#and dreams and rivers and strange creatures and revenge and hope and love

[satansnightout1984]

I finished reading Starling House by Alix E. Harrow, and all I can think about is haunted houses...

[pomegranates-and-blood]

νοσταλγία (Chapter 38)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Word Count: 5.8k

Warnings: The usual, plus like a heap of angst (or my poor attempt at it), a lot of stuff around broken bones, and mentions of injuries. And holy shit a lot of Persephone/Hades talk. A lot of it.

A/N: I hope you like this, and I’m sorry if tis is ooc, everything I write for Ivar feels ooc lately for me, and tbh I don’t know how to get better lol. Thank you for reading!

You never really considered, when you decided to tell Ivar about the Greeks, that maybe your lies were never for the sake of others.

That maybe pretending to love Narses was not for him to be safe and comfortable enough to lay all he had at your feet, but for you to be able to pretend it was something purer, softer, gentler than revenge what drove you to start that hopeless war against the Christians and their God.

That maybe the reason why you would have wanted to hide from Ivar the survival of the Greeks was not for them to be safe from him, but for you to allow yourself to live in a fantasy where the borrowed time, the winter, could last a lifetime.

You never considered it, and now you live with a weight on you that for once is caused by you telling the truth. Sometimes you wonder about the irony of it all.

You insisted to Ivar that nothing changed, that nothing had to change, but we don’t change the past or the present by telling a different tale.

And so things have changed. In the few days that have gone by since Ivar learned of their survival, of your meeting with Galla, a lot has changed, but at the same time, enough remains the same for you to pretend otherwise.

Pretend you don’t notice Ivar falter and hesitate at the sight of your gentleness, pretend you don’t feel the sting of pain when he sometimes rejects your affection, pretend you don’t feel your chest pull tight in pain and something else -something like nostalgia- when his eyes gain this haunted look even in the middle of something as innocuous as having dinner together.

This morning, his eyes are bluer than you’ve ever seen them, and he’s very obviously struggling, much more so than the day you saw him snap a bone out of place.

You eye him carefully as he tightens the iron braces around his legs, following his movements from your place at the foot of the bed, sitting with your legs hidden from the cold under your body and under a fur you’ve draped over them. Your refusal to get up has been deliberate, if only an attempt to lure him into choosing to not over exert himself by pretending everything is as usual.

Carefully, you start, “I don’t think you should-…”

“Ah, but I didn’t ask what you think.” He interrupts, not looking at you.

He can be annoying and infuriating when he wants to be, you know that. Knowing it doesn’t make the swell of irritation within you any lesser, but it does help you push past it, and insist,

“Just…come back to bed. If not for your sake, for mine. I don’t want to see you in pain.”

“No,” He states, unflinching, unwavering. But there’s a raw edge to it, a tinge of desperation in his resolve. Ivar stabs the crutch on the ground with more strength than needed, squares his shoulders and lifts his head. “I don’t get to stop my wife from sneaking out of our kingdom while I’m gone, I don’t get to decide when she decides to leave me,” His nose furrows in anger, and yet all that overcomes him is determination, “But I get to control this.”

“So you’ll break your bones just to hold on to control?” You call out, but he doesn’t reply with anything other than a grunt, leaving you alone in your room.

____

After more than half a day spent working with the women at the apothecary, and pointedly ignoring Valdís’ glares when she questions just why her son insists on her dipping him on the river holding him by the ankle; your relative peace is interrupted by a familiar-looking thrall coming into the home asking for a solution for the pain.

You step out from near the hearth, and Freydis shares a glance with you and steps back from the man, who looks at you with wide eyes.

You almost feel sorry for the way he seems to either fear you or your husband’s wrath so much so that his words stumble over each other as he tells you Ivar fell while inspecting the walls and broke his leg, but your sympathy for him is quickly overshadowed by concern -and more than a bit of righteous anger, because you told him so- for the man you married.

You dismiss him with short orders, and when you turn around Freydis holds a batch of comfrey in her hands, not hesitating, not even needing your words, to help you gather what you need. Her blue eyes shine with warmth when you thank her.

You are in your room waiting for him -but pretending not to by busying your hands with a mixture of chickweed seeds and primrose- when you hear the familiar pattern if Ivar’s steps, though they sound slower and more faltering than usual, and are accompanied by sounds of pain that make you grit your teeth.

“What are you doing here?”

If you weren’t told he had injured himself, that…warm welcome would have certainly let you know something was wrong.

“Have you forgotten this is my room too, love?”

“You aren’t subtle.” Ivar says, unnaturally-blue eyes set on you, even as he steps further into the room.

You answer with a shrug, “Never pretended to be.”

“They’ve put a cast on it already,” He tells you, and you can’t help but notice him not directly acknowledging the fact that he broke a bone. You eye the lower part of his left leg for a moment before meeting his gaze again. Ivar insists, “I don’t need you here.”

“I want to be here,” You reply, before changing the subject and asking, “You’ve sent scouts to find out where my people are, haven’t you?”

Ivar straightens where he stands, making himself taller and bigger, even though it makes the pain he is in all the more apparent. You have half a mind to scold him, but you bite back the words.

“Want to know where they are?” He taunts, but your answer is instantaneous,

“No.”

You make him falter for a moment; you witness the faint trembling of the mask he so cruelly wears. And there’s an inkling of regret within you, a voice telling you to remember that all you have done -and continue to do- is take away certainties from Ivar. Even if it is defeated and painful certainties, for the man you love it is better to hold on to scalding iron than to have nothing to hold on to.

Then again, he took much more than certainties from you, you think, but your soft heart keeps you from following that line of thought too far down.

He doesn’t say anything else, choosing instead to move carefully to the bed. You hear him working on the heavy iron contraptions, and you try to keep your attention on your work, but your every sense is attuned to him.

“Your Goddess, and what Hades did to keep her,” He starts suddenly, startling you with the choice of topic. Still, you are grateful he no longer insists on trying to get rid of you. “You never thought it a trick, I know that.”

You never told him that. Granted, you never told anyone that, about how you always wondered if the temptation wasn’t really hunger, if the trick wasn’t one at all.

But it doesn’t surprise you anymore how Ivar seems to be capable of seeing you bare of all lies and pretenses. He has since that first time you met, since those first conversations.

You shrug your shoulders, and turn to him, still holding the mortar and pestle in your hands.

“We can be forced to do many things. Go somewhere, even if that is another realm; accept a title, even if it is one that implies binds of marriage. But we cannot be forced to be loyal to someone.”

“So you think she chose him.”

“Chose to love him, yes. For anything else, she didn’t have a choice.”

“Who did, then?” He asks, moving to settle better where he sits with a grunt of pain that you narrow your eyes at. “Your Hades certainly didn’t either, she still leaves him each spring. That isn’t a deal that sounds like a choice, hm?”

“You cannot change nature with a trick, Ivar.”

“Ah, but it wasn’t a trick,” He lifts a finger to point at you, annoyingly smug about his retort. “I think you insist on saying there wasn’t a choice to make because you don’t like accepting the choice made, wife.”

“Your mother worshiped the Goddess of death and you still insist she was good and pure?” The Viking woman sneers, fingers toying with the carved statue of your Goddess.

“My mother worshiped Despoina, there’s a difference. The God of death is Thanatos. Despoina, she is the Queen of the Underworld.” You reply cautiously, because you know she has to know the difference, and you have the strange feeling of walking into a trap. Eventually, eyeing Sieghild with a smirk when she purses her lips, you press, “What. You surely have something to say about that.”

She shrugs, reaching for her ale and drinking before replying, “Our queens are not usually married to their captors.”

“He gave her a crown in exchange for her hand. Would you refuse?” You scoff back, as if the answer should be as clear to her as it is to you. “Hades offered her himself and his kingdom, Sieghild. A king and his reign are no small bride price.”

She starts to show a smile that tells you that in her own language of runes and one-eyed Gods she sees a deeper meaning to your answer. When you were a child you would almost fear her tales of tortured Gods and strange creatures, but now you see in those tales of fall and triumph the same honor and the same glory that Sieghild sees in them, and you delight in talking with her about her Gods and your own.

“In your Godddess’ place, would you want a king or a kingdom, little one?” She teases, and you take a sip of your wine with a smile on your lips.

“Are we not talking of the Gods?”

“Humor me.”

After a moment of consideration, you offer, “A kingdom would limit me. A king would offer me countless kingdoms if I so wanted.”

The Viking laughs, in that way of hers that speaks of a life of freedoms women in your home could never dream of, green eyes piercing on yours when she asks darkly, “And you still believe Kore was stolen?”

Unable to hold back the anger born out of uncertainty, you snap, “Since when are you so certain of the stories of my Gods, Viking?”

Ivar offers a smile, surprisingly enough not a smug or a taunting one, and instead one that is almost tender.

He considers you, head titled to the side, before he states, “I wasn’t talking about any Gods.”

And you’re face to face with too many truths for you to breathe easy, so you clear your throat and return your eyes and attention to your work.

“Willow should help with the pain, as it did last time.” You tell him instead, gathering the small vial of dark liquid and almost cringing at what you remember to be the most bitter drink you ever tasted. You hand it to Ivar, who surprises you by not arguing and downing the awful-tasting tisane in one gulp.

As you return to your small table to gather rolls of thick linen and the mixture you’ve known by heart for a while, Ivar lays down on the bed, but he is far from willing to succumb to the pain or sleep, and watches you raptly as you move about.

His eyes narrow at the things you bring with you to the bed.

“And what is that for?”

“Salves and presses always work best, especially with injuries like these,” You explain simply, noting the way he immediately sets to argue and rushing to insist, “I want to help, and you have no reason not to let me,” You state, unwavering. For emphasis, you raise your chin and remind him, “I’m the best healer in Kattegat.”

“I didn’t marry you because you were a healer, I don’t need your help.”

“I could argue once again that there ought to be a reason why the woman you married is a gifted healer, but I know it would be pointless, since our marriage was fated by the Gods only when it’s convenient to you,” You point out, the slightest tone of tease in your voice, “Instead, consider this from my perspective.”

Ivar’s chest expands in a slow breath, but he bites, “Which is?”

“That the man I love is in pain, and I know how to help.”

“You already gave me the…the tisane that worked last. It is done with,” He offers, the tell of irritation and anger at being put on the spot like this clear in his tone as he speaks, “You don’t have to…touch them, or s-see them.”

“Ivar…”

I didn’t want you to…to see. Thought I could make you forget. He told you once, the mark of pain heavy on his stance and his expression, and an uncharacteristic resignation lacing his voice.

It surprises you, even though you know you should know him better than to expect any different, that a part of him, however quietened in these months of faint moments of pain and scarce episodes of what he perceives as weakness, still tries to keep his condition from you.

You know that rationally Ivar knows he can’t exactly hide it from you. From the way he walks, to the very clear tell of the blue hue of his eyes, there’s not much he could ever do to keep you from noticing.

But he admitted to it himself, to wanting to keep you from noticing the graver problems with his legs, to wanting to hide from you the way sometimes the pain gets to be too much to bear. In these last few days, it has become more and more apparent, with him adverting his gaze when you mention the blue tone of his eyes; refusing to let you see him bare even if he has seen you countless times since you’ve crossed that barrier days ago; and even now, after everything, not letting you do the one thing you’ve been taught to do all your life.

“You know you don’t have to,” He tells you, looking pointedly over your shoulder, refusing to meet your gaze but still too stubborn to lower his eyes. “J-Just leave it be, it will heal, everything will be n-normal soon, and I-…”

You interrupt him with a soft call of his name, silencing his protests and making his eyes finally meet yours. Your chest pulls tight at the apprehension and the uncertainty you see written in them, but you do not falter.

“Trust me?” Is all you ask, voice quiet and eyes set unwaveringly on him. Your stomach tightens as you watch the conflict in his expression, and pale blue eyes search yours looking for something you aren’t sure he finds because you don’t know what it is.

Eventually, Ivar takes a breath, a breath that you think was supposed to be a deep breath but sounds only shaky and sharp, and nods his head. You exhale slowly, knowing what it means that he allows you this, that he trusts you with this, and move further down on the bed so you sit on your side next to the length of his legs, your own folded underneath you.

You need only lift the left leg of the pants a little over his knee, but Ivar tenses and coils his body tight as if you are baring him of any armor. In a way, maybe you are.

Hands carefully folded over his stomach, you catch a glimpse of a tremble in them before he tightens his hold on his own fingers, knuckles white and the trembling once again under careful control. You spare only a glance, before completely focusing on his exposed leg.

It is frailly thin, though you didn’t really expect any different, and it looks knobby and bears many scars, some deeper than others.

You linger on the badly-set bone that has long since healed in a bad position, and wonder how long it has been since a proper healer has tended to a fracture like this. Still, the latest of the breaks has been properly set and the linen put around it seems strong enough.

You take it off trying to move Ivar’s leg as little as possible, and think what kind of cast the men and women that have taught you to be a healer would use for this, wondering what improvements or changes they would make to work around the braces Ivar wears, that you know are not made with comfort for a broken bone in mind.

“T-Talk,” Ivar orders gruffly, startling you from your work on the comfrey and the ganglong you are so lucky to have found all the way in Scandinavia. You lift your head to look at him, but Ivar doesn’t meet your eyes, looking intently at the ceiling. At your silence, he insists, “It is never good when you’re quiet. Talk.”

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“Are you in a lot of pain?”

“I said talk, not ask questions.” He replies shortly, clear tell of gritted teeth in his voice. You don’t know if because of annoyance or pain, but you are smart enough to figure that it is best not to ask.

“Well,” You mumble, blinking a couple of times before you find something to say, “I once was mentored by a man that could know where a bone had been merely splintered with but a touch. I am…not nearly as proficient yet,” You smile slightly at the memory. He was from so far East that the people that traveled with you used to whisper he was from another Empire, and he had strict ways but he was a good teacher. You continue, “I’m using a plant he taught me to work with. Helps with healing, and with swelling. Not so much with pain. Comfrey helps with that,” You recall another memory and chuckle to yourself as you press the salve onto Ivar’s cold skin, and continue, “I…I was taught comfrey is incredibly useful when healing broken bones when I just started working as a healer, and I was still young, and…careless. Once, my mother was badly hurt in a battle. She had some of her ribs badly bruised, and was also nicked by a spear. They wrapped her torso with treatment for her wound before her bones, of course,” You mention, wrapping the press of herbs with a linen around Ivar’s shin. You are careful not to jostle the leg too much in fear of causing him further pain, but he doesn’t complain, and you continue, “And I was, uh, I was really worried about her ribs, so I made her an infusion using comfrey. Turns out, comfrey isn’t very safe for people to…consume. Sieghild was awfully sick for more than a week, threatened to poison my food as retribution for almost a month,” You fasten the cast he had before once again around the thin calf, and your voice turns wistful when you finish, “And she never let me forget it. Every time I made her an infusion, she would make me list the ingredients I used for it.”

You finish your work and after rolling the leg of the pant back down, you move the warm blankets and furs to cover both his legs and yours.

You look back up at Ivar, moving up on the bed so you are almost level with his face, and for as long as he needs to, you lay there, eyes on his and comfortably close even if a part of you grows anxious and searches desperately for something to say to make him lose the cautious and almost afraid edge.

His hand first settles on your wrist, lingering for a few beats before it moves up to grasp at your fingers, and you squeeze back without hesitation, lifting your joined hands to press a kiss against his knuckles, smiling up at him.

The warm specks of a dying sun linger on the room and make it feel somehow warmer, and smaller, more yours.

“I won’t do anything to the Greeks,” He starts suddenly, startling you. You hadn’t considered he would, if you are honest. Whether that makes you incredibly naïve or it makes him something other than the man that chained you, you don’t know if you want to hear the answer. Ivar takes a breath, the only indication he intends to continue talking before silence reigns between you for a few heartbeats. His voice is quiet but unwavering when he promises, “I love you, and…I know I have to let you leave.”

For a moment, with his voice so strikingly alike what it sounded like the night you told him of the Greeks, where he repeated out loud certainties for you to reassure him of and him to hold on to; you wonder whether he is trying to give you a few certainties of your own.

You try offering a smile that speaks of jest, though you are certain something much more saddened than what you intend is the result.

“They are technically your people too, you know.”

He doesn’t acknowledge your words, looking intently ahead and taking a deep breath before offering,

“You insist it is easy, you insist that…that nothing changed. That I should accept whatever time is left and forget that I promised to allow you to leave me,” His voice grows angrier and angrier the longer he speaks, but when he takes a breath, the anger is overshadowed by something else, and Ivar continues, “It isn’t easy, but I-…sometimes I forget. Sometimes you look happy here, with me, and I…I forget you’re leaving me.”

Your throat feels tight at his words, and your heart beats quickly as if trying to outrun the pain that fills your chest.

At the pain you hear in his voice, a pain you put there, it feels like your heart, no-longer-yours and trying to leave your chest with each of its beats, asks you to admit the shame and the failure and the damnation of I wish I never had to leave.

But you can’t, you can only remain quiet and advert your eyes to the side even if Ivar isn’t even looking in your direction.

“I’m…I’m being torn apart,” He confesses in a breath that shakes past his lips, eyebrows slightly raised as his expression trembles, as his strength crumbles and breaks your heart along with it. “I want to-…Sometimes I forget you are leaving, and I can pretend you won’t have to make a choice, and I am…” You cling to the way his words hang in the air between you, not realizing you lean closer and stall your breathing as if to hear the confession, not realizing until that moment how desperate you are to hear that he feels happy. But he doesn’t say it, shaking his head and returning the hardness to his tone, “But at the same time I need to remind myself that you are going to make a choice, that you will leave, because if I don’t…”

The words hang between you, but you don’t have the courage to ask him to continue, and you also don’t have the words to reply with, so silence too hangs between you soon enough.

Ivar turns on his side with a grunt of pain, and you don’t hesitate to move closer and lift your arm, his head a comfortable weight against your chest and his breaths, though labored and still hinting at a pain you cannot even imagine, familiar and warm against you.

“You should sleep,” You tell him softly, your fingers running through his hair in what you hope is a calming manner. Judging by the way his eyes flutter closed, you dare believe it is. Without thinking, you promise, “I’ll stay with you.”

You intend it to be the promise to remain in this bed for as long as he does, to keep him company and do what you can with your voice and your touch to soothe away the pain; but the moment the words leave your lips it feels like a weight dropped on you, like the reminder of the choice you will have to make.

For a moment, a fragile moment that you barely give time to be before you smother the foolish fantasy away, you pretend this is a promise you can make, and that it can mean forever and not a night.

If Ivar notices your poor choice of words, he doesn’t give it away.

Still, at your silence he speaks out, voice rougher with the pull of sleep, his words a little drawled out.

“If it wasn’t…pomegranates, what is it that keeps her there?”

You know to him they are just tales, but his curiosity for the world that has made you who you are and the Gods you’ll always hold dear to you never ceases to be…endearing, in its own way.

“I don’t know,” You answer truthfully. “This isn’t what we discuss at the temple, this isn’t…this isn’t what we are taught.”

“Were you never curious?”

“I didn’t have time to be. I left Greece when I was still a child, and when I returned…it seemed fitting, that she was truly stolen of a choice.”

“You told me some say she walked into the Underworld.”

“Yet she was still trapped, that part never changes.” You smile sadly, and for a moment when you blink you see warm eyes and olive skin and a sad smile that speaks of a man fully aware of your lies and choosing to love you anyways, choosing to trap you anyways.  In that moment, you understand why her story meant comfort to you all your life.

She was the maiden taken forcefully from her home, forced away from her mother and her land; you were a child clutching a wooden statuette of her and watching your birth mother burn, with Sieghild’s rough and unfamiliar hands guiding you on a path away from Greece.

She was the woman forced to marry a man she didn’t love, by deals of the Gods that ruled over her life and by her own mistakes; and you were a monster, a desperate one at that, whispering promises of love in Narses’ ear, earning what you wanted alongside heavy chains to be put on you.

She was queen of a world that was so unlike her, and a wife to a man many called a monster, alone and nostalgic; and you were dragged here by Ivar and told that by the will of his might alone he would make you wife and queen, no matter how much you fought against it.

And…and then she was a woman laughing under a red veil, lips stained with pomegranates and blood, and the winter meant home and love and belonging; and you learned to look into Ivar’s eyes and see a future even when you knew you couldn’t.

Chosen by Persephone, they always called you, since long before your birth. Child of the flower fields of Eleusis, they thought you to be destined to be yet another Hiereia under the warmth of Attica’s sun; they didn’t see the hunger, the heart that belonged elsewhere, they never imagined you to be one destined to delve into another realm to become its queen and never wish to return.

Lost in your thoughts, in your revelations, for so long that you don’t notice the passing of time, you only gauge how long you were lost by the way Ivar’s weight is a little heavier on you; by the way he is relaxed and pliant against you, even if shaken occasionally by a shiver or a tremble of the aftershocks of pain.

“Maybe they don’t tell us about whether or not she had a choice because she didn’t,” You whisper, voice so quiet you barely hear yourself. In the deep rise and fall of his chest, even if still interrupted by the quiet staggering in its pattern due to the pain, you are told he isn’t conscious anymore. Still, you continue your soft caress of the side of his face, and you continue speaking, “Or maybe it’s because she did, and she chose…chose love. Seems awfully selfish, though, doesn’t it?”

Your mother, the mother of sad smiles and a lost war, always told you that between love and duty one must always prevail. Between the earth under our feet and the sky over our heads, between what we must do and what we want to do, we must always choose.

Maybe she was never speaking of her plight, or in some prophetic way of yours, when she told you those things. Maybe she too wondered what temptation truly meant, whether there had been a trick at all; and she was whispering the truth about the Goddess of spring disguised as a warning.

You doze off, your fingers still carefully running through Ivar’s hair and your senses still attuned to him and his pain.

You wake up not because Ivar does, but because you hear something. For a moment, you think it to be him, but as the daze of sleep leaves you, you realize what it is.

The cry of a hawk.

Your blood runs cold, and with shaking hands and a heart that beats furiously in your ears you move your body from under Ivar and walk to the small balcony that overlooks Kattegat.

The sky is darkening, once again too late for a hawk to be hunting. Once again, it is too close, and its cry is too familiar for it to be anything other than Galla’s trusted beast.

You watch with wide eyes as the hawk flies above you, shrill cries piercing your head and your heart.

And a part of you that has been for too long too cowardly to face not the choice, but what the choice you’d make would say about you and who you are; that part of you begs and pleads in that moment.

You plead for more time, but the Gods have granted you time already.

And you once pleaded for a choice to make, and now the Gods demand you make it.

“His name will be Zephyr.”

“Why that name? He isn’t the fastest, or the strongest, out of the winds.” You mention casually, and Galla doesn’t take her eyes of her beast, smiling widely as it takes a piece of meat from her fingers.

“Because Zepyhr brings forth life, opportunity, change,” She chuckles, before knocking her shoulder with yours teasingly, “I may not be as versed as you in the worship of Demeter and Kore, Hiereia, but I know the gift that spring is.”

“And so you hold a special place for the one that brings forth the winds of the spring?”

She shrugs, fearless as she reaches under the hawk’s head and scritches at its feather’s, making it ruffle them and accept her affection. It never ceases to surprise you, how easily the beast has taken to her.

“Zephyr is the one that makes change happen. He is the one that time and time again guides Despoina home.”

You accept her words with a sigh, and reach for the piece of venison on the plate at her side, offering the raw meat to the animal, and smiling when it takes sit, though much more guardedly than when Galla offered the same.

“You hope it can guide us home?”

She chuckles, goes back to petting it, “I know he can.”

You stand there and watch Zephyr circle the longhouse, the cries louder once he sees you standing there. But all you can do is watch.

There was a girl, you don’t think you’ll ever forget her. You saw her first and last while working as a healer in some dusty city near Kufa. You were ambushed during the night, the cavalry of some enemy army broke past the defenses and were nearing the camp.

The hooves of their horses marched wildly over the dry earth, and Sieghild was cursing in her own tongue as she guided you both to the safety the soldiers provided.

But this girl, this thin and frail Arab girl, stood there, not moving, not breathing.

The ground trembled under the enemy’s might, the soldiers around you barked orders and prepared to defend, but she…she stood there, and watched them come.

Like she could keep time frozen in her small hands if she didn’t move, like she could hold on to life for as long as she held her breath.

You called for her. She still didn’t move. You screamed when the horses trampled her. She didn’t move again, and you didn’t even find her body in the aftermath.

And now you stand there in the small balcony, looking at the darkening sky like that wide-eyed girl looked at those incoming horses, frozen like she was.

You hear Zephyr’s call echo through the high skies of Kattegat and it sounds like the hooves of a hundred war horses wildly marching on cold ground.

You told Galla if she was ever to need you to send Zephyr to the skies, and you promised you’d be there. She needs you; they need you, and you promised you’d answer. You are their Anassa, their Hiereia; for the titles you bear and for your mother’s legacy it is your duty to answer their call.

Your hands tighten on the wooden railing, but still you turn your head to gaze into the dim light of your room, Ivar still resting on the bed you share. He trusts you; he loves you, and in another life you wouldn’t have hesitated to promise him forever. You are his wife, the woman he loves; for all the love you have for him you wish that you could be only that.

It was never Stithulf, it was never pomegranates; what forced a choice, what forced a change.

It was spring. From the first of its winds, it was spring what would force you to choose.

You just hoped winter would last.

____ ____ ____

....so yeah, s p r i n g.

What do you think will happen?

I might post 39 on tuesday just out of guilt for ending on a cliffhanger, but we’ll see.

Thank you so so much for reading, please let me know what you think!

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[cicada-bones]

The Warrior and the Embers

Chapter 32: The Battle for Mistward

Sorry for the wait! (and sorry that im posting this in the middle of the night - again.) This one was really hard! 

Also - its a monster: over 8,000 words. But I really hope you enjoy! (sorry in advance about the angst! but y’all already know how this goes down, so you really should be prepared).

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Early that morning, Rowan hadn’t been able to get back to sleep.

He’d woken up shaking and sweating, his dreams fading behind his eyelids. This time however, as he held Aelin’s dead body in his arms before the burning mountain cottage, it was Namonora’s words that echoed through him.

You must save her, but not for you.

She is different. She could be something different.

You cannot let that girl die.

Rowan’s silent vow in return still ached in his very bones. Because when he’d agreed, he hadn’t really been promising Namonora. He’d been promising himself – swearing that he wouldn’t let his blood oath be the reason for her death, no matter how it tortured him. No matter how it twitched and writhed in his chest.

It had been an acknowledgement of what he knew he wanted, deep down.

Rowan wanted to be sworn to Aelin, not Maeve. To serve her, and be in her court, and at her side. Always. Rowan wanted to give Aelin the blood-oath. And it wasn’t only because she deserved it, or because she needed him.

It was because he wanted to do something good. Because he wanted to be good.

Rowan hadn’t been good in centuries. He couldn’t have recognized good if it had stared him in the face. But now, with this princess, with this Queen just within his grasp, Rowan found that he wanted to be who she needed. To follow the old ways.

To be good, once more, before he died.

Aelin sighed lightly, and turned over on the bed, her golden hair twisting around her shoulders.

Her scent wafted around him, all-encompassing. Overwhelming. That familiar desire coiled in his gut, the desire to reach out and touch her. To reach out and claim her. To bite her, in that lovely space between her neck and her shoulder, or at the tips of her ears. To bite her all over.

Rowan was sure that he would be able to recognize her scent anywhere. That even in a crowded ballroom, he would be able to find her from scent alone. That he would be able to track her down from thousands of miles away.

But it was more than just scent – in the back his mind, or perhaps somewhere deep in his chest, he could sense her. Could feel her presence. In the weeks they had spent breathing in each other’s scents, they had become bonded. No matter how far away she was, Rowan would be able to feel her there. Feel her close.

Rowan closed his eyes, despair joining the desire smothering his limbs. The world had now shown him just exactly how good life could be, and it was about to take it all away.

And Rowan could see it all, could see every detail of that alternate future. It teased him, a delicious fruit just out of his reach.

In that other world, Rowan would leave Wendlyn with Aelin. He would help her form her court, would stand at her side. If she wanted, he could help her take her revenge, or regain her throne. In that other world, he could claim his lands and title, and he could make his suit with her. He could offer her wealth and men and material, and in that other world, he might be able to profess what he felt for her. And maybe, in that world, he could find out if she returned those feelings.

But that wasn’t the world they lived in.

Rowan breathed deep through the fury that rose up in his chest. But he wasn’t angry at Maeve, or the other blood-sworn, or even the gods – not really. He was angry at himself. At how weak he had been. How shortsighted.

Rowan threw off the blankets and strode over to the window where he immediately shifted and soared out into the blackness.

The winds were cold and dark and unexpectedly silent. Usually, the sky was alive with the sounds of the night-creatures; filled with the hoots of hunting owls, skittering mice, foxes playing in their holes, and bats gliding atop wind-rivers, scooping up bugs or pieces of dropped fruit.

But there was only quiet, and Rowan was uneasy.

He decided to take a sweep of their perimeter, his mind still consumed with thoughts of Aelin. But what he found there sent all those worries right out of his head.

···

Rowan roughly shook Aelin’s shoulder, relieved when her eyes shot right open. “Get your sword and your weapons, and hurry,” he said, already halfway across the room, slinging on a shirt and padded overcoat. He could hear Aelin doing the same, her breaths coming quick and copper tinting her scent.

“I think we’ve been betrayed,” Rowan continued, now sliding daggers into position along his forearms, shoulders, and thighs.

“They’re coming tonight,” Aelin breathed.

When Rowan turned to look at her, her eyes were wide as she stared out their small window at the silent forest and the advancing line of black. A darkness that blotted about the stars, blacker than the night.

Rowan’s teeth gritted together. They had only minutes to wake the fortress and get everyone into position.

“I did a sweep of the perimeter,” he said, stuffing a knife in each boot. “It’s as if someone told them where every trap, every warning bell is located. They’ll be here within the hour.”

“Are the ward-stones still working?” Aelin began braiding her hair, then strapped Goldryn across her back.

“Yes – they’re intact. I raised the alarm, and Malakai and the others are readying our defenses on the walls.” He’d intended to wake the old male before Aelin, but found Malakai already up and sitting at his desk, staring into a small fire, the empty bed neat and untouched.

Now, Rowan could only be grateful that they had left Emrys with the healers, no matter how it pained Malakai to be separated from his mate.

Rowan strapped his own sword across his back, alongside the hatchet and hunting knife. Aelin was now pulling on her boots, and her voice was hard as she asked, “Who would have betrayed us?”

“I don’t know, and when I find them, I’ll splatter them on the walls. But for now, we have bigger problems to worry about.”

Aelin’s eyes twitched back to the open window, where the darkness on the horizon had spread, devouring the stars, the trees, the light. Her voice was tentative as she said, “…what is that?”

Rowan’s mouth tightened, becoming a thin line. “Bigger problems.”

···

Minutes passed in a flurry of activity. Malakai took up his station behind the battlements, where he could control the flow of information and direct their movements through the battle. A few of the younger, less capable sentries were sent deep into the castle, guarding the emergency escape tunnel. A few more stood by the entrance, front lines for when the soldiers broke through the front gates.

However, the vast majority of the demi-Fae stood atop the battlements, clutching bows between white knuckles and shaking fists, readying themselves to launch volleys of arrows and pour vats of pitch and oil. Rowan and Aelin stood at the helm of the paltry force, each carrying bows of their own, and trying their utmost to emanate waves of confidence. It wasn’t working.

The men were scared. Rowan had done his best to shield them from the knowledge of their fate, but he couldn’t hide it all. They knew the numbers. They knew their chances.

The ward-stones were the last line of defense before the fortress itself, and Rowan had no idea how long the magical shield would last under an assault by the dark creatures. It could be minutes, could be seconds.

Either way, Mistward couldn’t outlast them forever. And when the creatures broke through, two hundred soldiers at their heels, the demi-Fae would have to face them head on. They didn’t have enough arrows to guarantee the deaths of even half Adarlan’s forces. No matter what, they would soon be facing hand-to-hand combat against an enemy clad in iron and wyrdmarks.

Once they ran out of arrows, the sentries would leave the battlements, one by one, and enter the courtyard – where they would wait. Wait for the gates to be breached, so they could use the entrance as a bottleneck. Wait for the fighting to commence.

With each breath, the darkness on the horizon drew closer, bringing their doom along with it.

The wind gave Rowan barely a few moment’s warning before dozens of animals began to stream past the walls of the fortress, fleeing the veil of blackness. Claws clicked over stone, wings flapped overhead, fur and feathers and scales blending into a medley of creatures, all led by the Little Folk. And though they were barely more than a gleam of nightseeing eyes at the edges of the flock, Rowan could have sworn that they kept glancing toward the woman at his side. To the princess.

Barely seconds after the last of the Little Folk disappeared into the woods, heading up into the mountains to safety, the veil of darkness touched the circle of stones. It rested against them, a dark cloud hovering in wait.

“As soon as the barrier falls, I want you to put arrows through their eyes,” Rowan said to Aelin, though his eyes were forward, scouring the woods for their arrival. “Don’t give them a chance to enthrall you – or anyone. Leave the soldiers to the others.”

Rowan still couldn’t hear or see anything to indicate the presence of the soldiers, but he remembered the strange effects the darkness had. It could easily shield an army from sight or sound.

Aelin nodded, gripping her bow more tightly. “What about magic?”

“Use it sparingly, but if you think you can destroy them with it, don’t hesitate. And don’t get fancy. Take them down by any means possible.”

As he spoke, a reek began to rise from behind the barrier, the smell of death and dust and carrion. The demi-Fae around them began to shift in their positions, murmuring uncomfortably. Their sense of smell was nowhere near as sensitive as Rowan’s – but still, they could hardly not notice the otherworldly stench seeping from the blackness. A smell straight from the lands of Hellas.

A few straggling animals darted from the tree line, their limbs awkward and disjointed, foam bubbling from the corners of their mouths. Aelin’s voice floated up from beside him, her words hollow and detached. “Rowan – they’re here.”

As if she had conjured them herself, the creatures emerged from the darkness, halting barely five yards from the ward stones. They were dressed in all black, their tunics slightly open to reveal the stone torques choking their necks. Their veins bled black, their talons sharp and polished, their eyes piercing the fortress like dark blades of obsidian. The cloud of fear around them was so intense Rowan could barely taste anything in the air other than copper.

And once they emerged from the darkness, he almost felt as though he could feel them, a harsh pressure against his skin. Like rough cotton, or unpicked wool. Three distinct presences that pushed on his soul.

Rowan started slightly. Three, not two. Three.

Aelin seemed to realize this at the same time he did. “But the skinwalkers – ”

Her voice cut off as that male, that beautiful male from before, smiled. It was a look born of knowledge, and of familiarity. A look directed straight at Aelin.

Rowan felt the energy in his body alchemizing, intensifying. Shifting from raw power into violent intent. He wanted to kill that creature. He would kill him.

A rabbit bolted from the bushes, racing for the path between the ward-stones. But before it could make it, a whip of darkness lashed out and passed over the animal. It appeared to have no more substance than a shadow, or a cloud of smoke, but the rabbit fell mid-leap. Its fur matted before their very eyes, even as its flesh shrunk, drying up over its now-prominent skeleton.

Rowan held in a shudder. Together, the creatures were much more powerful than apart. He and Aelin had barely escaped the clutches of one of them, even with the help of the skinwalkers. Together, the creatures had the power of a lesser god. Together, they would crush them.

Even as this truth seeped into Rowan’s bones, the demi-Fae all around him stirred, some cursing in surprise and horror.

Rowan collected himself. “The barrier cannot be allowed to fall,” he said to Aelin, though he made sure that the surety and confidence in his tone could be heard by all. “That blackness will kill anything it touches.”

Even as he spoke, the darkness stretched its reaching fingers around the ward-stone borders, encasing them completely in a cloud of pure black. The blanket blotted out everything, the stars overhead, the forest around them – even the wind was stilled. The only light in the fortress came from their torches and candles, a paltry hint of orange in a world of pure black.

The barrier began to hum violently, sparking and buzzing, almost in agitation. But it held. However, Rowan couldn’t feel particularly grateful for it. They were now entirely cut off from the outside world.

It was as if they had been transported to hell itself.

Aelin shifted at his side, a spark of gold in the darkness. She winced in pain as her ears sharpened to points and her canines pricked her lips, but her focus remained undiminished.

Then, Narrok stepped lightly out from the edges of the trees.

He was undeniably their leader, honed and scarred and powerfully built. He moved with a lithe power, making his authority obvious and indisputable. Narrok’s gaze passed over the demi-Fae, pausing on Aelin, and coming to rest on Rowan.

For a moment, they looked at each other. Measuring and weighing.

Rowan half-expected the male to make some speech, to parlay and offer them a choice between yielding to the king’s power or death. To break their morale. But then, Narrok drew his iron blade and swung it towards the ward-stone gates, a delighted look on his face. And there was nothing Rowan could do as a whip of darkness snapped out and struck the invisible barrier.

Before they had time to strike again, before Rowan even had time to register the effect this assault had on their only magical line of defense, he was moving back towards the gates, shouting for the archers to ready themselves, for them to use whatever magic they had to shield against the oncoming darkness.

There was another strike, and the barrier rippled, the air shuddering around them as if it were a physical thing – a stone in an earthquake, the inside of a drum. The ward-stones began to whine in protest.

Behind him, the demi-Fae were moving into position, their terror barely smothered beneath their desperate preparation. In front of him, Aelin was the only thing standing between the fortress and the ward-stones. The only one who had not moved.

“Aelin,” Rowan snapped, and she looked over her shoulder at him. “Get inside the gates.”

Her face didn’t change, and her legs didn’t move. Instead, she met his gaze in that way only she could, her eyes filled with fire and fury, and slung her bow across her back. When she raised her hand, it was clothed in a glove of flame.

Rowan felt panic begin to seep into his bones.

Aelin’s words were measured. “In the woods that night, it balked from the flame.”

“To use it, you’ll have to get outside the barrier, or it’ll just rebound against the walls.”

“I know,” she said quietly, and Rowan had to actively stop himself from sprinting towards her and dragging her back behind the gates.

“The last time, you took one look at that thing and fell under its spell.” The darkness lashed once again, and the barrier groaned in response, placing a dark emphasis on his words.

Still, Aelin did not move, and Rowan stepped once towards her, his blood spiked with adrenaline. Copper swirled all around them, but surprisingly, none of it seemed to come from Aelin. Her scent was completely blank. This did not comfort him.

“It won’t be like last time,” she said, her eyes on Narrok and the creatures. “I don’t know what else to do.”

But before he could shout at her, before he could say that she didn’t need to sacrifice herself, that she didn’t need to atone for anything, that they still had time to escape together – before he could admit that he didn’t know what to do either, a cry echoed through the fortress behind him.

A chorus of shouts joined it, yells of pain and surprise. Calls for aid. Cries of Rowan’s name. Then the unmistakable screech of metal on metal, the clash of steel and iron. The sound of battle.

And it was as if he were far away, as if he were submerged in water or deep beneath the surface of the earth, as someone said, “The tunnel! They’ve been let in through the tunnel!” and a hope Rowan didn’t even know he had crashed about his ears.

They had been betrayed. And the betrayer hadn’t just undone the traps and bells, hadn’t just guided the army around their makeshift protection. They had shown them the escape tunnel. And now the armies of Adarlan were crawling up from within, creeping through the underground network of tunnels and right into the belly of the castle. The ward-stones were far too occupied with the threat from above to even notice the one the snuck up from below.

The sounds of death and combat grew ever louder, but Rowan did not move. He couldn’t. Not while Aelin was still set on her path.

“Rowan – ” her words were cut off by the sound of yet another strike against the barrier stones. And another. Flakes of granite began to fall from the pillars, a shower of dust and sparks. The groaning grew in intensity.

The barriers wouldn’t be able to hold up much longer. And Aelin knew it. She began to take a few halting steps towards the stones.

A vicious growl ripped through Rowan’s chest. “Do not take one more step – ”

He moved towards her, but Aelin didn’t halt her advance. Screaming had begun from inside the fortress, and Rowan felt like he was being ripped in two.

He grabbed her elbow, forcing her to look at him. “That was an order.”

Aelin knocked his hand away. “You’re needed inside. Leave the barrier to me.”

“You don’t know if it’ll work – ”

“It will work,” she snarled. “I’m the expendable one, Rowan.”

His words were barely legible through the growling escaping from his chest. “You are heir to the throne of – ”

“Right now, I am a woman who has a power that might save lives. Let me do this. Help the others.”

Aelin’s eyes pleaded with him. And they were the eyes of a Queen, of the Queen that he wanted. His Queen.

And she wanted everything that he did. Wanted to be good – to do something good. After all that had been taken from her, all that had been done to her and denied her, she still wanted to help. Wanted to be worthy of her name.

No matter how it tore at him, how could he deny her that?

Aelin had the best, the only chance against those creatures. Yet the determination in her eyes worried him. It wasn’t a resolve born of a desperate fight for survival. No, her eyes spoke more of sacrifice.

I’m the expendable one, Rowan.

Rowan looked at the ward-stones, at the fortress and the sentries scrambling to help below. Weighing, calculating.

If he forced her to run, he would be taking away everything she wanted to be, everything that she was. He would be betraying her, in the deepest, most essential way. And he just couldn’t do it. Even if it meant that the hopes of thousands died, right here, right now. Because it meant death either way.

So instead of asking her to run with him, instead of begging her to hide behind the wooden gates, he did the harder thing. Made the more difficult choice. The words hurt as they slipped out.

“Do not engage them. You focus on that darkness and keeping it away from the barrier, and that’s it. Hold the line, Aelin.”

Her eyes did not change, and her scent was clean of fear as she nodded and said, “Understood.”

“They will attack you the moment you set foot outside the barrier.” Rowan released her arm, and it felt like a stone removed from a dam. ““Have a shield ready.”

The scent of her magic rose, cloaking her body in flame and smoke. “I know.” Aelin said, and she turned away from the fortress, away from the demi-Fae. Away from him. Turned to face the enemy that would likely kill her.

Rowan could help but linger. Couldn’t help but wait and make sure that she survived those few crucial moments, even while those screams tore at his eardrums.

Aelin walked out over the patch of yellowing grass, drawing her golden sword, the sword of Brannon, in her right hand, while Mala’s flames enveloped her left. As she walked her flames grew even brighter. Slowly, the Heir of Fire passed beneath the stone arches and into the darkness beyond.

Rowan tore his eyes away, even as plumes of flame and blades of darkness began to clash on the other side of the barrier. He tried his best to forget, tried his best only to think of what he had to do now. To think that if he could kill enough soldiers, that if she could hold off the creatures for just long enough, then maybe they could all flee.

Rowan turned and began to run back through the gates and into the interior courtyard, rallying the sentries to his side. They blocked the gates behind them, and he left two guards with orders to alert him or Malakai should the barriers fall, and darkness reach the castle.

The rest ran with him through the stone passageways down deep into the belly of the fortress, where blood streamed on the walls and ran in puddles on the floor. Where the dead were already piling up.

Rowan drew his sword in one hand and his hatchet in the other, and threw himself into the fray.

It was hell, but it was a familiar hell. So Rowan endured.

He took up position at the head of their makeshift phalanx, directly before the mouth of the tunnel, and there he stood as time began to flow like bees and honey – thick and slow and yet also swift and jerky and filled with action.

This was the part of battle that Rowan was used to. The part that he was most comfortable in. He sword hand did not falter as it rent through flesh, felling soldier after soldier as they poured up from the depths of hell.

Still, he couldn’t be everywhere. The tunnel was wide enough that Adarlanian men could slide past the touch of his steel, and reach the demi-Fae behind him. Rowan couldn’t protect them all, no matter how much he may want to.

And so he had to listen as the demi-Fae sentries tired, and began to fall. It only made Rowan fight harder, swing his limbs swifter, but he knew that even he would soon begin to tire. That this steady tide of soldiers wouldn’t falter until far after Mistward had been overcome.

Minutes passed as hours, and after some unknowable stretch of time, Rowan was pulled aside by Luca, of all people.

The boy was breathing heavily, a cut on his temple streaming blood into his eyes, marking his brow with gore. “It was Bas.”

Rowan started, but Luca just took a shuddering breath, his light eyes shadowed with devastation. “It was Bas who betrayed us. He – he wanted power. And…a home. A place. They told him that they could give it to him.”

The pain in the boy’s voice nearly broke Rowan’s heart, but all he could manage was to place a hand on Luca’s shoulder, hopefully communicating his sympathy without words. Then he pushed the boy behind him, forcing him back up the tunnel and into relative safety, and rejoined the battle.

Bas had chafed against the inferior position of the demi-Fae more than most. He’d risen in the ranks at Mistward fairly quickly, earning himself the admiration of many of the younger demi-Fae, and the respect of most of the older. Even Malakai had liked and trusted Bas a great deal. But it’d meant that Bas always wanted more. And Mistward couldn’t give it to him.

Rowan knew from the agony in Luca’s scent that Bas had already met his end. He could only hope that the boy hadn’t been the one to do it. Could only hope that the stains on this child’s soul were not yet so black as to be irreversible.

That they would live to see the light of day, so that the boy would have the chance to heal, and forgive.

So, with each swing of his blades, Rowan hoped.

···

Gavriel’s paws pounded into the earth, his breaths ripping through his lungs in pained, ragged bursts, his limbs heavy. They had run through the day, night, and day again. Had run until they met up with Lorcan and Vaughan, and then had run some more. And they hadn’t stopped once.

It was starting to weigh on him. But now, with the sounds of battle and the feel of that strange darkness all around them, Gavriel knew that it had been worth it. That they had reached the fortress just in time.

Unless, a dark voice whispered in the back of his mind, you’re too late. Unless they’re both already dead.

Rowan and the princess. The two people he had come to help. To save.

Ahead of him, Fenrys and Connall’s wolves sprinted forwards through the trees, down the hidden path they all knew would lead out of the mountains and down into the secluded valley that concealed the fortress. They whipped around each other, the black and white wolves, playful to the end.

Above, Vaughan flew in osprey form, his great wings cutting through the mists overhead. Behind, he could just hear Lorcan pounding through undergrowth, his Fae legs fighting to keep up with the four-legged creatures. Even so, Gavriel, Fenrys, and Connall had only had to adjust their speed very little to accommodate the male – Lorcan’s massive height was enough to nearly make up for the differences in stride.

Though they had been running together through most of the night, they hadn’t said one word to each other. Perhaps it was because there was nothing more to say. They had all decided to come. Had all answered their friend’s desperate call.

It felt strange. Different, to choose to be together. To travel and fight and work together by their own volition, wholly and completely. It spoke of something…new. New and dangerous.

Then they reached the crest of a hill, and the stone castle spread out beneath their feet.

It had been barely a month since Gavriel had last been at Mistward, and yet now, the male barely recognized it. It was shrouded in a cloak of thick darkness, through which he could only barely see the hint of broken stone and yellowed grass. The towering barrier stones looked old and cracked, and the dark magic that encircled the fortress was clothed in sparks of bright, vibrant gold - the only light in the utter blackness.

Four figures stood before the gates, and Gavriel could only assume that the strange darkness came from them. All around them, he smelled copper and death and carrion, a stench so potent and intense he felt his hackles rise despite himself. And though the figures stood on two legs as men, and were clothed in the guise of men, Gavriel knew, deep in his gut, that they were as far from human or Fae as a thinking creature could be. That they were demons.

The creatures did not turn at their approach, but the darkness began to spread towards them regardless – like blood in water. Gavriel felt himself slowing, almost subconsciously. Ahead, Connall and Fenrys stopped in their tracks, avoiding the touch of the dark mist, out of fear or knowledge – Gavriel wasn’t sure.

But before Gavriel could do anything, before he could shift or speak or even growl, a piercing light breached the black. A golden blade of fire that cut through the darkness like a knife in butter. And through the breach, Gavriel could just see the image of a figure wrapped in gold. A woman, whose scent spoke of ash and spice and citrus.

The flames formed a tunnel through the darkness, and then the wolves were running. Sprinting through the black as fast as they dared. Vaughn swooped down to join them, and then Lorcan was passing Gavriel, dark limbs joining fur and feather in the golden flames.

But Gavriel was hesitating.

Not to follow his fellow blood-sworn through the breach, but to leave with them. To enter the fortress, and leave the woman behind.

Fenrys and Connall were already gone, and he could hear their furious growls shaking the foundations of the castle as they joined the battle within. Vaughn was circling the battlements, surveying the perimeter before joining them, and Lorcan was forcing open the wooden gates, making to follow the wolves into the depths of the castle.

None of them had spared the woman a glance. Had not acknowledged her, or thanked her, or thought to make sure she was alright. Perhaps, in another world, Gavriel would have done the same.

But instead, he paused, the golden tunnel disintegrating at his back.

The princess was in pain. Her face was splattered in gore, her sword hanging limply in tired limbs, her eyes clouded with exhaustion. She coughed up blood, and it shone in the grass.

But still, her words were fierce. “He’s inside,” she choked out. “Help him.”

Gavriel didn’t have to know her to know that she was begging. That she was desperate for Rowan to be safe, desperate for him to survive. Gavriel didn’t have to know her to know that she loved him.

“Go,” she wheezed through broken lungs. “Go.”

Still, he hesitated. Could he allow this woman to sacrifice herself? Could he allow her to die here, alone and without help?

The sounds of death echoed from the stone building, and Gavriel took a step towards the castle. And another.

The darkness swirled around them, barely held back by the woman’s shields of flame. And Gavriel knew that there was nothing he could do. If he stayed, he would only be able to die alongside her. His magic was nothing to those creatures. He could be of no help.

But in the fortress, he could ensure that Rowan survived. For this princess, he could make sure that Rowan lived. And he could bear witness, could remember her sacrifice, her bravery, for the remainder of his too-long life. He could do her that honor.

So Gavriel turned away from perhaps the bravest woman he had ever known, and dove through the gates and into the waiting battle below.

···

Rowan was far from exhausted, and yet his thoughts were scattered, his limbs slow and unsure. Most of his attention was far away from this dark and bloody tunnel, up at the stone gates, with the female that was risking everything to keep the fortress from being overrun.

No, Rowan was not exhausted. He had fought for far longer and in worse conditions. But the demi-Fae were. Each of their swings were slower, weaker. It took more effort each time they faced an enemy to fell them, especially as soldiers continued flooding the fortress, an unending stream.

Rowan yanked his sword from the gut of a falling soldier, his dagger already slicing the neck of the next, when a deep growling shook the stones of the fortress.

Relief, deep and profound, threatened to bring Rowan to his knees.  

Many of the demi-Fae around him froze in fear as twin wolves leapt down the staircase, closing their massive jaws around the necks of enemy soldiers. Massive wings flapped, and then white light flashed and a glowering, dark-eyed male was before him, already swinging a sword to decapitate another solder.

Vaughan merely nodded grimly at him before taking position on his left side, never one to waste words. Beyond him, the wolves were nothing short of lethal, not bothering to shift into Fae form as they tore through enemy ranks.

The demi-Fae began to rally once more, taking up arms once again with more vigor than Rowan had yet seen. Now it was the soldiers from Adarlan who looked fearful. Who blanched and stumbled, wide-eyed in the darkness.

That was all Rowan needed to see before he was running, sprinting back up the stairs and dodging the bloodied and worn demi-Fae. Dread clenched its fingers around his quick-beating heart. Darkness had not yet fallen, the stones of the fortress still stood, which meant that she had to still be breathing, that she had to still be holding the line, but –

A mountain cat skidded to halt on the stairwell before him and shifted. Rowan took one look in Gavriel’s tawny eyes before he demanded, “Where is she?”

The male’s eyes tightened, almost imperceptibly, and he held out one arm. As if to stop him. “She’s in bad shape, Rowan. I think – ”

And Rowan was shoving aside his oldest friend, already sprinting up the stairs. Not waiting to hear the end of that sentence. Not waiting to find out what he had allowed to happen to the princess. To his Queen.

Another towering figure appeared on the steps before him – Lorcan.

Even Lorcan had answered his call. Rowan shouldered past him without a second glance – the time for gratitude would come later, and the dark-haired demi-Fae didn’t say anything as Rowan rushed headlong to the battlement gates.

What he saw there nearly drove him to his knees.

The wall of flame was in tatters, but still protecting the barrier. But the three creatures…Aelin was standing in front of them, hunched and panting, sword limp in her hand. They advanced, and a feeble blue flame sprang up before them.

They swiped it away with wave of their hands. Another flame sprang up, and her knees buckled. The shield of flame surged and receded, pulsing like the light around her body.

She was burning out. Why hadn’t she retreated?

Another step closer and the creatures said something that had her raising her head. Rowan knew he could not reach her, didn’t even have the breath to shout a warning as Aelin gazed into the face of the creature before her. And there was absolutely nothing behind her eyes. No fire, no fury. No life.

A wave of emptiness replaced the panic strangling Rowan’s limbs, and it felt as though all of the life vanished from his body. She had lied. She had lied to him. And this realization hurt almost as much as the knowledge that they were about to die.

She had wanted to save other lives, yes. But not her own. She had gone out there with no intention of coming back. Of surviving.

Fury rippled, deep in his gut. He would not, could not, allow it. Even if she had succumbed to her grief, Rowan wouldn’t allow her to just vanish. To let herself be annihilated.

Rowan took in a breath – to roar, to run, to call his power, but then a wall of muscle slammed into him from behind, and tackled him into the grass. And though Rowan shoved and twisted and writhed, he couldn’t do anything against the four centuries of training and feline instinct that had him pinned.

Gavriel knew him, had helped train him, had worked with him for centuries. And Rowan could do nothing to thwart him. Could do nothing about the magical shield Gavriel had raised, nothing about the muscled limbs clenched around his arms and legs.

They both watched as the creature took Aelin’s face in its hands, and her sword thudded to the ground, forgotten.

And Rowan was screaming. Screaming as the creature pulled her into its arms. Screaming as she stopped fighting. As her flames winked out and as the darkness swallowed her whole.

Gavriel held him through it all, keeping him from sprinting through those broken gates and into that blackness that destroyed worlds. The blackness that was well on its way to destroying his.

Rowan was aware of Lorcan lingering behind him, a dark presence at his back. He had no room to wonder why. Why he stayed. Why he watched.

Rowan writhed in Gavriel’s grip, and the barrier fell.

It fell without ceremony, without sound. One second it was there, a dark, crackling energy, and the next it was gone. Had winked out of existence as easily as the sun passes behind a cloud, or a fog fades at break of day.

Rowan hurled his power at the cloud of darkness with all the force he could muster; summoned gales of winds and storms of ice, but nothing could pierce it. The cloak of darkness held, a black shroud that hid his Queen from him. And it did not advance.

Though the barrier had fallen, the creatures did not attack. The darkness did not move. And Rowan thought he knew why.

The creatures and Narrok had captured a prize far greater than the demi-Fae. The joy of feeding on her was something they planned to relish for a long, long while. He had felt their joy as they consumed the female in the caves, had sensed the curling anticipation of the male that had chased them through the woods and into the arms of the skinwalkers.

The creatures fed on pain and suffering, and hers was far greater than any they could’ve possibly imagined.

Minutes passed, and though Rowan did not stop his useless assault on the darkness, time felt stagnant. Nothing changed. The sounds of the battle raging beneath them did not slow, nor did Gavriel’s grip on his shoulders slacken. And Aelin did not succumb.

Rowan wasn’t sure how he knew: he just did. Aelin was still alive. Her heart still beat, and until it stopped, he would fight. With everything he had, he would fight.

Even as he began to hear that soft, warm female voice. Beckoning to him. Calling him to her, begging him to join her. Saying that if only he came, she could live. If only he came, they could be together again, forever. If only he came, she would forgive him for everything, for all of it.

It tore him to shreds. And the minutes ticked by.

“Rowan,” Gavriel murmured, tightening his grip on Rowan’s arm. Rain had begun pouring. “We are needed inside.”

“No,” he snarled. They didn’t understand. It didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered but the girl dying in that dark. Dying alone. Thinking that he had left her to die alone.

“Rowan, the others – ”

“No.”

Lorcan swore over the roar of the torrential rain. “She is dead, you fool, or close enough to it. You can still save other lives.”

They began hauling him to his feet, away from her. “If you don’t let me go, I’ll rip your head from your body,” he snarled at Lorcan, his commander. The male who had taken him in, who had trained him. Who he had traveled with through the long centuries.

But Rowan said it anyways.

Gavriel flicked his eyes to Lorcan in some silent conversation. Rowan tensed, preparing to fling them off. They would knock him unconscious sooner than allow him into that dark, where Lyria’s beckoning had now turned to screaming for mercy.

It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.

But Aelin was real, and was being drained of life with every moment they held him here. All he needed to get them unconscious was for Gavriel to drop his magical shield.

“Let go,” Rowan growled again, preparing to strike.

But then a rumbling shook the earth, and the three of them all froze. Beneath them, some huge power was surging, so massive and primordial it set the ground trembling. So massive that Rowan felt it in his very bones.

They turned toward the darkness. And Rowan could have sworn that a golden light arced through it, then disappeared.

“That’s impossible,” Gavriel breathed. “She burned out.”

Rowan didn’t dare blink. Her burnouts had always been self-imposed, had always been born of that iron cage, the bars that she hadn’t been able to rid herself of. That she had clung to, through all these long weeks.

The creatures fed on despair and pain and terror. But what if Aelin could let go of those fears? What if she walked through them, and learned to embrace them?

As if in answer, flame erupted from the wall of darkness.

The fire unfurled, filling the rainy night, vibrant as a red opal. Lorcan swore, and Gavriel threw up additional shields of his own magic. Rowan didn’t bother. They did not fight him as he shrugged off their grip, surging to his feet.

The flame didn’t singe a hair on his head. It flowed above and past him, glorious and immortal and unbreakable. It embraced him. Welcomed him as a friend.

And there, beyond the stones, standing between two of those creatures, was Aelin, a strange mark glowing on her brow. Her hair flowed around her, shorter now and bright like her fire. And her eyes – though they were red-rimmed, the gold in her eyes was a living flame.

The two creatures lunged for her, the darkness sweeping in around them.

Rowan ran all of one step before she flung out her arms, grabbing the creatures by their flawless faces – her palms over their open mouths as she exhaled sharply.

As if she’d breathed fire into their cores, flames shot out of their eyes, their ears, their fingers. The two creatures didn’t have a chance to scream as she burned them into cinders.

She lowered her arms. Her magic was raging so fiercely that the rain turned to steam before it hit her. A weapon bright from the forging.

He forgot Gavriel and Lorcan as he bolted for her – the gold and red and blue flames utterly hers, this Heir of Fire. Spying him at last, she smiled faintly.

A Queen’s smile. Full of relief and friendship and care and tenderness. It was a smile he wanted to look at for hours. A smile he wanted to see every single day until the day he died.

But there was exhaustion in that smile, and her bright magic flickered. Behind her, Narrok and the remaining creature – the one they had faced in the woods – were spooling the darkness into themselves, as if readying for attack. She turned toward them, swaying slightly, her skin deathly pale. They had fed on her, and she was drained after shredding apart their brethren. A very real, very final burnout was steadily approaching.

The wall of black swelled, one final hammer blow to squash her, but she stood fast, a golden light in the darkness. That was all Rowan needed to see before he knew what he had to do. Wind and ice were of no use here, but there were other ways.

Rowan drew his dagger and sliced his palm open as he sprinted through the gate-stones towards Aelin.

For even if it was all for nothing, even if he couldn’t help her, even if it made no difference at all whatsoever, he would at least be by her side. Neither of them would be alone. They could be together, as the darkness consumed them.

Rowan reached her, panting and bloody, and he held out his hand for her to take.

They were carranam, and he had come for her, just as she would have for him. And Rowan saw in her eyes that this would work. That she believed it too. He didn’t know if his power was strong enough, didn’t know if they would survive.

He didn’t know, but he hoped.

Aelin held his gaze as she grabbed her own dagger and cut open her palm, right over the scars that marked her blood-oath to avenge the death of her friend, her oath to save her nation.

And even though she knew he could read the words right off her face, she still asked him, “To whatever end?”

Rowan just nodded, and she gripped his outstretched hand, joining them. Blood to blood and soul to soul. He wrapped his other arm around her, grasping her tightly and feeling her heartbeat on his skin, the contours of her body against his. He leaned close and whispered softly into her ear, “I claim you, too, Aelin Galathynius.”

The wave of impenetrable black descended, roaring as it made to devour them. But they were together, no longer alone. They had both survived horrific things, had both weathered darknesses much greater than the one they currently faced.

So Rowan was not afraid of that crushing black, not with the Queen in his arms. The woman who had lit up his night. Who made him want to live once more.

Rowan breathed deep, and let the barriers within his mind fall, one by one. And he felt as Aelin’s mind entered his, felt as her fire flickered in his veins, her power new and bright and hot.

She drew his power into her, and it flooded out of him in a great rush, Rowan letting it flow freely between them as their blood dripped down their entwined arms.

Her well of power was near-empty, but its sheer size still astonished him.

It was fathomless, an enormous, hollow expanse. Was as vast as the sun – as the very core of the earth. She was the Heir of Fire, the Heir of Brannon, and she had no equal.

Rowan felt vulnerable in a way he never had before as Aelin sucked his magic from him. Vulnerable, but completely unafraid. To her, who’d had nothing and no one, who had been left completely alone, he gave the one and only thing he could. Himself.

Aelin’s knees began to buckle as the weight of their shared power took its toll, and Rowan held her in place, supporting her body while her mind bore the immense weight of their combined magics.

Then, Aelin struck.

The black wave had not even hallway fallen before Aelin shattered it apart with an arc of golden light, leaving Narrok and the remaining creature gaping.

She didn’t give them a moment to recover. Aelin reached into Rowan, drawing his power into her own body, his ice and wind and lightning becoming fire and light and heat in the alchemy of her blood. And then it exploded out of them in a torrent of golden flame.

Together they burned, surrounded by the force of a thousand stars. Embers crackled in the air all around them, flickers of flame like millions of fireflies. It was like standing on the surface of the sun.

Narrok and the creature were shrieking, and the sounds tore up his eardrums, a blade digging in and twisting. He and Aelin clung to each other as she crammed the light down their throats, burning up their black blood.

There was a sudden silence. And before he was destroyed completely, Narrok looked at Aelin, his eyes piercing her deep. For a moment they stared at each other, seeming to exchange something. A final goodbye.

Rowan clung tight to Aelin, keeping her anchored to him as the light around them intensified, becoming so bright it was actually painful. But Rowan forced his eyes to remain open. Forced himself to watch.

Aelin called the light to her, bending it to her will. And then she forced it into the creatures, pouring all of that beautiful, golden light into every shadowy corner of them.

The ironclad expression on Aelin’s face did not shift as she stared back at Narrok, and burned him to dust and ashes.

The remaining creature only managed to crawl two steps before he succumbed as well, a silent scream frozen on his dark face as he was incinerated.

Slowly, the light and flame receded, and Aelin’s exhausted mind fell away from his own. And all that remained of Narrok and the three creatures were four Wyrdstone collars steaming in the wet grass.  

Their bloody palms fell apart at last, and Rowan felt Aelin’s soul slip out of his grasp. He shivered, suddenly cold.

Rowan looked up for the first time, and found that the darkness was completely gone, utterly eradicated. And though Aelin had burned as hot as a falling star, the trees around them were still green, the mists still chill. Towards the east, Rowan could just see the faint rays of dawn beginning to peek around the mountain peaks. The tips of Mala’s fingers stretching to greet them, washing the last of the darkness aside.

Aelin swayed slightly, utterly spent, and Rowan wrapped his arm around her more tightly, guiding her over the uneven grass and up the blood-spattered steps, towards their rooms. But before they left, Rowan leaned over and scooped up the stone collars, sliding them onto his swordbelt.

Gavriel and Lorcan were already gone, presumably to assist below. The sounds of battle had died down, the clash of metal and shouts of pain dwindling into silence. The fortress halls were quiet and empty as they walked side by side.

The second Aelin’s head hit the pillow, she was dead asleep.

Rowan pulled off her boots, rolling her over in order to pull the blankets out from underneath her. Then he tucked her into bed, carefully arranging the covers over her sleeping form.

But before he left the small stone chamber, his fingers found their way into her golden hair. Rowan smoothed the golden strands back behind her ears, gave her one last, lingering look, and walked out.

...

Masterlist / Ao3 / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

...

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[pomegranate-belle]

For Day 3 of MattFoggy Week: Matt Murdock Appreciation/Favorite Matt Moment

This is... Kinda late in the day to post, but I waffled for a long time. The next chapter of the Netflix/616 crossover would’ve been perfect for today’s theme, but it’s just not done yet. Instead, have some little bits and pieces from my WIP for the Marvel TV Bang, including one of my favorite Matt moments (who could choose just one??) aka Baby’s First Act of Vigilantism; apologies to the mods if these are still supposed to be anonymous but I figured that was just for art claims purposes--

((The premise of this fic is that NYC summons Matt to protect itself from Fisk (also a demon). Since the City has no soul of its own to sell, it lets Matt choose any person he wants. ;) Three guesses who the lucky winner ends up being--))

--

When Matthew Murdock dies, his hands are inches from the throat of the man who ordered his father’s murder, close enough that he can feel Roscoe Sweeney’s body heat against the pads of his fingers, pulsing like blood. They get no closer than that.

He takes a single bullet to the base of his skull, and can still feel the burn of it when he no longer has a skull to feel at all.

Matthew Murdock falls through the cracks, the way he always has. His body is destroyed beyond recognition and dumped without ceremony or care into the East River. There’s no one to miss him. No one to wonder if his soul has passed on.

It hasn’t.

The devil in him claws to the surface, clings to the City, clings to revenge, laughs at the way the City – webbed with energy and darkness and pain like a cracked windowpane – clings back. And even when the rest falls away, all the senses that remain falling silent with no input at all, there’s a piece the City in Matt and a piece of Matt in the City. A seed of each one in the other, a place where they’re the same – ravenous, protective, wounded.

And so perhaps in the end that’s the reason – the reason that, eleven years later when the City feels its first stirrings of true fear, it pulls Matthew Murdock out of the nothing, out of the void, out of the Ether. Draws him like a blade from that empty realm of demons and offers him anything he asks for.

--

The first thing he hears as he gasps in his first breath is screaming. Everything screaming. Himself, screaming. Every sense warring with the unprecedented, sudden onslaught of information. It’s like being blinded all over again.

… All over again.

Because he was. Blind. Before, yes. Before the aching gulf of nothing, before the Ether. Before it, he’d been… He’d been…

Matthew, the City seems to sing, soothing him from its barrage of sounds and smells and textures. Matthew Michael Murdock.

Yes. It all comes back to him, leeching through him like blood through veins – Jack Murdock, the accident, the orphanage, Stick… The mobsters.

The gun.

One shaking hand reaches for the back of his neck, but there’s no scar beneath his sensitive fingertips. Just soft skin and the wispy, silken brush of hair. The City has made him whole again. Bright and shiny and new.

And older. He must… He must be older, he thinks to himself, because he had been only seventeen when he died and he feels sturdier, a little taller than he did then. When Matt rubs a hand across his face, shakily assessing the differences in his body, he feels the itchy rasp of stubble where before there had been nothing but smooth skin.

The clothes he’s wearing are different too, not the simple, threadbare things he’d had on – hand-me-downs from the orphanage. Instead, the fabric against his skin is soft, gentle. High in quality, fitted like a dream. A button-up shirt, a silk tie, a suit jacket and slacks. Dress shoes. There are a pair of glasses perched on his nose. He pulls them off slowly, runs the pad of his thumb along the edge of the frames. Round. Matt slips them back onto his face. He tries to imagine the picture he makes. Professional, maybe. Like the lawyer his dad always wanted him to be.

A strange, contented feeling fills him that he knows is not his own. It’s the City, taking pride in its work, telling him, Look what We have made of you, feel the strength We have given you. And there is strength. A well of power so deep it almost scares him, thrumming under his skin, between muscle and bone.

The power of a demon.

Because that’s what he is now, he realizes with a shudder. A demon. One of the more-than-human creatures that stalk the streets of the City, that leave black Marks on the skin of the people living in it like dirty fingerprints.

The City has always had demons in it, and they have always had magic, but this? It’s beyond anything Matt recalls hearing about as a child or a young man. What he’s been given is fathomless. He could do anything with this power. Rip the world apart and put it back together.

But even with so much magic at his beck and call, he’s— cold. It’s like a hunger but it aches in his fingers and his heart instead of his belly. He… Needs something. Something…

The asphalt is warm under his feet, hums with life and energy, but not enough. The City can’t give Matt what he needs. What he needs…

That’s right, he thinks to himself. That’s right. A soul. He needs a soul. But even if the City is full of souls, it doesn’t have one of its own to keep Matt warm.

What warmth it does have surrounds Matt, strokes a summer breeze against his cheek and says— It’s ok. Choose one. Any one you want is yours, if you do as We ask.

And Matt is so desperately hungry for that warmth, and he loves his City – remembers, from Before, having always loved it, having learned that love from his father and from the people around him – that he says yes without any hesitation at all.

The deal is struck.

The City needs a protector, and Matt needs a soul, and then… Then the screams inside them both will stop.

--

It’s not long into his summoning that Matt hears the girl crying. Every night, crying. Her father comes into her room at night, and terrible things happen, and she cries.

The City is used to those sobs, even if it doesn’t like them. To Matt, though, they’re grating. They fray his nerves, rub them raw. But this isn’t in his deal, this isn’t part of the plan.

Still, it… It doesn’t always take demon magic to fix the world’s problems. Matt phones in an anonymous tip. He waits, he hopes.

The crying doesn’t stop. It actually gets worse – silent and gasping and painful. Helpless rage burns in his stomach like cold fire, only enhancing the chills that shiver through his body. But there is nothing he can do, no part of this that he can wrestle under the heading of the City’s deal. And the City is used to the crying, even when it hates it. It has to live with every person in it, the girl’s father included – the City doesn’t love him, but he’s still a part of it, one flickering flame among millions. And the only ones Matt is allowed to harm are the ones the City summoned him to. There’s no cruelty to the way it ushers Matt far from the girl’s window, but it still hurts. Aches inside him like a festering wound that Matt worries will never be healed.

Until the girl does something new. Until the night that she sets a book, dank with mildew, on her bedroom floor with a heavy thump. Scribbles something into the wood of the floorboards in firm strokes of what must be, by smell and sound, chalk. Dark energy fizzles in the air that night, a summoning to be done, a deal to be made. A deal born of vengeance and terror and the desperation of a child betrayed. A deal that sings for him. And Matt is clever, and he’s powerful, and he’s the City’s favorite. The deal is his almost before he can think to ask for it.

--

Matt’s hands are wrapped with cloth but the man’s blood seeps through them. It’s hot and soothing against his skin. He wants to bathe in it, use it to drive away the chill that still haunts his bones. When Matt flashes his victim a smile, his teeth are fangs and there are huge, twisted horns sprouting from his skull.

“Touch your daughter again and I’ll know,” Matt breathes, pressing a burning hand to the man’s jaw and leaving behind his Mark; a warning, a brand – equal and opposite to the one hidden beneath his daughter’s sleeve, a jagged mirror of Matt’s Mark that flares with malevolence instead of protection. “Touch her again and you die.”

“W-who are you?” the man demands, terror laced through every breath.

Demons don’t have names. Don’t remember them. They choose new ones, when they surface. And even though the City returned his name to him, Matt knows what he wants to say. Knows the message he wants to send this man and anyone like him.

Those Murdock boys, he remembers his grandmother saying, can almost remember the way the wrinkles creased her face, they got the Devil in ‘em. There’s nothing in Matt now – not even a soul – so he knows there’s no Devil in him.

Matt grins, savors the stinging, already-healing pain of the split in his lip.

“Me? I’m the Devil.”

And as long as that means he can keep the City safe, keep people like Eva safe… Well, Matt’s just fine with that.

--

Karen’s companion smells heady and sweet, enough that Matt can almost taste it on his tongue. Enough that his fingers twitch with desire when he considers burying his nose in the man’s neck to better inhale his scent. Even more alluringly, the man’s soul swirls with magic – Matt is put in mind of photos of the galaxy that he saw as a child. It’s blazingly warm, like sunlight on the skin, and it dances when the man laughs a perfect, glittering laugh. A tremble born of arousal, of hunger, chases its way through Matt’s body at the sound.

 --

“Are, um,” Karen asks hesitantly. “Are demon Marks always black?”

“What kind of question is that?”

The stranger sounds puzzled, concerned, and the tone of his voice – so full of care, love – sends another shiver of pleasure down Matt’s spine. He wants that tone with a greed that borders on terrifying. Wants it directed at himself.

“Well.” Karen’s voice breaks Matt out of the trance. “Well, say one was… Red. What might that mean?”

The rhythm of the man’s steps stutters, halts.

“Karen, I have literally never heard of a red Mark in my life. Is there… Something you want to tell me? You didn’t, you know, make a deal or something, did you?”

“No!” Karen lies. “No. Just, you know, curious, I suppose.”

“Right.” Her companion doesn’t sound at all convinced. “Well, you know… You know you can tell me anything, right?”

“Yeah, Foggy, of course. Of course I do. Really, it’s nothing.”

 --

Foggy, Matt mouths to himself, feels the shape of the name on his tongue. Foggy Nelson. It’s… Silly. Whimsical, and gentle, and sweet. Like the man it belongs to. Perfect.

Franklin Percy Nelson, the City purrs proudly – first-middle-last with no hesitation, not even considering the power that name could give Matt over the man strolling, unaware, down the street below him. The power to break free of any spell he casts, to thwart any exorcism he attempts… Even to bewitch or enchant him. It’s an intimate knowledge, but it’s not one Matt wants from the City – it’s not something he wants to use or exploit.

And anyway, he… He likes ‘Foggy’ better than Franklin.

But while Matt might be— enamored, he’s not a fool. Very rarely is anything as it seems at first— Er. Well. Matt isn’t much for glancing. But the point is that people aren’t always what they seem. And as much as he doesn’t want to think that this could be the case with Foggy… Matt’s not used to good things falling into his lap. He wants to be sure, to be absolutely certain, before he makes his choice.

He’s got a little recon to do. The City seems amused with he whole thing, and it doesn’t protest. Actually even seems eager to find out what Matt will do next. He takes this show of interest as the gift it is, and temporarily shifts his focus, from the City’s deal to Foggy.

[drmorbius12]

Solypsia, Warrior of the Watchers

(Vision 7) The Story thus far: Preface The following Book of Stanzas or Runes was found at the bottom of a deep cave, covered in several layers of heavy dust, ash, and rock.  The cave was discovered only a few years ago, within the ruins of a monstrous ancient stonewalled complex.

The edifice appears to have been built over the cave itself, and placed in such a way that it would have been almost impossible to find without knowing where to look.  It may simply have been by chance that it was found at all. As such, the book could be as old as the cave, especially in view of evidence that suggests the cave itself was artificially carved from the living rock, and that the book was found lying at the bottom-most layer. When, by, and for whom, it was written, and for what purpose, is unknown. Thanks to enormous work and effort, you can now read the text from this book, although, unfortunately, the translation is as yet, incomplete. P.S. The discoverer and translator of the book was of the opinion that the Book is Myth and not a Chronicle of History.  Never the less, feel free to draw your own conclusion. P.P.S. The text that follows is a very rough first translation. 1. The Beings of Light 2. The Watchers 3. The Dark Ones 4. The Warrior 5. The Bent Soul 6. The Power 7. The Battle 8. The Revenge 9. The Instrument of Creation 10. The After Myth

1. Beings of Light When the Cosmos cooled and conditions were Right, There came into existence Beings of Light. Strung together by pure Energy, They could think of a thing and that caused it to Be. They wielded their powers and from chaos brought Life, Carving out worlds like sculptor with Knife. To further their work, they created the Watchers, To guide and protect the Creatures they Fathered, And nurture existence so those Creatures Might, Make lives of their own and bring them Delight. On one of these worlds they created a Race, Of Creatures with powers of beauty and Grace. Given these powers to control their Domain, They could live life content and exist without Pain. But a world without pain can only be Myth, Since joy without sorrow cannot Exist. There are always the ones who never seem Right, And prefer dark shadows to the world of Light.

2. Watchers

Since time out of mind the Watchers have born Witness: There are beings in this world with powers almost Limitless.

Many can control the urge to Destroy. But some have gone beyond the boundaries of Joy.

And turned to pain in such exquisite Detail, It makes even the Watchers turn a lighter shade of Pale.

It is such foes they set themselves Against. In the hope that someday the Great Liberation will Commence. 3. Dark Ones

The Dark Ones are hiding down in the Deep, Spinning their terrible webs of Deceit.

They're the ones who's Toll must be Paid, So that their terrible plans may be Laid.

Regurgitated in cold blood Curdled, From the mouths of Gods who did not want them in their World.

These Dark Ones stand in shadows Contrived, They hate the Watchers and plot their Demise.

And if the Bent Soul can turn the Trick, They're one step closer to a world Thick

With Pain beyond the realm of Thought, Past rivers deep with suffering Untaught.

Beyond all possible chance of Recall, Snuffing out the lives of All,

Who stand against those constantly Seeking To gain the World for their own Keeping. 4. Warrior

The fire in her soul burns Unquenchable. The elimination of her enemies will be deadly and Sequential.

The powers she's discovered inside her small Frame, are unfamiliar and yet ready to be Tamed.

The Watchers chose her for a very special Task: They want her to discover the One Behind the Mask.

But first, there is a score to be Settled. Her enemy is powerful and will test all her Mettle.

There is the one they call the Bent Soul, the one she needs to Beat. But she must make sure she has enough Majik buried in the souls of her Feet.

She would dearly love to engage him in combat to the Finish. He is the one who is causing her kind to Diminish. 5. Bent Soul

With yellow fangs and foetid Breath, The Bent Soul stops with thoughts of Death.

A hulking presence in the Dark. Evil mind and devil's Spark.

He can smell that she has passed his Way, But hasn't guessed what game she Plays.

To strike her dead and eat her Soul, Is what it takes to pay the Toll.

He has no doubt that she is Strong, But knows that she has not been Long

At wielding powers new and Strange, Like new born babe that's yet Untrained. 6. Power Lightly she steps to her own sad Song, Contemplating her life as far as it's Gone. That morning she woke from Dreams of Strange Power That threatened to engulf her mind's bright Tower. The peaceable lake at the bottom of her Mind Roiled beyond control in a frightening Sign. Held in a trance, unable to Move, Looking out with a gaze she could not Undo, She became rooted in stone as she stood looking Out From the lofty high walls of the Great Redoubt. Her mind took a leap from rampart to Sky Leaving body behind letting out a great Cry. Of a sudden her vision telescoped to Infinity, She saw her self suspended on the edge of Eternity. Looking down on creation she realized that Soon, Darkness would creep across the bright Moon. And seep into every corner of her small World, Damning the wise, killing as it Unfurled. Spreading poison upon the pure running Waters Her people depend on to live and to Prosper. Along with this vision came powers Anew, And lifting her up, 'cross the world she Flew. And suddenly she knew with her deepest of Mind, How to complete her task and be ready to Find, The one that she hates with all consuming Desire, Who plans her Extinction in a bloodbath of Fire. 7.  Battle The Bent Soul is hiding somewhere Nearby, Thinking that she will be easy to Spy. Not suspecting that she has undergone Transformation, and is ready to effect a great Conflagration. With pain so sharp that it makes him Stagger, He picks up her scent and thinks now he can catch Her. His great bat-like ears quiver with delight At the sound of her footsteps as they fall in the night Every nerve in his psyche is taut as a bow. His toe claws dig in as he crouches down low. "The plan is so simple", the Dark Ones said, As they spoke without voice deep within his huge head: To rip out her soul in one vicious strike And fly back to their realm with the prize held tight! "But she's no fool", her mother once cried, As she spoke to the darkness just before she died, At the hands of the Bent Soul on a night of blood lust. Long ago, in an age now covered with dust. Held tight under arm she cradled a babe that twisted in struggle to escape the hot blade. And that very same child now grown to great stature, Is ready for revenge served with hot molten anger. With new found sight in the nth dimension, Sees him crouched for the kill as though caught in suspension. Leaping from shadow he swoops for the kill. Not knowing she already sees that he will. And now a bright Light shines forth from her soul, Blinding the Bent One beyond his control. Sending him reeling with such a sharp force, That he stumbles and falls like a wounded war horse. With laser-like focus she throttles her beams, And burns a dark hole in the Bent One's dreams. Screams of pain and cognition of loss, Are so great that the sound bounces off the hard rocks, To shake the foundations of all within range, So that even the Dark Ones down in their caves, Instantly know the Bent One has failed: The Warrior's soul will never be jailed, Down in the deep where others they've caught, Live in a world where hope is for naught. Neither living nor dead only serving to feed The obscene blood desires of those who are keen To keep them trapped as long as they can, Locked in malice away from the Sun. From higher realms The Watchers cry out With the joy and the sorrow of those who, no doubt, In spite of their triumph with the Warrior they have chosen, Weep for a once innocent soul long frozen, In shape that defies all reason and logic, To wander forever in thought so demonic, That only The Watchers can dare to witness The dancing dark hatred that lurks there in earnest. 8. Revenge Now the Dark One's can see All that Transpires Gazing into their pale Green Fires. Seeing together through each other's Mind, Seeking to stem the turn of the Tide, They reach down into the dark smoking Husk, of the Bent One as he lies cold in the Dust. With collective sigh they touch the one Spot, that still pulses dimly: they've found what they Sought! The only thing left that shows any Breath, Where they might bring him back from the worst kind of Death: Cast into a Void, where Nothingness Reigns, where even the Watchers couldn't Feign, Not to fear that which was solely Created, even before Spacetime was Inflated, To contain a Dark force that aches with strange joy, for that which only the Beings of Light may Employ. 9. Instrument of Creation The very Instrument of Creation, The Horn of Light, that can only be winded by a Being who's life, Exists on a plane of Infinite surface, Where the Sounds of the Universe Throb with a Purpose. So The Dark Ones burn with rank jealousy, Unable to fathom what the Great Music could be, Caught in a song they cannot Contain, Not hearing the Harmony needed to sustain, Creation as we know it, and failing to see, That as hard as they try they will never succeed With endlessly plotting for ways and designs, New methods to bring down Creation Divine, And steal the Great Instrument so that they may become Masters of all, and Subject to none. 10. After Myth Who are the Music Makers and what gives them strength? What makes them tremble, what makes them think They give birth to a world by wielding pure sound, But never look back as the echoes rebound So the Universe unfolds propelling us all Into paths of the Music We never foresaw. A melody played out eons ago We are unwitting notes caught in the flow.

-Here ends the translation of the first section of the Book

[kingmaker-thac0hno]

An Expected Journey: Part 6

The Journal of Evrin Brazenbrook

25 Gozran

This morning we proceeded west from the temple, skirting through previously surveyed land to reach some of the westernmost portions of the charter’s allotment. We came across what first appeared to be a monolithic structure, overgrown with vegetation, while nearby there was a large section of land that seems to have been the foundation of a building long ago. We cleared away some of the foliage toward the bottom of the foliage, and it was only a base with something above it. I then climbed upon Grimfeather who flew me to the top so that I could begin clearing the foliage from the top down. It turned out to be a fifteen-foot tall statue of Erastil, and even though we had witnessed other monuments to the Stag God this very morning, we all had a sense of reverence over this new discovery and we look forward to telling Jhod at the next opportunity. One of our party mentioned something about seeing a murder of crows to the southeast, but we simply made note of it and set camp for the night.

26 Gozran

We started the day feeling deliciously well-rested, though that feeling was apparently replaced with an ominous disquiet for Saryn as the day wore on. We proceeded further to the southwest, and came across the strange sight of a dead unicorn, missing its horn. Until today, I had been led to believe that unicorns were mythical beings, but Saryn had certainly had some familiarity with such creatures. The entire area was completely silent, and Armauk, our gentle cleric, could make no distinct determination as to how long the unicorn’s corpse had lain there. He did guess that from the height of the grass around the body that it had perhaps been a few weeks, but the body itself showed no signs of decay. Saryn suggested we burn the body, but the others including myself tentatively disagreed, simply because we thought there might be some chance of it returning to life. As such, we left it and completed our survey of the area, finding nothing more of note.

27 Gozran

Much excitement today as we came across a river crossing partially blocked by two large dams. Saryn immediately went to explore the dams and came across two large creatures that looked rather like a blend of a python with a dragon. These creatures did not hesitate in attacking the half-elf, and judging by the wounds we saw soon afterward, he is lucky to not have died right then and there. Fortunately our party has now gained some experience in dealing with beasts of various shapes and sizes, and through the coordinated usage of our respective abilities, we killed them without sustaining a great deal of harm. I did receive a nasty bite from one, though my uncle Wardley’s armor certainly absorbed what could have been a much worse wound. As usual, I cannot romanticize the battle too much, as it was mostly a blur, but thanks to Saryn’s exploration of the beasts’ lairs, we did find some coinage, as well as something that brought true joy to my heart: a scroll containing an excellent map of locations within our allotment that we have yet to survey! In truth, this has made our job much easier, and matching this map with what we ourselves have been charting, as well as the broader, unspecific map of the area, I suspect we are around three quarters of the way through our goal at this point. I have begun to wonder what will be next once we do complete our survey, but for now, this small victory should sustain our spirits for a few days.

28 Gozran

We proceeded to survey eastward, seeking to find Tuskgutter or Falgrim Sneeg along the way. We found neither, but we did find a large, partially covered pit that contained a wounded thylacine within. I have seen these creatures before, though they are not often to be found in woods like these. In any event, Armauk was able to communicate with the beast and convince it that we meant it no harm. We gave it some food, and I ultimately climbed down into the pit, fastened a rope around its torso, and we all pulled it out to safety. The beast understandably dashed off as soon as it was freed, but we all felt that we had done a good deed by not leaving it to the unenviable fate of starvation.

29-30 Gozran

We slew Tuskgutter! Much could be said of how we went about doing so, but it amounts to this: we found the beast’s empty lair as we were surveying to the east. We decided to lay some traps in front of the lair, and took careful watches as we set camp, making sure to not use a fire, and also taking care to camp in an effective blind. Early this morning, as Armauk was on last watch, we all awoke as the ferocious brute trotted towards its lair and made an enormous racket as one of its hooves was caught in the trap. We all sprung into action, and I must give full credit to the beast, as we thought we had killed it, only to see it rise up and give us more of a fight than we might have expected. We are further buoyed by this victory, and are seemingly on a run of good luck these days. Tomorrow we plan to return to the temple of Erastil, where we left Jhod, and we will then proceed to Oleg’s. Saryn cut off the head of the brute, and we truly look forward to presenting it to Vekkel. It was he who had requested we hunt this beast as revenge for gruesomely goring his leg, and he will be delighted to see that vengeance fulfilled.

1-2 Desnus

There are few words that can describe the tragedy that has befallen this expedition. Everything had been going so well, but this evening we made it back to Oleg’s Trading Post, only to see it completely engulfed in flames. It was sacked—utterly sacked—by the Stag Lord and his men, and it was only by what amounts to a minor miracle that our divine half-orc was able to restore life to Oleg, Eshelu, Veshka, and the mercenary Kesten. We mourn the loss of Svetlana, Vekkel, and Kesten’s fellow mercenary, Kurgan, whose head was completely severed from his body. None of the horses remain. Nothing remains. I tried to console Oleg, but how can one console a man who has lost literally his love and his livelihood in less than one brutal hour?

Kesten informed us that the trading post was attacked by the Stag Lord, fronting a veritable army of around two dozen men, at least one of which seems to have been almost impossibly strong and durable, deflecting attacks with ease. The Stag Lord himself appears to have deadly precision with his bow, and worse yet, the man we had been hunting on Kesten’s behalf—Falgrim Sneeg—was of the Stag Lord’s party.

I do not have time to write much more tonight, and indeed, my spirits are so low, and there is so much to be done, that I feel I may not have time to write again for quite some time. If things go as I suspect, it is possible that I will never lay quill to paper again. I cannot help but wonder if there is more we could have done to ensure Oleg’s safety, and to deal with the bandit issue more readily. I have tried my best to uphold the charter, and until today I believed that everything of value in the Greenbelt could be addressed while surveying. This is, of course, the reason why we were sent here…but I am now starting to realize that the dangers here are far worse than the Aldori Swordlords—my very order!—let on. People I cared about have died, and my own dogged pursuit of surveying has had a direct impact on those deaths. I am, in short, complicit, and the only way that I can make any sort of reparation for that complicity is to rid this place of the Stag Lord and his men for good. That will not assuage my guilt, but it will prevent this vile devil of a man—if man he be—from killing more good people and spreading terror in his wake. I hope that the party will aid me in this, though if they do not, I am willing to do it alone, even if it means my probable death. I have half a mind to burn this book, should my detailed scribblings fall into the wrong hands. But beneath the despair this day has brought, my spirit still has the faintest stirrings of hope that I may yet survive. Perhaps that is arrogance or ego, but should I survive, perhaps this journal may have some value to those who are to come. And knowing my superiors in Restov, come they will.

As the halfling put down his book and ceded his watch to Karis, he had troubling dreams of death and destruction, always featuring a massive figure with horns. The next few days saw the party take the survivors to Jhod at the Temple of the Elk, where he promised to do what he could to keep them safe. Kesten agreed to join the party to exact revenge on Sneeg, and the party continued in the general direction of where they believed the Stag Lord to be. The party pushed through exhaustion before finally reaching the kobolds in the silver mine, who graciously agreed to give them food and shelter for the night. The next day, the party set out early to the southwest, but nothing of note happened. The day after that, however—the 8th of Desnus—Armauk had a sense that the party was being stalked, and after climbing on Grimfeather’s back, Saryn noticed two things of great import: the first being that the creature stalking them seemed to be a large wolf, and the second being that a large encampment was visible to the west. This encampment seems to have been a former ruin, but has likely been repurposed as a highly defendable fort.

As for the wolf, the party pursued it, and it turned out to be able to speak. It snarled some threats—such as “I prefer my means screaming”—and after being shot with one of Karis’s arrows, it darted off to the east. By noon of the 8th of Desnus, the party was deciding how to best proceed against the Stag Lord’s forces.

[imreadingafuckingbook]

          A  List  Of  Halloween  Book  Recommendations

1.  Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

1990. The teen detectives once known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in the Zoinx River Valley in Oregon) are all grown up and haven't seen each other since their fateful, final case in 1977. Andy, the tomboy, is twenty-five and on the run, wanted in at least two states. Kerri, one-time kid genius and budding biologist, is bartending in New York, working on a serious drinking problem. At least she's got Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the team. Nate, the horror nerd, has spent the last thirteen years in and out of mental health institutions, and currently resides in an asylum in Arhkam, Massachusetts. The only friend he still sees is Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star. The problem is, Peter's been dead for years. The time has come to uncover the source of their nightmares and return to where it all began in 1977. This time, it better not be a man in a mask. The real monsters are waiting. With raucous humor and brilliantly orchestrated mayhem, Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids taps into our shared nostalgia for the books and cartoons we grew up with, and delivers an exuberant, eclectic, and highly entertaining celebration of horror, life, friendship, and many-tentacled, interdimensional demon spawn.

2.  The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth by Sarah Monette

The dead and the monstrous will not leave Kyle Murchison Booth alone, for an unwilling foray into necromancy has made him sensitive to--and attractive to--the creatures who roam the darkness of his once-safe world. Ghosts, ghouls, incubi: all have one thing in common. They know Booth for one of their own . . .

3. The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo

Love speaks in flowers. Truth requires thorns. Travel to a world of dark bargains struck by moonlight, of haunted towns and hungry woods, of talking beasts and gingerbread golems, where a young mermaid's voice can summon deadly storms and where a river might do a lovestruck boy's bidding but only for a terrible price. Inspired by myth, fairy tale, and folklore, #1 New York Times–bestselling author Leigh Bardugo has crafted a deliciously atmospheric collection of short stories filled with betrayals, revenge, sacrifice, and love. Perfect for new readers and dedicated fans, these tales will transport you to lands both familiar and strange—to a fully realized world of dangerous magic that millions have visited through the novels of the Grishaverse. This collection of six stories includes three brand-new tales, all of them lavishly illustrated with art that changes with each turn of the page, culminating in six stunning full-spread illustrations as rich in detail as the stories themselves.

4. The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding by Alexandra Bracken

"I would say it's a pleasure to meet thee, Prosperity Oceanus Redding, but truly, I only anticipate the delights of destroying thy happiness." Prosper is the only unexceptional Redding in his old and storied family history — that is, until he discovers the demon living inside him. Turns out Prosper's great-great-great-great-great-something grandfather made — and then broke — a contract with a malefactor, a demon who exchanges fortune for eternal servitude. And, weirdly enough, four-thousand-year-old Alastor isn't exactly the forgiving type. The fiend has reawakened with one purpose — to destroy the family whose success he ensured and who then betrayed him. With only days to break the curse and banish Alastor back to the demon realm, Prosper is playing unwilling host to the fiend, who delights in tormenting him with nasty insults and constant attempts trick him into a contract. Yeah, Prosper will take his future without a side of eternal servitude, thanks. Little does Prosper know, the malefactor's control over his body grows stronger with each passing night, and there's a lot Alastor isn't telling his dim-witted (but admittedly strong-willed) human host. From #1 New York Times best-selling author Alexandra Bracken comes a tale of betrayal and revenge, of old hurts passed down from generation to generation. Can you ever fully right a wrong, ever truly escape your history? Or will Prosper and Alastor be doomed to repeat it?

5. The Dire King (Jackaby #4) by Wiliam Ritter

The fate of the world is in the hands of detective of the supernatural R. F. Jackaby and his intrepid assistant, Abigail Rook. An evil king is turning ancient tensions into modern strife, using a blend of magic and technology to push Earth and the Otherworld into a mortal competition. Jackaby and Abigail are caught in the middle as they continue to solve the daily mysteries of New Fiddleham, New England — like who’s created the rend between the worlds, how to close it, and why zombies are appearing around. At the same time, the romance between Abigail and the shape-shifting police detective Charlie Cane deepens, and Jackaby’s resistance to his feelings for 926 Augur Lane’s ghostly lady, Jenny, begins to give way. Before the four can think about their own futures, they will have to defeat an evil that wants to destroy the future altogether.

6. Spectred Isle by KJ Charles

Archaeologist Saul Lazenby has been all but unemployable since his disgrace during the War. Now he scrapes a living working for a rich eccentric who believes in magic. Saul knows it’s a lot of nonsense...except that he begins to find himself in increasingly strange and frightening situations. And at every turn he runs into the sardonic, mysterious Randolph Glyde. Randolph is the last of an ancient line of arcanists, commanding deep secrets and extraordinary powers as he struggles to fulfil his family duties in a war-torn world. He knows there's something odd going on with the haunted-looking man who keeps turning up in all the wrong places. The only question for Randolph is whether Saul is victim or villain. Saul hasn’t trusted anyone in a long time. But as the supernatural threat grows, along with the desire between them, he’ll need to believe in evasive, enraging, devastatingly attractive Randolph. Because he may be the only man who can save Saul’s life—or his soul.

7. The Restorer by Amanda Stevens

My name is Amelia Gray. I'm a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. In order to protect myself from the parasitic nature of the dead, I've always held fast to the rules passed down from my father. But now a haunted police detective has entered my world and everything is changing, including the rules that have always kept me safe. It started with the discovery of a young woman's brutalized body in an old Charleston graveyard I've been hired to restore. The clues to the killer, and to his other victims, lie in the headstone symbolism that only I can interpret. Devlin needs my help, but his ghosts shadow his every move, feeding off his warmth, sustaining their presence with his energy. To warn him would be to invite them into my life. I've vowed to keep my distance, but the pull of his magnetism grows ever stronger even as the symbols lead me closer to the killer and to the gossamer veil that separates this world from the next.

8. Of the Abyss (Mancer #1) by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

After decades of strife, peace has finally been achieved in Kavet—but at a dark cost.  Sorcery is outlawed, and anyone convicted of consorting with the beings of the other realms—the Abyssi and the Numini—is put to death. The only people who can even discuss such topics legally are the scholars of the Order of the Napthol, who give counsel when questions regarding the supernatural planes arise.

Hansa Viridian, a captain in the elite guard unit tasked with protecting Kavet from sorcery, has always led a respectable life. But when he is implicated in a sorcerer’s crimes, the only way to avoid execution is to turn to the Abyss for help—specifically, to a half-Abyssi man he’s sworn he hates, but whose physical attraction he cannot deny.                            

Hansa is only the first victim in a plot that eventually drags him, a sorcerer named Xaz, and a Sister of the Napthol named Cadmia into the depths of the Abyss, where their only hope of escape is to complete an infernal task that might cost them their lives.

9. The Rook (The Checquy Files #1) by Daniel O’Malley

"The body you are wearing used to be mine." So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her. She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own. In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.  

10. The Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg

Returning to her hometown of Fjallbacka after the funeral of her parents, writer Erica Falck finds a community on the brink of tragedy. The death of her childhood friend, Alex, is just the beginning. Her wrists slashed, her body frozen in an ice-cold bath, it seems that she has taken her own life. Erica conceives a book about the beautiful but remote Alex, one that will answer questions about their own shared past. While her interest grows into an obsession, local detective Patrik Hedstrom is following his own suspicions about the case. But it is only when they start working together that the truth begins to emerge about a small town with a deeply disturbing past.