#it was called cavern (NOT. to be confused with The Cave which was released 1 month prior) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

chipper9906 · 5 years ago

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The Best Laid Plans- Chapter 5: A Reflection Of Herself

Link To Chapter 1

Pairings: Kylo Ren/Rey, Ben Solo/Rey

Rating: General Audiences

Word Count: 12,060

WARNINGS: Violence, Mentions of Blood

Status: Multi Chapter Fic- In Progress

Chapter Preview:

“Is that so?” Rey’s words were breathy, the simple act of talking too much when trekking in this heat. “If it’s so vital to them, then why haven’t you told anyone in the First Order about it? I mean, they’re excavating the planet for it, right? Why not tell them about this cave?”

Kylo stopped so unexpectedly in his tracks that, if she weren’t paying enough attention, she would have walked straight into the back of him. Confused, and slightly worried, Rey took a small step back, giving back the space that had been taken from his sudden stop. Considering she’s used to how Kylo doesn’t usually show much expression on his face, it was surprising how unnerving it was when she could only read the back of him. Kylo extinguished his saber, holding it limply by his side as he slowly turned around to face her, his eyes drifting up and down her form before rising up to her face to lock eyes with her.

“Because there are things in this Galaxy that are too beautiful to be damaged.”

In the pause after his words, a sudden chill ran up her spine. Not because of his words, no, but because of a realization; it was quiet. Not just quiet, but silent.

“What is it?” Kylo asked, having seen the panicked look on her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you hear that?”

Kylo furrowed his brow, cocking his head a little as he took a moment to listen closer.

“Hear…what? I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly. The birds have gone silent. Somethings wrong.”

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Chapter 5: A Reflection Of Herself

Her night had certainly not been one of rest.

It should have been easier to fall asleep after he had, and, considering the bone-deep exhaustion she had been feeling, she was quite surprised that she had not fallen into a deep slumber seconds after Ben had fallen asleep himself. And yet, she found herself staring at his slumbering form for much too long, willing for sleep to come and take her away. She would be lying to herself if she said she wasn’t nervous about their upcoming task; So many things could go wrong, and no amount of preparation will ensure her safety, not when she’s heading right into enemy territory- territory that’s technically controlled by the very man that’s sneaking her in.

When she did finally let sleep take her, it wasn’t a peaceful sleep. She did not dream of pleasant things; of the warmth of her friends embrace, of Han’s quick wit, of Leia’s mothering care, of the thrill of wielding a saber for the first time. No, her dreams were shadowy and sinister, of the disastrous possibilities the next day held, of terrible acts of betrayal and mistrust.

Which is why, perhaps, awakening from such dreams to see Kylo Ren peering down at her did not help in the slightest.

She could only imagine the look of sheer panic she saw on his face was one she was mirroring right back at him. In her groggy state of mind, she had reached out for her staff without a second thought, the solid weight of the metal handle a comforting presence in her hand against what her morning brain had perceived to be a threat. Ben was, thankfully, smart enough to leap away from her side before he could receive any potential concussions, splaying his hands in front of him when the wild, defensive look in her eyes remained.

“Calm down, it’s just me.” Kylo attempts to reassure her, slowly lowering his hands back down once it seemed like she wasn’t going to take a swing at him. “I didn’t mean to startle you-“

“Then what were you trying to do?” Rey snapped at him, dropping her staff down by her beside and exhaling heavily in relief as the short spike of adrenaline in her system begun to wear away. “I mean seriously, what was that? Were you watching me sleep?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kylo deflected with a frown. “You woke me up.”

“I woke you up? How could I possibly-“

“You were calling out to me in your sleep.” Kylo cut her off. “You were forcing your way into my dreams, reaching out for me over- Whatever it is that connects us. At some point, you started calling out loud, and it woke me up. I could sense your distress as you slept and I… I was trying to do what I could to help.”

“…What do you mean?”

“I…” Kylo begun, seemingly shrinking down on himself at the question. “I thought that, maybe… Maybe if I reached out to you too, answered your calls while you slept that, perhaps… It…It might soothe you. I fear I made it worse, since, well-“ Kylo gestured a hand at her pale, sweat-drenched form. “In my defense, it isn’t something I’ve exactly done before.”

“It’s the thought that counts, I suppose…” Rey mumbled as she pushed herself out of bed, rubbing a hand across her face in an attempt to wipe away the last dregs of drowsiness clinging to her. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather you didn’t do something like that again.”

To her surprise, the frown that seems permanently etched onto his face only seemed to deepen at that. Kylo managed to quickly wrangle in whatever emotion he had briefly let slip, returning to his neutral expression with a clear of his throat and the straightening of his posture.

“I’d suggest you get yourself ready; we have a long journey ahead of us and we’ve eaten up too much of the morning hours already.” Kylo’s suggestion was more of an order than anything, and she would have made such a remark if he wasn’t already heading for the exit of her old home, the fluttering end of his cape the last thing she saw of him as he slipped out of view.

Rey agitatedly swept her staff up off the floor with a frustrated groan, racing around the AT-AT that was baking in the steadily increasing temperature of the morning hours of Jakku to collect what little possessions she had packed to take with her.

“Maybe one day you’ll settle on which personality you want to show to me. That’ll be a nice day…”

* * *

Kylo’s shuttle looked every bit as menacing up close as it did when she spotted it from afar. She didn’t exactly have memories of this ship, except for the fact that she knew this was the ship that he had taken her onto after forcing her into sleep against her will. So, for that reason, she couldn’t help but feel a little bit anxious as she stepped aboard.

Kylo placed his helmet atop the ship's console before dropping himself down into the pilot's seat. He gave her a side glance when she appeared in his field of vision, standing somewhat awkwardly by the seat next to him as she took a good look at the ship's interior.

“Sit wherever you’re comfortable,” Kylo advised, turning his attention back to the console and firing the ship's engines to life. “It’ll take some time to get there.”

“You ever going to tell me the name of this planet?” Rey asked as she slipped into the seat next to him. It unsettled her, when she wasn’t in control of a ship, unable to dictate where she’ll end up. Even if she isn’t the one in control, the closer she was to the controls, the better she felt.

“And let you pass that information onto the Resistance?” Kylo asked in a dead-pan tone, briefly taking his attention away from the steadily shrinking ground in front of them to raise an eyebrow at her. “Nice try.”

“Well, what can you tell me about this planet?” Rey inquired as she yanked her bag around her body. Flipping the top open, she reaches a hand in and searches around until she feels the smooth leather of her holster. “I’d at least like to know what I’m walking into.”

“Nothing you shouldn’t be able to handle. Planets covered in flora mostly, oceans are rather small but we won’t have to worry about them.”

“Anything I should be worried about?”

“So long as we keep a low profile, we should be okay. The place we’re headed to, no one else knows about it, so we shouldn’t have to worry about running into any patrols. The foliage should help keep us covered, so if we’re lucky, no over-head ships should pick us up.”

“Any wildlife?”

“I’ve only seen a few reports that mentioned any potentially dangerous wildlife; most we’ve seen are a few small serpents that have snuck inside the bases we’ve set up. I’ve only been here once, and I didn’t see anything in that time.”

“That doesn’t mean there’s nothing else out there.” Rey mumbled, her focus diverted to her hands as she struggled to clasp her holster around her waist, fingers fumbling across the single strap that would tighten the holster.

“No, but that’s all the knowledge I have on this planet's fauna. There’s nothing we can do but be cautious. Although, there is one thing I had plenty of experience with while I was out here.”

“What?”

“Storms,” Kylo said with a grimace. “They don’t usually hit until the evenings, but when they do… They’re unlike any storm I’ve encountered before; The rain falls so heavy you can barely see in front of you, and the lightning… It would be a beautiful thing to see if you weren’t right in the middle of it. It struck multiple times, I was surrounded by it. You could feel the electricity in the air, feel as it was about to strike you…”

“How did you avoid getting hit?”

“I searched for the closest shelter I could find, which ended up being a rather dingy looking cave. I fell into it really- it was so well hidden within the rock wall. The second I entered that place… I knew it wasn’t just myself that guided me here. The power radiating from deep down within that cavern, I could tell this place was something special, something more than just somewhere to shelter from the storm.”

Kylo released his grip on the ship's controls, leaning over the console and tapping his fingers across its surface, flicking a silver switch above his head before turning to face her.

“And that’s where we’re headed to right now-“ Kylo’s words tapered off as he caught sight of the weapon attached to her hip, his mouth suddenly turning dry. “-What is that?”

“What’s what?” Rey’s brow arched in confusion, glancing down at herself to try and figure out what had gained his attention. “My holster?”

“I meant more the weapon that it's holding.” Kylo noted dryly, nodding to the blaster sat snuggly within its hold. “That’s my father's weapon, isn’t it?”

“Oh, you’re finally going to start calling him your father now, are you?”

“Don’t avoid the question.” Kylo deflected with a dark scowl, narrowing his eyes dangerously at her. “Where did you get it?”

“He gave it to me.” Rey defended herself, pulling the blaster out of his holster to hold close to her. “Like you, he didn’t think I could protect myself with just my staff, so he gave it to me.”

“He just…gave it to you?”

“Yes. I was going to give it back to him- blasters aren’t really my thing- but… I never got the chance.”

Kylo lowered his eyes to the floor, suddenly finding himself unable to meet her gaze. With an annoyed huff, he turned back around to face the stars that were streaming past them, watching the streaks of lights that warped overhead.

“I’m surprised you didn’t recognize it.” Rey noted after a few unbearable seconds of silence. “After all, I have shot at you with it before. Twice, actually.”

Kylo huffed again, though whether this time it was one of exasperation or one of laughter, she couldn’t tell. Judging by the silence that followed, the conversation seemed to have come to an end. With an awkward clear of her throat, Rey joined Kylo in gazing out the front of the ship, content with watching the Galaxy fly past.

“I learned how to shoot with that blaster.” Kylo was the one to break the silence this time. “We used a stun blaster first- didn’t want to risk me accidentally shooting something I wasn’t meant to. Chewie, he- He would set up these targets for me, made of rocks.”

There was almost a wistful look on Kylo’s face as he reminisced, just a hint of a smile twitching at his lips, his eyes glazed over as he found himself lost on his own memories.

“Chewie taught you how to shoot?” Rey spoke softly, not wanting to startle him out of whatever trance he seemed to have fallen into.

“Taught me how to fly a speeder, too. I had a few close calls the first time I tried, but… He was persistent that I learned. I wanted to learn how to pilot a ship like… Like Han did. Said I needed to learn how to fly a speeder before I got anywhere near the cockpit of a ship.”

“I’m surprised Han didn’t teach you.”

“Mom probably would have killed him if she found out he was teaching me how to shoot. When he saw how well I was doing with the stun blaster, he let me start training with that one.” Kylo pointed a finger towards the weapon in her hands. “Not as powerful as his heavy blaster, but lethal enough. Had a safety switch too- something I’m sure helped appease mother as well. I had to give it back to him once I was sent away to my Uncle.”

Rey pulled the blaster out from its pouch, holding it in her hands which were rested atop her lap. The silver gleam of its metal body reflected the various lights of the ship they were sat in, it's metal well-polished after a good clean. She may not know much about using a blaster, but she at least knows that a clean, looked after blaster is a blaster that will never fail you.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you shoot a blaster.” Rey pondered as she looked down at the blaster in her lap. “Were you any good?”

“I could hit the target.” Kylo replied indifferently, shrugging his shoulders. “Which is more than I can say for your skills.”

“Hey!” Rey protested. “I managed to hit a good few of your men!”

“Didn’t manage to hit me.”

“You were deflecting them with your saber! They were still on target-”

“-I distinctly remember seeing some bolts flying past me into the trees.”

“I was running away from you, it’s not like I could take the time to aim! Wouldn’t have mattered much anyway, if you just kept deflecting them.”

“Well, it was that or let myself get shot. Although, I’m sure you’d be glad if I had let the latter happen.”

“Well, I… I wouldn’t say glad.”

“Oh? What would you say?”

“I’d say it would probably have made life easier for me, but… easier is boring.” Rey responded, glancing at Kylo out of the corner of her eye. “Besides, I prefer a challenge.”

* * *

Despite how much Rey had insisted she wouldn’t be able to sleep in his ship, there were many times in their long journey that she found herself drifting off. It seemed that the comfortable seats of his shuttle and the fact that she hadn’t got much sleep last night were really having an impact on her ability to stay awake.

Rey was jolted out of her sleepy state by a crackling sound emitting from the ship's intercom. Kylo immediately straightened to attention at the sound, leaning away from the console and closer to her to whisper in her direction. “We’re approaching our destination. It seems my troops have detected us.”

“Unknown Ship, you are entering into Restricted Space. This planet is strictly off-limit to non-personnel of the First Order. Turn around, or identify yourself, or we will be forced to fire upon you.”

Even though she knew she was currently sat inside Kylo Ren’s ship, she still felt a sharp spike of fear run through her, as if they somehow knew she was in here. It was an irrational thought, she knew that full well, but living the life she had, it had taught her that the best way to survive was to expect the worst of a situation, and make sure you’re prepared for it. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get a word out, Kylo had raised a finger to his lips. While usually she would not accept such orders from him, the urgency she saw in his expression was enough for her mouth to slam shut. Once he felt assured she would not speak, Kylo let his finger slip away from his lips and turned back to the console, leaning closer to the intercom and pressing his finger down onto the button.

“It would do you well to identify your Leaders ship, trooper,” Kylo spoke smoothly into the intercom, his tone sending as much as a threat as his words ever could. “I can think of just a few of the many… repercussions you may face from the First Order after firing upon your leader. If I don’t get to you first, that is.”

“My apologies, Supreme Leader,” The man’s voice had lost most of its superiority, a few warbles away from becoming a trembling mess. “We were not expecting a visit from you today.”

“Snoke may have been a lot more lax in checking up on his trooper's work, but I prefer to be a bit more thorough. No use checking up on you when you know I’m coming. This way, I can see how you’ve truly been doing- And then I can assess your usefulness from that.”

“Of course, Supreme Leader. Welcome.”

With that, the intercom crackled once more, and the ship returned to silence. Kylo released his hold on the intercoms button, moving his hands back over to the console of the ship and messing with a few buttons, taking the ship out of auto-pilot as he grabbed hold of its controls.

“Easy as that.” Kylo turned his head to speak to her, though kept his eyes trained on the windshield of his ship. “And as he said: Welcome.”

It never ceased to amaze Rey the vastly different planets that existed out here. Having lived most of her life on a dry and sand-covered planet, the thought of a planet existing that was covered in plants, lush and full of life, seemed impossible. It was possible, but being stuck in that place… In that state of mind, it was nothing more than a dream. This one looked quite similar to Takonda, and she was sure she had the same expression of wonder and amazement planted on her face as when she laid eyes on Takonda for the first time, aboard the Falcon. The planet was nothing more than a green orb from this distance, barely able to see the small patches of blue that dotted its surface. Rey pushed herself out of her seat, leaning over the console and closer to the thick glass of the windshield, the only barrier between her and the un-survivable cold of space, desperate to get a closer look.

“You might want to sit back down,” Kylo’s voice broke her out of the moment, bringing her sharply back to reality. “I’m starting the descent.”

Rey fell back down into her seat, watching as the small green orb grew bigger and bigger, until it was all she could see. The hazy gray clouds covering the planet split apart as they broke through the planet’s atmosphere, an endless landscape of brilliantly vivid green staring back at her, cresting up the planets mountainous landscape. It seemed that, unless there was an ocean in the way, every square inch of the planet’s surface had become overrun by flora. The stretch of green that made up the ground rapidly rose to meet them as Kylo pushed the shuttle further down, until they were close enough that Rey could make out the tops of the tall, swaying trees that rushed past them.

“There’s no landing pads here- as you can imagine. No landing sites either.” Kylo told her as he decreased some of the engine's output, slowing the ship down.

“Where are you planning to land then? It doesn’t seem like there’s anywhere to safely put this thing down.”

“There is a landing pad near a base, nearly a day’s walk away from where we’re headed. Obviously, using that is unwise, since we’re trying to prevent my troopers from spotting you. Once I had returned from my trek last time, I knew this was a place I was going to return to- So I cleared a small area to land. Shouldn’t be too big as to attract the attention of my troops, but big enough that we won’t have to worry about damaging ourselves upon landing.”

“You cleared an area of forest all by yourself? With what?”

Kylo answered his question by tapping at his saber by his side.

“It took me a while to find a good area- Most of the trees have too thick of a trunk you see, wouldn’t be able to slice through without starting some fires that I wouldn’t be able to extinguish. Fortunately, I found an area that mostly consisted of very thin, but very long, trunks. They were easy to bring down.”

“And you remember where this place is?”

Suddenly, the ship gave a giant lurch, and Rey found herself pinned to her seat as the ship slowed in the air dramatically. She felt her stomach sink as the ship began to drop down rapidly, a feeling similar to being in free-fall. She heard the whirring of gears as the ship's landing gear dropped down, moments before she feels the reassuring ‘thud’ of the ship reaching ground safely.

“Yes, I’d say I do,” Kylo said with a tone that hinted he was barely holding in his cocky smile. After a few more taps on his console, the ship's engines powered down, and Kylo rose from his seat, reaching out to snag his helmet from the console before he took a few steps behind her, disappearing from her line of sight. “Come on, we’ve still got a small walk ahead of us.”

Rey gave him a small glare as she too got up from her seat, turning to see the back of him as he stood waiting by the ship's open ramp, nothing more than a black silhouette against the bright light of the planets sun spilling into the ship. She walked over to his side, very nearly tripping over his cape that was whipping against his legs from the breeze that filtered in up the ramp. Even from here, she could feel the heat of the planet wrapping itself around her. Heat was something she was used to, but this was nothing like the heat of Jakku. Jakku was a dry heat, one that left your lungs feeling scratchy and your mouth so dry that it was as if you had swallowed its sands dunes. This planet's heat was almost wet, the air so dense with it that was sure she was breathing in warm water and not air. She was so unaccustomed to it that she almost felt like she was suffocating, like she was in no way getting enough oxygen to function properly.

Kylo looked unaffected by the planet's condition. Perhaps he had already become accustomed to it in his visits. Or, maybe he was just very good at hiding it, as he is many other things. After a few moments, Kylo attached his helmet to his side, resting securely on a clip that was on his belt.

“Are you ready?”

‘No.’ That’s what she was thinking, at least, but it wasn’t something she could ever say out loud. After all, she’d already come all this way. She may be fearing not only what’s to come, but what could happen on the way there, but with all this effort put into reaching here, not just by her but by the man standing next to her, turning back now just isn’t an option.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

Every now and then, Rey took a moment to take in the absolute beauty of this planet. Whilst the treetops provided a decent amount of shade from the burning sun above them, there were still a few beams of sunlight peering through the thick wall of leaves, accentuating the gorgeous colors that surrounded them. Whilst it was true that most of what she saw was various shades of green, there were a few bursts of color all around, many different species of exotic-looking flowers trailing up the ridiculously tall trees they were navigating their way past. It was very peaceful, not much to hear but the shuffling of leaves pushed by the gentle breeze that was too warm to do much in terms of cooling her off, and the beautiful songs of the flying creatures that flew over-head, some brave enough to swoop right past the two of them.

Rey’s sure she’d be able to appreciate it even more if she didn’t feel like she was about to drop dead from the heat. She had lost track of how long they had been walking for now. All she does know is that it feels like her skin is melting off her body in this awful heat. The burning pain on the bottom of her feet makes it feel as if she’s managed to rub away the soles of her shoes, the sensitive skin within rubbed raw. Sweat was steadily collecting within her boots, which only served to worsen the friction burn as she walks. A part of her wanted to give in and ask Kylo how much further it was until they reached this cave of his, but a larger part of her refused to do so, not wanting to give away any signs that this long trek was affecting her more than it seemed.

Especially since, in the brief moments she glances over to him, his long strides meaning she’s practically having to jog to keep up with him, the only sign she gets that he’s suffering as much as she is by the glistening sheen of sweat covering his skin, a few drops occasionally rolling down the bridge of his nose. She can only imagine the amount of sweat building up in the big, dark, bulky combat boots he wears, still stomping along the dirt path with his usual forcefulness, as if each step isn’t bringing him intense pain, occasionally swinging his saber in front of him to slice through any vines that stopped their advance.

Still, he hasn’t said a thing about the intense heat. Kylo hasn’t said much, really, which she assumes is because he’s focusing on remembering the way to the cave. The idea that perhaps he doesn’t remember the way, and is too stubborn to admit he’s lost, does briefly flutter past her thoughts, but she’d rather not test his patience by bringing it up right now, especially if this heat has him feeling as agitated as she feels. She doesn’t know how he does it, walking about in this insane heat, covered in layers of nothing but heavy, thick, black clothing. The cloak seems completely unnecessary at this point, and she’s sure it would be such a relief to take it off. And yet, it remains.

However, as time goes on, and with it the ache in her feet worsens, and the scratchy dry feeling in her throat increases, Rey finds that her patience only lessens. He had said that this was a short walk, and while she doesn’t know what Kylo’s definition of short is, this is definitely not it. Not even close.

“Are you sure we’re on the right path?” Rey used her staff to flick away a piece of vine that had rebounded at her off Kylo as he pushed through. “This all seems very… Untouched.”

“It’s been a while since I was here, most of the vegetation has regrown,” Kylo replied, grunting as he cuts through a particularly thick vine that had refused to bend away. “Trust me, I’ll never forget how to find my way to this place. I’d never forgive myself if I did.”

“Sounds like this place is important to you.”

“That’s because it is. Planets that are rich with naturally occurring Kyber Veins are incredibly rare, especially now that Illum is… not available. It’s a vital resource to the First Order.”

“Because there are things in this Galaxy that are too beautiful to be damaged.”

In the pause after his words, a sudden chill ran up her spine. Not because of his words, no, but because of a realization; it was quiet. Not just quiet, but silent.

“What is it?” Kylo asked, having seen the panicked look on her face. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you hear that?”

Kylo furrowed his brow, cocking his head a little as he took a moment to listen closer.

“Hear…what? I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly. The birds have gone silent. Somethings wrong.”

Rey didn’t think he would take her words too seriously, expecting for him to brush aside her concerns as nothing more than paranoia. Instead, she sees him tense up, igniting his saber within seconds and spinning around, trying to get a glimpse of a danger that they don’t even know exists just yet. Kylo took a step back, bumping into Rey’s side, to which he instinctively puts an arm out to try and pull her behind him. Rey goes willingly, turning so that they were back to back and holding her staff out in front of her at the same time that Kylo holds his ignited saber in front of himself. The two pivot on the spot, scanning every inch of the treeline they can see.

“Do you see anything?” Rey turns her head slightly to whisper up to him, making sure to keep her eyes on what’s in front of her.

“No,” Kylo mumbled under his breath in response. “I can barely see a thing through all these plants-“

A deep, guttural sounding growl froze the two of them. The cold chill Rey had been feeling peaked at the sound, her hands much clammier than they were before. The two of them simultaneously turn in the direction of the sound, in no way able to anticipate what it is they were about to confront.

Out from the shade of the trees came a large, sleek beast, very nearly the same height as them. It moved slow and low to the ground, it’s four muscular legs propelling it smoothly forward, prowling towards them. It was covered in fine fur, its color a brown so dark, Rey almost mistook it as black. The sun glinted off its fur as it moved, an odd iridescence pattern appearing, spots of blue appearing as it was exposed to the light. Its head resembled one of a lizard; long pointed snout that cracked open to reveal rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth. Sitting within its mouth was a slender, navy-colored tongue which flicked about in its mouth as it released yet another one of its low growls. The creature came to a stop as its beady, yellow eyes swiveled around to focus on them, it's diamond-shaped pupils dilating, it’s nostrils flaring, catching their scent.

Kylo spun his saber around in his hand, the saber emitting a crackled hum at the movement. The creatures growls increased in volume at the sight, sensing the danger and power within the object in his hands. The creature began its crawl once more, sluggishly moving its heavy mass to circle them, inching steadily closer as it did so.

“Keep behind me,” Kylo ordered in a low, quiet tone, not taking his eyes off the creature for even a second. “I’ll do my best to distract it. Once it’s focused on me, you make a run for it.”

“What?” Rey hissed. “I’m not leaving you to fight this thing off on your own!”

“You don’t have a weapon. Just that blaster,” Kylo shot back in an equally harsh tone. “This isn’t up for discussion. Go!”

“No! We don’t know how powerful this thing is, it could kill you!”

“For Kriffs-sake, Rey! Why can't you just do as I ask-“

Kylo was cut off as the creature unexpectedly leaped through the air, showing much more agility then it had previously. Kylo barely had enough time to react, shoving Rey to the side and twisting away, slashing his saber through the creature’s side. The hit barely glanced the creature, which gave a rough growl as the saber burnt through its flesh. It reacted to the pain by swiping out an arm, catching Kylo off guard. The power of the hit swept Kylo off his feet, sending him hurtling through the air into the depths of the forest, landing somewhere out of Rey’s sight with a painful sounding ‘thud’.

“BEN!” Rey yelled out after him, uneasiness settling within her when she gets no response.

The creature turned its furious gaze onto Rey at her yell, having become enraged and defensive from the injury Kylo had inflicted. It only gives a small snarl in warning before charging towards her, swiping its sharp claws across the ground as it gets closer. Rey brings up her staff to swipe the creature in the side of the head, sending the creature staggering to the side from the hit. It shakes its head side to side, something akin to a mix of a growl and a hiss vibrating from its chest as it dived towards her with its jaws open wide. Rey shoved her staff in the direction of the creature, the top of it catching the roof of the creature’s mouth. The beast tried to snap its mouth shut, only to be greeted by the bottom of her staff. The creature hissed in anguish, but Rey could feel it biting down harder and harder, felt her staff shake in her hands under the immense pressure. With a loud crack, the staff snapped in two, and Rey threw herself to the ground, moments before the creature's sharp teeth snapped together where her head once was.

She rolls as she lands, bouncing back up to her feet. Before the creature can recover, she yanks her blaster out of her holster, pressing down on the trigger. She only realizes that the blaster isn’t firing because the safety is still on once the creature pounces, its heavy weight pushing her to the ground. It’s nothing but adrenaline and instinct fuelling her actions as she holds the creature by the neck, the only thing keeping its snapping teeth from sinking into the soft flesh of her neck. Its rancid breath washed over her as its snout moves closer and closer, her trembling arms unable to hold the beast at bay for long.

She hears the sound of something gliding through the leaves and dirt of the forest floor until it gently hits her side. Just as the creature rears back, ready for its final blow, Rey grabs hold of the object by her side. Her hands wrap around the familiar hilt of Kylo’s saber and, as the creature strikes, she ignites the saber.

Kylo somewhat stumbles to his feet, his vision still blurry from the hit to his head, the slight trickle of blood running down the side of his face the end result of such a hit. Through the fogginess of his vision he’s just about able to make out the shape of the creature resting atop Rey, both bodies still on the forest floor.

“Rey?” Kylo tries to ignore the icy grip of fear that clung to his heart at the sight, his uncoordinated movements resulting in more of a staggering shuffle in her direction.

The fear releases its grip at the sight of Rey pushing the creature off to the side, revealing the smoldering hole that had been pierced through its chest, his saber still ignited in her hands. He lets out a small breath of relief, wiping his hands across his face, waiting for everything to stop spinning around him.

Rey grimaces as she pushes herself up to sit, glancing down at the saber in her hand to see it still ignited, swiping the ignition switch down to extinguish its blades. Something black appears in the corner of her vision, and she glances up to see Kylo’s glove-clad hand, which she gladly takes, leaning on him as she pulls herself up to stand. Kylo wobbles at the extra weight, and Rey shoots out a hand to stop him from keening over, grabbing hold of his arm.

“Are you okay?” She asks him, eyes drawn to the sluggishly bleeding wound on his head.

“I’ll be fine.” Kylo brushes her off, despite the jelly feeling in his legs. “I’ve dealt with worse.”

“We should really take care of that.” Rey insisted, furrowing her brow anxiously at the wound.

“I said I’m fine.” Kylo snapped, trying to tug his arm out of her vice grip. Instead of letting go, Rey tugs him towards a fallen trunk, pushing him down to sit. Just the fact that she’s so easily able to push him around only serves to prove her point that he is not fine, but that doesn’t stop him from weakly glaring up at her.

Rey pulls open the top of her bag, pulling out a small canteen of water and a few bundles of cloth and gauze, most of them homemade from spare bits of cloth she was able to cut from old clothing of hers, Luke’s and (when they finally gave in) the keepers of Ahch-To.

“We’d be better off with some Bacta-patches,” Rey tells him as she uncaps the canteen, placing a piece of cloth at the lip of the bottle and pouring out some water, soaking the material. “But we’ll have to make do with this.”

Kylo doesn’t say anything in response as she lifts the cloth to his face, wiping as gently as she can across the wound. Kylo can’t help but flinch at the touch, doing his best to hide his wince at the sharp burst of pain.

“Sorry,” Rey whispers in apology, clearing away the blood that had smeared across his forehead. The cloth quickly becomes coated in red, to which she wets another piece of cloth, continuing to wipe away the blood that continued to slowly leak from his head.

“This might hurt a bit,” Rey warns him as she takes a bundle of cloth in her hands and pressing it to the wound, putting as much pressure as she dares. Kylo’s breath hitches as his eyes flutter shut, holding his breath for a moment before releasing it slowly, keeping his eyes shut as he works through the pain.

After a few minutes, Rey pulls the bundle of cloths away from his head, relieved to see the bleeding had all but stopped. She gently grabs hold of the sides of his face, pulling him closer to take a better look at the injury. Kylo’s eyes open at the touch, gazing up at her as she assesses his wound.

“I don’t think you’ll need any stitches,” Kylo feels her breath fan across his face as she speaks. “We should probably keep it covered though, just to be sure.”

Kylo makes no complaints as she turns away to unroll the gauze, pushing his hair out of the way as she wraps the gauze around his head as tight as she can without hurting him. She finishes tying the ends of the gauze in a knot to secure it, her eyes dropping down to see Kylo’s intense gaze locked on her. Her hands slowly drop from his head as she finishes the knot, finding herself unable to tear her gaze away from the intensity of his.

“Thank you,” Kylo spoke softly, his gaze briefly moving from her eyes down to her lips, before flicking back up again.

Rey snapped herself out of it, all but leaping back from him, surprised by how close they had managed to get in just a few seconds. Kylo blinks owlishly for a few seconds before clearing his throat, glancing down at the log he was sat on and picking up the discarded and bloodies bits of cloth. With a few kicks of his feet, he had created a large enough hole to drop the piece of cloth into, kicking some dirt and leaves back on top to cover them. Rey placed the canteen back into her bag, picking up his saber from beside her and glancing up to see Kylo staring up at the sky. Rey looked up to see what he was staring at, noticing that through the cover of trees, she could make out the sun, which was already reaching its highest point in the sky.

“We uh… We should get going.” Rey stammered out, looking away from the sky and awkwardly holding his lightsaber out to him. Kylo doesn’t say a word in response as he scoops the saber back up, only solemnly nods at her and clips the saber back to his belt, turning on his heel and pushing through the forest once again. Rey watches his retreating form for a few seconds, unable to explain why the humming warmth she felt within her chest when she gazed into her eyes seemed to be growing colder the further he walked away from her.

“What just happened?”

* * *

Rey had all but sunk into her thoughts, mostly as a way to distract herself from the ache she felt throughout her entire body at being pinned down by that creature. She imagined Kylo was in a similar boat right now. That wound did look rather painful, and the hazy look she had seen in his eyes, along with his somewhat sluggish movements, didn’t do much to boost her confidence in his wellbeing. As she walks, she glances down to the two halves of her staff in her hands, feeling a pang of sadness for its demise. That weapon had been by her side nearly her entire life, protecting her from all manners of relentless scavengers and other trespassers.

She’s about to take another step forward when her path is blocked by Kylo’s arm, stretched out in front of her to stop her from moving any further. He’s not looking at her, rather he’s staring at a section of a cliff wall that’s adorned by hanging vines and creeping plants extending up and around the cracked rocks. He drops his hand away, sweeping over to the solid face of rock and placing a hand palm forward on its surface. Rey’s about to ask him what he’s trying to do when he takes a step to the side, grabbing hold of a clump of hanging vines and tugging them harshly down, ripping them away. This forms a small black hole, and Kylo continues to pull away more and more of the vegetation until eventually, there’s a hole large enough for them to squeeze through.

“This is it.” Kylo breathes, grabbing the side of the tough, thick vines, grunting with the effort as he pulls it to the side, widening the hole just a bit more for her to enter through.

“Are you coming with me?” Rey asked as she peering into the un-ending darkness within, a small bubble of anxiety forming at the idea of making her way through this cave all by herself.

“Every step of the way.”

She flashed him a grateful smile, to which she got a twitch of the lips from him in response. That’s as good as a smile to her, especially when considering this is Kylo Ren. She ducks under his arm that’s still holding the rebellious vines away that are valiantly trying to return to their original position, stepping into the smothering darkness that threatened to swallow her whole. Her eyes flick about in the dark, the small stream of light making its way through the entrance barely lighting the room. She only has to exist in this uncomfortable state of being without sight for a few seconds before the room is filled with a blinding red. She winces at the sudden, unexpected burst of light, though her eyes quickly recover. She glances over to the source of the light, seeing that Kylo had ignited his saber, holding it out in front of him as a light source. The crackling sabers light gave out a similar glowing effect, its flickering light replicating the effect of a lit torch.

If she’s being honest, the place doesn’t look all that special. The cave is narrow and somewhat claustrophobic, her limited vision making it feel like the walls were closing in on them both. The ceiling is, thankfully, quite high up, and she at least doesn’t feel at risk of the ceiling collapsing atop of her.

“We’re so close…” Kylo whispers into the darkness, his voice, while quiet, amplified as it bounces off the walls that enclosed them. “I envy you, in a way. This experience is one you’ll never forget.”

Kylo began to walk forward, Rey trailing close behind. After all, he’s the one that’s been here before, and she’d much rather not get lost in this place. Without a source of light, she’d never find her way back out, and that’s a fate she wants to avoid at all costs.

“Can you only ever get one crystal?” Rey asks as they advance further and further into the cave, relieved to see that the narrow walkways were beginning to widen marginally.

“I’ve never heard of an instance where more than one crystal has called out to one of the padawans during The Gathering. That doesn’t mean you’re limited to only one, however. There have been many Force Wielders in the past that have returned to Illum to find another crystal, either for another saber, or to create a saber with more than one blade.”

“Then… what’s stopping you from getting another crystal?”

“Nothing but myself,” Kylo replied. “I don’t need another crystal. I’m more than satisfied with the saber I have, and I have no desire to construct another for myself. I could experience collecting a crystal again, yes, but I can never again experience the first time. It’s different. The feeling of rightness is one I cannot explain. You’ll know when you feel it.”

It didn’t take long for Kylo to be proven right.

Rey repeated his earlier actions, shooting out a hand and grabbing hold of his upper arm, forcing him to come to a stop. It felt like a light tickling sensation at the back of her head at first, so subtle she almost didn’t notice it. The deeper down they went into the cave, the stronger it got until eventually, it was more than just a sensation. Now, she could hear it: Unintelligible whispering, floating out from somewhere ahead of them, willing her to come closer.

“You hear it, don’t you?” Kylo asked, and if she listened close enough, she would be able to pick up the slightest tone of excitement in his voice. “It’s calling out to you, Rey. Follow it.”

Rey didn’t need Kylo to tell her this. The need to go and find the source of the whispers was so strong, the notion of doing so utterly natural, something that she has to do, the thought of not doing it simply out of the question. It felt like she wasn’t in control of her body, more like she was just a passenger, watching herself as she descends further and further down, no longer needing the gentle glow of Kylo’s saber to light the way. She could be blind for all it mattered, robbed all of her senses, in fact, and it would not matter. So long as the Force existed within her, so long as she had the privilege of being able to shape it to her will, she would find her way.

Rey didn’t feel like she had truly regained control of her body until she had reached the end of a particularly narrow tunnel, staring agape at the gigantic cavern she had stepped into. The crumbling walls of the cave were now so far apart, the cavern so wide in size, that she could barely see where it ended, especially past the odd, murky fog that floated lazily just above the damp floor. All of this was nothing compared to the ginormous, breath-taking crystals that littered the cavern, most jutting out from the walls of the cavern, others surrounding narrow columns that had been eroded away from the trickling water escaping from the ceiling. If it weren’t for the sense of calmness that had washed over her upon stepping into this place, the sight of the sharp, hanging crystals attached to the ceiling above them would likely have worried her.

But, it doesn’t. She trusts the crystals, as if they were alive, believing with her entire being that they would not hurt her.

“It really is beautiful,” Rey whispers in astonishment, spinning around to take in all that she can.

“It’s certainly something to behold, yes.” Kylo agrees. “The call, it must be stronger now. Almost unbearable, if your experience is similar to mine.”

It was exactly the same as his experience, based on the incessant tug she felt deep down inside her. It almost felt like a physical pull, like someone had wrapped around her waist and was yanking with all its might, willing her to follow wherever it leads. Rey readily gives in to the tug, to the call, letting her feet take her to where she needs to be.

It’s here.

It’s here, and its been waiting for you.

She feels it, more than she sees it. A single, small shard whose energy pulsed through the room, standing out to her like a flashlight in the dark. Her pace quickens as she lays eyes on it, needing to get there faster. She can hear the slapping sounds of her own footsteps as she advanced towards it, hears the echoing footsteps of Kylo right behind her, as he promised.

“Is this it?” Kylo asks once she comes to a stop. Her eyes were focused on only the crystal in front of her. Nothing seemed more important in the Galaxy, at least not right here in this moment.

“This is it.”

No if, no ‘I think’, no buts. This was it. She just knew.

“What are you waiting for?” She could barely hear Kylo’s voice over the relentless whispering that filled her mind. “Take what’s yours.”

Rey reaches out a hand, pinching the tip of the crystal between her thumb and her forefinger. With a flick of her wrist, the crystal cracks, snapping off from the base of the shard. She pulls the crystal into her palm, wrapping her fingers so tightly around it that the sharp edges of the crystal bite into her soft skin, close to drawing blood.

Her mind raced with the possibilities, of what color the crystal would shift into. It had been colorless when she snapped it off, a rather cloudy pale white color, almost translucent. What color would it show to her? What of herself would the crystal reflect at her?

Rey closed her eyes, taking a deep breath to ready herself. Agonizingly slowly, Rey uncurls her fingers one by one, the crystal rocking lightly in her hands. She takes another deep breath, counts to three, and opens her eyes.

The crystal had broke in half.

Two pieces now sat in her hand. Moments ago, it had been one single crystal. She knew that. Felt it as she snapped it off.

But, that wasn’t all. That wasn’t the only thing that had caught her attention. It was the color of the crystal.

Red.

The crystal was undisputedly, glaringly, red.

Her stomach dropped to her feet, dread replacing the hole it’s lack of presence had created. This… This wasn’t possible, was it? She was sure of it. Kylo had told her as much, the crystals didn’t naturally turn red. It was a process, a draining, painful one at that. So why? Why had this happened? Why did she have to be the one for this phenomenon to occur for?

“Ben?” She whispers, his name coming out as more of a tremble. “Ben, I don’t understand, I didn’t think that-“

But when she turns to address him, he’s gone. Nothing but darkness exists in the place he had once been, seemingly vanishing from existence.

“Ben?” Rey calls out, her voice echoing back to her. “Ben!”

Panic is quick to take hold. She refused to believe he had just abandoned her. It just wasn’t possible. He had been by her side seconds ago, there was no way for him to have left as quickly as he did. Nothing made sense.

You went straight to the dark…

Rey whirled around, eyes desperately searching in the darkness for the source of the sound. Its cruel whispers bounced around the room, echoing its harsh words back to her.

It offered you something you needed. And you didn’t even try to stop yourself…

No….No, not this again.

I’ve seen this raw strength only once before in Ben Solo. It didn’t scare me then. It does now…

“Stop it…” Rey whispered, eyes wide in fear as she stumbled backward, her mind beginning to play tricks on her in the dark. “Just… Stop it…”

You think you can turn him? Pathetic child…

“Shut up!” Rey snaps at the irritating voices. “Bring everything back! Bring Ben back!”

The voice shifted once more, no longer the voice of her mentor, or the being that had once ruled the First Order. The darkness had granted her request, but not in the way she wanted.

And somehow, you convinced the droid to show it to you. You. A scavenger…

“This isn’t real…” Rey whispered to herself, her attempt to reassure herself not going as planned when her own voice whispers back, “How can you be sure?”

You had no place in this story. You come from nothing. You’re nothing…

I know that when the time comes, you’ll be the one to turn. You’ll stand with me, Rey.

“I won’t!” Rey wailed. This was just a test. That’s all it was. Then, why did it feel more than that? The crystal burned in her hand, a reminder of its presence, that of which she had somehow almost forgotten about amidst all this chaos. She tightens her grip around the crystal halves, the stinging pain of their jagged edges a grateful distraction. “I’ll never go down that way. I’ll never be tempted.”

“But words are easier than actions, are they not?”

It was her own voice again. Except, this time, it did not come from her own mind. No, she heard them spoken out loud, a dull tone that made her whole body shiver in disgust. And it was coming from right behind her.

The figure was shrouded in darkness, barely see-able due to the black garments it had draped itself in. A long, thick, dark cloak that pooled around their feet, clad in military-esque black boots. Black strips of fabric wrapped around the top of the boots, leading up and joining the equally black colored leggings. The thing that caught her attention the most was an all too familiar mask covering their face, the sight of the ragged blood red lines hitting her like a punch to the gut.

For a second, she almost whispered Ben’s name. After all, who else would wear such a mask, but the man who had hidden behind it for years? But, no… No, the figure was much too feminine to be him, too petite in size, too slender. And if the voice she had heard emitting from the figure has truly been her own, then…

Her worst fears are confirmed when the figure pulls the helmet off their head, that recognizable hiss of air sending a wave of nausea through her body. The most frightening thing about it all was, perhaps, that the face that was staring back at her had barely changed. Apart from the clothing, it seemed like she was just staring into a mirror. It was herself, and she seemed like herself.

“It had been one of his most brilliant ideas,” The other Rey stated, staring fondly down at the helmet in her hands. “ ‘The Mystery of Kylo Ren.’ The unstoppable being of raw power, that would bring the Galaxy to its knees with nothing more than the swing of saber, and the wave of a hand. One Kylo Ren was terrifying enough, but… What if there were more than one? One equally as strong with the Force, one that could complement his power with their own… What being would stand a chance against both of us?”

“No.” Rey denied, unable to stand the sound of her own voice, not when it was saying such words. “I would never agree to such a thing…”

“Oh, but we did,” The other her gloated. “And I was here, once. Just as you are now. And I said the same words that you did. And I believed them as much as you do right now. But things change. People change. And the more things changed, the more I learned… All of sudden, the words I once thought were from the ramblings of a tyrannical leader started to claim some truth to them.”

“Liar.”

“You can tell yourself what you want to believe. Try and change things as much as possible. But at the end of it all, you’ll stand here, just as I am now. The Force will call out to you, ask for your guidance to teach another. Teach you. And you will do it gladly. You will tell yourself to give in to that happiness. Of what you were missing all this time…”

“Tell me whatever you want. I won’t listen to a word of it. There is only one truth, one such power that can grant us a view into the possibilities the future may hold, and that is The Force. You are nothing more than a cheap trick to sway me. The Force may show me such possibilities, but I am the one that controls my own destiny.”

“Yes.” The other her agreed, much to Rey’s surprise. “You do control your own destiny. And that thing in your hand right there? That is the piece that leads you down this road, to becoming the person you see in front of you.”

The other her slowly placed a hand behind her back, yanking away a saber that had been cleverly hidden within a holder strapped to her back. She ignited the saber, revealing two fiery blades which, to her horror, were of the same ferocious energy as Kylo’s saber, the crackling red projecting across the sharp lines of dark her’s face.

“You take those crystal pieces from this place? It will always end up back here. Back in this saber in my hands. This will always be its place.”

“I won’t give in. Not to you, not to Kylo, not to the Dark. I will never become like you. I’ll make sure that never happens. No matter what it takes.”

The smirk on dark her’s face slipped away, lips curling in disgust at her past self.

“So be it.”

Dark Rey flicked the saber in her hand, the forceful movement pushing one saber down until it locked into place, forming a two-sided staff. A satisfied smile appeared on her face at the fear that washed over Rey’s face.

The crystal pieces in Rey’s hands began to burn ferociously, hot enough that she was tempted to drop it to the floor to relieve the searing pain. The burning spread across her hand, the crystal joining and becoming… Larger? It was morphing shape, tall enough that she could wrap her hands around it. It’s smooth surface had changed, the ridges she felt under her fingers very familiar. Rey pries her eyes away from her other self long enough to glance down at the crystal in her hands.

Only, it wasn’t a crystal anymore.

It was Kylo’s saber.

Rey wasted no time, flicking the ignition switch up to his saber. It did not emit the crimson blades she was used to, instead out came a pouring of blindingly bright white light. It retained its unstable, crackling energy, casting a flickering white light all around the cavern. It’s light lit up Dark Rey’s face, and this time it was her face that had constricted in fear, though she still retained that look of disgust, now directed at the saber in Rey’s hands.

“Abomination,” Dark Rey spat at her, her fear quickly morphing to fury. “Do not try to deceit me. Kylo would never do that to his saber. He would never do such a thing.”

Rey had no idea what the other her was babbling about, but clearly, it had disturbed her deeply. From what she could see, the only thing about the saber that had changed was its color, and she would confess she knew little about a sabers color, even more so, she had never even heard of a lightsaber turning white. This was not a new saber, it was very obviously Kylo’s one. She could never mistake it. So how had the crystal within changed color? And why did it upset the vision she was shown so much?

Rey doesn’t have much time to dwell on it, for the vision in front of her charges, lightsaber raised, ready to strike. Rey swings Kylo’s saber up in retaliation, placing a foot behind her to steady herself as Dark Rey’s saber clashes with Kylo’s. The force of the hit has Dark’s Rey’s saber sliding off to the side, to which she spins and aims a blow at Rey’s side. Rey just barely manages to aim Kylo’s saber down by her side in time to catch the hit, the hit nearly pushing Kylo’s saber into her own flesh. Rey kicks out her foot, landing squarely on Dark Rey’s chest. Dark Rey stumbles back with a pained grunt, though it quickly turns to amused laughter as she spins the saber-staff from her left hand to her right, taunting Rey with a wave of her hand, gesturing her closer.

Rey doesn’t rise to the bait.

‘Don’t strike first.’ A smooth voice filters through her head, wrapping its comforting presence around her mind. ‘Let her come to you.’

“How many years into the future are you?” Rey asks her future self as she begins stepping to the side, to which Dark Rey copies, the two slowly circling one another. “To think; You have all these years of dark side training over me, and yet, you can’t beat me.”

Dark Rey does rise to the bait.

She snarls, taking a few powerful pouncing steps towards her before she uses the force to launch herself into the air, aiming the end of her staff at Rey as she falls. Rey struggles with the weight of Kylo’s saber, sluggishly swinging it into the air and knocking the staff to the side before it can impale her. Dark Rey’s feet are centimeters from touching the ground, but before she can land, Rey throws out a hand, using the Force to push her away before she can attack once more. Dark Rey uses the Force to slow down her landing, feet skidding across the rocky floor as she slows to a stop, crouching low to the ground as she lands to take in the impact of the landing, her staff held tightly behind her back. In a flash, she’s back on her feet, the staff in her hand a blur of red and black as she takes repeated swipes in Rey's direction. Rey parries, mostly instinct and muscle memory fueling her movement as she reflects the hits. Rey pushed down the staff with Kylo’s saber, pushing it further and further down until it meets the floor. The floor hisses at the contact, rock slowly melting away as the tip of the staff is forced further and further down into the ground. Dark Rey pushes the other side of the staff towards Rey’s who flinches back enough to avoid the other end of the staff from spearing her face and lifts Kylo’s saber into the air, bringing it down hard onto her future self. Dark Rey throws out a hand, catching the saber mid-air. Rey’s arms shake with the effort as she tries to resist the force pushing up on her saber, and to her surprise, see’s that she’s winning the fight as the saber inches slowly downwards. Dark Rey unexpectedly releases hold of the saber, rolling away to the side to avoid the saber slicing through her.

Rey bends back up from the strike in time to see Dark Rey holding out a hand to the wall of the cave. A harsh rumble fills the air, the floor shakes, and then, a chunk of rock is ripped right out of the wall. It hovers menacingly in the air for only a moment before it’s sailing through the air, thrown in her direction.

‘Grab it!’

Rey flicks out a hand, calling out to the Force as she imagines physically swiping the rock away. The rock all but soars away to the side, slamming into the side of the cavern with such a forceful impact that the cavern begins shaking again. Then, there’s another chunk of rock flying towards her.

This time, she grabs it.

The rock floats in front of her, a few bits crumbling away to the floor at how hard she was ‘grabbing’ it. Instead of letting the rock fall to the floor, she lets her rage get the best of her, screaming in fury as she launches the rock back at her opponent. Dark Rey dives to the ground, the rock going sailing over her head. Rey advances towards Dark Rey, taking advantage of her opponent's weakened position on the ground. She twirls Kylo’s saber in her hand until it’s pointed downwards, pulling the saber across her body and striking slantways at Dark Rey. Dark Rey only just manages to get her staff up in time, but her grip on her weapon wasn’t strong enough, and the staff is wrenched from her hands, clinking across the floor and rolling away. Rey sneers at her future self as she watches her weapon disappear into the darkness of the cavern, raising Kylo’s saber until the tip was pointed down at her head, ready to bring it down.

‘DON’T!’

The voice was so deafeningly loud now, startling her enough that she took a few stumbled steps back. Her first few steps land on solid ground, her startled retreat pushing her further and further into the suffocating darkness of the cavern. It’s only once she’s fully surrounded by the darkness, barely able to see her future self still knelt frozen on the ground, head bowed in preparation for the killing blow that her next step meets nothing but air, and then she's falling, falling down into the deep, inky pit of nothingness.

She expects the intense pain of her body meeting the hard ground before she fades into oblivion. The world around her is still dark, and she can certainly feel the solid ground under her back and her legs, laid out across the floor. Except her head is cushioned on something soft, and she is very aware of the feeling of warm, calloused hands caressing the sides of her face.

Her eyes flutter open, escaping the all-consuming blackness she had slipped into. Her vision comes into clarity, focusing on the sight of Kylo’s face leaned over her, eyes closed and face twisted in pained concentration, the edges of the bandage on his head drenched in sweat. All of a sudden, his eyes snap open, and they immediately drift down to her face. The relief on his face upon seeing her awake was palpable. He tilted his back slightly, blowing out a puff of air as he closed his eyes once more.

He looked immensely tired.

“What…” Rey gets out blearily, feeling like she had just been flattened by a speeder. A pained groan escaped her lips as she bent forward, pushing down the heat rising to her cheeks at the realization her head had been resting in Kylo’s lap. “What happened?”

“You dropped the second you touched your crystal,” Kylo answered, not moving from his knelt position on the floor. “I managed to catch you before you hit the floor.”

“Does that always happen? When you touch your crystal for the first time?”

“Not to me. I tried to wake you, but nothing was working. I had to enter your mind to find out what was happening.”

Something unpleasant coiled in Rey’s stomach at that. She had experienced Kylo searching through her mind without her permission once before. The thought of someone so easily being able to sift through her thoughts, to take whatever they want from her… It unsettled her, to say the least. Kylo seemed to sense that, the closest thing to shame she think’s she’ll ever see from him flittering across his face.

Then, it clicks in her mind. That voice. It had been so familiar, so comforting… How had she not recognized it?

“It was you, wasn’t it? The voice I heard, that was you?”

“I wasn’t sure what state you were trapped in,” Kylo answered. “I didn’t want to find out what happens if you were to lose to her.”

“That other me, she… She said I’d turn out like her if I took this crystal.”

“I heard.”

“She’s wrong.”

Kylo raised an eyebrow at her.

“You don’t sound all that confident in that.” Kylo challenged her.

The most irritating part was that he was right. All of her decisions since she had discovered her connection with the Force had been fueled by the visions the Force had shown her. The way her opinion had changed of Luke once Kylo had shown her a vision of the past, of the night Master Skywalker had considered taking his life. How that in itself had only added fuel to the fire when Kylo had reached his hand to her across the burning fire of her hut, of the agonizingly beautiful future of Ben Solo the Force had shown her the second her fingers had brushed against his, only reinforcing her decision to drop everything and go to him, to ensure that vision would become reality.

And now, her future apparently lied in the crystal she held in her hands.

They both looked down to her hand that held the crystal, her fingers clenched so tight that her knuckles were turning a milky white, straining against the thin layer of skin covering her hand. Kylo’s gaze briefly shifted up to her face; seeing the trepidation there, the hesitation to truly gaze upon the crystal for the first time.

“We can’t just sit here and stare at your hand forever,” Kylo said gently, placing his hand over hers, her small hand engulfed in his. “I’m here every step of the way, remember? We can do this together.”

Ever so delicately, Kylo tugged at her fingers. Her fingers followed the movement, uncurling under his hand. Now there was nothing blocking the crystal from the light of day but Kylo’s own hand over hers.

“Together?” Kylo said in a questioning tone, ducking his head down to meet her gaze. He wouldn’t remove his hand until she was sure she was ready.

“Together.”

Kylo’s hand slowly slipped away from her own. Rey gasped sharply at the sight of the crystal. Even Kylo took in a sharp breath as he laid eyes on the crystal. The crystal was not a deep red as the vision had shown her. It was a wonderful, shining gold crystal nestled safely in the palm of her hands. Rey looked up to Kylo, who had a similar look of astonishment on his face.

If she were to guess, that meant this didn’t happen all that often.

Right now though, she didn’t care what it meant. All she cared about was the crystal was whole, in one piece. Not cracked into two pieces as her vision had shown. It was not red, at least, not now. The vision had been wrong, and she had never felt so thankful for such a realization.

“Well, you got one thing right,” Rey said, glancing up to Kylo’s curious face with a tired laugh. “This is certainly something I’ll never forget.”

Link to Chapter 6

#reylo #reylo fanfic #reylo fanfiction #kylo ren/rey #ben solo/rey #reylo au

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experimentalmadness · 5 years ago

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Cin Vhetin Ch. 4: Into the Depths Part 2

Chapter Summary: Din and The Rebel find themselves trapped underground while Din wonders if their unease truce still holds.

Pairing: Din x OC/Reader (however you prefer to read it) No warnings for now

Masterlist: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3

Ao3 Link

***

They were falling.

The light disappeared rapidly as they plunged into the tunnel, the bike showered sparks as it sputtered and crashed against the metal of the long drop. At this speed and with no bottom in sight, staying on the bike would be a death sentence. Din ignited the jet pack still on his shoulders and released the speeder, clutching the kid tightly to his chest. The baby laughed against him.

At least one of us is having fun.

Not for the first time he marveled at the kid’s resilience. Maybe whatever sorcery it possessed caused it to view danger in a different way. The jet pack flickered against him as he tried to gain altitude. The winds were strong. Some kind of a cross breeze from whatever lay underground and the canyon above. He gritted his teeth and fought against it. He jerked downward and hit his back against the metal tube. At this rate he had two options: continue fighting the winds only to crash regardless, or use what remained of the fuel to descend to the ground and find a different way up.

Din hit the side of the tunnel again as the wind crushed against him. Option B it was.

He deaccelerated down the tunnel, realizing it sloped gradually to one side and curved into a wider chamber. Once on solid footing again, he shut off the jet pack. The cavern was pitch black. Keeping one hand on the kid he adjusted a headlight. The area itself seemed both natural and manufactured. Wide, carved tunnels with metal encasing and wiring lay surrounded by geological rock formations jutting through old assembly lines.

“Abandoned factories.”

Din spun about, blaster drawn as he stared into another headlight affixed to a helmet. The Rebel had survived the crash? They were covered in soot and dust and their left arm seemed limp at their side. Still, their weapon was trained on him. “Glad to see you made it,” they said. “Sorry about that. I thought most of the underground factories on Akiva were further south of here. Still, we should be able to get out.”

“We? What happened to that fair fight you promised after we ditched the other hunters?” Din couldn’t quite figure out what this merc’s game was. First they try and sabotage his ship to get him out in the open, next they’re blasting him out of the sky without a warning, and now here they were trapped underground. It was a perfect opportunity.

“I don’t want to carry your corpse out through several leagues of tunnels and caves. Besides, between the two of us we’re likely to work out a faster way out. I don’t fancy staying down here longer than I have to,” The modulator crackled as they spoke. “Truce?” They holstered their blaster and held up a hand, though the left one still remained motionless.

“You broke your arm in the fall.”

Static laughter pierced through the modulator. “Was it obvious?”

“I could shoot you now,” Din said matter-of-factly, taking a page out of The Rebel’s playbook. “Leave you here, find my own way out.”

“I heard Mandalorians were all proud warriors,” they tilted their head. “You going to shoot an unarmed, injured person in the dark right after they just called a truce? That would be disappointing.”

Din hesitated.

“Or maybe my arm’s not really broken.”

Before he could blink the Rebel had two blasters drawn, one in each hand. Static crackled out of the modulator that covered for the obvious laughter as they quickly resheathed both weapons. “Just kidding. It is broken, but,” they removed their blaster’s holster and fashioned a crude sling. “This’ll do for now.”

Din’s confusion only mounted as they kicked the discarded blaster over to him. “Look, now you have my weapon so you know I must be serious. Ready to get out of here?”

“Are you crazy?” he pocketed the spare blaster.

“No. Just someone who wants to live,” they turned their back on him and stared out at the expansive cavern. From here there were multiple points of exploration. Three tunnels that he could see at ground level, another two were up a ledge that was easily climbable for him at least, his companion would have some difficulty with it.

“So,” if this was how it was going to be he could play along. He’d had stranger allies of convenience in his life. “Which way do you think?”

“No light, no fresh air, when in doubt go as straight as you can,” The Rebel said, gesturing down the center tunnel with their good hand before walking off.

Well, nothing for it now. Din holstered the blaster. The kid blinked serenely up at him. He shrugged. “Unless you have any suggestions?” he asked. As usual the kid had none. For now they’d follow the Rebel.

***

“Give me a boost, will ya?”

Din hoisted the Rebel up onto a high ledge, letting them scramble one-handed to pull themselves upright. The same gloved hand reached back for him to help him up. From their new vantage point it was easy to see where the factory properly began in the caverns. Din looked down at his feet, they were standing on an old assembly line. The rubber padding was worn from disuse and the elements, but the gears that would have moved it along its track were still visible.

The Rebel half bounced their way along the track and Din had to be fast to catch the child about to race after them to skip along at their side. He didn’t care if they were allies for now. That kid wasn’t getting anywhere near them. For all he knew they were just waiting for him to let his guard down so they could nab the child, shoot him in the back, and take off.

He’d anticipated it for hours now. But the Rebel remained affable, and wholly uninterested in harming either him or the child. He couldn’t get a read on them. The vocal modulator and the tinted helmet made it impossible. Maybe this is what everyone else thought of when they saw every other Mandalorian.

They walked along in silence, the only lights coming from their headlamps. The kid’s excited and curious coos echoed around the caverns. Din looked up at an old, rusted crane that hung loose over the cracked ceiling. Stalactites pierced through the holes in the metal plated roof. In the distance Din could hear the squeaks and flaps of some flying creatures. He hoped that was all that was down here with them.

He almost jumped backwards when his light refocused ahead of him, reflecting against an unknown, armored silhouette. There, standing in rows and rows were disused, decaying B1 battle droids. Din blinked back the sudden flashfire of explosions across his eyes and stepped carefully around the army of corpse-droids.

The kid tugged on his leg, a concerned noise leaving its throat. “I’m fine,” he replied absentmindedly, continuing to back up away from the rows of droids before he bumped into something solid and metal. Half expecting it to be the Rebel, Din was wholly unprepared for the sight of something he hadn’t seen since childhood.

The droid looked smaller than he remembered, but the B2 super droid still appeared as ominous as ever in the dim light, it’s attached blasters were held at the ready, it’s armored head, tucked close to its shoulders. The red light on its breast plate was off. It was off, Din reminded himself as sweat broke out on his, thankfully, hidden face.

“Told you these were abandoned factories. Shut down after the wars.”

The Rebel’s voice drowned out the screams echoing in Din’s ears and brought him back to reality. They were standing next to him although he could not recall them walking over. They were staring impassively up at the B2 droids. “Kinda sad, all these things down here in the dark? Never even got a chance to do anything?”

“Sad?!” Din could not keep the electric anger out of his voice.

If the Rebel found that unusual they were keeping it to themselves. They only shrugged at his outburst, never taking their eyes away from the droid. “I wouldn’t want to be left in a place like this. All alone.”

There was something to those words their modulator interrupted with static. They sighed and clapped Din on the back with surprising strength. “Guess that’s why I’m keeping you alive so we get out of here, huh? C’mon. Keep moving.”

Din forced himself to put one foot in front of the other. His every instinct screamed at him to burn the entire assembly line to the ground. Blast it right out of existence even if it buried all of them. But in a strange way the Rebel was right. They had been left down here, never living in the first place. IG-11 came painfully to mind at that last thought, but his brain was crowded enough with memories. He gave his head a shake and regained full control of his faculties, resorting to using an old breathing exercise he had learned during his early days of training to keep calm.

“Take it you don’t like ‘em too much?” The Rebel said tilting their head at the rows of droids they were still following.

The assembly track was angling upwards which for all intents and purposes had to be a good sign. Going up meant going out. The Rebel seemed to think so as well as they never deviated away from the track.

“No.”

An uneasy silence reigned after that as they climbed upwards. There must have been hundreds of unused droids down here. Thousands. That was not a pleasant thought. Even as they spiraled ever onward the rows of B1 and B2 droids didn’t change. At least they were deactivated.

The child giggled at his feet. “What do you have there?” Din asked.

It was holding one of the B1 heads in its little claws. It toddled over to the edge of the track and launched it off into the darkness, laughing as it clanked against the sides of the cavern on its way down into the blackness.

“Can we not toss things over into the abyss?” The Rebel asked, fingers twitching for their blaster.

A red glow spread through the cavern, illuminating everything.

Din had a blaster out without waiting. “What was that you said about these droids having never seen any action?”

A sickening echo magnified by hundreds caused Din to wince. The familiar sound of gears grinding and droid joints shifting made panic well in his gut. The Rebel had their weapon out too, whirling about wildly as the B2s spun their torsos about and leveled their hand cannons on them.

“Intruder Alert,” a deep, robotic voice intoned down the assembly line.

The kid’s ears pinned back in fear, it immediately scuttled behind Din, clutching his leg. “I’m guessing it means us,” Din grunted.

Blaster fire drowned everything else out. For Din it was easy to dodge the incoming fire. Grabbing the kid in one hand, shooting with the other, he gained height thanks to the jet pack. The Rebel, on the other hand… Din watched as they took a running leap at one of the B2’s, springing forward with one hand, twisting in mid air so that they could angle themselves up onto the second tier track and gain some cover.

“There’s too many of them!” Din shouted.

“I can see that!” The Rebel spat back, shooting one B2 unit through the connecting tubing against its torso and legs, the only place where the armor was weakest on those things. Most of the blaster fire bounced right off the damn things.

“There’s gotta be a way to...I don’t know...shut them down?” He flew in, laying some covering fire so the Rebel could reposition.

“Oh, do I look like the resident expert? Grenade!” Din had just enough time to fly further afield as the Rebel lobbed an explosive down onto the other track they had just been walking on.

The resulting explosion sent a blast of heat and fire through the cavern, decimating the immediate droids, but creating a massive gap in the track. Was he imagining things or did he just feel the cavern give a shake? A stalactite fell almost directly on him at the thought.

“Look up there!” The Rebel gestured with her blaster. “I...I think that’s some kind of central processing station!”

They were pointing at a boxed unit high up on the ledge closest to the roof of the cave. It would be impossible for the Rebel to climb up there with one hand and pinned down by droids, but for him? “Cover me!” he shouted and angled his flight towards the station.

The droids aimed their cannons at him, but the older, clunky droids telegraphed a shot a mile away. Din shielded the kid and tucked into a spin, dodging the blasts. From below he saw the Rebel concentrating their fire on one of the B2 units, firing shot after shot directly into the core of the droid until the armor super-heated and melted away. Without skipping a beat they shoved their hand directly into the chest of the droid before it could collapse and pulled on something internally, firing an ion blast directly from the hand canon. Their mask let out a loud crackle of static that Din could hear even from the air as they used the deactivated corpse of the droid to draw fire away from Din.

Not bad for one broken-armed merc.

He landed up at the station. A quick assessment proved the Rebel’s instinct corrected. It did looked like some kind of foreman’s station. But the controls were rusted over, and almost everything was already off. What the hell would shut down the whole row of droids if they were already technically supposed to be off? Din flipped a switch that looked like the backup generator’s. A weird relief swept through him as the station lit up and the control panel blinked and beeped to life.

Ok, step one. Turn on the military droid assembly station. That could only be a good thing, right? Din hoped this didn’t mean he’d just activated some distant row of droids further down the tunnels. Considering where his luck was at now…

The panel’s labeling was long ago stripped, so that he could only make out a few letters here and there. Nothing for it. He pressed random buttons and flipped a few switches. Hazarding a glance out the scummed-over window he could see the oncoming red glow moving like a wave over to where the Rebel still fought on.

“Not to hurry you along or anything but if you could—-” anything else they said was drowned out in static, masking their panic, fury, or probably a combination of the two.

A crazy idea struck him.

Oh, no. Absolutely not. He shouldn’t. It could very well bring half the tunnel down on them.

What was better? Dying by droid or being crushed to death?

Din slammed his hand down on the one button that was clearly labeled: Crane controls.

From above came a screeching, rusted over monstrous sound that temporarily silenced even the blaster fire. The lurching, ancient metalwork from above shuddered, curled and uncurled...and then careened straight at the assembly line and control’s station.

Din had just enough time to jet out of the station before it was crushed on impact. Below, the Rebel unstuck their hand from the B2 unit, tossing it aside before reaching for her blaster again, firing shots indiscriminately as they tried to climb higher.

The crane went tumbling from its rusted perch, slamming into station and track, ripping the gears clean off and causing the line with its many rows of newly activated droids to plummet over the long spiral into the abyss below. The ground gave a sickening roll and the Rebel lost their footing as they ran to avoid the falling track.

Din was speeding towards them, grabbing them without thinking as the whole assembly line gave way. He shot forward towards one of the smaller, more natural rock tunnels above the now collapsing roof of the factory where the control’s station had been moments ago.

For a moment there was nothing but the sound of metal scraping against rock, blaster fire from the hapless droids careening towards a more permanent deactivation, and the warning emergency sirens all fading out as they fell into the black. Then there was only the sound of his ragged breath, the child’s panicked coos, and the static modulator from the Rebel who never took their gaze off of him.

“Why did you do that?” they asked. “Why did you do that?”

They seemed rattled, but not from the fight. Their good hand trembled ever so slightly as they flexed their fingers to still themselves. Even their modulator couldn’t fully flatline their shock at having their life saved.

“We had a truce, remember?” Din slapped a hand across her back in the same mocking fashion they had done to him earlier. “Come on. We still don’t know what else is down here. Eyes sharp. Blasters ready.”

The Rebel pulled their own pistol out absentmindedly, giving him a small nod as if they had been soldiers together from the start. Din set the child down and drew his own weapon, reciprocating her nod. Why had he saved their life? He hadn’t even thought to question why it had happened so fast. He didn’t like the immediate answer that entered his mind. They fought like a warrior. Smart, adaptable, agile. Admirable. He thought back to their words earlier: no one should be left down here alone.

Brushing the thought aside he gestured with his blaster down the mouth of the damp, rocky cave. “After you.”

#The Mandalorian #Din x oc #Mandalorian x oc #Cin Vhetin #we really getting into it now

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chicgeekgirl89 · 6 years ago

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The Shituation: Chap. 3

Fandom: SEAL Team

Characters: Lisa Davis, Sonny Quinn, Jason Hayes, Clay Spenser, Eric Blackburn, Trent Sawyer, Brock Reynolds, Ray Perry, Cerberus

Read Chapters 1 and 2 Here

Shituation: A situation that is already very bad and then goes to shit.

“We got trouble!” Ray yelled.

Everyone’s guns went up and Lisa was shoved toward the back of the cave as there was a loud bang and smoke filled the room. Her eyes immediately began to water and she choked as gunfire erupted around her.

“Get down!” Sonny pushed her to the floor, his hand heavy on her back.

It was chaos and terror and she had no idea how they were going to survive when she couldn’t even see six inches in front of her.

“Take Davis and go!” Jason yelled from somewhere next to her and the next thing she knew Sonny had grabbed her arm and was pulling her toward the back of the cave and through a tunnel.

The air was clearer in the tunnel but her lungs and throat still burned. Sonny finally stopped, pressing her into a shadowy spot. “Stay here,” he ordered, handing her one of his backup weapons. “Shoot anything that isn’t us.”

With that he was gone. She put her hands on her knees and bent double trying to catch her breath, panting against a stitch in her side. Seconds later Trent barreled into the space dragging Clay with him, Ray right on their tail. Trent lowered Clay to the floor where he groaned, his eyes closed.

His face had gone pale and Lisa realized there was blood, a lot of it, seeping through the bandages. Ray took up a defensive position at the tunnel entrance as Trent hit his knees. “Davis, I need your help,” he said and Lisa moved on shaky legs to do what he asked. “The bullet must have moved and nicked an artery. If we don’t get this stopped he’s going to bleed out.”

She nodded. Trent handed her a wad of gauze. “Put pressure on it. Hard as you can.”

She pressed her hands to Clay’s leg with her entire body weight as Trent prepped another transfusion. Blood soaked through the gauze almost immediately and Trent handed her more which grew equally red. Lisa swallowed back bile as she grabbed a third wad. The bleeding wasn’t stopping. Clay was going to die in here, all because he’d been protecting her.

Trent got a transfusion going and then took another look at the wound. “It’s a little better,” he told her, but his eyes said it still wasn’t great. “How you doing Clay?”

There was no response and Trent looked up to find Clay’s eyes closed, his head lolling to the side. “Clay! Hey! Wake up!”

The rest of the group had made it into the new cave looking a little worse for the wear, but without any other serious injuries to report. Jason was barking at Blackburn through the comms while Brock and Sonny reloaded what little ammo they had left and Ray kept an eye on the tunnel.

Clay moaned and then his eyes opened a crack. “Hey,” Trent said. “That’s it. Look at me. Hey!” He cupped Clay’s cheek and tapped it roughly. “Clay, look at me. Do you know where you are?”

Clay nodded sluggishly. “Good. Don’t go to sleep okay?” Trent said. “How bad’s the pain?”

“It’s not bad,” Clay said, but his hands were clenched into fists and Lisa didn’t believe him for a second.

“I can’t give you anymore morphine right now. Just try to ride it out,” Trent told him.

“Sonny?” Clay croaked.

“Yeah, what’s up buddy?” Sonny asked, still shoving ammo into his gun.

“What do you call it,” Clay coughed a little, “when the shituation gets even worse?”

“Jason’s fault,” Sonny said immediately causing him to crack a smile.

“You can let go,” Trent said to Lisa. “I got it.”

Lisa let him take over and stood, trying to stretch out the cramp that was still in her side. The world tilted a little and she reached out a hand to touch the wall. The adrenaline rush was making her dizzy. “Davis? You all right?” Sonny asked.

“Yeah.” She forced a smile. “Yeah, just need to catch my breath for a second.”

That seemed easier said than done. She sucked in one and then another, the world getting progressively less stable. The stitch in her side felt even worse than before and she pressed a shaky hand against it, trying once more to ease the pain.

“Lisa,” Sonny came to his feet, moving toward her. “You’re bleeding.”

“What? No,” she said quickly, looking down at her hands. “No that’s Clay’s blood.”

“Lisa, hey, look at me,” Sonny said gently. “I need you to sit down.”

“What?” He must be confused. She wasn’t bleeding. She was okay. It was Clay who was bleeding. “No, Sonny I’m fine.”

“Listen to me, sit down right here, okay?”

He guided her to floor and she suddenly found that this seemed like a great idea after all, because her legs felt strange. And she was tired. Really tired. “Trent!” Sonny yelled the man’s name loudly, making her flinch. Why was he yelling for Trent? Clay needed him, he was bleeding.

She felt dizzy. Why did Sonny look so worried? She knew him and there was real panic in his eyes as Trent left Clay and came to them. “She’s hit,” Sonny said tightly.

“What?” Trent’s voice was sharp and he immediately began unstrapping her vest. “Help me get her out of this.”

“No, I’m okay,” she said as they pulled and tugged. She could take off her own vest. But even as she reached for the straps she found her fingers didn’t seem to work quite like normal.

Her thoughts were becoming hazy, like she couldn’t quite grasp them. She was fine. She should tell them she was fine and that they should take care of Clay.

Within seconds they had stripped her down to her t-shirt. Sonny eased her back so she was lying on the ground and that was when she began to really feel it. The stitch in her side was on fire. She gasped. “Oh god.”

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Lisa looked pale and shaky and it had him worried. Even if she was combat trained, it wasn’t like she did this on the regular. They’d asked a heck of lot of her today and it wasn’t over yet. “Davis? You all right?”

She smiled at him. “Yeah. Yeah just need to catch my breath for a second.” She pressed a hand to her side and that was when he saw the blood dripping onto the floor. “Lisa, you’re bleeding.” His stomach lurched and he automatically reached for her, even as she protested. She didn’t know. Probably hadn’t even really felt it yet, too much adrenaline running through her system.

“Lisa, hey, look at me. I need you to sit down.” He tried to keep his voice calm as he took her arm and helped her to the floor. He didn’t want her to know that he was panicking, because god almighty she’d been shot and was bleeding and it was all their fault. “Trent!”

She looked confused and that scared him even more. “She’s hit,” he said as Trent knelt beside him.

“What?” Trent’s eyebrows shot up and he immediately stripped off the gloves he’d been wearing, pulling on a fresh pair before reaching for the straps on her vest. “Help me get her out of this.”

Sonny pulled at the velcro, working as fast as he could to get it off her body. She groaned as they pulled it off and Sonny’s heart stopped when he saw the dark stain spreading across her shirt.

“Trent, what’s the situation?” Jason asked, his eyes still trained on the small opening into their cavern, waiting for the bad guys who were sure to catch up eventually.

Trent cut it into Lisa’s shirt, ripping it apart to expose her abdomen. The bullet had traveled upward, lodging just above her hip. “It must have been a ricochet off the floor,” he said.

The angle had allowed it to slip under the bottom of her vest, evading the kevlar’s protection. It was an improbable shot. One that should never have happened.

The rest of the team had taken notice, the nervous energy in the air ratcheting up several notches.

“Is she all right?” Clay asked, trying to sit up and see what was going on.

“You stay down!” Trent barked. Lisa moaned as he probed at the wound, blood flowing at an even faster rate.

“Sonny!” Lisa gasped, reaching blindly for him.

“I’m right here,” he said, grabbing her hand. “We’re all right here. You got the whole team with you okay?”

Trent was working rapidly grabbing gauze, bandages, and antiseptic. Lisa tensed, her eyes squeezed shut in pain. Sonny wished they could go back to five minutes ago when she hadn’t realized she was hurt.

Trent kept moving, his hands working hard to stem the flow of blood that didn’t seem like it wanted to stop. “Trent?” Sonny asked.

“I’m working on it Sonny,” he growled, grabbing more gauze. “Put pressure here.”

Sonny used his free hand, pushing gently against the wound, afraid of hurting her even more. Trent grabbed his wrist and pushed it down hard. Lisa cried out, arching her back, and Sonny wanted to die hearing the agonized sound. Trent looked him dead in the eye. “You can’t be gentle. This is life or death. If you can’t handle it I’ll get Ray to do it.”

Sonny shook his head. “I got it.” He released her other hand and pressed firmly, cringing at her choked cry of pain.

“Talk to her,” Trent ordered as he started an IV. “Keep her awake.”

“Davis, hey, look at me, you’re going to be fine, all right?” Sonny said. “Gonna have a great scar, be a hell of a story to tell all your behind the scenes buddies.”

“Sonny, I’m scared,” she whispered.

He wanted to throw up. “I know. I know you are. But Trent’s got you, okay? And I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

She nodded and closed her eyes, her breathing shallow and fast. “Ray, I need your help,” Trent said. Ray came closer, shouldering his rifle so his hands were free. “Hold her shoulders down,” Trent said quietly, then raised his voice so Lisa could hear, “Lisa, this is going to hurt.”

He pulled Sonny’s hands away and began packing the wound. She screamed and Ray pushed down hard her shoulders to keep her from moving. Tears streamed down her face and Sonny felt some pricking at his own eyes. The next thing he knew she had gone completely limp, her head lolling to the side.

“Trent?!” Sonny asked in a panic.

Trent took her pulse. “She just passed out. Probably better for now.”

“How bad is it?” Jason asked from where he hovered having taken over Ray’s spot on the defense. “Bad,” Trent said. “She’s lost a lot of blood. I’m giving her a transfusion but she needs a hospital fast.”

“Jay, we gotta get out of here,” Sonny said.

“Yeah I got it Sonny,” Jason snapped. He put his hands on his hips and started to pace.

Jason was worried. Trent was worried. This was some real, bad shit.

#SEAL Team #The Shituation #Chapter 3 #SEAL Team Fanfiction #Savis #Sonny Quinn #Lisa Davis #Trent Sawyer #Brock Reynolds #Ray Perry #Clay Spenser #Jason Hayes #Cerberus #Clay Spenser Whump #Lisa Davis Whump #Bullet wounds

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teamoliv-archive · 5 years ago

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Cutscene: The Silent Sister, Part 1

The team had known that the missions they were supposed to be accompanying Auburn on were going to be hard. They were highly-rated, very dangerous missions meant for experienced huntsmen often in very hazardous locations. This first one took them into the area outside of the city to help clear out Grimm from an old temple.

Auburn was bundled into a cloak that protected her from the wind and snow, clearly unhappy with the arrangement. Tyrael was the one picking the missions, which was fairly annoying. He didn’t seem to understand that not only could she handle these, but she didn’t want to help some ridiculous century-old temple no one ever visits anymore. The cold was supposed to be the biggest hurdle for the mission. They even sent a guide to meet them there to “make sure the sanctity of the holy site was preserved” or some other nonsense. “Hey, blondie, what’s so special about this temple again?”

Violet already explained the temple’s significance three times already but Auburn never seemed to actually pay attention. However, instead of just giving the short version, she decided to start over partly to pass time and partly to annoy her. “The Consecration of the God of Creation is an old Mantle faith that’s been around since before the Great War. It holds the belief that the gods of creation and destruction are in perpetual conflict. Humanity, including faunus, are made by the God of Creation and the Grimm come from Destruction and his attempts to destroy his brother’s work. This temple is the tomb of Saint Alger, one of its earliest adherents in Solitas who brought the faith from the Mistrali Empire three hundred years ago. It’s the most important holy site in the region and now there’s apparently a giant Grimm rooting around in it.”

“And you volunteered because your family follow that faith and that’s why you volunteered, blah blah blah. I didn’t need the whole story. You could have just said ‘It’s an old tomb of someone important to my dumbass religion and we’re killing the monster in it before it scratches the wrong important sconce’ and left it at that.”

“And you could have paid attention the first time!”

“Enough.” Lapis barks, not bothered nearly as much by the cold as the other two and making strides ahead of both. “We’re almost there, I think I see someone ahead; think that’s our guide?”

The trio approaches the entrance to a snow-covered entrance to the tomb. The stone was weathered and faded with the passage of time. Inside the archway a faunus girl draped in a sideways cloak and matching bunched up muffler stood there. She nods politely before her head snaps to stare right at Violet, recognition lighting in her eyes.

“Sapir!?”

The two stare at one another for a few moments before a smile creeps across both of their faces and they rush to each other and quickly embrace.

Lapis watches this with curiosity, wondering what the odds were of this. So was this their guide? The mission brief said the guide was a member of the church who oversaw this temple but this girl was dressed very much like a huntress. “You two know each other?”

Violet backs up a few steps, her smile not leaving her face. “It’s so good to see you again, Sap.” Her smile scrunches into a slightly confused look, “What’s with the outfit, though? You didn’t leave the church to become a huntress, did you?”

Sapir keeps a content smile and simply shakes her head. She adjusts her cloak that covered most of her right side and lifts her left hand, flashing a series of numbers: 2, 1, 5.

Auburn stares at their guide with a mixture of annoyance and a glance that she hopefully screamed ‘I have better things to do right now.’ “What the hell does that mean? Hey, you, what is she doing? Is this some weird vow you people practice?” She points at Violet expectantly.

“Not to agree with Huldre, but I’m confused too.”

“It’s verse,” Violet explains, “Sap can’t talk but she’s memorized the Gift of Creation and, well, so have I. So this is just kind of a thing we do to talk to each other. She normally doesn’t need to talk to anyone else except the priests most of the time. Don’t worry, I’ll translate.”

“So what’s this one say?” She really didn’t have time to be deciphering holy books just to talk to their guide. At this rate she was wondering if they even really needed one.

“It means ‘Advance the expression of your faith in your works.’ So basically Sap decided to take up fighting to help out more.” Violet tilts her head and examines Sapir’s outfit a little, “Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this? What changed? I thought you were an alter girl.”

Sapir turns around and flashes another number sequence with her left hand before starting down the pathway and beckoning the others to follow.

Violet looked confused. She would have just responded but she knew Lapis and Auburn were going to want a ‘translation’. “Wait, ‘Obey the precepts of the holy orders’? Someone ordered you to do it? Encouraged?” She was hoping for the latter. Outright demanding an ordained sister to take up a trade was something that fell out of practice before the Great War. There were a few very old fashioned sects still roaming around, but they were usually absorbed and moderated by more contemporary churches quickly. Sapir didn’t respond to the question, only continuing to walk forward. She’d probably have to go to the church later for the full story.

Lapis and Auburn didn’t approach for any small talk as they made their way downward with their silent guide. Sapir and Auburn were quick to avoid small hazards in the dark, but Violet had to take out a flashlight in the darker areas for her and Lapis. The stairs leading down to the inner sanctum had long since collapsed and and the drop to the floor below where the body lay was a very long drop.

“We could jump, but it’s dangerous. We’ll need to rappel down.”

“No, you will.” Auburn takes a few steps forward as her eerie shadows materialize from the busted steps to let her follow downward. It was still strange not having her previous landscape-warping illusions, but this more physical manifestation of her semblance, apparently a side effect of the aura transfer altering how her semblance worked, was very useful. Auburn knew she’d have to take some time to practice the nuances soon.

Sapir watched this display with clear discomfort on her face. She could tell that semblance was... unnatural. She looked to Lapis and Violet wide-eyed and pointing at her.

“It’s... complicated.” Lapis states as he backs up a few steps. “You two rappel down if you want. I’m jumping.” With a slight running start, Lapis jumps from the steps and a shimmering blue shield appears in front of his arm, he points it downward so he could roll into the impact.

Violet pulls out one of her pistols and jams the spike into the rock, testing it’s hold before releasing the cable. “Sapir, do you need to borrow my other one?” She winces and nearly falls off the step as a loud crashing noise like a hammer hitting bricks resounded right next to her. Sapir had jammed a claw coming from a flail larger than her head into the stone where she held tightly onto a long chain. Violet presumed she had to have been storing that thing under the cloak. “Fair enough...”

The four reached the lower level and looked ahead at the large inner sanctum. From what Violet remembered of the tomb’s history, the entrance had been dug out until the workers had found a cave. Seeing it as a sign, they chose that spot to bury the dead saint and build the rest of the tomb around it. The actual sarcophagus was dwarfed by the massive dank surroundings. The ground was latticed with bits of ice and cracks in the floor and cave wall were everywhere and was illuminated gently by faintly glowing dust that shone through the cracks giving it an eerie look. Still, the stone held regardless which further cemented the idea of this place being miraculous; but this dark cavern also meant that Grimm could hide and grow in the depths.

Lapis tried to scan the area while Violet panned the scene with her flashlight. “So what kind of Grimm tend to live down here?” He asks hesitantly, pulling out his weapon and keeping the safety on for the time being. He was ready to flip it off and fire as soon as he could.

“Vampires,” Violet responds, “They look kind of like huge bats and they have tongues that can shoot out and stab you, and a sonic screech on top of that. The best thing to do is keep it grounded once it shows up. There’s probably going to be a bunch of little ones, too. It’s probably further in.

Auburn smirks and stalks off ahead. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s flush it out and be done with it.” She rushes ahead almost silently, jumping off of bursts of her own shadow to keep air and speed, jumping off walls when needed.

Sapir narrows her eyes and throws a stern, almost judging gaze at Violet and Lapis as if faulting them for bringing Auburn here. She had no respect for this place. She dashes off after Auburn, waving to get Lapis and Violet to follow her. She drew out her large flail and begun building up momentum by swinging it overhead.

Lapis watched the two faunus dash off and barely held back a smart remark, keeping the thought to himself. Typical... Whether that was a faunus-directed comment or a situational-directed one was something he’d have to decide later. “Ah hell... We’d better go after them, Goodfellow. They’re going to draw out every Grimm in the cave like that.”

“Hey, wait!” Violet reaches out to call the two back but it was clearly too late. She lets out a frustrated sigh and readies her pistols again. “I don’t think even Auburn can handle that many. Vampires tend to be small but they come in pretty big numbers. The alpha, though... that thing’s huge. They’re going to need backup.” Besides that, she was really worried about Sapir. She had never seemed the fighting sort in her life. What was an altar girl suddenly doing with a weapon like that?

#teamoliv #Lapis Hamelin - Cutscene #Violet Goodfellow - Cutscene #Auburn Huldre - Cutscene #Sapir Antiny - Cutscene #Team OLIV - Project Borealis

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lizartgurl · 6 years ago

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I wish you would write a fic where Emma’s celebrates her first birthday at the manor

ANDI I LOVE THE NEW ICON IT’S MAGICAL

And this…this got way too long.

Mary and John Grayson were murdered on April 1, 2006. A little over a month later, on May fifteenth, Emma Mary Grasyon, her mother’s namesake, was supposed to celebrate her twelfth birthday in a place that was still strange, where the only family to celebrate with her was her little brother. Neither of them were in a mood for celebrating.

Emma woke up that morning with eight-year-old Richard snuggled against her, squeezing the life from his plush elephant, Zitka, named for their elephant friend from the Circus. She had been a “Welcome Home” gift from Mister Bruce, an attempt to make the vast and empty Wayne Manor feel more alive.

Emma had lion of her own, named Simba. The circus had tigers, but not lions, so her little friend was named after the Lion King who also had to witness his father falling to his death.

Emma tossed Simba across the room, he softly hit the door and fell to the floor as Alfred the Butler opened it.

“I assume Master Richard had another nightmare?” He asked quietly.

Emma nodded, slowly sitting up. Being called “master” or “miss” was still something she was getting used to.

“Then I will bring his uniform in here and make sure to keep the pancakes warm. I believe it would be best to let him sleep for now.”

“Yeah,” Emma agreed, and made her way over to the wide expanse of a vanity, brushing her back into a ponytail, just as she always did.

Alfred didn’t leave, dusting off Emma’s school uniform that had been pressed and set out on her desk chair the night before.

“Did you sleep quite well last night, Miss Emma?” He asked.

Emma snapped the elastic into place, “Just fine,” She assured him.

“If I may,” Alfred pulled a burgundy red ribbon from his pocket, carefully tying a bow around her ponytail.

“Happy Birthday, Miss Emma,” He gave the young girl a soft smile beneath his perfectly groomed mustache.

Emma made the effort to smile up at the old butler. “Thanks, Alfred.”

Thirty minutes later, Richard was running down the stairs, struggling to straighten out his school uniform as he sprinted to join Emma, Bruce, and little ‘Bella at the breakfast table.

“Morning, Champ,” Bruce said, not looking up from his paper. Emma noted that he was reading an article by Clark Kent, one of his friends, about the ridiculousness of the argument of “Batman versus Superman.”

“What’s he say?” Emma asked. Richard punctuated her question by piling tons of whipped cream onto his stack of pancakes, already drenched with syrup. Five-year-old Annabella watched Rick’s experiment of how high he could pile the cream before it fell over with wide brown eyes.

Mister Bruce grunted, “That Batman and Superman would work better together than fighting.”

Emma gave a “huh,” slowly chewing her strawberries and pancakes.

“I bet Superman would win.” She said, taking another bite. Bruce raised an eyebrow in her direction.

“No way!” Rick declared, already standing on his chair. “Batman has all those gadgets and stuff! And he’s smart! He’d find a way to stop Superman!”

“But why would they be fighting?” Annabella asked, forgoing the fork and eating her pancake with her bare hands. Alfred rushed forward with a damp cloth to stave off the syrup.

“That’s a good question, sweetheart,” Bruce leaned forward to kiss his daughter’s forehead, “But you are right, Richard, I bet Batman could take Superman down if he really had to.”

“Well,” Alfred interjected, “I happen to think that Superman could whip Batman’s tush if he so desired.”

Emma, Richard, and Annabella burst into laughter. As if Alfred’s accent weren’t already perfect, the way he said “tush” was still hilarious to a couple of kids.

“Okay, okay, I guess they probably wouldn’t be fighting in the first place,” Bruce stood up to help Alfred clear the dishes, “In fact, there’s been talk that they’re going to start a team with some of the other heroes.”

“Like Wonder Woman?” Emma gasped.

“And Flash?” Richard asked through a mouth of whipped cream.

“And the other heroes who helped them with that alien invasion a couple months ago. Now chew with your mouth closed, champ, and hurry up, we gotta get you two to school.

Middle School would have been absolute Tartarus for “charity project” Emma Grayson if it weren’t for Bette Kane, Bruce’s cousin and heir to her own fortune. Emma giggled as Bette stood up in the middle of social studies to give a five-minute rant about how the myth of Medusa was just a bunch of Greek men with their togas on too tight projecting all their fears onto a woman and how that was still evident in today’s society. The teacher was stone-faced for ten minutes while the class applauded her.

“Alfred told me it was your birthday, today, so I brought cupcakes!” Bette said at lunchtime. They were huddled in their own corner of the courtyard, no one was going to bother them here. There weren’t any candles allowed on school grounds, but Bette sang her the “happy birthday” rendition from Emperor’s New Groove, and Emma had another reason to laugh, though she regretted that the chocolate cupcakes Bette brought tasted nothing like Aunt Kayla’s birthday cakes.

Not even Rick had wished her a happy birthday, she sighed as the three Wayne children arrived home from school to an empty manor. Bella, still in kindergarten, ignored her homework in favor of the gardens, and since Rick was still in elementary school and summer break was fast approaching, he followed. Alfred went with them to supervise after making sure that Emma was content in the Manor’s library with a plate of milk and cookies.

Emma soon abandoned her boring few assignments, scouring the shelves for anything interesting to read. Her eyes fell on a copy of “The Mask of Zorro,” novelization. It sounded only slightly more interesting than “Pride and Prejudice”, but it seemed that it didn’t want to come off the shelf.

With a yank, she managed to pull the book forward, but not completely off the shelf. The floor beneath her feet shook, and that section of the shelf crawled forward, just enough that it could slide in front of another section.

Right behind the shelf was a cool, dark staircase, illuminated with tiny blue lights, curving down and out of sight.

She jumped back, unable to process this discovery, and a few minutes, the shelf returned to its proper position with a loud cranking noise.

She turned and ran from the library.

Alfred was in the kitchen, patching Annabella’s knee, so Emma ran straight for Rick, lining up sticks and pebbles to create his own version of Gotham city.

“Richard! You gotta come see this, now!” It only took minimal dragging to get Rick all the way to the library, but a lot of cajoling to get him to stand right there and be patient while she found the right book. Then, he was the one dragging her down the stairs to see what was hidden at the bottom. Emma was the only one of them who noticed when the door shut behind them. With no apparent way out, she followed Rick to the bottom.

“Woah,” Rick gasped as the stairway opened up into a cavern. Stalactites still hung from the top, interspersed with small groups of annoyed, fluffy bats, but the stalagmites on the floor had been cleared for catwalks, computers, suits in display cases, a giant playing card, and a giant mechanical dinosaur, of all things.

“This is awesome!” Rick shouted to make his voice echo with the dripping water.

Emma had a sneaking suspicion that they shouldn’t be there, and tried to back up, only to run into a wall. But it wasn’t a wall. She turned, and it was Bruce, glaring down at the both of them, arms crossed over a giant, black, Batman symbol on his chest.

“You’re him,” she squeaked.

“Batman!” Rick gasped.

Bruce just sighed, “I didn’t think you would be home from school yet. Get back upstairs, both of you.”

“What? Why?” Rick whined.

“Because I’m Batman, and I said so.” Bruce growled.

Richard glared at Batman’s cape as he sashayed away, confident that was enough to make them obey.

“You can’t make me, you’re not my dad!” He ducked under Bruce’s arm and swung from one catwalk to the next, deftly balancing on the rails as he rain, taking shortcuts a grown man like Bruce couldn’t hope to achieve, even if he was Batman.

As out-of-place as she felt, Emma was curious, about the cave, and about her foster father being Batman. He had been there the night that her family died. Why didn’t he save them? Batman was supposed to be a detective, wasn’t he? So why didn’t he stop Mister Zucco?

Inflamed by a sudden bout of anger, Emma leaped up onto the railing, copying Richard as she ran after Bruce. She landed on his cape for a moment, enough to distract him from grabbing Rick, and then leave him confused over which child to catch first. That gave her enough of a lead to make it to his giant computer.

Bruce caught Richard fairly quickly, a firm hand on the boy’s shoulder as he steered him to where his sister was waiting, but not quite hiding. He was a little ticked to find Emma sitting in his favorite chair- the only chair in his hideout, as a matter of fact- in front of the computer, eyes narrowed and arms folded tightly.

“You know where Zucco is,” She accused coldly, the GPS on display for all to see on the screen behind her.

Bruce couldn’t find an answer as Richard looked up to him, shocked and hurt.

“You were there that night,” Emma stood up, rigid and shaking, “You could have stopped him, and you didn’t. And now Mami, Tati, Aunt Kayla, and Jonny are dead, and Uncle Joseph is paralyzed for life.”

“You’re right,” Bruce admitted, which surprised both Graysons, “I could have stopped Zucco and his men, and I didn’t. I doubted that Zucco would do something so bold in plain sight, and it cost your family their lives.”

Emma’s eyes stung and Bruce released his grip on Richard and took her by the shoulders, kneeling in front of her. “That’s why I took you two in, because I know what it’s like to lose your family, and because I promised myself that I was going to stop Zucco from ever doing something like this again.

Richard sniffed loudly, and Emma wiped her own tears with the hem of her school jacket. “Let us help you,” She begged.

“No,” Bruce said with finality. He stood up, pulling Batman’s familiar cowl over his face. “You two stay here. I’ll take down Zucco and be back in time to tuck the two of you and Annabella into bed.”

Still, Emma and Richard persisted, following him down to the “Bat-Mobile, waiting on a rotating platform to shoot off in any direction at a moment’s notice.

“You two can’t get involved with this,” Bruce insisted, “It’s too dangerous.”

“So was the acrobatics we did at Haly’s.” Emma huffed.

“No. Now get upstairs before I call Alfred,” the top of the Bat-mobile slammed shut, and shot off through the waterfall that concealed the cave’s entrance from the rest of Gotham.

Emma’s hands shook. She didn’t care if Bruce was really batman or Wonder Woman or whatever. Tony Zucco had killed her parents, and she wasn’t going to stand by and let him hurt anyone else, either.

“Emma,” Richard said quietly, “Do you know where Alfred put our old costumes?”

Emma knew her little brother was thinking what she was, and as she grinned at him, her eyes landed on a couple spare masks and sheets of kevlar, just big enough to be called a cape.

Batman caught Zucco and his men breaking into the Graysons belonging left in storage under Joseph Grayson’s name. When he woke up, he was strapped to a spinning target on the grounds previously occupied by Haly’s circus. You could still see some of the darkened dirt where the Graysons had fallen. Zucco was throwing knives at him with reckless abandon, while his men watched and laughed.

“Look out, Batman!” Zucco cackled. Another knife flew through the air, aimed for his heart, but something knocked it to the ground. A dull batarang, one he’d left behind at the cave for Alfred to sharpen.

“Excellent shot, Miss Grayson,” Alfred’s voice manifested over his comms a moment later, as one of Zucco’s thugs had his feet yanked out from beneath him, and another was struck with a batarang to the shoulder.

“Alfred,” Bruce growled so that Zucco couldn’t heard over the sudden commotion.

“I’m afraid that they insisted, as you typically do,” Alfred quipped. “And I can’t very well quarantine all three children in the house at once.”

Bruce rolled his eyes as Emma Grayson, golden wings splayed across her red tunic top, eyes hidden behind a mask, and protected by a yellow skein of kevlar, sliced away the rope holding back his hands.

“Thank you,” He grunted, crouching to the ground. His belt had been stolen, but he grabbed a knife from the target board. With a flick of his wrist, it knocked the fedora clean off Zucco’s head.

Out of Batarangs, Richard and Emma each grabbed a couple knives that had nearly killed Batman to fend off the thugs that were now running at them.

Then Emma saw the gold dangling from Zucco’s pocket. Her mother’s necklace, a robin on a branch, made from solid gold. A Wedding present from John to Mary. She screamed with fury, using her knife to slice the hand Zucco was using to reach inside his coat for another knife. She went for his face next, but it was Batman who grabbed her wrist, blocking her from Zucco, who lay whimpering on the ground.

“He deserves it!” She spat, “He killed them!”

Bruce kicked Zucco in the face with his heavy boots, down for the count as he gripped Emma’s arms tightly.

“It isn’t up to us to decide who lives and who dies. That’s how they think,” He nodded to Zucco, then to his men, who had been casually taken out by a few easy flips from junior acrobat Rick.

“Emma,” Bruce tried again when she refused to look him in the eyes. “Would your parents want you yo give in to your anger, to go down a path that’s very hard to return from, just for them?”

Lip trembling, Emma shook her head, and threw her arms around Bruce, sobbing. Rick joined them a moment later, also crying.

They watched from a distance a few minutes later, as Commissioner Gordon arrived to arrest Zucco’s gang for murder, and thievery. Emma absently traced a heart in the dirt with her toe, holding Richard’s hand.

“I’m proud of you,” Bruce said as the police caravan drove away, “Both of you.”

He drew something from the pouch of his retrieved utility belt. “I believe that this belongs to you,” He held out Mary Grayson’s robin necklace to Emma, securing it around her neck.

“Happy Birthday, Emma.”

#lizart writes #my ocs #nightingale #young justice oc #batfam oc #other people's ocs #shadow #nightwing #robin #dick grayson #bruce wayne #batman

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ayearofpike · 6 years ago

Text

Thirst No. 4: The Shadow of Death

Simon Pulse, 2011 492 pages, 28 chapters + epilogue ISBN 978-1-4424-1319-1 LOC: PZ7.P626 Th 2011 OCLC: 731720997 Released August 9, 2011 (per B&N)

The immortal Sita has died. Only not — her soul still lives, in the body of her descendant. How did this happen? In seeking the answer, Sita will learn the secret to defeating the ancient race that imperils humanity. The search won’t be easy, though. Sita must traverse time and space, heaven and hell, the physical and the spiritual, and what the hell is even going on my head hurts.

Honestly, I’m not sure what Pike is going for in this book. Is it trying to be smarter than other authors of the era and genre by bending the rules of continuity? Is it striving for a narrative that is just beyond his reach? Is it just pounding out Another Damn Sita Book against deadline to get that green? It could be any of those. At least it ties up the story of the Telar and the IIC relatively well, although there’s still enough loose ends to keep our vampire going if necessary (and of course it is; Thirst 5 is still on the horizon).

One thing Pike has totally bought into is the arbitrary capitalization of the names of things to make them Important Artifacts. You remember this: probably the impetus was Suzanne Collins, naming specific elements of the Hunger Games to showcase why they were relevant and how the country had accepted them as elements of the competition. But then every single friggin’ YA book about a post-apocalyptic dystopia started adopting the shit. At least Collins tried to come up with catchy names for her Artifacts. The other authors just come up with a word to call something and throw an initial cap on it, and Pike leaps happily aboard the Proper Name Train. And every time you think he’s drilled down to the smallest level of a Category, he names a smaller subgroup that needs its own Capital. Eventually it makes me want to put the Book down and kick the Ass.

Is it obvious I’m teaching again? Not just because I’m going all loco on repetitive cliches, but also because it’s taken me like three weeks to write this.

Let’s just bore down into the summary. We start with Sita in her descendant Teri’s body, awakening to that fact at her own funeral. Apparently she had a couple of days that are just blank or at best hazy, but then Miracle Baby Teen took Teri’s hands and looked into her eyes, and crystallized Sita’s presence. Nobody is sure what this means, exactly, but Sita is feeling blood hunger for the first time in years. The new body doesn’t have the five thousand years of experience and transfusions from multiple vampires and gods and saviors to abate it, after all. So when she gets back to her hotel, she orders room service — only they don’t offer blood. But the delivery boy has some, and dude does she drink it ALL. So then there’s some wacky hijinks as she has to clumsily get the body out of the hotel and dispose of it.

She’s not ready to reveal herself to Immortal Boyfriend yet, though. He was against her turning Teri into a vampire in the first place, remember, and in her weak state she figures he’d kill her. So she carefully and strategically reveals some info like Sita told Teri as they try to figure out what to do about the bigger threats of the virus wielded by the immortals and the crippling mental focus of the monster corporation. The Telar-ites want to focus on mass producing the cure to the virus and getting it distributed, but Sita thinks the only way they can do that is to involve IIC. Someone’s research has turned up that all of the main members were students of the same parapsychology professor at Berkeley(?), and so Sita, Seymour, Miracle Teen’s mom, and the young Indian girl who has been sucked into this life all drive out to meet him.

But before they go, Sita/Teri has to clean up her mess. Apparently she’s not as stealthy as she used to be either, because some dumbass kid saw her taking the room service cart with a body stuffed under it down to the garage, and his mom reported this Olympic champion to the police. So she has to try to wipe out any trace of suspicion from the cops’ minds, as well as finding a safe source of blood to feed on. Turns out one of them has a wife who is a doctor, and after an overreaching act of hypnotism, Sita gets into the hospital blood bank and takes all of it, then goes back home with the doctor and wipes out her memory as well as her husband’s. So it’s cool that she still has her vampire hypnosis, but it’s super clumsy, just like everything else in this new body. And what happened to Teri? Miracle Teen seems to think she’s dead, but that can’t be right. But why not? And if not, how come Sita is so in control?

The professor is quite a font of information, and he sure is scared of the IIC boss. He suggests they go talk to her ex from school, who was one of the major catalysts in the discovery of group-focused mind control via ESP. This dude and his girlfriend are still living in Santa Cruz, and they aren’t at all surprised to find four random diverse strangers at their door. Sita is confused, though, that the math doesn’t add up in regard to how old these people are. According to the research, their studies happened in the ’60s, but there’s no way this dude can be older than 40 when he ought to be knocking on 70. It gets late quickly, and so the couple offers our ramshackle group a couple of rooms for the night. Sita takes the opportunity to decode some more of Original Vampire’s book, and learn more about the deep and true love between him and the Telar he married. She also calls Teri’s parents to check in, and learns that the cops are still looking for her in connection with the missing room service dude, so that sucks.

In the morning, the CEO’s ex tells them more about his research and how IIC stole it to find exactly the right sociopaths to use in its mind-control device. Basically it was an astrological predictor, so that you could tell with a high degree of accuracy what someone would be like and how their extrasensory facility would manifest based on where and when they were born. Sita realizes, all of a sudden, that the creepy kid she ran into at the CEO’s house is actually conceived with this ex, because of his own predilection for ESP and his familiarity with the needs of the astrological predictor. He talks about having been targeted by the device himself, and his girlfriend says that she managed to shake him free by pushing him down the well on the property. They’ve mentioned this well before, and how it provides such amazing water, so now Sita is curious.

She ends up climbing down the bucket rope in the middle of the night, into a vast cavern with a faint glow at one end. Following the light leads her to: her own body. Sita’s body, that is, the one that was supposed to have been buried in Denver. Sitting by it is the astrological researcher’s girlfriend, who Sita immediately realizes is more than she’s revealed herself to be. Yep: it’s Original Vampire’s wife, Immortal Boyfriend’s mom, and one of the oldest and most ancient Telar still in existence. But it’s not like that. She took the body to protect what it holds, not just to keep it from these creepy evils that are trying to get more power but also because — check this shit out — it’s healing.

Sita can get back into her body, Ancient Telar says. All she has to do is let Teri finish dying.

Obviously when he finds out, Immortal Boyfriend is pissed. He is totally ready to murder Sita, without actually ritualizing it so she returns to her body. And Sita knows she deserves it, sort of. She’s as much to blame as anyone for the mess they’re all in, and she loved Teri as much as any of them, maybe even more. So she’s not going to fight back if Immortal Boyfriend exacts his rage. But he can’t do it, and he does realize that having a full-strength Sita will help their cause. So they all end up back down in the cave, where they reconnect the appropriate bodies by ripping Teri’s femoral artery and allowing Sita’s corpse to drink the blood. The transfer happens fast, and lucky for Immortal Boyfriend Teri has just enough consciousness to say goodbye.

I have to step out of summary for a minute to flat-out state how GROSSLY DISSATISFYING this is. Like, for seven books now we’ve known Sita as this inhuman giant, capable of defeating everyone and anything. Now she’s in a newer body, with a younger brain and less experienced reflexes even if it has all her consciousness, and she’s supposed to start figuring out how to overcome that. To just un-write the whole thing and stick her back in her old body not even half a book later strikes me as Pike didn’t want to commit to a decision he’d already made, rather than any kind of grand plan that this was always gonna happen. And yeah, I get it, Sita’s body has all kinds of implications, but why did it have to come back almost immediately? I’d go so far as to say that this makes Teri Raine practically irrelevant to the grander scheme of the story. And it sticks the whole personality quirk we’ve just learned about Sita — where she has followed and cared about her line of descendency, one that never actually seemed believable having read the first six — even deeper into the grave.

So now the gang is all together and ready to carry out their plan. Sita waltzes into the IIC office, releasing the deadly virus as she does so, and makes her demand: use the mind control group to destroy all of the high-ranking Telar or die painfully and frightened today. This is where the Arbitrary Capitalization makes its most insidious entrance. The top Telar, the Source, can meld to form the Link, which makes them unbeatable. But IIC can focus its Array through the Cradle, powered by a smaller group known as the Lens, and at least find where they are. So once she learns a Location, Sita can use her Knowledge to open up a Can of Whoop-Ass. But to join the Lens, she’s required to offer up a sacrifice, and she figures the best candidate is the mole who keeps feeding up information on where the group is, and not least the DNA of Immortal Boyfriend so he could get possessed. Who is it? Probably the math teacher who conveniently keeps not being with the group every time they get attacked. Only as the Lens forces her to climb to the top of Truman College’s bell tower and hurl herself off it, Sita sees inside her mind and knows she was innocent the whole time.

As it happens, she feels claws on her shoulders. Ancient Telar warned her that this would probably happen: in order to tap into the powers of the extrasensory, one has to connect to a Familiar. Sita can see the ones clinging to the kids in the room, but is not permitted to look back at her own, which makes her suspect that it’s probably the most powerful demon of all — a demon that was never actually a demon, but an angel that refused to accept its grace in being less than God and ended up falling into the deepest of despair. Yeah, that one.

She calls back to base and lets her crew know what’s going on, then tries to use her newly replenished powers to fix the police detective whose brain she screwed. Only he starts feeling scared and disturbed, and she realizes that this Familiar that is now attached to her is having a negative effect on her powers. IIC Boss comes in and they talk about the computer game that everyone’s playing, the one about being saved and moving to higher planes of heavenly ability, which is (not coincidentally) being constantly written and updated by the kids in the Lens when they’re not out brain-murdering.

Have I talked about this game before? It feels like I did, but maybe I’m thinking of Alosha. Miracle Teen loves it, and he said his presence in game was literally just to make himself known. But there are obvious creepy levels behind it, and IIC Boss reveals that there is no possible way to delete or destroy the code because of how it’s been embedded into the Internet. What’s it for? We don’t know yet! We do know that there’s significant backmasking and subliminal messages which echo the invocations the Lens uses to get into its power state. So maybe this game somehow charges telepathic batteries? I’m pretty sure this is the last time Pike mentions it in this book.

But now they’re getting ready to attack the major players in the Telar, so they have to work fast and without many breaks. They get two by melting them with too much chlorine in a hot tub, and then there are four in an LA hotel that they attack by forcing one of the guards to disrupt them and break their Link. But before they can kill all the Telar, one invokes a name that throws the psychic connection into the garbage. Sita knows where they are, though, and attacks in person. We get some more Matrix shit as she leaps from a helicopter and uses stairs like trampolines, and she ends up leaving the last Telar alive with a command that he use his high-ranking government contacts to launch a missile strike on a location that she will psychically contact him with in a few hours. That is, once she figures out where the rest of the Source is hiding.

The rest of Team Vampire shows up (well, not Miracle Teen, who is smart enough to keep the hell away from the demon-summoning corporation that would love all of his power) to help Sita fight the final battle. Seymour and Immortal Boyfriend are going to vaccinate the IIC against the virus, which is dormant but not totally gone as Sita’s bargaining chip. Only not the kids in the Cradle and the Lens: Sita has arranged for them to get a full dose of the virus instead, so the company can’t wield its devilish mind-control device with impunity once its primary antagonists are all dead. Yeah, we’re murdering children now. Sweet. Oh, and also, Ancient Telar is also the mother of the leader of the Source, and Sita has learned that you can control someone who is related to the person with the blood (or DNA, or whatever the fuck marker it is they’re actually using) and so attacking the dude might kill her too. It’s a risk Ancient Telar is willing to take.

She joins the Lens, and her sacrifice is the creepy teenager who leads it. Like, she literally breaks his arm and allows his brain to murder himself. Shit, if Sita knew she could do that! They find the Source and realize it’s impenetrable; their shield is too strong and all the kids will break before they can get through. (Like, I’ll murder kids, but not before I’m done using them to murder immortals.) Ancient Telar tells Sita there is a way — she just has to remember what happened after she died. Like it’s that easy.

But she does. Suddenly, we’re back on the mountain, where Sita has just been lasered in the heart. She finds a cave and follows it down forever, until she sees others and decides she needs to follow them. The path leads to a giant river teeming with inhumanity, all sorts of dead people who are trying to answer a question about their lives in order to take a boat across. Only thing is, if you answer it wrong you’re forced to forget it. We get to remember them, though, because this is a book and not some crazy spiritual encounter.

Sita answers the first question wrong (”what is the most useless human emotion?”), and then finds a beautiful and familiar-looking young woman who tells her not to despair, because she has plenty of time to think about the answer. She’s already gotten her question right, and is waiting for Sita so they can ride together with another woman. After a second missed question (”what quality is both great and dangerous in humans?”), she meets the other woman, who also looks familiar. Weird! She tells Sita that all of the questions may be different, but the answers are all important, and they should come back to us when we need them. So I guess we can yell at the book like it’s Dora the Explorer later on. The third question is “what is the greatest mystery in the universe?” Sita knows this one: it’s that God and his names are all the same, so by invoking the name you are bringing God to you. It does take her a second, because she has to argue with the boat driver over misleading info he’s given her, but in the end she gets to cross the river with her new friends.

On the other side is a mountain full of caves. They each have to go through their own cave, and Sita ends up at an abyss, where she can see the tunnel on the other side but doesn’t know how to get there. A woman with some grotesque facial scars shows up and walks across the space, offering to help Sita do it, for a kiss. She knows about Sita’s final sin, showing a blood-stained syringe like she’s predicting kid-virus-murder, and with a kiss they will bond and the woman will protect her when it comes to final judgment. After all, she did miss the second question. And suddenly it comes flooding back to Sita, with a realization of what the correct answer is: faith. She doesn’t need to get across, necessarily; she just has to take a leap of faith.

She passes out for a minute after jumping, then comes to in a pathway with the syringe on the ground next to her. She makes her way to the obvious judgment house and sees how it works. You state your name and age, put your hands over a scale, and one of them makes diamonds and the other black pearls. Whichever side is heavier determines where you go in the afterlife, and the younger you are the less the scale expects, I guess. The young woman that Sita rode in the boat with offers to go first, and OH HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK IT’S TERI. Because this is happening in the past, remember, Sita doesn’t think Teri is dead, but the other woman says time doesn’t matter here, you can encounter people who are dead from all periods, including apparently the future. But Teri was good, duh, and she goes up. And now we learn just how old Sita is exactly: 5152 years old. Naturally someone with this long of a life and this complicated of a history produces enough gems to bury the scale entirely. Her hands drop with the exhaustion of producing so much junk, and ultimately the dark side of the scale prevails. The devil himself shows up to make a deal with Sita, though: if she destroys the light bearer, he’ll go easy on her.

And now Sita is back in her living body, still channeling into the room that observes the Source, with a bitter realization of what she has to do. Ancient Telar has described their initial Link, the one that granted her people immortality, as one that filled them with light. So she needs to kill this lady in order to make the current Source vulnerable. Which, duh, Ancient Telar knew it the whole time, and is ready to make peace with her twelve thousand years. Her soul’s absence weakens the Link, and Sita makes herself visible through multiple ancient magics to let them know of their fate. Of course they try to reason and bargain with Sita, but as she’s already been tortured nearly to death by the leader she doesn’t think it’s necessary to make a deal, and sticks around long enough to make sure they’re all still present when the last dude she left alive sends in the missile strike.

So now obviously the kids are sick and dying and Team Vampire has to get out of this building. They’re stopped by the CEO and her husband, who insist that they heal all the kids, only Sita refuses and the CEO knows why: this Cradle business has gotten out of their control and the only way out is to let it die. When her husband argues in favor of the kids, she shoots him in the fucking head and then asks Sita for one kid: her daughter. They get in the van, Seymour screaming and protesting the whole time, and they’re only maybe a mile away when the shit blows up. See, while Sita was planning for her child murder to be slow and painful, Immortal Boyfriend laced the whole place with powerful explosives so that they’d just die instantly.

Almost immediately, they get pulled over. Why? There’s no connection between this van and the building they just left, or any of their identities. But CEO confirms that the Internet program just kicked on, which means maybe there’s one person still connected to the Cradle who could make it go. Who the hell could it be? For now, Sita hypnotizes the cops away from the van and they figure out how to make it to a middle-of-nowhere hellhole hotel, where she shares a room with the young Indian girl who had been a part of the Array but has had some unusual powers against it, who had also been scarred in the face before Sita found her, who somehow had the original copy of Original Vampire’s book even though Sita KNOWS she made a copy of it to send back with her. Weird!

And suddenly Sita realizes who is the mole, the rat, the link, the answer to all of the problems. And the young Indian girl slowly drops her facade and reveals that yes, she’s been the human connection for the devil the whole time, and that she was dark and evil even before her arranged fiance threw acid in her face. And just as suddenly, Sita is talking with the devil himself, in a luxury hotel room overlooking ... I dunno, Hell City? He’s kind of pissed that she wiped out the Cradle, and counts himself lucky that the Internet program was able to be started up. Still, he offers her another deal so that his connection to the human realm won’t be lost. Sita wants the answer to the ferryman’s first question in return, but he won’t give it up. But she’s figured something else out: the light bearer is actually this first fallen angel, Lucifer. And now she’s back in the nasty hotel room, where she doesn’t hesitate to rip of the Indian girl’s head and throw it out the window.

And suddenly AGAIN, Sita is back in front of the scale, where she knows the answer to the riddle and realizes just what is holding her down: guilt. It’s her guilt that has caused her hand to rest on the dark side of the scale and pull it down. She releases it and immediately the light side takes over. She is led to a long tunnel, which leads to an intoxicating blue light, and a man with a long braid and a flute. Finally, Krishna has come for Sita. Only he didn’t have to, because he’s always been there for her, and will be even if she chooses to go back to her body.

And that’s the end of Thirst No. 4! It seems like this would have been a satisfying enough ending for this whole series, right? We got some closure, we know that the monsters have been dealt with, we are ready to be done. But we can’t, because we know there’s still a fifth book coming. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I’ve never read that one, after two attempts by Pike to end this series. Maybe it won’t suck? Let’s find out.

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livingdarwinaward · 7 years ago

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In the city that doesn’t exist

Chapter 3: Defying a principle that doesn’t apply

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Still based off of @givethispromptatry‘s prompt

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Living in the cloud sector back at home had prepared me to navigate in areas where buildings and streets shifted occasionally. Clouds are changeable after all, but it turns out half-reality is even more so. Seriously. Last ‘night,’ the ladder to the cloud sector had anchored at a towering ridge with a view of pretty much everywhere in the Hub and very close to the ocean sector, but now it was anchored on a wide arch of rock connecting the massive spire the Keep was carved from to a nearby peak. (And I say ‘spire’ because it’s usually freestanding) with the ocean sector nowhere in sight.

It took me a while to get to the ocean sector, but I managed, and once I found it, Morgan’s bar was easy to find. At the counter, Megan was talking to a young man about his sister, and I realized this was the man whose sister had disappeared. Megan say me and said, “Hey, Fern!” then turned back to the man. “Hey, why don’t you tell Fern what you told me?”

“About what Ammy found?”

“Yeah, she’s doing a project, and it this might be useful for her.”

“Oh, cool.” He turned to me. “So my sister, Ammy, went missing yesterday, but apparently she was just exploring the city and lost track of time. We found her, thankfully, and she said she found this weird place on the very edge of the city. The whole area was weird, she said. She told me it was like what she thought a junkyard-- like in some of the worlds-- looks like, but the stuff in it was really odd, and looked kind of valuable. And she told me there was a weird feeling about the place, that it seemed… I think she meant it felt less real than the rest of the Hub, but it was hard to figure out what she meant, and I’m not quite knew what she was trying to explain.” He looked around, focusing on the pool game going on across the room. “Now, I don’t know if that’s useful to you, so…” he trailed off.

“Sounds like it could be, and I’d like to check out this place. Where exactly is it?”

“Um, it’s in the cave sector, near where Jason’s Smithy used to be. That’s all the detail I got.” He got up to leave. “So, I have to go to work now. Good luck on your project!”

“Well--” I turned to Megan “--there’s a few problems with those directions,” I started. “One: I don’t know much about the cave sector even in Arel, ‘cause I’m storm fae and obviously try to avoid being underground; and two: I couldn’t find where Jason’s Smithy used to be even if the Hub didn’t keep shifting, and it does.” I paused. “Seriously, how do you find your way around? Even though the clouds move in Arel, there’s reality to make how they move makes some sort of sense, but here everything moves with no rhyme or reason.”

Megan chuckled. “If you live here, you don’t even notice the shifts, we just keep going as if the city never changed at all. I can give you a map, but once you get underground, you may have trouble telling what level you’re on.”

“Well, a map is better than nothing,” I said. “I learned how to read the different levels written on a map, I can try to find them here.”

“Alright,” Megan said. “Just remember, should the city shift while you’re on the way, the map’ll change to match, but you may end up in a totally different area away from your route, and anything I write on the map will probably not change with it.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Naturally, the city shifted. “Fuck.” The route Megan had indicated now led through walls, mountains, and into nothingness. I was warned, I thought. Still a pain in the ass. I went to a nearby man to ask: “Could you show me where Jason’s Smithy used to be?”

The man’s head snapped up, and he looked absolutely terrified when he looked around. “Where am I?” He was clearly freaking out. “Am I sleepwalking? I was just having a dream-- wait, I don’t- I don’t recognize this place… Where am I?”

“You’re in the Hub,” I said, scratching the back of my neck. “If you want to get back to a world, you’ll probably need to go to the, uhh,” shit, what’d Morgan call it? “The Directory.” I paused. The man had seemed to know his way around, but when I’d talked to him, he’d not known a thing. “Do you know how to get to the Directory?”

The man shook his head.

“Shit.” I looked around and saw a group of kids coming toward us.

“Do you need help?” one asked, looking between us. “We can take you to the Directory.”

“That’s where he needs to go.” I nodded at the confused man. “But I’m trying to find something in the cave sector.

One boy stepped forward. “I know the cave sector really well, I’ll take you there.” He started walking opposite to my previous direction. “What are you looking for?”

“It’s a place like-- have you heard of junkyards? Like in some worlds?”

“Oh! I think I know that place, I found it with some friends yesterday. It was so weird-- it felt wrong somehow. It was interesting though. We thought we were in there for, like, half an hour, but but we left and our families were going crazy looking for us ‘cause we’d been gone for hours. But you can’t blame us, all the stuff was so interesting, ya know?”

“Never had that much of a difference between-- holy shit…” We’d entered the cave sector, which I’d been in once before (in Arel) and hadn’t much liked it, but this version was much better. The gloom wasn’t nearly as oppressive here, but that was probably because before, I’d been in a relatively small passageway the size of a street with a twenty foot ceiling, and this was a massive cavern hundreds of feet high, and hundreds of yards across. Freestanding buildings made of stone and brick created a ring around the marketplace we were walking through, and luminous things-- animals, plants, rocks and crystals, and slime covering the stalactites-- were everywhere, lighting up the cavern well, but casting deep shadows that emphasized everything, and the details of the many different building styles were obvious. The haze was, for some reason, less obvious here, allowing me to easily see the different styles, from modern and sleek to ancient and intricate, and the colors, while still muted, were not muted as much. I could also see that the cave walls were crisscrossed with ramps and stairs and pocked with smaller caverns and hollows. Stalactites, stalagmites, and columns were often hollowed and carved into houses and shops and things, and covered in as many murals as the rest of the buildings in the cave. My guide led me through a less crowded area and I saw mosaics all over the floor, showing, like many murals, scenes from the worlds, most about Arel. The crowds soon thickened again, and I looked up, seeing the floating boulders covered in all manner of cave-dwelling plants and fungi, colorful or in shades of black and grey, some glowing, flowering or creeping, others carnivorous, with tendrils reaching and swaying for the bats and other flying things.

The boy-- “Hey,” I said, “what’s your name?”

“Leo,” he replied. “What’s yours?”

“Fern.”

The boy-- Leo-- nodded at that and led me through a massive stone arch and into an even larger cavern, open at the top. A small forest of surface plants grew all over a large pile of rocks in the middle of the cavern, and over that swayed foot bridges crisscrossing the cavern. Leo led me in before pausing.

“This may sound weird, but I don’t know where to go from here. Could I see your map?” he asked.

“I should be able to find it…” he muttered as we looked at the map.

“Is it not on there?”

“No, and that’s weird.” Leo’s eyes flicked over the map. “I think… follow me,” he said, giving me the map. He turned around, the chose a passage near us, stairs sloping down into a lower level. A lot of stairs. About a hundred steps down, the passage opened up into a huge cavern with an incredibly uneven floor hundreds of feet below. When we got to the bottom, I saw that the rock formations were actually small canyons caused by subterranean streams. The walls of the canyons were hollowed out, and between were canals, not streets. People walked on the roofs and crossed bridges, and we did the same to get to the lower end of the cavern, where Leo took a small boat from a large dock. One more level down,” he told me as I got in the boat with him. Then he grinned at me. “Hold on.”

He released the boat and it left the dock, gathering speed as it entered a steep tunnel until we were rocketing along, somehow following the course of the water without slamming into the walls. At the bottom, we ended in an underground lake with stalagmites jutting out from the bottom and into the air with houses built on top as if they were stilts. Boats, rafts, and houseboats dotted the water and, again, footbridges crossed all over. We got onto a path hugging the cavern wall, before going into a tunnel in the wall, rooms and apartments and stores and such hollowed out of the walls, resembling the part of the cave sector I’d been in in Arel.

Ten minutes later, we were in another, higher cavern with shallow streams crossing the floor and flowing into holes in the wall, presumably to end up in the lake. This cavern was smaller than the others, but still took a while to cross. Once we did, Leo led me to a tiny hole in the wall. “I had a feeling about this cavern, then followed the weird feeling from there,” he said.

“So this is it?”

“It should be, feels about the same. But it’s still not on the map though, so I’m confused.” He pointed to a section of the map. “See, here’s the dinner place here--” he waved at the hollow next to us with a sign saying: ‘Closed ‘till dinner.’ “--and here’s the light shop.” He pointed at a point on the map and the hollow across the hole from us. He kept staring at the map and said, “You go in, I’ll try to figure this out.”

I nodded, then turned to the little hole. “Gods I hate small spaces.” I squirmed into the hole and started shuffling down the tiny passage. I was so focused on that weird feeling Leo had mentioned that it took me a bit to notice other details, like how the feeling of being crushed (I knew I wasn’t, but I live in the sky, being underground makes me hyper-aware of the many hundreds of tons of rock over my head) wasn’t even as strong as in the open cavern outside. It seemed backwards, until I remembered that feeling had been reduced by being in half-reality. Am I going even further into the Rift? Another thing: as I shuffled along in my half-crouch, my feet sank into the rock. Is it even rock? Looking down (and I shouldn’t have been able to see squat, there was no light source, but I could) it was clearly rock.

The passage widened out into a cavern filled with all sorts of things. Books, money, weapons, treasures, technology, almost all magical (that feeling is pretty noticeable once you learn it) filled the room wall to wall. I couldn’t tell if the walls were further than they looked, or if they were just hazy as all get-out. The haze that filled the city was even more obvious here, and combined with odd colors, movements and the apparent disintegration that never seemed to affect things (all more prevalent here) made it very hard to see.

I started sifting through the massive heaps of stuff, not sure what I was looking for or what evidence of something going on would look like, but pretty sure something was going on. This is clearly further in the Rift than the rest of the city, I thought as I looked through a pile of books in languages I couldn’t read, or even recognize. And I bet this stuff is from all sorts of different worlds, too. This place isn’t on the map, so I don’t think it should be here. I sat back on my heels, looked around, and realized my eyes must be getting used to the oddness of the place-- I could see almost as well as in the rest of the city. Huh. I had wished to be able to see better, but hadn’t expected to adjust as fast as I did. Maybe it’s a robber’s hoard. I looked down at the book in my hand again. It’s a spellbook, I realized. What the hell is ‘elixir of firetree? Wait-- how am I even reading this? The book was in a language I’d never seen before, but I was reading it. I decided to get out of there, ‘cause it was messing with my mind. I’ll bring some stuff out, to see what anyone knows about it.

Out of the cavern with a few books in hand, I looked at Leo. he looked amused. “Guess you didn’t think it was interesting,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you weren’t in there for very long. Find some books?”

“I was in there for hours, Leo.” I shifted the books to my left arm. “But yes, I-- wait.”

“What?”

“I can see as clearly as if I were in a world,” I said. “That’s never happened before.”

Leo looked at me. “Your eyes are different. Paler. Like, white now. It’s actually kinda creepy.”

“Hang on, lemme check something.” I went back to the tiny cave, shuffling down. It took me about a minute to get to the bottom. Once in the cavern, I could see pretty well compared to how it was before, roughly how the city had appeared when I had first arrived. The cavern was different though.

I’m talking about the dragon. At least, I think it was a dragon, definitely a Rift beast, shaped vaguely like a dragon, but hard to see. Pretty loud, though.

“TINY TRESPASSER!” it boomed. “GIVE BACK WHAT YOU STOLE AND I MAY LET YOU LIVE!”

“Dropping the books!” I yelled before doing so and bailing.

As soon as I made it out of the tunnel, Leo asked: “How long does it take to check something? I mean, you’ve been down there for hours!”

I caught my breath. “A minute to get down there, thirty seconds to freak out about the dragon, and another thirty seconds to bail out. What do you mean, hours?”

“Yeah, hours on this end, look, the dinner place is open now. Wait, hang on-- dragon?”

“Yeah, giant fucking dragon.”

#writing #my writing #in the city that doesn't exist #original #givethispromptatry #fantasy

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neeksleep · 6 years ago

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Day 12: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

I absolutely loved Xenoblade Chronicles 1 on the Wii when it made its way to America after project Rainfall succeeded. The world was massive, the story had me hooked and the combat was unique. However, the span of which I played that game was almost 3 years, picking it back up when I was feeling bored. I would get sidetracks a whole bunch and barely make any progress in the story. Because of that, it’s hard for me to remember most of the details for why I enjoyed the game so much.

But, with the release of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, I could easily block out time to play the game since it was handheld, and I could play it in a condensed period. This game has similarities to the previous entries in terms of huge areas, plenty of monsters and a great story, but there was a huge overhaul for the combat system and the graphical style. They also introduced a gatcha system that lets you draw for rare ‘blades’ which are the complement to your character for combat. It’s a bit complicated to explain in a short, but I’ll do my best. Basically, you the player character are the driver, and can attack with your weapon, but also using skills. The skills come from one of the 3 blades that you can equip at a time, and all offer their own unique abilities, and elements. If that doesn’t make sense, don’t worry, I didn’t understand it until a few hours of combat, but it didn’t mar my experience until then either.

Huge Areas and Great Sights

Following in the footsteps of Xenoblade Chronicles 1, this game features some really unique and expansive areas. Whereas the original Xenoblade took place on one (and part of another) giant immobile creature, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 takes place on several different Titans that roam around the Cloud Sea, a vast plane of clouds that covers an unexplored world underneath. Although it’s overall not as impressive of an idea that the first game was, the environments in my opinion are as enjoyable to explore.

Each area offers a different biome that is filled with tons of monsters, hidden treasures and gathering points. You may not always be crossing paths with monsters that you can handle either. One wrong turn and you may find yourself being targeted by a monster 90 levels above you! I loved this part of the Xenoblade games. It is so satisfying when you finally get to go back and take on those monsters, and they often still pose quite a challenge even if you have rare blades equipped. The story bosses only go up to around level 70, but the strongest enemies can be found throughout the world (called superbosses) and can go up to level 130!

Aside from the monsters though, the areas you visit are visually stunning. Not necessarily graphically, the Nintendo Switch has its hardware limitations. But if this game doesn’t prove that art style can make you look past the graphics, I don’t know what will. Even generic environments like some green plains look amazing when you decide to look around and can see the Titan’s body parts, large as mountains, subtly moving as it traverses the world. The Kingdom of Uraya is my favourite, starting you in a very simple looking cave, but opens to a massive cavernous area full of bright fauna lighting up a huge lake and a kingdom at the other end. I don’t want to spoil anything though, because if you plan on playing this game, then I think it’s best you experience seeing the locale by yourself. It may be some of my favourite video game locations to just sit and look at.

Characters to Love

Say what you will about the voice acting or the character animations in this game, I think there is room for improvement. But that doesn’t change how much I really enjoyed playing the game to see these characters develop. It helps that I also really liked the voice acting and thought it was only brought down because the animations didn’t match the English voice overs. My favourite character, Nia, has a great range of emotion, and her story adds quite a bit to the world itself. Even Rex, the main protagonist, despite being a typical hero archetype, goes through some believable development as the game progresses.

There’s also just dialogue that you’ll hear as you’re in combat or small cutscenes. The rare Blades all end up having their own set of sidequests. They are all voiced, and a lot of them have some fairly entertaining conversations. The Blade sidequests also tend to be more involved and fun than regular NPC sidequests.

Incredible Soundtrack

The first game had some really great music. It stood out because it matched all the environments perfect, and most areas also had songs for both night and day. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 also has this, but I think they outdid themselves in this game. The Kingdom of Uraya track is by far my favourite, but the Mor Ardain track also gets a special shout out. The regular combat track also never got old for me (though pre-patch, some of the enemy callouts were entertainingly overused). Check out some of the songs from this game and check out both the day and night tracks for any area songs. You’ll surely find one that clicks with you.

In Conclusion

Xenoblade 2 really hit the spot for me when it came to a long RPG with engaging combat and a story that wasn’t overly complex but still fun to follow. The combat might be confusing at first, but it’ll eventually click. And the difficulty never really ends up being a challenge, so long as you don’t completely skip fighting any monsters in the field areas. There are also way too many sidequests to count and systems that offer several hours of gameplay beyond the story. At this point, I have yet to play a Xenoblade Chronicle games I didn’t like. It will be very hard to top this entry, because I could very well consider this one of my favourite RPGs of all time.

#Xenoblade Chronicles 2 #nintendo #Nintendo Switch #monolith soft #rpg #Review #yasunori mitsuda

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themusesofmars · 8 years ago

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Fanfiction Posted - Final Fantasy XV

@ignoctweek IgNoct Week Day 6, Prompt A: (Simple) Stars & Sea Title: “Bring Me Home” Rating: general Warnings: angst Synopsis: Noct has been asleep, locked inside the Crystal, for longer than even he knows. There’s only one man who can wake him up and bring him home. FFNET: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12600746/1/Bring-Me-Home Archive of Our Own: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11705646

An indeterminate amount of time had elapsed since Prince Noctis had been sealed within the Crystal. Hours had passed, stretching into days…weeks…perhaps years. His perception of the passage of time grew unfocused as the countless moments strung along, until the very concept of time became meaningless. For all he knew, it had been many lifetimes since he had last seen the light. It had been dark inside the Crystal’s confines—and cold, like the grave.

Memories washed over him like the inky gloom that had enveloped him. The last thing he recalled was seeing Ardyn, almost close enough to touch but then a million miles away. He had breathed a black liquid ice that poured into his lungs and expanded, filling him with its chilling nothingness. He had tried to call out to his friends—Gladio, Prompto…Ignis—but his voice was soundless, and his silent screams went unanswered.

In the beginning he was afraid and desperate, and all he could think of was escaping. Eventually he had grown weary and weak from fighting the tendrils of desolation coiling around his body and simply let them seep into his mind, dulling his thoughts and numbing his heart.

He had slept the sleep of the dreamless, wandered aimlessly in a sea of emptiness, until he lost all sense of purpose and could not even remember his own name.

Then all at once he was free of it. Freedom, at last! The Crystal had held him prisoner, gripped in its vice, completely immobile. Long had he been trapped inside, with only his thoughts and memories for company.

Or had he? Suddenly it seemed he had been gone but minutes.

How could he have ever felt so tormented by such a soothing sleep? He had been captured and released in the blink of an eye.

…Had it truly been only an instant? Or a decade? A moment, or an eternity?

Dazed, Noctis tried to stand and swayed. His vision was unclear, but he detected a faint glow in the foggy blackness surrounding him. He held his swimming head, certain now he heard the sound of sea waves crashing against an unseen shore. The ocean? But how? Was this even real?

The prince stretched out a hand to steady himself, bracing his palm against a gritty wall of rock. His sight slowly came into focus, and the dim light that shone from the distance revealed a little of his surroundings.

He was in a cell: but this prison, unlike the crystal’s endless ether, was concrete, physical. It was cavernous, a hollow carved into rock. And just ahead was a means of escape. If he only had the strength and the willpower to go.

An unexpected voice seemed to rise above the splashes of water that echoed off the walls of the cavern. The prince stood perfectly still, not even daring to breathe as he turned an ear toward the cave entrance and carefully listened.

For long seconds there was nothing more. Then a faint whisper called to him: “Highness!”

Noctis had almost forgotten the sound of that voice, but now he felt his heart pounding at its familiarity.

Ignis!

The prince tried to shout, but only air passed through his lips.

He tried again.

“Ignis!”

This time, a croak.

Noct’s throat was dry, as though he had been trekking across the deserts of the Three Valleys.

But somehow, miraculously, it seemed Ignis had heard him. “Noctis!” he called from far away. “Follow the sound of my voice!”

Noct took an unsteady step forward and staggered. He caught himself on the rock wall at his side, but it took all the effort in his shaking limbs to keep from falling. He realized now just how weak he was, how frail he had grown while floating in that bleak cosmos.

“You can do it, Noct!” Ignis encouraged. “One foot in front of the other. You’re strong. You’re the prince of Lucis!”

Noctis trembled, clutching the wall as the world spun wildly. He closed his eyes, which stung with frustrated tears. “There is no Lucis!” he argued, his throat tight. “I am the prince of nothing.” He covered his face with one hand as he wept, and felt the scratch of a beard that had grown over the countless years of his captivity. And then he knew how long he had been gone.

“You’re right,” Ignis conceded, “you are not the prince of Lucis; you are her King.”

“I’m…the King,” Noct repeated, grasping the cave wall. “I’m the…King. I’m the King.” Every time he said it, his voice gained strength.

“That’s it, Noct!” Ignis called to him eagerly. “Now stand up like a man.”

Noct braced his hands against the cavern and shoved himself off of it.

“Walk tall!”

He moved slowly, but Noct dug his boots into the sand littering the cave floor and staggered steadily forward—one foot in front of the other, like Ignis had told him.

“Come to me, Noctis.”

“I’m comin’, Iggy,” Noct hissed through his gritted teeth, pushing past the pain and dizziness and confusion as he made his way through the passageway. The light in the distance was still a soft glow, but the air was fresh and salty, and the world was waiting for him.

Noctis stepped out of the cave and into the night. He was outside, standing on a deserted beach, alone. The only light extant was from the stars reflecting on the waves of the ocean as it beat against the coast. There was no one in sight, but Noct plainly heard Ignis’s voice on the wind as he said, “Come home, Your Majesty.”

Noct’s eyes landed on the speedboat waiting to take him to shore. “Hang on, guys,” he said with renewed confidence, “Your King is back.”

#ignoctweek #ignoct week #ignoct #ffxv fanfiction #angst

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allthatjazza · 8 years ago

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UNDERTALE FANFIC/NOVEL/THING

Adventurer by Name, Adventurer by Nature - Chapter 1

A/N: So this is basically an interpretation of the True Pacifist Route of Undertale, based on @therealjacksepticeye ’s playthrough of the game. The protagonist is my own character, not Frisk (no offence to them, I love the smol bean) but it follows the events of Jack’s playthrough and the dialogue is a word for word transcript from Jack’s videos. I started writing this about a year ago, if not longer, and I think it’s finally time to share it. If people like it, I’ll continue to upload it as I write it. This is just chapter 1, ending just before you enter the ruins, after your encounter with Flowey. In my word document, the characters’ dialogue is actually in the Undertale font but it doesn’t translate over to Tumblr so you’ll just have to imagine it’s in that awesome font.

SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE OF THE TRUE PACIFIST ROUTE OF THE GAME ‘UNDERTALE’ BY TOBY FOX. I DON’T OWN THE PLOT OR THE DIALOGUE IN BOLD OR ANY OF THE CHARACTERS EXCEPT THE PROTAGONIST, KIT. I AM NOT MAKING ANY PROFIT FROM THIS.

They zipped up their jacket, laced their shoes and donned their backpack before grabbing the rope and harness.

Approaching the cliff edge, Kit Ross stared down into the deep, dark depths of Mount Ebott.

Legend has it that, hundreds of years ago, the village had been inhabited by a coven of witches and warlocks who had taken a drastic step in the monster vs human war, banishing the monsters underneath the mountain with a magic spell.

It was rarely taught in history classes, though, so it’s more like a myth. Either way, Kit was going to find out soon enough: they’d gotten bored and decided to go camping in the caves for a few nights.

They secured the rope around a boulder and clipped their harness to it. After a double check, they turned on their headlamp and climbed down into the abyss.

Wait, wasn’t it supposed to be getting darker the further they descended…? Yet, the cavern was strangely light at the bottom. Kit turned their head round to try and get a better look at whatever was emitting the mysterious glow: big mistake. In taking their eyes off the rock face before them, they failed to notice a particularly sharp, jagged rock that jutted out from the wall. It snagged on their rope and, before they knew it, snapped the rope and sent them plummeting to the rocky floor below.

Heart in their mouth, Kit squeezed their eyes shut and braced themselves for the painful impact of their body on the ground. Luckily for them, the rope had snapped just short of a dozen or so feet from the floor, meaning they landed with a heavy thud and a bump to the head, but otherwise relatively unscathed.

Sitting up and brushing off the dust from their clothes, Kit noticed that they had landed in a luminous bed of golden flowers. Odd; there was no one down here to tend for them.

Gingerly rubbing their head, they removed their abseiling gear and packed it into their bag. Walking for a bit, they inspected the nearby area (just rocks and darkness, nothing of interest) before stopping to pull out a water bottle from their bag. Just as they unzipped the rucksack, they heard a voice:

“Howdy!”

Instincts fuelled Kit and they turned, quickly withdrawing their pocket knife. Then it registered- they were stood in front of a yellow-petaled flower…with a face. That apparently just talked.

“…what the fu-”

“I’m Flowey! Flowey the Flower!” exclaimed the plant in a disgustingly sweet voice.

“I… I can see you’re a flower…”

‘How hard did I bang my head?’ they thought, holding the knife tightly.

“Hmm, you’re new to the underground, aren’t ya? Golly, you must be so confused!” cried the shrill voice with a shit-eating grin.

“Yeah, no kidding…” Kit mumbled. They kept the knife raised as they inched closer.

“Someone ought to tell you how things work around here!” Kit rolled their eyes, already sensing the craziness of the situation.

“I guess little old me will have to do! Ready?” Kit nodded hesitantly. “Here we go!”

Suddenly, the room went dark and two spotlights fell upon Kit and ‘Flowey’.

“See that heart?” asked the flower. Kit felt a heavy weight on their chest and looked down to see a red, heart-shaped pendant hanging from their neck on a gold chain. “That’s your soul; the very culmination of your being!”

Yeah, Kit was calling bullshit on this so hard. Nevertheless, they politely signalled for the yellow flower to continue.

“Your soul starts off weak, but can grow strong if you gain a lot of LV!”

Kit glanced down and noticed the pendant was surrounded by a mere layer of glass. They frowned.

“LV?”

“What’s LV stand for? Why, LOVE, of course!” the flower cried.

Kit resisted the urge to cringe.

“You want some love, don’t you?”

“Uhh…” Kit didn’t think so, anyway.

“Don’t worry, I’ll share some with you!” the flower winked and five…blobs appeared around it. Kit’s eyes widened in shock as they started to question life and their sanity.

They were dreaming, right? This couldn’t be real…they pinched themselves just to make sure, but nothing happened.

“Down here, love is shared through little white ‘friendliness pellets’.”

Okay, that definitely sounded fake; “friendliness pellets”? For a split second, Kit could have sworn that the flower’s face switched into a malicious grin, if only for a mere moment, but it could’ve just been a trick of the light. When they blinked, it was smiling, just as before.

“Are you ready? Move around! Get as many as you can!” Suddenly, the white ‘friendliness pellets’ were moving towards Kit.

Now, Kit didn’t make a deliberate move to grab them, but curiosity got the better of them and they didn’t move away from one headed for their arm.

They didn’t know what they expected to happen, but searing hot pain and an open, bleeding wound certainly wasn’t it.

They cried out and grabbed their arm before noticing the flower’s face: a terrifying evil grin.

“You idiot,” came the distorted voice. “In this world, it’s kill or BE killed.”

Kit sneered at the two-faced dick of a plant before them.

“Why would ANYONE pass up an opportunity like this?!” The face turned into a smug smile as the five orbs multiplied into hundreds and encircled Kit, leaving no gap for escape, except…

“DIE,” screeched the monster-plant, and the trap started to close in on Kit slowly. Unfortunately for ‘Flowey’, it wasn’t a very well thought out trap; the orbs hovered at Kit’s waist level, which just happened to be about 3 feet above the ground.

They brandished their knife and, in a very Indiana Jones style move, rolled forward under the bullets. They stabbed the blade through an exposed leaf, pinning it to the floor. The plant released a high-pitched shriek as the trap faded into nothingness.

“I don’t know what the fuck just happened or what the hell you are, but you leave me alone y’hear?!” Kit demanded angrily. ‘Flowey’ nodded (if plants can nod…) and tried to retreat underground again but was hindered by Kit’s knife.

They removed it mercifully, letting the flower go: they never were the one for killing. It quickly disappeared back into the soft earth with a squawk of fear, leaving the cave silent.

Kit sat back, staring at the bleeding wound on their arm. They put the pen-knife back in their bag and went to stand up when they came face to face with a purple fabric and a white insignia, surrounded by white fur. Shocked, they fell back and landed on their arm, inhaling sharply in shock and pain.

“What a terrible creature, torturing such a poor, innocent youth…” came a soft, warm voice from above them.

Kit scrambled back, getting to their feet and pulling their knife out again. They were certainly more scared now; there was no adrenaline, no fear or pain fuelling them now. This was a…a creature at least 3 times larger than Kit, not just some stupid plant. God knew the damage that could be done to them in this moment.

“D-Don’t come too close, I’m not afraid to use this!” they stammered unconvincingly, pen-knife trembling in their hand. This…being…was at least 6 foot tall, if not taller, and resembled some sort of bull or goat. It had small horns on its head and wore a purple…dress? Soft white fur encompassed its whole body, and although it didn’t appear threatening, Kit was extremely on edge.

“Ah, do not be afraid, my child,” said the being, kneeling down to match Kit’s height more, smiling a sincere smile. “I am Toriel, caretaker of the Ruins.” It gestured to the surrounding cave that was a lot less scary in the presence of this…woman? It appeared female, but who was Kit to judge someone’s gender…do animal-monsters even have genders? Either way, this being was no more threatening than a bumble bee bumping into a window on a hot, summer’s day.

“I pass through this place every day to see if anyone has fallen down,” she continued, standing up again. She had to be nearly 7 foot in height, towering over Kit’s tiny 5’6” frame.

“I came here to camp,” they explained, realising how dumb that sounded compared to the fact that the monsters from the legends actually exist. “I was abseiling down when my rope snapped and then I ran into that…thing,” they said, pointing at where the plant had appeared. “I didn’t…expect anyone to be down here,” they admitted, looking back up at the goat-woman-being.

“You are the first human to come here in a long time.”

“Makes sense,” nodded Kit. “No one believes in the myths and legends: they just think this is a normal mountain. When that kid fell down here and was never seen again, people started to avoid it like the plague. Now it…sort of makes sense.” Kit put the knife away in their pocket for easy access and hissed as their burnt arm flexed. As they looked down, they saw something odd – the heart pendant had a small crack in it and was glowing a little less brightly than it had been before. “Huh…guess that weed was right,” they mumbled, fingering it curiously. But…how could a simple necklace actually represent their soul? Kit hadn’t even been aware that souls existed until now.

Toriel gasped when she saw the wound, putting a gentle hand-thing on Kit’s uninjured shoulder. “Come! I will guide you through the catacombs,” she said, leading Kit to a purple archway that they hadn’t spotted before. It appeared to be made of marble, consisting of two huge pillars and a curved segment joining them at the top. Within the curved arch was a strange symbol that sort of looked like wings, in Kit’s eyes.

“This way.”

Kit grabbed their bag and shouldered it, Toriel leading the way further and further into the mountain…

#Undertale #Toby Fox #Undertale fanfic #undertale fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #toriel #flowey #Undertale AU #AU #OC #Undertale OC #jacksepticeye #therealjacksepticeye #jse #jack

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redpagespodcast · 8 years ago

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An Introduction to Gothic Games

In this short essay, we’re going to take a layperson’s look at Gothic video games, how they draw on their literary predecessors, and what they offer to the genre that no other medium has managed.

The components of the gothic tale are at this point well-worn tropes in literature, comfortable to slip into and easy to digest. Gothic iconography – the mouldering manor, the decayed bloodline, the horrific creature – has become the symbol of mass-market consumerism, cropping up every October to implore us to purchase candy and decorations. Draculas and Frankenstein’s Monsters grin out from cereal boxes, while zombies creep their way out of film-screens and into works of literature where they did not originally exist, such as in Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009). It should be no surprise that the largest grossing entertainment industry in the United States, the video game industry, also shares this preoccupation with the Gothic. Even before it ballooned to the size it is today, some of the earliest games were based upon the generic moves and tropes originated in gothic novels. In this paper, I will provide a brief overview of the history of “horror games” before examining several titles classified as such in the popular imagination, drawing from a broad range of years and developers, in order to comment on how some of the most popular titles utilize the conventions of the Gothic to produce works of interactive media.

The immediate and obvious difference between Gothic novels and games is the interactive nature of the latter, which faces the challenge of interface. This problem is not unique to the “horror” game genre – and throughout this paper I refer to games alternately as “horror” or “Gothic” interchangeably – but it has been handled differently from the vast majority of other genres by developers. When developing a video game, the primary goal of the developer, when designing the physical control scheme that one uses to play the game (be it mouse, keyboard, controller or other input) is to remove, as much as possible, any sense of friction between the player executing a command and their onscreen avatar carrying it out. This is primarily due to the fact that most modern video games are power fantasies – the player-character is the best soldier in the world, or a superhero, or a powerful wizard. Any time the player feels hindered in their control, it creates a psychological dissonance that disconnects him or her from the state of play and causes frustration. Over decades, a series of best practices has emerged so that, within a genre, designers understand what the easiest and most intuitive control schemes are. For horror games, however, this is less true, because unlike most other game genres, horror games are not empowerment fantasies. The protagonist of a horror game is often pursued by monsters, lost and confused, deprived of resources and subjected to all sorts of physical and psychological trauma from which they will be lucky to escape alive. As a result, many styles of control that have become obsolete over the years persist in horror. The most famous example of this creative choice are so-called “tank controls,” which feature as the control method for the first three case studies presented below. Tank controls are a form of avatar locomotion where, appropriately, the player-character controls like a tank: in order to change direction, the character must pivot in place to face the direction of intended movement before being able to step forward. The camera is static, and does not follow the player. This is in contrast to games where the player may press a directional input and their avatar will immediately move without first having to go through a pivoting process, and the camera dynamically changes angles to always be behind the avatar. The original reason for the tank control implementation was due to technological deficits: early three-dimensional environments utilized pre-rendered images generated on powerful computers that could be drawn to the screen on a lower-powered game console as static backgrounds. Because these backgrounds were, in essence, flat photographs, the camera could not move around without exposing the artifice of the game’s environment and breaking the illusion. As technology advanced and the ability to freely move the camera in a three-dimensional environment became standard, many horror game developers felt that despite their outdated design, the frustration of having to grapple with unintuitive controls increases the tension felt by a player, heightening their sense of stress and fear in hairy moments. Robin Hunicke’s MDA Framework[1] posits that games can be viewed through a triumvirate set of lenses that work together to create a unified experience: “the mechanics give rise to dynamic system behavior, which in turn leads to particular aesthetic experiences. From the player ís perspective, aesthetics set the tone, which is born out in observable dynamics and eventually, operable mechanics” (emphasis mine.) Interestingly, artificially restricting the player-character’s movement straddles all three categories. It is one thing to run from a monster, but it is quite another to do so with one’s metaphorical legs tied together. It is in the horror game genre that one of the golden rules of interactive design can be found suspended with frequency, acting as an exception that proves the rule: it is not always better to provide a frictionless control experience to players.

Example screen of Haunted House

The horror game genre began in earnest the 1980s, with an increasingly-rapid number of releases designed to scare players. One of the earliest of these titles is Haunted House (1981) for the Atari 2600. As will become apparent, the traditional Gothic locale of the haunted house was immediately seen as an attractive setting for staging a game, and the play of Haunted House involved attempting to escape from the titular house while avoid monsters like bats and ghosts – though the visuals were so primitive that it was unlikely any player would truly feel their spine tingling. A series of haunted house games followed, however, such as Terror House(1982, Bandai LCD Solar) and Ghost House (1986, SEGA Master System), while other horror titles looked directly to classic works of gothic literature for inspiration, producing games such as Castlevania (1986, Nintendo Entertainment System) and Frankenstein (1987, Commodore 64) adapting or drawing upon Dracula and Frankenstein respectively. While text-based games could do a reasonable job of evoking the sense of dread and foreboding that the Gothic has come to be known for, these were not popular in the marketplace, and most of the best-selling titles were held back by technical limitations. A limited amount of memory restricted the number of colors that could appear onscreen, causing monsters to be rendered as blobs that were difficult to parse or laughably cartoonish. Developers focusing on providing the player with compelling gameplay at the expense of the game’s theme led to titles like Castlevania trading scares for action. It was not until the early 1990s that the power of computers advanced to the point where games could focus on telling a complex narrative of any type through more than simply printing text on the screen – a crucial element in producing a “Gothic” video game.

Carnby explores one of the haunted halls of Derceto

One of the forefathers of the modern horror game is the classic title Alone in the Dark (1992, DOS). The French developer Infogrames drew inspiration from the works of authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft in producing the title. Set in the year 1920, Alone in the Dark follows in the tradition of earlier haunted house games by trapping the player within the walls of the decaying Louisiana mansion Derceto. Taking on the role of an investigator [2] arriving at the mansion to determine what could have caused the prior owner, artist Jeremy Hartwood, to suddenly decide to take his own life, the player is drawn into intrigue surrounding the death of the mansion’s original owner, pirate Ezechial Pregzt, who was murdered during the civil war and now wishes to return to life to unleash all manner of terrifying beasts upon the unsuspecting world. From the roof of the mansion down into the system of caves below, the investigator must fend off supernatural assaults while working to lay Pregzt’s spirit to rest. The art direction of the game draws upon an aesthetic of romanticism, placing the investigators in an environment that, while not a natural wilderness (save for brief forays outside the manor’s confines,) still conveys via the environmental design a sense of untamed wildness, a darkness that is at once foreboding and irresistible. The manor itself is filled with haunts and ghouls, and the narrative climax, wherein the caverns below the house collapse, is reminiscent of the Fall of the House of Usher, despite the fact that Derceto remains standing for the player to continue exploring following the story’s conclusion, should he or she choose. Alone in the Dark spawned multiple sequels, but its most popular and famous progeny was not one of them. The most successful haunted house game of all time would come not from France but from Japan.

In 1996, Capcom released Resident Evil, known as Bio Hazard in Japan. Doubling down on the horror aspects, Resident Evil, much like Alone in the Dark, allows the player to select from either a male or female protagonist, both operatives with the task force S.T.A.R.S. investigating the disappearance of their fellows at a mysterious abandoned mansion on the outskirts of the Midwest town, Raccoon City. After being harried by dogs that would put the Hound of the Baskervilles to shame, the agents take refuge in the decaying house only to discover that it is infested with zombies. Making their way into the bowels of the mansion, they discover a conspiracy, contend with a traitor in their midst, and ultimately, as all Gothic manors must, the house collapses in on itself. Superficially, it appears that Resident Evil makes many of the same thematic moves as Alone in the Dark, relying on a mansion, supernatural phenomena within it, and a mystery to unravel to build tension. However, there are several factors that account for both this game’s mass-market success and its successful intervention into the Gothic genre. The same graphical improvements that had allowed Alone to stand out from its predecessors had, in the intervening four years, catapulted forward, and Resident Evil’s live-action opening before transitioning into then-cutting edge full three-dimensional explorable environments gave the title a cinematic flair unusual for the era. The second factor was the game’s narrative, unlike Alone in the Dark, grappled with social anxieties in a classic Gothic fashion. Fears over identity and betrayal from within sit alongside more modern tensions such as medical experimentation and government conspiracies.

The protagonists of Resident Evil defeat one of many zombies.

These fears were alive and well not only in the Japanese psyche but worldwide, though within a few months The House of the Dead, another Japanese title involving special agents investigating a mansion full of zombies to uncover a medical conspiracy was blowing up arcades. As has been pointed out, the shift in zombie narratives from supernatural to scientific origin had been underway for some time, and although “it would be a challenge to pinpoint the exact moment,” critics have pointed to Night of the Living Dead, I Am Legend and the research of ethnobotanist Wade Davis for pushing zombies from magic to medicine. [3] The Resident Evil franchise continued into the present, branching out into box-office megahit films while becoming less gothic with each successive title, veering into more of a military fantasy with Resident Evil 4 during the years of the Iraq war when the enemies became infected foreigners, and staying there until 2017’s Resident Evil 7, which took the series back to its roots and harkened back to Alone – the setting is a Faulkneresque dilapidated southern plantation home where the darkness comes not primarily from the undead, but from the family that inhabits its collapsing structure – a redneck version of the Compson family, perhaps, but one that speaks to the class tensions in modern America. Resident Evil’s continual reinvention of itself demonstrates not only the ability of Gothic, as a genre, to take on whatever might be plaguing the collective unconscious of the era, but also how the anxieties of past Gothics – whether foreigners in Dracula or class in Wuthering Heights – return to the modern era wearing new clothing.

The horror game genre fully embraced anxiety and psychological manifestation three years after Resident Evil in the franchise Silent Hill. Expanding the haunted house concept to an entire abandoned town, the city of Silent Hill was notable for having a dual nature: the vaguely unsettling abandoned fog-filled streets would suddenly and without warning transform into an industrial nightmare world of rusting metal beams and horrifying monsters. While the story of a man searching for his lost daughter laid considerable worldbuilding groundwork, it was not until the sequel that the franchise reached its heights. Silent Hill 2 “features a woman’s blanched face on its cover, begins in an isolated, vile public toilet, and is about the spiritual purgatory of a grieving husband.”[4] Protagonist James Sunderland receives a letter from his wife, dead some three years, telling him that she is still alive, and that he must meet her in Silent Hill. When he arrives there, he finds his deepest repressions made manifest on the streets, constantly tormenting him. The environments are filled with hospital beds adorned with crisp white sheets and pillows, the monsters take the form of nurses and even a seemingly-real women he meets appears identical to his wife, despite having a wildly different personality.

James confronts his repressions in a straightforward manner

All the while, Sunderland is stalked by a violent and sexually aggressive creature known as “Pyramid Head.” Furthermore, other people trapped in Silent Hill appear to see the town completely differently – a teenage runaway named Angela, for example, perceives the town as being on fire, whereas Eddie, who has a history of violence, experiences the haunts not as nurses but as people laughing at and taunting him. As the player progresses through the narrative, it slowly becomes apparent that James’ wife did not die from an illness, but was smothered in her hospital bed by none other than James himself in an act that he himself is unsure how to classify – was it an act of mercy, or was it because he had come to resent the burden of caring for her? The trauma and repressed memories James grapples with created the Silent Hill that he experiences, and the murderous Pyramid Head grew out of James’ desire to be punished for his actions, and at the end of the game, with James now fully aware of his mental state, two Pyramid Heads commit suicide in front of him, their function no longer required. This banishment of the monster is a major differentiating factor that separates the gothic horror game from its literary progenitors: “While inhabiting Silent Hill… the challenge is to survive these monsters. Although you can run away from many of them, you cannot escape the boss monsters—you cannot if you wish to carry on your quest and continue to fall into the abyss of the player characters’ tortured souls. Unlike fiction where the question is “whether the creature can be destroyed” (Carroll 1990, 182), the player characters absolutely must destroy them or, for the Pyramid Head(s) of SH2, hold out long enough to make them kill themselves.” [5] The game can end in a variety of ways, ranging from James leaving Silent Hill in peace to following in the steps of Pyramid Head and driving his car into a lake. These variable ending states incentivize players to replay the game, finding different paths through the story in order to try and free James from his demons.

Unlike the Gothic novel, which must end in the way the author has written it, the ability for Gothic games to alter to fit the choices of their players allows designers to drive home psychological horror in a way books may struggle with: the characters descend into their own personal hells by the player’s hand and should they fail to emerge, it is the player’s fault. While readers may be complicit in the reading of a book with an unhappy or particularly traumatic ending, achieving a “bad” ending in a game, especially if a “good” ending is available, doubles the moral burden upon the player – not only are they complicit in acts of abuse against the fictional characters onscreen, but they also failed to guide the narrative to a positive conclusion. Some games, such as Until Dawn (2015) which features teenagers vacationing in cabin in haunted mountains, have made variable endings their main conceit. More of an interactive film than a traditional game, the player is presented with numerous split-second decisions to make with the goal of preserving the lives of every protagonist through the night – it is possible for them all to survive, or for each to meet a grisly death. If any of the protagonists fails to survive, the game drives home the guilt in the ending, as the rest weep about how they were not smart, strong, or fast enough to save their friend(s). Of course, it is the player who is the failure, and has caused the deaths of these teenagers - alongside, of course, the game designer, a puppetmaster who has orchestrated the scenario.

The final case study presented for examination is Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010). Perhaps the most obviously Gothic of any game herein discussed, Amnesia is set in 1839 and follows the story of the London archeologist Daniel as he finds himself trapped within the walls of Brennenburg Castle in Prussia. Suffering from memory loss and terrorized by the castle’s inhuman inhabitants, Daniel seeks to regain his memories, discover why he inflicted amnesia upon himself, and ultimately escape from Brennenburg. Unlike the games discussed above, Amnesia is played from a first-person perspective instead of a third-person perspective, and more than any other is concerned with the generic convention of a gothic protagonist being disempowered.

Brennenburg’s architecture appears like a modern version of Derceto.

Although it does not feature tank controls, Amnesia’s control scheme still aims to frustrate the player, as all actions must be completed in a realistic fashion. For example, whereas in most games all one needs to do in order to open the door is click on the door, in Amnesia the player must click and hold the mouse cursor on the door handle, then pull the mouse back as if they are pulling on a door. In a similar fashion, cabinets must be opened and closed, cranks must be turned, and drawers must be pulled. The ironic unintuitive nature of this control scheme (it too closely mimics real life physical object interaction for many players, and is considered tedious) causes the player to clumsily fumble with their objectives in tense moments when the game’s monsters are bearing down upon them. The second and perhaps most important way that Amnesia deals with disempowerment is via omission: unlike in any of the prior games discussed, there is no combat. While games such as Resident Evil or Silent Hill often discouraged fighting due to high enemy resiliency and low access to resources such as ammunition or health restoratives, Amnesia prevents combat entirely: if confronted by a monster, the protagonist’s only option is to run and hide, and being caught inevitably leads to a swift demise. Hiding itself is dangerous, however, due to the protagonist’s fear of the dark. If too much time is spent in dark places, the Daniel’s sanity will begin to drop and he will begin to whimper, drawing enemies to his hiding location or resulting in a game over due to going insane. Of course, lighting a match also alerts enemies to Daniel’s presence, so the player is in a constant state of tension, balancing Daniel’s sanity with his physical safety. Furthermore, as Daniel’s sanity drops, he begins to see and hear things that are not real, further confusing the player and making it unclear as to what is a real threat and what is simply an illusion of the mind. Developer Frictional Games’ innovation in showing it was possible to create an environment of Gothic disempowerment via an act of subtraction rather than addition, led to massive critical acclaim and revolutionized the way that horror games were made: both Silent Hills (a now-canceled title) and Resident Evil 7 changed their camera style to a first-person perspective and significantly scaled back their respective combat sequences, the latter even venturing into virtual reality to deliver more immersion and thus deliver more intense scares. Although “survival-horror” existed as a term describing a subgenre within horror games that focused more on stealth and puzzle solving than combat before Amnesia, the subgenre blossomed into its own with the title’s release.

What, then, can be concluded about the gothic genre as it manifests in video games as opposed to books? Obviously, the generalities related to the differing mediums apply – interactivity versus passivity, multimedia versus text, and so forth – but within Gothic specifically, placing horror games next to their literary counterparts reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the form. The kinesthetics of movement tied to play allow games to deliver to modern audiences a visceral feeling of tension more effortlessly than novels, though the written word excels at telling complex narratives that game storytelling still struggles to match. This is to be expected, of course – games are a young medium and the basic tools of signification are not fully understood. Although some would argue that “the best interactive stories are still worse than even middling books and films” and thus “if there is a future of games, let alone a future in which they discover their potential as a defining medium of an era, it will be one in which games abandon the dream of becoming narrative,[6]” horror games show that despite a lack of written narrative complexity to match older media, their ability to deliver narrative experiences on an emotional level – via engagement in an environment, be it solely through the physical manipulation of an onscreen avatar or through total sensory immersion in virtual reality – remains unmatched even at this early date. Gothic games may be the best evidence for this: their focus on the physical input device allows the mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics of a game to work together in a way most other genres do not achieve.

[1] Hunicke, Robin, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek. MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. Game Developer Conference, 2004.

[2] One potential choice for investigator, Edward Carnby, is named for Clark Ashton Smith’s John Carnby, a character found in “Cthulhu Mythos.”

[3] Jones, Tanya Carinae Pell. “From Necromancy to Necrotrophic: Resident Evil’s Influence on the Zombie Origin Shift from Supernatural to Science.” In Unraveling Resident Evil: Essays on the Complex Universe of the Games and Films, ed. Nadine Farghaly. McFarland & Company Publishers, Jefferson: North Carolina. 2014. 19.

[4] Alexander, Leigh. “Why Silent Hill mattered.” Offworld: 1 May 2015 (Web).

[5] Perron, Bernard. Silent Hill: The Terror Engine. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2011. 42-43.

[6] Bogost, Ian. “Video Games Are Better Without Stories.” The Atlantic. 25 April 2017.

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