. Plus protective Cassian (one of my personal favourites).

As ACOSF draws nearer, I wanted to ask you guys a question. I initially was hoping to finish this fic before it came out, but I just don't think it's going to happen. So if you would still read E&L after ACOSF comes out, could you let me know? It will help me to make a decision on whether I need to start wrapping this all up sharpish, or whether I can continue to move along at my current pace.

Enjoy :) And I hope you all are having a lovely festive period.

p.s I’ve been having issues with tagging blogs lately. Let me know if you get a notification?

Chapter 24 Nesta

Nesta was drowning.

Drowning in the dark; in the unfathomable cold that bit at her ankles and dragged her down by invisible, insistent hands and sharp, pointed claws. Down, down, down Nesta went, into the inky blackness that sung of ancient horror, fighting for a breath that she could not take.

Inside her head, Nesta was screaming; the sound an echo, as if she were detached from her body and she were listening to someone else. It was a scream of rage and unmeasurable pain as her body was torn apart and rearranged: her bones cracking and reforming into solid steel; her ears stretching into points; her limbs elongating. And with that fire a burning cold that was deeper than the gap between stars. Nesta screamed from the agony of it, but cold water rushed into her lungs and stifled the sound. Pain licked at her skin like the flames of a fire, until her blood was bubbling with rage and a thirst for revenge that ran so deep it became woven into the very fabric of who she was — of who she was being moulded into.

Nesta should have passed out from the pain but instead she fought to remain conscious; wholly awake and wholly a witness as she tore at the edges of the blasted Cauldron. The sides were made of nothing but canvas, Nesta’s nails ripping through it as the Cauldron bucked and shrieked, like an animal caught beneath her paw.

Bright light poured through the gaping holes, blinding her new born eyes that had not yet seen.

She felt the power of it, the piece she carved out for herself in fury and with revenge singing in her blood. She made it hers, let that power sink into her bones, her skin, as they snapped and cracked and reshaped themselves…

The Cauldron continued to thrash and struggle. The water took on a thicker quality like tar, but Nesta did not relent. She ravaged that power until it was a part of her; stolen and consumed. Impossible to take back.

And then Nesta was no longer drowning but falling.

The pocket of air hit her with such force that Nesta found herself with the irony that she could not breathe, even though it was what she needed more than anything in the world. But then her lungs were spluttering, her stomach lurching, and inky blackness — ancient death — was regurgitated onto crystalline rock. Nesta heaved until her stomach had no more and she was gasping for breath — cold, bracing fresh air that tasted like freedom — before she rolled onto her back, her hair plastered to her face.

She shivered from the cold and the unquenchable fury that would not see her yield.

Above her was midnight black, the stillness of what Nesta wanted to believe was sky but she knew was only an illusion. It brought her comfort even though she wanted to hate it; wanted to sob and scream until she was so exhausted that she couldn’t muster any more strength.

And she should have been terrified but she also felt deathly calm, even as a voice spoke out of the darkness. It was a voice that was ancient; old and superlunary with a strength that whispered of unimaginable power for better or worse. “I have been waiting for you, Nesta Archeron.”

Words like ice fire. Of steel and reserve. Of power beyond Nesta’s wildest reckoning.

It hurt to move but Nesta scrambled to her feet, slipping on loose rock and craggy stone. The sound that beat in her ears was an insistent, terrified rhythm, and it took Nesta a moment to piece together that it was her heart, throwing itself with a repetitive boom against strips of bone — a flimsy cage for something so fierce.

Whirling around, Nesta tried to source the voice but found only that endless stretch of deep velvet, and in the near distance, a towering shadow that rose up, up, up into the darkness until it blended into the canvas, like something disappearing into the clouds.

Nesta made herself take stock. Made herself stand still. To dampen the terror and focus on that spiky, deep-set anger that still consumed her. Her back stiffened, her chin rose, and when she spoke for the first time with her new lungs, Nesta did not let her voice shake.

She clenched her fists until her new nails bit into the meat of her palms. “Where am I?”

A sensual laugh as smooth as marble echoed around her — perfectly rendered. “Do you hear the wind? It moans your name, Nesta Archeron. Your twin can hear it. They’ve always been able to hear it. Your history written into the night sky where you only need join the dots. So easy to ignore until now.” A pause and Nesta felt that being move. Her head snapped around as the voice mused from behind her, “And your destiny: a sacrifice and a gift in the same moment.”

Nesta tightened her fists in an effort to ground herself and willed herself to lean back into that odd sense of being rather than the fear that was making her heart race. She felt her nails break through her skin with a pop. She scented blood; metallic and salt. She was so cold she wanted to shake until her teeth chattered, but Nesta would not show weakness. She would not break down.

So Nesta rose up tall and made her voice ice cold; strong rather than brittle. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Another long, sensual laugh. A caress akin to a brush stroking the softest of bristles over her skin. “No, you don’t,” the voice agreed. “Not yet. But you will.”

A moment in time stretched out, the pause pregnant and awesome. Then a soft light in the darkness above, growing in size: a fleck, a star, a luminescent ball of light…

“What do you want, Nesta Archeron?”

“I want revenge,” Nesta replied, her voice full of a sudden vigour as vengeance lashed out on a forked tongue.

Again, more soft laughter that licked over Nesta’s body in a shiver. “You have already got that, have you not? Do you not feel that deathly power in your veins? That hum of primitive power that you have stolen, that has been woven into who you now are.”

“I will end him. I will end everyone who has caused my sister harm.”

“Of that, I have no doubt. But what will that take from you?”

Hysterical laughter wanted to burst forth from Nesta’s lungs, as if she could only feel the sharpest of emotion and everything else were muted.

“Everything has already been taken from me,” Nesta spat, balling her hands into harder fists, her nails digging into her crescent shaped wounds.

Pain flared, fresh and sharp but Nesta paid it no heed. She was no stranger to pain and she would rally. Every. Damn. Time.

The light above Nesta continued to grow until it became distinct; a fiery palm emerging out of the dark. Nesta did not flinch. Did not scream or back away. Did not bow or yield or grovel. She only let pearlescent fingers close around Nesta’s own, the touch like a near-scalding bath that settled only when your blood thrummed beneath raw, pink skin.

“So much sacrifice,” the voice pondered, turning Nesta’s hand. Nesta’s fingers unfurled from her palm without her willing it, until her palm lay open, the half-crescent moons bloody tears in her otherwise new skin. “But what about a gift?” the voice asked. “A gift for the girl who lives with such anger and guilt. The girl who sees the world in all its terrible glory and feels too much. What do you say to that?”

“I only want revenge,” Nesta repeated, her mind assaulting her with images of Elain as she was pushed under the inky water, as she emerged drowning and wholly new — wrong.

No laughter this time. Only that hand rising, fingers coming together until they were pointed and pinching something out of the dark.

A pearl of pure light hovered millimetres from those shining fingers, as if it were attached by an invisible string. It sung with such radiant brilliance that Nesta wanted to look away: it was the pure, unfathomable brightness of a midnight star. A melody that sung of promise and hope.

“What is revenge worth if it does not emerge from the desire to protect?” the voice asked, letting go of that drop of light. It did not fall like water; it floated down slowly, until it nestled in the crook of Nesta’s palm like a pearl that shimmered as it caught the light.

Nesta remained deathly still, staring at the drop of possibility in her palm.

“Revenge is choice, Nesta Archeron. It can be a wish for death and pain or to protect and defend.”

“Both,” Nesta said fiercely. “It can be both.”

“Multi-faceted and complex, as all decisions are,” the voice agreed. “And there are so many strands in you, aren’t there? Already you have felt one of them, although I do not think you have truly placed the puzzle pieces together. But here is another choice; something to cherish and use wisely on those who are worthy. Everything is cyclical. Day and night, birth and death, love and sacrifice…”

The luminescent hand closed Nesta’s palm, but rather than the drop of light bring dampened by shadow, it sank into Nesta’s skin, until it too became a part of her.

“I don’t want a gift.”

But even as Nesta spoke she knew she did not truly mean it.

She also knew it was too late. She felt her blood spike and thrum as that light channeled into her, twining around that deathly power that she had already stolen and forced into her remaking.

A low hum vibrated the ground beneath Nesta’s feet. “Don’t want it or do not deserve it?”

And then Nesta was drowning again with such startling speed that she hadn’t the time to take a deep breath. Terror gripped her, and with it power sung in her blood, the sensation like boiling water, as if her very skin were bubbling with it even though that dark water bit with a cold akin to the fiercest frostbite.

As if fear had summoned it, silver fire began to glow at Nesta’s palms. Water rushed into Nesta’s lungs and with it, that power surged.

Up, up, up Nesta went, like an arrow unsheathed from a bow until the inky black was no longer concrete and colour swam on the surface.

Everything tilted as the Cauldron tipped, jerking the water and Nesta out onto the cold flagstones of reality.

Nesta took a desperate, ragged breath through the gag that was suddenly back around her mouth, and cast a look around the room: to Cassian who was sprawled unconscious on the ground, his arm outstretched and his wings in tatters; to Feyre who was kneeling in her own vomit tucked into Rhysand’s side...

And on her sister’s face, Nesta could see what she was: ravaging, deadly, awesome. A face and figure to stop males and females in their tracks. A face and figure that would make humans and fae alike think twice.

But that was nothing of the forged steel in Nesta’s bones, in her blood, as she scrabbled across the floor to Elain on her long, unnatural limbs and tore the gag from her mouth.

It was a steel that no-one could see but that they could all sense as Nesta locked eyes with the King of Hybern, that promise of death still swimming in those mercury eyes that moved.

She would have her revenge. Of that, she was sure.

***

Nesta gasped.

Her hands flailed, her body screamed with agony, her lungs were hoarse and raw, her abdomen set with a pain that went so deep she knew something was gravely wrong.

And through her veins… no whisper of her magic. Not a drop.

It was that which made her thrash, her lungs suddenly unable to breathe from the agony that wrangled through her body.

She heard her name. Again and again; the high-pitched desperation of a female. Feyre. But then something much lower. A caress. A rumble that quelled her fear and kicked the breath back into her with a force that had her gasping.

Nesta’s hand found a rough, calloused palm across the mattress. Fingers curled unbelievably gently around hers. She heard the rustle of wings. Smelt pine and musk and the bracing fresh air of the Illyrian skies.

“Nesta. You need to take your medicine. The morphine has worn off.”

Cassian.

Even with her eyes submerged in the dark, Nesta knew that Cassian had turned his head to murmur something in low tones to her sister — her senses heightened in the wake of the fear that was still bitter on her tongue.

Then light retreating footsteps. The click of a closed door. A large hand on her temple. A wet rag against her lips. Nesta opened her mouth despite the foul tasting tincture which burned her throat and flooded her tastebuds; swallowing it down, begging it to soothe over the pain which she could not describe for its wrongness, even though she had been told that she would heal.

Frawley had come to visit her the last time Nesta had resurfaced. Had explained why she was there and what had happened. That Nesta had the gift of healing. That she had over-healed Mas's traumatic injuries and moved on to older ones. That she had sacrificed her wellness for someone else’s. That she would have died had Cassian not got her to stop.

Another power Nesta needed to train. As if she didn’t have enough to wrangle under control.

Nesta did not remember much after dropping to her knees at the widows camp. She remembered the click of a lock inside of her; the way her power had flipped from silver to startling, brilliant white. That she had known what to do as she lifted her hands over Mas and started to use her magic for something wholly good.

“What did you feel for your power came to the surface?” Frawley had asked before she took leave.

Nesta had bitten back a whimper of agony as she shifted uncomfortably on the mattress. She had been swamped in heavy blankets and consumed in Cassian’s scent. His bed not hers. But the scent of him… it comforted her. She was too tired to rally against it. Had woken knowing that she was immeasurably safe even though memory tried to persuade her that she was not.

Eventually, when she realised that Frawley’s second eye had come to rest on her along with ice blue, Nesta had supplied, “I felt grief.”

“And what else?” Frawley had urged, her ice blue eye glowing with intensity.

Nesta had been too tired to answer. Her eyelids heavy from the sedative she had been given, despite the energising tea Frawley had administered to attempt to speed up the act of replenishing her magic. To fight the fatigue one felt when they had been drained of power.

And now she was waking again and Frawley was gone.

Braving the light, Nesta cracked open an eye. Her head throbbed, as if her brain were growing in her skull and it was pressing against bone.

Cassian was hovering over her, a crumpled frown twisting his brow as he dripped the medicine past her lips. He caught her eyes opening a fraction too late and she catalogued worry slide into relief before it was pushed back and a light was forced into those dark irises. When he smiled at her, it was too tight and anguished to ring true. She must have been in a bad way — very bad — for him to lose sight of his tendency to arrange his expression into that casual playfulness. For her sister to still be here, hovering by her bedside unsure how to act or how to behave. For her mate to be in the room next door, his star-blessed magic permeating Cassian’s bedroom even through stone and plaster and wood. She could even sense Azriel’s shadows moving like an agitated fog.

No Amren. No Mor.

Something to be thankful for.

“Mas?” she asked. Her throat was dry despite the tincture and the word came out scratchy and raw.

Cassian pressed a glass of water to her lips.

She drank.

“Mas has left to help relocate the widows and orphans,” Cassian told her. “I had her checked over by Madja and Frawley. She is perfectly fine. Roksana too,” he added when Nesta frowned. “Mas hasn’t flown yet,” he continued. “She wanted you to witness it.”

Something tightened around Nesta’s throat. It was not panic but… deep twisting affection for the housekeeper. It must be agony for Mas not to launch straight into the skies. Yet… Nesta was touched beyond imagining that she would wait for Nesta to witness something so precious. A moment in history that was not tainted in blood and death but joy.

Cassian had paused as if he were checking himself. He had moved away from her, to the dark dresser to the left of the bed. There was a clink of glass which Nesta supposed was him stoppering the medicine. “I know you do not like it here and I understand that. You were given no choice and Illyria is…” he trailed off, as if he were searching for the right word. “It’s brutal, in both harsh reality and its beauty. But the widows and orphans… they will not forget what you have done for them — how you fought for them. Mas has been shackled in so many ways throughout her life, but her wings… You have given her freedom, Nesta. She will never forget that ,and neither will those females who witnessed you healing her.”

When Cassian turned back to look at Nesta, his eyes were glowing with such intensity she did not know what to say. He seemed to understand that, breaking their gaze to stare out of the window.

It was snowing again. The scent of it was in the air and on Cassian’s clothes, from where Nesta imagined he’d been in the throng of it all, establishing order where there was chaos. She imagined that was why his family was here.

“Azriel has some information about the kerits,” Cassian said. He remained staring out of the window, his gaze fixed on the snow falling from the thin sheets of grey cloud strung in the sky. “About where we think they came from. We would like you to be a part of the discussion.” A pause. “If you would like to be, that is.”

Nesta held back a snort partly because she knew it would hurt too much. “I don’t think your High Lord wants me to be a part of any discussion.”

“Rhys specifically asked me to fetch you before we began,” Cassian replied, not flinching at her ice-sharp words. Nesta supposed he had become immune. “You are integral to the conversation.”

Noise caught in the back of Nesta’s throat. “I thought I was just a stain you all wished you could rid yourself of.”

No, not immune. Cassian flinched as if he had been burned, his wings spreading instinctively before he could catch them. He retracted them back in with a slow huff of anger. It was not a disparaging or exasperated sigh, more… defeated, as if it were a remark that brought him pain.

Still he did not turn to her. If anything, his focus became more intent on the scenery outside. At the bustle of Illyrians as they fought against the flurry of snow that promised to kiss everything white at the worst possible time.

Cassian’s jaw feathered. “If I remember correctly, it was always you trying to rid yourself of me.”

Nesta blinked at the coarse words that held no lightness, no mockery, no teasing. That were honest and unhappy. Twisted with a rejection which hit her to the bone.

You rejected me first, Nesta wanted to say, as she watched the taut muscles in Cassian’s back. They were vibrating with an energy that usually told Nesta that he needed to fight with his fists until his body was sated.

“We believe the attacks might be orchestrated,” Cassian continued. “Azriel went to scout the perimeter to see if there was any evidence. He has only just arrived back.” Finally, those amber eyes rested back on her. They were burning with a rage that had been purposefully dialled back, but Nesta knew how much Cassian cared about his people. “Will you come?” he asked.

Shock wound through Nesta at the confession. At the brutality of what Cassian was suggesting. Anger spiked through the exhaustion with such ferocity her magic should have been roaring, but it only remained quiet. Yet… a determination solidified in her mind. She did want to be a part of the conversation. Not just to be useful, but because Nesta cared about the widows and orphans. She longed to hold Roksana close and see Mas fly. To lay the dead to rest, to check in on the injured. To see if she could use her healing magic to mend their wounds. To show that she was not an observer but a fighter - a protector. That she would lay her life on the line to protect the females who had nothing and were helpless against every threat, just as she had once been.

She did not say all that. Instead, she just said, “Fine.”

A short nod as if Cassian understood. “We can do it in here or out there.” Cassian jerked his chin to the living room. “Frawley said you are not to move if it can be helped, but something tells me you’d sooner have died than be crowded on your sick bed.”

There. A small lace of lightness that had not been there before. Forced, maybe, but there all the same.

Nesta scowled. “You thought rightly.”

“It will hurt,” Cassian warned her. “For me to lift you.”

“Then do it gently.”

A soft snicker as he moved off the many, many blankets, and then strong, corded arms slid beneath her body.

Cassian’s voice was rough in her ear. “You’re the most stubborn female I’ve ever met.”

Gritting her teeth, Nesta tried to overcome the sharp, deep-set pain that made her want to cry out.

The way Cassian gathered her to him was pain-achingly careful but it was still too much, her wounds too fresh and Nesta gasped a high-pitched cry, digging her fingers so hard into his tunic that she knew they must have bitten into the skin of his shoulders. Cassian did not indicate that she had hurt him, he only cradled her closer to the hard planes of his body, his huge wing curving around her as if he could partition off the pain and keep her safe.

The glow of the membrane was not unlike that of rusty, glowing embers. Beautiful.

Cassian remained stock still, waiting for the pain to ebb and then, slowly, as if he were hesitant to do it, his forehead came to rest on the top of her head; a bowing gesture that was almost like a confession, folding her into a protective cocoon that smelt of pine resin and warmth.

If Nesta could move without crying out, she would have traced a finger down his wing, following the spider webs of his capillaries. She had never had the opportunity to study them this close up. They were as mesmerising as fire flames as they danced their way up into the sky; as captivating as woodsmoke as it were tossed about on a breeze.

“I thought you were going to die.”

Cassian’s voice was a low, deep rumble that she felt in the pit of her stomach. In her bones. In her heart.

“Not yet,” she replied drily, but the hoarse words were muffled by the embrace.

She knew what he was trying to say. Had felt it before. The way in which history had tied the two of them together. Had made them terrified not just of dying, but without the other. An immeasurable panic that clawed at her throat and tore at her lungs.

To end up on death’s door without her lying over him was unimaginable. They had vowed to go together and even now, when they were separate rather than entwined, she would still lay her body over his broken one and refuse to live.

“Don’t say that,” Cassian clipped, his voice suddenly sharp. Broken.

Even though it hurt to move, Nesta rolled her head to press against his chest, shifting his forehead so it was lower, his lips almost brushing her skin. Nesta could not bring it in herself to care. Cassian smelt just as his sheets had — pine, musk and untamed air. Comforting.

Hesitantly, as if she had surprised him, Cassian’s large hand came to cup her head.

For a moment, they stayed like that, until the burning question that had hung in the back of her mind became too much. “Why am I in your room?” she asked.

“I had to put Mas in your bed,” Cassian confessed. She felt him smile small against her — a promise of mischief. “It’s not the way I imagined I’d first have you beneath my sheets, but I guess I should just be thankful you’re alive.”

A quiet snarl from Nesta had Cassian lifting his head to laugh. The sound was a low rasp which did not hold its usual vigour.

He was still worried. She could feel it. The sensation was relentless as a crashing tide.

“Reign in your worry,” Nesta snapped weakly. “I can feel it and it’s making me nauseous.”

Another laugh, stronger this time, and then Cassian’s emotion vanished, as if it had been carried away on a sea-kissed breeze.

“I’m going to move now,” he informed her. “Best brace yourself for the pain, sweetheart.”

It was agony. The pain so awfully deep that Nesta could hardly breathe, even as Cassian moved as smoothly as possible. She wanted to cry out, to whimper, but she would not show weakness in front of her sister’s mate.

By the time she was settled on the couch, Nesta had broken that vow; distressed sounds escaping through gritted teeth as she panted desperately for breath. With a click of Rhys's fingers, the nest of blankets that Nesta had been swaddled in appeared on the couch, just in time for Cassian to lower her onto the cushions.

Nesta did not have it in herself to be angered that Rhys had helped.

At the sound of her sister's stifled shouts, Feyre rushed out of the kitchen. She was holding a steaming mug in her hands, which Cassian plucked from his High Lady and planted straight into Nesta’s palms.

Feyre allowed him to do it without a word of protest, anxiously wringing her hands as she studied what Nesta imagined to be her too pale face, the sweat that had broken out on her forehead…

They had not spoken properly since the attack, but Feyre had been there, hovering on the periphery; anxious and sick with worry that she did not know assaulted Nesta until she too became nauseous with it. Nesta’s icy guard had been down since she had dropped to her knees beside Mas, and she hadn’t the power to stack it back up. Not when she was as exhausted as she was, her power utterly diminished and her body focussing on healing.

Finally casting a glance around the room, Nesta saw that the flames in the log burner were raging mute. She wondered who had magicked them to become silent. She hoped it was Frawley rather than Rhysand.

Rhys was positioned to the right of the fireplace, and when Nesta’s gaze purposefully passed over him as if he were little more than part of the furniture, she felt his violet eyes flick to her, his expression no doubt hard and unyielding. But Nesta was too tired to battle today.

Cassian was watching her too, glaring with such intensity at her hands that Nesta was surprised they hadn’t moved involuntarily to raise the mug to her lips. Wanting him to stop, Nesta took a slow sip of tea even though it hurt to swallow. It didn’t work; those hazel eyes remaining unwaveringly fixated. He was standing right by her head, scrutinising everything she did, his wings spread as if he were contemplating launching into flight.

Nesta wanted to hiss at him, but then Feyre sat close beside her, and that made her want to hiss more.

At his place to the left of the hearth, Azriel’s lips twitched. He had been standing as still as a statue, like marble carved out of the finest stone, his shadows stolid, but now he shifted to face her.

Nesta guessed the shadowsinger could sense her emotions with her guard down completely.

She supposed there had to be a first.

When Nesta took the last sip of her drink, Cassian’s hands were immediately there, taking it from her, his siphons winking in the firelight. Nesta barely noticed. She only felt an overwhelming sense of relief at the first whisper of silver and brilliant white that twisted through her veins like two coiled serpents; intertwined yet separate.

Easing backwards with the intention of settling into the cushions, Nesta tried to ignore the pain that suddenly stabbed through her as her stomach muscles tensed. A sharp gasp escaped her, her breath knocked out of her lungs, but then cool, shadowed hands gripped Nesta’s shoulders. They took the weight off of her abdomen, slowly lowering her backwards until she was resting comfortably.

Behind her, Nesta heard Cassian’s wings snap in and out, clearly agitated at her pain.

When Nesta turned her head to Azriel, he dipped his head to her in acknowledgement. Black tendrils of shadow whispered back to him, curling around his arms and face, waiting patiently to be bent again to their master's will.

Then the shadowsinger turned to Rhys, as if seeking the order to begin.

“Thank you for joining us, Nesta,” Rhys said tightly. “Especially given the circumstances.”

Nesta did not reply, could not find it in herself to do it, but she finally stared at their High Lord with unflinching determination.

As always, Rhys was irritatingly immaculate, leaning against the hearth as if he owned it. Already Nesta felt like he was tainting her space — her sanctuary — and although she wanted to spit at him to leave and not come back, she only gave a stiff nod.

It would appear both of them were going to be forced today. Circumstances that were greater than their feud were at work, and neither of them was going to be petty enough to undermine that.

“Feyre allowed me to view her memory of the kerits attack,” Rhys said. “Three males flew over the mountain minutes before it happened. They can’t have been a part of the usual patrol as they weren’t doing the scheduled circuit. Instead, they flew straight over the mountain pass. Do you remember that?”

Nesta frowned, reaching back into the far depths of her memory… The three dots that coursed across the sky, the winking flash of silver from steel.

Sharply, Nesta craned her head to look at Cassian, not thinking of her injuries. She gasped. The movement had twisted her abdomen in a way she was not ready for.

Cassian’s large hands fell briefly to her shoulders before he moved to perch on the left of the U-shaped couch, close to the corner where he had lain her down.

“Ragar—” she started.

But Cassian only shook his head, leaning forward so his elbows were resting on his broad thighs. His wings were held in high and tight to his spine. “Accounted for,” he told her. “And his friends. They were in the sparring rings with Devlon and countless other witnesses.”

His smile was grim. “It’s one of the first thing I checked,” he confessed. “But it made us start to wonder if perhaps the attacks have been orchestrated. One attack can be passed off as a freak accident, but three attacks across three different camps is suspicious, especially given that kerits do not venture into populated areas.”

Nesta’s expression sharpened. “You think somebody purposefully led those beasts to the widows camp?”

Rhys’s nodded. “We think it’s a possibility.” He pinned his brother with those violet eyes. “What did you find scouring the perimeter, Az?”

The shadowsinger’s expression did not physically change, but Nesta felt his shadows chill. “Carrion,” he said coldly. “A trail of it leading to the mountain pass. Morsels of it. Not enough to feed a starving pack, but deliberate enough to tempt them out of the depths of the mountains.”

“This winter has been especially punishing,” Cassian interjected. “I bet food supply has been scarce. They struggle to survive as it is. The sounds they made as they hunted probably alerted other packs who joined the hunt.”

Feyre sat forward so she was hovering on the edge of the couch. “That would be why they were so vicious. They knew they were competing with other packs for food.”

Nesta’s stomach turned as she thought of how the widows and orphans had been seen as as a meal. How they had huddled to the Eastern point of the camp with nowhere to go and no means of defending themselves.

“The carrion was well hidden,” Azriel continued with a nod, his voice as smooth as cold marble. “Frawley examined the remains. They weren’t killed with siphon magic and there were no visible wounds to the bodies. We also found boot prints in the mud; different prints ranging in size in two separate locations within a miles range of the camp. They were fresh.”

Everyone’s expression tightened.

Nesta didn’t ask if the carrion was human or animal. She didn’t want to know.

“Frawley has taken samples to analyse them,” Azriel added. “She said she will show her sisters, as well. To see if they can sense an insignia.”

“So that means the attack was orchestrated,” Feyre said. “Someone deliberately led those beasts to the camp?”

Rhys nodded. “The attack was certainly pre-meditated,” he replied, pinning Cassian with a look. “The real question is who would arrange an attack on three separate camps.”

Cassian snorted. “You know what the lords are going to say. What all of the Illyrian’s at Windhaven are going to say.”

“That it’s an attack from another war camp,” Azriel supplied, his voice chilled midnight.

“War lords usually have no issue in taking responsibility if they played a part in an attack,” Rhys countered.

“I know that,” Cassian interjected, impatience lining his voice. “So will the lords when they stop to see sense, but the moment we tell them that we suspect wrong doing, all hell will break loose. We can’t afford to lose any more lives to petty feuds. We’re still reeling from the loss of males since the war and the Rite is already looming over the camp.”

Rhys nodded to show he had heard. Nesta wondered if he mourned the loss of lives like Cassian did. The High Lord looked tired, as if he had been torn away from his mate for too long. Yet nobody looked as ravaged as Cassian did. Nesta did not know if his brothers knew of his recurring nightmares, but she hoped they learnt of them. Sometimes Cassian looked so exhausted that Nesta vibrated with a concern she could not shake. In the past, she had bitten her lip one too many times to prevent herself from ordering him to go to bed.

Nesta knew how awful it was to force someone to do something they desperately wanted but were too fearful to surrender themselves to.

“We will manage the lords,” Rhys assured Cassian. “We can decide how we are going to play that consul, but for now, we need to get to the bottom of how the kerits managed to get past Windhaven’s patrols. You and I both know how meticulous Devlon is when it comes to security around the camp. Those males shouldn't have been able to pass over the camp without being stopped by the warriors on patrol.”

“Whoever they were, they must have known that Cassian wasn't going to be in the camp today,” Azriel offered, the spymaster in him coming to the forefront. “The only good news is that they clearly had no idea that both Feyre and Nesta would be at the top of the mountain and able to fight. And," he added after a beat of consideration, "they certainly underestimated Nesta’s ability to slay the pack if she had been alone today.”

If Nesta hadn’t been white from pain, she would have had to freeze the blush that dared to grace her cheeks at the shadowsinger’s compliment.

An abrupt snort came from Cassian. When he spoke, his voice was brimming with anger, “Of course they underestimated Nesta. Even though they have witnessed her fire daily and sensed the enormity of her magic, they still can't fathom that a female could be more powerful than them. It has to be Illyrian’s at the root of it. Only they would be chauvinistic enough to fail to see what is right in front of them.”

“Which,” Rhys interjected, “has worked unwittingly in our favour. Rather than fuel hatred towards the Night Court and cement the growing opinion that we do not protect the Illyrian community, we had two High Fae slaughtering the pack well before any warriors arrived on the scene. And then Nesta brought Masak back to life — someone who the Illyrian males in this camp do not see as worthy to live amongst them.”

Through the exhaustion, anger heated Nesta’s blood. She felt her magic whisper. If Nesta looked inward, she could see the two strands. Could now sense the promise of healing magic in her veins amongst her silver fire. As if she had been granted the key in the face of Mas’s death and she had turned it over in the lock, setting that power free.

Yet, even as Nesta grazed that healing power, it was her silver fire that promised to roar.

“I didn’t do it to stop a Civil War. I did it to protect the females who cannot protect themselves,” Nesta snapped weakly. She was too tired to muster enough vigour into her words, but she was annoyed at the false implication behind her actions. That she had not done it out of love for the housekeeper, but because of politics.

“That may be,” Rhys said, his voice forcibly light, “and what you did was honourable, but we cannot ignore how the Illyrian’s might interpret the action.”

“What Rhys is trying to say,” Azriel interjected smoothly as Nesta’s nostrils flared, “is that the females already respect you. The way you defended them today will not strengthen the dissent, only highlight that there are fae outside of the Illyrian communities who have their best interests at heart. You, for example.”

“You know they like you,” Cassian said quietly. He did not look at Nesta. Instead, he remained fixated at the hands that were clasped tightly in front of him, his elbows resting on his broad knees. “You know they have accepted you since you defended them against the males.”

“I protect them because nobody else seems to bother,” Nesta said coldly. “How many innocent females died because of the cruel intentions of males today? How many were injured?”

“Thirteen dead, thirty plus injured,” Cassian told Nesta quietly. “It would have been many more if you and Feyre not been there. You moved so quickly you managed to slay the majority of the packs before they reached the females.”

Nesta’s expression hardened as she thought of the trailing guts that had glistened in the grey light of day; the way Roksana’s hands had slipped in Mas’s wet, sticky blood, and how she had croaked for help. Her first word aloud since Nesta had met her.

“That is still too many,” Nesta insisted, her voice betraying her — shaking with the anger and horror of it all. “Why would they target the widows first? Why not lead the kerits down the other side of the mountain pass where they would could reach the main camp and weaken Windhaven’s forces?”

“Perhaps the kerits were never intended to weaken Windhaven’s ranks at all,” Rhys mused. “Perhaps they were intended to prove a point.”

A shocked, prolonged pause.

“Are you saying,” Nesta said, her voice shaking, “that you think the rebellion could have orchestrated the attacks. That they might have specifically targeted the defenceless females because widows are seen as disposable, but their deaths would be enough to fuel dissent amongst the camps?”

Rhys stared at Nesta for a moment. His head tilted slightly to the side, in the same way that Cassian’s did when he was trying to puzzle her out. But Nesta barely saw it. All she saw was the twisted body of the kind cook who had fed Nesta every morning… Of lovely Durkhanai, with her beautiful curly hair and bright green eyes. A female who had been dealt the harshest of fates. She had not deserved her end. None of the females had.

Feyre’s hand crept over the blankets to Nesta’s. Her sister’s slim fingers wrapped around her own. “Surely they wouldn’t kill their own race?” Feyre said, her voice shaking. Nesta wondered if she, too, was thinking of the discarded limbs and pools of blood. “There were children in that camp. The females didn’t even have weapons…”

But her sister did not understand just how harsh the camps were. Unlike Nesta, Feyre had not lived amongst the widows for months. She did not know just how willing the Illyrian’s might be to offer the widows camp as a sacrifice for the sake of politics.

“I would not put it past Illyrian’s to see widows as a necessary sacrifice,” Rhys admitted eventually after a long, pregnant pause. His violet eyes had softened with grief. “If this is orchestrated by the rebellion, I suspect that by targeting the widows camps Kallon was hoping to fuel the anger amongst the Illyrian’s that they are not protected. That the Night Court does not care for Illyrian’s and offers them no protection. The widows would have been seen as a necessary sacrifice. They are outcasts in Illyrian society with no families to mourn their deaths.”

A ringing sounded in Nesta’s ears. The noise tuned out the room around her. It took her a while to realise that it was fury. It burned. It was not hot, but cold - enough to give her frostbite - as if her magic was not replenished enough to fly but was trying its best to rally itself. Inside of her chest, something cracked. It sounded like bone. With it, came creeping fingers of light, reaching towards her...

With all her strength, Nesta clamped down... until shadows ate away the approaching light and the room righted itself.

When she came to, Cassian was growling low in warning, his wings stretching as far as they could without hitting her square in the face. At who, Nesta did not know. Did not care for his territorial display when there were bigger matters to discuss.

“And why isn’t there protection?” she asked.

Nesta’s words were as cold as the chill in her veins. Rhys stilled, and with it, his magic trembled. The growl was still rumbling from low in Cassian’s chest — deeper even — and he sat forward, bracing his weight onto his thighs as if he were getting ready to launch himself at… someone. Nesta wasn’t sure who.

Feyre was still gripping Nesta’s hand tight, her grip firm enough to hurt. If Nesta had cast a look to her sister’s face, she would have seen that tell-tale glaze over Feyre’s eyes. It was the kind of far off look which told Nesta that her sister was speaking to her mate mind-to-mind. Or trying to, at least.

“Why was there no protection around each of the Illyrian camps given that there had already been two kerit attacks?” Nesta continued, ignoring the rumbling sound that had her heart wanting to beat that little bit faster. “I have seen the protective shields the fae used in war — around your City of Starlight. Why is that courtesy not extended to the Illyrian communities?”

A long, drawn out silence of star-kissed eternal and a whisper of ancient silver.

“I have offered protection numerous times to each of the war lords,” Rhys replied eventually, his voice too measured to be casual. “Each of them have turned it down. They see it as a criticism on their duty as warriors to protect and defend.”

Nesta’s snort was harsh but the hard quality to her eyes did not change. “They are stubborn Illyrian bats. Get them to change their minds. Or are you not their High Lord?”

A flicker of amusement passed across Azriel’s face, his shadows lightening the sharp, beautiful angles of his face. “Nesta is right,” he said, causing everyone to turn. “The war lords don’t have the luxury of turning down our help when it looks as if there will be more kerit attacks. There shouldn’t have been a gap in today’s patrol. Windhaven has always prided itself on its security — all the camps do. Have we found the soldiers who should have been patrolling the perimeter? I think it wise to consider that they may have been compromised by whoever tempted the kerits to the camps. Recruited, even. They could well be the males that flew over the mountain pass.”

“Nobody can find them,” Cassian growled. “We have males out looking for them as we speak. As soon as they are found we will interrogate them.”

“Cassian and I will interrogate,” Rhys told Azriel as a rare flicker of surprise fell across the shadowsinger's expression. “I need you to visit your most trusted contacts in the camps and tell them that we believe the attacks might not be random. We need all eyes and ears to the ground to find out as much as we can, not least to anticipate where the next attack might be.”

A tense nod, but Azriel folded into shadow and disappeared.

Cassian’s fists curled into fists on the tops of his thighs. “We need evidence. We cannot assume this is the rebellion without it.”

“Of course not,” Rhys admitted smoothly. “Which is why we need you to try and snuff out as much information as you can when you and Nesta go to the Solstice luncheon next week. Accept the offer to stay overnight.”

Nesta hadn’t thought Cassian’s expression could turn any stonier, but it did. “No.”

“The more time you spend at Ironcrest, the longer Nesta has to pick up any untoward emotion, especially surrounding conversation about the camps. It gives Frawley time to look and identify the origin of the sword, and it gives you and Lorrian time to pry out any information. Insist on you and Lorrian overseeing the aerial and ground units that next morning, it will ease away any suspicion. A trip there is long overdue but it is time to act on this rather than gathering information, which we have been doing up until now.”

Cassian blew out a long, steadying breath. Then he conceded, “With the Rite meeting been moved forward to that afternoon, it shouldn’t be hard to extend our stay."

Rhys nodded. “Good.” Then his violet eyes rested on Nesta. “You are willing to go with Cassian?”

A raised chin. Defiant. Strong. Despite the pain and exhaustion that wanted to pull her down, down, down. “Yes.”

“Then we have a plan,” Rhys said with another nod. “Azriel will continue to train you. If he is not available, I will travel to the camps and train you myself .”

At the edge of her periphery, Nesta saw Feyre’s eyes widen. In her stomach, Nesta felt Cassian’s surprise, a sensation which grew as Rhys said, “Welcome to the Court of Dreams, Nesta Archeron.”

***

By the time the meeting was over, Nesta was drained; her eyelids unbelievably heavy, her limbs aching. She desperately wanted to sleep, so she took the tincture Feyre brought her without comment and didn’t protest when Cassian carried her back to his bed rather than hers; agony fogged the rational part of her brain.

She was practically asleep as Cassian lay her onto his mattress. She felt his fingers coax hers away from where they were clutching his leathers. Blankets were pulled over her, the weight a comfort. A sedative was dripped into her mouth.

And then she slipped under.

When Nesta next woke, the taste was still bitter in her mouth but the room was dark; the light having receded even from the gap between the curtains.

In the armchair beside her bed was Feyre, her feet curled up beneath her and her freckled nose buried in Love in Velaris. A bobbing faelight hung overhead, willed by her sister’s magic. It illuminated the pages.

From the dent Feyre had made in the book, Nesta guessed she had been asleep for hours. Beyond the room, the bungalow sat still — the way it did when Cassian was not home — as if it too were sleeping, waiting for its owner to come back and breathe life into the rooms with his presence.

A few seconds passed until Feyre noticed that Nesta was awake. It gave Nesta enough time to catalogue the concern etched on her sister’s pale face; the tight expression which made Feyre’s sharp cheekbones even more prominent.

Nesta did not usually see the similarities between them, but now, as Feyre’s serious steel-blue eyes snapped up at the rustle of blankets, Nesta knew why others had said they looked alike.

“You’re awake.” Feyre spoke slowly — unsure — as she unfurled her long, lithe legs. When Nesta winced as she tried to get into a more comfortable position, Feyre jumped up and moved to the dresser. “Here,” she said, pouring some tincture onto a silver spoon.

Nesta hated the way she needed assistance to lift her head, but she allowed Feyre to do it in a rush of pear and lilac. Nesta was not proud enough to deny that she needed the tincture to smooth away the pain. And whilst the pain wasn’t as agonising as hours prior, it was deep-set enough for Nesta to consider whether she could persuade Feyre to allow her to swallow down the whole damn bottle.

After some water to chase down the foul taste, Feyre stepped back. “How are you feeling? Frawley seemed to think she could speed up the healing Madja did, but you were so sick…” Her sister trailed off, setting back to examine Nesta’s face. “You look a little less pale...”

“I’m fine,” Nesta said hoarsely.

Feyre opened her mouth and then closed it again, as if she were contemplating what best to say. The action annoyed Nesta. She wanted to be alone and quiet. To fall back asleep and wake when the pain was gone and she no longer felt helpless.

“Don’t you have duties to attend to?” Nesta asked tiredly, turning her face to bury it into one of the pillows. It was a few seconds reprieve to calm the irritation that had started to hum through her.

Slowly, Nesta breathed in the scent of pine, musk and air that was so fierce Nesta felt as if she were almost a part of it. She had no doubt this was the pillow Cassian rested his head on. The scent soothed her, smoothing over that spiky, dangerous anger of hers to leave bone-lead weariness in its place.

“I wanted to be here,” Feyre told her. There was a subtle stubborn lift to her chin that Nesta knew Feyre had copied from her at a young age so many times that it had now become a part of who she was. “I wanted to look after you. To make sure that you were healing.”

“Well, I don’t need you to take care of me. You heard it yourself, I should be out of bed tomorrow. I just need to sleep.”

Nesta had intended to say it icily, but she was not well enough to muster the strength.

Feyre’s expression tightened, and for a moment, Nesta thought she might snap. But then she just straightened with determination; her tall, lean body rising to a height that called for attention. “Then let me say what I want to say and I will leave you alone.”

A long, stony silence and a blank, impenetrable mask that Nesta hoped with desperation conveyed the message she wanted to snap: Go away.

Instead, Feyre seated herself on the armchair and reached for Nesta’s ice-cold hand. “Nesta,” she started, the word practically a plea. “I know you and I - I know that our relationship has always been rocky. And you are right, there are many things that I hadn’t considered, not least when I sent you here. But… you almost died today and it’s made me realise what is important: I love you. I don’t think I’ve told you that before, but I always have. Even when we were younger and we were both so angry and bitter at our lot in life and we spent our days fighting. And I know you love me, too. Hiring someone to take you to the wall to find me told me that…”

Feyre let out a long, shaky breath and when she next spoke, her voice turned softer, dropping into a confession, “I forgave you and Elain a long time ago for when we were starving, Nesta. I want you to know that. I don’t — we were children. It was father that failed us, not you. I never saw it as your job to care for me and… I’m sorry that you were there when mother asked me to take care of you…. That must have been a horrible thing to overhear and… well, I would have felt resentment towards me, too, if I were you.”

More silence. Nesta would not allow herself to speak for the barbed words she knew would spill forth. About her sister’s mate and how whilst Nesta had tried to make amends, Rhysand’s obvious dislike of her had not disappeared with Feyre’s supposed forgiveness.

“I also want you to know that what you did in the war — you saved hundreds of lives. I know you witnessed unimaginable death and horror, but fae and humans are walking on Prythian because you struck down the male that promised to wreak havoc on our world. You did all of that and I never thought to thank you. And then I was so swept away by my duties as High Lady and recovering from Rhys’s near death that I did not give you the time I should have-”

Such careful tiptoeing around their father’s death. How Nesta had watched the life bleed out of his eyes, until they were nothing but glassy and wholly unconscious.

It was that which made Nesta cut her sister off. Even now, she had no desire to discuss his death. “I am not a burden you need to add to your list of priorities. I didn’t want your help. I explicitly told you to go away and instead you continued to force me to socialise when all I wanted was to be alone.”

Feyre let go of Nesta’s hand. Something akin to loss flashed through Nesta, piercing through the exhaustion and the pain in her abdomen.

“I think communication has always been an issue for us,” Feyre admitted, not backing down from the conversation. “I have spent time thinking over what you have said and you are right, I have not truly listened to you. But I was so scared for your safety I adopted drastic measures—”

“It is not your place to decide what is best for me,” Nesta said coldly. “I am not yours to command. And,” she continued with as much iciness as she could muster, “I do not think that an Illyrian camp is a place of safety.”

A deliberate pause to highlight how she were in bed suffering from major injuries.

“I thought if you were with Cassian that you would be protected,” Feyre said, her expression anguished. “I thought if anyone were to hold their own in an Illyrian camp it would be you. You are so strong, Nesta—”

“You thought a fae male could protect me when the protection I was promised by males has failed over and over again?” Nesta countered. “He is not even here all of the time. Sometimes he is away for days on end and I am left alone. You banished me to this awful place in front of an audience with no care for my feelings.”

But as Nesta spoke, something scrabbled in the back of her mind. Because it wasn’t fair to criticise Cassian for both leaving her and crowding her. Because Cassian had given her space and yet he had also been there, on the periphery if not right in front of her. Taunting her and encouraging her, but with so much space to grow. He had not made her train with him, dragging her spitting and screaming into the sparring ring. He had not thrown her out into the camp each morning and forced her to work or make friends. He had given her choices that she had more often than not denied over and over. And when she had done that, he had bought her more books or figured out the foods she liked to make the days a little less boring.

Cassian had not just protected her but allowed her to grow stronger. Had given her the space to decide for once in her life what she wanted to do and what she wanted to be. True, she might have been stuck in Windhaven, but she had never felt truly trapped. The skies made her feel unencumbered. The mud beneath her feet rendered her a part of nature rather than apart from it. The craggy mountains were a physical depiction of how Nesta was starting to see herself; sharp and angry but resilient and strong.

Outside the bungalow, Nesta heard the unmistakable crunch of boots in the snow. The low murmur of male voices floated through the bedroom window, which had been cracked open to circulate the stale air.

Feyre’s face crumpled in sudden irritation, and Nesta guessed that her mate had tried to speak mind-to-mind with her mid-conversation. From the way Feyre’s expression quickly cleared, Nesta got the impression she had banished Rhys completely or told him to go away.

The click of the magical lock from the front door rang through the bungalow, but Feyre’s attention was only on her. “Adjusting to the role of High Lady has been… a struggle,” her sister admitted. “Cassian, Rhys, Amren and Mor are my friends as well as my trusted advisors. But you are right, I spoke to you as a High Lady not as a sister when I told you to come here. I thought that using my new status would make you listen because my role as a sister had failed. It was a last resort and I knew… I knew that Cassian would look after you.”

Feyre stared up at the ceiling, as if the memory caused her pain. “As soon as you left I knew the way I had summoned you was wrong.” Feyre looked back to Nesta and sincerity swam in her eyes. “I did not consider that I had imprisoned you. I was selfishly only thinking of forcing you to be well.”

More silence.

Feyre got to her feet, her expression pained.

She waved a hand to the window, gesturing to the scenery outside. To the craggy mountains that stretched for miles and the sea beyond it. To the world that existed beyond Illyria. Beyond Prythian. “When you are healed, if you wish to leave Illyria you can. I don’t want you to feel imprisoned any longer.”

There was a finality to the words that rang true. Her sister meant them, even if it was obvious they caused her pain. Yet… Nesta did not want to leave. Not now, not when she had promised to attend the Solstice luncheon to see what they could discover about the sword and the kerit attacks. Not when the females here were so vulnerable. Now when they needed help rebuilding their community — to mourn for the losses that Nesta had vowed would not go unnoticed.

“I said I’d help, didn’t I?”

Feyre halted at the door.

“And your help is invaluable,” Feyre said slowly, “but you are not obligated to do it. So if you wish to leave, you can. Just… please tell someone before you do and let us know where you are going.”

Feyre looked weary and Nesta wondered if she had even bathed since everything that had happened. Her body was clean like Nesta’s… but her leathers were crumpled and her hair dishevelled. Nesta’s own body felt like it was covered in a film of oil and invisible dirt. Her skin itched at the thought and she longed for a bath, even though she knew she would not be able to manage it without more rest.

When Nesta closed her eyes, Feyre’s blood-streaked face swam into view. She remembered how Feyre had gripped her hand in the midst of battle and told Nesta to lead the way to the Eastern side of the camp, even though they were in the thick of danger. Her sister had not hesitated or balked. She had only been fierce and unwaveringly brave, ready to put her life on the line for those who needed protection.

For all of their problems, when the two of them had been fighting side by side, it was the first time that Nesta felt as if she truly belonged with her sister. For a brief moment in time, their issues and past mistakes had bled away, as if they were inconsequential.

“I’d love for us to start afresh,” Feyre continued quietly from her place at the door. “We have both made errors, but I do not care about yours. I hope that with time you might be able to forgive me, and if you do, I’d like to start over, you and I, with a blank slate.”

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badsext · 4 years ago

Note

I wish you would write a Leon fic.. that's it. That's the message 😅

Scene Partners: Leon X Reader

Thank you for the request @misskittysmagicportal. I love Leon. I hope I’m doing him justice.

Summary: After Leon’s ill fated role as Neil Armstrong in the fake moon landing, he decided that fancy acting classes would be just the thing to launch (pun intended) his career as a serious actor.

Warning: Very irresponsible and spontaneous smut (Please use protection IRL) 18+ and suggested assault of a character within a play. I hid the smut under the ‘read more’. These warnings make it sound heavier than it is...it’s actually super light and fun.

________________________________________________________

Johnny looked at Leon incredulously. “Where are you going at 10:00 AM on a Thursday morning?”

Leon looked his best mate in the eye and lied. “The pub, of course.”

In fact, this was the first day in months he wasn’t drunk or high...Alright, maybe just a toke or two to take the edge off. He even washed his hair and put on a turtleneck because that is what serious actors wore. Leon had lied and stumbled his way into a local university Theatre School, financing his tuition with a fraudulent cheque.

It was only an introductory scene workshop for beginners, but after watching the real Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon, Leon aspired to do great things. He arrived at the theatre more or less on time and with an inflated sense of purpose. It smelled like dust and leather and old wood. Framed photographs of former students lined the hallowed halls. Nervousness began to set in. He felt like an imposter, just like he did when Johnny had asked him to impersonate Stanley Kubrick some months ago. Accept this time, the only thing he had to impersonate was a man with confidence. After a brief internal struggle, Leon decided that he would go to the pub after all. There was always next Thursday.

As he reached for the door, a young woman had just entered, shaking the rain off her umbrella. Seeing how cute she was, Leon immediately changed course.

“Are you here for the workshop?,” she asked politely.

“Yes, I am,” he replied with a bashful smile. “I’m Leon.”

When she took off her coat, he saw how she wore a very similar black turtleneck.

“Y/N. Pleasure to meet you, Leon.” She paused, looking up from her cat eye glasses. “I think we might be late!,” she added urgently. He followed her onto the workshop, sitting beside her in the back row of chairs. His interest in y/n distracted him from the enormity of the theatre and his growing stage fright.

The professor explained the warm up exercises, but Leon learned nothing. He was watching y/n chew on her fountain pen. They started with a series of vocalizations and deep breathing. Leon watched y/n’s chest and diaphragm expand and contract with each concentrated breath. Once she caught him staring, he would look up to the rafters or down at his shoes, thoughtfully scratching his beard. She smiled at his lack of subtlety.

The professor distributed scenes to the students at random. Leon looked down at his script. His stage fright resurfaced as he read the words at the top of the page. ‘Macbeth: Act 4, Scene 1.’ The ‘Second Witch’ part had been highlighted.

The students were given fifteen minutes to rehearse their scenes wherein Leon mumbled and stumbled through his lines. The actresses playing the other witches were good-natured about it, but everyone knew the scene would be shit.

He broke into a sweat as the actors were called to the stage. His mind was nothing but static at that point. He watched the actresses move their lips, hunched in crone-like fashion and wiggling their fingers over an imaginary cauldron. They chanted in unison:

“Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

When they stopped, everyone looked at Leon. This was his line. The last ‘bubble’ just hung in the air while the silence took over. He gave it his best effort, though his voice was weak and his hands were shaking.

“Fillet of a fanny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of twat and tongue of hog.”

His hands shook with such force that he dropped the script.

“Oh, bollocks - It’s gone in the soup!” He improvised rolling up his sleeve and fishing it out of the hot cauldron.

“Leon...Leon!” It took the professor several tries to rouse him from his panic. “That’s enough, Leon. We mustn't paraphrase Shakespeare.” The students giggled. The professor pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Let’s try something else, shall we?”

He turned and pulled two scripts from his briefcase, handing one to Leon. “We need something to build your confidence. You will play Stanley Kawalski. He’s a proud, domineering brute.” He beat his chest for emphasis. “And you...y/n, you will play Blanche, the jealous, simmering sexpot,” he said, casually handing her the other script.

“A Streetcar Named Desire? Wasn’t that a film with Marlon Brando?,” Leon muttered nervously.

The professor put a hand on each of their backs. “I’ll read the stage directions. Don’t think, just use your instincts.”

Leon read the lines with as much bravado as he could muster. “I've been on to you from the start! Not once did you pull any wool over this boy's eyes! You come in here and sprinkle the place with powder and spray perfume and cover the light bulb with a paper lantern, and lo and behold the place has turned into Egypt and you are the Queen of the Nile! Sitting on your throne and swilling down my liquor! I say--Ha!--Ha! Do you hear me? Ha--Ha--ha!”

“Okay, now he walks into the bedroom.”

Y/N cried out a warning as Blanche, “Don't come in here!”

“That was quite good,” Leon whispered, eliciting a small smile.

“Stanley goes into the bathroom and Blanche picks up the phone.”

Blanche: “Operator, operator! Give me long-distance, please.... I want to get in touch with Mr. Shep Huntleigh of Dallas. He's so well-known he doesn't require any address. Just ask anybody who--Wait! I--No, I couldn't find it right now.... Please understand, I--No! No, wait! ... One moment! Someone is--Nothing! Hold on, please!”

Leon grinned out of character, so impressed by y/n’s acting.

“Blanch is going mad now, pacing back and forth.”

Blanche: “Operator! Operator! Never mind long-distance. Get Western Union. There isn't time to be--Western--Western Union! Western Union? Yes! I--want to--Take down this message! "In desperate, desperate circumstances! Help me! Caught in a trap. Caught in--" Oh!

Stanley: “You left th' phone off th' hook.”

“Now he blocks her from the door.”

Blanche: “Let me--let me get by you!”

Stanley: “Get by me! Sure. Go ahead”

“But he only gives her an inch.”

Blanche: “You--you stand over there!”

Stanley: “You got plenty of room to walk by me now.”

Blanche: “Not with you there! But I've got to get out somehow!”

Stanley: “You think I'll interfere with you? Ha-ha!”

Blanche: “I warn you, don't, I'm in danger!”

“He takes another step and she smashes the bottle breaking it.”

Stanley: “What did you do that for?”

Blanche: “So I could twist the broken end in your face!”

Stanley: “I bet you would do that!”

Blanch: “I would! I will if you--”

Leon’s reading becomes increasingly stilted and awkward. “Oh! So you want some rough-house! All right, let's have some rough-house!”

“He springs out at her. She swipes the bottle at him, but he captures her wrist and overpowers her.”

The professor read the stage directions, but Leon wouldn’t move, delivering the next bit of dialogue with a sigh of regret. “Tiger--tiger! Drop the bottle top! Drop it! We've had this date with each other from the beginning!”

“Overpower her, Leon.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t like to do that, Professor.”

“It’s acting, Leon...It’s pretend.”

“I don’t even want to pretend. Stanley is horrid and I hate him.”

The professor rolled his eyes, disregarding Leon’s protest. Then he clapped his hands together addressing the other students. “Okay, everybody, that’s it for today. I want you off book by next week.”

The students started getting up from their chairs and shuffling their things. Y/N approached Leon who was staring down at the stage with his arms folded. He looked up anxiously as she leaned in to whisper in his ear. Meet me in the ladies room in five minutes.

Leon was at first confused, then his eyes widened with surprise when he realized what she meant. She laughed and swaggered away.

Y/N spotted Leon lurking by the door. “Leon, that was three minutes, at most. Luckily everybody left after class. At least I think so,” she added with a cheeky grin. “Come here.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him inside the cubicle. Do you want to shag?

Leon nodded his head. “Y-yes.”

“I liked what you did today,” she said, removing her knickers. “It was very chivalrous of you.”

Y/N tilted her head and kissed him. He inhaled at the contact of her lips.

She pulled back and looked him in his glistening green eyes. “Go on then.”

“What ‘d ya mean?

“Fuck me, Leon.”

“Shouldn’t I, you know...foreplay?”

“Leon, I’m already soaked. Get your cock out and fuck me.”

Leon quickly unbuckled his belt and let his trousers fall down around his ankles. She turned with her back against the partition wall and one foot on the toilet seat. He lifted her tartan skirt and drove up inside her, groaning at the tight wet sensation. She inhaled through her teeth, clutching at his shoulders, then wrapping her arms around his neck. Leon closed the gap between them, his pelvic bone at the base of his cock creating a throbbing pressure on her clit as he thrust. The hard bouncing rhythm made her glasses fall askew. She whimpered and moaned as the orgasm pulsed through her, overwhelming her senses.

“Was that?...Did you?”

Her eyelids drooped peacefully. “Um hm.”

He smiled, encouraged and continued thrusting. His eyes shined like Christmas trees. She pet his curls, watching the pleasure wash over his face.

“I’m gonna…”

“Don’t stop, sweetie.”

He plowed into her, releasing his warm seed with a hearty grunt.

“Bravo, Leon,” she smirked.

@bubblyani @elliethesuperfruitlover @super-unpredictable98 @salvador-daley @helena-way07 @chipster-21 @punknatch @slutforrobbiebro

#Leon x reader #leon x reader smut #Robert Sheehan character fic #Robert Sheehan fanfic #Robert sheehan request #moonwalkers #moonwalkers fanfic #robert sheehan imagine #smut

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the-fox-knows · 4 years ago

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A Sage’s Golden Quest

Taken from ‘The Secret Arts’ from the Enchanted World series Artwork by George Sharp

Of all the guardians of the hidden lore, none were more jealous of their secrets than the alchemists, specialists in transmuting base metals into gold. Only adepts knew the formula that controlled the transformation, and each master, according to tradition , was allowed to pass on his knowledge to just one disciple. The revelation did not in itself guarantee success; only a man who had driven egotism from his soul could have the purity of spirit necessary to refine ordinary matter into the world’s most precious metal.

One who mastered the art was an Englishman named Thomas Charnock, who was born in the days when science and magic had not yet grown apart He took up the quest as a young scholar, equipped only with a scanty store of Latin and a small inherited income. With its aid, he traveled the country in search of a master to initiate him.

After some months he heard talk of a prior in the city of Bath reputed to have alchemical powers. He tracked the man down, only to find that his knowledge had not brought him happiness. Overmuch study had left him blind, and the small boy he paid to lead him informed Charnock that the old man’s wits were going too. Nonetheless, he possessed the formula, and from his disconnected ramblings, the younger man learned all that he needed to know.

The details of the formula he received were lost when the line of alchemical knowledge came to an end. Chroniclers suggested, though, that the process involved subjecting a weak solution of gold to a complex cycle of twelve separate distillations. If the seeker was on the right track, he could expect first to create a hard, white pebble. Later, the white would turn to red. The resulting russet nugget was known to alchemists as the philosopher’s stone. A mystical substance, it could not merely turn ordinary metals into gold, but improved everything in its kind: Thus, if used on humans, it was also a sure cure for disease and an elixir of youth.

Burning with enthusiasm to put his newly acquired knowledge to the test, Charnock used his small funds to equip a laboratory in his gloomy country mansion. He sought out the finest equipment from metalworkers and glassblowers; to conceal the true nature of his work, he spun wild tales of a plan to make a brazen head that would speak and keep him company in the long winter nights. He preserved his privacy from the prying eyes of neighbors by draping the windows of his study with thick curtains rarely opened to let in light.

At last all the utensils were in place, the retorts gleaming and the fire lighted. Jars of gold pieces, silver, mercury, ammonia and aqua fortis lined the wooden shelves, vying for space with leather-bound books and dusty parchments inscribed in crabbed and ancient hands. guided by the lessons contained in these manuscripts as well as by the prior’s directions, Charnock dropped flakes of gold into a flask of acid to start the long process of manufacture.

After each cycle of evaporation and condensation, the substance in the retort changed mysteriously. Sometimes it seethed as if in anger, and emitted strange noxious odors. At other times it was white and powdery, firing Charnock with hope. Finally, it changed no more. It became black and viscous, like oil, and lay sullenly at the vase oft he still.

After his initial despair, Charnock began again, only to fail once more. But he did not give up hope. He turned back to his books and manuscripts in search of fresh knowledge. Soon he was breathing the names of the masters in his sleep — Ramon Lull, Hermes Trismegistus, Zosimus the Egyptian.

By day he kept to his room, tending the gentle flame that encouraged the slow cycle of distillation. He rarely left the house except when driven out by the reeking fumes of acid and ammonia that the flasks belched forth. At night, by the smoky light of cheap tallow candles, he sought to decipher the riddles of the manuscripts, seeking the root of his failure in the accumulated experience of the past.

That there was some simple error in his calculations he did not doubt, for who dared say that the masters lied? He studied the nature of the elements and the properties of matter, consulting astrological charts to determine propitious conjunctions of the planets, for Trismegistus himself had said that everything above is reflected below.

Although he persisted with his research, success still eluded him. As time passed, he himself changed. He restarted his work after every setback as before, but the passion for enlightenment grew calmer in his soul. Fear of failure no longer disturbed his nights. Instead, the tending of the flame became a discipline, almost an end in itself.

As his character mellowed, his concentration grew; he came to realize that his state of mind affected the substance in the flask. If his mood was good, the process prospered; if worldly cares assailed him, the liquid became as black as spleen.

After many years, a day finally came when he saw that the matter in the still had grown hard and white. He was not aware of any alteration in the process he had employed so often in the past; rather, he thought, the breakthrough must reflect the change in himself. Calmly, betraying no agitation, he continued the cycle of distillation. Charnock watched in awe as a red flush spread across the white, until the stone had turned the color of blood. With a mounting sense of triumph, he lifted it from the retort, chipped off a flake and dropped it into a cauldron of molten lead. The bubbling metal fizzed and hardened, and as it did so it was suffused with a rich yellow glow. After twenty years of effort, Thomas Charnock had finally reached his goal.

As a young man he might have used his skill to make himself rich, but the quest had taken away his taste for worldly show. Instead he lived quietly and comfortably for the few years of life that remained to him, and his neighbors noted in him an aura of saintly calm. The lesson he had learned in the course of his long pursuit was an old one, that it is the journey, not the arrival, that matters. He had come to see that the change his mission had wrought in himself was more important than any of the transmutations achieved in all his bubbling retorts

#Enchanted World series #alchemy #storytelling #philosopher's stone

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twitchesandstitches · 6 years ago

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There are several main AUs I do on this blog, and they are very broad in scope, encompassing a wide variety of potential settings and scenario set ups. They can encompass my OCs, redesigns, fandom stuff, and all that in a single package, and that includes ‘non-canon’ one shots that have no connection to the AU besides setting.

While it’s incredibly unlikely that, at this point, any of my followers didn’t already follow me on my previous writing blog, there is nonetheless a possibility that I might get some new people here eventually. And then, they’re likely gonna be real confused when I start talking about my AUs without context. And even if you do know all my ramblings about my AUs pretty well, it’s useful to have refreshers in case you forget stuff or want some info now and then. So real quick, I’m writing up some refreshers on my main AUs.

Firstly, Crossthicc AU. It is a massive crossover in the vein on Kingdom Hearts, or to be more specific, it is a kink-centric reworking of a more SFW fanfic I’m planning on doing eventually, with elements of this being reused in that. It takes place in a sprawling space opera type of sci fi with fantasy elements, and an epic adventure tone; mighty wars are decided by duels between champions, cities construct massive structures to harness the forces of magic or the psychic energy of living beings as a power source, giant mech suits and power armor exoskeletons are ubiquitous, and so forth.

BAsically, imagine a combination of Warhammer 40k, Eclipse Phase and a sci fi-themed version of Exalted, set against a multiverse cosmology based on Dungeons and Dragon’s Planescape. The technology levels, the general aesthetics and the overall feel flow from that, and then you Paragon the SHIT OUT OF IT. And that’s before the thicc-ness stuff comes in!

Taking place a great deal of time after a multiversal catastrophe that nearly spelled the end of existence itself and caused smaller reflections of such disaster across all the realms of existence, the AU proper focuses on a fleet of characters drawn from all across the fandoms I am personally familiar with or at least find interesting. This is an extremely small fleet, numbering from several hundred to a little under a thousand people depending on where in the timeline it takes place; their number of ships are undefined, but probably not very many, and are a mixture of the Quarian Migrant Fleet from Mass Effect and the Scum sub-culture of Eclipse Phase - which is likely also a thing in-universe. Their ships are mainly refurbished cargo barges, space buses and the occasional colony ship, mostly automated and run by summoned spirit friends to make up for their lack of numbers. This ships are all living machine-beings, vast AIs or networks of thinking machines, and can choose to transform into gigantic hyper curvy robot ladies in times of great need, but rarely do so.

The fleet came together from the survivors of many broken or damaged worlds, banding together for survival and growing closer, eventually stabilizing into a sort of weird family. Fiercely loyal to one another, coming to appreciate adventure and enjoying the relative stability, they have been journeying as cosmic nomads for several years now, having had many children together and growing in power, and over time they have noticed some things… off about the cosmos. There have been hints, in ruins and half-destroyed records dating back thousands of years, and they have come to the conclusion that the cataclysms that wrecked the multiverse was not random events but an active scheme.

And they are coming to the attention of whatever caused that disaster in the first place; they refer to this mysterious force as the conspiracy, but know little of who this conspiracy, their purpose or anything beside the horrors they have committed.

Over time, the fleet has become a strongly paragon-themed organization of heroes, champions of righteousness, seeking to be perfect heroes all the time… all while being extremely eccentric and quirky weirdos, as prone to flying off on rants about peanut butter when they were supposed to give a moving speech on heroism. In any conflict they will usually side towards which resolution does the least harm, and fighting tyrants is something of a hobby of theirs. That, and collecting incredibly pissed off conspiracies presumably unrelated to the Big One they are learning about.

The fleet - or specifically, their number one champion - is in possession of a powerful relic called the Eupeptic Gestat. It’s loosely based on the Keyblade, but is essentially a vore/hyper pregnancy themed artifact with powers based on Fullmetal Alchemist’s take on alchemy, with the ability to absorb almost anything and gain new powers based on what it absorbs, and allows the fleet to craft new powers from those, distilling them mostly into adorable Pokemon-like creatures that members of the crew can fuse with to gain their powers. By mixing and matching their abilities, the members of the crew can gain an enormous number of powers, as well as gain mutations to sculpt their bodies into whatever they please, though often with some unexpected frailties.

Note that this powers always involve some variety of physical mutation; get fire powers, your arms erupt into volcanic flame and your skin is living fire, your eyes burning like stars. These mutations are not subtle, they’re not pretty, and they’re usually pretty weird. Combining powers will get some very odd results, and likely induce additional frailties or limitations in exchange for greater potential.

The crew itself is highly diverse, with humans forming a distinct minority in it. Name a species from a fandom somewhere, they are probably present. Orcs of all kinds, elves and more. Dragons shapeshifting into more mundane forms, robots of every single conceivable function and form happy to be part of a group that welcomes them as family. Transformers - mostly Autobots - are giant guardians to their smaller kin. Gems of many castes, and plenty of them permanent fusions with one another. Asari, krogan and Geth from Mass Effect form a major contingent, as do a wide variety of monster girls and boys.

Whatever they are, though, the women of this crew - and the men, to a lesser degree - will get bigger.

As they grow more powerful and benefit from the powers granted to them, the women of the crew invariably grow more hyper curvaceous. Their breasts swell to enormous sizes and absurd milkiness (and this milk often has its own properties, based on the heroine’s other abilities or personality traits), they tend to become rather more fit, their hips expand to couch-destroying sizes with butts to match. This curve growth never really stops, though the precise extremes are an entirely personal decision; the biggest girls are generally the most powerful as well. They tend to grow much, much larger over time, inevitably becoming giantesses dozens of feet tall when they power up, and this too has no real limit.

Additionally, they gain a number of abilities related to pregnancy and other traits should they allow the Gestat to imbue them with its powers. It’s devouring-based abilities grant almost anyone the ability to consume other things, metaphorically or otherwise. THis can be absorbing energy or specific forms of matter and empowering yourself with them, or very literal; the power to swallow things whole and digest virtually anything. This is universal among most of the crew. But it expands their fertility, allowing them to do things such as give birth by materializing them in a spirit bubble, summoning powerful entities by gestating them within their bodies, absorbing allies and healing those allies within their own fertile wombs and possibly imbuing them with their own powers.

Additionally, they have no limitations on how many children they can have at once, gestating dozens at once without issue, and eventually even spontaneously generating them by just being around other people; no sex required or needed. They also act as living crucibles or cauldrons, distilling powers imbued into them within their bodies and refining them into a more complete form that can be used for other purposes, with the mother’s own quirks in it. And with every child they give birth to or other application of their powers, they become more powerful, so that the crew is largely dominated by absolutely massive, impossibly curvaceous, motherly heroines.

Becoming a MILFy, ravenous giantess is thus part of the package. Men can and do benefit from these abilities as well, often as support to their much more powerful counterparts; dad bods and buff bara types, as well as extreme femboys, are VERY common.

Finally, the crew constantly experiments with self-modification, using blends of magical ability, scientific procedures, cybernetic augmentation and biological trickery to create a variety of what they call ‘mods’, which can alter their bodies in specific ways. Using traits harnessed from the many species of the galaxy, along with specific aspects of the powers they have built, members of the crew can have almost any appearance or alteration that pleases them; exoskeletons, enhanced muscle fibers, horns, claws, gills, fangs, completely new morphologies and robot-ization are all examples of this.

Monster girl/boy/non-binary transformations are included in this, of any sort. By combining traits from many different species, you can get all kinds of monstrous forms even without using additional powers. Usually this is done for an edge in combat, but some just like being monstery.

They can also do mods that give other people hyper fertility, all manner of biological transformations or otherwise enable kink transformations of any kind, often tied to a power of some sort. One way they fund themselves is by selling these mods at worlds they visit.

(This means, yup, there are dispensing machines that sell mega-buff energy drinks, chocolate milk that makes you a curvaceous MILF who LITERALLY lactates liquid chocolate, and sodas that turn you into a liquid monster person.)

It should be noted these mods are permanent, and there is no resetting to a default state; in order to change back, you have to undertake procedures to transform you into something like your original state.

Now that the fun transformation stuff is clarified, what does the fleet actually do? Mostly they bounce around from world to world, racing through the tides of the spirit world and relying on their magically powerful navigators to guide them to new galaxies in this faster than light travel, searching for a new world to call home or a means to create their own homeworld. They get involved in archaeological mysteries, wind up in the middle of fight with warlords and empires, and if they don’t have at least one epic space battle a week, it's been a really slow week.

Among other things, they have a rival in a crew of space pirates, and it's a mostly friendly rivalry, a blackrom on an organizational scale, and they compete for resources, treasure, ancient lore and the secrets to great wealth or fame. This pirate crew likely outnumbers them, though the crew’s abilities are a potent force multiplier.

Less friendly is a resurgent military from the distant past, led by a fearsome general of a long-defunct empire, who has reclaimed a powerful gauntlet and seen the situation the universe is in, and intends to bring it to endless war and conflict to force it to become stronger and break the cycles of stagnancy. To this end, he has gathered together a vast legion of like-minded warriors, bloodthirsty warmongers, soldiers enamored with war as a solution, and others of that nature. The fleet and this legion constantly but heads, and while they do sometimes work together, their goals are completely opposite. Eventually, tensions will come to a head.

The conspiracy, as stated above, is likely their biggest threat but none of them know much about this force besides that it does exist and is responsible, directly or otherwise, for the cataclysms that nearly ended reality as they know it. They have some apparent connection to the fiends of the realms of pure evil, a wide variety of strange and loathsome entities, and appear to be bankrolling a vast majority of destructive agencies across the multiverse. Why they are doing this is unknown, but they are a persistent thorn in the fleet’s side, presently too large to even notice the fleet as yet.

There are also a very wide variety of monsters and beasts the crew faces on an almost daily level. They range from kaiju-sized monsters that savagely attack everything in sight and seem to warp reality as a matter of just being there, to ethereal horrors that devour everything and constantly grow bigger until they can eat stars and swell up into spaceship-sized monsters that sail across space and devour planets, to destructive fiends that colease out of hatred and negative emotion to just make things worse on everyone. Most of these are the ‘take them out, guilt free’ kind of brutes just there for good action scenes, or acting as the minions of some other greater force.

#/#//#///#////#/////#my AUs #AU refs #crossthicc AU #long post

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voltronbookshelf · 6 years ago

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Double, Double, Toil, and Trouble

A couple of disclaimers first.

This fic is not intended to present any Wiccan beliefs. This is technically (though it can be read as a stand-alone) part of my A Fractured Fairy Tale AU which can perhaps be best described as a Buffy/Stargate/Generic Urban Fantasy Mashup and is known to most people (of the five who know about it) as “The Ghost!Shiro AU”

So all witchcraft has no basis in anything other than my undying love of faerie tales and two decades of exposure to the fantasy genre.

This fic was written for the finale round of the Voltron Spooky Games and is inspired by this lovely art.

Thank you and I hope you enjoy!

*** Before they have even stepped all the way through into the back room Allura has dropped any pretense at calm and is moving with purpose, grabbing bottles and tins and crocks off the shelves and placing them on the worktable before whirling off to gather something else. Stunned, Romelle can do nothing but watch and try to stay out of the way.

Even knowing that she isn’t the target of the more experienced witch’s wrath, she still shrinks back when Allura turns on her. “Fetch me the box from behind the yarrow root.”

Romelle scrambles to do as ordered, struggling first to find the appropriately labeled bottle and then she nearly drops the box as she fumbles, only able to catch a glimpse of the intricate carvings in the wooden surface before Allura practically snatches out of her hands and then lights her hearth fire with a single struck match and swings her cauldron over it, the box clutched in her hand the entire time. She breathes deep and murmurs something under her breath, straightens her shoulders, and sets about preparing the tabletop.

“Was that part of the spell?” Romelle asks, her curiosity overpowering her instinct to remain unobtrusive and not attract the attention of the furious aura the more powerful being in the room is radiating.

Allura blinks at her, briefly looking startled, as if Romelle has broken her out of some kind of trance, before she relaxes and even manages a small smile, even if the tense lines around her mouth don’t completely disappear.

“No, it was just a reminder to myself to slow down before I make a mistake. Something Shiro always says.”

“Patience yields focus?” Romelle hazards a guess and Allura smiles again, small and wry.

“Keith?”

She nods, “He said it a lot while we were in the Abyss. And he said he got it from Shiro.”

Allura rolls her eyes and rearranges the moth wings so they are across the circle from the ginger root. “I don’t want to mess this up.” she says quieter, more serious. “I can’t mess this up.”

Romelle dares to reach out and lay her hand on the other girl’s arm. “You won’t mess it up.” she declares fiercely. “Magic is willpower right? You’ll find them.”

“It’s more complicated than that!” Allura protests but she is more relaxed now. “This is an incredibly complicated spell, I don’t know if it will work even if I do everything right.”

“It’ll work.” Romelle insists. “I’ve seen you and the others do the impossible. ‘Complicated’ shouldn’t even be that hard.”

The air is suddenly being squeezed out of her as Allura snatches her up in a hug. “Thank you.” is muttered into her shoulder before she is abruptly released and Allura turns to the worktable with a determined gleam in her eye.

“Let's do this.”

Coran in cat form hops up onto the stool beside the worktable, so both girls remain on their feet, hurrying back and forth, Romelle following Allura’s directions to the letter, terrified of messing something up. The mice scurry over the circle itself, carefully not smudging the carefully drawn sigils as Allura places a sample of each element, (a clump of dirt from her herb garden, a sea-sponge soaked in fresh water, the downy feather from a young eagle, an acorn just sprouting a seedling, a glowing ember from the hearth-fire) in a dish at each point of the circle before carefully lowering a small silver basin into the center. The basin remains empty for now.

With everything assembled, the two witches turn to the cauldron. The flames have died down by now, no longer licking up the sides of the cauldron and threatening to catch Allura’s skirts on fire. With one final breath, Allura takes action, blowing out the lamps and leaving the work room lit only by the low-burning fire.

“I will stir,” she declares, voice soft but sure, nudging Coran to the side to retrieve her long-handled birch-wood paddle. “You will add the ingredients in the order I have lined them up in.” She gestures at the small line of bowls at Romelle’s elbow and Romelle nods mutely. Two of the mice have settled on Allura’s shoulders and Coran is sitting up straight, mustache whiskers twitching, solemn and still.

As one, Allura and Romelle each reach for one of the buckets of spring water at their feet, and they begin.

Somewhere between sprinkling in some kind of moss that she can’t pronounce and reaching for the salamander toes it hits Romelle that this is spellcasting on a level she has never even dreamt of attempting before, even as an assistant, and the sense of overwhelming pressure nearly brings her to the floor. One of the mice chirps worriedly in her ear and she locks her knees and keeps going.

It is less than an hour by the hourglass, but seems like ages before they reach the final steps, the silence only broken by the hissing and bubbling of the now-murky liquid in the cauldron, Coran’s worried cat-fretting, and the occasional squeaks and chitters from the mice. The potion is beginning to steam, the luminescent green whisps so stereotypically witchy that Romelle has to fight down the insane urge to laugh. She can almost imagine Allura in a pointy hat.

“Now!” Allura says, low and urgent, and Romelle tips in the beaker of gunk she’s afraid to find out what it is. The potion flares bright green, blinding her, and she blinks away the stars in her eyes to watch Allura dip a small silver pitcher in, already chanting, voice deep and echoey in that way it only gets when she is working serious magic.

In two steps, Allura hovers over the circle and carefully pours the contents of the pitcher into the matching basin in the center. She places the pitcher down and delicately lifts the lid of the carved wooden box Romelle fetched earlier, drawing aside several layers of what looks like white silk to reveal one tiny, golden scale.

Still chanting, she lifts the scale and drops it into the basin. The potion in the basin flashes a brilliant gold, and Romelle is blinded again, even more disconcertingly so this time as Allura falls silent. The workroom is plunged into darkness once more for a moment and Romelle thinks she might actually be properly blind, before a small golden glow begins in the basin, and then streaks like an arching rainbow from the basin to the map of the city tacked up on the wall.

Allura grins, vicious and victorious as she marks the spot on the map where the single spark landed. She is illuminated by her phone screen as she pulls it out of her pocket and presses to call, lifting the phone to her ear.

“We found them, Veronica. We know where Haggar has them.”

#vld Allura #vld Romelle #Voltron Spooky Games #My Fanfiction #A Fractured Fairy Tale AU #Rain Rambles #Allura #Romelle

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imjustthemechanic · 6 years ago

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Natalie Jones and the Golden Ship

Part 1/? - A Meeting at the Palace Part 2/? - Curry Talk Part 3/? - Princess Sitamun Part 4/? - Not At Rest Part 5/? - Dead Men Tell no Tales Part 6/? - Sitamun Rises Again Part 7/? - The Curse of Madame Desrosiers Part 8/? - Sabotage at Guedelon Part 9/? - A Miracle Part 10/? - Desrosiers’ Elixir Part 11/? - Athens in October Part 12/? - The Man in Black Part 13/? - Mr. Neustadt Part 14/? - The Other Side of the Story Part 15/? - A Favour Part 16/? - A Knock on the Window Part 17/? - Sir Stephen and Buckeye Part 18/? - Books of Alchemy Part 19/? - The Answers Part 20/? - A Gift Left Behind Part 21/? - Santorini Part 22/? - What the Doves Found Part 23/? - A Thief in the Night Part 24/? - Healing Part 25/? - Newton’s Code Part 26/? - Montenegro Part 27/? - The Lost Relic Part 28/? - The Homunculinus Part 29/? - The End is Near Part 30/? - The Face of Evil Part 31/? - The Morning After Part 32/? - Next Stop Part 33/? - A Sighting in Messina Part 34/? - Taormina Part 35/? - Burning Part 36/? - Recovery Part 37/? - Pilgrimage to Vesuvius Part 38/? - The Scent of Hell Part 39/? - She’ll be Coming Down the Mountain Part 40/? - Stowaways Part 41/? - Bon Voyage Part 42/? - Turnabout Part 43/? - The Apple Part 44/? - Vesuvius Wakes Part 45/? - Fire At Sea Part 46/? - The Real Jim Part 47/? - Return to Naples Part 48/? - La Mela

Okay, back to the plot. At last, the Philosopher’s Stone!

The pigeons flew off in a chorus of squeaky fluttering feathers that was almost loud enough, with so many of them, to count as a thunder. They swirled over the city like a slow-motion tornado of birds, and then, slowly at first but soon by the hundreds, they all flew to land on and around a particular building on the outskirts of the city.

“I feel like I should be doing some evil laughter,” said Sam. “Declaring myself the Pigeon Master or something.”

“Or you could be the Pigeon Man from Hey Arnold,” Nat told him.

“Who’s that?” asked Sam.

“It’s not a compliment,” she promised.

The pigeons had taken the direct route but the humans, of course, didn’t have that option. They had to pile into two abandoned vehicles and find their way through the winding streets, now all but empty as the Neapolitans had fled the volcano. They found the flock of pigeons perched all over a little palazzo that had once been the home of a wealthy family, but was now home to the Coral Palace, a museum and workshop of coral jewelry and shell cameos.

The Palazzo would have been quite a pretty building if it hadn’t been entirely covered with pigeons. Instead, it made for a very strange sight indeed. From a distance it looked almost as if the entire building and the empty car park outside were covered in a fluffy gray snow, with the close presence of the volcano suggesting ash, but as they got closer they began to see the birds moving. There must have been thousands of them. Iridescent heads popped up out of the mass, looked around, and then vanished again.

“That is probably about the creepiest thing I ever saw,” Sharon decided.

They pulled into the car park. As they did, the birds moved out of the way ahead of them as if they were the Red Sea parting for Moses. Sam brought the lead vehicle to a halt, then rolled down the window and leaned out.

“We made it!” he announced. “You guys can go!”

The pigeons all took off at once, and for a moment nothing was visible except for thousand upon thousand of smoky gray feathers passing by. Then they were gone, leaving behind a three-storey building with a pink and white columned façade. Above the colonnade were the words Manifattura Corallo. Everything, from the roof to the decorative architecture to the pavement in the car park, was coated with evidence of the pigeons.

“Nice,” said Nat, not bothering to hide a snicker. She was imagining the faces of the Palazzo employees when they returned and found this.

“I’ll tell them to hold it next time,” Sam said.

They got out of the vehicles, and tried not to think about why it was slippery underfoot as they climbed the steps to the porch, where there was a row of windows. Nat rubbed a place clean and peeked in – all the merchandise in the cameo factory showroom appeared to have been taken away, leaving empty glass-topped tables in a grand columned room with gray stone floors and peach-coloured walls. There was nobody there.

This was a public building, Natasha thought. How could anybody work here unseen? Unless there was something else… something hidden.

They made their way around the back, and there they found a door with a Solo Dipendenti sign on it. It was propped open, and beyond it was a hallway that joined the loading dock that took deliveries. In the other direction was an employee washroom and a blank wall.

The latter showed a deep, flaking crack in the whitewash. Nat got her fingers into it and pried it open. Sure enough, there was a secret door there… one that had been forgotten long enough to be plastered over, but which had been recently opened. She turned on a flashlight and found the door opened on a flight of steps. When she turned the light off again, she could just barely see a blue light shining around the corner at the bottom.

They started down.

The wall on their left, as they descended cautiously into the dark, was smooth. The one on the right was rougher, and when Nat shone the light on it, she saw markings where decorative architectural features, half-columns and rosettes, had once been attached. This had once been the front of a building, before the new palazzo was built on top of it facing the other way. In one spot, there were even some letters.

She traced them with her fingers – La Mela, they said. The Apple. That must be the original name of the villa. Nat was betting she knew who had built it.

At the bottom of the steps they turned right, and found themselves in a tiny little room, almost a dungeon. The walls were stone blocks – not modern cinder blocks but actual cut lumps of limestone – and the floor was big stone slabs. In the middle of this was a huge bubbling cauldron, overflowing with what Natasha would have taken for dry ice smoke if it hadn’t been softly purple-blue. Inside the cauldron itself was the source of the purple-blue light, which was not exactly bright, but it was difficult to look at, as if it would give a person a migraine if they let their eyes linger on it too long.

The cauldron itself was made of gold, glinting by the glow of Nat’s flashlight. It stood on three legs, and between each a pipe, also made of gold, emerged from its belly. Nat followed these across the floor into a corner, and then stopped. There was a big crack in the floor there, as if an earthquake had broken it open, easily big enough for a person to climb into. The golden pipes fed into that.

A ladder was also propped within the crack. There didn’t seem to be any question where Newton had gone.

Natasha gripped the flashlight in her teeth and started climbing down. When she put her weight on the rungs of the ladder, she felt them sag under her weight. The ladder, too, was made of gold.

At the bottom of the ladder, twenty or thirty feet down, Nat found herself in a rough tunnel about six feet in diameter, with an arched roof and a flat bottom. A lava tube. Behind the ladder, it came to an end where a big boulder was blocking it. In the other direction, it continued on at a slight upward slope. The golden pipes continued off in that direction. They should have been opaque, but they were glowing softly, in the same uncomfortable shade of purple.

“Do you still have your sunscreen, Sam?” asked Sharon.

“No,” he replied. “I didn’t think I’d need it after sunset in the middle of the night.”

“If we’re all burned tomorrow we’ll blame your lack of foresight,” Nat told him.

“Thanks,” he said.

“I know this isn’t the time,” Jim observed, “but I gotta say, I enjoy the part where you guys are all giving each other shit as you’re saving the world. It makes me feel like I’m in action movie.”

“Keep feeling it,” Nat advised him. “In the movies the good guys always win.”

“You don’t think we’re gonna win?” Jim asked, honestly surprised.

“I’m definitely planning on winning, but it’s not a given,” Nat said.

They started following the pipes uphill. The floor of the tunnel was crushed rock and sharp sand that would have been unpleasant to walk on had Nat still been in high heels, but much worse in just pantyhose. At first, it just looked like stone, but as they continued up the slope, she began to catch glimpses of things glittering in it. Eventually she stopped and reached down to pick up one of the stones. It was no different in shape or texture from the others around it, but it was very, very heavy.

“It’s gold,” Desrosiers said.

Nat tossed the nugget away again. “He said he didn’t want to make gold,” she said.

“The cauldron and the pipes must be gold, because it is chemically inert,” Desrosiers explained. “Because the Philosopher’s Stone is in contact with this equipment, as long as it has no other template…”

“… the reactor will make gold,” Nat finished for her. That must be how alchemy had come o be so closely associated with precious metals.

They kept going. The tunnel snaked back and forth a little, it got narrower and wider, but it was definitely going east and uphill. The further they went the more gold they found, until the stones under their feet were clinking instead of crunching, and people’s shoes began getting heavy. Nat wondered if it were dangerous for them to be exposed to this. Would their very bodies begin to transmute if they stayed in here too long?

They couldn’t turn back though, not now – they were here to save the world, after all. After narrowing until they almost had to crawl, taking great care not to touch the glowing pipes, it widened out again and joined a larger channel. The air was starting to get warm, and Natasha reached to wipe sweat from her brow. It glinted golden as it dripped into the dirt at her feet, and she wondered if that were just a trick of the light. In here, maybe she was literally sweating gold.

Finally, after what felt like hours walking in the increasing heat, the dust and the painful glow of the pipes, the tube opened out into a huge chamber. Steam was rising from the ground all around them, mixing with the purplish fog and rising up to where the rocks arched above them, forming a space the size of a cathedral nave. There might have been a couple of holes in the top to let it all escape, but Natasha couldn’t tell, because there was a huge thing hanging in the middle of the cavern. A network of the golden pipes, arranged in hexagons and pentagons like a geodesic dome, surrounded it and fed the purple smoke into it, and in the middle was…

It was difficult to describe. It looked like a huge round crystal, twenty-five feet in diameter, glittering with millions of tiny facets. Inside that was a thing she could only have compared to photographs she’d seen in National Geographic, of the surface of the sun as seen through a special filter. It was glowing dull purple, and seemed to be made of millions of tiny, squirming grains that appeared and disappeared and occasionally erupted, spewing little geysers of purple steam. Where these touched the walls, the rocks turned from dark basalt to glossy yellow. Gold.

“Well, hello!” said a voice.

They all turned. Walking towards them from underneath the hovering monstrosity was Newton.

He was still wearing a t-shirt and frayed denim shorts, crocs and that beat-up green hat. It didn’t look much like an outfit to make the philosopher’s stone in, and when Natasha compared it in her head to the image of the man in the wig and frock coat in the famous portrait by Kneller, she almost wanted to laugh. She thought better of it when she remembered that she and her companions were all still dressed in their evening clothes, which was if anything even more ridiculous.

“You people are remarkably persistent,” Newton observed.

“We know,” said Natasha.

“We make a habit of it,” Sir Stephen agreed.

“Well, as you can see, you’re too late,” he told them. “I have the Stone now, and I intend to use it. ‘Nelle,” he added with a smile at her, “your advice was invaluable. I need to use it before I can let it blow, obviously.”

Desrosiers nodded, her face calm but her fists clenched. She caught Nat’s eye, then looked at Newton again. “Since we’re all about to die anyway, perhaps we could give the Committee a demonstration of its powers,” she said.

#fanfic #natasha romanov #steve rogers #sam wilson #clint barton #sharon carter #bucky barnes

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doomedandstoned · 3 years ago

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Row of Ashes Air Scorching New LP, ‘Bleaching Heat’

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

A bloodthirsty salvo of sludge, djent, and extreme metal greets us as the fiercely titled 'Bleaching Heat' (2022) begins. This is ROW OF ASHES and they're about to leave you breathless.

Opening track "WorcesterMan" presents a dismal, overcast day that carries an ominous feeling in the air. Soon it's pummeling us with ice chunks hailed down from on high. I thought of Baptists while taking in the wild, windswept drumming. Lyrics are filled with gut-wrenching spite, as the song proclaims: "I confess I confuse who I am with what I’ve done."

A positively mammoth drum attack welcomes us to the title track. The vocals are likewise fierce, with "Bleaching Heat" spitting out a lungful of flames that burn like American Headcharge's first album 'Trepanation' (1999). The guitar really grinds on this one.

You’ll never have a reckoning You’ve fallen too far to save

An off-beat rhythm welcomes us to "Jerk," with bleak low-end that surrounds and covers us like a formidable stormcloud, unleashing torrents upon our heads. Guitar strings glide back and forth like a banana yellow slip 'n' slide. A great pairing with Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza or Car Bomb.

"The Wreck & The Mill" gives us calm reprieve with a scenic instrumental, then about half-way through there's a sudden change of character. The song erupts in a fit of dissonance and an emphatically repeated declaration: "...make traitors of us all." You may feel the band is walking a precarious tightrope with this bubbling cauldron of caustic ire; perhaps at any moment it could all just explode without warning. The rage is almost unbearable, but it is at last spent and dissipates into darkness.

"The Next Away" seizes us like a delirious fever dream, with powerful blasts of bass, sizzling guitar, and damning vocals calling to mind the bombast of Meshuggah, whilst the amps crackle and reverberate like Yob or Samothrace. Then guitar, bass, and drums combine forces to produce massive, crashing chords that will rival anything you're likely to hear in its class. My mind wandered into visions of stomping kaiju making massive dents in the earth with each raging, forceful footstep. These are some of the most memorable, emotion laden moments of the record

After a short interlude that sounds something like an exposed PVC pipe being blown by the wind on a sopping wet day, we get into "Contraband." The shouts and monstrous low end stir up all the wrath of a band like Gojira or Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean. I'll bet that Row of Ashes is frighteningly heavy live.

The band summon their full powers for the first-raising soul-bearer "In Summation." It may also be the most supremely doom number of the lot. The singing gets so vehement it'll send your eyes rolling into the back of your head. Towards the end, there's a blast o' guitar that'll leave all your hair standing on end, too. Mighty stuff.

Look for the wide release of Bleaching Heat by Row of Ashes this Friday, May 6th, via UK label Surviving Sounds, who will be releasing it digitally and on limited edition cassette (pre-order here). Shuffle this into a playlist with Will Haven, Unsane, Neurosis, Trap Them, Ealdor Bealu, and Mutant Scum. This is the Doomed & Stoned world premiere.

Give ear...

Bleaching Heat by Row Of Ashes

SOME BUZZ

Surviving Sounds proudly present the new album from London based noisy sludge metal trio ROW OF ASHES - to be released on cassette and digital on May 6th 2022. Bleaching Heat is Row Of Ashes rawest and most immediate statement to date - the summation of two years of frustration bent into a pummeling barrage of angular riffs, bulldozing drums and pained screams.

Captured by Joe Garcia at Joe's Garage in Bristol (which has also graced Idles, Wilderness Hymnal and Ogives Big Band), Bleaching Heat is all sweat, muscle, fire and fury, though not without nuance. A glistening undercurrent of violin on 'The Wreck & The Mill', eerie field recordings menacingly manipulated on 'Machining Statues' and a Moog synthesizer with all the bass frequencies turned up and distorted on 'Contraband' - these subtleties become and underbelly to lift and flavour the trio's aggressive and intense performances.

With lyrics that rally varying levels of disappointment and frustration in the actions of others - Row Of Ashes' layers of noise pinched distortion, jagged riffs and eruptions of encompassing bass speak their internal woes. From the angular heat of 'Worcester Man' through to the apocalyptic beatdown of 'In Summation', Bleaching Heat is an intense and timely ode to sparring with a world that has become increasingly chaotic.

Row Of Ashes have toured mainland Europe with Hundred Year Old Man and performed alongside the likes of Witchsorrow, Garganjua, Torpor, Slabdragger, Wallowing, Wren and more. Their previous record Unbeliever was released on Truthseeker Music. Since their formation, Row Of Ashes' exhilarating and cutthroat sound has made an unmissable force in the UK's vibrant underground heavy scene.

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

#D&S Debuts #Row of Ashes #London #England #UK #industrial #sludge #doom metal #noise #Surviving Sounds #D&S Reviews #Doomed and Stoned

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prolestari · 7 years ago

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Well I decided to continue this oneshot I wrote about Merlin and Gowther meeting. Here is the next part, so please enjoy!

Gowther smiled to himself as Merlin eagerly readied the fire under the large cauldron set in the middle of his cell. It took only a few attempts before the sparks at her fingertips blazed into a small, controlled flame. The coals set in a metal basin began to glow with the heat, and the girl smirked triumphantly once the little fire was going steadily.

“Now what?” she called over her shoulder, her eyes still trained on the flames, glinting happily.

“We’ll need plenty of water,” he said smoothly. “Be sure to filter it properly.”

Merlin all but rubbed her hands together before hurrying over to his shelves to find the water stones he kept there. Gowther settled back in his chair where he watched her with a great deal of amusement. In the six weeks since he had begun to give the girl lessons, he noted that the ones that involved chemistry always caught her attention the most. It was interesting to him that of all the magic he had taught her—like drawing forth fire, pouring water from stone, calling forth gems—the simple concoctions were her favorite.

Within minutes the water was poured, filtered, and boiling, and with glowing cheeks Merlin turned to him expectantly. “All right then,” he nodded. “Start pouring in the rest exactly according to the instructions.”

The girl busied herself in running back and forth from the table where his recipe book laid open to a marked page. “Read aloud,” he reminded her.

“Four spoonful of ashes from an oak tree,” she read. Merlin walked to the shelf that contained boxes of ashes, reading the labels until she found the right one. Then she snapped her fingers and a spoon flew to her hands—“Showoff,” Gowther chuckled under his breath—and carefully measured the ashes into the pot.

“Let boil ten minutes.” Merlin walked over to the hourglass, setting it to the time, and then returned to the table.

The lesson went on in this way, with the girl reading instructions aloud, Gowther offering adjustments as she went on. “Be sure the cups are level, not heaping,” he cautioned her as she poured in the wheat flour; “Counterclockwise,” he answered in response to her question on stirring the brew.

After a short amount of time, the contents of the cauldron were thick and bubbling. Merlin snuffed out the flames with only a small tendril of smoke remaining, and the demon made a mental note to review that skill so Merlin would leave no trace of the magic fire. He wheeled himself to the pot of ingredients and peered inside, nodding as he watched the contents thicken as it cooled.

“Are you going to tell me what we’re making?”

He looked up into curious golden eyes, and Gowther tilted his head. “What do you suppose it is?”

Merlin pressed her lips together. “It’s definitely not food—the lye would be poisonous to eat.”

“Raw, yes,” he commented. “But not after it has been used in such a manner. But you are correct, it’s not food.”

“Is it an energy source?” she guessed. “Something to burn for heat?”

Gowther shook his head. “It’s actually not flammable at all, anymore.”

Merlin looked at him suspiciously, as if she didn’t believe him. He raised his eyebrows and asked, “Any other guesses?”

“Just tell me,” she huffed impatiently.

Nodding, the demon took out a small knife from his pocket. Carefully he cut into the waxy substance that now filled the pot, carving out a rectangular hunk and depositing it into Merlin's hand. “Its soap,” he announced.

“Soap!” Merlin scowled viciously. “Why in the world are you having me make soap? This isn't magic!”

“A mage must be proficient in spirit, mind, and body,” he scolded. “Now why don't you head into the washroom and clean yourself up a bit?”

Merlin gaped at him, so Gowther simply folded his hands. “When was the last time you had a proper bath? Or a proper meal, other than when you eat my food?”

He had prepared himself for an outburst, even so far as a tantrum; very little was easy with such a precocious girl. But the quiet animosity in her eyes and the way her fingers clenched the soap so tightly surprised him. “Don't tell me what to do,” she muttered.

Gowther sighed. “I'm your tutor, I'm supposed to tell you what to do, if you recall. And that was by your choice, not mine.”

“Fine!” Merlin cried, her voice taking on a strained pitch. “If you don't want me here then—”

“Now I didn't say that, ” Gowther retorted, starting to feel agitated himself. “You're my pupil and that makes you my responsibility. It's been weeks and I don't know how you're living, where you are sleeping, if you are eating properly—”

“It's not any of your business—!”

“You're only a child and children cannot care for themselves—”

“I'm not just a child!”

Gowther rolled closer, but Merlin stepped out of his reach. “There are people who want to help you, my friends—”

“Oh! Who is that? The demon and the goddess you mentioned?” Now her voice was painfully shrill, and Gowther shrunk back a bit as she bared her teeth like a wild thing. “I've had my fill of demons and goddesses and all those.”

“Fine,” he argued, “but at least while you're here you can get clean and have some proper clothes—”

“I told you not to tell me what to do! You're not my fa—”

Merlin gasped, her eyes wide and bright with emotion. Gowther looked at her with raised brows, noting the way she trembled and the misty drops that rose to the corners of her eyes. Slowly he closed and opened his eyes with a sigh. He had gone about this all wrong, and now a deep pit of regret settled in his stomach.

“Merlin,” he began slowly, but the girl just shook her head and began to back away.

“I'm leaving,” she said.

“Stop!” Gowther pressed forward and tried to grab her arm, but Merlin shook him off and stumbled backwards. She knocked into a table of samples, the glass vials clinking loudly as they rattled and fell to the floor. “If you want to be treated as an adult you must be reasonable!”

“Leave. Me. Alone!”

Merlin raised her hands to do the familiar swipe that would make her disappear, but Gowther was not ready for her to go yet. “Perfect Cube,” he called, his power racing from his fingertips. A purple cube at once surrounded Merlin, making the girl shout. He watched steadily as she tried again and again to teleport out, failing and growing frustrated each time.

“Let me out!” she shouted, banging on the wall of the cube.

Gowther wheeled directly in front and crossed his arms. “Not until you get a hold of yourself,” he said simply.

“You can't do this! You can't keep me in here!”

She looked panicked, and Gowther frowned. “Merlin, calm down. You're not in any danger. I just want you to listen.”

“Please! Please let me out!”

Gowther paused for a moment to wonder what to do. Was this real, or just Merlin being dramatic? Despite her appetite for knowledge the girl was an exceedingly good actress when it came to getting her way. He reached a hand up and held out a palm. “Merlin, calm down. I just want you to meet my friends, and if you don't—”

“No! I told you no!” Then Merlin stepped back, looking around the cube. “There must be something, some way to get out…”

Gowther pursed his lips. “There's no way to escape my Perfect Cube,” he snapped in annoyance. “So you may as well calm down and listen to reason.”

Then Merlin's face changed: her expression turned cold, her eyes narrow slits of determination. There was an air of triumph around the girl, something he had seen before as she mastered one skill or another. But there was also something frightening about the girl, and Gowther unconsciously gripped the arms of his chair.

She placed her hand in front of her face, two fingers up. The air shifted, as if the oxygen was rushing towards her, and then Merlin said, “Absolute Cancel.”

“What—?”

Before he could ask, the cube splintered. He gasped—how was this even possible?—and a moment later his magic was gone, as if it had never existed. Gowther stared, unbelieving, only to catch sight of one last victorious smile before she, too, was gone.

Two weeks went by without a sign from Merlin. Once he had taken her on as apprentice, Merlin was always good to show up at some point in the day. Only occasionally did she miss, often showing up tired and even dirtier than normal, and ravenously hungry. But two weeks? That was unheard of, and left Gowther more than unsettled.

Meliodas had assured him they would do what they could, but the hours ticked by endlessly without word. He even tried to search himself, dusting off an old looking orb to try to pinpoint the girl’s location. But this was different than when she had masked her presence before; now she had simply disappeared from the face of the earth. He felt incredibly guilty for the foolish way he had handled her, the insensitive way he had tricked her. But all Gowther had wanted was to give her some help! She was still a child, no matter how clever or powerful she was, and it gnawed at him that Merlin was out in the world all alone.

Between worrying about her and looking for her, Gowther also pondered her escape. There was no way the Perfect Cube could have been broken.

He spent hours looking through his books and old notes about power manifestation. Typically they began to show in childhood, just as adolescence began—except for those, like Merlin, who were exceptional and would show their powers early. The nature of power, what was often referred to as a person’s ability, would manifest based on a combination of innate nature and environment.

A person whose parent had an ability to manipulate snow, for instance, would most likely have something weather-related as well. Magical ability was not completely genetic, but there was enough evidence Gowther had collected over the years to point to this being a factor. In the same vein, a magical ability would also respond to stimulus. A person who lived in the desert might be able to control sand storms; someone who lived in an area with wildlife might speak to animals. It hung heavily on him that much of the research had been done by those hailing from Belialuin.

There was also compelling evidence that power could manifest out of pure need. Gowther read and reread the accounts: one of a child hiding from an abusive sibling who manifested the power to become invisible, another of a mage who was a thief and could unlock anything, a young woman who was trapped in a cave and developed a way to create light.

Merlin needed to escape the cube. For whatever reason, she had panicked, and Gowther theorized that this ability had come forth as a result of that. If it was the truth, however, how had she managed to break a spell as strong as his own on the first try? Now she was out in Britannia, somewhere, on her own…

The possibilities of what could happen to her—and the havoc she could wreak on the world with such an ability—kept him from eating or sleeping.

When Meliodas returned, he brought the goddess with him. “Lady Elizabeth,” he greeted her, placing a hand over his heart and bending forward a bit. “I’m so sorry for what’s happened, I know you were anxious over the girl and—”

To his surprise, the goddess pulled him to a tight and unexpected hug. “Thank you so much,” she whispered fiercely in his ear. “You did all you could, you kept her safe. Thank you.”

His cheeks were red and her eyes were misty when she finally let him go. Gowther looked in alarm at his friend, but Meliodas only shrugged with a twisting smile on his lips. “Yeah, she does that.”

“What do we do?” she said sadly. The two sat in the chairs Gowther offered, and he wheeled to the little kitchen area to make some refreshments.

“We keep looking,” Meliodas firmly answered. “She is one little girl. We’ll find her.”

“Merlin is more than just a little girl,” Gowther mused. He placed a tray of cool drinks on his lap and wheeled back to the sitting area to lay out the table. “She is a remarkable mage, already at her age. She has learned to manipulate magic in a way that I have never seen. She may even be better than I was at her age.”

As he handed a glass to Meliodas, Gowther suddenly felt something on the back of his neck. It gave him a split second pause, but it was enough to connect with Meliodas’ green eyes. Both immediately knew they were not alone, and with an indiscernible nod the demon cleared his throat.

“Tell me, Lady Elizabeth, what will you do if you find her?” Gowther prompted.

The goddess sighed sadly, her hands twisting in her lap. “Apologize, first. What my queen ordered, what they did—” Her voice cut off sharply as she choked back a sob. “It was awful. We went and we saw the torment. It was more than unjust; it was immoral. It was reprehensible.”

She raised shining eyes to his, and Gowther could almost feel how sorrowful the goddess was at this moment. The magician and scientist in him wanted to analyze that feeling—was this the goddess’ true power, this profound empathy? But he found himself getting lost in her words and the earnest truth on her face.

“I want to beg her forgiveness, and then try to give her some peace. I will protect her with my life. I will see her people receive justice. I will make sure that no one ever gives her such a terrible choice, and I would tell her…”

Elizabeth looked to the side, as if Merlin stood right there. “I would tell her it wasn’t her fault.”

A heavy but peaceful silence fell then. Gowther swallowed thickly, the goddess’ words rousing his own resolve to see Merlin safe and protected. He watched as Meliodas took her hand, observed the comforting smile that passed between them, and could not help but chuckle to himself. This was the woman who captured the soul of the demon prince. Her words had their own power, to turn the hearts of others. She was truly remarkable.

Meliodas stood and offered Elizabeth his hand. “We’ll take our leave, but please let us know if you see her,” he said to Gowther.

The demon nodded and looked up at the goddess. “I’m sure we’ll see her again.”

Elizabeth smiled in return, and moments later they were gone. Gowther busied himself putting the tray away, keeping his senses sharp for any sign of the missing girl. So it was with only a bit of surprise that when he turned back to the room, there she was, standing in the middle of the living area with her head bowed and arms crossed.

He was struck with a bit of uncomfortable nervousness, remembering what had happened between them the last time they met. “I’m glad to see you,” he finally said.

Merlin did not respond, her eyes darting to the side. “We’ve all been worried about you,” he continued. “I’m very sorry for—”

“Who was that?” interrupted Merlin.

Gowther cleared his throat a bit, deciding to forgive her bit of rudeness. “Those were my friends that I told you about. Elizabeth is a goddess. She wants to meet you.”

The girl remained stubbornly silent. He looked her over, seeing no injuries; just a bit more dirt than usual, and Gowther thought she looked a bit thinner than usual as well. “Would you like to meet her?”

A tense moment passed between them, and then Merlin nodded. The air in his lungs came out in a rush as he deflated in relief. “Very good. I will send a message, but first I’ll get you something to eat. Would that be all right?”

“Can I take a bath first?” she asked, her eyes darting to meet his finally.

Gowther nodded and tilted his head, indicating the washroom. Merlin walked slowly to the door, but after a few steps hesitated; she seemed to want to say something, even going so far as to look over her shoulder at him. But then the girl must have thought better of it and hurried off. The demon smiled as the door clicked shut before wheeling to his table to begin writing a letter.

#nnt #fan fiction #merlin #gowther #elizabeth #meliodas

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purplezebraproductions · 3 years ago

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Ash Meets Ko

[Tales Told is an original fictional story based on old fairy tales from across the world.]

I debated with myself on whether or not I was going to follow him. I had no real reason to feel responsible for some strange man in women’s clothing trouncing around at midnight in some unfamiliar city. I owed him nothing, and likewise he would’ve probably forgotten about me in a week’s time. Yet, as I listen to the shuffling of his feet as he tries to leave the Inn undetected, another cauldron of fire begins building in my stomach. That same cauldron that started bubbling on those cobblestone streets. The same cauldron that began to tear away at me the moment I heard that door shut. Why do I feel responsible for whatever happens to that Reaper? If he wants to go back out alone in the dead of night, right after getting jumped, why should I stop him? I shouldn’t. It’s his funeral after all.

And yet, still, I grind my teeth together with a bunch of “what-ifs” circling around in my head. Reapers can have anything they desire. They can have ten-foot-tall bodyguards, golden gates that burn anyone who tries to go near them, tasers powerful enough to take down full-grown ogres, and yet this one flimsy wisp of a Reaper did nothing. A Reapers weak point are their bones, so if you grab onto them, you can inflict serious lasting damage with the flick of a wrist. Is that why he could do nothing to those idiots in that alleyway? Because they had a hold of his arm? Still, it was unlikely that a Reaper would be in such a position in the first place. They’re not meant to walk the same cobblestone roads that the rest of us do.

Yet, here he was, alone, at night. And his voice. Since when did Reaper’s sound like they came from some out of the way farm? All the ones I’ve met take pride in speaking in the most pompous way possible. Using vocabulary that not even they fully understood. Yet this one spoke with a twang to his voice.

But what does any of it matter? It doesn’t. He’s gone now and I can move on with my life.

One less Reaper to deal with in the end.

…

_____________________________________________________________

I truly hate myself sometimes.

I think as I stalk the clearing city looking for some idiot Reaper in women’s clothes. Every step I take I know is another step closer to getting caught by even one eavesdropping officer who can’t help looking out his window for a quick glance at the moon. Out of sight, yet always on my mind. I can never afford to not think of the nearest escape route if someone were to find me. Yet, here I am, stalking my prey the same way they would if they ever found out about my whereabouts.

Didn’t his mother ever tell him to not stay out past midnight?

The marches had stopped not too long ago, so the night was as quiet as could be. Even my own footfalls were dampened by a looming silence that hung over head. I was hoping that I would’ve been able to hear the Reaper scurrying along, but it was as if someone was holding their hands over my ears. Every sound was muffled.

Just as I had started to panic, a flash of blonde caught my eye. The Reaper was heading into the woods of all places! Facing thugs in back alleyways was one thing, but werewolves, ogres, and banshees tended to stalk these woods at night. What could he possibly hope to gain now? A more gruesome death at the hands of the monster race?

With a strangled curse I followed him into the inky blackness; my footfalls now becoming silent as they were dampened by the wet grass beneath my feet. Keeping my eyes on him I noticed he too was being exceptionally cautious. Every now and again he would whisper something, but I couldn’t really catch it. Yet, as he trekked deeper into the overgrown woods, he became a bit more confident and spoke a tad louder, much to my surprise.

“…Ko…”

Ko? Not a word I was familiar with. It sounded more like a name. Was someone waiting for him? Was he waiting for someone else before he got jumped? If he had a friend traveling with him, why had they separated? Surely if they were together, it would’ve been harder to attack them.

“…Ko…?”

He nearly turned around to catch me following him, but luckily the night in the woods had become so dark and dreary that he could barely see me. Or at least, I hoped, considering I now could just barely see him. Once again, he was now a silhouette in the distance, just like when I first saw him.

When I thought he, was a “she.”

“…Ko…?”

His call was a little more forced this time, almost as if he was starting to panic. Would his friend have left him if he showed up late? Is that why he was hell-bent on leaving in the middle of the night?

“…Ko…?”

Just then a much larger shadow began to steadily work its way closer to the Reaper. Some kind of Giant for sure. Perhaps a Wood Giant, or a Cave Giant had found the small Reaper in the middle of a dark forest. My own panic began to set in. Surely if this Reaper couldn’t best a few thugs, he had no chance against a Giant. I wanted to move and pull the Reaper away, but from this angle any movement I made would no doubt alert both parties to my presence; completely nullifying any surprise attack I could muster. Half the reason those thugs were so easy to take down was because they weren’t expecting it, but a full grown Giant? That’d be a much harder task.

What should I do? Should I do anything at all? I followed him all the way here so it would be a waste to not help. But still, does he deserve my help? A naïve precious Reaper like himself prancing around a dark forest deserves whatever is coming to him. Is this just a trap? Did he run off at midnight knowing I’d follow him and get killed by some Giant he called forth? He tried to play the innocent game with me. He acted as if he wasn’t above it all, when his actions have only shown me he believes himself to be untouchable.

Let him go Ash, he’s not worth it.

The now huge shadow lunges forward and grips the Reaper’s shoulder, turning him around. And, despite myself, my heart stops for a moment. But just a moment.

“Ko! Thank goodness yer here!”

He exclaims gleefully. Suddenly his whole-body language changes. His shoulders perk up, and he stands a hair taller. His whole body looks like its pulling itself upwards to greet the larger creature.

“What happened?”

The voice that comes from the larger figure is a deep low growl. Though I can tell a hint of shock and panic accompany the tone.

“Who did this to you?”

I can feel it in my stomach. That knot that forms every time I hear another creature bare their fangs in an act of aggression. Whoever this creature is, he’s not happy.

“It was some ah the humans I tried to talk to. They…didn’ really wanna listen.”

The Reaper’s figure sagged, and his voice sounded ashamed. Did he feel bad for getting attacked?

“Louvre, how many times have I told— “

“Can we skip the lecture for tonight? My legs hurt a lot.”

The Reaper said, his voice now growing a bit louder. I could hear the larger beast sigh, but when I looked back at them, I saw him wrap what seemed to be a reassuring arm around the smallers’ shoulders.

“Of course, Luv. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

With that the larger beast wrapped the Reaper in some kind of cloak and led him out of sight.

What in the world had I just witnessed? In all my years alive I’d only known Giants to be brutish idiots. But this one, spoke with clarity. And the way he held onto the Reaper. There was no malice or aggression in the way he moved. But that’s impossible. It has to be! Giants are proud territorial creatures. If these woods were his territory that Reaper should’ve been ripped to shreds without a moment’s hesitation.

What is the point of vicious creatures acting like they’re innocent?

Just then I hear a twig snap somewhere close, but far away. It becomes evident that I’m still in the middle of a dark forest with no protection. I guess there’s nothing more for me here. Whoever that Reaper and Giant were, they now have each other. I don’t need to worry about him anymore.

Good riddance.

There are too many true innocents in the world to worry about someone masquerading as one. As I turn to leave, I feel the knot in my stomach loosen up and the cauldron finally seize its boiling.

This is how it should be. A precious pompous Reaper has a dimwitted all brawns bodyguard, and the Salamander is alone once again. I’ve got my own problems to worry about, I don’t need the added mystery of two creatures who stalk the night.

As I make my way back into town, I look upwards, watching as the moon follows me with its single unblinking eye. I’ve done a lot more than I should have. Now I need some rest.

#Tales Told: Original Story #writers on tumblr #writblr #writing #writer #original story #short chapters #story

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clan-of-reaching-stars · 7 years ago

Text

Boil, Toil, and Trouble

@jadedragons

“What are you making Daddy?” Nita asked, perched on the edge of the cauldron. Tobai smiled at his adopted daughter, “I was thinking about making a surprise for your father.” He scooped her up, away from the concoction that gave off a faint light. “If I can get the ingredient I need.” He hummed softly, tail swishing behind him, as he set Nita down on his desk. “Would you like to be my little assistant?”

“Yes please!” Nita’s wings spread, she was still such a small hatchling, a bright spot of warmth, like a little flame. He knew she’d get big eventually, but for now he’d enjoy his daughter’s small size, “alight, see that book over there? The open one?”

“Yes!” She scampered over too it, perching on the top of it, “are we making him a new lab coat?”

“Yes, after he burned that hole in his last one,” Tobai wasn’t sure how his husband had done that, he worked with electricity not fire, but perhaps he was better off not knowing, “you wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”

Nita giggled, her dark blues gleaming, Tobai narrowed his eyes.

“Did he tell you not to tell me?”

“Poppa said it was our little secret.”

Tobai shook his head, “alright. Well this one is ours.” He raised one his paw to his mouth to put a finger over his lips, the little nocturne mimicked him.

“Alright, so can you read me the recipe for a red lab coat?”

Nita nodded, and studied the page a moment, “two scoops of grey slime.”

Tobai went to the rows of bottles holding his alchemical supplies, and retrieved a bowl, before finding the bottle that held the slime, “two scoops grey slime.”

“Three cups of red goo.”

Tobai nodded, moving along the row, “makes sense. Three cups?”

“Yes, daddy!”

“One, two,” Tobai paused to shake the cup, “goodness it’s stubborn.” He heard Nita giggle and looked to her, “not nearly as pretty a red as you.”

“Daddy!” she ducked her head, and Tobai laughed. He tapped the cup against the bowl, Nita parroted the metal clang it made. Tobai tried not to cringe at the sound, please let that have been a one time thing, or Victor was going to have words with him about that.

“And three,” the third cup was equally slow to pour, but Tobai managed to get it out into the bowl.

“Alright, what next!”

“Five cups green ooze!”

“Of course it requires that,” Tobai muttered under his breath, “Nita, does it say to mix these separately from the purple sludge?”

“Yes!”

“Good.” He thought he’d remembered that, but he wanted to make sure. With any luck, said purple sludge was boiling away in his cauldron. “You’re such a big helper.”

“Thank you!” Nita chirped brightly as he carried the now almost full bowl over to the desk. Gently he moved the book, and his daughter, so there was space. Nita jumped and fluttered to perch on his back and peer over his shoulder.

Tobai could see her out of the corner of his eye, red in both warmth and color, and gently patted her.

Nita sat on his shoulder patiently as he stirred this part of the mixture, after a bit he offered the spoon to her, “would you like to stir?” There was no risk at this stage, with the ingredients at room temperature, the worst that could happen is he’d need to give his daughter a bath.

Nita jumped onto the table, looking at him eagerly, “can I?”

Tobai offered the spoon to her, Nita took it with wide eyes.

“Just mimic what I was doing,” he told her, Nita smiled up at him.

“I can do that!” His daughter began to slowly stir, Tobai’s heart warmed at how perfectly she took to alchemy. Maybe someday she’s be his apprentice.

“Okay, you take care of that, Daddy needs to check on the cauldron.”

Nita nodded, and with one last check to make sure she was handling things properly, he check his cauldron. To his relief the liquid had boiled away into a smooth sludge, one that was a beautiful purple color. With the final ingredient ready, the two of them could continue the recipe.

He scurried back to his desk, “Nita that’s perfect. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

His daughter’s face twitched awkwardly, and Tobai’s heart ached as he realized she was trying to mimic how his crests splayed with delight. “Alright, so my little assistant, what do we do next?”

Nita ran over to the recipe, “we slowly pour the mixture into the cauldron and then wait two hours and ten minutes, before pouring it into two glass beakers to let cool.”

“Thank you, Nita,” Tobai carried the bowl over to the cauldron, the good thing about his heat vision was he could see if anything was overheating. However, the mixture and the cauldron were both the perfect temperature, making it easy to safely pour his and Nita’s hard work in. It was a strange almost blood red color, he hoped it would settle to a red closer to the gems that decorated his mate’s feathers.

Once the mixture had poured in, and he’d stirred it all together, he sat back on his haunches, checking his pocket watch for the time. “And now we wait.”

Nita, also sitting on her haunches, looked at him curiously, “what do you do while you wait?”

“Normally I stay here and clean up,” he nodded to the dirty bowl and slightly splatters on the desk, “I don’t suppose you want to help with that too.”

Nita made a face, “why is alchemy so messy?”

“I think that’s just your father’s alchemy,” a familiar voice spoke, one that filled Tobai with warmth even as he turned to glare at the Skydancer.

Victor stood in the doorway, taking in his mate, the bubbling cauldron, and their daughter, “I suspected I’d find her here.”

“Come to save her from cleaning up?” Tobai asked, stepping into Victor’s space, his mate pressed his forehead to Tobai’s, the gem there was cool against Tobai’s scales, he always hoped Victor could feel just how happy Tobai was to see him. Victor’s eyes widened and he jumped out of the way of Tobai’s tail, just because he was happy to see him didn’t mean he appreciated comments about him being a messy alchemist.

“Poppa!” Nita flew to him, happy perching on his shoulders, “I was helping Daddy make a recipe. But it’s a surprise.”

“Is that so?” Victor glanced at Tobai who shrugged.

“You’ll have to wait and see what it is Victor.” He winked two of his eyes at Nita, “but she’s quite the little helper.”

“Soon she won’t be so little,” Victor playfully sank, “getting so big…”

“Poppa!” Nita flicked her tail back and forth, “I’m not that big yet!” She settled into his feathers, looking almost like one of the clusters of gems that speckled her father.

“Not yet,” Victor stood back up, Tobai turned to him, “do you mind if I spend some time with our daughter?”

“Of course, I’ll clean up here,” Tobai shooed them off with one paw, “go have fun and get out of here before you ruin the surprise.”

“Can we make something else tomorrow?” Nita asked, her blue eyes bright, “this was a lot of fun.”

“Only if you promise to help clean that one up,” Tobai replied, Nita pouted a moment, before she sighed.

“If I have to.”

“You do, and if you stay much longer, I’ll put you to work now!”

“Poppa no, don’t let him!” Nita laughed, hiding in Victor’s crest again, Victor smiled at Tobai as he moved away, careful of Tobai’s equipment.

“No, I shall not let you, you foul alchemist.”

“Hey!” Tobai flicked his tongue out, “I’m making you a gift. Just for that,” he raised his front paws, wiggling his fingers at them, “run, run, before I make you both clean!”

He carefully chased them out of his lab, Victor and Nita’s laughter was infectious and bubbled out of him as he watched them run down the hallway, he leaned against the doorway and watched them until they were out of sight. Then he sighed, and headed back in, grabbing a rag and a bucket to start cleaning.

#Clan Lore #Tobai #Victor #Nita #Flight Rising

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rosemaidenvixen · 5 years ago

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You are my Sunshine

Chapter 9: Ten

Ao3

Barbara had to tiptoe to get the last sticky note on top of the ceiling fan. It was pretty far out of the way, but Jim had specifically told her he wanted it to be extra hard this year.

Right on time the doorbell rang, Barbara darted over to get the door. When she opened it Nancy Domzalski’s smiling face greeted her.

The elderly woman proffered up a large baking dish covered in foil “I made a casserole, I figured the boys could use something to balance out all that sugar,”

“Thanks, come on in, the bus will drop them off any minute,”

Nancy stepped inside and handed over the pan “Just turn on the oven and put the casserole in. No need to bother with preheating, it’s already fully cooked so it just needs warmed up,”

“Got it,”

Nancy got comfortable on the couch while Barbara went into the kitchen to pop the casserole in the oven. Right as she stood up from sliding the pan in, she saw the bus pull into the cul de sac through the window. Almost immediately after it came to a stop, a werewolf and a zombie jumped off and ran up to the door.

“Trick or treat!” the zombie shouted while letting himself in.

“That’s not til later Toby,” the werewolf corrected.

Nana pulled herself off the couch and greeted the two with a hug “Did you boys have fun at school today?”

“Yep,” Jim answered for both of them “Each class made a jack-o-lantern and did math with the seeds, then we had our Halloween party!”

“Check out our loot!” Toby said proudly while holding up a large plastic bag, practically bursting with candy.

“That’s quite a bit of candy, especially considering you went to the trunk or treat last Saturday,” Nana was clearly of the opinion that the amount of sweets had crossed the threshold into too much “Maybe you should donate some this year,”

The boys exchanged panic-stricken looks while protectively clutching their bags.

Seeing their horrified reactions to the thought of a few less Nougat Nummies drew a chuckle out of Barbara.

“It’s your candy boys, you can do what you want with it,” she joined them in the living room and held out a sticky note “Now why don’t you get started on the scavenger hunt,”

Jim gleefully snatched up the offered note “ Your next clue is hidden somewhere bread goes in, but doesn’t come out ,”

Toby’s face instantly lit up “I know, the toaster!”

And with that, they were off, racing eagerly from clue to clue while dragging Barbara and Nancy in toe. Twice Barbara had to make them stop so that poor Nancy could catch her breath from all the scurrying back and forth.

After what seemed like hours of going from note to note, but was probably closer to forty minutes, the boys found the final clue stuck on top of the ceiling fan.

Toby read it this time “ I’m cold and hot and warm, and I spin around and around ,”

They struggled with this one for longer than the others. After a few minutes of puzzling over it Jim gave her a beseeching look “Can we get a hint Mom?”

“Let’s see,” Barbara tapped her chin and made a show of thinking it over

“ Please Dr. Lake,”

“Ok,” she relented “The part that’s hot and cold and warm is water,”

It only took them a few seconds to put one and two together.

“The washing machine!” Toby cried out.

They made a mad dash to the basement door and sprinted down, taking the stairs two steps at a time.

“Slow down boys,” Barbara said while following them into the basement, albeit at a far more relaxed pace, with Nancy just a few steps behind her “It’s not going anywhere,”

The boys had already pried open the washing machine lid and pulled out their prize; a plastic cauldron containing DVDs of scary but age appropriate movies and full size candy bars.

“Awesomesauce!”

“This is the greatest!” Jim gushed “Thanks Mom,”

“Thank you Dr. Lake,” Toby parroted.

“You’re welcome,” Barbara gestured to the elderly woman behind her “Don’t forget to thank Nana, she got you the DVD’s,”

Toby and Jim dutifully recited their thanks to Nana before running upstairs, did they really have to do everything at a breakneck pace, to make simultaneous use of the candy bars and movies.

Barbara made to follow them, only to be stopped by a gentle hand on her shoulder. She turned to face Nancy, who looked troubled, but determined.

“Barbara, can we talk?”

A nest of butterflies burst to life in her stomach.

The melancholy look on Nancy’s face, waiting until the boys were gone, isolating the two of them in the basement. She had a feeling this was not going to be a light, casual conversation.

“Oh….ok,” she leaned back against the banister while Nancy took a seat on a box of old textbooks “What’s going on?”

Nancy let out a deep breath “I want you and Jim to go trick or treating with us this year,”

Barbara stood rooted to her spot, paralyzed by dread and desperate not to show it.

This was exactly the conversation she did not want to be having.

Nancy continued “I know how much you must want to keep Jim close to you, to keep him safe, especially after losing his father,”

Barbara opened her mouth to refute that statement only for the elderly woman to hold up a hand, effectively silencing her before she could get a word out “I know, you didn’t lose James the way I lost Ralph, but loss is loss,”

“Nancy….”

“Doing this by yourself is hard, and believe me, I understand the urge to hold him tight and keep him from ever being hurt,” she looked desperately into Barbara’s eyes “But being cloistered and protected from everything….that’s no way to live,”

Nancy’s next words cut her deeper than any knife ever could.

“So please, come with us tonight,”

Barbara couldn’t speak; throat closed off with emotion, she kept staring down at the basement floor as if it held all the answers to her problems. It took every last drop of her concentration to keep her facial expression and body language neutral. She wasn’t completely successful, the cool, wet sensation on her palm told her that fist had tightened to the point her fingernails had broken the skin.

If only she knew.

Sometimes Barbara almost managed to convince herself that Jim’s blue form existed in its own bubble, confined to regular hours with no impact on the rest of their lives. It was only when incidents like this happened that the ugly truth was forced back into her face.

Jim’s nightly metamorphosis sent out ripples that affected every aspect of their lives. Everything they did revolved around keeping his transformation a secret. These unusual routines did not go unnoticed. Others saw how they lived, and recognized it for what it was, abnormal.

Nancy wasn’t the first person to approach her about her supposed overprotectiveness of Jim. Hell, she wasn’t even the first person to imply that she did it due to baggage from her dearly departed ex-husband.

As much as it stung her pride, as much as Barbara yearned to scream that she hadn’t given that bastard a thought in years….it was too damn convenient.

If people assumed they knew the truth, that Barbara kept her son close due to abandonment issues from being left by James, they wouldn’t dig any deeper.

It made her burn with shame every time someone suggested it, but it was safer than the alternative. If she corrected them they might start looking into why exactly Barbara Lake never let her son out at night. And that could lead to someone finding out she left her ten year old home alone for hours on a regular basis. That would bring in social services and CPS investigations and police. And somewhere down that line, Jim’s blue form would be discovered.

And that would open up an even uglier can of worms.

Barbara raised her head, forcing herself to look Nancy in the eye.

It wasn’t that she mistrusted the elderly woman, far from it. Ever since Nancy had moved in across the cul de sac, she had been a constant source of comfort and companionship to Barbara. They shared a connection as two women who unexpectedly found themselves raising children without any other family to help. Barbara considered Nancy one of her closest and dearest friends.

But there were certain aspects of people that never came to light until they were put through trial by fire.

Barbara wanted so badly to believe that Nancy would continue to be the kind, generous woman that she was upon learning about Jim’s metamorphosis, but she couldn’t gamble his safety on the alternative.

She gave Nancy a small smile, hoping it didn’t look as forced as it felt

“Thank you for the offer, but my answer is no, Jim and I will be spending Halloween at home the way we always do,”

There was no explosion following her refusal, no debating or bargaining.

Nancy didn’t look sad or angry or even surprised; just disappointed, so very disappointed.

“Alright,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper “But maybe next year?,”

“Maybe next year,” Barbara replied, knowing full well her answer would be the same next October.

Deep down, she thought Nancy knew that to.

They trudged up the basement stairs in silence, emerging to the joyful noise of the boys wolfing down their candy bars over the sound of the DVD they had started.

In an effort to maintain a casual mood, Barbara went into the kitchen with Nancy to pull out the casserole. They managed to get the boys to each have a serving of the dish before they went straight back to gorging themselves on candy.

Meal complete, Nancy poured them two cups of tea and the two women started making idle conversation. It almost felt like one of the many casual evenings the Lakes and Domzalski’s spent together, almost.

A barrier had gone up between Barbara and Nancy, like a sheet of glass separating the two women. And as much as she wanted to remove it, Barbara knew that to take down the glass would be to risk her son’s life.

She kept one eye on the clock at all times, and soon enough, it was fifteen minutes to sundown and the credits were rolling on the boys’ movie. Time to send the Domzalski’s on their way.

Barbara stood up and went into the living room, picking up the remote to halt the scrolling credits “Alright guys, it’s been fun, but now it’s time to wrap things up for the night,”

Protesting only slightly, Jim and Toby gathered up the spoils from their school party and scavenger hunt and soon Barbara was escorting the Nancy and Toby to the front door.

“Thanks for coming over tonight, be sure to have fun trick-or-treating,”

“Happy Halloween Dr. Lake,” Toby gave a quick wave goodbye before dashing out onto the sidewalk, already eager to get a head start on his trick or treating.

Nana still lingered by the door, she placed her hand on the frame before Barbara could shut it “Come with us,” she begged “Both of you. Please.”

The only reason Barbara was able to keep her emotions in check in that moment was years of practice.

“Have a good night Nancy,” she shut the door, slowly but firmly.

She waited a few seconds, to make sure that they had walked away and weren’t still standing right outside, before sliding the deadbolt into place.

Barbara let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Another holiday over and done with no incident.

She didn’t know whether to be relieved that the song and dance was over, or dejected that that’s what holidays had become to them.

The sound of the Gun Robot theme song saved her from deciding. Jim had put on cartoons and was still tucking into his candy, no doubt to take his mind off the fact that he was going to spend the rest of Halloween alone. Figuring she was in need of a distraction herself, Barbara went into the kitchen to clean up the casserole dishes.

A few minutes later she heard Jim call out from the living room.

“Mom….I need help,”

Jim was fairly independent for his age, asking for help like this meant that he was really in a fix. Dropping what she was doing, Barbara went into the next room to see what the problem was.

Jim was still sitting on the couch in his werewolf costume, only now it didn’t appear to fit the way it should.

“Did you get stuck in your costume after you changed?”

“Uh huh,”

So that was the issue, Jim had transformed while he was still wearing his costume and now it he couldn’t get out of it on his own.

“Hold still honey, I’ll give you a hand,”

The shirt and gloves came off easy enough, but the straps of the mask had gotten tangled up in his horns. For a while she thought that she might have to cut them to get it off, but eventually she was able to detangle it.

Barbara took note of Jim’s horns as she smoothed his hair. The tops of them were peeking out of his hair now, and if she wasn’t mistaken they were starting to thicken and develop a slight curve as they grew.

At this point it was anyone’s guess what shape they’d be by the time Jim stopped growing

“All better kiddo?”

“....yeah….,” Jim replied while looking glumly down at his candy, now rendered inedible, effectively ending the holiday for him.

Or so he thought.

Barbara smirked “That’s good because I have one more surprise for you,” going over the closet, she reached in and pulled out a large gift bag.

“Here you go,”

Wide eyed, Jim tore into the bag and pulled out a pair of heavily used work boots. A jubilant smile spread across his face “Cool Mom, Thanks!”

In a move that surprised her, Jim reached around to the floor on the other side of the couch, picking up a ziploc bag full of butterscotch and Kit Kats, her personal favorites, and held it out in her direction.

“These are for you,”

Moved by his generosity, Barbara tried to graciously decline “Jim, that’s your Halloween candy--”

“And I can do what I want with it,” he continued holding out the bag, determined that she take it.

Barbara knew when she was beaten “Thank you Jim,” she accepted the bag “Do you want to start another movie?”

“Yuh huh,” he mumbled past the steel toe now wedged between his teeth “Ocus Pucus,”

Barbara popped the DVD into the player and sat back on the couch with Jim reflexively curling up against her side. She put an arm around his shoulders and gave Jim a gentle squeeze “Happy Halloween kiddo,”

The opening credits started to roll, Jim finished chewing and swallowed the steel toe of the boot, “Happy Halloween Mom,”

#rmvwrites #tales of arcadia #trollhunters #fanfic #you are my sunshine #jim lake jr #barbara lake #toby domzalski #nancy domzalski #nana domzalski

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