everymariogalaxy

[everymariogalaxy]

things are changing. hang in there, nastasia.

—

END OF ARC 3

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

[everymariogalaxy]

17 on that prompts list, w/ nassy?

17. “Don’t you dare look him in the eye.”

 Nastasia’s hands shook. She tried to wring out some of the nervous energy, but the tremor worked its way up her arms, so she gave up and sat on her hands.

She hated this awful cave. She had already run out of corners to examine, features or sounds to memorize. And they had only been in here for a few days. The stone walls and cover of constant rain made tracking the passage of time nearly impossible, but Nastasia dutifully recorded the hours off her wristwatch. She wondered how long the battery would last, if the Count did not recharge it.

The Count. She winced. He sat unmoving near a fairly smooth portion of the wall. He had not moved in at least two days. He simply waited, staring vacantly into the open pages of the Prognosticus, stopping now and then only to sleep, or to mutter about food until Nastasia brought something over from their dwindling supplies, at unnervingly regular intervals.

Her insides squirmed at the idea that the Prognosticus might be telling him when to eat or sleep.

But she dutifully made note of those intervals, as well. She could bring him something before he asked, and she wouldn’t have to hear the horrible scrape in his voice.

Nastasia bit her lip and turned away from him, busying herself with her planner. Their planner. She had nothing left to do. No notes to take, no observations, no new information. Just the passage of time, and the occasional thunderstorm outside.

Maybe the book would tell him when to get up and leave, too. Or maybe the book was waiting for her to figure out how to work the wand.

Well, she wouldn’t play that game. The Wand of Fissures belonged to him.

“I think…” she started, and then stopped to clear her throat. Her voice sounded all wrong, tiny and shaking. Try again. “I think the weather outside has, um, cleared up a little, Count… If you want to, like, change caves? We could go sit somewhere else instead?”

No response. The corners of Nastasia’s mouth turned downward involuntarily. She scuffed her shoes against the dirt and pebbles.

She chanced a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. Yeah, still parked there, on the ground. Not going anywhere.

Something seemed off. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. A few moments passed, and then they widened, and a cold dread squeezed into her chest.

He’s not even reading anything. The Count’s eyes did not track the words across the paper, his hands did not raise to flip the pages. The Prognosticus’ pages simply flipped on their own, occasionally. What was it doing to him?

Nastasia realized she had stopped breathing. Her lungs and throat burned with the old instinct to draw in air, but when she tried to start again, her breath came in strained and irregular. Though her mouth had grown dry as the dirt and pebbles below her, she somehow managed to choke on her saliva. The air seemed to twist and curl in front of her eyes, and she leaned hard to the side, and fell against the rock she had used as back support.

Distantly, she noticed she had started crying at some point, and despite her best efforts the tears refused to stop. She wanted to scream, to slap the book away from him- but the book was his, just the same as her. Her claws clutched at her hair, and naturally made their way to the rims of her glasses.

No.

She just couldn’t. What if she reached in there, and couldn’t find anything? What if he was gone? She could hardly stand looking in his direction, let alone having to endure the stare of those blank, expressionless eyes.

He already sat, inactive, waiting for orders, like a marionette without a master. She could not be the one to take up those strings. Don’t you dare look him in the eye.

-

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

[everymariogalaxy]

error 404: blue not found

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

—

(…)

[everymariogalaxy]

she remembers that he smiled at her even though he wasn’t feeling well.

one thing nastasia didn’t really get with her old boss was that feeling of “being appreciated.”

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

[everymariogalaxy]

nastasia got nerfed since the last patch.

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

[everymariogalaxy]

book!! why do you even HAVE that page, if you don’t want anyone to see it???

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

[everymariogalaxy]

little comic set after the end of minion quest

[everymariogalaxy]

the last fully cognizant thought blue cares to have is to scream “i hate you” at himself.

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

[everymariogalaxy]

Prompt: "Journey"

(i originally wrote this up according to an oc-tober prompt a few years ago since i was doing the challenge with a friend, but i didn't get farther than the first bit.)

Nastasia rummaged through her backpack as quietly as she could, re-counting her and the Count’s supplies to keep herself awake while the sun touched and then crept under the horizon. Her head cleared somewhat as the oppressive, muggy daytime haze gave way to nighttime fog. It curled and flowed around her busy arms, and the Count’s unmoving horns.

Still unmoving. Good. She spared him another glance out of the corner of her eye. She had already had to stop him from wandering off twice during the day. Exhaustion pulsed behind her eyes and her heavy tongue. Her hands shook with it.

Blood supply, extra dress, planner... She didn’t have much to check off her internal list, but she reviewed and re-reviewed it as if she had forgotten something anyway.

Did she forget something? Cold panic, colder than the wet air, briefly seized her, and she fumbled the planner open. No, they had everything she could think to carry. If only she had more survival skills… if only she had thought to ask Orazio, or her supervisor. She bit her lip as she considered, tapping the end of her pen against her fang. None of them probably could have known, either, now that she thought about it. They’d always lived in the castle, with no expectations of surviving in the wilderness for more than a night or two. And even then, it wasn’t as if they had the same needs as a living creature, like the Count.

A slow, unsteady motion at the edge of her vision brought her lurching back to the world like a stone falling through her mind. The Count had woken and sat up, and blinked at her wearily.

“Hey, Count,” she rasped, if only to say anything at all.

He nodded back. She pushed his bag toward him, and he carefully tugged at the worn, delicate fabric.

She frowned. “How, um, old is that bag?”

The Count stared at his bag as if seeing it for the first time. He opened it and peered inside, apparently unsure what to look for. “Count Bleck has… always had this bag… so it must be very old.”

She tapped the back end of her pen against the planner paper. “Is it time to think about getting a new one?”

“Is it?”

Her hand stopped, and the pen and planner fell silent. The paper stared back at her, and her increasingly jumbled shorthand scrawled across the page became utterly mystifying. Her temples pounded as she attempted to parse the full depth of his question.

The Count seemed just as willing to sit silently, pawing at his eyes and yawning. He looked even more tired than when they’d stopped for the morning, so many hours ago.

Nastasia frowned. “Well, did you get more fabric and repair your own bag somehow? Or did you just get a new one at some point?”

How did he take care of himself, before? Where were the backup supplies? His belongings hadn’t been in such disrepair when she’d met him, despite however long he had been traveling completely alone. He had seemed so much more put-together, before… all this. In worse health, but, Nastasia had assumed that was due to exposure rather than incompetence: no one to keep watch in the day, no second bag, no way to instantly end any fight in an emergency. How had he done it before?

He seemed to ponder the same question, because after a moment he winced. “Why… you must have helped me. You handled it, yes?”

“Before I started traveling with you, sir…”

He stared, wide-eyed, bewildered. “We have always been traveling together… Haven’t we?”

The stone in Nastasia’s mind sank through her throat, and then through her chest down into her stomach.

No… no. He had ways of taking care of himself. If he could just reach into the past, or have some reminder or insight, he could do it again. He couldn’t be that far gone. Could he?

Could he?

After barely registering the distant, uncertain “Nastasia?” she nodded and buried her attention in the planner, absently tapping the pen tip against the page and leaving a series of tiny, messy dots.

It was difficult to know how to drag the Count off this road he traveled down, when she couldn’t even see the road. If she didn’t know where his mind was going, how could she hope to follow, to save him? What if she stumbled down a similar path, and couldn’t see that either? A dark and uncertain future loomed before the two of them, its tendrils of shadow already wrapped around them like the curling fog around their makeshift campsite. Nastasia swallowed, but that only solidified the stony dread sitting in her gut.

The boss always knew what to do. The boss always knew how to pull through that darkness. How would he get them through this?

-

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

[everymariogalaxy]

one step forward, one step back.

part 2 of 2.

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

(this comic puts us over 100 full pages!!)

[everymariogalaxy]

on a mission.

part 1 of 2.

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

[everymariogalaxy]

even with little (no) hope of finding timpani before the end of her natural lifespan, setbacks get insanely frustrating.

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

[everymariogalaxy]

she figured he had a sweet tooth.

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

[everymariogalaxy]

forgetting that you’re forgetting.

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

[everymariogalaxy]

i really liked ttyd! here's some of my faves!

[everymariogalaxy]

plan a: ineffective

previous | next

index

start at the beginning

[everymariogalaxy]

wishing you had died isn’t the same thing as actually dying, blue. but it’s a good start to stamping out who you are.

at least nastasia got him turned away from that sign.

previous | next

index

start at the beginning