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tobbotobbs · 5 months ago

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this winding labyrinth, ch9

chapter nine: the crawl

pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Reader (reader is not gendered, race-ambiguous, and no physical descriptors are used)

summary:

You wish you never met Hannibal Lecter. But you yearn for his presence. You want to forget him. But he never truly leaves your thoughts. Now, you’re left to pick up the pieces of a broken design. A battle of instinct rages on in your mind—one of bittersweet relief and cloying grief, fearless resolve and poignant regret; a clashing between affection and antipathy, pride and pain. What will win, in the end? Only time will tell.

this is chapter 9, act 2 of this broken design. if you haven't read act 1 or chapters 1-8, this won't make too much sense.

ao3 version | Spotify playlist

Warnings: smoking, addiction, withdrawal symptoms, suicidal ideation; animal death, typical gore/violence

A bit of a disclaimer here: the reader is somewhat forced to curb their smoking addiction, which results in several withdrawal symptoms. Their addiction isn’t intended to be a centerpiece of this fic in the slightest, so the pacing of that part of the story may seem a little fast. I want to restate that I don’t intend to romanticize addiction or substance abuse in the slightest—I tried my best to do some research and ensure that this depiction was as accurate as possible. Hopefully, I haven’t made any missteps along the way.

Jack took away your lighter and your cigarettes. He even went so far as to appear on your front doorstep and demand that you turn over any remaining materials you had at home. It was utterly humiliating and dehumanizing to have your privacy so swiftly broken. Not to mention, it felt incredibly patronizing. You’re a fully-grown adult, not a child who needs disciplining. You’re able to make rational decisions and monitor your own health. And yes, smoking was having a poor effect on your health. But you had already considered its adverse effects and decided to ignore them (and even embrace them).

Truthfully, you hadn’t thought that your new habit was consistent enough to create an addiction, but you were wrong. In the hours following Jack’s house visit, you’re shaking and trembling as you stare off into the wall in front of you. Your mouth feels dry, your eyelids feel heavy, and a persistent nausea climbs up your throat, threatening to spill past your lips. Most of all, you feel terribly… empty. There is an utter lack of emotion and color to your life. Everything bores you, nothing excites you.

Typically, when you feel uncertain or are struggling with something, you’re able to throw yourself into work. But now, when you focus your attention on work, you find yourself experiencing a new emotion as you meet the hazy eyes of the corpses of victims: envy. When you blink and look down at them, you see yourself lying on the cold metal table—skin mottled and entirely motionless.

You’re starting to think you won’t feel anything ever again; you’re succumbing to the seemingly infinite fog suffocating everything and everyone around you. Everything lacks substance. Nothing gives you fulfillment. Life is horribly muted and painfully monotonous. You wake up in the morning, pretend that your breakfast tastes like something, drive to work, toil away at your desk (and occasionally find yourself in the field), force yourself to eat lunch, do more work, go home and pretend your dinner isn’t the same meal as the night before—only to fall asleep and repeat the cycle all over again. It’s all an act—a performance to convince yourself and Jack that you’re capable of getting better—even when you don’t believe it to be true.

Surprisingly, somewhere along the way, going through the motions—as miserable as they are—begins to yield results. You begin to feel the familiar stirrings of rage and disgust in your gut as you come across corpses; grief and remorse when you’re left to the shadows seeping through the corners of your home. You’re slowly picking up the pieces of your shattered psyche.

…But then the card tower of coping skills you spent time delicately arranging topples down into a scattered mess. But then the pendulum tears through the air in front of your eyes, until you’re standing at the top of a carpeted staircase and looking down at a woman’s sprawled body with the taste of copper settling on your tongue.

Through the shadows, you can see her husband crawling on the ground—dragging himself towards you in a futile attempt at resistance. You grab his hair and yank his head up, promptly pushing the barrel of your gun to his temple and firing a shot he will not survive. The children are swiftly eliminated with the same unapologetic cruelty—necks twisted brutally and viciously.

You look down at your bloodied hands and inhale slowly, feeling a strange sense of serenity and peace overtake you. The Jacobis and the Leedses were small steps towards your desires; this family is a much bigger lunge towards them. Even so, you feel a magnetic pull towards the bathroom tucked away in the corner—a visceral urge to punch the mirror and dig your fingers into the shards of glass. But you cannot leave fingerprints, so you have to settle for placing a shard in your pocket and making a quick departure. There is nothing left for you here.

The pendulum is unyielding in its descent, as it roughly pulls you back to the present moment: back to the chilly white walls of the lab and away from the trickling warmth of crimson running down your fingers. You’re not sure how much time has passed since you entered the laboratory—nor do you really recall entering the space in the first place. Yet here you are: staring down at the mother’s wide, milky eyes and wishing they could tell you more.

Jack and you are standing over the table in utter silence. You can’t pinpoint exactly what Jack’s feeling, but you’d wager it’s a mix of guilt, frustration, pain, and exhaustion. Well, the pain and exhaustion may be projections. Your limbs have been trapped in an eternal state of dull aching; the skin on your face feels drawn far too tight across your cheekbones and jaw. There’s a weird taste settling on your tongue and a desperate tremble to your hands. You haven’t been sleeping well lately either. It’s almost as if your body knew that something was about to happen, because, in the past few days, you’ve only slept for a collective few hours. And you doubt your sleep is going to get much better, now that the image of the fresh corpses is thoroughly cemented in your mind.

While the pain ebbs and flows, as you suspect, your sleep gets worse in the coming days. The unfounded dread from before gives way to skin-deep grief and persevering self-loathing. You’re sleeping at short intervals—with long periods of restlessly staring up at the ceiling interspersed across them. Even as your withdrawal symptoms start to fade and color slowly bleeds back into the world, you still feel miserable. You’re exhausted and overworked. Life as an FBI agent is hard enough on a full ten hours of sleep and a complete breakfast. You’re lucky if you get five hours and a bite to eat on the way out of your house in the mornings.

Throwing yourself into your work has never been a healthy solution to your problems, and this newest attempt is no exception. Bloodied, misshapen corpses follow you into your dreams and your waking mind. You can’t stop contemplating the nature of your existence—what has gifted you continued life, while children’s flames are brutally snuffed out without a moment’s hesitation. You’re going more and more fidgety as time passes—a confusing contradiction to the lethargy and fatigue that assault you the moment you wake. You’re trapped in a strange state of unreality, bogged down by reminders of the life you reunite with every morning.

You can barely think straight. Your mind feels like a giant mess of a cobweb, with strings shooting around in all the wrong directions. There is no clear path to the answers you seek—and, frighteningly enough, you don’t think you can even remember why you want those answers in the first place. What are you fighting for? What are you running towards? Is this really your fate: waking up to fall asleep, avenging the dead to live? What happened to that determination from your training years—that visceral desire to push yourself up from the ground and keep at it? You can’t remember the last time you felt genuinely motivated to walk into work.

Even Jack has noticed your changes in behavior, but he’s so swamped in work that he never seems to address it. Besides, that responsibility isn’t his—you should know when you’ve reached your limits; you should be able to call things off when it gets to be too much. You’re an experienced agent by now—you should have some sort of process for all this. But you don’t have anything. Instead, you’re falling victim to a merciless cycle of hope and despair; anger and remorse; anticipation and apprehension. You’re fading, just as the lifeless corpses on the spotless lab tables.

It certainly doesn’t help that the newest murder comes with a frustrating lack of substantial evidence. Shattered mirror fragments can only reveal so much. Jack and you seem to come to the same troubling conclusion, as you lock eyes in the dim warmth of his office.

“We need to talk to Hannibal,” you realize aloud. The recognition settles into the air uncomfortably.

“I’m afraid so.” Jack appears resigned, but not defeated. The two of you both know that Hannibal likely has information. The only problem… is trying to get him to reveal it. “Would you like me to accompany you?”

“No, I’ll be fine,” you deny the offer. Sensing that Jack is impatient, you push yourself out of your chair and head for the door—only for him to interject just before you can leave.

“Agent,” Jack remarks. You freeze and turn back around to face him, unsurprised to find a grave expression on his face. “Don’t let your guard down. He is not assisting us out of the goodness of his heart.”

Then why are we seeking him out again? You think wryly.

“I think you know we have few other options,” Jack responds. You hadn’t realized that you uttered that last thought aloud. “Believe me, I would love nothing more than to leave Lecter to rot in his cell. But this killer is far too similar to him. He will have valuable insight, even if he hasn’t revealed it yet.”

You bite the inside of your cheek. “What if he never reveals it?”

“Then we’re in trouble,” Jack admits darkly. On that note, you leave his office and head out of the building. Once you make it to your car, you’re quick to pull out of the parking lot and begin the drive to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. You don’t have to use navigation to get there anymore—and that small realization is rather frightening. You never wanted this—never wanted him —to be a part of your life again. In the years following Hannibal’s surrender, your life was blissfully quiet. The voices in your head were subdued. Now, they’re back in full force—scolding you for everything you haven’t yet done.

You go through the motions of the entrance procedure, coming back to yourself just a few steps from the door that leads to the corridor with Hannibal’s cell. You contemplate turning around and walking away, as you have done many times before. And, just as you always do, you reach out and open the door. The door lets out an ominous creak, betraying the fear and apprehension that keep you firmly frozen in the doorway.

Eventually, you somehow manage to convince yourself to keep moving forward. You take one step, then another, then another. Through this process, you find yourself standing in front of the ever-familiar glass-wall of the Ripper’s enclosure. You take a slow breath and attempt to steel your nerves, despite knowing the effort is futile.

To your surprise, Hannibal doesn’t notice you right away. Instead, he seems to be looking at some sort of paper with rapt attention. You squint and attempt to get a glimpse of what he’s reading, only to recoil upon reading the headline. It’s an article from TattleCrime—the one about you that was published a few years ago. There’s a picture of you on the front cover—glancing off to the side with a stormy expression on your face, the scar ripping through your cheek fully visible—underneath a bolded headline speculating about the nature of your “relationship” with Hannibal.

Fortunately, you haven’t been featured in TattleCrime since your unplanned friendship with Freddie. But seeing that paper in Hannibal’s hands transports you back in time: to a deceptive tranquility and a comfortable silence that clung to your home’s walls. You remember the feeling that stirred within you as you read the article for the first time. After all, back then, you were doing a rather good job at compartmentalizing any and all thoughts about Hannibal. But that article was the first to crack through the walls you erected and invade your mind with unwanted thoughts.

When you remember your surroundings and refocus on Hannibal, you find that he’s already staring at you unabashedly. Your gaze falls to the paper in his hands and he makes no attempt of concealing it, instead offering you a smile and placing it on his desk. Something ticks in your jaw. You hold back any sharp remarks as Hannibal gets up from his chair, stalking over to stand across from you. His hands folded behind his back, he levels you with an intent look. He seems to be scrutinizing you—and it almost appears as if he doesn’t like whatever he finds.

“You look…” Hannibal starts. You’re suddenly incredibly irritated.

“Awful, I know,” you finish for him, sick of everyone you meet scrutinizing your appearance. Well, “everyone” is a bit of an exaggeration—a playful remark from Bev and a quick inquiry from Jack was all you really received. But you’ve noticed the wary glances that have been paid to you at crime scenes; the way everyone has been giving you a wide berth, as if waiting for you to snap and lash out. There aren’t any words that can overstate your exhaustion.

“I was going to say exhausted,” Hannibal says with a thin smile. He pins you down with an attentive gaze. Your hand twitches at your side as you notice just how close he’s standing. Taking a deep breath, you try your best to maintain your composure and remain frozen where you are—even as your heart races along your skin. Your eyes are burning from fatigue. “How much sleep did you get last night?” He asks.

“Is this a doctor’s appointment?” you snap bitterly. Hannibal doesn’t respond. You take a deep breath again, recognizing that he isn’t the source of your frustration. “…Three hours.” You decide to answer honestly, after a few moments of contemplation. There’s really no harm in providing him with such a useless detail.

“Have you been having difficulty concentrating?” Hannibal hums, his gaze flitting about your face. He almost looks concerned. You may be tired, but you’re not dazed enough to mistake the turn of his lips as genuine distress. You cross your arms over your chest, then let them fall to your sides when you remember how much you’ve been doing that simple gesture in front of Hannibal—as if you’re attempting to shield yourself from him. The effort is futile, though. You have no agency in the affair—if Hannibal wants to know something, he will learn of it. “Memory problems? Worsened moods?” He presses. You’re idly reminded of his background as a surgeon… and then sickened by the subsequent contemplation of how many people he covertly harmed under the knife.

You’re beginning to get a headache. Admittedly, you have been experiencing all of the symptoms he mentioned—in varying degrees of severity. “What’s the prognosis?” You ask in lieu of providing an answer. Hannibal nods knowingly. He’s more than familiar with your avoidance, just as you are more than familiar with his loaded questions and ambiguous answers.

“Sleep deprivation,” he remarks. You exhale in amusement. That’s far from a revolutionary diagnosis—you could’ve pieced that together yourself, even with your minimal medicinal knowledge. (After all, the FBI never taught you how to heal people–only how to hurt them.) “And the lingering traces of withdrawal. Why haven’t you been sleeping?” Hannibal continues.

“Nightmares,” you admit. A phantom shiver rolls down your spine, sending goosebumps across your arms.

“About what?” Hannibal is practically leaning forward in interest. You don’t want to give him more ammunition, but damn it, you need information on the Tooth Fairy. And, perhaps, if you can get him in a good mood… then he’ll be a bit more forthcoming. After all, that’s what you’re here for… right? …Right?

“The newest victims,” You respond. Hannibal is staring at you expectantly, as if waiting for you to elaborate. Somehow, that’s when your mind shuts off and the desire to speak fades into obscurity. You settle for shaking your head silently, not wishing to summon more thoughts of bloodied stains splattered across homey walls.

“Perhaps you should return home,” Hannibal suggests a moment later, clearly sensing that you would rather be anywhere else. You pay a fleeting glance at the security door from which you came, wishing you had such a luxury.

“No, I need to keep working on this,” you maintain. “Here.” You take a few steps to the side and slide a photo through the small mail slot. The photograph has been burning a hole in your pocket since you prepared for your visit here. And regardless of how many times you ran your fingers over it and ensured there wasn’t so much as a single paper clip attached to it, Hannibal’s predatory approach to the mail slot puts you on edge. Standing across from you once more, Hannibal looks down at the mail slot and stares down at the photograph. Your stomach churns as he takes it in his hands. But he barely gives it more than a second of his attention. Just as quickly as he picked the photo up, Hannibal places it back down in the slot.

“I don’t wish to look at this,” he announces, sliding it back through the slot.

You choke on a laugh. “What?” You stare at him in surprise. The expression on his face is completely blank. “Don’t tell me you’re backing out now.” You scoff and stare at him, irritation and helplessness assaulting you.

“You need to go home, Detective.” Hannibal asserts, enunciating his words carefully. What is it with everyone treating you as if you’re made of glass? Do you really look that pathetic? Sure, you have impossibly dark circles under your eyes and a general sluggishness about you, but that doesn’t seem like cause for such concern.

“The newest victims,” you continue determinedly, pretending as if he hadn’t spoken. “Another family, two parents, one child. Mirrors shattered. The wife had strangulation marks, bite marks on the neck.”

“Enough.” Hannibal orders, his voice cutting through the static in your mind. You blink and lurch forward, placing a hand on the glass to brace yourself as a wave of vertigo hits you. When your vision finally clears, you’re surprised to find Hannibal on the other side of the glass, his hand extended to match yours. There’s a stormy expression on his face.

“Leave,” he says. “If you return well-rested, I will discuss the murder with you.” Hannibal doesn’t leave you much of a choice. If you want his perspective, you’re going to have to come back later. You grit your teeth and walk away, bidding him a quick goodbye and shoving your trembling hands in your pockets.

Your suffering doesn’t end there, however, as you nearly crash into Frederick Chilton on your way out. He steadies you with hands on your shoulders, looking at you intently. “Lecter seems worried about you,” he prompts.

“Hm?” You ask, admittedly zoned out.

“Lecter seems worried about you,” Chilton repeats, his brows furrowing.

You squint at him in disbelief. “Sure,” you decide to say, if only to appease Chilton. Unfortunately, Frederick Chilton must be the densest person on the planet, because he refuses to drop the subject.

“I have to admit, you look tired,” Chilton says after a moment. Somehow, the look on your face must be enough to convince him that you don’t want to talk, because he holds his hands up in surrender. “Alright, I won’t fight you on this. Get home and get some rest.”

You mutter a goodbye and head back to your car. The ride home is uneventful, save for your eyes stinging with exhaustion. Unfortunately, you don’t get rest. Rather, you find yourself sitting across from Jack as he brainstorms a way to draw the Tooth Fairy out of hiding. It’s clear that the killer will continue to kill every full moon, and you’re regretfully lacking in evidence. If you don’t have a new lead soon, another group of innocent people will die. The thought keeps you tossing and turning that night, until you’re walking into the bureau the following morning with a renewed vigor. You restlessly ruminated over the Tooth Fairy murders that night, neglecting sleep in favor of attempting to dissect the same few pieces of evidence again. Is it insanity to do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results? You’re not sure.

Regardless, you do come to some sort of conclusion. It doesn't necessarily have to do with the existing evidence; rather, you have an idea of how to draw the Tooth Fairy out of hiding. You tell Jack as much that early morning, and he looks at you tiredly over his mug of steaming hot coffee. He eventually places the drink aside and asks you to elaborate.

You go through your existing characterization of the Tooth Fairy, starting with what he looks like and moving on to his personality. There, you remind Jack of the man’s pride—and how that pride and arrogance led you to develop an idea. At that point, Jack is practically foaming at the mouth with how much you’ve been leading him on. You eventually abandon pretense and tell him outright.

“I think we should set up a TattleCrime article,” you say. “In it, we’ll characterize him to be a sexual deviant and a monster, amongst other things. Then, when he sees the article—which he will—he’ll take out his anger on the closest target.”

“Which is…?” Jack trails off, staring at you expectantly. You gesture to yourself and understanding passes over his face. He contemplates the idea for several minutes, his hands folded in front of him as his elbows rest on his desk. You almost want to accuse him of being distracted, but it’s clear from the look in his eyes that he’s meticulously analyzing the plan you’re suggesting. You both know it’s risky, but at this point, you don’t feel as if you have a choice. You need to catch this guy—or, hell, at least get something on him.

Hours later, you find yourself in a conference room at the Bureau with a rather unique group of individuals: Jack, of course; Freddie Lounds, journalist for TattleCrime; and Frederick Chilton, the head administrator at the Baltimore State Hospital of the Criminally Insane. The four of you quickly review the basic information on the Tooth Fairy, before Jack takes the lead with creating a suitable narrative for the story. Freddie types notes rapidly on her laptop, while Chilton divides his attention between staring at you and providing unwanted commentary to Jack.

Then comes the fun part: inventing provocative remarks about the killer. It isn’t exactly hard to do, considering the mirror fragments he always leaves behind. The Tooth Fairy is a man deeply wounded inside—longing for acceptance amidst a society and world that doesn’t understand him. That’s the sugarcoated way to put it.

“He is a sexual deviant,” you say, the words practically slipping from your lips of their own accord. “A predator that preys on innocent people and gets off on killing women because that is the only time when he is able to exude power and authority. In all other aspects, I daresay he is small—in stature and in presence. He is hopelessly insecure, and seeks external enlightenment to mask his many flaws.” If there’s one generalization that can be made about the Tooth Fairy’s ego, it is that he loathes being underestimated, objectified, and otherwise scrutinized. No doubt these comments will drive him absolutely crazy. At least, that’s your hope. And judging from the somewhat surprised and impressed look on Jack’s face, you think your statements are suitable. After all, if the killer is secretly as fragile as you suspect him to be, he will take offense at virtually any insult—even if there isn’t a grain of truth in it.

Some time later, Freddie has gathered everything she needs for the article—save for an accompanying photo. She seems to think that a picture of Chilton and you will do nicely, and Jack agrees. Outnumbered, you suppress your objections and stand next to Chilton. Freddie adjusts the angle and the camera flashes, freezing everything around you. A feeling you thought to be vanquished has just reared its ugly head: fear. You will be faced with the brunt of this killer’s attack, unless you somehow divert it.

In a spur of the moment decision, you clap a hand on Chilton’s shoulder. Admittedly, the physical contact is entirely purposeful and pointed. Through the gesture, you’re forging an association in the killer’s mind and passing off the blame to Chilton himself. If you’ve characterized the killer accurately so far, there’s a good chance he’ll take his anger out on Chilton.

The irony is not lost on you. When you were held captive by Abel Gideon and forced to point a gun at Frederick, you couldn’t take the shot. You had pushed him to the floor and inadvertently saved his life. Now, you’re holding the gun… and you’ve just fired the trigger.

You tilt your head in what feels like slow motion to look at Chilton. Suddenly you can see him lying dazed on the kitchen floor, eyes glazed and hazily crooning at you, “See?” Suddenly there’s a bullet carved neatly through his temple, and his body lurches backwards and falls to the floor of the dimly lit hallway of that crumbling house you were trapped in. Suddenly he’s ripping his way out of a horse’s womb, covered in blood and guts, and you’re firing at him with nothing but rage in your heart…

You blink again and look ahead. The camera flashes once more, sending dizzying spirals across your vision.

You just sent Frederick Chilton to the gallows.

endnotes: I really don’t think I did the TattleCrime article justice. In the TV show, Will goes OFF on the Tooth Fairy and it’s savage as hell.

Recent movies/shows I've watched: Chucky (1-3), Halloween 2 (the bloody tears almost made me cry), Late Night with the Devil, and The Patient (went back and finished it; it was fucking awesome)

thanks for reading!

look forward to a new POV in the next chapter Ψ(`_´ # )↝

hannibal taglist: @its-ares @tobbotobbs @xrisdoesntexist @gr1mmac3 @tiredstarcerberuslamb @yourlocalratwriter @kingkoku @kahuunknown @atlas-king1 @pendragon-writes @slipknotcentury @cryinersaved @the-ultimate-librarian @starre-eyes @pendragon-writes @peterparkeeperer @gayschlatt69 @flow33didontsmoke @mrgatotortuga @house-of-1000-corpses-fan

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tobbotobbs · 6 months ago

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Think about how spawn Astarion would lead you to a nice pub in the inner city. How he would take your hand and sit down in a quiet but comfortable corner in the pub, asking one of the barkeepers for the finest wine they had. Just the best for his darling love.

For the one that saved him from turning into something just as cruel and bad as his late abuser, Cazador, was.

Saving and staying with him even after he yelled at you for not being on his side with his idea of taking over the ritual.

For staying when he came crawling back and apologizing in a rather pathetic way, for is standards.

He truly was greatful for you. For your trust and believe in him. Even when he most absolutely did not deserve it. Not after nearly killing you on first sight, trying to bite you without asking in the middle of the night or for all the scoffing and screaming he did because something wasn't how he wished it to be going.

He would look into your eyes from where he sat, holding your hand over the table, slowly caressing the top of it with his thumb. When the wine would be served, he would smile slightly at you and take a glass.

He would swirl it around in his hand before taking a quick sniff to see how it smelled and would then hold it softly against your lips. A mischievous glint in his eyes as he watched you blush while slowly gulping the blood red drink down your precious scar littered throat.

Oh how he would swoon over your little puncture scars on your throat. A clear sign of his claim on you. As your partner, your lover, your most trustet one. He would then take the glass away and catch the last droplets with his own lips, putting them on yours and kiss you lovingly.

The night would go as smoothly as the slide of his daggers through your enemies throats, laughter and smiles and good stories for hours before you even think about going home.

Have a little treat darlings, because i just saw i got 100 followers and none of them were fake or bots!

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tobbotobbs · 6 months ago

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I need Copia to hold me close for the minute

Actually, I need all of them to hold me for the minute it takes

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tobbotobbs · 6 months ago

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pweemo (important)

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tobbotobbs · 6 months ago

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some cirice eye contact and closeups to help prepare us for his face on the big screen [x]

(i'm not ready i'm not ready i'm not ready)

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tobbotobbs · 6 months ago

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this winding labyrinth, ch8

chapter eight: excarnation

pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Reader (reader is not gendered, race-ambiguous, and no physical descriptors are used)

summary:

this is chapter 8, act 2 of this broken design. if you haven't read act 1 or chapters 1-7, this won't make too much sense.

ao3 version | Spotify playlist

warnings: mentions of cancer (stage 4 lung), chronic illness, self-deprecating thoughts; typical blood/violence. Gore!!! A LOT of gore. This cannot be overstated. Please take caution!!!!

Nothing haunts Jack Crawford. The criminals he places behind bars (with the assistance of his team) fade from his mind’s eye the moment they’re confined. He doesn’t have time to dwell on memories. His attention moves from one threat to the next to the next; he is purpose-driven and rarely distracted. The few nightmares he does have hit far closer to home—with Bella’s Stage 4 lung cancer suddenly spiking and causing her immense, unlivable pain. Jack’s deepest, darkest fear isn’t a serial killer ripping him apart—it’s the thought of looking into Bella’s eyes, hazy with pain, and feeling completely helpless as she suffers.

Even so, there is one exception: one killer who will break through Jack’s barriers in the quietest of moments, when he least expects it. Yes, Jack supposes, Hannibal Lecter is a special case. He isn’t an average psychopath—he is charismatic and incredibly composed. And what eludes Jack most is the undeniable fact that the only reason they caught Lecter… was because he allowed them to. His surrender was tactical, pointed—and grounded in his conviction that he would be able to escape whenever he desired. Jack can only hope that Lecter was incorrect; can only hope that the man will rot in a cell for the rest of his life. (But he knows, deep down, that Hannibal Lecter is rarely wrong. And that troubles Jack far more than he’s willing to admit.)

In the time following Lecter’s “surrender,” Jack does not think of him. For several months, his mind palace is thoroughly guarded against any unwelcome intrusions. His attention is devoted to: 1) Bella, whose condition is slowly but surely worsening; and 2) his work with the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Admittedly, there is something else that occasionally crosses his mind—but it isn’t necessarily related to Lecter’s seemingly countless murders. Instead, it is the nature of Lecter’s affections for you that consistently bothers him.

The look on Hannibal’s face that fateful night often flickers before Jack’s eyes, and he feels a strange sense of guilt at the memory. Because Jack was the reason Hannibal met you—he was the one to introduce you both, all those years ago. He needed you to pass a psychiatric evaluation and Hannibal seemed intelligent enough to understand that—to understand how essential it was for you to return to the field. Jack hadn’t thought that he had made a misstep until he saw the two of you together at the crime scene the Minnesota Shrike left behind—until he saw Hannibal practically latched to your side, looming over you like a menacing, all-encompassing shadow.

Now, as Jack stands before Hannibal Lecter in his cage at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, he feels as if he’s drowning in déjà vu. Those brown-crimson eyes pin him in place before the glass enclosure. Frederick Chilton’s interest in Hannibal is abundantly clear, Jack realizes, as his eyes wander across bookshelves, a writing desk, and other amenities that the other prisoners certainly do not have. Chilton has always been annoyingly self-serving, and Jack isn’t even sure if a conversation with him would change his behavior. It is clear that the administrator is painfully aware of the kind of opportunity Lecter’s captivity presents: a once-in-a-lifetime chance to study someone who defies all existing research. Jack personally can’t see the appeal; he is instead concerned with the lives the man has taken and the families he has torn apart in the process. He is instead concerned with the inexplicable feeling burrowed deep in his chest—the one that suggests that, despite their positioning, Jack is the one trapped in walls of glass (the pawn) while Hannibal looks on (forever the chessmaster).

“Hello, Jack.” Hannibal greets him, looking up from his book. His eyes are twinkling, Jack notes with distaste.

“Lecter,” Jack responds carefully, unable to keep the disdain out of his voice. Hannibal notices this and a slight smile rises on his lips. “You requested to speak with me.” And while Jack’s instincts screamed at him to ignore the request, he knew he really had no choice. If there’s a chance, no matter how small, that Lecter has information on the Tooth Fairy… Well, Jack will endure the man’s mind games.

“I did,” Hannibal acquiesces, clasping his hands and crossing one leg over the other. Even in a nondescript white jumpsuit, he makes the gesture look elegant. “How are you, Jack?” Immediately, Jack is annoyed. He doesn’t have the patience for this. As the Head of the Behavioral Analysis Unit, he has never had much time for meaningless conversation. Every second wasted is another second for a knife to be lodged between someone’s ribs—another chance for innocent lives to be taken.

“I struggle to believe you summoned me to engage in casual conversation,” Jack says, not bothering to hide his irritation anymore.

“Perhaps not,” Hannibal admits with that infuriating smile. Jack has never been a particularly violent or confrontational person, yet he can now see the appeal of wrapping hands around someone’s neck and choking the life out of them. He shakes his head to clear himself of the uncharacteristically violent thought. This place—this façade of a hospital—has always brought out the worst in him. “How are you, Jack?” Hannibal asks persistently. He isn’t dissuaded by his nonexistent answer. “How is Bella?”

White-hot fury rises in Jack’s chest. He is immediately thrown back into the past, into a time when Bella felt as if she couldn’t burden him with her condition (as if it was somehow her choice, as if Jack was so selfish as to prefer ignorance over assisting his partner). He has never fully recovered from Bella’s lie of omission—and the worst part is that he understands her decision. There have been times, across the course of his career, where he concealed his own injuries so that he didn’t cause her unnecessary stress. And while their situations are entirely different, Jack still can find the commonalities in them—can still understand the need to keep your partner from experiencing any undue stress.

Jack isn’t sure how long he stands there, lost in thought, until he remembers that Hannibal asked him a question. He takes a slow measured breath. “She’s fine,” he settles for saying.

Hannibal arches a brow. “And I suppose you’re fine , too?” He asks, his voice devoid of emotion. Yet there’s a fraction of a second where Jack sees the man’s shoulders tighten in irritation.

Jack makes a point to take another slow, measured breath, before clenching his fists at his sides. He will have to play into Hannibal’s hand, if he wants to learn anything about why he’s been called here today. And while he wants nothing more than to lie, he knows the man in front of him will discern the truth in an instant.

“Bella is… not well.” Jack admits. Her health is getting worse—to the point where she is mostly bedridden. Jack hates that his work keeps him from her during the day, hates that he returns to find her with a smile on her face—as if he’s not letting her down. He feels his jaw clench at the thought.

“I am very sorry to hear that, Jack, truly,” Hannibal says. Jack suspects the sentiment is genuine—Hannibal shared dinner with the two of them, after all. Bella then reached out to him and had several meetings with him regarding her disease. And while Jack is grateful that Bella felt empowered to speak to someone about her situation, he selfishly wishes that she had just sat down and spoken to him instead. After all, her meetings with Hannibal created an awkward gap in their relationship—as Jack was forced to come to terms with the fact that the psychiatrist knew more about his wife’s condition than he did. “How are you faring?” Hannibal asks, drawing him out of his thoughts.

“I don’t see how this is relevant,” Jack says, gritting his teeth. This idle small talk is making him more and more restless with every passing moment.

“It is painfully relevant,” Hannibal asserts.

“Fine,” Jack repeats angrily. He feels like a broken record. “Very well. I’ve been better.” That’s the under exaggeration of the century—he feels as if he’s falling apart, as he is forced to stand by and watch as Bella’s health deteriorates. Jack wants nothing more than to help her, but he doesn’t know how. Bella maintains that his presence is enough, but Jack still feels the visceral need to do something more than sitting silently at her side .

“How much longer does she have?” Hannibal asks.

“A few weeks, she’s told,” Jack answers habitually. Everything about the disease is horribly cruel. Jack wishes he could share some of Bella’s pain—or, even better, take it away entirely. But he’s not a miracle worker—he is only her husband. Jack is not a religious man—someone like him, who has chased criminals for decades, will lose faith as they see fresh horrors that question their very mortality. Yet recently he has found himself close to praying for Bella’s recovery.

“It must be difficult to make time for her,” Hannibal says. “The FBI isn’t an accommodating employer. Not that I would know.” He says coyly. Jack feels any of his remaining patience promptly disintegrate into nothingness.

“Enough with the small talk,” Jack demands. This is taking much longer than he would like it to. “Why did you ask for me?”

“As I said, I have information for you,” Hannibal states.

“On the Tooth Fairy?” Jack presses.

“No.” The man responds. Jack nearly loses it right then and there. He turns around and is about to make his departure when Hannibal continues. “I have information on someone close to you.” Someone close to you. If it were Bella, then he would’ve said so. Who could this be about?

“How did you come to possess this information?” Jack asks guardedly. He still doesn’t necessarily believe the other man. Hannibal could be deceiving him. But Jack’s already here now, so he might as well at least hear him out. At worst, the information will be useless and Jack will storm out of the building in annoyance.

“Observation,” Hannibal answers ambiguously.

“Who might this person be?” Jack asks, despite being fairly confident that there’s only one reasonable answer. He hopes his suspicions are incorrect.

“Your best agent,” Hannibal responds, confirming his suspicions. Unease prickles along Jack’s skin. “Don’t distract my best agent,” Jack had said to Hannibal all those years ago. If only he had known how much of a distraction the man would prove to be…

“I don’t believe you,” Jack immediately remarks. The words crawl up his throat and wrench themselves out of his lips, clinging to the tense air like a vice.

“I think we both know that baseless conjecture would not benefit me.” Jack just remains silent. Eventually, Hannibal continues. “I have a defined sense of smell, as you know,” he says. He’s dragging this out on purpose. Jack has to resist the growing urge to snap at him. The man must sense his quickly declining patience, because he continues. “During our first conversation, I smelled smoke.”

“Must’ve been a fluke,” Jack interjects. If Hannibal is bothered by the interruption, he doesn’t show it. But Jack is certain that he’s annoyed—after all, he abhors rudeness.

“That’s what I thought,” Hannibal agrees. “Then we spoke again—and I recognized the scent as the same one I smelled before. I assume there is no significant other in the picture, therefore… your best agent is a smoker.” That last remark almost sounds like a question. Jack tries to dispel it from his memory, but he finds that Hannibal has ensnared him in a verbal trap. In order to get the truth, he must divulge information that Hannibal does not deserve to know. But, when it comes to your safety…

He decides not to answer, despite knowing deep down that his silence is enough of an answer. Instead, Jack asks the man to recount what happened in detail and Hannibal obliges. As he claims, he first smelled smoke when you approached him and asked for information on the Tooth Fairy. He wanted to inquire about it, but he wasn’t convinced of his theory. After all, the odor could’ve come from a visit to a friend’s house or a windy day downtown. The next time you visited, however, Hannibal smelled it again. He confronted you about it and you didn’t deny his accusations. Apparently, he also expressed his concerns—citing that smoking can cause lung cancer and other adverse effects. You didn’t seem to care.

Jack isn’t sure he believes Hannibal wholeheartedly, but he also knows that the man has no incentive to lie. That begs the question, however: why would Hannibal say something in the first place? “I don’t understand how telling me this benefits you.” Jack confesses, watching him warily.

Hannibal smiles knowingly. The gesture is fleeting. “I find myself worried,” he admits. “Smoking is terrible for a person’s health and can cause lifelong, irreparable damage.”

“You want me to intervene,” Jack realizes aloud, immediately discerning the real reason Hannibal summoned him.

“I believe you are in a unique position—one that gives you the authority to curb such a habit,” Hannibal proposes. A dark expression flickers across his face as he stares ahead. “I pray it hasn’t become an addiction just yet.” He supplements, appearing vaguely troubled.

Jack knows the danger of making a promise to the man standing in front of him, to the Chesapeake Ripper. But he feels it is necessary. After all, if he can manage to follow through, then he’ll likely receive some good karma and cement Hannibal’s trust in him. Jack could then exploit that trust later on. Knowing that, he decides to go for it. “I’ll see what I can do,” Jack guarantees.

“Thank you, Jack,” Hannibal responds sincerely. “You are unfailingly reliable, as always.”

“...Thank you,” Jack responds. The compliment doesn’t mean very much to him, considering the entire situation. He takes a deep breath and tries to settle the sudden onset of his nerves. Jack anticipates that you will bristle and withdraw if he tries to intervene. But Jack doesn’t really have any other option—you’re a vital component of the Behavioral Analysis Unit and he won’t see your physical or cognitive abilities impaired by anything, let alone something as harmful as smoking. “I’ll be departing now.” Jack announces.

“Very well,” Hannibal nods, regarding him one last time. The smile on his face sends a shiver down Jack’s spine. “It was good to see you, Jack.”

Jack doesn’t bother echoing the sentiment, instead turning on his heel and walking away. He got what he needed and will leave entirely unscathed. So why is his heart racing so thunderously in his chest?

Jack soon understands when he finds himself standing before you, attempting to decide how to best confront you. Because this is, ultimately, a confrontation—an intervention that you will likely not appreciate. But it’s a necessary evil, Jack tells himself.

Eventually, he just decides to cut to the chase. He’s never been one to sugarcoat things. “You’ve been smoking.” Jack says cavalierly.

You stare at him, eyes widening for the briefest of moments before the emotion is being reigned in and suppressed. Jack can’t help but think of that emotional control written on someone else’s face—in the brown eyes gleaming with crimson and the wry turn of lips. “No, I haven’t,” you respond smoothly.

Jack is not fooled. He has considered everything he’s seen—has digested the evidence (or, in this case, the utter lack of it). “Don’t lie to me, Agent,” Jack sighs, exasperation and irritation battling for prominence in his voice. He’s a bit disappointed that you think you still have the ability to lie to him—that you can hide such things from him.

“How did you know?” You then ask suspiciously, shoving your hands in your pockets. “I haven’t been smoking at work.” And somehow, Jack knows you’ve been taking meticulous showers—and ensuring that the smell doesn’t reach your work clothes. That’s the only explanation for the complete lack of sensory input.

“That doesn’t matter,” Jack eventually settles for saying. How he became privy to that information isn’t important. What is important is the truth of the matter: that you’ve been putting yourself at risk.

“Who told you?” You demand, ascertaining what Jack fails to utter. He locks eyes with you and, somehow, you seem to find the answer in his gaze. “It was Hannibal, wasn’t it?”

Jack is still quiet. It’s cowardly, but he doesn’t want to utter the words—that will usher in a whole new horrifying sense of finality. He knows you’ll get an answer from his silence anyway; indeed, you study him for a moment before nodding resolutely and walking away. He watches you depart with a tight feeling in his chest, inexplicably convinced that he just crossed a line he can’t come back from.

Standing before Hannibal Lecter’s cell, you’re overcome with the knowledge that you shouldn’t have visited. Irritation, anger, and (unjustified) betrayal prickle along your skin and pull your hands into clenched fists. You can cope with the former emotions, but the latter? You should not feel betrayed—because betrayal implies that, to some degree, you trust Hannibal. Even after everything he’s done to you.

You shake your head and take a deep breath. It’s too late to go back now. You’re already standing in front of his enclosure. He has already seen you, even if he gives no indication that he has noticed you.

“You told Jack.” The accusation crawls from your lips before you can attempt to stifle it. It’s raw, pained, emotional—in all the worst ways. You’re wounded prey before a hungry predator—tempting it with what it desires. Hannibal wants to see you affected by his actions, and you’re fulfilling that desire. After all, you’re not so foolish as to think that Hannibal genuinely cares for your physical wellbeing. You’ve made that mistake—assuming the best of him—far too many times in the past. Even behind this glass wall, Hannibal is the puppetmaster. But you refuse to be his puppet.

“Hello,” Hannibal responds. He closes the book he’s holding and looks up at you. You’re not convinced that he just now focused his attention on you; no, the moment you stepped into the hall, he sank his teeth into you. “You must know it’s polite to start a conversation with a greeting. And I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”

“Hello, Dr. Lecter,” you seethe. You’re not feeling very charitable today, so you don’t bother to pretend that you’re composed. “You know exactly what I mean.”

“Do I?”

“Yes,” you remark, finding it increasingly difficult to be patient. He’s drawing this conversation out on purpose. He senses that it irritates you, so he keeps doing it. You try to stay focused. “You told Jack that I was smoking.” Your teeth grit at the memory of your conversation with Jack, at the disappointment hidden in his words. Lately, you can’t shake the feeling that you are nothing more than a problem to Jack.

“You presume Jack didn’t know before,” Hannibal assesses.

“I was doing a rather good job of keeping it hidden from him,” you argue, crossing your arms over your chest. Indeed, you went to extraordinary lengths to ensure Jack didn’t notice your new habit. You only smoked outside your home, in casual clothing that Jack wouldn’t see you wear. Not to mention, you always kept your lighter and cigarettes concealed in your pockets discreetly. No, you made sure that Jack wouldn’t notice.

“Were you?” Hannibal questions.

“Stop doing that,” you snap, abandoning pretense. He’s parroting your words back to you—asking questions that don’t advance the conversation. “It’s annoying.”

“Very well,” Hannibal says with an amicable shrug. Something about the nonchalance dripping off of him is both non-threatening and sharpened to a fine point. Everything about the man before you is a contradiction. He is nothing but a twisted, tangled mess of paradoxes. Hannibal Lecter is companionable but lonely; compassionate but cruel; deceptively ordinary but horribly, dangerously different. He is only noticeable when he wishes to be. Nothing about him is as it seems.

You stare at the man before you: the Chesapeake Ripper. He is a killer who has upturned your entire life—ripping the rug from beneath your feet and ensuring that you will never know stable footing again. Rage bubbles and froths beneath your skin, compelling you to itch at your forearms in a futile attempt to rid yourself of the overwhelming feeling. This match’s players were decided long before the game even began. Are you forever doomed to be his victim? Do you stand a chance against fate?

“Do you remember?” Clark Ingram croons. “Ripping apart the skin, digging your hands into the matter that gives an organism life? Do you remember that your hands didn’t shake? Do you remember washing away the blood? Is it still on your hands?”

Spots float across your vision. You blink them away; when you open your eyes again, you see Abel Gideon standing behind the glass wall in front of you. His eyes are hazy and unseeing, yet he seems to stare into your very soul. He reaches a hand out, then another, and you instinctively bring your hands to your neck, if only to wrench his grip away-

“You.” Garret Jacob Hobbs whispers. “You’re just like me.”

And suddenly Gideon is reeling back, a bullet carving a neat path through his temple. Blood slips down his face in crimson rivulets; his eyeballs slip and roll in their sockets, before falling out—leaving them to dangle ominously, with only the optic nerves to keep them anchored. Gideon opens his mouth and his teeth crumble and rot, blackening and decaying to dust in his mouth.

Suddenly his visage shifts, and you’re staring at Miggs—who is staring back with wild eyes. He lets out a truly bone-chilling laugh, his jaw extending further and further until it’s snapping off and ripping through his skin. His tongue slithers down his chin, traveling down his body and resting in a scarlet puddle on the floor. His eyes are bloodshot and frozen as they spin faster and faster-

A blur of motion draws your attention to the left, and you watch in muted horror and shock as a pale hand reaches towards you, beckoning you closer. You lock eyes with Franklyn Froidevaux; a pained noise leaves your lips as you watch his hand snap and break, bending and curling backwards in a manner that is not physically possible. With clawed fingers, Franklyn brings a hand to rest in the air near his chest and you hear ringing in your ears. In a fluid motion, he impales himself. His free hand mimics the motion and your stomach stews as you see him grasp adjacent ribs in each hand, before brutally ripping them apart to bare his chest cavity and free his heart. The organ pulsates in the open air, and past the disgusting squelches of blood, tissue, and biological matter fleeing further down his chest and hitting the ground, all you can hear is his heart pounding in your own ears-

There is a hand on your shoulder. You inhale sharply and immediately turn around, prepared to fight off another criminal—another one of your victims—when you lock eyes with Frederick Chilton. It takes you several moments to come back to your body and ground yourself in the present moment. Your breaths are arriving and leaving far too fast; there’s sweat collecting at the back of your neck; your hands are trembling; your throat is extremely dry.

When you can finally move past these physical sensations, you realize that Dr. Chilton is staring at you with glittering eyes. The concern on his face almost seems genuine, which is all the more concerning.

“Time’s up.” He says, a modicum of sympathy in his voice.

You cough to clear your throat, wincing at how tight and scratchy it feels. “I just got here.” You answer raspily, trying to shrug his hand off of your shoulder. Chilton’s grip only strengthens.

“I gave you an extra ten minutes,” He says softly, looking at you worriedly. His grip on your shoulder is tight and you quickly shake it off. This time, he lets you. “It’s been an hour.”

An hour? Surely that’s not right. You glance at your watch, only to find that it has indeed been an hour. Sensing a gaze boring into you, you remember Hannibal’s presence. Glancing at him, you find that he has a blank expression on his face. Have you really been standing here, rooted to this very spot for an hour, with the Ripper right in front of you? What did he do, while you were lost in phantom worlds? Did he observe you with a sick fascination, reading through research in his head? Your stomach churns at the thought of being so vulnerable in front of Hannibal for such an extended period of time. The security in this place is not nearly enough to make you feel safe in front of him. Hannibal can overcome any obstacle, if he desires.

You take a shuddering breath in and nod at Chilton, turning towards the door. Hannibal utters a goodbye, but you’re too lost in your thoughts to hear it. This meeting was an entire waste of time, but, then again, what were you expecting? Did you hope to have a reasonable conversation with the Ripper? You’re not sure why you bothered showing up in the first place. A small part of you wonders if this is all an act of elaborate self-sabotage—if you’re setting yourself up for further pain with every new conversation with Hannibal.

Regardless, the events of today serve as a reminder: Hannibal is confined within these halls, but he still has enough power to manipulate the outside world—enough to manipulate your life. You dig your nails into your palms and walk down the hall, your footsteps echoing throughout the space. You’re so rattled that you don’t notice Chilton’s grip remaining on your shoulder, nor do you notice the malicious glare Hannibal sends him in response.

endnotes: Avoiding pronouns here was very difficult, so apologies if the conversation between Jack and Hannibal is a bit awkward. But I’m still committed to ensuring the reader’s gender is ambiguous, so… awkward phrasing it is.

Here was the original dialogue I was going to use for the conversation between Hannibal and the reader. I ended up scrapping it, but I still think it’s a fun idea:

“You’re a bastard. You know that?” “I’m afraid that’s a new one,” Hannibal says, a small mirthful smile slipping onto his face.

Jack takes a bit more of a *proactive* approach to combating your addiction in the next chapter.

I am proud of myself for the gore. Heehee.

thx for reading! hope you enjoyed :3

check out my other works, sorted by fandom.

friendly reminder that i don't give permission for my writing to be shared to other sites, stolen, copied, translated, or used in any way. thanks!

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tobbotobbs · 7 months ago

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For the one that saved him from turning into something just as cruel and bad as his late abuser, Cazador, was.

Saving and staying with him even after he yelled at you for not being on his side with his idea of taking over the ritual.

For staying when he came crawling back and apologizing in a rather pathetic way, for is standards.

The night would go as smoothly as the slide of his daggers through your enemies throats, laughter and smiles and good stories for hours before you even think about going home.

Have a little treat darlings, because i just saw i got 100 followers and none of them were fake or bots!

#astarion #astarion x male tav #astarion ancunin #astarion fluff #astarion fanfic #astarion fic #bg3 #bg3 x male reader #bg3 tav #bg3 astarion #astarion x tav #baldurs gate tav

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tobbotobbs · 7 months ago

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limitations (part 3)

early access + nsfw on patreon

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tobbotobbs · 7 months ago

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CH 3: Hold Your Demons Close Maybe Then You'll Feel Something

CW:NSFW blood, gore, mutilation, killing, cannon typical violence, child abuse (it's minor but still there), drugging, military inaccuracies, Mage reader, Monster cod AU, poly141, eventual poly141 X reader, reader isn't a good person, a few masc terms used but overall gn.

Ao3; Word count: 19.1k (It's a heckin chonker) Big thanks for @rodolfoparras and @princeguri66 for betaing for me, love you guys!

Masterlist; Chapter 2 <-Chapter 3 (You are here) -> Chapter 4

Aisha remembers the day she thought she would die.

As a gift for the 10th birthday her mother had taken her to the market in the big city. It had been chaotic compared to their little village, so many people donkey carts, and mopeds moving around like crazy ants in a freshly exposed nest. Aisha had gotten lost, swept away by the time of movement, and ended up at the entrance of a shady alley where she'd stumbled on an old beggar woman.

Long as she lives she will never forget the sight of the woman. Strip her of flesh and blood and the memory will still be etched into her bones — of ghostly blue lines forming impregnable chains across sunken sunburned skin. Of dirty rags loosely hanging off skeleton thin shoulders. Of blood crusted bandages wrapped tightly around her shaved head to not scare the children running about, the cloth dipping into the eyeless sockets of her skull. Of her asking passerby for alms with the handless stumps of her arms.

The sight alone had frightened Aisha, but then the beggar had turned her head to Aisha as if she could hear the frantic beating of her heart. A sad saccharine croon left the mage woman's chapped lips as she looked right at her. "Hello, fellow daughter of Magnus."

Her mother found her then, pulling Aisha back while shouting at the woman at the top of her lungs. Aisha's mind had been too full of thoughts to notice her mother drop their shopping in favor of scurrying out of the market with Aisha in hand. She had only snapped back to reality when her mother had thrown Aisha into her father’s rusted little car, barely able to sit up straight before they were driving home to their village as fast as the car’s geriatric engine could go.

Aisha had been locked in the room she shared with her sisters, but the door did little to mute the way her parents argued all day long, accusations of infidelity and cursed bloodlines thrown around like bird feed. Most of it flew over her head, but Aisha had understood one thing: Her parents were afraid.

The strange men came to her house just as the sun had set, drawn out by the dying light like coyotes hunting for a stray lamb. The strong stench of rot heralding their arrival made her sputter to hold back the bile burning her throat. She remembers the sparks of yellow and red and blue and all the other stolen colors of the rainbow swirling in their cold eyes.

They chatted while inspecting her like a cow in the market, their language just as rough and hard as their hands. But they lost interest quickly, unable to find what they wanted to see. They turned to throw lecherous looks at her mother and older sisters before her father had stepped between them and her, protecting his daughter now that he knew Aisha wasn't a freak. He'd tensely asked them to leave after paying for their time, standing in the doorway and only going back inside when the strange men were well and truly out of sight.

Her parents let them in without complaint; Her father held her down, his steely gaze watching the men crowd her. Her mother whispered trembling words into her ear to just be a good girl as the men tore her shirt off. Aisha's questions and pleas and panic fell on deaf ears, her mother pressing a worn hand over her mouth to silence her cries as the men inspected her chest and arms. They pinched and pulled on her skin with hands scarred like gnarled tree bark, the roughness of their palms chafing her soft flesh.

Aisha remembers the days she thought she would die.

Waking up each day to wash under her mother's stalwart gaze so she could ensure Magnus hadn't sown seeds into Aisha's body while she slept. Going each week to the village elders to drink the special brew of Morgana's tears, spending agonizing hours curled up and sobbing on the floor with a stabbing pain in her chest, her heart beating like the wings of a snared bird as the poison made its way through her system. She'd lost count how many times her heart would stutter after every bout of joy or childish argument on the rare moments the children of the village would interact with her — any lick of emotion would force her to run home to check the pads of her fingers in fear that this time magic had cracked through her skin.

She had been so happy on her 15th birthday — the danger had passed. She wasn’t a mage. She could finally live a normal life, meet a boy, get married, have a family.

She’s 16 now. All those years of worry and fear feel like childhood bliss.

Aisha knows she will die.

It happened so suddenly; When her friend had jokingly rubbed a feather duster in her face, Aisha would have never expected a stupid sneeze to force liquid frost through her fingers. Pain had raced through her chest at the speed of lightning, an unknown force pulling her arms up, and the next thing she knew she had frozen over her neighbor's entire crop field. Aisha had barely heard her friend scream over the pounding in her ears, her legs moving on their own long before her brain could understand the pain in her hands or what she had done.

Her mind might still have been reeling, but her body understood she needed to run, needed to hide, before the sun fell and the coyotes came for her.

The house she's found to hide in is one of the many corpses the Russians left behind, stripped bare to rotting wood bones and crumbling bricks, moldy wall paper peeling in long thick strips and rickety boards creaking under the slightest pressure. Gravel crunches beneath heavy tires outside the decrepit house and a rumbling engine cuts through the silence. Aisha scrambles up the stairs to the second floor, hiding in a dingy closet with it's walls closing in around her like the sides of a cramped coffin. Termite made holes in the closet door act as peepholes, letting her see into the bedroom and watch the long shadows created by the car's lights stretch across the floor.

She bites her lip as the slightest twitch of her pinky finger makes pain bloom across her entire hand, though she's barely able to move her fingers with how stiff they are. Her tan skin bellow the wrists is corpse pale and cold, blood crusting the creases of her knuckles. The creaking of floorboards has Aisha hastily pressing her ice cold hands against her lips, the taste of her blood — copper and iron with a hint of something sweet like antifreeze — failing to churn her stomach when even the hint of slowly encroaching rot has her heart clogging her throat so not even a whimper can make it past her lips.

She’s sure her lungs stop working when a man crosses the threshold into the room, and immediately she’s hit with such a strong smell of decay, like death had crawled up her nose and died there. Her throat and chest spasm with the need to cough, tears freely running down her cheeks from how much effort it takes to keep quiet, but past her blurry vision she can see the man slowly walk into the room.

He’s tall and gangly like a newborn foal, bulky clothes widening his frame that’s mostly skin and bones, thinning blond hair badly swept over a sizable bald spot. He wouldn’t be so scary if his eyes didn’t glow an unnatural mixture of toxic green and burning red— the sight alone has goosebumps spreading across his skin, followed by a deep seated discomfort as if leeches are crawling inside her bones.

“Come out little girl,” Even his voice feels wrong, like glass ground on sandpaper, but he speaks with so much sweetness it’s disgusting. “We only want to talk to you, don’t worry you’re not in trouble.” She can tell he’s not from Urzikstan by the rough accent that muddles the Arabic words he speaks.

The floorboards creak softly as she shifts. His head swivels to look around the room and the man quickly walks over to the bed, dropping to his knees to look under it. “Fuck!” His facade falls as he snarls when he sees she’s not there, stumbling to his feet like a drunk. “I mean uh- don’t worry I’m not mad kid,” He chuckles lightly, trying to put on an act of a worried Samaritan, though the attempt falls short when his predatory eyes fall on the closet she’s hiding in.

“Hey, did you find her yet?” Another voice rings from the entrance of the room, this one feminine and with a slight drawl to her words as she speaks in english. It makes Aisha jump, though the squeaking boards beneath her go unnoticed when the new voice continues. “Boss is starting to get antsy and if we don’t find her soon he’ll be sticking your ass with the pigs.”

She can’t see well, but she’s certain the man shows a middle finger to the unseen person. “Fuck off,” He spits out the response like it’s a mouthful of poison, “We both know you’re the dead weight.” He says, taking a few steps around the bed, but luckily for Aisha he stops in the middle of the room. Aisha can hear how deeply he breathes in, before something catches in his throat and he coughs. “I can smell the magic, the wench is still in the house.”

“Bullshit.” The woman scoffs, “You say that every hunt and we end up wasting our time.” A moment passes before the unseen woman chuckles and adds. “You couldn’t smell shit if you shoved your head up your ass!”

The man openly seethes, quick and heavy footsteps carrying him right up to the woman and out of Aisha’s field of view. “You take that back you fucking bitch!” The snarl is more animal than man. Aisha can only assume he punches the woman from the way the floorboards groan loudly in the otherwise silent night, shoes scuffing on the floor, grunts and swears filling the air as the noises of fighting steadily recede to another room.

She’s light headed by the time she manages to pull her hands away from her mouth enough to draw in a breath of stale air, her lungs burning from how long she had gone without breathing. Her heart drums loudly in her skull, her ears pricked to listen to the two strangers exchange angry words in a language she doesn't understand, each passing second of the continuing scuffle making confidence slowly form in her mind.

This is her chance!

. . . to do what?

She doubts she could take them on, she's pretty sure she saw a gun hanging off the man's waist, and she definitely knows she won't be able to outrun them. She's stuck. Cornered.

“Whatever, you just fin-” The sound of footsteps once again nearing the room she's in forces her body to act without her input.

Fishhooks tug on her fingers and force them to splay out flat in the air despite the pain. Her mind scrambles to think of something, anything, before unseen hands pull her mouth open. A shaky breath escapes her lungs and before she knows it words are falling from her lips, so smooth and fluent like her mind is reading a script carved into her bones. “Oh harsh creatures of brutal winter, please, I need your help-” Something cold and sharp stabs behind her chest, more of her skin turning pale as magic slowly crawls down her arms.

It hurts —

Spiderweb cracks of broken glass spread across her knuckles and a fat drop of blood rolls down her chin from how tightly she bites her lip. Her blood beads through the cracks in her skin, the dark crimson turned a light pink by the freshly exposed white light that pulses beneath her skin like a living thing. Aisha sucks in a sharp breath before continuing, “- I beg you, give me a crumb of your power, a ball of silent snow to hide my life-” The more she speaks, the more the white light cracks through her skin until it cracks through the pads of her fingers and escapes as shoddily formed snowflakes.

They dance through the air like drunken fireflies before finding the right position and floating in the air. More of them spawn from each finger with every word spoken, taking their own place in an unknown pattern.

Slowly the overlapping snowflakes take on the shape of a scratchy circle, trembling lines forming a complex web of shapes inside it. The pain grows with it; it turns her fingers pale and numb as if she had stuck her hands in freezing water, the icy bite of frost spreading up her wrists. Her frozen skin cracks from even the slightest tremor in her hands, white speckles dancing in her crimson blood as it leaks down her palms. Each second taken to breathe and bite back a whimper disrupts the fragile collection of snowflakes, causing parts of the circle to break off and drop to the ground in big watery drops.

Her chest feels like it’s tightly packed with soaked wool, a type of pressure building behind her sternum, her shoulders stiff as her body is getting ready for. . . something good—

The closet door swings open with enough force to break it off its hinges. White light of the circle refracts off the gun aimed at her.

Bang!

A bullet tears through the magic circle and shatters it into pieces, all the pressure that had been building in her body rushing through the crumbling remains of the circle right back at her.

She screams and shakes, fat tears freely running down her cheek like the blood flowing from her palms. There’s not a single word in any language able to describe the pain rushing through her veins, the liquid agony infesting every cell — sharp and blunt and deep and gnawing, like her body is trying to eat itself, like she’s infested with maggots; the bullet that tears through her side feels like a soft mercy.

“Fucking moron!” She barely hears the woman snarl over the rush of blood in her ears. The gun aimed at her is roughly pushed down. “Are you trying to get the boss to take our heads?” The stench of rot only worsens it, disorientating her further and she’s barely able to make her fingers twitch. She’s got no defense from the rough hand that roughly grabs her by the hair and pulls her out of the closet.

“I’d rather not die from a first time mage!” The man yells, grabbing her by the shoulder. Aisha’s legs can’t support her weight no matter how much she tries, but the man is far stronger than she had expected and has no problem holding her up. Her lungs manage a pained sound before her arms are grabbed and painfully wrenched behind her back, handcuffs softly clicking as they’re tightened until the steel digs into her aching wrists.

“Oh so when I’m the one on the end of the damn spells it’s fine then?” The woman’s anger shows in the way her cracked nails dig into Aisha’s scalp and pull her head back like she's trying to take it off entirely. Aisha struggles to breathe, gasping and wriggling to the best of her ability but it’s useless and a second later a thick metal collar is tightened around her neck, rusted needles on the inside of it pricking her skin enough to draw blood.

It burns. The collar rapidly heats up like she's got a string of hot coals around her neck, the heat traveling down her skin to grip her heart in a vice. The collar is so tight she can’t even gasp, fresh adrenaline pouring through her veins as she tries to scramble out of the handcuffs, tries to shake out of their hold, tries to just get away. . . but she’s about as strong as a kitten.

“You’re expendable. The girl could make a better spell than you.” The man holding her shoulder laughs and pulls her away as soon as the woman lets go of her hair, all too happy to drag her like a sack of potatoes behind him. Each step down the stairs has the base of her spine awkwardly hitting the step, accosting her frazzled brain with even more pain.

“We got the girl, boss!” The man says triumphantly, pulling her up so she’s facing another man. Even with the tears blurring her vision, Aisha can tell the ‘boss’ isn’t from Urzikstan; He’s a pudgy little man with a wide flat nose and other features that don’t quite fit his face, but his eyes — they glow the same rainbow hue as the other two, with the same malice.

“Finally.” The boss huffs, not wasting a single second and pulling a knife from his pocket. A rough hand holds Aisha’s head so she can’t squirm away from the knife as it cuts across her cheek. Just that small cut feels like a gaping wound and a small whimper falls from her lips as the boss pulls the knife back, specks of white floating in the dark blood coating the metal. A black tongue slips from his lips to lick up the bloodied edge, the sight making her stomach curl with disgust.

Another hand grabs her cheek, cracked fingers like claws digging into the cut until blood flows over the man's fingers. The man holding her pulls his bloodied fingers into his mouth, humming. A second passes before he curses and spits at his feet. “There’s barely anything there,” He says, the hold he has on her tightening. “Barely worth the bullet.”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem.” The boss waves him off, sharp rainbow eyes looking her up and down. “Couple of grams from ol’ daddy Magnus and we’ll have ourselves a proper sow.” He reaches out to pat the top of her head, condescending — like she's just a dumb animal. “Alright, put it in the truck.” The boss orders and the man holding her complies, starting to drag her to the truck parked in front of the house.

Somehow, behind the the loud beating of her heart, she hears rumbling. Somehow, though her mind is like tangled yarn and she can barely grasp a thought, she feels something — an emotion that doesn't belong to her: Anger

Violent anger. Burning hot in the cold night, so all consuming it leaves the world around her trembling.

"Hold on-" The boss says suddenly, quickly raising his head to sniff the air. "Do you smell that?"

Tires screech against the rocky road, orange flames sparking from thin air as a motorcycle appears out of nowhere. Aisha only manages to get a glimpse of glowing orange eyes before she's blinded by bright light. She closes her eyes, heat washing over her body before she hears the head of the man holding her explode.

Shards of bone and brain matter rain down on her, sticking to her dark curly hair. The body stands for a second, unaware it no longer has a head as the charred stump of the neck steams. The body falls to the ground and takes Aisha with it, falling on top of her.

The elbow digs into her bleeding side, her eyes flying open as she struggles to get out from under the man, managing to push him off. Her gaze flies to the steaming charred stump where the head used to be. Panic rising she breathes in and oh god the smell — it’s an automatic response; Her stomach convulses and she pukes, bile burning her throat, retching and crying as the scent of her bile only makes it worse.

She feels heat rush over her and she doesn’t need to see to know your magic makes the other man and woman’s heads pop like grapes. Their bodies drop to the ground somewhere behind her, but what makes adrenaline rush through her is the soft sound of the motorcycle stand clicking against the ground.

Her head flies up to look, heart beating like a bird in the cage of her ribs; Dirt crunches beneath your boots but to her it sounds like breaking bones, steam rises off your body, the bright glow of your arms and the intense glare of your eyes behind the tinted lenses of your mask. . . it all gives the image of a demon — of something she needs to flee from.

If the people had been coyotes, then this person— no. . . the thing that had found her was a starved lion.

She tries to scramble back but it's useless when the smallest twitch of a muscle has her whimpering, blistering cold gnawing on every inch of her nerves.

You reach her in seconds, leaning down to grab her by the front of her clothes to pick her up like she weighs nothing. Your scent floods her nose, rot and just a small hint of sweetness, like honey poured on the floors of a burning charnel house. She tries to kick you but can barely move her toes, her legs just swaying uselessly beneath her. Your fingers, warm but not burning hot, hook under the steel wrapped around her neck.

Your jaw tenses, trying to remember how to speak. "Hold still." You order.

Your voice is soft. Not the velvet softness of her mothers', more akin to the smoothness of a tar pit right before it pulls a hapless creature into its inky depths. But you don't hurt her.

Metal screeches as the rusted steel bends like clay under your fingers. It only takes a few seconds before the collar clatters to the ground. The sudden release of pressure has Aisha gasping for breath so quickly she starts coughing and almost pukes but luckily her stomach is empty.

She doesn't feel you free her hands, the world spinning a thousand miles a minute before her eyes. She's forced to close her eyes shut in an attempt to fight back the nausea, rainbow spots crackling in the darkness of her vision.

Casually stepping over the corpse of the Devourer you sit her down on the hood of the truck, keeping a hand on her shoulder to make sure she doesn't fall face first to the ground. She shivers under your touch, trembling hands slowly raising to grip your wrist. You don't need magical sight to know an aborted spell is ravaging her insides; her fingertips turning black in front of your eyes and the specks of white dancing in her pupil is enough.

Judging by the way you can barely pick up the scent of mage standard rot on her, you can only assume she's a late bloomer. With a small huff you place your other hand on the middle of her chest, casting a simple circle at your palm.

Aisha gasps, fingers scrambling to try and pull your hand off, too numb with cold to register how the cooling lava making up your skin warms up. But it's like trying to move a mountain. You don't budge an inch. She can feel something inside her move, burning frost shepherded by blistering heat slinking down her fingers back into her heart, increasing speed with every inch it travels. She barely notices the aching in her side subsiding, or the sensation returning to her fingers.

You let go of the girl when you’re satisfied she won’t die from either blood loss or mana shock, leaving her to sit on the hood of the car as she looks dumbly at you.

The bullet loudly clatters on the steel hood. She turns her head and her eyes nearly pop out of her skull at the sight of her blood literally bleaching out of her clothes like it's being drawn back into her body. Letting go of your wrist she lifts her shirt, and there's not even a mark on her tan skin.

She’s no threat to you.

No sooner that you take a step away from her does Beelzebub's cold presence rush out of your heart with enough force to make you stumble back. People say it’s madness for a spell, a tool, to have personality. But the way black candlelight flames spark at your fingers and immediately rush out like a swarm of locusts to devour the three bodies is. . . it's angry. Vengeful As it should be. You can't fool yourself into thinking the way Beelzebub's magical fires eat away the Devourers hands before spreading over the rest of the body, crackling and buzzing like thousands of flies as they devour skin, then muscle, then bone until not even dust remains, is anything but vindictive.

Like erasing mistakes, it brings you a sense of satisfaction.

Your fingers twitch but you stop yourself from reaching up to trace the faint blue magic gluing your throat together. Instead, you focus on converting the mangled chunks of mana Beelzebub deposits in your chest into something you can use. Devours are a pain in the ass, so much different mana all twisted and held together with gum and staples, all of it now bashing against your ribs like wailing ghosts. With a huff you focus, the rock chunks on your arms getting wider and bigger as you store the stolen mana for later use, steam lazily rolling off your shoulders.

Aisha watches you, eyes wide, but. . . not scared. She doesn’t notice when she opens her mouth, her voice far too loud in the silent night. “Are you a jinn?” She asks, and cringes at her words. Of all the things she could have said, she chose that?

You don't know how you manage to open your mouth enough to answer. “No.” Beelzebub, satisfied as a hog in shit, burns on the ground for a few seconds in the shape of the bodies before seeping back into the earth, settling back to slumber in your heart.

You roll your shoulders. The slight bite of pain and the spasm of your muscles reminds you of the glass sticking out of your back. A grunt forces past your lips, more from annoyance than actual pain. A simple thought is enough to activate the magic you had cast on yourself, vestigial sparks flickering across your shoulders and boring a hole into your jacket. The edges glow brightly before they birth flames that eat away the bulletproof vest and the rest of your clothing until a sizable chunk of your back is exposed.

Aisha catches the edge of a small circle scribed atop your spine in the middle of your back, but her eyes are soon drawn to the mess of glass shards sticking out of your skin. There’s not a speck of blood in sight, but somehow that makes the sight more disturbing. Her gasp falls deaf on your ears, your mind more focused in trying to remove them.

Forcing your opposite hand to cool down enough so the heat doesn’t shatter the glass, you reach back as far as you can, trying to feel as best you can with your numb fingers. But your hands are stiff and unfeeling, making you fumble about like a bull in a china shop as you try to get one shard and miss. The only time you manage to grasp the sharp edge, you break it when you attempt to pull it out. A curse slips past your lips and you crush the broken piece between your fingers.

Aisha doesn’t know what possesses her, nothing good probably, but she speaks up. “Can I-” Your head turns to her so fast she startles, mouth snapping shut with an audible clack of her teeth. She can only stare at those burning eyes for a second before her animal brain forces her to look away, focusing on the gas mask portion of your mask because looking at your eyes feels wrong. But she powers through it, forcing herself to speak. “Can I help you?”

That was not what you expected.

“No.” You say, your head swiveling to glance at the road and then back up to the sky, a pulse of formless magic slipping past your fingers on instinct to ensure you’re covering all your bases as far as relative safety goes. You don’t see nor sense any form of life besides the girl, nor any mage magic save for the tracker in your pocket.

You hate to admit it, but the wraith was good. And so was the mage that made the tracker, it took you a good while until you had sensed the small piece of enchanted rock hidden in your pocket. You’re still unsure what you want to do with it, maybe you could somehow game the situation or send the monsters after you on a wild goose chase, so for now you’ve only isolated it with your magic instead of destroying it.

Aisha persists. “Please,” She grits her teeth, resisting the urge to shrink back when your eyes once again settle on her. “I- you helped me, I don’t want to hold debts.” There is a kind of determination in her eyes you know too well, the same kind Frosty had right before you and him—

If anyone asks or puts a gun to your head, you will blame this moment on many things — the fatigue, the side effects of using too much magic, the spiraling descent into lichdom, finally losing what dredges of sense you have in your no good skull; “Fine.”

You take careful steps towards her until your knees press against the bumper before turning your back to her, forcing her to spread her legs to accompany your body. You keep your body turned in a way that still keeps her in your periphery. Not that it matters. Even if she had a knife hidden on her person nothing short of 30/06 ammo could leave any damage you couldn’t immediately heal off.

Aisha hates the part of her that regrets her decision now that she's presented with the large array of glass sticking out of your skin. She reaches out like she would try to pet a wild dog, cold fingers gripping the sides of one piece, bracing her other hand on your back. She tries to wiggle it out, and though you keep yourself from hissing, your muscles still spasm around the sharp glass. “Sorry, sorry-”

“You’re fine rookie,” You grunt automatically. “Just yank it out.”

She sucks in a sharp breath and prepares herself like she’s the one with half a ton of glass using her as a pin cushion. But she does as you say before she can shy away from it. The glass slides out easily enough, glowing orange blood staining it. Her eyes go wide when the blood suddenly drips off the shard in one continuous stream until she’s holding a perfectly clean piece of glass. The blood lands on your back and slithers up your skin into the wound, repairing muscle and flesh until there’s not even a mark to indicate where the glass had pierced your skin.

“Are you like me?” She asks tentatively, mentally hitting herself for such a stupid question; of course you’re a mage, what is she even thinking? Hoping to escape the embarrassment she pulls another shard out of your back.

“You and I are mages.” You say simply, occasionally glancing to the road and sky before turning your attention back on the girl. It feels… strange. You don't remember the last time you've spoken with someone who didn't want anything from you. Someone who didn't want to use you. Kill you.

“Ye- yeah, I figured.” Aisha bites her lip, squinting her eyes. “Why… why did you save me?” She finally asks the question that had been plaguing her.

“I just did.” You shrug your shoulder, a small breath slipping past your clenched teeth as the motion makes the glass dig deeper into your shoulder.

Aisha’s shoulders fall, a frown tugging on her lips. She doesn’t know what she had expected. “Thank you.”

Her words make your head turn to look at her fully, “Why?”

“Why not?” Another chunk of glass falls to the ground, “You saved me from. . . them. You killed to save me.” She says, nodding her head at the three body shaped scorch marks on the ground. She doesn’t know why talking about the death of them suddenly feels so. . . normal, like she’s walking through a dream and none of this is real. More like a nightmare.

“Killing bad men doesn't make me a good one.” You grunt, choosing not to voice how your motives for killing them had been far more selfish than she could imagine. Vengeance and anger are poor motives, but motives nonetheless.

Aisha clicks her tongue and scowls. “And saving me would make you bad? One good deed has to amount for something, right?”

A pregnant pause rings through the silent night.

“You are strange.” Is the only thing your mind can turn into words.

“So are you!” She shoots back quickly, lowering her head when her words register in her brain. Chewing on her bottom lip she pulls out the last glass shard from your skin, letting it fall from her fingers where it joins the small pile on the ground. She awkwardly pats your shoulder. “Who were they?” She finds her voice again.

“Devourers.” You fail to hide the hate in your tone. Stepping away from her you activate the spell you’ve cast on yourself. The magic burning at the edges of the hole in your clothing flares up, fire washing over your naked skin to reconstruct the fabric you had destroyed. “Humans who want magic, and will bleed you dry to get it.” The jacket feels bigger on you than it should, you don’t even doubt that you’ve lost a few pounds just in the past few hours as you’re forced to tighten your belt to keep your pants from sagging. "Kill them if you can, avoid them if you can't."

“Why did they want me?” Aisha asks, bracing herself on the car’s hood and slowly sliding down until her feet touch the ground. She feels lightheaded and sways on her feet, gripping the hood to keep upright. You glance at her but she just shakes her head — you two are even now, she hopes, she doesn’t want to have to ask for help for something as simple as standing.

“You’re a mage, they want magic.” You shrug, fixing the cuffs on your jacket so not an inch of your mage marked skin shows. “They want your blood, by drinking it they can use what they lack.”

Unwanted thoughts laugh at the back of your mind. Phantom pain blooms across your throat as you swallow, your lungs stuttering to draw breath. Memories you'd rather not revisit nibble at the back of your mind, just begging to gain your attention. Your hand reaches out to hold the tags—

Nothing.

You come up empty.

Your heart finally stops.

You hold your fist against your chest for a few seconds, the need to break something, even your own sternum, crooning soft melodies in your ears. Finally your fingers slowly uncurl so your palm rests flat over your heart. Your body is warm, but a blizzard rages inside your ribcage. You lost them, again. . . and you don’t feel fury, or sadness, or any other way. You don’t feel shit.

A low pathetic sound escapes you. Titanium wires stitch your jaw closed, pulled so taut you'd chip a tooth without your magic. For a split second you think of dispelling the magic around the tracker and letting them come to you. . . but you don’t; at least Taurus’s training remains effective. You’re sure your brain will let you feel anger as soon as you’ll be in a position to survive the consequences of anger birthed stupidity.

Aisha leans to her side just enough to see your front, confusion written on her face as to why you had suddenly gone quiet. Though your eyes still burn with an inferno, they feel empty to her. She remembers her father’s eyes had been the same when he had returned from fighting. “Did you lose someone?” She asks, voice soft.

“Yes.” You grunt, and fuck, it feels insulting to them how lost you sound. You’re one of the best mages on the planet for fuck’s sake, you’re not supposed to feel this way. “Lost a lot of people.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be.” You finally pry your hand off your chest, both hands now hanging by your sides, fingers curled into fists. “You had nothing to do with it.” You wish you could say the same to yourself.

You shake your head; feelings can come after the job is done. You know the general lay of the land enough to know there is a small city not far from where you are, one that isn’t too harsh on mages. It would take her a couple of hours on foot to reach, but it’s better than nothing. You tell as such, starting to walk towards your motorcycle. “Get to the city, don’t linger around here.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Aisha follows after you, struggling to keep up. “What am I supposed to do when I get there?” Her mind swirls with all sorts of questions, where will she go? What of her parents? What if—

“Do what you want.” You shrug and get on the motorcycle, the engine roaring to life. “Join the military or the circus or whatever else, just don’t stay here.” And with that you drive off.

. . .

"Well, would you look at that." A man sighs as he pulls the binoculars down to rest in his lap, a deep frown on his face. It only lasts for a scant few seconds before he smirks, crows feet forming around his eyes. "Our firebug's manners haven't changed one bit." The man chuckles and turns his head to regard his companion, eyes glowing the color of crystal clear quartz.

"Oh, I wonder who taught him that." The woman sitting next to him snarks, the blue chains marring her arms disappearing like a mirage when she dispels the illusion spell. The human skin melts away to coarse sand and weathered whalebone, red bone eating worms squirming and boring holes into the whalebone, small anglerfish lures softly waving through the air as if she's deep beneath the sea.

The man purses his lip, "I've no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm sure, mister 'I dropped a mountain on an oil rig with my second in command still in it'." Water flows between the seams of whalebone, extending past the stumps of her wrists to form hands of seafoam and salt.

She uses her newly remade hands to tug on the man’s ear like he’s a disobedient child.

The man scoffs and bats her hand away. "Hey now, you did say you wanted to go diving." He shrugs, "Oh, and looks like I won our bet." He smirks, catching the golden coin the woman throws him. Charles's face smiles on one side of it, but the man pays it no mind and puts the coin in his pocket; they’re both far too old to care about money and the dead kings on them.

“Yes, but not like that!” She snaps, not even the bandages around her head able to hide the glare she throws at him. But instead of following up on her anger she sighs and looks down at her hands. Glowing blue plankton swim in the crystal clear waters, but it feels like yesterday her hands were dyed a burning orange.

She hates what they had to do. What they continue to do. “Ifrit is still too reckless. Your plan failed.”

“No it didn’t.” He shoots back. “We just overestimated the kid again. It wouldn’t have been a problem if you hadn’t coddled them all so much.”

The man fully expects the slap on the shoulder he receives, cool water splashing on his greying blond hair. He doesn’t comment on it, simply runs his hand over the patch of wet hair. Small green shrubs bloom on the cracked earth texture of his palm, moss crawling up the crystalline outcrops along his elbow bone, little flowers sprouting in his hair and beard.

They sit in silence for a moment before the woman sighs and hangs her head. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.” Lifting her head she angles it to look at the man. “I just… I wish we didn’t have to do this.” She confesses. “It breaks my heart to see Ifrit so lost.” As much as her still heart can be broken.

“I know, I know.” He reaches out to gently take her hands into his. Though she can’t see his face, even her magic can only go so far, she knows he’s sporting a gentle smile. “Ifrit will be fine. He has no choice.”

Two jet planes fly overhead, engines screaming, blind to their existence as they rush after their prodigal soldier like bats out of hell.

The woman grimaces, water easily sliding past his fingers as she pulls her hands away. “I know,” She tilts her head towards the abandoned house, and the girl slowly walking away from it. “I suppose I’ll find something to occupy myself with.” The woman gets up, glancing at the man once again. “I hope you know what you’re doing Taurus.”

"I always do Sierra."

. . .

The atmosphere is so thick a vampire could bite into it. They all know first hand how missions can go wrong in a moment’s notice, but none of them had expected it to go this pear shaped; some of the mages they had been given are dead, the rest are all in some kind of coma, and it’s a miracle that Captain Roberts had survived long enough to get medical evac with how burned up she was. Gaz had almost lost his lunch when he’d gone to pick up the mage captain and her arm had fallen off in brittle pieces of blackened bone, fabric and skin melted together all over her torso.

"Are you boys alive?" Is the first question out of Laswell's lips when the contact her. The shoddy connection makes her face grainy and pixelated, but her voice is clear enough, tinged with exhaustion and the light of the screen darkens the bags under her eyes.

“Yeah,” Kyle says, “Besides nearly getting turned into KFC we’re fine.” He moves his wings for emphasis, holding back a grimace at how the residual soot and ash irritates the soft skin beneath his feathers. He’ll be lucky if it’ll wash out after a week, though the grime is only secondary to the stench of death and heat clinging to him.

Soap grunts, not bothering or simply forgetting to pull the frozen piece of rubber from his mouth before speaking. “O-cgh ohnlhy ah fheph burhnrs.” Spit leaks down his swollen lip as he gurgles. It hadn't been noticeable at first, but when the adrenaline wore off the pain in his gums hit him like a truck. The medic had given him the rubber to soothe the burns all over his mouth, and he would have been pissed about how much it looked like a doggy chew toy if the relief it brought wasn’t worth it. Doesn’t mean he’s any less agitated about looking like a teething puppy.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Kyle chides, singed wingtips flicking against the back of Soap’s skull.

Johnny pulls the rubber out of his mouth enough to growl back and simultaneously tries to swallow the saliva. He chokes, hitting his chest a few times and coughing, “Yae try ta talk with a burned mouth! Feel like ah’ve been gargling devil pish.”

“Boys.” Price snaps, voice as cold and hard as his reptilian eyes. “Enough.” There’s a hardness in his gaze neither men have seen in a while or even think of challenging. It’s easy to see that something is bothering the dragon, even if he doesn’t say it, and whatever it is, it’s got Price angry.

Not the usual ‘shouting and arguing’ angry Price gets when he’s given dog shit orders, no. This is the cold and silent anger that precedes the destruction of cities.

Soap looks away, biting down on the frozen rubber. Gaz mumbles an apology.

“John,” Kate begins, sensing the storm in his head. “What did you find out?”

“Ifrit knows Ruin magic.” Price says, bits of steam rising from the corners of his lips as his anger shows. He had gone centuries believing that despicable magic had finally died out and rotted away like every mage that used it. He was wrong. Very wrong.

“Shit.” Laswell rubs the bridge of her nose, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Price’s wing flares out a bit, tail flicking side to side in a subconscious show of agitation. “I felt it.”

“Anyone care to share with the class.” Simon asks, arms crossed over his chest and claws digging into his biceps. The light pricks of pain keep him grounded enough to ensure his arms don’t turn into puffs of dark smoke; he’s had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach ever since the fight, something about you — how you moved, how confidently you used magic — he hadn’t seen it in a while.

And it didn’t bode well. It was better when a mage was scared of their own shadow and put on a cheap mask of confidence. But with you? There wasn’t even a single second of hesitation in anything you did.

Price looks at him, then at the two sergeants, finally looking at Laswell as the two exchange nods. “It’s nothing good.” A sigh leaves him. “Ruin magic is old and dangerous,” Price starts, eyes hard like stone. “The last time it was used a plague swept across Europe.”

“What?” Kyle’s eyebrows furrow. “Do you seriously mean the black death was caused by magic?”

"Yes," Kate says, "But we can have a history lesson later. Ifrit knowing ruin magic changes things, they're now our top priority."

"Ah dhogh geh-" Soap remembers they can't understand him and pulls the rubber out of his mouth. "Ah don't get it, what's so special about ruin magic? Ain't all that magical shite the same?"

"No." Price grunts, "A ruin mage needs the body of another person to learn a spell. They see anything or anyone living as chunks of meat to be used in their spells." His eyes darken, claws digging into his palms.

He shakes his head. “Did you manage to get any information about Ifrit from the tags?” Price asks. He had sent photo copies of each dog tag to Laswell as soon as Johnny had given them to him.

Soap pulls the rubber from his mouth, swallowing the excess spit before reaching out to grab the tags laying on the table. He doesn’t know why, but something about holding them feels sacrilegious to him; like he’s holding the pelt of another werewolf instead of pieces of metal.

“No, Ifrit’s tags aren’t ones made by the military.” Laswell says, and that piques Kyle's interest. He leans over to look at the tags as Johnny inspects them. The metal chain hangs loosely off his fingers, weighed down by more than a dozen tags dangling from it. They vary in damage, some are bent, some have black heat marks on them in the shape of fingertips, and some are so blackened he needs to use his fingers to feel the text. Silicon silencers prevent the tags from making noise when he lays them down in a pile on his palm, a couple of them spilling over to hang at the sides of his hand. The first thing he notices is the stench, nothing specific like the smell mages have, but it’s not pleasant either.

Soap takes a random tag and reads off the fine text —

‘JACHAL

VENENUM, ACIDUM, L9

MAJOR

O NEG

JEWISH’

“Yer telling me.” Soap huffs, taking out his own tags from beneath his shirt to compare the two, just to make sure he’s not insane and the tags don’t make sense.

“What kind of shite even is this?” Johnny’s tags sport his full government name and security name without mentioning his rank. The tags he has in his hand look more like the ones civies would get personalized than anything else. He grimaces and hands the tags over to Gaz, “Are they even real?” He asks.

“Why would someone just carry around a bunch of fake tags?” Gaz asks, inspecting them as well.

“Could be part of a wannabe militia. Wouldn’t be the first time some punks with guns tried to play army.” Ghost shrugs. “Could also be to throw us off.” Ghost suggests, tilting his head enough to see Kyle appraise the small hunks of metal. “Or it’s all for shits n’ giggles.”

Kyle’s sharp eyes spot the tag he had been looking for; the tag is the only one without a silencer, the metal caked in soot and ash that the letters are hard to see and Kyle needs to trace the metal with the pad of his thumb to understand what they say:

‘IFRIT

IGNIS, CINIS, RUINA L10

CAPTAIN–

“Whoa,” Gaz’s eyebrows raise. “Ifrit’s a bloody captain.”

“What’s someone like that doing as a terrorist’s dog?” Soap asks.

“Ifrit’s motives remain unclear, but I did find something.” Kate shuffles some papers off screen, pulling up two thin looking file folders. “Two of the tags you sent me have actual people on them.” She says, taking a paper from each folder. Even through the camera they can see how the once crisp white paper has been yellowed with age. “Lance Corporals Hutch and Lambert, both presumed KIA nearly 11 years ago along with their entire squad. Apparently they were led by Corporal Yerrow to conduct a reconnaissance mission in Iraq to investigate a human smuggling ring, but a shoot-out caused a forest fire and no bodies were ever recovered.”

Johnny sniffs the air, crossing his arms over his chest, tail tip slowly wagging. “Anyone smell bull shite?”

“You’re not the only one.” Kate turns the files so the text side is aimed at the camera. More than half of the documents are redacted to the point it looks like a rorschach test. “I haven’t been able to access the original files, if they even exist, but the agent that oversaw the mission was a predecessor of mine, I’ll see if I can get in contact with him. ” It wouldn’t be the first time the CIA covered something up, but what could have happened back then that even Kate couldn’t get to the files?

“Great, what other shite can we pile on our plates?” Soap growls, ears twitching.

“Don’t jinx it.” Kyle says, gently setting the tags on the table.

“There’s another thing.” Kate adds, putting the files away.

“Nice going puppy.” Ghost grunts, ignoring the look Soap gives him.

“Whatever it is, it’ll need to wait.” Price says, speaking up finally. “Ifrit’s a ruin mage. We need to put it down before it melts half the country to slag.”

“That’s the problem.” Kate’s voice makes Price’s eyes sharpen, slitted pupils turning into thin black lines. “We’ve managed to identify the gas used in the terror attack. It was Sarin gas, remnants of Barkov. The same ones Makarov stole.”

“Told you they’re a damn magnet fer wankers.” Soap mutters under his breath. Price's eyes shift to him, giving him a hard look and making it very clear it’s not the time for his comments. Soap’s ears twitch and his tail curls around his leg.

“How did Al-Qatala get their hands on the gas? There’s no way Makarov would just hand over his toys.” Ghost asks.

“We don’t know yet. And we might not ever know if you don’t hurry.” Kate stresses. “The top brass figured out Khaled’s location, they think Ifrit’s going after Khaled so they’re sending troops to take them both out in one place as we speak.”

Price catches on quickly. “Kate, you’re not telling me we need Ifrit alive?” Price stresses, body stiff.

“I’m not,” Kate rebuts, just as tense. “This is an order.” Price flashes his teeth at her, but finally looks away, black smog escaping past the corner of his lips.

“If you can’t get to Khaled, Ifrit will be our only chance to get Makarov.” She ads.

“So go capture the human bomb without dying.” Gaz summarizes, claw tips nervously scratching at the fresh pin feathers growing from his forearms. “Sounds easy.”

“Walk in tae park.” Johnny snarks.

"Only the parks on fire." Ghost adds, tone dry as old bone.

Price stays still and silent for a few moments. Thunder rumbles in his chest and his tail tip lashes against the floor as indications of his anger. His claws scrape against his palms with the need to tear into the festered flesh of the ruin mage, to rip out the heart and destroy it so he can make sure that blasted magic is gone for good.

But he relents, only so he can have unrestrained access to you once they get the information they need. “Pack up. On the double.” Price growls. “We’ve got a mage to hunt.”

. . .

Why did you do it?

It had been a split second decision to divert course when you'd sensed the Devourers, and even then, the mana they gave you through Beelzebub was miniscule compared to what you were used to handling. Hell, you probably wasted more mana using the temporary invisibility spell to get close to the Devourers than what you made from them.

With Khaled's betrayal and an unknown military likely after your head, ignoring the Devourers would have been the smart move. Your ‘heroic’ act won’t earn you any brownie points with whatever made the mistake of putting you on the planet — that’s for fucking sure.

But. . . she reminded you of, well, you. The you violent flames had cremated when they first sparked across your fingers. The you you’d left behind when you took your friend’s hand and ran as fast as your legs could carry. The you you’d been forced to stuff beneath the floorboards and ignore as you lied to the recruiter. The you you sometimes wish you hadn’t forsaken for the sake of survival.

. . . eh, what does it matter? Frosty’s as dead as the rest of them and no amount of grief and tears (assuming you could even force yourself to weep) will bring him back. Maybe it’s a good thing you never found his tags, the universe’s way of keeping him from suffering the humiliation you’ve inflicted on the others.

The engine roars beneath you like a caged beast, each little rock and hole in the uneven terrain causing the motorcycle to buck, the back of the seat knocking up into your tailbone. It’s a necessary evil, driving far away from the main road with the lights off helps you evade detection slightly better, and you’ll take anything you can get. Your commander’s words are etched into your bones: “Only let your enemies know you’re coming when your knife is hilt deep in their throat.”.

The sizzle in your bones and little deep pinpricks of pain in your lower back are barely noticeable with how numb you feel. Both in body and in what’s left of your humanity. You’ve gotten good at that — turning off your emotions and doing what needs to be done; you’re sure if you got shot dead that your body would finish the mission before it figured out there was a bullet in your skull.

Sometimes you even wonder what a witch would see if she ever tried to scry into your heart. Would it still be the hellish landscape Taurus showed you all those years ago? Or would it be like Pompei? Or some other landscape of impeccably preserved tragedy?

Your fingers twitch around the handlebars in an attempt to stop yourself from reaching out for something that’s not there anymore. Some vestigial and selfish part of you whimpers and yearns for the brief respite the tags brought. Their absence feels more suffocating than all the times you’ve been hanged; more painful than when your throat had been used as an artistic butcher’s canvas.

Your magical senses pick up the life signs long before your enhanced ears hear the screech of jet engines. You nearly snap your neck with how quickly you look up, able to catch two jet planes flying overhead by the glow of their engines, trying to track both of their flight paths.

You tighten the grip on the handlebars and increase the speed. You don’t stop to see if they saw you, you know they did from the way the planes twirl in the air. . . and from the way they shoot rockets at you.

Letting go of one handle you let mana rush to your fingers, cinders burning away your sleeve and glove. Just as the rockets get close enough for you to hear their screeching you swing your arm up, a burning arch of flames following after your palm. The motion is enough to tell your brain what you want, a thick screen of roaring flames spreading out from the arc in front of you.

The missiles hit the wall of flames instead of you. You swear you nearly go deaf from the loud explosion the missiles make when they connect with your defense magic, everything around you shaking from the sudden force but the spell holds, not even a scratch in sight. The resulting smoke flares around the sides in a suffocating cloud, the thick wall of fire obscuring your vision and forcing you to blindly swerve side to side.

Your magic may protect you, but it can’t stop the rocket from hitting the ground right in front of the wheel. The whistle and screech of the missile is the only warning you get before the ground beneath you explodes and sends you flying. You hit the ground and roll, jagged rocks slamming into your bones, scraps of metal pelting your back. Magic washes over you to heal the bones you break.

It leaves you feeling every bit of pain when the motorcycle falls on top of you, pushing the breath out of your lungs. The sudden force has your jaw slamming onto the ground, your tongue caught between your teeth. Blood floods your mouth. It tastes like battery acid and burns your throat on its way down to your stomach, but it forces adrenaline to rush through your system and let you push the motorcycle off you.

Your spine cracks multiple times in the short seconds it takes for your magic to fix the bones, giving you back the sensation in your limbs so you can roll to your side and avoid another missile. You summon a few smaller flame shields to protect your head and vitals from the blast, but not from the sharp rocks that hit your back like grenade pieces.

Your vision swimming and ears ringing you scramble to your knees. You’re given no choice but to use your own blood. Even with the distraction of another missile hitting your shield, it’s easy for you to focus your mana. It flows from your heart to your fingers but you don’t let it escape like it wants. Forcing it to pool in your palms until the heat burns away your remaining glove and turns the stone of your hands into lava.

It only takes a few seconds for fat drops of brightly melted rock to drip onto the ground, and only then can you feel your blood, both the one in your veins and the rivulets of bright orange freely flowing down your back. Burning hot and brimming with so much mana it’s no problem for you to take hold of the blood you've bled. Bright crimson crawls across your back to draw a magic circle from memory alone.

Quickly hunching your back generates enough force to make your blood bust through your vessels, two arcs of blood tearing through skin and muscle like a knife. The bright glow of your blood lights up the dark, stray droplets hovering in the air like oil in water as more of it flows from your body and branches out until it resembles skeletonized wings. Fire sparks at your skin and follows the blood, forcing it to crystallize in place as ash takes up the space between the bones and cascades down in long shrouds. Obsidian sharp crystal blood digs into your skin with every little move of your new wings as they twitch erratically. Lighting races up your spine, your mind forced to create new nerves and deal with sensations it wasn’t designed for.

You summon a circle beneath your feet, ash bursting up to send you high into the air in a long continuous column like it’s the tower of Babel just as another missile hits the place you had been moments ago. The spark from the rocket ignites the ash, giving you an extra few feet in the air before you start to fall.

The leftover smoke swallows you whole, gravity forcibly tipping you back until you’re falling head first. The wind screeches in your ears and the grounds gets closer and closer with every second, the grim reaper laughing over your shoulder; you remember yelling and screaming, even passing out, many times during this type of training. Now, you are calm.

Your mind finally creates the right nerves to move your limbs. Your wings spread out with the same violence they burst out of your back, sharply pulling on your chest muscles as they swing out and down. The flap of your wings breaks off a bit of the ash covering your crystallized blood, flames burning at the tips of your wings making the ash erupt in an explosion and creating enough force for you to soar high into the air.

Flying is hard regardless of how often you’ve done this, your back muscles cramping as you struggle to use your new wings. Not that it actually is flying in the same sense the harpies or other winged creatures would call it. More like gliding with extra steps. Either way, it serves its purpose in making you airborne and mobile.

You shoot high up into the sky like a bullet, trails of ash following after you and wrapping around you like a shroud. The quick movement of your wings and sharp turns let you avoid a set of missiles shot at you, but even at your fastest speed you’ve got no chance of hitting the quick jets flying around you like flies. So instead you use simple spells and hope your aim hasn’t gotten rusty. The muscles in your core and arms tense, a circle forming flush with your palms. Mana rushes to your arms and you use the brief stability in the air between the flaps of your wings to set off your spell.

A solid beam of concentrated flame shoots out, thin as a pencil but it tears through the clouds and metal plane like butter. You manage to cleave off a wing, the wound left behind in the metal glows brightly, before a simple thought activates the latent magic and the entire jet explodes a second later.

Rockets and bullets fly at your back like plague carrying insects, only to be burned away by your magic. Your neck hurts from how sharply you jerk your head to look behind you, mana flowing to your eyes to enhance your sight until the jet is clearly visible. At least you have comfort in the fact your hand eye coordination is still as sharp as ever, another beam of fire cleaving the jet in two.

And just like that, you’re alone in the sky.

You don’t realize how rapidly your heart is beating until you take a moment to breathe, wings spreading out to let you glide through the sky. You reach into your pocket to pull out the tracker, a small piece of rich green rock. Your magic swirls across the surface of it, cinders worming through the stone; You don’t know how they found you when your magic is still active on the tracker, there are no ‘happy accidents’ in your line of work.

Gritting your teeth you dispel your magic around the tracker and toss it as far as you can in the opposite direction, wings pressing closer to your body to increase the speed of your glide.

With your motorcycle more than likely fucked, you have no choice but to rely on your bloodmade wings longer than you’d like. Using the mana you’d stuck on Khaled as a compass you let yourself fall and gain speed before spreading out your wings. The deep muscles in your back and chest scream for a second with each flap of your wings before your magic silences them, the discomfort of using temporary limbs easy to shove into the back of your mind. Your flying speed is much faster than that of the motorcycle, the ground moving rapidly beneath you.

You’re only mildly surprised to feel Khaled’s presence in his base. It’s an old oil refinery that was abandoned when the Russians restricted the production of oil in the country. Khaled found it and turned it into a bastion, hiding up high in the mountains like he’s some kind of king.

Any old dragon can attest a kingdom of steel and concrete like that won’t survive scorching flame.

Your only problem is that it’s got magic sensing tech, which just means there’s some extremely sensitive electronics that end up sparking like shoddily made light bulbs when more than just the smallest amount of modern magic is used. Sometimes you hate how thorough you are.

Luckily for you, it’s not the first time you’ve had to sneak past such tech.

You land near the base of the mountain, just at the edge where you know the range of those sensors ends. You’d like to say you land gracefully and with barely a sound, but you’re pretty sure a tank would have an easier time than you. The exhaustion and the added weight on your back doesn’t help you in any way to keep balance, making you stumble forward and almost trip on a root. Your arms spread out to grip the trees for support, but you underestimate your strength and the wood splinters under your right hand, making you fall face first.

The few seconds you spend flat on the ground is probably the longest you’ve spent laying down in the past month.

With a sharp breath you get to your feet, carefully leaning your shoulder against a tree. Your makeshift wings press against your back and pull on your muscles, but the thought of ‘what if you’ll need them?’ keeps you from dispelling them. Embers burn away the clothing shielding your front, giving yourself just enough sight of your skin to be able to cast the spells you need.

It’s one thing to push your mana to your hands and out as magic, it’s another to force the burning heat through every little capillary in your skin and pull on it in certain spots until magical circles etch themselves into your skin. It’s not that far off from using blood magic, only it requires a little less mana and focus. You’ve done this so much you could do it with your eyes closed, filling the insides of the circles with little diamonds and magical sigils only your mind can grasp.

The body enhancing spell has an immediate effect. The pain in your back disappears suddenly like it was never there, the vestiges of weakness from mana use getting pushed back to the back of your mind. It even dispels the base painful thrum in your skull you hadn’t realized you had.

With a clearer mind you go about casting more similar spells that carve themselves into your skin; one to temporarily strengthen your body beyond what you already have, another to force your mana generator to increase in productivity, yet a third one to increase the potency of your spells; Buffs that push your body past the edge of what it can take, to the point you barely feel human.

This is the closest man will ever come to godhood. ”Don’t let it get to your little head firebug.”

Your last spell to prepare is different. A dirty trick.

“Valefar.” You huff, speaking another name for a spell that deserves respect. Nothing happens at first, but then you feel it. Like a living thing deep beneath the earth, Valefar hums a soft lullaby to the tune of crackling flames. The dirt beneath you expands and black flames break through the earth, creating a spider web of dark old magic that fills up the empty root system spanning the entire mountain. The flames don’t dare touch you yet. They’re waiting. . . hungry.

Before the problematic thing in your skull can give you grief, you let the waiting beast in and welcome it like a brother. Valefar’s black flames shudder and slowly, carefully, crawl up your legs, scampering along your abdomen and kissing the sharp transition between skin and mage marks. They paint the yellow glow of your mage marks a pitch black, the magma of your arms and your crystalized blood turning black as obsidian. Even the flames tipping the ends of your wings turn black as pitch.

For a second you’re accosted with the sensation of every bit of magic you had pushed into the earth over the months, every drop of mana obediently waiting its time in the rotten root system. But Valefar soothes your mind, dampening the glow of your eyes and shrouding your brain in water cool flames. Valefar lacks the crushing weight or the freezing cold of most ruin spells, simply almost thrilled to be used.

Ruin magic is too old to be tracked by modern means, and you take the first step into the range of the sensors without fear. You knew Khaled would betray you, you’ve almost started growing old in an industry that killed its soldiers young, you knew to listen to your stomach. Khaled had been one of those people you wouldn’t trust as far as you could throw them, though you never expected him to be so brazen about it. It’s no different than the day hellfire rained down on your hea-

You stop yourself mid thought the second you register your anger trying to boil over, the burning heat inside your chest making steam rise off your shoulders. Asmodeus, the one spell you won’t ever use, sparks beneath your skin; angry, vengeful. You stifle it before it can gain an upper hand, sparks of black flame flying past your lips as you breathe out and escaping through the filters of your mask.

Taurus always blamed your hotheadedness on your magic. What is a mage if not the fire Prometheus stole for you? The suffocating hate Vesuvius spewed? The blackened rotten blood giving birth to spells like Beelzebub and Valefar?

Loud gunfire breaks through your thoughts; Khaled would never practice shooting drills in the middle of the night.

You increase your pace, turning your jog into a run. As you near the old refinery something immediately stands out to you – there’s way too many life signatures than there should be. Even without a good line of sight you can sense them, all those beating hearts and flickers of life fluttering together like moths until you find yourself with a massive pain in your skull.

Breathing out a small breath you duck behind the tall trees just at the edge of the compound. To say you’re surprised to find Urzikstan soldiers engaged in combat with Khaled’s men would be an understatement. And the army didn’t hold anything back. There’s a fuck ton of soldiers, most of them hiding behind tanks that block the only exit from the compound and sponge up the machine gun fire Khaled’s men are unloading into them. Bullets rain down on both sides, there’s even fucking helicopters flying in the air — this is a full on assault.

You can still sense Khaled is in the refinery somewhere, you would be able to narrow down on his exact location if there weren’t so many living bodies buzzing around like ants. Your mind whirls with ideas; you could use the distraction and sneak past, or you could just destroy both sides in one quick and clean attack, you doubt anyone would be able to notice you using magic when they’re more focused about the hail of bullets.

A tree branch snaps beneath you, followed by the clicking of a gun and three rounds going off. “Mage in sight! I repeat I got mage in sight!”

Nevermind.

The bullets tear through your vest but just bounce off your magic enhanced skin. You turn on your heel, holding your arm out. “Beelzebub.” Burning cold swells in your heart and crawls through your veins, black flames shooting out from your palm at the soldier. He barely has the chance to scream before the black fire eats away his vocal cords, his gun clattering to the floor. In only a few seconds the only thing left of him is the uniform and the black flames burning in the shape of a man.

Despite how stupid it might be, you let go of the fine control you have over Beelzebub. It doesn’t waste a second, thousands of little wisps of obsidian fire breaking off from the main mass and shooting out at the nearest source of organic matter. Be they tree or human, Beelzebub will devour them all the same.

Fresh mana fills your chest and you’re quick to turn it into something useful. This time it takes significantly less time to spread your wings, summoning ash beneath your feet and launching yourself up into the air.

Tree branches whack you over the head before you make it into the open air. . . and accidentally smash your head into the belly of a helicopter. A dull 'thump' sounds and you're not sure if it's your head that's empty or the helicopter.

Your vision blurs for a second, and you shake your head to get rid of the temporary headache. The helicopter swerves to the side, the tail swinging right at you, the soldiers inside yelling. Tucking your wings close to your body you fall just in time to avoid the tail, twisting your body as you careen through the air until you’ve got a clear line of sight. One magic circle is all it takes to blast a sizable hole through the center of the flying machine, taking out the engine and the blades all at once.

Quickly flapping your wings you dart up through the hole you created, ash flooding the inside of the heli as you pass and erupting in an explosion a second later. The heli plumets down to the ground but you stay in the air, spreading your wings out to soar. This high up you’ve got a clear view of everything — the entire compound, made up of two big buildings connected with a catwalk and oil storage towers; The machine gun men shooting at tanks with no regard for how many bullets they use; Beelzebub’s black flames spreading across the terrain like a forest fire, consuming everything in sight until the only thing left is scorched earth and dust.

First things first, the machine guns. Though not as dangerous to you as the tanks, you’ve had enough of them to sate you for a lifetime, and you’d rather not be on the receiving end again. With sitting ducks for targets it’s laughably easy to cast simple homing spells to kill the gunner and melt the machine guns mounted on the rails.

A bullet hits your chest, tearing through the bullet proof vest. It bounces off your skin but the force nearly knocks you out of the sky. You go with the force, tucking your wings and flipping backwards in the air until you can spread them out to glide down. You notice the snipers, two on the roof of each building, one on the middle one of the tall oil towers just behind the buildings. You go for the straggler first, diving down with the speed of a bullet.

The sniper tries to shoot you again but you barrel roll out of the way. You shoot a ball of flames at the sniper when you're close enough, completely disintegrating him on contact. Turning to your side you soar through the gap between two oil towers, making a sharp left turn around the tower with a quick flap of your wings so you can quickly soar up.

The building to your right is closer and your next target. Gliding down close to the roof you you summon your spell, incinerating the closer of the two snipers. The other one drops his rifle to shoot at you with a pistol, but you just tuck your wings close and barrel roll to evade the bullets.

Your wings suddenly spread out with the force of a tightly coiled spring, the crystalline edge slicing straight through the sniper's neck like a guillotine. You're given no time to focus on the remaining snipers when a massive artillery shell flies at you. With a swing of your arm your flames race out to collide with the shell, an explosion going off right in front of your face. Ash and soot cake on top of your lenses but that's a small price to pay when you can safely dart through the smoke cloud; looks like the tanks have noticed you.

Pulling your wings close to your wings close to your body you divebomb to take out the final two snipers. You crash into one of them, your boots making contact with his chest and the force you’ve generated from your flight means you completely smash through his ribs the second his back hits the roof. The concrete cracks beneath your boot, but that doesn't stop you as you race across it, pulling your arm back to swing a fist at the remaining sniper. The skull cracks the second your fist connects, breaking completely under your knuckles, blood and brains splattering on the lenses of your gasmask.

The roof you're on has a helicopter on it, and you think of destroying it, but the tanks present a bigger problem. Leaping off the edge of the building you launch yourself back into the air, turning your attention to the tanks. There’s four of them, all spread out in a vague arc across the empty field of land between the buildings and the road leading out. Not a problem for you.

Slowing down to a smooth glide you stretch your arms out in front of you. Your flames rush out to hit the artillery shells shot at you, but it also forces the mana Beelzebub keeps stuffing into your chest to move to your palms. Summoning four evenly sized circles in front of you is easy for a mage of your caliber. With mana burning in your palms you squeeze your hands, forcing all that magic to shoot out through the centers of the circles as concentrated beams of flame. As if struck down by some god's smite, The tanks blow up the moment your magic hits them, leaving smoldering half melted skeletons of steel behind.

You land near one of the tanks with enough force to crack the charred ground beneath you, stumbling a few steps forward. You turn your head, using the tattered remains of your jacket near your shoulders to wipe away the lenses. It makes you see the clear destruction Beelzebub has wrought, the once lush forest surrounding the compound turned baren. Yet the spell hungers still, given the chance it would easily devour the entire world, and you can feel it gnaw on the edges of your passive control in it's attempt to stray away from you. Biting the hand that feeds. Arrogant. Just like Lambert.

You're forced to snuff it out, dispelling Beelzebub before it tries to sweep through the country like all ten plagues.

A shuddering breath leaves you for the first time in a while, your lungs stuttering as you breathe in for the first time in a while. Despite how stuffed to the gills with mana your chest is, how you can barely breathe with the pressure against your ribs, you can feel the familiar sting of your bones — the cost of mana use burrowing into your marrow. The missions, the ambush, this, it’s all starting to pile on. It’s the cost, you suppose, no mortal will ever become god, this is simply a consequence for your choices.

Shots ring out above the crackle of flames, bullets bouncing off your body and only making you aware of the soldiers. Thy are too much of a problem to be kept alive, but killing them with magic would be a waste of mana considering you’re slowly reaching the breaking point of how much even your augmented body can handle.

Fortunately, you’ve got a cheap trick up your sleeve. Quickly sensing the exact location of the Urzikstan soldiers you cast another spell, circles forming beneath their feet before chains of living flame ensnare them like rabbits. "Belial." You say, your gaze fixed on the Urzikstan soldiers.

Belial is softer on your arteries than Beelzebub, but it still passes from your heart and into your fingers like a kidney stone. Big globs of tar black lava drip from your arms, sizzling and steaming when splatter on the ground. But they don’t stay inert for long. You’ve seen the sight a thousand times; Roaches made of pure black lava crawl out of the puddles by the dozens, quickly skittering towards the hapless humans. They crawl up the bound soldiers, fiery mandibles eating away the flesh and boring holes through muscle, squirming into every orifice, infesting every inch of their insides.

The soldiers try to scream but their vocal cords are soon devoured as the roaches eat everything they deem useless. They gorge themselves on the fat, groups of them peeling off the skin in long strips until the bowels and other organs fall out to the ground with a wet 'splat' to be eaten by yet more roaches. The bodies twitch and convulse, falling to the ground when you dispel the chains. Blood and mucus froths at their mouths but the roaches drink up even that like it's the finest wine.

When they're done feasting they crawl into the body that's nothing more but muscle, ligament, and bone. A single hand motion is enough to command the bodies to rise. They do so slowly, limbs twitching and bodies shaking as the magical roaches squirm in the homes they've made between muscle fibers. The bodies stumble to their feet, eyeless slack jawed heads full of roaches staring at you.

Your control over them isn’t as fine as Jackal had over his puppets, but it’s still better than what most militaries see. Your well hidden anger bleeds into your magic, you don’t even need to speak for the charred puppets to stumble past you, seeking out to devour the stragglers you missed.

With that done you turn your attention to the large two story building where you can still sense Khaled’s presence.

. . .

"Ah still think this is bollocks." Soap growls when his head bumps against the roof of the Humvee because Price drove over yet another pot hole in the road. "Go capture tae mage that can turn yeh into a kebab, wonderful idea, no wee problem there."

"Noted sergeant." Price grunts, knuckles almost white as he grips the steering wheel. "Anything else you want to add?" He asks but receives a few grumbles in return. They've heard that one part of the army had come to lay siege on the refinery, and from the preliminary reports Laswell gave them, it didn't end well for the poor bastards.

"Do we even have a game plan sir?" Gaz asks, glancing between Ghost and Soap sitting in the backseat. "One that isn't 'let the mage shoot at us until they tucker out'?"

"Got a better idea?" Ghost asks with a small huff. "Let me n' Price do the heavy lifting." He grunts, "You two stay back and provide support."

Even with irritation nibbling on his nerves, Soap can't help himself. "Oh, you like it hot Lt?"

Gaz gives a surprised snort. Ghost side eyes Soap. "Mhm, scorching."

"We're getting close." Price warns, switching gears as the road starts going up the hill. His sharp senses already pick up the lingering hints of smoke and ash along with the tang of burnt flesh. Beneath all of that is something older: the rancid festering flesh of crumbling empires and wild animalistic grief.

Price grits his teeth. "Remember, we need Ifrit alive."

"Laswell never said we had to keep 'em in one piece." Ghost ads.

"Thank fock for that." Johnny says and bumps his shoulder against Ghost's. "Yae reckon she won't mind if ah take a few fingers off?" He asks, a mean grin pulling his lips back to bare his teeth.

"Play nice and I'll throw you a femur too." Ghost chuckles, ignoring the look Johnny gives him.

"Are we even sure this thing will work?" Gaz asks, looking down at the heavy piece of metal in his hands. It looks like a metal collar, runes and circles etched into the outside surface, tiny needles poking from the inside. Three vials filled with bright purple liquid are slotted into the back of the collar. The thing buzzes softly beneath his claws, like there’s a thunderstorm stuck inside the metal, making his fingers go numb.

"That's why we brought the arm restraints to be sure." Ghost says, absentmindedly tapping a clawed finger against the restraints he's holding. They look like big elbow length mittens made out of metal, similar runes scrawled over every inch.

Kyle purses his lips before his gaze turns to the roll of silver tape Price had haphazardly thrown on top of the dashboard. "What's the tape for? Planning to put a bow on Ifrit?"

"Got to wrap up the gift somehow." Ghost shrugs.

"Oh yeah, an I reckon the mage will just sit nice n pretty and let us play dress up." Soap snarks.

"Focus." Price orders, pulling their attention to the front windshield. The forest surrounding the main road abruptly disappears as if a god had photoshopped a different part of the world in it's place, verdant green replaced by scorched black ground and nothing else. The smell of burning metal and flesh is inescapable now, seeping through the cracks of the windows and making Gaz cough.

"Fucking hell." Gaz mumbles, tears stinging his eyes and forcing him to quickly put on the gas mask hanging off his neck. It doesn't help a single bit with the god awful smell.

"This shite is useless." Soap complains as he secures the gas mask to his own face. Soap had smelled his fair share of foul things in the demolition school, from Sulphur to gas and everything that could be used in making explosives, but the stench he's exposed to now makes everything else smell like daisies. "How the hell did the matchstick do this?" He can't help but ask.

"That's the work of ruin magic." Price says, tone hard and clipped.

They're forced to stop a little bit away from the compound as their path is blocked by the wreckage of a helicopter, the steel melted into the concrete road and the sides of the road too steep to drive around. They pile out of the Humvee, Soap and Gaz clutching their guns close; it's uncommon for them to use human made weapons when they're monsters, but Price isn't taking any chances with his mens safety.

They inch carefully past the remains of the helicopter, burnt cracked dirt crunching beneath their boots. With no trees in the way the compound is easy to see, and it looks just as bad as the surrounding area.

"Steaming Jesus." Johnny mutters as they walk around one of the four tanks, the metal melted and flames still flickering a top it. The land here looks like the hell his ma would describe in an attempt to put some godliness in him; The ground is cracked and charred black, hot under their boots. Ash and steam blanket the ground, making it hard to see where they step. Parts of the buildings have been melted, long strands of slag running down the sides of them. There's no light save the fires burning haphazardly across the ground, but their eyes can see fine in the dark.

"Should we check for survivors?" Kyle asks, finger tightly pressed against the safety switch, his wings spread out just enough to be able to quickly launch himself into the air if the need arises.

"Don't bother." Simon says, dark smoke slowly fizzling off his hands. The air in the compound feels heavy, feels like he's back in that fucking coffin. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end, anticipation crackling under his skin like static. "We didn't bring a dust bin. Or Henry the Hoover."

"Fuck Lt," Soap opens his mouth to speak more, but before he can make a sound, they hear a half mangled groan ring out from their side. Immediately raising his gun Soap narrows his eyes, managing to make out a dark outline stumbling towards them. At first Johnny thinks it’s a survivor, but then the steam clears enough to see it’s clearly not. What stumbles towards them is a completely skinned human, muscle and bone charred black, jaw gnashing as if it's already got their throat between its teeth.

Without thinking Johnny unloads a couple of bullets into the body, silenced gunshots echoing in the smoke. The body just soaks up the bullets, continuing to stumble after them. "Shit!" Soap hisses as he steps back, but before he can shoot at it again, Simon's shadows lash out at it.

The whips of darkness knock the corpse to the ground, managing to tear off a desecrated arm off in the process. A disgusting sound gurgles in it's throat as it tries to crawl towards them, the cracked bone of its fingers clawing at the ground. Simon moves his hand up and a spike of darkness erupts from the walking corpse's shadow, destroying the head in an instant. Soap doesn't even have time to breathe before the body starts convulsing, large black pustules rapidly swelling on its back. They explode without warning, black flames spewing out in a few feet around it like a miniature bomb, incinerating the corpse in the process.

A second of silence passes.

"What the fock was that?" Soap stresses, staring at the black flames as they burn on the ground.

"Belial." Price mumbles under his breath, blue eyes narrowing as a small breath of smoke escapes past his lips. "Magic made undead.” Price grunts. “Ruin magic lets the mage control the body like a puppet."

"Great." Soap grunts, trying not to breathe in the scent of burning flesh. "First the bomb shaped mage, now focking zombies? Firecracker's pulling out all the stops." Soap’s tail flicks to his leg and he grips his riffle tighter. "Shit, that smell too." He doesn't know how you keep managing to make things smell worse and worse, but fuck, he's sure the stench will be stuck in his pores for the rest of his life.

"Not a fan of barbeque?" Ghost asks as they step around the burning corpse. Or rather what remains of it.

"Not quite the cook out ah have in mind LT." Johnny grumbles.

"Remind me not to join you two at the next brass dinner." Gaz ads with a humorless chuckle before his harpy eyes spot more movement. "Tangos, one o'clock." He says, and doesn't need to be prompted to fly up into the sky to be their eyes.

"Stick close and aim for the head." Price orders, all of them slowly and quietly making their way into the compound. They encounter more zombies, some of them stumbling around mindlessly, some simply standing. Knowing where to hit they're easy to take out unawares, a couple of bullets through the skull enough to get the corpses on the ground.

Kyle lands behind them when they near a two story building. Another one is opposite it, a catwalk above them connecting the buildings together. A nearby door is torn off its hinges, smoke spilling through it into the surrounding air. It's the only place they can think of where you might be.

"Simon, with me." Price says, "Gaz, Soap, secure the perimeter." Price doesn't need to say it twice. Simon steps close to him, guarding his six as they enter the building. Large holding tanks are built in the center of the building, smoke filling the room up to their knees and the occasional cinder of ash gracefully fluttering through the air. Price automatically checks his right, eyes focusing on the stairs leading to a small room on the second floor, one set of stairs on both sides of the room. Bits of thick ash cascade down the stairs, and both of them can smell the rot.

He makes a small hand motion and Simon understands easily, leaving his side to duck behind the towering oil tanks, crossing the room and reaching the other set of stairs. Quietly they make their way up, making sure not to make a single sound. The door on Price’s side is torn off too, his pointy ear flicking as he hears what he assumes to be your voice, low and muffled, simply asking: "How?"

. . .

Your hand shakes from how hard you try to keep yourself from crushing Khaled's skull. You can already imagine the way bone would softly creak before finally splintering to pieces, the way blood and brains would squelch between your fingers. You grip his head hard enough to bruise instead, his skin bubbling and hair burning from the barely controlled heat of your hand.

Khaled looks exactly how other prideful men look when you come to collect your due — eyes wide, teeth clenched, legs weakly kicking you as you have him dangling in the air. You’d usually feel satisfaction, but the only thing in your heart right now is a suffocating cold.

The cold extends to your free hand, turning the lava into inert stone so not even a single thread of the patch laying in your palm is burned; A black decapitated right hand sits in a crimson backdrop. A crimson eye in the center of it cries bloody tears. ‘Mortem Opetere’ is stitched on top of it, boldly proclaiming what awaits you. Across both sides just three measly words turn your world upside down: ‘Red Right Hand’.

Your jaw feels welded shut as you try to open it, moving your tongue like your mouth's full of barbed wire before you manage to force out one word: "How?"

Khaled grunts instead of answering, coughing as the ash cascading off your wings continues to twirl in the air. Beelzebub’s flames dance at your feet, consuming the magical ash the second it touches the floor so the room feels suffocating, but it doesn’t make him pass out.

You grip him harder, claws of lava burning through the surface of his skin until you’re digging into the muscles covering his bones, his screams fall deaf on your ears. Even like this, barely able to hold yourself back from cracking his skull like an egg, your magic is controlled. You only let enough mana linger in your palm so the heat burns and stabs at his nerves, but not enough to completely destroy them. “How. Did. You. Get. This?” You ask again, each word like a sharp stab to your tongue.

Khaled bites his lip so hard it bleeds, glaring at you with utter disgust in his eyes. “Ask your- mh!- your commander lich-”

You notice the enemy presence a second too late, gunshots blasting in your ears. Having dispelled your body enhancing spells because of how taxing they were, you’re left with no choice but to blindly throw up a shield of crackling flames to destroy the bullets.

You miss one.

The bullet hits the crystalized bone of your wing and it's all it takes to create a spark. The ash making up your wings erupts, the resulting explosion unable to damage your wing but it does knock you forward. Khaled slips through your fingers as you both are tossed to the ground from the force. Your magic surges through your hand even as you scramble to stand, magic circles forming in the air to shoot uncontrolled flames at the two exits of the room.

Ropes of dark shadows shoot out from the right doorway, forcing you to throw yourself to the side to dodge them. You get to your feet just as the shadows hit the wall at the height of your head, quickly eroding a hole into the steel; The wraith has found you, and likely the rest of the misfits too.

You're careful as you stuff the patch into your pocket, but have no regard for the muscles in your back when you spread your wings out. Fresh ash cascades down the crystalline bones just as you flap your wings to send a gust of ash towards the front of the room. Mana surges to your cold arm and melts the stone into liquid lava which you fling into the cloud of ash, the heat from those drops of lava causing another explosion. Unable to sense where the wraith is, you focus on completely blocking off the exits in your flames, bright circles forming at the doorways and white hot flames shooting up, spilling over the door frame to scorch the ceiling.

You’re too distracted to notice Khaled move "Idiot boy have I taught you nothing?" the crackle of flames and the exploding ash masking his labored footsteps. His hand grabs your shoulder and pulls you back enough to jab a cold needle of a syringe into your neck.

Your wing shoots out automatically, knocking him back with enough force to have him crash into the wall. You yank the syringe out and toss it to the ground. The glass shatters, residual drops of bright purple liquid seeping into the ground.

But it’s too late.

You can feel Morgana’s tears course through your system, burning each cell in your blood vessels like battery acid, leaving your throat feeling numb and head light and heavy at the same time. You sway on your feet before your legs go weak and you fall to your knees with a gasp as if someone had punched you in the gut, your burning fingers tearing gouges into the floor as your muscles tense and relax a million times a second. Beelzebub’s black flames shoot out from between your fingers, freezing cold solidifying around your heart and in your arteries. It's a useless attempt to stave off the serum, to give you a few seconds more to escape, but you're glad for it.

You push on the ground with all the strength you can muster and get back on your feet. The weight of your wings nearly makes you fall on your ass as you’re forced to take a few shaky steps to keep your balance. From the corner of your eye you can see Khaled stumbling away from you, to the third exit to the room which leads to a catwalk connecting this building with another.

Raising your hand you try to summon a spell to take him out, a shaky circle forming at your palm. It breaks into a million pieces when a heavy body slams into you like a train, breaking your concentration and your ribs. You’re forced back until your wings hit the wall, forcing them to spread out as some of the crystal audibly breaks and cracks, accosting your brain with pain signals your mind was never created to handle.

Your hands shoot up, “Fire-” You force out in an attempt to combat the shroud Morgana’s tears weave around your mind. A circle forms, the usually crisp lines wonky and inconsistent. A few measly sputtering sparks flicker in the center of the circle before you’re able to force a bout of unwieldy flames in the face of your opponent.

You can feel how weak your fire is, you doubt you could give a man a second degree burn, let alone scratch the fireproof skin of the dragon that comes charging through your magic. Icy blue eyes dance in the periphery of your vision seconds before the dragon punches you right in the diaphragm.

You hunch over and almost vomit up an organ as all the air is forced out of your lungs. You feel your muscles tear and ribs break, your magic too focused on healing you to numb any of the pain that comes racing to your brain. You don’t know how you’re still standing but you weakly manage to slam your elbow back into the wall, quickly cooling lava scraping the metal and causing a spark.

The ash explodes for a second time, the force of it making your wings crack further yet they still hold. It creates a hole in the wall and forces the dragon to stumble back with a cough. You tip back and fall through the hole, the whole world weighing down on your body before you crash on the hot hard ground. The sudden stop knocks the breath out of you a second time, every muscle in your back screaming at you. Your chest is steadily growing colder as Morgana’s tears bypass Beelzebub, your arms feeling stiffer with every waking second as the serum forces your mana to slumber.

Your vision swims and blurs like the lines of a water drenched painting, voices somewhere close echoing in your ears. The dragon’s cold blue eyes stare down at you for a second before he jumps through the hole. You roll out of the way with great difficulty, avoiding him just in time as the dragon’s fist lands where you had just been and shatters the earth.

Stumbling to your feet you feel your blood leak down your back, pain pulsing in your chest as your mana struggles to heal each broken bone. Your mind is scrambling for the names of the spells you haven't needed to use in a long time, your thoughts further slowed by the fact you need to dodge out of the way of the dragon's fist. “Jump.” You speak. You summon a circle beneath your feet you that launches you into the air, the whirling world almost making you vomit and you barely manage to catch yourself on an oil containment tower.

Somehow through the ringing in your ears you hear the whirring of helicopter blades, turning your head to see a helicopter quickly rise from the roof of a building and start to fly away. You don’t need magic sense to know Khaled is in it. Your hand shakes as you raise it, Morgana’s tears steadily taking more of your mana hostage to the point it's getting hard to cast a single spell. “Fire bullet.” You manage to say, shooting off a shaky ball of concentrated flames.

You miss the rotor you had been aiming for, but by a lucky chance manage to hit the tail. Your fire isn't hot enough to melt the metal fully, but it still enough to make the helicopter swerve wildly. You watch it slowly loose altitude and crash somewhere beyond the tree line.

You’re not given even a second to catch your breath before the tower shakes violently, beginning to list heavily. You catch sight of a werewolf trying to scale it and that forces you to jump off the tower. You land on the one in front of you and don't stop, leaping across the three towers. Jumping off the last one you manage to flap your wings, the pitiful explosion that goes off beneath you gives just enough lift for your slowly liquifying wings to reach the roof of the second building.

You stumble as you land on the roof, the coagulated blood forming your Daedalus wings falling to the ground with a wet 'splat'. It feels like every single inch of your veins and arteries have been turned into pin cushions, the hot lava of your arms, absent of mana, quickly cools until there’s only a thin surface of cracked rock covering your muscles and bones. Your vision swims and you can barely move your arms, trying your best to just stay upright.

Asmodeus is the only thing unaffected, burning at the back of your mind like the last star of an empty universe. It tempts you with the heat of the magic it can give, with the power you could use if you just let it in. What's a few more drops of blood when you're drowning in it?

The harpy comes out of nowhere, slamming into you with enough force to knock you off the building.

You land on your back, barely able to utter a sound from how loudly your bones crack. Your leg is numb. Lingering dredges of your magic crawl across your spine, trying to fix your wounds with the same grace as cavemen with stole tools. You whimper like a child as you try to get up, barely able to dig your fingers into the scorched dirt to get some stability.

Footsteps approach you. A boot sharply kicks your side and forces you to roll on your front. "Playtime's over." A voice rings somewhere in your ears. Your scattered brain focuses on the accent — Manchester you think — instead of the clawed hands that yank your arms behind your back. Instinctively you try to scramble out of the firm hold but it's useless and the only thing you achieve is making the enemy pull on you harder.

Your arm is forced into a sickeningly familiar constraint; The mage cuff seals around your forearm and forces your hand into a fist, the binding spells making the metal feel like your arm is coated in liquid nitrogen. Your other arm follows suit, powerful magnets activating and binding the cuffs. They lock your arms together and painfully force your chest to stick out to the point you can barely move your arm without the risk of dislocating it.

More footsteps ring behind you as you weakly struggle. "Stay fucking still." The man above you growls as he yanks the helmet off your head with enough force you’re surprised he doesn’t take your head off. You gasp as the ash and smoke filled air enters your lungs, so unused to going without your helmet. A collar is quickly snapped around your throat, so tight you can barely breathe, needles on the inside digging into your skin. The binding spell on the collar is just as vicious as the one on the cuffs, forcibly pulling your brain into the bottom of the ocean.

Your vision swims with black spots and you’re barely able to see a man squat in front of you until rough clawed fingers grip your chin hard enough to make you bleed dark purple-red blood over his fingers. The enemy tugs your head up, but you’re unable to make out more than bright blue eyes and a stupid mohawk. "Huh, ah was expecting uglier."

Spite flares in your heart. A glob of spit and red blood shoots from your mouth at his face before you can think. The slap you receive nearly knocks your head off your shoulders and bashes your brain against your skull. His claws rake across your cheek, blood pouring down your skin. "Ahgk! Fockin' disgusting-" But It's worth it to hear the man curse.

"Told you not to take it off." The enemy on top of you growls.

"Charming." A lighter voice, you think it's the harpy, ads. "He's not going to turn into. . . one of them?"

"No." A new voice joins in, hard, angry, rumbling like thunder. You think it's the dragon, but your brain struggles to stay conscious let alone try to think. "Tape."

You shake your head to be difficult just out of spite, but sharp fingers bury into your scalp and pull your head up so the tape can be sealed over your mouth.

The enemy, wraith, your mind reminds, has no problem hoisting up your cold body, manhandling you like a doll.

You’re barely conscious as you’re roughly pushed into somewhere, somewhere without a lot of space. Two unyielding bodies squeeze you in on either side, your chest is barely able to move enough to ensure your lungs get a bit of air. Panic tries to get a foothold in your mind, to make your silent heart race. The walls and ceiling feel like they’re closing in, like you’re getting squished down and at any moment your organs will rupture—

But the drugs smooth out your brain like ocean waves weather down massive cliffs, your body so exhausted you can’t manage even a small twitch of a struggle. You feel the cold muzzle of a gun press against your temple, the cool sensation making you aware of the pounding headache.

"Move," The man on your left says, voice rough like sandpaper and with a distinct accent, "An’ yer dead." His threat sounds like an order, you don’t doubt he’s just itching for you to make a single move he can justify to his brass as aggression and kill you. You know you would do the same.

The vehicle you’re in rumbles to life but you can barely feel it, body and mind too exhausted to even hold your head up. Your stomach twists and turns as if trying to find a way to crawl up through your mouth, your lungs burn from the lack of air.

“Laswell we got-”

“-bout Khaled-”

“-ead, arsonist shot do-”

“-get out, the army reinforcements are co-”

You try to pay attention to what they say, but their words bang uselessly around your hollow skull, shapes and edges blurring together into abstract art. With nothing stopping it, Morgana’s tears leisurely branch through your blood vessels like brambles, making you shiver from how cold you are. You’re stuck in maddening limbo, there’s not enough of the drug in your system to turn you temporarily catatonic — your body is too used to the drug — but at the same time it’s fucking agony.

You've done this before, you know how much small victories count. You don’t know what they want from you, but you swear to yourself not to cry from the pain, both now and when the torture starts. You’re not a fucking child, not that snot nosed private you were when you first felt the sting of Morgana’s tears, you’ve been through worse.

But the problem is, you’re not out of tricks.

Your control over Valefar slips, the exhaustion and drugs slowly wearing down the rope of control you've been maintaining for months. Since the first day you started working for Khaled. You knew he’d betray you, you had that feeling in your gut. The collar beeps as mana suddenly sparks in your chest, thawed by the ancient magic you use. Without warning the needles in the collar jab into your neck as your mana builds, pumping more of the poison into your blood.

But it’s useless, with steam starting to rise off your chest not even you are able to hold it back. A rough chuckle forces its way out of your throat. You always figured you would die by your hand or not at all.

"What’s with the giggling?" The werewolf demands, gun still trained on you. "Something funny?"

You gather your strength and slowly roll your head back, every vertebra in your spine cracking from how much damage your body has received. The trembling wall of the truck gives you the support you lack. Black spots dance in your vision, but you manage to turn your gaze to one side.

On your right is the wraith. A creature of death. Violent Death.

You feel like there’s a joke about the situation somewhere. Figures you’d be sat against the personification of violent death. You’ve been living on borrowed time for too long, the reaper doesn’t like to wait.

Shadows darkening what little you can see of his face through the skull mask, making his eyes look like you’re staring into the void.

Unnerving.

You’ve been told your eyes are much the same.

The wraith stares at your face, into your eyes. You’re pretty sure this is the first time in ten years that someone has seen the eyes you were born with. The color is so painfully drab and human.

But it don’t last. Out of nowhere mana sparks in your eyes like a violent forest fire set off from the cinder of a forgotten cigarette. Oranges, reds, and yellows swirl around the pitch blackness of your pupil, bright and intense like staring into a black hole.

There’s no grand gesture to show the snapping of your control. Your heart skips a beat as it births Valefar, the soft cool magic nibbling on your veins as a pulse of cool mana rushes through to your fingers. You see the wraith stiffen, only barely able to sense how the world quivers.

The earth shatters.

The truck jerks forward and you almost fly out of the front windshield, kept in place by someone's rough hand gripping and pulling you back in place. The earth shakes violently as months of accumulated mana melts through rock and suddenly erupts from the ground as a beam of pitch black flames. You can feel Valefar laughing beneath the ground, inside your hollow heart. It takes joy in spreading your magic as far as it can, incinerating the arriving helicopters full of soldiers before they can even understand what's happening.

The car swerves to avoid the rocks falling from the sky, the air around you trembling as Valefar makes a crater out of the mountain. They’re lucky that your control finally evaporated when they were far enough to escape the impact zone.

You tilt your head, catching sight of the wraith. He stares at you.

Your eyelids flutter without your consent, all strength leaving you, but you manage to wink at him.

You pass out.

Tag list: @resident-cryptid @diejager @lovingtyrantkitten @lieutnt @lilpothoscuttings @krystiannng @crankyweasel @ashy-kit @fyolaizs @h0n3y-l3m0n05 @aldis-nuts @whoislucas @birdiiiiiiiiiii @thigh-o-saur @dont-look-at-me-im-shy @reaperxxxxzz @patronizingbitch @kaoyamamegami @mauvette268 @inspector-m3 @gaynesspersonified @fluffysteampunkd @fall-myriad

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tobbotobbs · 7 months ago

Text

this winding labyrinth, ch7

chapter seven: survival

pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Reader (reader is not gendered, race-ambiguous, and no physical descriptors are used)

summary:

this is chapter 7, act 2 of this broken design. if you haven't read act 1 or chapters 1-6, this won't make too much sense.

ao3 version | Spotify playlist

warnings: nightmares, drowning; canon-typical blood, violence, gore, & death. y'all know the drill by now, i think.

If your dreams were vivid before, you’re not even sure how to describe them now. The moment you close your eyes, you’re transported somewhere else. Suddenly, you’re walking with bare feet on muddy soil when wrists shoot out of the damp earth, grabbing onto your ankles and yanking you back through dirt until you fall down next to a decaying corpse…

Then you’re swimming through a sea of broken glass, every movement burying shards further into your skin. Your blood slips through the fragments, a crimson bubbling sea rising around you until you’re being pulled under by the ferocious current…

…You’re restrained on an autopsy table, a surgeon making an incision down your chest. Your chest aches, but you suspect the feeling isn’t just from the scalpel. Sure enough, you feel something clawing at your chest cavity and you lurch forward against the iron manacles forcing your wrists down. Claws prickle against your skin and, suddenly, a bright bird bursts from your chest and flies about the room…

Then you’re standing across from Hannibal, as he stares at you from his confines. He presses his fingertips to the glass boundary and it crumbles to dust in the stale air. For a moment, when you blink, you see bloodstained antlers branching out from Hannibal’s head. When you blink again, he is standing impossibly closer. You’re screaming at yourself to move, run, but you’re entirely frozen. Just as he reaches out, there’s an impossibly loud blaring sound…

You open your eyes to find yourself tangled in your bedsheets, your alarm making incessant noise. You reach out to grab your phone and turn off the alarm, before rubbing a hand over your face as you try to ground yourself to reality. These dreams of yours aren’t helping your sleep at all, and you sometimes find yourself staying up later in the foolish hopes of outrunning the horrors you know you’ll be met with when you close your eyes.

There’s a buzzing sound ringing in your ears—an aftereffect of the dream. You clamp your hands over your ears, surprised that the effort actually dampens the sound. Then you glance at your nightstand and realize that your phone is ringing. You stare at it for a few moments in confusion, before groaning and picking it up. There’s an incoming call from Jack—you immediately accept and push yourself up to a sitting position, before bringing the phone to your ear.

Jack neglects a greeting. “There was a murder,” he says. Immediately, all of the thoughts you’d been trying to push away—namely, the Tooth Fairy killings and your conversation with Hannibal—come flooding back. You take a short breath in. “A prisoner at Baltimore State Hospital died yesterday; he choked on his own tongue.”

Foreboding clings to your skin like a vice. Jack doesn’t need to provide any more detail, because you can already picture—with almost complete certainty—who the victim was. All you need to do is close your eyes and remember the disgusting feeling of saliva on your cheek, followed by the ice-cold shiver that ran down your spine as you saw the fury gleaming in the Ripper’s eyes. Just as you expect, Jack confirms that the victim was Miggs—the same inmate who you had that rather unpleasant interaction with but a few days ago.

You’re lost for words. Thankfully, Jack isn’t expecting an answer from you. “Chilton wants you here,” he continues, a hint of annoyance creeping into his tone. “Now.” You’re still sitting in bed at this point—and Frederick Chilton isn’t exactly a person you’d rush out of bed to assist.

“Tell him I’ll be there this afternoon,” you answer after a moment’s contemplation. You have plans to visit Abigail today—which you refuse to reschedule. Plus, you need to review the case files and autopsy reports before returning to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. “And if that’s not soon enough… then too bad.” Chilton isn’t your boss—Jack Crawford is. And you know Jack has far more pressing issues than a house call from a hospital administrator.

Your suspicions are correct, because Jack doesn’t argue. “Got it.” The call ends and you groan, rubbing a hand over your face roughly in an attempt to fight off your exhaustion. It’s a bit earlier than you intended to be awake, but you know you won’t be able to fall asleep again. Conceding defeat, you brush your teeth and get dressed before heading out to the kitchen for a light breakfast.

Not long after, you find yourself taking notes on what you know of the Tooth Fairy so far as you sit on your back porch, wind whipping at your skin. The cigarette dangling between your fingers is a small comfort, and it doesn’t provide nearly enough warmth as you desire. Even as you try to focus on the imminent threat—the Tooth Fairy—all you can think about is your interaction with Hannibal. You should have known that he would aim to harm Miggs. Indeed, that vicious snarl on Hannibal’s face was indicative of what was to come. You should’ve fucking known. Then, maybe another person wouldn’t be dead. Then, maybe you wouldn’t be sitting on your porch with this selfish guilt crawling around in your chest. You have no right to be guilty—you practically allowed that murder to happen.

…Right?

You’ve caught yourself getting stuck in that mindset rather often recently. Your psyche loves to assign you the guilt and award you the responsibility. Sometimes, you know it’s deserved. But, in cases like this—in situations like the murder of Miggs, where you were just a bystander—you feel like you’re giving yourself too much credit.

There’s only so much time you can spend mulling over the details of the Tooth Fairy killings and refreshing your memory before you find yourself growing agitated. You’re buzzing with restless energy, your foot tapping against the deck impatiently. Your thought process has grinded to a halt; the just barely visible trail has now gone cold. It’s frustrating to have so little information on this killer, especially when you know exactly when he will kill next. You feel as if you’re just fighting against the inevitable, at this point. But murder should never be inevitable. The BAU needs to find a way to get this guy behind bars.

You shake your head and push yourself to your feet, collecting your materials into a relatively coherent pile and moving back inside. The sky is looking a bit overcast, and you’d rather not have raindrops scattered across the files. Besides, it’s nearly time for your visit with Abigail, you realize as you look down at your watch.

You’ve been visiting her off and on since the encounter with her father in their home—since he sliced his daughter’s throat and stared right through you, those eerie, dusty green eyes pinning you in place with ease-

Safe to say, your memories of Garret Jacob Hobbs still aren’t buried, even after so many years. He’s the first of the many voices sounding in the cacophony of your mind.

You push thoughts of the murderer aside and walk up the path towards the building. You sign in with the receptionist and walk over to the waiting area, taking a seat on the couch. It doesn’t take long before Abigail makes an appearance, and the two of you exchange greetings before you walk outside, settling on one of the benches under a willow tree. The wind rustles through the leaves and there’s a slight chill to the air, but it’s far from unpleasant. You place your hands on your knees and try to pretend as if you aren’t feeling tense. You’re here to speak with Abigail—you can abandon thoughts of bloodstains and corpses until you leave.

For a few minutes, Abigail and you sit on the bench in companionable silence. You get the feeling that Abigail is trying to figure out her next words, and your instinct is proven correct when she breaks the silence moments later. “I’ve been placed into a foster home,” she reveals.

You raise your eyebrows and try to study her reaction. She doesn’t exactly look thrilled. Actually, on second thought, Abigail looks as if she wants to be happy—but she’s preventing herself from being hopeful. You suppose that’s a normal reaction, for someone who’s been through what she’s been through. “That’s wonderful news, Abigail,” you say with a smile. The smile on her face flickers and you frown. “What’s the matter?”

Abigail sighs, clasping her hands in her lap. She is being uncharacteristically evasive. You decide to be patient and wait for her to gather her composure. Eventually, she takes a deep breath. “I… I’m scared.” The admission seems to take a lot out of her. She’s avoiding your gaze now, staring ahead at the building she’s been practically trapped in since she woke from her coma.

“What are you scared of?” You hum, genuinely curious. You don’t want to patronize her, so you try to ensure that your expression is as open and honest as possible.

Abigail is silent for a bit. “Disappointing them,” she eventually admits. You try to digest that confession. “And I feel like… I don’t deserve this. After everything I’ve done…” Everything she has done, indeed. Abigail was not entirely innocent in her father’s crimes—and she was more than just complicit. She helped him source his victims, pretended to make friends with them so that they would let their guard down. Maybe that’s why you have formed such a kinship with Abigail: you both know cruelty; Abigail and you have both been victims and perpetrators. “What if they don’t like me?” Abigail whispers, so quietly you nearly convince yourself you imagine it.

Then you’re abruptly reminded that, above all, Abigail is still a young girl—practically a child. Your throat burns a little as you process her statement. “They’ll love you, Abigail.” You’re quick to reassure her.

“What if they don’t?” Her voice cracks and your heart breaks a little.

“Then you can make a break for it,” you respond with a dramatic wink. The remark successfully diffuses the tension that had been settling in the air and Abigail laughs. A small part of you wants to offer for her to stay with you, but you know that’s a foolish promise to make. You suppose it’s normal to want a family—every human craves connection, in one way or another… regardless of how that connection may manifest. But you’re not deluded enough to think that you have all the necessary tools to be a parental figure to Abigail. You’re busy enough fighting off your own demons. Abigail deserves a normal life, and you’re not able to give that to her.

(Maybe, in another world, you would be able to provide her with a quiet, ordinary life and a loving home. Maybe, in this other world, you would have someone to share that responsibility with you—someone who cares about Abigail just as much as you, someone who would protect her with all the ferocity and compassion that she deserves. Someone like…)

Your thoughts are veering into dangerously fantastic territory. You shake your head and try to shift your focus back to the conversation, ignoring the deluded (but compelling) calls of domesticity and belonging. Ultimately, you have never belonged. And you don’t see that changing any time soon.

“So… it may be a while before I see you again,” Abigail says, tearing you out of your reverie. You stare at her for a few moments.

“That’s okay,” you then reassure her, upon seeing the guilt written all over his face. “You’ll be busy—going to school, hanging out with friends. You won’t even think about an old geezer like me.” You smile, hoping to cheer her up further. Your efforts seem to work, because a smile rises on her lips.

“Shut up,” Abigail says with an amused huff. “That’s not true.”

“It is true,” you say, a fond smile growing on your face. You hope she’ll be able to move on from all this and live a normal life: go to school; hang out with friends; and engage with her hobbies. You can only hope that Abigail’s father doesn’t haunt her mind the same way he haunts yours. “And I wouldn’t want anything less for you.” You maintain.

A pleasant silence descends across the air once more. A gentle wind blows through the trees and Abigail sighs. You mimic the gesture and she smiles. You’re not sure how long the two of you remain seated in companionable silence before an orderly appears in the doorway of the building and taps her wrist, indicating that your time is almost up.

You dig your hands in your pockets and find the item you intended to give her, turning it over in your hand and hesitating for a moment. Abigail follows your gaze and looks at it. You realize it’s too late and take a deep breath, offering her the object. “If you ever need me,” you say pointedly.

Abigail takes your business card and looks down at it, raising her eyebrows. “Ooh, how professional,” she teases. You roll your eyes. The orderly motions pointedly and a sudden sincerity stifles the air. “I’ll make sure to text you.” She promises, the resolute gleam in her eyes indicating that she will not go back on her word.

You stand up and she does the same, before turning towards you and reaching forward to hug you. There’s a kind of sadness lingering in her movements, in the unspoken way she tucks her head into your chest and stays there. It’s clear she’s still nervous about the whole foster parent affair, and you don’t blame her. “They’re going to love you,” you assert, resisting the uncharacteristic urge to ruffle her hair.

“I hope so,” she murmurs against your shoulder.

“They will,” you reassure her. They’d better, you think darkly. The two of you eventually break apart and Abigail regretfully traipses back to the building, leaving you to walk to your car with conflicting feelings of relief and stress. You get the feeling you’ll see Abigail again, but it may be a little while. You’ll be busy with work and she’ll be busy adjusting to a new lifestyle—a peaceful one.

Overall, your visit with Abigail was a welcome distraction from everything going on; unfortunately, the moment you start your car and pull out of the parking lot, all of your anxieties come rushing back. You’re supposed to meet with Frederick Chilton. Supposedly, he wants to speak with you. You can only hope that your conversation won’t be centered around getting you to participate in a consultation appointment with him.

And, to your immense fortune, Chilton doesn’t mention a consultation appointment once. Perhaps he’s finally accepted that you’re not interested in participating in a vulnerable conversation with him (or a conversation at all, if you’re being perfectly honest). Instead, he levels you with a wary gaze as you enter his office, his eyes tracking your every movement. You settle for standing in front of his desk with your hands shoved in your pockets. Admittedly, you’re feeling pretty restless—but you don’t want to give Chilton the satisfaction of knowing that.

“You wanted to see me.” You prompt, after a few seconds pass and the administrator doesn’t make any move to address you.

“I’m assuming Jack has briefed you,” he says, cutting right to the chase. You nod and he pinches the bridge of his nose. “The prisoner who died was Miggs… His cell was near Lecter’s.” You aren’t very surprised and the thought briefly makes you feel guilty, before you remember why exactly Miggs was imprisoned. “When I went to review the security footage, I noticed something interesting,” Chilton continues ambiguously.

The look on his face is nothing short of pure suspicion. You’re quickly losing patience with this circular conversation. “What?” You demand tersely.

Chilton doesn’t seem surprised by your sudden rudeness. Instead he just exhales slowly, clasping his hands on his desk and looking at you with an unreadable expression. “There was an altercation between you and the victim.” He states.

“Yes, he spit on me.” You recall, unable to hide your distaste. Chilton grimaces in sympathy. It’s a fleeting gesture—one that is performed for pretense, rather than out of genuine sentiment. Although, you’re sure he’s had similar experiences with prisoners—what with his position as the hospital’s head administrator.

“Immediately after, you spoke to Lecter.” Chilton continues. This is just one of the numerous reasons you don’t like Frederick Chilton: when he has the opportunity to speak, he monopolizes it. He likes hearing the sound of his own voice, so he’ll go into painful and unnecessary detail for his own amusement. You always struggle with being patient in these moments, and right now is no exception. “Then, hours later, Miggs turns up dead. That seems like more than mere coincidence.”

You grit your teeth, catching the implications of his statement immediately. “You think that I spoke to Lecter and ordered him to kill Miggs?” You repeat, a little indignation seeping into your voice. You’re trying your best to remain calm, but it’s difficult when you’re being accused of a murder you didn’t commit. “Why would I do that?”

“Miggs spit on you, disrespected you,” Chilton answers. It’s an incredibly weak justification, and it almost looks as if he regrets uttering it. In your infinite generosity, you give him a few moments to take it back. But he doesn’t move to apologize or rescind his remark, so you’re forced to acknowledge it.

“My pride isn’t that easily wounded,” you scoff, crossing your arms over your chest. “I think you know I didn’t sic Lecter on him just for a simple discourtesy.”

“Men have been killed for far less.” That may be true, but you wouldn’t kill someone over a small act of disrespect. You want to think you wouldn’t kill at all, but you’re afraid it’s a bit too late for that. Your victims cackle in your ears, reminding you of your cruelty and hypocrisy.

Chilton is staring at you expectantly. You remember that it’s your turn to respond. “Yes, it’s probable that Lecter killed Miggs,” you acquiesce. “But I didn’t ask him to do that.” He did it of his own accord, you know. Arguably even more frightening.

“Even so…” Chilton breaks off.

“Just stop,” you interject, before he can hurl any more unfounded conjecture at you. “You’re grasping at straws here. Not to mention, if you checked the security footage, you would know that I left the building after that encounter. There��s no way I would’ve been able to get back in and have another conversation with Hannibal.” You don’t notice the slip until you see Chilton raise a brow, and you’re quick to continue speaking. “Besides, if you wanted to know what he said to me, you could’ve just asked.” You suspect that’s been the prime motivator for this conversation. Chilton likely knows that you didn’t commit the murder—he’s just trying to lead you into a verbal trap in which you reveal details of your conversation.

“Very well,” Chilton acknowledges with a gesture of mock-surrender. “What did he say to you? The footage shows you about to leave, before you return to Lecter for a few moments.” He recalls, glancing at his computer before looking at you again.

“He was calling my name,” you remember. “I went back.” I’m not sure why, you neglect to say. “He asked me if Miggs spit on me. I told him that he did. He said it was discourteous. I told him it would be fine.”

“And then?” Chilton asks, practically leaning forward in interest.

You smile. “Then I walked away.” You answer.

Chilton visibly droops and you just barely manage to hold back a laugh. Honestly, you can’t believe he had the audacity to try to play mind games with you. You’re a criminal profiler and investigator—you’ve spoken to far more dangerous personalities and have manipulated people far more threatening than Frederick Chilton. The fact that he thought, even for a moment, that he could talk circles around you is insulting—and it speaks to his towering ego.

“Now, I want to speak to Lecter,” you assert. I’m not letting this visit be a complete waste of time, you think to yourself. You’re already here—you might as well try to squeeze some more answers out of Hannibal. Will you actually get any valuable information? Probably not. But you won’t know unless you try. At least, that’s how you try to justify it to yourself. The voices don’t like that justification, though—Franklyn whispers that you’re just like him, that you just crave his full attention-

“Knock yourself out,” Chilton sighs dejectedly, tossing you his keys. You’re roughly torn out of your thoughts and you just barely manage to catch them, surprised that he’s trusting you with his keys after he just finished accusing you of murder. Your thoughts must show on your face, because Chilton just shakes his head in disbelief. “It’s been a long day.”

You decide to leave it at that and leave his office, heading downstairs and pacing down the hall lined with iron bars and dehumanizing cages. The prisoners aren’t nearly as rowdy as they’ve been in the past, and you think you make it all the way to the final door before Hannibal’s cell without being harassed or insulted. That might just be a record, you think to yourself wryly as you unlock the security door with Chilton’s door and shut it behind you. Immediately, your eyes aren’t drawn to Hannibal—but to another cell.

Miggs’ cell is empty. There’s a sizable chunk taken from the toilet (evidently, that’s what he threw at you). More worrying, however, is the rather large, light pink stain marring the floor. It’s clear a janitor was tasked with mopping up all the blood that Miggs left behind. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like all of the blood came out. You shake your head and rip your eyes away, that familiar nausea prickling at the back of your throat.

When you settle in front of Hannibal’s cell, you realize that something is different. Hannibal is seated at his writing desk, staring down at the cracked wood as if it holds invaluable secrets. He looks up when you take another step, but you’re too busy looking at the empty shelves behind him. Consulting your memory, you realize that his books aren’t crowding the shelves anymore.

“Where are your books?” is somehow the first question that leaves your lips. Hannibal clearly doesn’t expect the question, because he blinks for a few moments before helplessly quirking his lips as he turns to face you. “Chilton took them?” You ask before he can answer.

“Yes,” Hannibal nods. The irritation that is normally hidden behind layers of his mask almost seems to froth and bubble over, spilling over his frame and tightening his posture. He clasps his hands on the desk and stares at you, studying you. You’ve gotten used to the feeling of being shoved under a microscope and relentlessly examined with attentive eyes, yet it doesn’t fail to unnerve you.

“I’ll speak to him,” you suggest after a few moments. Getting Hannibal his books back may help him to trust you, which could prove beneficial in the long run. But that’s not the real reason you’re offering, is it? “In the meantime-” You try to continue.

“Will you really?” Hannibal interjects, staring at you scrupulously. There is little emotion in his voice—no sign of hope or gratitude. The statement is spoken with an entire lack of substance. Perhaps captivity is slowly eating away at the man. Somehow, you doubt it.

“Yes, I will,” you promise before you can consider the consequences. Why did you do that? Somehow, you felt pressured to agree—and Hannibal hadn’t even formed any expectations for you to do so. You just volunteered to speak to Chilton on his behalf… entirely of your own accord. And that troubles you. You thought you were maintaining a professional distance, but your actions are speaking to something deeper.

“I would be grateful,” Hannibal says. “There is little to do in this cell.”

Now you’re feeling guilty. You’re falling prey to his mind games, knowingly, yet you aren’t doing anything about it. You are an entirely willing deer prancing about near a lion’s den. “Books keep the mind at bay, I’m sure,” you murmur. You’re speaking before thinking and it shows. “Anyway, that’s not what I came for-”

Hannibal inexplicably gets up from his seat and you flinch. He paces towards the glass barrier, until he is a mere two or three feet from you. Then he inhales through his nostrils. The man’s brows furrow and his expression turns pinched. “You smell of smoke,” Hannibal remarks astutely. His eyes flit up and down your form, likely looking for evidence of your new habit.

“I’m surprised you didn’t notice sooner,” you say guardedly. Indeed, from what you remember, he has always had a keen sense of smell. That primarily manifested in him making those eerie types of comments, but you also noticed his nose scrunch at unpleasant scents when he thought no one was looking.

“I noticed the moment you approached the glass, before our most recent conversation,” Hannibal confesses. You frown. “I dismissed it as a once-off occurrence… It appears I was incorrect.”

Silence. You don’t know what to say. Hannibal seems content to let the silence drag on painfully, as he just stares wordlessly. Just when you’re growing to be a little too uncomfortable, he breaks through the quiet air. “Tell me, do you enjoy the thought of lung cancer?” He hums lightly.

You don’t bother dignifying that statement with a response, instead burying your hands further into your jacket pockets. Your fingers find the steadfast cold metal of your lighter and you take a deep breath. A cough is building in your throat and you tilt your head to the side and cough into the crook of your elbow. You don’t need to look at Hannibal to know that he’s staring at you with a knowing expression, but you find your gaze pulled back to him (as it always is). You’re instantly surprised by the sight of Hannibal frowning at you. You were certain he would take pride in foreseeing your suffering, but instead, he looks concerned. Surely you must be seeing things.

“Does it bring you solace?” Hannibal breathes. You don’t need to ask him to elaborate, but he does anyway. “Burning yourself from the inside out, that is.” Admittedly, you have thought about that before. A part of you, however small, does take solace in the fact that your new smoking habit is slowly destroying your lungs, rendering them entirely inedible to a cannibal. Maybe this is just a small delusion you’ve allowed yourself—one fleeting act of resistance against a never-ending, surging tide.

The Chesapeake Ripper is waiting for an answer. Inwardly, you find amusement in the realization that, out of all the things you’ve done, smoking is what bothers Hannibal. You have done far more cruel, dangerous, and self-sabotaging things—but this is where he draws the line. Once a doctor, always a doctor.

“I’ve grown used to the flames,” you mutter.

He doesn’t find your answer satisfactory. That much is clear, from the way his lips are pulled tight in a thin line to the disappointment lingering in all that remains unspoken between you. “And to addiction?” Hannibal asks. His presence before you now is one big contradiction: his words are non-confrontational, yet there is a combative desire written in the harsh lines that sew him together.

“You’re not my doctor,” you snap, with a bit more bite than usual. You take a deep breath and rub a hand over your face roughly, shaking your head in disbelief. Hannibal remains entirely enigmatic—too unpredictable for your liking. One moment, he’s murdering an inmate; the next, he’s attempting to warn you off of smoking. These interactions never fail to give you whiplash.

“Very well,” Hannibal acquiesces, clearly sensing that he won’t get more information about your harmful coping mechanisms. Before you can get in another word edgewise, Hannibal is continuing to speak. “Send in Dr. Chilton, will you?” You’re being effectively dismissed. Somehow, you feel humiliated. This entire time, you were foolish enough to think that you were controlling the conversation, that you were the one with the power. But that was never the case. Your presence, your existence behind these nondescript walls was always his to dictate.

“Sure,” you respond through gritted teeth, cursing yourself for letting your guard down. You turn on your heel and walk away, very tempted to ignore his farewell. You eventually settle for throwing a wave over your shoulder as you depart, lost in thought.

You come back to yourself as you’re standing in Chilton’s office. You blink dazedly and look around you, confused as to how you got here. You don’t remember walking back through the halls, but you must’ve—otherwise you’d still be standing in front of Hannibal. You rub at your eyes roughly and try to collect your composure, painfully aware of Chilton staring daggers into you as you stand there. He’s nearly vibrating in curiosity; unfortunately for him, it takes you a few minutes to regain the ability to speak.

“He’s asking for you,” you finally utter. Chilton nods and steps out of his office. You stand frozen in the doorway until you hear the doors to the hall shut behind him. Then, as if possessed, you move to his desk and look down at his computer screen, which is focused on the surveillance camera feed for Hannibal’s cell. For a few minutes, Hannibal remains seated at his desk in solitude. Then, Chilton appears in the hall. The camera feed is slightly grainy and there’s no audio, but you try your best to ascertain what’s happening from their nonverbal gestures and posture.

“I need to speak to Jack Crawford,” Hannibal says.

“And why should I listen to you?” Chilton scoffs. Chilton is standing at least a foot away from the glass wall. You’re starting to think the administrator has a bit of a complex when it comes to Hannibal. Now that the Ripper is behind bars, Chilton is foolishly convinced that he is the one who holds the power. But Hannibal’s surrender was tactical, and you’re almost certain that he has something more up his sleeve.

Hannibal doesn’t respond, instead staring at him silently. It’s abundantly clear that the man isn’t very fond of Chilton.

“Fine,” Chilton responds. “But don’t expect to be getting your books back any time soon.” He adds.

You’re left to speculate on the nature of their conversation, and you’re forced to make your escape once you notice Chilton leaving. You manage to make it out of the building before he returns, thankfully. As you drive home, you can’t help but think about the interaction you just witnessed. While you don’t know what the two men discussed, you do know that Hannibal will likely get his way.

And indeed, he does. Unbeknownst to you, within three hours, Jack Crawford is standing before Hannibal Lecter’s enclosure with an annoyed pull to his lips. Moreover, the next time you visit Hannibal, you will notice that all of his books have been returned to him—in addition to the toilet seat and his drawings, which were both removed as punishments. These occurrences will serve as yet another reminder of the power Hannibal holds. He is no ordinary prisoner—no ordinary killer, no ordinary man.

“You are far from ordinary,” Hannibal had told you once. Even now, years later and separated by a seemingly impenetrable wall of glass, his voice echoes down the halls of your mind palace and slips right past your defenses. You spend the rest of the evening trying to suppress old memories.

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