luminescentlyricist

[luminescentlyricist]

🎠 Path Paving 🌹

Carrie awoke, eyes blinking slowly. She didn’t want to greet the day, of course, but the beds not being particularly comfortable made up for any will to sleep in. Due to the nature of the troupe, lodgings were seldom given any comfort. Everyone had things to do. Movements to make. One was reluctant, though their complaints remained unvoiced. Too much happened for her to waste time on such petty little whims, much less pushing them onto anyone else to deal with.

She sat up, the sheets falling away from the top half of her body and leaving her near-bare arms to prickle with goosebumps. The sensation was a shock, seeing as she usually made sure to block her tent’s entrance as much as possible, but she chalked it up to her father’s antics. He didn’t need any permission from those he thought inferior, as the Ringmaster, even when it came to invading more personal affairs. It was a pain, yes, but something she expected. Privacy was inexistent between them due to how ‘tight-knit” Homura wanted his employees to be.

That was just code. He wanted them to be loyal to him, and letting bonds forge between those he considered pawns would just make subduing a group that much easier. So boundaries were important - just not to him. He was leagues above the rest.

His daughter’s eyes, despite still adjusting to the dim surroundings, flickered over to the entrance to work out what was actually going on. She couldn’t see much beyond the fabric, but the amount of light and noise let her know that someone had shifted it earlier in the day. Kicking the lower portion of the sheets away from her legs, she groaned aloud in protest. Ultimately, there wasn’t enough of a valid fight she could put on to halt the sun in the sky. Swinging upright and over the edge of her bed, the young performer shrugged on a jacket and slid on shoes while still fighting back a yawn.

Upon closer inspection, a small figurine of a cat with gleaming red eyes had been placed in her path to the outside world.

So it hadn’t been her father after all…

With visible relief, Carrie allowed themself to roll their shoulders and shrug away some of the tension that’d built at the prospect of meeting with their father. However good his intentions were, intimidation was something that Homura relied upon to have the upper hand in any interaction. Bending down at the waist to pick up the figure, she noticed there was a note attached with tape onto its front paw. Folded beneath the left, a trademark of only one performer she knew - if the animal itself weren’t a good enough indicator.

She placed the cat in her pocket, smoothing a finger over its head with a quiet affection. This cat was something often passed between she and its initial owner, with her notes attached to the back left paw instead. Though the distinction was unnecessary, it felt strange putting anything on the right - and thus out of the way - because of her own dominant hand. Unfolding the note, her eyes skimmed the page. It’d been many years of deciphering Kazuki’s scrawls before she was able to read them at a glance, and there were still some days she had to ask the overexcited aerialist for confirmation in person. Of course that rendered their secret communications moot, but proved necessary the irritating majority of the time.

The note itself was short, just inviting Carrie over to their tent to watch them “do something new”, with some mention of a hobby they’d picked up. She had a feeling it was more than that, but wasn’t going to deny a chance to see her friend. It had been a busy week of performances, so the little ‘downtime’ she had was precious to her. That meant neglecting herself in favour of others, unless her father had dragged her off to do some maintenance work instead. She placed it in her pocket and proceeded across the Sparkslide grounds, though her vision swept anxiously around. They didn’t want to get caught and dragged away.

One particular figure within the crowd milling around caught her eye, but she made no move to engage them because of her mission. The knife-thrower, Dahlia, had hopefully settled in since Carrie’d last seen them. They weren’t wearing their signature wig, but had been too little a blur in Carrie’s periphery for her to gauge what their hair actually looked like. Their last encounter had been less than amicable, but the performer was still coming to terms with the fact that it hadn’t been a nightmare. She was all too willing and eager to forget the details of almost being skewered by the knife-thrower. They were a friend, after that, but the young woman wasn’t quick to trust others in general. Especially not when her father had his claws in all affairs.

Eyes falling to the ground, Carrie dug her heels into the path for a moment of forced pause. Her mind had begun to wander, and she wasn’t sure she liked looking into the crowd’s faces. Luckily enough, she knew the way to Kazuki’s tent with her eyes closed. Instead, she made the rest of the journey there with gaze trained at her feet, arm held protectively to both shield her vision and prevent her bumping into anyone on the way there. Something did run into her path, a streak of black with pale eyes, but she’d not processed it was a cat until she’d reached her destination. They often followed Kaz around, almost as if protecting them, and it was as if they knew Carrie herself was no threat. She had enough scrapes and bruises from her daily practices to make up for the lack of claw marks, however.

Her luck was famously bad, and the black cats were just the cherry on top. Grimacing at the thought of having to nurse more scratches, she knocked on the panel of wood that served to shield the tent’s entrance from onlookers. Hers had been shifted earlier by the very aerialist she sought. They didn’t particularly mind if they were turned away, but being outside made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. The sound of clicking heels grew louder, soothing any worries, and she was soon greeted by the familiar face of Kazuki at the doorway. Their cotton-candy dyed hair was duller than normal, presumably due to lack of supplies at the troupe’s current location, but their smile was vibrant as ever. 

“Kaz, you know you don’t have to barge into my tent while I sleep… It’s kinda creepy.”

Carrie only said this as a way of greeting her friend, a gentle smile playing at her lips. They took it with grace as always, a wide grin on their own face as they stepped away from the doorway and allowed their friend inside. So she sat, picking her way through a strewn path of silks, hoops and all manner of other tricks scattered across the floor. She’d no doubt that Kaz had a reason to be messy at all times, mainly when it came to laying out their thoughts in a more tangible manner to sort through - a method Carrie herself often employed - but had no intention to trip over so soon.

She thought there were things to discuss.

“Of course I don’t! But where’s the fun in that?”

Kazuki was lucky he was hard to be mad at. Their smiles and apologies both were genuine at all times, and it was remarkably hard to find someone so precious. Still, Carrie waited in a stunned silence before digging around in her pocket to break the stilted atmosphere. Pulling out the cat, she set it gently down on a cluttered side table and once again pet it on the head a few times.

“You wanted to show me something, right? A new move or another dubious hobby? I don’t think we have much time, so you better make this quick.”

She murmured, brows furrowing. Carrie hadn’t intended to be rude, but her words weren’t the best. Truthfully, her heart was hammering in her chest, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. Kaz was preoccupied, wringing their hands in a distracted manner and refusing to look their companion in the eye. Their expression had fallen similarly to the other’s, but they didn’t want to show outward concern to Carrie so openly and cause them more worry. If anyone was aware just how fragile Carrie could be when it came to panicking about other peoples’ safety instead of their own, it was Kaz. So, being a performer by nature, they forced a smile back onto their lips and silently gestured for their friend to follow them outside the tent.

Picking their way through the bushes, the aerialist followed a simultaneously overgrown and well-worn path for a few minutes. Pushing lightly against a trellis, the large structure yielded to his touch only enough to swing on rusted hinges. These had been covered by leaves, positioned accurately enough that no prying eyes would glimpse the metal beneath. They spared a glance backward only to check that their companion hadn’t fallen, sighing gently but otherwise refusing to speak until they’d led her away into the clearing behind the ‘gate’.

There lay roses.

Bushes upon bushes filled the area, each in its own stage of development and bloom, with countless fallen petals cushioning the pair’s footsteps. The scent was enough to make Carrie’s eyes water, but it wasn’t a bad thing. For a moment, she remained in a state of shock, the drone of their many friendly pollinators remaining the only constant sound in the surrounds. A tear ran down her cheek, and the first movement she made was wiping it away before Kaz could see. She knew that her friend had created the scene, due to how often the cats had hissed at her when she tried to move around the back of the tent.

“It’s beautiful, Kaz. Thank you.”

Their voice was little more than a whisper, nearly reverent in tone. Though they knew it wasn’t just for them, the sight of so many roses made their heart ache. The flowers were special to them because of Kazuki, after all, and she had a feeling he knew that. There would have been little reason for them to risk bringing the other into their private space if that weren't true.

Though the aerialist was anything but secretive, keeping the flowers away from anyone that might’ve killed them was of utmost priority. They had to flourish, and it was a private joy that he hadn’t wanted the Ringmaster to extinguish or covet for himself. There was a reason why he’d kept it from Carrie until the flowers had opened properly, despite her lack of ill will. Her bad luck was just the thing that would nullify the hard work they’d put into their garden. 

Though the troupe would come to move from their current location, taken by the needs of the Ringmaster for entertainment, it would continue to bloom through rain and shine for a few moments longer. That was more than enough, because Kaz had always had no trouble leaving things behind. The second performer, engrossed in the sights before her, had chosen to stay. She wasn’t moving, quiet breaths solely displaying her liveliness. 

Creeping ivy tendrils, growing to support the latticed roses, had spread in equal measure beneath the petals. They would climb, indiscriminate, around anything that looked stable enough. The aerialist was aware of this. They kept themselves elevated, stamping their feet occasionally to ward off the plants. They were almost scared of him for a reason he couldn’t explain. Plants weren’t sentient, after all.

However, they watched as ivy coiled itself around Carrie’s legs, thinking no harm would come of it. But she didn’t react, frozen with that gentle smile on her lips. A realisation hung in the air, stronger than the perfume of the roses.

Carrie could no longer move forward when Kaz was by her side.

[luminescentlyricist]

🎠 Petals, Sticks And Stones 🎠

While the idea for the Sparkslide Circus troupe, Carrie and Homura belong to me, Kazuki and Dahlia actually belong to @c4ndystarz and @maimai020104 respectively! Go give them the incredible amount of love they deserve.

~~

The pounding in Carrie Astor’s chest was unavoidable. She’d awoken with that pain for many nights in a row, gasping for air like she’d been choking. But there were things to do as morning broke, so it usually culminated in her simply rolling back over in her bed to get what little rest she could. This time, though, she sat up. Fingers curling loosely to grip the sheets, she hauled her tired body further upwards to rest against the headboard. A groan of protest parted her lips, as was normal for that early in the morning, but she doubted the show would wait for her to get her beauty sleep. And even if it did, on a rare occasion indeed, there were people who expected more from her than laziness. Although she hadn’t been assigned a specific role in the Sparkslide Circus’ troupe, doing whatever was needed to fill in the gaps between all manner of excuses, the variety instilled in her a hunger to continue moving forward.

It was this hunger that kept her awake at all hours of the night, tossing and turning until the sheets tangled around her legs and she had to sit up to fix them. She craned her head to look out the window, crinkling her nose in distaste at the thin beam of morning light beginning to invade her peaceful darkness. Still eager to avoid whatever laborious tasks Homura - the troupe’s Ringmaster and her father, no less - had in store, the young woman groaned louder. Her throat was sore from the last night’s performances, as she’d been kept up talking with a few of the other members before being taken aside by him and given an earful of additional tasks.

The work wasn’t thankless.

Her thoughts shifted towards her friends in the troupe as she fumbled about for a stray glass of water on her nightstand, narrowly avoiding knocking it over a small music box she kept there. Taking a long and grateful sip, the performer found herself reminiscing about the origins of the trinket. It had been a gift from one Kazuki Rosario, the troupe’s own self-professed ‘master’ aerialist and first companion to Carrie when she’d begun her own forays into the world beneath the stage-lights. She’d had to patch it up many a time, of course, owing to her disastrous strokes of misfortune, but they never seemed to mind when she repetitively apologised. If anything, the meetings were only an excuse for them to bond in what little leisure time they were given. No matter what, he seemed to tease a smile out of her.

She would’ve wished to meet with him, then, but looking at the sorry state of the music box reminded her of just how irritable he could get early in the day. It wasn’t their fault. Nobody truly got enough sleep in the troupe, and that wasn’t even on her father’s list of concerns. He only wanted to present something good to the people, no matter what expenses and stresses were piled onto his loyal performers. Kaz had been an active member in shows for as long as Carrie’s memory stretched, however poor, though they were both similar in age to one another. Neither of them got any special treatment, despite the many years they’d worked together - and Carrie’s inevitable closeness to the forefront of the show.

Swinging her legs a few more times, the only thing left to do was greet the day that hadn’t yet arrived. Now, with mind racing, she looked at the clock on the wall. Six o’clock was definitely earlier than she would’ve liked to be up and moving, but was just late enough to leave little room for boredom. If she wasn’t already planning something, people could tell her things to be done. Or, of course, she could invade any number of the other tents that she’d been given a key to. Supplies always needed replenishing in the communal prop tent, no matter the number of resourceful clowns who only worried about their own. Thus, she stood up, immediately swaying in protest.

“Good grief. You’re not going to die from a few chores, Miss Carrie.”

With a croaking voice the woman scolded herself, turning back to neaten the sheets of the bed and grimacing at the comparatively loud shifting of the mattress. Everything was grating for a time, just until she could put the music box on and soothe herself with the melody. Though it often stuttered and the handle was nearly falling off, a touch of paint (on top of some luck with tinkering) would do its job. The tune it produced was akin to a lullaby, something soft that urged one almost to sleep. For Carrie, it was a reminder of the shows that Kaz was in. The ways the silk and hoops moved in synchrony with her friend’s body was just as captivating, and she recognised it as one of their own tracks. Usually, there were musical sets already in place, but rules never mattered too much to Kaz. 

Boy, they’d had to fight her father to get that permission…

A small smile rested on her face as she worked, deciding not to touch the box for the time being. Things that were precious were few and far between, and she feared each handle-crank would be the one to stop the music for good. Instead, Carrie pulled on her shoes and fumbled tying the laces in the dark, guided only by the mocking sliver of light from her stubborn curtains. It wasn’t easy in the best days, due to certain dexterity issues she’d always had. Far more humiliating, however, would be anything falling off in the middle of a show. The thought alone made her shudder as she straightened, swinging her right leg a few times and sighing in relief. That one was a prosthetic, owing to an accident in her early childhood that remained in her mind as little more than a blur of pain and darkness.

Though they were sure their parents wouldn’t refuse to tell them if they asked for clarification on the subject, it made her nervous anyway. Happiness was preferable in their family, in their lives, and to jeopardise that would only consume Carrie with gnawing guilt. It was just one of many things she’d learnt to make herself blend in. No privileges were consciously given to her as an Astor, and she intended to keep it that way. Her dear friend would have even less time to stay and talk, to brighten the skies when her muscles ached, and that wasn’t something she was willing to trade away for a ripple of hope on the horizon.

She opened the curtains for later, hoping that the weather would hold and not present too much of a damper on the mood. It was harder for her to bring people happiness when it didn’t have a reason to personally exist. No matter how many tricks she employed, sadness was the easiest thing for an audience to spot under the glaring lights. The various friends that she walked alongside helped fend back the misery, and it was more than she could ever ask for.

Shaking herself back to reality, the performer busied herself with leaving the tent that served as her lodgings. Though each appeared to be a miniaturised red-and-white circus tent, the walls were solid and structure akin to any other room. Her eyes continued to sweep around anxiously like she hadn’t seen the interior a million times over. A small vase sat on the desk, housing three small blooms. One was a spider-lily that she’d plucked from a miscellaneous show’s congratulatory gifts, finding the colour and design striking. The last two were given to her on seperate occasions. Homura had handed her the strangely wilting dahlia just the day prior, an infuriatingly sly expression that she’d wanted to slap off his face along with it. He’d mentioned that there was a new arrival coming soon, and she’d need the reminder. Of course he had to be cryptic and obnoxious, despite a genuine attempt to do something nice for her.

The other was a rose.

Kazuki had given her many roses, and it’d become a lasting symbol of their bond. It was a shame that Carrie didn’t have a green thumb, but she did the best she could remembering to water them. Many were even de-thorned, to the best of the aerialist’s ability, and he’d announce his arrival with a string of muttered curses more often than not. The oft-necessary first-aid kit in one’s cupboard was an asset to both performers. Her fingers paused in the air reaching for the flower, and she had to remind herself that time wouldn’t pause for her silly whims. It would be safer to leave it out of the buzz and rush of preparations. So she exited the tent with a notable drag in her step, leaving soothing thoughts of rosy fields and sunlight behind along with it.

Of course it was beginning to rain. The light that streamed into her tent had been cold and grey, though she’d not taken any notice of it because of her prior squinting protest. She’d forgotten to bring an umbrella, but that was something trivial. Judging by the steady emergence of people into the main area, it was time to work, and preparations for shows didn’t stop because of the sun’s refusal to shine. It was a pain, seeing as Carrie herself had reservations about being vulnerable in bad weather, but she was only a cog in the entertainment machine. Things wouldn’t work as smoothly without her. With this in mind, she looked toward the only different tent in the vicinity (save for the titular Big Top) and made a note to avoid it for the time being.

Homura insisted on being the centre of everything whenever possible, sly and ‘quiet’ though he was, and it really got on her nerves. Of course he worked in the shadows, puppeteering the lives of the people he claimed to love, but the spotlight was ultimately his - not even his family’s. For this reason, his tent was a measure bigger than the others, draped in navy and gold to contrast those around it. Carrie didn’t want to disturb him when she could continue silently, as she was his personal favourite errand-runner. It was as if she had no more purpose to him than another prop, and fitted well with his hobbies in the art of hypnotism. Unlike other shows, Carrie’d always thought that her father’s participants weren’t quite as willing.

It meant that not even she was safe, and his influences reached farther than the stage. He was never bragging outwardly, no, though the possibility of having her agency taken with a moment’s notice made a shiver course through her body. So she kept her head down and ran herself ragged to make things as perfect as possible, if only to avoid whatever was in store if she stepped out of line. He forced himself to be calm and collected, but those closest to him knew it was just one of many masks he put on for the public. The ruse could drop when the curtains fell.

The young woman continued toward the Big Top, trying her best to convince herself that the shaking of her legs was only due to the cold. There was a commotion there, with many performers beginning to congregate around the fabric entranceway. Her walking then faltered. It was far too early to deal with such a thing when her voice wasn’t even cooperating. So she changed course, deciding to take her time getting to the supply tent. Though her right hand was uncooperative most days, she wanted to try juggling more. However backwards it seemed, she was sure that training herself to her limits would help new horizons open. She denied the foolishness of these thoughts, especially because her father was happy enough to encourage anything that would make ‘his’ shows more interesting.

Setting down the bag she’d grabbed prior, Carrie begun taking stock of items available. There were walls stacked with teetering piles, some housing equipment she found comfortable and others far beyond her reach. There were more people crowded into the tent, but she paid them no mind. Even after years of being around the circus, the sheer magnitude of tricks and toys they had available tended to make her tune out everything else in captivation. Smoothing her hands over a layered mass of aerial silks, she debated taking some of them and meeting Kazuki for practice. 

The thought was comforting, but she needed to start pushing herself if she was going to make her father happy. He’d told her she wasn’t up to par, and the only way to fix that… He left it to her imagination, which was an unkind thing to do. She thought badly of herself more often than not. After choosing a set of juggling balls emblazoned with various insect shapes and putting them into her bag, she barely had enough time to turn around before a figure called out to her. She was too engrossed to hear what they’d said, nor decipher who it’d been until a hand grabbed her shoulder to shake her away. Strands of pink and blue dyed hair framed the aerialist’s perpetually smiling face as Carrie faced them, though the expression fell into concern seeing her irritated.

“Carrie-“

She shook Kazuki’s touch and attention both away, wordless in her rejection, continuing to walk out of the tent with not a single thought in mind until it finally dawned on her just how rude she’d been. Beginning to turn around to seek his familiar fairy-floss hair in the crowd, she instead stepped on a crag of the pavement before she could find her footing. Roughly falling down, she exclaimed, attempting to brace herself and having one of her habitually-worn gloves slip off. Before she could right herself and begin gathering the juggling balls, an unfamiliar pair of hands stretched down into her vision.

Grateful for the help, Carrie took the performer’s hands into her own and hauled herself upright, bending over to pick up some of the supplies before they escaped her grasp in the increasing throng of people. She paused upon seeing the blades on their belt, however, and the grateful smile that’d bent her lips upward prior wavered. Great. Just what we need - more people doing dangerous acts. Straightening, it came to mind that the figure before her must have been Sparkslide Circus’ new arrival. Before she could speak, however, she was caught up in the subject of her wonder again. Judging by the handles’ sculpt, the knives were crafted specifically for throwing. Carrie was tempted to ask the new arrival whether she could handle the skill, too, but caught her shaking hands in her field of vision too soon.

Absolutely not.

In the suspended moment, Dahlia - the knife-thrower - had taken note of the missing glove, holding it out to Carrie. The other used it to hide a variety of cuts and wounds, the most interesting of which was a still-healing scar running the length of her palm. This was nothing of concern, being one of many such injuries owing to a life of performance coupled with horrendous bad luck. But it managed to capture Dahlia’s attention, for better or worse. While they didn’t want to invade and ask Carrie where they’d sustained the injury, they walked silently alongside the girl as she’d begun to leave. After a moment, Carrie turned toward Dahlia, gesturing vaguely to the Big Top gleaming behind them.

“Sorry about that. The name’s Carrie. The Ringmaster let me know yesterday that there was a new arrival coming to the troupe, but didn’t bother specifying when. He never gives enough attention to the things that actually matter. Thank you for your help.”

Dahlia’s expression was far more gentle than expected, seeing how sharp her skills were bound to be. While Homura didn’t shy away from training those he thought were worth the time, it was oddly rarer still for him to take already-trained members into the ranks. It was riskier, too, being a hypnotist, for him to let anyone slip from his grasp. But he was overconfident. He believed he could pick apart the mind of anyone who came his way, and Carrie only hoped that was a lie. Dahlia only smiled, hesitating before speaking as if planning her words. The other hadn’t wanted to be overwhelming, but their awkward first meeting had thrown a curveball into the typical conversational process.

“Dahlia. You’re sure you’ll be alright?”

Carrie’d chosen to simply nod, the performer’s name ringing in their ears for a moment longer. So that was why their father had given them the flower… though she didn’t think of it as a simply nice gesture in the first place, it would’ve been better for her to be told directly.

“Of course. I’m more used to falling over than your usual person, if anything needs to be said. Do you know why the Big Top is so crowded?”

There was another pause, during which Dahlia’s eyes swept across the girl in front of them and fully took in who she was seeing. She’d not been informed that the Ringmaster of the troupe had any family, but was able to tell there was something odd going on with her. Someone with so many careless injuries didn’t meet the expectations she’d seen from the imposing man, so the only avenue she could reason with was that Carrie had obtained some sort of special permission to be there. It was obvious from their earlier words they were part of the performing members, after all, and not just any member of the crowd.

This didn’t culminate in any judgement - just simple curiosity, the likes of which made their eyes light up as she responded.

“The Ringmaster told me, yesterday upon my arrival on the grounds, that there was going to be a sort of introductory gathering in the Big Top some time the next morning. No other details, as you might guess, but I can’t say I’m surprised that he would want to make a spectacle out of everything possible. As much as I can’t say it within earshot, he seems terribly self-absorbed.”

There was laughter in Dahlia’s words, posing a comfort to Carrie although she didn’t have the courage to mention it. Some of the tension that’d been in her shoulders from the fall (and meeting a stranger in such an embarrassing state) melted away as she took a moment to talk and gain her bearings. Luckily, none of the juggling balls had strayed too far, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to risk using them again.

“He hasn’t shown himself in the Big Top yet, as far as I can tell, so I was going to check if one of the practice tents were set up and keep myself occupied. I’m sure you have your own things to do, Carrie, so I’ll-”

I’ll leave you to it.

The knife-thrower’s words were interrupted by the sound of an exclamation, then a loud and very familiar voice swearing. This made Carrie’s attention pull away from Dahlia, if momentarily, and she frowned deeply.

“On the other hand, I might accompany you. Nothing good can come from someone that raucous.”

Dahlia noted, more than willing to follow her new acquaintance if it meant getting to the source of the fun. She matched Carrie’s pace as they begun to run toward the prop tent, appearing to seek out who exactly had sworn. 

The performer’s eyes were wide, panicked, footfalls heavy against the uneven grass where the tents were pitched. There was no time. She needed to find Kaz before they got hurt, and she had a feeling they already would be. But the tent was silent. Too silent. She glanced back to the knife-thrower, instinctively grabbing their hand for support, one gloved finger coming up to make a shushing motion against her own lips. She couldn’t risk their being found, but she knew better than to take a single step further into the entrance of the tent. It was something of a protective instinct, stemming from all the times she’d been in front of her father’s wrath. 

Evidently, Homura’s plans had changed and he saw no need to notify anyone of the shift. What he said went, and the same rung true if he never talked at all. All the world was his stage, and his alone. He had one hand clamped over his eye, tight enough so that none of the storage tent’s dim illumination was reaching through it. Though Kaz stood back from the Ringmaster, Homura's commanding presence seemed to darken the whole room. On his face there usually sat a large medical eyepatch, strings fraying but otherwise well-kept. This was the only exception to formality he’d ever make in appearance, preferring the large patch over something more stereotypical and pirate-like. It did nothing to lessen how intimidating he was.

Carrie, meanwhile, had wrestled her attention away from the admittedly disturbing scene enough to debate asking Dahlia for a favour. Though it was far too soon for her to be in debt to a fellow performer - someone she couldn’t really escape from - she saw no other option. Maybe, if they could create a diversion, she could free Kaz from whatever conflict they’d unwillingly stepped into. Maybe it would just be safer for her to back out and away, running before the altercation even concerned her. She’d be branded a fool to desert the two, even if it were the better personal choice. She was making the situation much bigger in her head than it had any right to be, yet it was driven by the need to protect someone dear to her.

So she turned to Dahlia, voice little more than a harsh whisper, before loosening her hold. She didn’t want to let go just yet, however, breathing becoming ragged and nervous. They were aiming to be a comfort to the knife-thrower, yes, but to glean comfort in return as well. She took one more step past the doorway, leaving Dahlia standing behind as if guarding her. But there wasn’t time.

Before Carrie could act, there was a flash. Bright. Blinding.

Yes, Rosario, blinding.

The movements of the once-fluid aerialist became staggered. Stiff, inorganic and conveying none of their usual personality. Not suspended, as any dancer would be through the air, but frozen. Trapped.

This sight was something familiar to Carrie, and the young woman’s breath caught in her throat. Why? Why would her father risk it? For something so petty, so inconsequential, he’d become unforgivable. It was not the first time that he’d used his hypnotism in such a way, leaving performers vulnerable and empty-minded, but the fear never ceased to grip his daughter every time she saw it. Her hands became clammy with sweat as she stood numbly, eyes darting around to find any reason for the outburst. And it was there, simply, lying on the floor.

Kazuki had made a fatal mistake.

He wasn’t dead, but might as well have been. The medical patch that the Ringmaster wore had fallen during the two's scuffle earlier, which Carrie hadn’t been around to witness, and she guessed that Kaz had taken it off or caused the bands to somehow snap. She held faith in her friend that he wouldn’t have done something to spite his superior willingly, though Homura’s thinly-veiled insecurities were as fragile as the metaphorical strings now lodged in Kazuki’s shoulders. So he struck out before he thought, more often than not, and it cost him relationships forged organically.

He’d just smile and bear it. So long as people agreed with him, there was no point in having ‘companions’ for any other purpose. ‘Puppets’ were enough.

Feeling Dahlia’s grip loosen around her left hand, Carrie only held it tighter. It took her a precious few seconds more to react properly, but she attempted to pull the knife-thrower away from the prop tent’s opening. They were transfixed, smile left upon their lips, and so she tried again - an anxious tug from the wrist, expression warping into worry as they resisted without response. Even this refused to work, but if there was one thing Homura agreed upon it was that his daughter was stubborn. So he watched her tap the performer’s shoulders, urgency surely almost leaving bruises, but it was all futile. She held tighter to their hand, hoping the warmth would do something. Anything. 

Focus had shifted, and he was simply waiting for her to realise.

The Big Top had fallen silent.

Heads began to crane in the other direction. A million eyes, crowd and performer alike, all glaring straight toward Carrie. She couldn’t see the majority of their faces, but the ones she did know were making her nervous. Even Dahlia’s ice-blue gaze was harder than before. Vacant and unyielding to the effort she’d put into trying to save them. Just how much time Homura had spent under the guise of preparation accomplishing something so terrifying was beyond her, but she could barely think. Twisting her wrist to break her hold on Dahlia, she winced as a crack rung out. Though she hoped nothing was broken, the all-consuming stiffness in the knife-thrower’s body wasn’t natural.

Homura watched this all transpire with a sly smile, knowing well that the stage would be his once more. He bent over at the waist and swiped the medical patch off the floor, deftly tying it to his face and sighing in relief. The darkness comforted him, even if it made his depth perception a lot worse. Craning his neck to look at the motionless aerialist, the soft expression he wore hardened into something more menacing. Sure, he was smiling, but he may as well have had shark teeth. There was nothing genuine about the expression. Kazuki remained still, the only indication of their being awake lying in the steady rise and fall of their chest.

With a wave of Homura’s hand, a nonchalant forward motion, Kazuki fell into step behind the hypnotist. The two left the prop tent, with the smaller swamped in his superior’s shadow. As the man approached his daughter, the greeting was interrupted by Dahlia’s own movement. This too was stilted, nearly stumbling forward, but the ground was smooth enough so that she didn’t fall. Before joining Kaz behind their Ringmaster, she shot Carrie a smile. It was no comfort to the girl, suspended in disbelief and fear as she was. The blades were dull compared to the intimidation hidden in their expression. Still, they took two knives out of their belt and twirled them around in gloved fingers, carelessness shown like they were no more than toys.

But Dahlia and Homura both knew the damage they could do.

“Well… look what a predicament we’re in, Carrie.”

Homura taunted his daughter openly, spreading his arms wide to frame the emerging crowds that had gathered behind him. His tone was soft and alluring to any other, but she knew what it hid. Venom, spat, and harshness beyond measure. It’d hurt his public image, yes, but he’d never been so kind behind the curtains drawn. Control was the only thing he desired. She was his child above anything else, and held that position of influence regardless of any petty trickery.

“Will you join the show?”

In reality, Carrie knew she had no choice. The crowds loomed forward behind her, closing in and pushing her further toward the Ringmaster. A mass of bodies, unidentifiable but brought together by a singular goal.

One mind.

The girl couldn’t muster the courage to respond, even though keeping silent often did more harm than good around him. Instead, she tried to reach out toward where she thought her companions were waiting, however hard it became to see individuals in the swarm of crowd and performer alike. When Homura raised an eyebrow in silent judgement of this action, she faltered, cringing habitually away from the criticism and withdrawing her reach. He took a singular step further toward his daughter, breaking the line of tension between them.

It was in this moment of fearful instinct and clarity that her resolve gave out, and she turned tail. Running through the oppressive crush of bodies, there was nothing she could think about other than finding relief from the hammering in her chest. Usually, Carrie would’ve been able to talk to him at the very least, but she was one performer against the whole circus. The fact that their blank stares were all seeming to judge her was bad enough, and that was something she was sure he knew well. She raised her left arm to shield her eyes from the lashing arms all fighting to grab her, caring little for the injuries that she’d have to deal with later. There wouldn’t be a later if her father got his way.

The crowd never stopped their pursuit, but the only other way to make them stop was to face their Ringmaster. 

She wasn’t about to do that.

Two sets of hands grabbed at her shoulders as she ran toward her tent, one’s scarring familiar and one cloaked in gloves. They didn’t even try to pull her back, even as her pounding steps reached the border of her tent. Twisting to release the harsh grips, she staggered into her room and slid the door closed behind her, falling finally onto the floor and heaving in a choking sob. For a second or two, she debated locking the door, but the howling of noise began to fade away. Whether it was because she was falling asleep or unconscious, she couldn’t tell, but she didn’t particularly care. All that mattered was that the Ringmaster had left her alone.

She wanted badly to crawl into her bed right then and there, but with lucidity came overwhelming pain. Wearily, just as she had that morning, she thought to check the clock. 

Half-lidded and tear-filled eyes swept up towards her desk again, just in time to see the petals fall.

[luminescentlyricist]

🎪 Short Fuse - Identity V 🪄

Mike had never really been a fan of Servais Le Roy. The man’s attitude, combined with how high and mightily he carried himself, had always rubbed him the wrong way. But he wasn’t about to tarnish his reputation with bad faith. They were both once performers, after all, and it didn’t matter how much tension there had been in the air when they’d first arrived at the Manor. Mike’s job as an acrobat was to put on performances, even if that meant haphazardly keeping face until his peers could trust him. Just as the Magician had indirectly taught him, certain new people weren’t deserving of his true colours straight away. Cold courtesy came easier to him than he thought, and it was more than a lot of his fellow residents expected in the first place.

Sure, it seemed scalding and out of character for someone who smiled so often at first, but he found that he no longer had the energy to care. Others could adjust to what was new, just as he’d done far too many times. This was one of them, of course, but he’d already taken it too far to recognise his mistakes. He was a man of extremes in and out of the circus, but this proved to be more of a hindrance than a helpful trait. With this came a personal disregard for safety, as was naturally fostered by his once intense personality, and he’d never had the chance to learn other coping mechanisms. Now the fool’s heart was no longer on his sleeve. It was locked safely in his chest where none would hear its beat.

So Mike had muted out the fabrics of his usually bright and jovial outfit into monochrome, keeping to himself in the great hallways of the manor and all but withdrawing from the life he’d so cherished. There were knocks on the door of his tent, of course, but they remained unanswered. How it was a pain. Change was simply taking too long, and he’d become bored with the philosophy that he’d adopted. But there was only a nagging listlessness accompanying this fact - no truer emotion, these having been kept away under metaphorical lock and key for as long as he could manage before.

Nobody was close enough to really know who he was.

His cousin hadn’t spoken with him in some time. Murro, the very one that had made him proud to be a Morton, caring beyond the placating fawning and lies of Bernard. Since he’d become more withdrawn, even those he thought he could rely on were taking their steps backwards. Running like the cowards they were. Margie no longer visited his tent to bring him food, not even leaving it outside the door, so his stomach remained as empty as his thoughts. But it didn’t matter. Mike had already tried everything he could think of to win others over, and now it was time to shred the scripts. The only way he would win was to draw a blank page.

He wasn’t sure he knew how to express himself properly. The face in the mirror no longer seemed to suit him, hard as he tried to make it smile. He lay back on his bed as the knocking pounded in his ears, and it was all he could do not to throw something at the grating noise and make it stop for once. The festering loneliness had begun to translate into an anger, white-hot and merciless, but he simply laid on his bed and turned his back to the doorway. It was better to smother anything that would make him act out, lest anyone get the wrong idea. He was mature enough to notice prior mistakes, and being so open was the first of many.

The young man’s eyes stared blankly towards the wall, the likes of which had been stripped bare of everything personal owned: not even the poster that announced his grandest birthday show remained, as this had flared embarrassment in him. Joviality now amounted to childishness, and every step he took forwards proved that over and over again. The rose-coloured lenses had been torn away from his eyes the moment he left Hullabaloo, but he’d kept himself afloat with naivety and undeserved hopefulness for a long time since. Now his reputation didn’t hold any weight, and all he was worth was what he could give to others. Never repaid. 

Of course he wasn’t going to stop being an acrobat. That was what he owed to the Baron, sticking to some title, expectations met neatly and boxes ticked. It didn’t matter if things no longer rung true. Nothing did in that Manor, whether the building’s walls enclosed him or he wandered the grounds outside. People were remorseless liars and thieves, taking with disregard for emotion, so he’d barred himself away from that. If he showed nothing outwardly, then maybe he’d be safer. He’d so little left after giving himself away wholeheartedly to those who walked away. What belief did he have to have in people to get their lasting appreciation for once in his life?

He no longer knew.

It was all draining. Around the Manor, it was increasingly difficult to keep face around an ever-evolving cast of members. He didn’t mind whether they were survivor or hunter - just that they gave him the personal space he was due. The only one who wouldn’t, no matter how many threats he hurled, was the Baron de Ross; this was expected, however, and he dealt with that by walking away whenever possible. It proved to have damaged Orpheus’ deceptively fragile ego enough over time that even his visits became less frequent. Gratefulness filled him as he soaked in the silence of forgotten encounters each time, but it faded just as quickly into indifference.

This scene was disrupted by another knock, harsh rapping of knuckles against wooden frame only disrupted by the fabric of gloves.

Someone had arrived at his tent, and he wanted more than anything to turn them away. There came the tapping of a cane on the floor: not Helena’s, the movements of which were accentuated with careful swipes, who would also have the courtesy to announce her arrival prior. An old acquaintance, demanding respect, who thought himself above the signs and signals that the acrobat was putting out in droves. His distaste and disregard both couldn’t have been more obvious. Yet.

When he spoke, not facing towards the visitor or addressing them by name, his tone was cold and flattened. This was simply met by a soft laugh, a mocking sort of chuckle, just enough to let Mike know what a fool he’d become. 

The Magician had succeeded in his long-awaited task, and the glaring sparkle of the Acrobat had finally been extinguished.

“Leave me be, will you?”

Mike asked this of Servais with no response expected, but eventually received one in low tone. However dull, no giddiness detected, it was obvious that the other man in the room was almost morbidly satisfied with how things were turning out. Servais simply leaned on his cane, eyes searching around the room for any semblance of the livelihood he’d expected from his fellow in the Manor. There was nothing to take in, of course, so he continued with his visit if only to attempt drawing something out of the Acrobat. An intrusion of personal space was usually met with a playful tease, threat of tricks used to repel, but he showed no such effort or care as he froze in his disregarding position. He wouldn’t give that man the time of day if he could help it.

The forced dampening hung in the air between the two men, heavy with silent expectation from both sides but remaining uninterrupted for a while longer. Eventually, Servais took one step too far into the space that the Acrobat heralded as safe, and he jolted to sitting up as the floorboard creaked beneath the other’s shoe. He’d become so paranoid that he employed an old trick of bartenders, intentionally installing the one “musical floorboard” so that he’d know of intruders for his own ease. Of course it wasn’t meant to be a security measure in first purpose, but served as one well enough.

As if to prove his disdain, to push all of Mike’s buttons he could see, Servais took yet another step forward. It was a simple thing. Brutal effectiveness was how the Magician worked. He didn’t like to expend unnecessary time or energy dealing with troubles he could more easily avoid, and his illusions aided in that. The smile held on his cheeks was only another false formality, one that neither participant of the conversation thought of as deserved. His grip tightened around the globed head of the cane, and he struck it down on the floorboard enough to make it squeak. All efforts were made in the name of just toying around.

Nothing was made serious toward an unwilling audience member. Servais was only biding his time. Like the younger man in front of him, he was one of the Manor’s residents who’d been cast aside quickly, left only to work in shadow and isolation. In direct contrast to how Mike had carried himself prior to the steep downhill slope, this had been no true change for the other gentleman in the room, and only brought with it a sense of tranquility and relief. Nobody needed to disturb his work, and the loneliness suited him just fine. If anything, it served to directly benefit. It was how he preferred to do things with his standards. The only one who’d ever truly meet them was him.

“I’ll do no such thing, Mister Morton, until you stop being such a fool here and deserting your duties in the Manor. Much as I don’t care for de Ross and his games, the man sure knows how to whine. He’s been visiting me to do so with increasing frequency, and I suggested he go find you if he wants someone to act the clown.”

Mike’s eyes were half-lidded as he looked towards Servais, though his gaze cast itself truly over the Magician’s shoulder and out to wherever salvation might’ve laid. It was easy enough not to look directly at someone, but give the impression of respect when none was owed. His lips twitched up into a lazy sort of smile, teeth showing for a moment, dropping back into listlessness when Servais talked more. Oh, how the man’s voice grated. The acrobat would have liked to send him packing right then and there, but they were at a stalemate. Neither wanted to shift from their position. Neither could make the other shift enough.

“Now, be a good entertainer and go find the Baron, won’t you? I’ve better things to do than stand about cleaning up messes that aren’t mine. Goodness knows why he couldn’t find that cousin of yours to retrieve you.”

Servais’ words were light, but his presence and their meaning both was imposing enough without the height difference - the acrobat easily towered over him while standing, which is why the cowardice was all the more to the former’s benefit. His white-knuckle grip on his cane remained beneath the levelheadedness he openly displayed, and he would’ve liked to swing it at the boy’s head to snap them out of their stupor. 

Instead, Mike tilted his head to the side as if amused. A wide smile stretched onto his face, and he fixed Servais with an unblinking stare. For a few precious seconds, the silence was appreciated, but he cut through it with a bitter laugh. This was… different. It wasn’t joyous as usual, not at all, and he leaned forward to stand up, bracing his hands on his knees and pushing himself upright. He’d teach that man who was looking down on who. Picking out a white juggling ball from his pouch of tricks, then a gleaming red one, he took his time despite the deadline of patience. Precious seconds remained.

With a twist of his heel, he noticed the Magician was leaving. He called out.

“Servais, don’t you go running away. We’re not done here!”

Nobody left him alone without some sort of punishment: Margie and Murro, even, had the weight of what they’d done haunting them by the day, even if Mike wasn’t around to see it. It was because they’d left him that they felt the guilt of their actions dragging them down. Immediately, the grin on his lips dropped to a scowl, this being the most intense emotional display and switch he’d experienced in months. It made him feel sick to his stomach, but he pushed through the guilt to focus on the situation at hand. 

Servais wanted Mike to prove himself a fool so badly? Then he could have a taste of the trickery he’d prepared. The one-man show was ready to begin, and it wouldn’t last long. Short and sharp, just like an explosion. With a coordinated few flicks of his wrists, he first pulled the distinct ruff around his neck upwards to cover his mouth. Though it looked ridiculous, it was only what was required. Then he released the white juggling ball from his hold, hurling it with frightening speed to trap the Magician where he stood. The sticky substance only trapped the man’s shoes, but that was exactly what he’d intended to do. He was precise when he needed to be.

“You’re awfully rude, trying to walk away from someone who’s talking to you, though I can’t be surprised. Definitely fitting of a third-rate Magician.”

Mike knew well the words he was speaking. They were Servais’ own bitter recollections, parroted and twisted to the benefit of the very person he’d once intended to demean. The boy took a lingering step toward the magician as he struggled to release his shoes from the white substance, shaking his head solemnly as he watched the display. Noticeably, he skirted around the creaking board that the other hadn’t known to avoid.

“I’ll let you go, but never come here without me telling you to again. Watch your feet, and watch your back at all times. Understand? I deserve my peace as much as you do, and think you know better. I expected much more of you, really, Mister Le Roy, but your reputation doesn’t precede you out here. I’m not sure why I ever did.”

He muttered, taking a container of relatively diluted acid from the cabinet and pouring just enough of it over the bomb’s residue to melt it without hitting any of the other parts in its path. He didn’t want to deal with Servais’ whining, much less over pettier things like the fabric of his shoes. As was expected of him, the Acrobat had grown tired of waiting, and put the next part of his plan into action before his companion could reply: he switched the Fire Bomb into his left hand and threw it towards Servais, in such a way that the man’s tailcoat caught aflame.

Of course the Magician ran out of the room, fear finally seizing all logic and making him act irrationally for the first time in an age.

Mike had the means to help him, and would’ve gladly done so before. Instead, he pulled more bombs from his cabinet and gave chase, the crimson trail serving as his beacon to catch up in the frenzied race. Now was the time for retribution. After all the time he had to put up with mockery, he’d no longer need to hear a single word from that man’s mouth save for a plea: forgiveness was not going to be afforded. They’d passed the point of any niceties and mercy.

The Hunt had only just begun.

[luminescentlyricist]

🎪 Bird’s Call - Identity V ✒️

There were shoes, clicking slowly yet distinctly against the tiles. The young man that they held aloft was wandering without a goal in mind, though that was only because of his preoccupation. Looking upwards and through one of the Manor's windows when carpet cushioned the sounds, Mike let out a sigh. He wasn't prepared for the days that stretched ahead. Such dejectedness hadn't come to him for some time, but it felt like it was going to drown him. Even thinking about the man he'd once held dear was making his head whirl. As much as he would've liked to return to his room and bury his face in the pillows, he'd promised his former troupe members that he'd always continue forwards. Refusal to do so would be an insult to their memories.

This, more often than not, led to his being awake during the later hours, and it wasn’t just because he had trouble falling asleep. As a performer, he had given himself many ways to quickly get rest, even if the resultant naps made him feel more rotten than before. Bernard had instilled in him a faith that hadn’t wavered, a need to do his best, so sacrificing a few hours to a visit wasn’t a big deal. Letters from the Acrobat were characterised by long rambles, paths of sentences calling back to performances already long forgotten by the recipient, because he wished for each encounter to be a memorable one. It was a shame they took so long to complete, for his handiwork needed to be legible.

As he passed the kitchen in his aimless wander, his chest tightened despite his internal protest and logic; the smell of smoke was pungent as ever, though it was only an accident with food and no disaster. From the nape of his neck to his tailbone, the acrobat focused on the tingling feeling of a shiver to take his mind off the tragedy that lingered ever-present. Pulling at the ruff around his neck had become habit. Even though his breaths were no longer shallow gasps, he'd almost forgotten how deeply his lungs would let him inhale. Remembrance… he had no time for it, if he were to honour those he'd left. Those that remained, and those he'd walked away from. Mike slowly bought a hand up to pinch his nostrils closed, lowering his head as a defence against the smell.

His feet carried him, still, even though he didn’t quite know where he was going. He walked out to the gardens visible in front of the Manor, sitting cross-legged atop one of the white benches and unintentionally taking up more space with his long legs. It was late enough that he doubted anyone would join him, which filled him with a sense of long-awaited peace. Relief. Eyes sweeping the area, the man finally let himself go - he untucked his curls from the hat that so often held them, fingers curling around the brown fabric so loosely that it might’ve fallen. To anyone else, to him in another night, this would mean nothing. But his muscles ached with their burdens, and it signified a small victory of sorts.

Reaching into the pinched and pinned-back portion of his hat, he drew out a small note, unfolding it with the utmost care he could provide. It had been pinned down there, in a little pouch, as were commonly found dotting the insides of the innovative Acrobat’s everyday wear. Always hidden from view. This note was something very important to him, but he refused to show even Margie what was written. She remained his dearest friend in the troupe’s Manor populace. Before he could read it properly, however, the noise of wings alerted him: a raven, black against the nearly starless sky, gazing down at him with beady eyes. He suspected the smell of food had followed him out from the kitchens, and it sought something from him.

“I have nothing left out here for you, you know.”

Mike remarked, the smallest of smiles curling the edges of his mouth as he replaced the note and put his hat back on. He hadn’t expected such an encounter, let alone at an unusual time. He watched as the bird tilted its head, as if to enquire ‘why not’, then flew up to a higher branch in the tree overhanging the bench. It continued to watch him, but he couldn’t satisfy whatever it was they wanted. Instead, this only left the acrobat feeling undeniably unsettled, with no true way to get the point across without sacrificing his peace - away from humans, that was - and returning to the Manor to get much-needed rest. His mind was soon occupied by the raven’s antics, as he found a sense of strange familiarity in that stubbornness.

“Certainly nothing seedy and aptly delicious. Shouldn’t you be with your roost-mates? It’s late.”

Of course he knew that the raven didn’t have any understanding of his words, but thought it rude to leave them without an explanation regardless. Despite how there weren’t many stars, the lamps flickering to bathe the gardens in a soft light were enough to avoid Mike straining his eyes. From one of the pouches on his belt, he pulled out a bottle of water, deciding to drink from it first and then hold up the filled cap to the raven, who simply stared at it for a good ten seconds. This was enough for Mike’s cheeks to colour in embarrassment, so he tipped it out onto the grass and replaced it before wandering over to a decorative stone basin that the Baron had commissioned from the Sculptor - Miss Galatea, whose self-reservation did little to stop the unease Mike felt even bringing her leering face to mind - some time earlier but never used. Now seemed as good a time as any, even though he couldn’t provide exactly what he assumed his new companion wanted.

So he emptied the rest of the bottle into the basin, heedless of how hot it’d been getting for him. He could remember to refill it any day. After a moment more, the raven came to perch on the edge of the basin and dipped its beak into the cool water. Mike was pleased, but he still took a few cautious steps backward so they wouldn’t see him as an invader. When he turned away, there came a squawking - the raven was indignant, almost, to hold his attention. The acrobat didn’t immediately turn on his heel, no, but instead pulled on the thick gloves hanging at his waist-belt (usually situated in his cabinet, he’d strung them there with little regard in a sleepless stupor that morning) and held his arm out to the bird, twisting his body appropriately.

Ruffling its feathers as if to puff out its chest in pride, the bird took the opportunity to use Mike’s arm as a perch. The young man stiffened in caution and alarm both as it landed so close, breath hitching. Muscle by muscle, he allowed himself to relax, mis-matched eyes meeting the small bird’s for a second or two. He needed to keep it occupied so nobody else would be disturbed by the racket its call produced, however futile. Tentatively, he reached a gloved hand over to run his fingers through the raven’s head feathers, almost as if giving it a pat, and it responded by leaning into the hold, a gurgling sort of quieter vocalisation eventually coming from its throat. Of all the thrilling things Mike had done, getting so close to a bird usually heralded as a vicious and dark omen wasn’t on his list. It didn’t seem to want to harm him, at least, and he was grateful for that.

The moment, perfect in its stillness, didn’t last. A familiar yet unwanted presence had arrived. The raven flew up to its tree once again, making its silent protest known. The acrobat sighed, unwilling to acknowledge what’d been shaken for a second longer. His eyes slipped closed, if only to preserve the waning peace of the situation, mind and focus lingering on the vague sensations left in his hands from the raven’s feathers. Until it was shattered, at last, by a crowing of another type - that man’s voice, grating on his ears like nothing else could. The tone wasn’t so bad in reality, but Mike personally couldn’t stand it. The obnoxiousness oozing from each syllable seemed nearly palpable to his sensitive ears.

The only thing Mike could think to do to stave off the novelist was to cut him off, and he did so with little regard to any possible greeting paid before. It wasn’t like him to be as careless as he appeared to Orpheus, but he knew well enough how long the conversation would drag on otherwise. He was too tired to deal with it, as the soothing of the raven’s visit had left him without the energy he naturally carried. The bird was more of a friend to him than someone of the Baron’s standing could ever be, though he didn’t speak it around anyone to avoid backlash. Sure, he could whine to his cousin or Margie, but the time ticked on. It would have been discourteous, he felt, even though both Survivors had assured him they’d be there if he needed them regardless of how early or late it was.

“Mister De Ross, I’d thank you to leave before I throw something fire-lit in your general direction.”

Mike hoped sincerely that his threat would be heeded. Orpheus was his own man, however, and would do nothing of the sort. Instead, he moved toward the acrobat even further, craning his neck to look at the raven in his own right. The bird stayed away from him, gaze nearly unblinking, and it appeared not to want to come back down for the disturbance. His smile was soft, serene, but held some air of superiority - he knew well that the acrobat wouldn’t be able to do anything to truly stop him, not while he was in the Manor’s grounds. Placing a hand over his chest, he continued to mock further, taking a slower step forth.

“How you wound me, Mike. I was simply coming to check on you. I’ve taken to doing the rounds, though Miss Dyer tells me I may stretch myself too thin checking on each of you.”

Who else he was talking about was left unspoken, but the acrobat knew better than to ask the novelist for confirmation. It would only make matters worse, indulging the Baron like that. He’d talk for hours, and Mike couldn’t hold attention for that long unless it actually concerned him. His gaze trailed up to the bird on the tree-branch, taking comfort in its presence. It was almost guarding him. Orpheus continued to talk to him, but his thoughts were elsewhere, distant as the raven. He wasn’t intending to ignore, really, but his captivation with the simple scene soothed him more than being almost interrogated by his visitor.

Said visitor became irritated, the patient curving of his mouth falling away, and he did the only thing he could think of - as if commanding the staff of the Manor, he clapped his hands twice sharply.

Mike’s breath caught in his throat, and he seized in fear.

Of course, somewhere in the back of his mind, Mike knew that Orpheus meant no harm. But the noise was so distinct, so painfully familiar, that his logic had abandoned him. His eyes were wide, startled, and it was all he could do to sit back before he fell, gaze redirecting to the man of the manor naturally. Just because he no longer craned his neck enough to see the raven. His palms scraped against the worn concrete of the path, but the pain barely registered for the aching of his heart. The last time he’d had such a thing happen, had a command be given in tandem… no. He wasn’t going to think about it.

Soon pulling distractedly on the cuffs of his ruffled sleeves, Mike’s movements were little more than twitches. He’d tuned Orpheus out, entirely oblivious to the concern of the Baron upon seeing the frightened display. Though his heartbeat pounded in his ears, he barely felt the rise and fall of his chest. Lightheadedness caused his eyelids to droop, though he knew he couldn’t stay like that forever - a futile attempt to stand left him on a course to the ground, yet more senseless tears blurring his vision and logic both.

“Mister Morton, I’d advise you return to your quarters. You’re not well.”

The voice came from a direction the acrobat couldn’t process, and he closed his eyes, bringing shuddering arms upwards if only to grind the heels of his hands into them. He didn’t like showing weakness, much less around someone of higher standing. He never had, really. He continued this movement until he felt a soft grip take his wrists, pulling them away from his face. The force caused him to tense, shivering in resistance. Though he didn’t open his eyes, he could tell that it was Orpheus - the callouses atop each of the novelist’s fingers told him everything he needed to know, sensitive as he was to the small things when overwhelmed. When he tried to formulate a reply, nothing came from his mouth.

He disliked feeling so pathetic, but the sound of the clapping still rung in his ears.

It should have only taken a moment for him to recover. That was what was expected of him, after all - being at another’s beck and call, especially for matters of entertainment. Always maintaining a smile, even when it was a struggle to bring one to his lips. He had to respect Orpheus, as his new source of… haphazard companionship, he thought, but the shaking of his body and mind both were doing terrible things. He couldn’t do it, and that stressed him out more than he was able to articulate. It was akin to a mask breaking, and the curtains opening on the backstage proceedings. He couldn’t afford to let it happen, but there was no strength left in him to pull everything together again.

Bernard had done that to and for him. Given him simple cues and commands, a list to follow, and they were once helpful. But he was no longer a child who needed to be shepherded around, and retrieving his easily diminishing sense of pride and growth had taken him a longer time than he cared to admit. Joker mocked him more than enough for his liking, and did him no favours. These cues were turned into weapons, even though the acrobat was the only one who thought of them as such. They were just another reminder of his lack of control, no matter how finely crafted his defences were.

Mike simply twisted his body, wrenching his hands from the Novelist’s well-meaning hold.

“Leave me be, Mister De Ross. Of course I’m not well, and It’s because of you. Just go. Please. I cannot cope with you right now. You should know better than to treat me that way.”

The acrobat’s voice was uncharacteristically cold, flattening almost into indifference but holding an obvious edge of irritation. He wasn’t feeling right, not at all, and the presence of someone he’d only consider a friend at the best of times was draining him of energy. He took his hat off, rubbing his hands across his ears in a vain attempt to rid them of the sound lingering. Of course Orpheus didn’t care to know the reason why the clapping had startled him so, and Mike didn’t expect it. It was a petty thing, and would have seemed ridiculous to anyone who hadn’t been through it.

This sort of loneliness was something he wouldn’t care to explain, but only one person in the Manor would have responded in the right way regardless. Curling his hands into fists to protect his palms, he leaned back onto them with heaving breath. Tears continued to run down his cheeks, but he didn’t move to wipe them away. Despite being unable to properly let it out, for fear of losing his composure around his superior in its entirety, Mike felt the relief sweeping through him as he allowed himself to cry. He was too tired to resist, even if he wanted to. It was something entirely foreign: the lack of performance in the display of vulnerability.

Orpheus was taken aback, to say the least, to see Mike crying, but he didn’t have the means to comfort the younger man. So he left, as was asked of him, and didn’t think to look backwards. However nagging his discontent with the issue, he knew that it’d all just make things worse if he tried to push forward with something likely to devolve into an argument. He, too, was tired, and he wasn’t looking forward to a sore back from falling asleep at his desk again should his journey take too long. He had writing milestones to meet before indulging himself with rest like that.

It was in this way that the acrobat found himself once more alone, sitting down on the path to the gardens with the sun threatening to set behind him. He didn’t care to sit back up on the bench, as nobody would think to go outside at that time. Much less to the gardens themselves, which were a subject of avoidance for any wary manor resident - save for the Baron’s closest, and the maintenance workers - due to an accident prior. This was yet another mystery surrounding the novelist, but he hadn’t had the time nor the actual courage to pry for answers. With a short and exasperated sigh, Mike kicked one leg up to steady his other foot on the ground, leaning against it with the majority of his tired weight in order to straighten and stand.

It was time to visit a friend.

Sparing a glance up to the sky, he wondered where the raven had flown off to. As disappointing as it was to find he’d lost that company, the acrobat knew such a thing wouldn’t have lasted. Idealism did him no favours. Grounding himself in the moment with the familiarity of his customised shoes would have been easy otherwise, but his heartbeat pulsed in his ears and drowned out all other noise. The plates he’d added to most if not all of the soles were reminiscent of proper tap shoes, and allowed him to keep the lively spirit of performance around. Sure, the modification was met with significant complaint, but he’d allowed himself a moment of relief and ignored it. They made him feel better, and the manor’s residents either learned to put up with it or reach that understanding themselves. Mischief didn’t equal the discomfort of others to Mike. That was different.

Soon enough after walking in a detached haze, the acrobat found his place, slipping out of his shoes and placing them at the front of the grounds (simply outside the entrance) before stepping through.

That morning, Orpheus had tasked himself with checking back up on Mike. Despite not having any understanding of what had caused the acrobat to lash out at him, he’d boiled it down to the night’s irritability, and had no real intent to stir enmity between anyone. There was a time and a place for that, and it was beyond the position of the Baron De Ross. Unbecoming of a nobleman, unexpected of a novelist, and thus out of place in his goals. First, he checked around the young man’s tent - a simple structure, donned with white and red striped cloth in its stereotypical fashion, serving as his retreat beyond the confines of the Manor despite being put up right beside it. That was where Mike spent most of his time, despite looking rather barren. A desk, a bed, a cabinet and a few piles of miscellaneous belongings, stacked with unprecedented care. That was all he needed.

Not meaning to intrude, he backed away from the tent and allowed the fabric to flutter behind him, closing the entranceway from view when it settled. He wondered why the acrobat hadn’t asked him about increasing the security, but hadn’t cared to look for enough. There was a panel that served as a doorway, and Mike held the key, but he hadn’t returned to his tent and set everything back in place.

Instead, he continued to the next place he thought Mike would be: around where his cousin’s boar was often kept with some of the other animals. Occasionally, Wick the post-dog would greet anyone there, but Victor had told him he preferred to keep them close. The Postman's companion, therefore, was likely still curled at the end of the boy's bed, sleeping soundly. Stranger still was the entire absence of the boar. It was commonly content to be there, snuffling away, tail flicking until Murro needed to take care of it again. The two were as inseparable as ever, but their bond remained rivalled by another.

That gave him the last idea. The woodlands beyond the Manor where the Gamekeeper prowled were often home to more wild boars. Contrary to the beliefs of some on the grounds, what was whispered between guest and servant alike, Bane didn’t intend to harm unless threat was bought to the animals under his care. So long as one kept in the many beasts’ good graces, he’d turn a blind eye to those entering and exiting his ‘territory’. Bane considered their opinions more than his own. He was one of the more unfortunate Hunters, twisted by circumstance and tragedy, but outside the game he was circumstantially gentler.

Orpheus took a deep breath, gathering his coat and heading out to the woods. Luckily for him, as he walked further into the various connected thickets and copses, there was no sign of Bane about. No further complications. The animals weren’t hostile, per se, but enough of them were large and frightening to those as unadjusted as he was. There were a few survivors who liked the forest, fewer still who may have preferred it to the Manor’s shelter, but the narrowing of options was exactly what he needed. So he walked further in, even though the trees’ canopy thickened and begun to block out the light. He took a pause to pull on his coat, fumbling with the buttons as his hands shook with the sudden cold of the shade.

A bird’s crowing cut through the oppressive silence as Orpheus walked, but he couldn’t see where it was coming from. They didn’t often come to the Manor, let alone straying to the darker parts of the trees. He followed where the sunlight struck, trying to keep himself as safe as possible. It wasn’t as if he were a frightened child, unwilling to go into the darkness; getting lost running around the unfamiliar parts of the Manor’s boundaries was just going to be more of a hassle if he had to help Mike get out as well. So he thought. Thanks to someone else’s careful guidance, the acrobat knew the woodlands better than Orpheus himself.

Turning a corner, he was lead to the entrance of a large clearing. Here, there sat a sight he’d never seen before, but was pleased to witness nonetheless. Mike and Murro were both asleep, side by side in the clearing, supported by the large boar’s soft body that it seemed perfectly content to let them lean against. It was simply something lovely, something peaceful, an occurrence seldom given within the Manor’s walls. The raven, the past night’s guardian, sat atop a tree-branch nearby, fluffing up its feathers as its own ward from the cold. It was only when Orpheus was leaving, unwilling to disturb the cousins in their moments of relief, that he knew what he was truly seeing.

A memory of the past, framed in waning sunlight.

[luminescentlyricist]

✒️ A Prologue - Identity V 💉

CONTENT WARNINGS: IMPLIED DEATH/LOSS

This is modelled around Season 19 Essence 3, with Homesick and Awaiting! The third figure called to is Aging, though she's not mentioned by name.

~

Orpheus De Ross was painfully lonely, and had been for a longer time than he cared to admit. He had dragged himself out of bed and to his desk, monocle affixed to his face as always, but the fountain pen he claimed to treasure sat unused in its ink pot. This had long since dried up, as had his motivation to do anything more than dream. Sleep was his only release from the deepening depression that gnawed at him as if eating a hole in his chest. Though the manor’s staff had upheld their duties and attempted to make the place cleaner and brighter for the lone resident, he hardly noticed the changes. The man had been stagnating for an unknown amount of time, and not even the freedoms of his writing felt like they could save him from the haze that enveloped his emotions.

What use was it all if nobody was around to read it?

This phrase whirled around in his mind as he stared listlessly forwards, eyes tracing the heavy velveted curtains that blanketed the space in near-darkness. He’d made a request earlier that week for his bed to be moved into his writing room, for he felt so little motivation that getting from one location to another was a chore. It had only been a mistake. Instead of relief, what little he felt was taken over by a dull regret, being unwilling to accept that he’d weakened so drastically. Laying his head down on the desk, Orpheus longed to close his eyes and float away. If anyone found him in such a state, he knew his already poorer sales would dwindle, and the only source of joy he could find in the greying skies of his life would fade.

Instead he forced himself to be awake. There was no wound clock in the vicinity, but the deepening bags beneath his eyes were no longer a source of concern. All that mattered was continuing to produce works, whatever internal protests his body had in store for him. Taking up the pen, he unfolded a notebook, reasoning that it was useless to attempt extending an actual book. The ideas necessary to make anything coherent and publishable just weren’t going to come to him in such a slump, after all. His eyelids drooped for a moment before he pushed himself back upright in the chair, arms trembling from the strain. There came a knock at the door of the study, but the young man had no voice to answer it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to anyone that wasn’t his own face in the mirror.

That accompanied a sense of loss deeper than even he, a writer by trade, lacked the words to articulate. He often wondered if it was all wrong for him, and others had told him he was free to retire because of his inherited estate, but making others happy with his writing had hardly seemed like a job before. Now, his resolution was wavering, as was his sense of identity - “Orpheus” was simply a pen name assigned to him by his publisher. True to the profession, he moulded himself to suit whoever saw him for the best effect, and spent little time wondering about personal preferences. Nobody had cared about him enough to tell him that was wrong before it was all too late, and he’d forgotten who he was behind the mask of the Baron de Ross. He no longer knew, but at least they did. The soft clicking of the door handle roused him from his morose thoughts in a matter of seconds, and he plastered on a gentle smile for no benefit of his own.

Emily Dyer, unexpectedly, had come to his aid. Though she worked silently, she knew the reclusive novelist would only let a precious few people into the Manor, let alone the study. He needed someone to take care of him, however small the gestures. Pulling the curtains open and tying them aside, the doctor placed a small object on Orpheus’ desk as she passed to leave: a white paper boat, folded carefully and hand-painted with flowers. She looked backwards upon placing her hand on the door, poised as if wishing to speak to him, but swallowed this notion just as soon. What little response she could’ve gleaned from his words wouldn’t be worth the effort for either participant. She left him be after that, as much as she regretted it. He was one of the two most important figures in her life, and guilt would prevent her mind from settling for some time after that. It didn’t much matter that the (perceived) uselessness was unavoidable. It stung anyway.

The light from the window did nothing to improve Orpheus’ mood, but one thing did catch his attention: a small black feather drifted downwards from a tree in the garden. That garden… it was like a mockery of times long gone. Yet every staff member he could muster the will to contact insisted that it would make him feel better some day, and they continued to maintain it to the best of their abilities despite his frequent protest. It’d been quite a while since he’d been out of the manor, and even longer since he’d seen any animal that wasn’t a fish drifting aimlessly in the aquarium of the common area. However restricted they were, the novelist often felt they had more freedom than he did. Not that he had the motivation to fix that, of course.

That feather, though… he couldn’t stop thinking about it. The birds had long since fallen silent, and yet they continued to visit him. The manor was feeling less and less familiar the longer he wandered within its walls, like some sick, reversed alienation tactic. Standing up, Orpheus cleared his throat, pulling a suit jacket on and fixing the angle of his slipping monocle. The flowers embroidered across the lapels reminded him of home, even though he couldn’t quite remember where that was to him. Two special people - Miss Dyer being one of them - had sewn the design onto it long ago, and the feeling of the raised threads against his fingers gave him a small burst of comfort. 

To be homesick for somewhere he couldn’t remember was torture, but fate had never been kind to him in the first place. Rubbing a hand across his eyes, he didn’t bother to find a proper brush, instead running his fingers carelessly through his hair. Grease came off onto them, but he simply assumed it was because of hair gel, though the container sat empty on his desk as it had for many days. Taking care of himself was just one more expenditure of strength. Removing the familiar presence of a ball-point pen from his shirt pocket, the novelist scrawled down a simple phrase on the paper, as if beginning to make an outline of the day’s plans for himself: ‘The Novelist visits the gardens.’ Doing so was by no means a regular practice for him, but he had a feeling it’d give him a needed sense of direction in such a slump. Tucking away the pen and the notebook both into his pocket, he came to a stand, eyes distantly scanning the window for any sign of another feather or accompanying bird.

Gently, he unfolded the paper boat, refolding it into the smallest square possible. He wasn’t going to distract himself from the bliss of the moment by reading it. There were people who cared about him, and that was all he really needed to know. Details were irrelevant at that point. Unfastening the three topmost buttons on his dark jacket, with trembling fingers the man folded back the top of his suit’s fabric. Resting against the space nearest to his heart, there was a shakily sewn pocket. Tugging at the stitches, he soon managed to loosen those up the top. Despite how badly he was trembling, Orpheus managed to place the paper inside, searching afterwards for a needle. The pocket was usually kept open or simply buttoned closed on other suits he’d added it to, but he felt there’d be no need to replace it any time soon. Sewing the top up, he buttoned his coat before allowing himself to relax.

Opening the door of his study, Orpheus took a deep breath. The air no longer smelled stale. Hearing his own shoes clicking against the floorboards as he walked down the hallway almost made his head begin to spin, but he bore it anyway. He felt distant, as if he were floating within his body, heedless to the environment around him. As much as he longed to be free of sensation, if only for a moment, that wasn’t going to happen. As soon as he turned the corner to go out to the gardens, an ear-splitting cry rang out. The call was familiar, and bought to mind a sleek black feather. This didn’t make him stop - instead, it only furthered the resolve he thought was lost. For the first time in too long, the novelist heaved open the manor’s doors and stepped into the dimming light.

The garden was there, freshly maintained, but the flowers and foliage were the only traces of life. Not even the insects that Melly had once trailed behind her remained, which was a continual worry for the maids in regards to growing produce. Pollination helped in terms of diversity as well, and it made their jobs a lot easier. Orpheus was oblivious to all of this work, of course. He left the manor with returning reluctance, for the burst of motivation he felt was draining away. The sleek black feather remained in his thoughts, but the appeal of it was lessening because of his sobering mental state. Such quick change was exhausting. The novelist continued on his journey at a more relaxed pace, eyes flickering about to take in the sights.

The maze was still standing. After everything that’d happened within the confines of the hedges, it loomed there as a reminder of Orpheus’ failures. He took a rattling breath inwards, trying not to let the heat creeping on the back of his neck unnerve him too much. It was just a bunch of leaves. Nothing else. There would never be blood spilled there again. There never... there never had been. Whatever was he thinking? Shaking his head to clear his thoughts in a physical manner, he continued to walk, though his footsteps were getting increasingly louder in his head. This strange warping was chalked up to tiredness, as the young man had no idea how long it’d been since he’d had a full night of sleep. The demand for his writing was lowering as he’d become more of a recluse and inherited his father’s estate, but old habits were hard to break. To Emily’s dismay, he’d often find himself asleep at his desk despite having no ideas to write.

Sitting on a small bench with his back to the maze in question, he spied the feather lying on the ground a few metres away. It was being ruffled by a slight breeze, but that didn’t deter him. If the bird it’d dropped from were to return, then that could provide him with the burst of motivation needed to complete his next chapter. Why he was so captivated by a small thing was beyond him, but went unquestioned. As he stood to collect it after a momentary rest to collect his thoughts, the feather was swept up in a gust of wind, and lodged itself firmly beneath a tile on the mosaic covering one of the building’s walls. This mosaic was something he often came to when inspiration was lacking, for the manor’s residents and guests were free to decorate one of the numerous panels as a way of leaving their impressions if they were to leave. Many were those he had painted himself, alongside Emily and his other regular visitor.

With another flick of the pen and notebook cover, a yawn was stifled when Orpheus found his resolution in the script: ’The Novelist continues his search, and will not stop until he has uncovered the truth of the gardens that he seeks - whether this be a feather or something more.’ Truthfully, he expected nothing more than the owner of the feather, but as a story writer was prone to slipping into fantasies and dreams. It was detrimental to others in terms of keeping his attention, but on many occasions Orpheus considered this trait to be the only thing that kept him sane. Awareness to the world outside the manor terrified him more than he cared to admit.

Tugging gently at the feather, Orpheus’ eyes roved across the designs on the tiles. Caught up in remembrance, he hardly realised that he’d almost freed the object until something sharp and familiar jolted him away from the wall, tearing part of the feather’s fluff off in the process - the call of a crow, indignant as ever. Well, that was one way to find out who it belonged to… His gaze flickered up to the crow in question, a small smile dancing across his lips. They weren’t a common sight in the manor grounds, so seeing their sleek forms was always a surprise. This one was adolescent, and fluffed up delightfully against the crisp breeze rustling through the garden. Though it would be a bad idea, he almost longed to climb the tree so that he could feel how soft it was, and perhaps get it to a better place. Heedless of the fact he hadn’t asked anyone about their natural habitats, the gardens certainly weren’t safe enough.

Nodding to the bird as acknowledgement before setting back to work, the novelist bowed his head toward the wall once more. Running his fingers along the grout between the tiles, his bitten nails snagged on something unfamiliar. Pulling his hand back, he heard a soft click. That wasn’t a sign of anything good. Before he could move to alert one of the maids of the maintenance issue, a glint of silver caught his eye. The crow had returned, bringing with it a coat pin that it dropped at his feet before letting out an alerting call and retreating to its branch. Orpheus bent down and picked it up carefully. It was a small snake pin, curled in an infinity symbol and biting its own tail. This was similar to one of the mosaic tiles’ designs, but he had no recollection of what it meant to him at the time of painting. That sort of forgetfulness tended to happen a lot, but the mosaic was there to remind him, not take his understanding away…

This was a hassle he wasn’t quite prepared for, so he turned his attention momentarily to adding another point to the day’s itinerary. Uncharacteristically, he nearly dropped the pen from his hand as it shook as if by nerves. Though the wind was becoming colder when the days wore on, it wasn’t enough to send a significant chill through the thick and dry fabrics he wore. Unable to afford himself another brief moment of respite, he scrawled onto the page, ignoring how harsh his strokes turned out. Unless the paper tore properly or the ink stained, it wouldn’t be a problem to record small things such as these: ’The Novelist confidently approaches his destinations, for his fate can always be rewritten.’ This wasn’t true, but he chose to believe what he wrote anyway. Self-confidence was something he needed.

Stowing the pin safely in his other jacket pocket, Orpheus resolved not to waste any more time ruminating on things that didn’t make sense. The crow had disappeared from the treetops, which filled him with an unexplainable sense of regret and sadness. Perhaps it was simply that morning’s mental fog catching up to him, but they had felt like a companion in the isolated garden. Digging the rest of the feather’s misshapen plume away from the tiles, his fingers lingered around the snake design for a few moments longer. If his eyes weren’t deceiving him, the tile had been pushed in slightly, and he could have moved it aside. The ink on his notepad didn’t lie to him: he’d continue looking around the garden itself, and not stray off the beaten path too much this time. With a huff, he reached up and swept a stray hair away from his monocle. The lens was cracking in some places, but he’d never bothered to get it fixed.

The sky was beginning to darken considerably by that time, so Orpheus’ pace quickened. Before he knew what he was doing, he had circled back into the maze, and was weaving through the foliage with an unnatural steadiness. He’d not visited the maze in a long time, much less soon enough to remember all of the twists and turns with such certainty. The leaves blurred together in front of his face, and he continued to walk even though he could no longer tell where he was going. The branches that hadn’t been trimmed back in some time stung as they cut his face, small gashes that luckily weren’t deep enough to bleed. As the sun truly set, the lights flickered on, but the novelist ignored everything around him. He felt a compulsion from his own instructions was stronger than ever, and he wasn’t going to ignore it just for someone else’s sake.

As soon as he reached the centre of the maze, Orpheus sat down and retrieved the mysterious pin from where it was safely stowed away. His suit was going to get dirty, but the significance and comfort of that particular jacket was, at that moment, the least important thing to him. Running his fingertip over the snake’s emerald eye, he wiped the dust onto his pants. His breathing became so quiet that it was a wonder he was awake, for the rhythm of his chest’s rise and fall was more appropriate for someone lost to dreaming. After a few minutes of this, his eyelids truly drooped. Staying still with his eyes closed, Orpheus was unable to stifle a yawn. Pressing the cold metal of the pin into his palm to renew his alertness, he reached up to fasten the pin to his jacket, but dropped it for the second time. Cursing quietly, he bent down to retrieve it. He decided that he’d prefer not to be interrupted, lest he lose his train of thought again.

The doctor, on the other hand, was becoming increasingly worried for his absence. Though it was true they were both adults and had no need for curfews, she hadn’t been able to tell him important news of the day, and he had hardly ignored her before. Adjusting her capelet’s position and rubbing her arms as a ward from the cold, she exchanged a few quiet words with a maid for preparations to begin a search before slipping out the manor doors. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but if dawn broke and he hadn’t returned, then there would have to be more serious efforts made. The Baron wasn’t simply the most important person to her: jobs needed to be allocated, calls taken, and he was still the novelist she dearly loved the stories of. He had his own occupation and a life to continue.

Turning the pin around in his hands a few times, he observed how the emeralds gleamed dully in the lights. He heard nothing except the pounding of his heart in his ears, the sound seeming to dwarf everything beyond, but paid no mind to it. How had he been so careless? The pin was beautiful… yes! That was it. He had to show her… Staggering to his feet as if swept into a trance, the novelist swayed in place. There was something in the back of his mind, and he was unable to shake it. He’d write it down just in case… disregarding his shaking hands, he drew the pen across the page of his notebook, but was unable to finish the bullet point as his pen began to leak, staining the paper and his hands both with ink.

Without these directions, he was aimless. A dull thud was heard as the pen and notebook, the latter rapidly drying in the wind and heavy with ink, hit the grass. A single tear trailed down the man’s cheek as he looked down towards it, but he had no voice left to cry. He didn’t want to show weakness to the ones who loved him, but that strange pin felt like it was amplifying his emotions tenfold. He’d simply stay out in the gardens, then, and bother nobody with his feelings as usual. Though he felt strange, light-headed and almost feverish, there was nothing he could do to ease the sickness building in his stomach. Sinking to his knees in the maze, he gripped the grass as if it were the only thing keeping him from floating away, letting out an uneasy chuckle. 

It’d be fine, right? The young man hoped so. All that was left was to wait, but he wasn’t so sure that he wanted to be found. Sleeplessness was catching up to him, and his thought patterns caved to falsities and illogical conclusions. The pin… He had everything he needed right there, even though the wind bit into his clothing. How little everything else mattered! Ignorance… why, his father had been right to shove everything into his arms. Maybe now he could let everything fade away, and the emeralds could capture the gaze of his adversaries. That crow knew better than people what was best for him! What fools they were, not to listen to the shrill calls of the birds. Blocking his ears had done him no good before, but now he felt enlightened. He was finally finding the truth!

To Emily’s concern, the Baron was making no effort to reveal himself, and she stumbled through the gardens even as the moonlight began to fade. She wished above all else to find him, of course, but there was only so much she would be able to do. Her fingertips were beginning to go numb from the cold, but she didn’t want to lose track of him. Pulling on the gloves that hung at her waist, she wriggled her fingers to check if some of their sensation had returned. They weren’t lined with the same warm black fur as she’d requested for her capelet, but they’d do well enough insulating her for now. And so she continued to search, but everything was fruitless. Returning to the main building in the early hours, Miss Dyer was left to crawl into Orpheus’ own bed, soaking in the warmth from his lingering presence to attempt easing her thoughts.

If he found her, yes, there might have been some questions, but all of the love in the world to go along with it. Though Orpheus had never been a verbally affectionate man, he’d often leave her a paper crane or something of the sort on her bedside to welcome her with a poem in the morning, and she kept all of these. She used them to teach origami, as his folds were always so perfect it showed how much he cared for her. In return, she would nurse his paper cuts, scolding him with a laugh held back in her voice all the while. “Now, Orpheus, you must be more careful! Your hands are important, you know… No, not as much as your heart. Don’t be silly. I’ll take care of that too.”

He’d never make it back to the Manor, after all.

Orpheus had put the pin through his chest pocket whilst trying to fasten it onto his own jacket, tearing the paper so that he’d never be able to read what was written within. To some superstitious individuals, this was tantamount to making the text a lie, but none of the manor’s residence allowed such negativity to reach them. Emily hadn’t been the only one to write it: a child’s small, shaking script echoed the message in their own writing, but the sentiment was a clear truth in both instances. The state of the paper didn’t matter.

“You’ll always have a place here. I love you.”

[luminescentlyricist]

✒️ Watching - Identity V 🕸️

CONTENT WARNINGS :: IMPLIED DEATH, MANIPULATION

This is a story about my IDV persona's S-tier skin, "Ariadne"/Fate Weaver, and an encounter with a... noncanon portrayal of a certain skin. Carrie and "Ariadne"'s information can be found here and here.

~

To be saddled with such a job as she had been many aeons ago was a momentous, terrifying task. But this so-called “Ariadne” knew that she was the only one who could do it now, and that there was no point in complaining. Someone had to watch over things, and she’d rather it be someone like her with less attachments. Many people tried to mess with Fate before they knew the consequences, and that only made her job more of a pain. One person in particular just kept coming back around into the red zone, and she needed to undo the knots he had no idea he was tying.

“Ariadne” stood up in the endless dark expanse, and a spider’s web sprawled out from beneath her feet. This was a normal occurrence, and the only way she could physically navigate the realm stretching outwards. Mentally, it was a different story. Her eyes swept around the area, but looking like that was useless. Force of habit… even after all this time, it was difficult to surpass. Drumming her fingers along the belts she wore, it took her longer than usual to locate what she was looking for in the first place. A moment later, she took the thin blindfold into her hands. She sighed tiredly. How annoying it was to do this every time she needed to work, necessary though it proved.

Resting on and firmly tying it over their face, the Fate Weaver allowed themself to revel for a brief moment in the familiarity. There was a reason they didn’t illuminate their mysterious space, for even the necessary lights had the potential to burn their eyes. Gradually, the markings on the blindfold revealed themselves, glowing brightly and illuminating the once-hidden dewdrops that glimmered across the webbed realm. These marks were drawn across the fabric in an arc, resembling eight small eyes. Though they had no recollection of ever picking the blindfold up or doing the drawings, it had always been with them. At first, they hadn’t understood what they were supposed to do. But all that was behind them, and they weren’t about to waste time ruminating.

Stepping forwards again, her resolution was perhaps stronger than before. Fixing his mistakes was a familiar task, but properly locating him was always such a chore because of the knowledge he’d been granted. Who he went to to get such information was beyond them, but she’d have liked to punch whoever (or whatever, as it may well have been, considering that man’s motivations) squarely in the face. It just so happened that he’d left her a familiar indicator this time: a glaring red dewdrop sat in the midst of a distant cluster, as if filled with correctional ink.

No, no. This wasn’t something he could correct. He’d only make the mistakes for her to notice in his stead. Again, and again, and again. Walking confidently forwards, none of the dewdrops the Weaver landed upon shook from their webs. When she reached closer to the red droplet, though, they became more unstable. Each and every one previously had been almost perfectly circular, rigid upon the threads they had chosen. He was trying to move, and she didnt like that one bit. Lessons were forgotten repeatedly, and the spilled ink wasn’t something she was fond of - it stained, after all. Reaching down towards the dew, it was reluctant to rest on her hand as usual. So, the silence of the realm was broken by an exasperated sigh and one word, laden with expectation and hidden meaning all at once.

“Orpheus…”

It was simply coincidence that “Ariadne” had become acquainted with someone sharing a moniker from their own namesake’s mythology, but it was no less strange than it’d been the first time she found out his name. It’d have been better if she didn’t know it, though, because a person’s droplets often got closer the more familiar they were to her. She couldn’t just become apathetic to the harm he was causing to the world beyond. Finally taking the dewdrop into her palm, a shudder worked its way down her spine. He wouldn’t be happy to see her. The feeling was mutual, however silent she had to keep that sentiment. They’d no idea just how much power he’d hold if he could take risks with them, considering their line of work.

Walking further into the darkness, the world shifted more than it had any cause to. Stillness and stagnancy had been normalcy for the longest time, but now… “Ariadne” quickly glanced down to the droplet they cradled, but straightened in rigid fear when the spiderwebs began to bow underneath her weight. This far into her realm - or the realm, for it was just a place she happened to have access to and didn’t know if she truly governed it - the commands she was adjusted to were liable to slipping or breaking. Her paradoxical blindfold assisted her in seeing the path she was meant to be taking, however, so she didn’t spend any more time trying to debate the nonetheless terrifying breach in safety.

Hazards wouldn’t keep them away from work. They had too much to do on their own to risk delays, and that’d show itself many times. Orpheus was just one of those particularly frustrating individuals. Always causing trouble in or out of her path. Still, on she marched in silence, searching with covered eyes but open mind for any semblance of an end goal in the black. It’d only reveal itself if it wanted to. With how many fates were being altered just from one man’s actions she had yet to correct, she hoped it’d be sooner rather than later. Luck wasn’t something she regularly possessed, but the clovers once shone in her eyes, and she guessed they were blooming within her still: there, as if by some miracle, lay a string of webbing more akin to a mirror’s frame in shape and dimension, waiting almost expectantly right in front of her. This was where everything was meant to be.

To lead to this small frame that would open everything again. The solution she was waiting for. 

Hands shaking, she finally removed the blindfold, taking longer than was reasonable to undo the knot and forgo something that gave her comfort. Attachments… well. She didn’t have many to people, per se, but her work was her life, and that presented its own unique challenge. “Ariadne” didn’t need to see where she was going any more. Still, to be sure, she needed a test subject or two… Placing the droplet back down, she selected another two nearby. These ween’t moving as much as the others, and that concerned her. If she couldn’t change their Fate, then perhaps she could simply check what was wrong, if only to ease her own insecurities. They already had a feeling they knew who these would lead to.

Just in case, they located a pair of small earplugs, inserting them into their ears before contending with the next stages - stretching the droplets across the frames was often more fragile a job than she’d have liked, and it all depended on the intentions of those on the other side. If they didn’t want to be found, they wouldn’t, which was why the shining red droplet was all the more perplexing. Luckily enough, the dew held, stretching across the frame of webbing and solidifying into a shining film like a mirror. Tapping her fingers across the edges of the passage, a relieved smile curled her lips for the first time in an age. At least someone was working with her today.

She could have visited many of these people, stepping through temporarily into their world, but chose just to watch. Putting her body through that was a waste of a lot of energy, both mental and physical. Rapping her knuckles atop the dew, ripples fanned out from that spot before stabilising into the sheet again. 

This time, though, there was an image there: two people, standing next to each other, the shorter talking animatedly about something that “Ariadne” wasn’t sure they wanted to hear. Fate had told them something of this future, the tragedy, and that was hard to bear however much they were driven to hiding their emotions. The Conductor, Theodore, and his brother Ulysses… cruelty wasn’t a foreign concept to her in the least, but it didn’t hurt any less when she had to watch one of them come to the end. She’d never known Ulysses’ job, as she’d never taken the liberty of meeting them in the Fate realm, but she wasn’t sure if asking now was the best idea.

Some time passed of her idly watching the Warren siblings going about their day with a newly blank expression, but the muscles in her arms were tense, and her mouth was dry. The droplet belonging to Ulysses was only stable enough for a final viewing, and she had a feeling that-

A crack rang out, reverberating through the entire space the Weaver occupied like a shockwave. 

The screen before her had shattered, and a lone droplet rested on the ground where there had once been two. It was filled with colour, not unlike the one she was using to guide herself, but was dark and muddied as if filled with smoke, refusing to reflect and shine like the others. The red was the colour of dried blood, and seeing such a thing still made “Ariadne” quite nauseous despite how often it’d played in her mind. She knew that Theodore was becoming more fragile, and the screeching of metal that accompanied the ‘screening’ was only making her feel worse. Yet, Fate could not be changed. To challenge that was to condemn herself, no matter how much she yearned to make things ‘better’ in her own eyes.

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, her muscles relaxed, and she forced herself to continue working. There were more important things to be doing than mourning someone she’d never met, after all. Scooping up the dewdrop, they observed how it clung onto their skin, unwilling to let go of some sort of an anchor. It didn’t bother them. Lives were fragile, and the emotions they carried often passed into the realm of Fate. Considering how long she’d watched Theodore and Ulysses for, it should have, but time was all a blur. She had no need for it. “Ariadne” would only toil away and weave her webs for as long as Fate decreed it, and held neither attachment to her own life nor the possibility of death.

With some resistance, they were able to leave the darkening dewdrop behind. Glancing about, they located the other coloured droplet without the need for their blindfold. How annoyingly persistent. Taking it into her hand, “Ariadne” felt herself seize once more. Hurriedly, she shook it away from her skin and onto fabric, making note of a strange red mark that it’d left. A… burn? Though she lacked sensation when things harmed her, that was more of a fascinating thing than something for concern. Nothing like that had happened before, and it drew her closer than ever to the subject of the dew. 

She left the area for a moment, weaving some spider’s silk between her fingers at an abnormal speed until she’d created a pair of gloves out of them. Slipping these on, they returned to the location of the doorway and the droplet both. Picking it up once more, they were relieved to find the gloves had prevented further irritation, however worrying the latent heat was. Looking upwards to the frame of webbing, they heaved a sigh of regret. There was no turning back for them now. At least the same was true for him, and she could possibly convince him just what he was doing was wrong. Possible, but unlikely. Near-impossible. 

Raising onto the tips of her toes, she slowly stretched the droplet across its frame and prayed it’d hold together. The whole realm was heating up, and she instantly realised something was wrong. A haze filled the air as many beads of dew begun to vaporise, and it took all the strength she had to pull her blindfold down in order to protect her eyes before ramming her shoulder through the passageway and out of Fate’s realm. She couldn’t afford to look backwards. 

Running blindly for once, she staggered out into the world beyond, not stopping until she felt the oppressive heat recede from behind her. Orpheus’ dewdrop fell to the ground as her spiderweb disappeared, and the colour was drained from it. Though clear and thus without extra indication, it would serve her well enough. Leaning down, she untied her blindfold and ripped the fabric filling the centre ‘eye’, letting the dew fall from her finger when she laid the fabric down and watching while it solidified as if crystallised into a lens.

This, they reasoned while they stood, would surely make the barren landscape they were often met with brighter.

There, in front of them, laid a sight they never expected - a large building whose fading sign bore the words “Eurydice Mansion”. It almost made her want to laugh. He truly was committed to the naming schemes, wasn’t he? It was easy enough for her to walk to the door and let herself in, but something told her the so-called “novelist” wouldn’t make himself so easy to find. Naturally, she held his Fate with her, and there laid the upper hand. It was eerily quiet for such a big mansion, as if no other people were there. This struck her as odd, given the amount of figures she’d seen in previous ‘checkups’, but something so small didn’t matter as long as she could get her job done. Using the small cues the ‘lens’ gave her, she walked along the outskirts of the building for a time, stopping only to pluck a small flower from the earth. Forget-me-nots…

Tucking this through a hole in the belts she wore, situated near her chest, would ensure Orpheus saw it. He needed to have a constant reminder of how mistaken he was trying to change everything. With a frown curling her lips downwards, the woman busied herself with looking all over the mosaic that covered one side of the building - a poor choice though it was, for all the weathering evident across the tiles - for a specific design. The sky was darkening faster than she would’ve expected, but she managed to find it before the sun slipped below the horizon: a tile on the lowest row of the mosaic, depicting a snake curled into itself. This would have been unremarkable to anyone else, but the extra loop in the body told her everything she needed to know.

Taking something small from a pouch on her belt, she rolled the round gem in her hand and ducked to a crouch. A shadow had passed the window that interrupted the centre of the mosaic, and the last thing she needed was to be discovered early. Doing all they could to stop themself from shuddering, they pushed the gemstone into a hole where the snake’s eye would be. With a mechanical hiss, parts of the wall began to shift to the left, sliding the tiles away and revealing a passageway. Pocketing the stone for later, “Ariadne” wiped away the sheen of sweat beginning to form on her hands. Nerves weren’t something that would help them, and thus had no place in their… mission. 

She wasn’t nervous, and she wouldn’t be, though the uncanny pounding that’d begun in her chest as she neared her destination could’ve proven otherwise. Orpheus just needed to cooperate, and everything would be fine. He never did, though. Swallowing, the woman seriously contemplated running back to a doorway that wasn’t there any longer. Everything felt wrong, and she felt watched already. Her voice rung through the corridor, though, as clear and confident as she could make it sound. The man couldn’t sense fear, no, but her job was much harder when she was uncertain.

“Immortal, I’ve a proposition for you.”

As soon as she uttered the moniker, a paradoxical chill fell over the room. She tore the blindfold away from her eyes as it began to burn again, cursing under her breath. Evidently, he didn’t favour being called that, though it was his name. A man of many names, of many lives, but of one undeniable Fate. Though the ‘lens’ of the blindfold continued to scald her hand, she gripped it harshly. Anger was no companion here, but neither was complacency. She wondered idly if his Eurydice was anywhere to be found, but discarded the thought just as soon. He’d have little motivation to mess around with Fate’s machinations in such a rash manner if she was there to help him.

“If you don’t want to cause more problems for yourself, you’ll listen. I’d appreciate getting out of this corridor, though. It seems you’ve been renovating.”

“Ariadne” felt her tone tremble, but didn’t back down. Instead, she held her head higher, walking through the corridor even though it stretched further and further along with her strides. He was really listening (for once), she could tell, for a hissing wind filled the room and carried messages. Many were too quiet or otherwise warped for her to properly ascertain what he was trying to say, but they made her uneasy enough. Soon, the Weaver became irritated, turning on her heel and starting to walk in the opposing direction. To her surprise, the wind parted for her, and a doorway gleamed at the end of her line of sight. Typically, he wasn’t giving things to the heralds of Fate so easily.

Tugging gently at her gloves, she made sure that they were firmly secured beneath her sleeves before reaching towards the door handle and falling through a darkening abyss.

The wind was knocked out of her lungs for a moment, but she soon righted herself thanks to the wind’s direction. Unbeknownst to the Weaver, her blindfold had become useless, as it no longer glimmered with the dew that Fate had given her. She still looked expectantly out from the tear in the fabric, hoping for any guidance, though none showed itself. She was unable to speak, though the hissing words were ringing through her head, and the pounding of her own heartbeat steadily increased in volume. Just when it became all-consuming, and the headache building over time was threatening to split her in two, she fell down into a room.

A bed of strikingly golden flowers greeted her undignified descent, though they were luckily soft enough to cushion her fall. Staggering to her feet, she peeled the blindfold properly away from her eyes, fumbling around her belts for an empty pouch and closing it inside. The brightness of her surroundings was stifling, the hairs on her arms rising, but there wasn’t any choice. She’d come so far, and she was going to get to her goal whether this Immortal liked it or not. She stood on trembling legs and pulled herself together, clearing her throat and beginning to address the empty room. He’d not want to present himself physically for a while after all the trouble they were causing, she was sure, and that was fine.

“Cease your altering Fate, and rest in the knowledge of stillness. There is still a chance for you to fix what you’ve begun, but that requires cooperation.”

There was a large table in the centre of the room. Before “Ariadne” knew it, she was stumbling towards it like her legs were being pulled by strings, movements stilted and unnatural. It bore two chairs despite only one person being present, and she sat down in one of these, though it felt like she wasn’t quite in command of her own body. A jolt of pain ran up her arm as it lurched toward a fountain pen on the desk, but she had no room to exclaim. This wasn’t just a normal novelist she was dealing with. He was much more terrifying, though she’d never guessed just how far his… ‘contract’ had run. Just how much of his humanity he’d forgo in order to reach a goal.

Eventually, her hand moved in jerky, large motions against a page resting in front of her, spelling words that ripped and entirely tore the paper in places. The heat that she’d felt in Fate’s domain was beginning to return, but “Ariadne”’s lack of autonomy meant she couldn’t react to it. Nothing mattered to her, in any case, except for figuring out why he could control her, and undoing it before anything worse happened. Before she could attempt to speak, her head jerked downwards to what had been scrawled on the page, glaring at her in emerald green ink. They had half expected it to be red from blood with how erratic and careless he’d been, but the gentler colour made what was there no easier to stomach.

“YOU REALLY THINK YOU CAN SHIFT THE TIDE. WHAT HAS BEEN SET IN MOTION NOW HAS ALWAYS BEEN. FOR AEONS BEFORE YOU SET YOUR EYES UPON THIS GROUND. BEFORE THEY DID. I WILL DO AS I MUST. AND YOU WILL BE POWERLESS TO STOP ME. OR STOP WHOEVER COMES AFTER ME. I AM ETERNAL. I AM INFINITE. I AM “IMMORTAL”. YOU ARE NOT. YOU SHOULD REMEMBER THAT.”

As this ink faded away, a strange command took its place in a neater script, phrased as simply as any writer would command a character.

“The Fate Weaver stands, bowing to welcome an arrival.”

And so she stood, and she bowed, for Orpheus - Immortal, rather - had arrived.

The pin that affixed to his lapel was all too familiar: this was the very same figure-eight ouroboros that “Ariadne” had seen in many places through her life, though it all rushed back to her now. The mosaic’s was the only one she had recognised, but perhaps the voice in the corridor had been related to it. The symbol of eternity was a glaring mockery of both people in the room, though only one truly cared, and he intended to make her care as well. The pin, however small, was spreading a black miasma through the fabric of his pale grey jacket, and it was almost reaching his skin. Had he been so careless as to give even more of himself away, if only to prevent something she was no longer able to see? 

He walked wordlessly across the room while “Ariadne” shook herself loose of the controlled state, seeming either oblivious to this development or not to care entirely. Sitting on the seat across from the Weaver, he took the fountain pen from where it threatened to roll off the table, shaking his head in combined disbelief and disappointment. Once again, the page was strangely clear of text, and he wrote on it without regard for what had been there before. The silence in the room was so heavy it felt suffocating for “Ariadne”, but Orpheus was used to it by now. He hadn’t seen anyone familiar to him in a long time, but he only had himself to blame for that. Oftentimes, Fate had other plans when it came to someone so volatile and possibly malicious.

It just so happened that “plan”, “Ariadne” herself, had found themself in a bind tighter than any she could’ve imagined weaving. Though she imagined herself free of the novelist’s control, nothing could have been more wrong. He didn’t need any fancy implements or trickery to mess her about, not while she was within the confines of the Manor. It was simply a formality than any good host - and certainly a Baron, though there was no one in the Manor that would know to address him as such - should afford to his guests. 

Once more, after being met with a sly smile from the other at the table, a singular page was slid across to her. This time, there were two words written, but so many things happened in a few seconds that she was unable to process the script. In a flurry of movement, the woman stood, unable to resist the pull of Fate. How… how did he learn? That question rang in her mind as she was pulled to her knees in the room, hands slamming onto the floor as the petals began to curl and wither beneath them. An acrid smell, now all too familiar, met her nostrils. Though her head was bowed and she had no willpower to lift it, she knew well enough that Orpheus would have his own safeguards in place, for this was his domain.

Or so she thought.

As the fierce burning continued, spreading through the Manor and enveloping the two in crimson flames, echoing footsteps rung out across the undefined space. Flinging something towards “Ariadne” directly before she could no longer see for the smoke, Orpheus watched the remnants of Fate curl and dance in the pitch-black air. No, he’d brought her back just to see who was always in control. Now, as her vision wavered, the woman grasped the page and bought it closer to her, letting out a hoarse laugh for the last time. What a tricky one he was.

“She surrenders.”

[luminescentlyricist]

🎪 An Explosive Break - Identity V 🎪

With the release of Weeping Clown and thus more Hullabaloo lore, some of the things written here may be outdated slightly, but I have tried to keep it as canon-compliant as possible prior to this release. [Even then, I made mistakes in the details, but the general event progression is the same.] I hope you enjoy the read!

~

Mike stumbled where he stood, sitting quickly down onto his rough bed so as not to fall over. The acrobat was relatively new to the circus, but held utmost faith in himself. He’d spent the past few days unpacking and getting ready, but today was the one he’d been waiting for… He’d finally earned Bernard’s trust and been told he could perform for Hullabaloo. Checking in the mirror, he hastily locked the door to his small room. Sure, outsiders thought they lived in small tents echoing the Big Top, but the cloth was just an excuse to hide what little structure there actually was when the rooms were set up. He wasn’t quite sure whether it was to be considered a travelling circus, but he hoped so. The adventure promised to him was half of what had lured him into working there, flashy costumes and employment opportunities notwithstanding. Those he could showcase with just about any group that gave him half a chance.

Looking around the room, he spied one of his suitcases almost open, the materials within carefully wreathed in all manner of paddings. It was dangerous, carrying acids and other such hazardous equipment for his ‘special’ interest without having them locked up and secured, but it had been the best he could do at the time. Besides, if it hadn’t appeared to be a regular bag, there would’ve been far more questions to dodge. Despite being an acrobat, that type of thing wasn’t his strong suit. Standing with a slight groan, the world whipped around in front of his eyes for a moment. The bright lights weren’t the best thing for his eyesight, however young and spritely he appeared to be. Walking slowly over to the suitcase, he dragged it to sit on a rug near the farthest wall, tapping around on said wall for an inevitably loose board and finding one that he pried aside with his trembling fingers.

There weren’t exactly the best regulations in place for the hobbies Mike had, so he got away with what carelessness he displayed from time to time, but the thought of being discovered was the last thing he wanted anyway. Glancing back towards the door, a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead despite the lack of hot weather. He needed to pull himself together. As far as Bernard and anyone else was concerned, even his new friend Margaretha, the balls and other supplies contained within the hastily-constructed case were only for juggling. He’d hoped that was how it’d stay. Dragging his fingers down the worn leather, he fiddled with the silver clasps, managing to heave the lid over without crushing anything vital. With a heavy thud, it all fell open, revealing the result of his efforts. Pristine bottles, shining juggling balls and miscellaneous tricks kept securely in place with all manners of loops and button-straps, as well as being padded in thickly with whatever Mike was able to find with a moment’s notice. The invitation to Hullabaloo had come with little warning, and he’d not wanted to waste any precious travelling time in case it delayed when he was able to perform. He’d not expected any sort of introductory delay, but all came together in its due course.

Mike’d been there for a few months at the time, and his heart still ached for home, but there were ways he could carry those memories with him. This was half of the reason why he’d not properly unpacked for so long - sometimes, he kidded himself into thinking he’d leave. But there were new friends here too, like Margie and Murro, and they were his reason to stay. The dancer was charming and trustworthy, even though he’d only known her for a few days, and there were rumours that she’d be introducing her fiancé soon. He couldn’t wait to make a good impression.

The Wildling, though, was like an older brother to him. A guardian when the ringmaster was asleep. His heart squeezed horribly every time he read the crinkling letter underneath his pillow, though he intended to frame it and keep it close. Having a hard time coming to terms with losses was something that’d followed the acrobat wherever he went. He was becoming more aware of these patterns over time, and preservation of memories was becoming easier due to the technology available. Attachments were fine things to have, he told himself, and Murro was safe out there somewhere.

Eyes widening suddenly, the young man snapped out of his nostalgic daze. He pulled on some white gloves at his bedside table, wiggling his fingers to make sure they weren’t going to slip off. Someone knocked on the thin door, which was really just a panel of enough wood to cover the entranceway and give him a modicum of privacy. Nearly slamming the suitcase shut on his fingers in his panic, he called out to his visitor, unable to keep his tone from trembling. Peeling off the gloves and approaching the doorway, he quickly wiped off the sheen of sweat gathering at his palms onto his pants and cleared his throat.

“Mike Morton here. What do you need?”

His voice had always been soft, but nothing compared to the near-whisper that escaped his lips then. He’d not intended for it to come out that way, but hadn’t truly needed to speak to anyone for quite a while. Brow creasing in concern, the acrobat made way for the figure at the other side of the entrance for them to come in. Usually, whatever small area he could claim as his own was nearly sacred to him, but the circus was new and frightening. Some companions would surely be an asset to him while getting used to everything. One certain performer had shown him kindness from the very beginning, and he couldn’t have been more grateful for that, but she did little to ease his nerves when he was so tired all the time.

“To talk with a friend.”

The reply came after a moment’s pause, and the familiar dancer revealed herself in the doorway, leaning against the thin walls for a moment before Mike had the thought to usher her into the tent. Steps so light they could barely be heard, Margaretha picked her way through the strewn path of half-unpacked bags and perched on the end of Mike’s bed, crossing her long legs but remaining tense and ready to leave. Eventually, Mike snapped himself out of his uncharacteristic daze and retrieved a rolled-up piece of paper from his scattered belongings, hanging it up on one of the walls. Though not much of an artist himself, an old friend had designed a poster for him. However long it’d been since he’d visited home, he’d cherished that wherever he went. The performer’s mismatched eyes wandered to read the text, a gentle smile curling his lips upwards. “Mike Morton’s Birthday Party Show!”

For a brief moment he forgot he had a visitor, being so caught up in his euphoric memories. But Margie was a friend of the present, and had even placed enough trust in her companion to share with him a small secret. She’d slung an inconspicuous black bag over her shoulder and was setting it down on the bedsheets, her gaze doing a rapid and habitual sweep of the area to make sure nobody but the acrobat was watching. Ushering him over with one hand, she pushed the bag away with the other, setting its contents in her lap - a glittering music box, carefully modelled in the shape of a circus tent and adorned with the types of gems she’d previously only dreamed of.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Mike? Sergei had it made for me. He thought that being able to choose my own music for the dances - to an extent - may help ease my nerves. We are new here, as you know, and I find audiences can be unwelcoming at first. I can only hope you don’t get such thoughts.”

Mike, suddenly apprehensive to be in his own space, came to sit beside her on the bed, grabbing his gloves once more as he passed. He didn’t want to damage such a precious object with carelessness, much less get any marks on it that others would notice. Pausing for a second, his eyes found Margie’s as she nodded encouragingly. Opening the box with as much care as he could muster, Mike peered inside. Squinting, he looked up to his dressing table, finding a monocle and affixing the chain behind his left ear. Though just used as a cosmetic most of the time, he’d since put a magnifying lens in. Preparing his props had been tricky work until he’d committed the movements to memory, and swore he could do it with his eyes closed.

The details of it all were nearly overwhelming, but he could recognise how much care had been put into it, and that was all that really mattered. It wasn’t his, after all; it was Margie’s, and she was clearly smitten with both her fiancé and the gift. He took one glance at the handle and decided it would be insensitive for him to play it, seeing as it had been described in such a personal manner. Placing the lid back down, he smoothed his hand over the fine carvings and looked up at his friend once again to respond - he was easily distractible, so locking eye contact in some way was the easiest way for him to stay focused.

“It’s a remarkable show of craftsmanship, that’s for sure. He didn’t say where he got it?”

Margaretha laughed softly, taking the music box from Mike’s lap and placing it back in the bag. 

“That’d ruin it, don’t you think? I can introduce you to Sergei, though, because we don’t have our show until tomorrow. You shouldn’t be watching your own troupe members perform without knowing their identities, at the very least. It’s early enough that you can get some undisturbed sleep afterwards. The lights are out today because Bernard is fixing things up for our new display, and it may well take more power than we’d otherwise have… I’ll be back in a moment.”

The dancer trailed off, standing up onto her toe tips as she left the bedside and the ‘tent’ in its entirety. There was an unfortunate chill in the air, and the short-sleeved outfit she wore diid little to shield her from the elements. Making her way to her own room, arms crossed and rubbing her shoulders, she was surprised to find Sergei and Joker waiting for her there. The clowns had evidently been discussing the upcoming performance, but stopped in their tracks when they saw Margie’s silhouette in the doorway. Sergei stood up, shifting his position atop her neatly-made bed - so clean that it looked virtually untouched - and gesturing for her to sit beside him.

“It’s a pleasure to see you, Nat- Margaretha… now if you’ll excuse Joker and I’s untimely intrusion, we were just talking about tomorrow’s performance. I was going to come and collect you, because we haven’t had a proper chance to talk since the ringmaster’s meeting, but you seemed busy.”

He raised a brow when the dancer didn’t join him, instead standing and gently grabbing her wrist to gain her attention.

“Are you feeling well? You’re restless, my dear.”

“I have other things on my mind, to tell you the truth. I told Mike I would help him settle in, and I mustn’t keep my friend waiting. Shall we move this discussion? I daresay he wouldn’t mind the company. I was planning to make sure he’d be familiar with you before our grand debut. How about you two come with me to visit him?”

Her reply was quiet, and she didn’t meet Sergei’s eyes. Usually, she wasn’t so reserved, but the dancer was definitely displaying nervousness beyond performance anxiety; it was true, but the thought of voicing any of her concerns was more nauseating than the issues themselves. Joker watched the exchange silently, bending down to fix a part of his prosthetic and swinging his leg back and forth to test the joint. He was simply happy to observe Natalie, if anything; the dancer had piqued his interest since the beginning. As much as he was jealous, he understood Sergei’s captivation.

Meanwhile, the Acrobat in question had set himself into quite a panic. He only had moments (before he thought his friend would return) to clear away his acids and materials in their cabinet, the likes of which was laid out on his bed where Margie had sat prior. It was made of dark wood, hosting a strong metallic loop at the top from which it could hang, with a thin layer of black felt on the back for protective purposes. He picked up a couple of large nails and hammered them into the wall, grimacing at the noise but knowing there was nothing he could do to combat it. Quickly, he began to sort things in the cabinet - acids in the shelves, juggling ball casings in a bag on the door, all in a flurry of movement that his own eyes could barely keep track of. Adrenaline was fuelling the young man, and it was just as well because of the others’ plans.

Soon after, Mike was finally able to hook it up on the wall. Fumbling with the ruffled collar he usually wore - lacking much in the way of a casual, out-of-performance outfit and preferring the colourful display - he lifted it over his head and set it down on top of the cabinet, a small silver key shaking free of the fabric to drape at his neck on a chain. It usually remained hidden amongst the folds, and for good reason. Access to his equipment wasn’t something he intended to give to anyone else, unless his ringmaster needed to do a check for security purposes. Taking this key off, he hung it on the handle of the cabinet, forgetting his caution as the sound of footsteps agitated him further. But they died down, and he decided that he’d have time to check on his companion - had she become lost?

Quickly grabbing a pouch with three casings and an acid vial small enough to fit in his pocket, Mike headed over to the tent where he’d seen Margie leave towards. His hands were trembling at his sides, and when he knocked the noise stuttered against the door-panel. Two seconds in, and he’d already shifted his first impressions with Sergei, who’d stood in order to open it. Instead of the critical scowl the performer had expected, a serene smile rested on the clown’s face when he stepped away to usher the stranger in, bowing slightly to show respect.

“Ah, Margaretha! Is this the dear friend who you were so concerned for?”

Sergei asked, glancing over his shoulder to check what her response was (in the form of a brief nod) before reseating himself. He didn’t want to check with Mike, though they were right there, for fear of overwhelming the already skittish-looking acrobat. However, he’d since straightened his posture and was already observing the room keenly, opting to sit on the floor with his legs crossed because there weren’t any more proper seats in the cramped area. 

“The name is Mike Morton, sir. I didn’t mean to disturb your discussion, but Margie thought I should meet some of my fellow troupe members.”

Truthfully, Mike was still nervous, and it wasn’t just because he’d never met Sergei before. Joker was there in the corner, having been otherwise silently adjusting various things from his prosthetic leg for far too long to be genuine, and there wasn’t a thing about him that felt trustworthy. After a while of this observation, the man’s head jerked up, and he fixed Mike with a glare colder than any he’d seen before. Clearly, a mistake had been made, and Joker didnt take lightly to that sort of thing. He’d already been shoved into the same room as his rival. The last thing he needed was some nosy newcomer asking questions about his accident.

“Staring at someone sure is a strange way of meeting them, Mike. We communicate with words here.”

The sad clown murmured, scowl remaining on his face. Even though his expression was permanently downcast, he was clearly angered, and the atmosphere of the small room was immediately dampened. Shifting the positions of his legs on the floor, the acrobat looked away from his newfound adversary, unclipping the pouch from his belt and trying to ignore the trembling in his hands. Exhaling and attempting to regulate his breathing in order to respond, he busied himself undoing the drawstrings of the pouch he’d bought and tipping out its contents onto the floor. After a few moments of electric and uncomfortable silence between the performers, he rolled a vial in his left fingers and returned to looking at Joker, while the newcomers abstained from interruption. Though Margie calmed them all down, it would only make the situation worse to intervene.

The younger’s breath caught in his throat regardless, and he found himself unable to give Joker a proper response. This seemed to irk them even more, but there was little to be done. Just when Mike thought he might pass out from holding his breath in anticipation of another horrible quote, a gentle hand brushed against his shoulder, and Sergei stepped forward to stand behind him and glare at Joker.

“This is not the time for fighting. We are here to discuss and introduce, and nothing more. If you need to spit at each other, do it outside. We are all tired, but that is no excuse for treating others with disrespect. I’m sure Mister Morton here didn’t intend to forgo his words.”

Immediately, the acrobat relaxed a tiny bit, glad for the smiling clown’s company even if he was imposing in his own right. He nodded to acknowledge these words, but was otherwise absorbed in flicking the clasps on his juggling balls’ casings around. Intrigued, this captured the attention of his defender, who sat on the floor in front of his and looked back at Margie, who was gazing worriedly toward the darkening skies in her own right.

“On the other hand, Margaretha, you and I can stay back as long as we wish to discuss the performance. Things are skewing awfully, and the darkness is undoubtedly making things worse. I will make sure Mike can calm himself, then it’s best I help him find his tent. I think Joker will agree that he has overstayed his welcome already… I doubt I’ll have a good rest tonight; adrenaline is a powerful thing, and I would rather help you set up regardless.”

At this, the other performer heaved himself to his feet, teetering a bit as his prosthetic buckled but getting a hold of his balance just as soon. There was little point in arguing, it was true, and there were more important things he had to worry about than some passive-aggressive exchanges. Dipping his head to Margie and removing his hat with a flourish, he left the premises without so much as a glance to his fellow clown and the acrobat. They were different, and he didn’t often bother with those he couldn’t connect to enough. 

Arriving at his tent, there was nothing to do but attempt sleep. Though he couldn’t possibly do that because his mind was racing with thoughts. Seeing the way that Margaretha had moved, so cautiously, and her overall unwillingness to be involved in the night (despite them being in her own room) was making him nervous. Regardless of his frail Weeping Clown character in shows, there was nothing much that moved the stalwart man. This was the one exception: some days, it were as if Margaretha were the only person in the circus who saw him behind his masks, and he wanted to protect her as best he could. Joker would be lying to himself if he said he didn’t have any feelings for her, but held back on his advances. Sergei was more trouble than he was willing to deal with, seeing how tightly-knit the two were.

Back in Margaretha’s tent, the woman herself had walked outside to catch some air, leaving her two friends alone. It was obvious, even before the pink reached his cheeks, that Mike felt ashamed of his performance in front of his peers. No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t muster the courage to say anything. A few excruciating seconds passed before the other man spoke and shattered the silence, warm tones alleviating some of the nervousness that’d consumed Mike’s thoughts. He could see why his friend trusted them so much. 

“Say, Mike, what are those seams there? I’ve never seen such craftsmanship.”

Sergei asked, pointing to one of the distinctive red casings that the acrobat was fiddling with. It boasted silver-grey stitches that stuck out far more than usual juggling balls would call for, and it was clear they were closer to clasps than anything - meant to be shifted and opened, however deceiving their simpler appearance. At first, Mike’s fingers only tightened around the fabric. He didn’t know if Sergei really had his best intentions in mind. Sighing softly, he placed it gently in his pouch again, drawing the strings without another word. A response did come, luckily, but it was much shorter than he’d have liked, and the young man was displaying far more nervous behaviour than his usual bright disposition would allow.

“I made them myself, that’s why. Don’t trust anyone else to.”

He muttered, fastening the pouch onto his belt with a click and blinking sleepily. In his previous troupe, he’d found it more secure to glue magnets in between the leather belt-straps and sew them shut rather than having everything slip out all the time during performances. It was this sort of intuition that made Bernard recognise him as more of a valued member of Hullabaloo, combined with his naturally magnetic personality and willingness to try anything. Together with Joker’s mechanical knowledge, the two would’ve made an excellent team, but there was no chance of that union. Their ideals and viewpoints clashed too much, and beyond the stage they preferred keeping to themselves.

Mike shook himself back into the real world, cheeks tinging with a red flush when he became aware of Sergei staring quizzically at him. The man’s hands were balled into fists at his sides, but there was no other indication of anger, his expression frozen in a serene smile as always. He wasn’t satisfied with the acrobat’s response, but was equally sure he’d find out the truth in due time. He always found a way; his charm wasn’t just part of the show, and that was often deceptively detrimental to other people. The acrobat stood, unaware that his vial of acid had slipped out of its otherwise secure position on his belt and onto the floor until Sergei picked it up and held it out to him.

“A wise decision, that’s for sure. How about I accompany you getting to your tent? It’s getting late, and Miss Margaretha may need some time to herself. The power’s been diverted temporarily for my debut, so it’ll be darker for the journey, but I’m sure we can figure out how to get back between us.”

Mike curled his fingers around the vial carefully before slipping it into his pocket, only nodding a response. The dark was finally catching up to him, however much he doubted his ability to sleep. The coldness of Joker’s eyes and tone of voice wasn’t likely to leave him for a significant amount of time. Much like the man in question, the acrobat was mostly unfazed by things others might find unsettling; the way he’d been spoken to just dug into his skin a little too much to be fixed by blind optimism. The clown clearly had a vendetta against him. The reason was unclear at that point, but he was unwilling to poke around enough to get those types of answers unless it was strictly necessary.

The acrobat stood up quickly, the ground lurching under his feet for a few confusing seconds. Managing not to stagger, he took a moment to smooth a hand over the pocket where the vial was tucked and let out a relieved sigh. Given its contents, it would have been very easy to know whether or not it was broken, but he still liked to check. Small things like that were essential in keeping his mind peaceful when the circus was such a busy place. He found it more comfortable trailing behind Sergei until the man held the door open, at which point Mike took the lead and thanked Margie for her hospitality, falling back into step beside his companion just as soon. As courteous as the clown was, tension remained in the air wherever he trailed that made any situation uncomfortable - like the soothing he did was only an excuse to let things get worse when it was all gone.

The majority of the journey passed in silence, which relieved Mike of any increase in nerves for a precious few minutes. Leaning against his doorframe, the performer pivoted on his heel to thank Sergei for the company only to find they were staring directly past him, gaze fixed on the very same key that he’d been so careful to hide before that careless forgetfulness. While he wasn’t questioned about it, the clown did follow him into the tent, drumming their fingers against the wood of the wall on which the cabinet hung, dangerously close to where they key itself sat. Tension shivered its way into Mike’s shoulders, making them raise and pull visibly taut. Biting back as much nervousness as he could, the young man walked himself back over to the doorway and looked pointedly at his uninvited guest.

“I think you should find your way back to your own lodgings before you jeopardise your performance with sleep loss, sir.”

He muttered, barely awake enough at that point to prevent his voice from slurring. 

Sergei agreed silently, slipping out the door and leaving it ajar. There was too much on his mind now that he’d seen the cabinet and the vial; though unaware of Mike’s bomb-crafting hobby and the true nature of the juggling balls’ construction, it had become abundantly clear that his fellow new employee wasn’t as open about things as he seemed. It’d warrant further investigation, also taking into account the previous protectiveness with which he’d held the key to the mysterious cabinet about him. The room wasn’t neat, either, but one thing appeared particularly amiss - an otherwise inconspicuous poster, yellowed with age and curling at the edges. It’d been stuck on like Mike hadn’t had enough time to think, placed on top of a board that’d raised enough to make it crinkle or pinch in various places when it already seemed fragile.

The once-smiling clown was acutely aware of his makeup smudging and being in dire need of a touch-up. He headed back to his fiancée’s tent on the way to his own, feeling an urge to make sure nothing was wrong after her strange and withdrawn behaviour earlier. To his surprise, she was slumped down in a sitting position and leaning heavily back against the room’s exterior, blinking at him as if she’d just been disturbed from sleep. Not unlike his own, mascara was running down her cheeks, and she flinched away from Sergei’s hand when he kneeled in front of her, reaching to wipe it off. Though it was getting colder and her clothes were less comforting, she refused to move from her spot. Shivering, she shifted slightly to wrap her arms around her knees, wanting to shrink back down into the dirt. Sergei was the last person she wanted to see. Joker had been speaking with her a lot more before then, and was helping her clear the fog from her eyes. Though the guilt was eating at her, she felt for Sergei less and less.

“What’s the matter, dear? You should come inside… the cold can’t be too good for you, and you must rest before tomorrow.” 

The dancer didn’t look up at him, her silence weighing heavily in the air before it was interrupted by her coming to a stand. She gripped the fabric draped over the tent for a moment, not seeking Sergei to lean against. She was perfectly capable of fending for herself, and the clown needed to learn that. If she needed help, though, there were other people she could actually rely on. Turning to face the inside of her room, she craned her neck toward the man she was speaking to carelessly over her shoulder. Anyone could judge that she’d been waiting for him in the night, but the change in her attitude was far less predictable.   

“I know.”

Margaretha - known as Natalie elsewhere, and to Sergei in private - didn’t care much for what he thought as she spoke. In truth, she’d rather have been with her other friends, but while he was around there were things she wanted to say to him. They were far more urgent than a need to sleep; though she’d desensitised herself to the majority of his affections over time, he was more powerful than he appeared. Bernard had taken a liking to him immediately, and since she was seen as a pair, a package deal alongside him… she shuddered to think of the prospects. She wasn’t ungrateful for what he’d done for her, and her earlier enthusiasm for the music boxes had been genuine when she’d visited Mike, but awareness had crashed over her since. It was all like a wave. Overwhelming, oppressive, leaving her struggling to breathe without any certainty as to where to drag herself next. But knowing about herself was better than the confusion, however painful.

Sitting back on her bed, she half hoped the clown wouldn’t join her. She steeled her resolve with a deep breath, the noise rattling in her ears. Everything was too much. If there was one thing she was good at doing after a lifetime of socialising with performers, it was masking her truer emotions. So she painted on a smile without make-up just in time for her fiancé to enter the room properly. He sat across from her, none the wiser. Drumming her carefully painted nails along the headboard of her bed, Margie rolled words around in her thoughts trying to figure out what was a good way to say what she needed to get out. There were two issues she wanted to point out, and one was decidedly lighter than the other, so leading with that one seemed the best bet.

“I’m just concerned about Mike, Sergei… I don’t know if he’ll fit in here, as Joker seems to have already made an enemy of him. I’ve no doubt he’s personable and easy to get along with, but that’s not enough. He’ll get torn apart!”

Usually level-headed, Margie appeared to be going off the deep end more than usual - her tone spiked upwards, and her hands were poised at either side of the jewelled cap she wore with all the intent in the world to rip her own hair out. They were trembling almost as badly as her voice before she gripped the sheets, manicured nails luckily prevented from digging into her sweat-slicked palms. She shifted about, anxious and unable to keep herself still. They were such small. erratic movements that it looked like she was flinching every so often. Even against the soft fabric, the sensations were irritating, but there wasn’t much she could do until her companion left.

The clown in question was looking at her with furrowed brows, expression an uncertain mixture of concern and anger. He didn’t want to be angry, but what she was saying just made so little sense. Why had she crawled here, out of the freezing weather, and acted in such a precarious way just to talk about someone else? He knew there was something she was hiding, and hated the idea of that more than anything else. Had he not worked for so many years to build trust in her, alongside genuine love? Irritably, he tugged at the collar of his outfit, otherwise maintaining his colder exterior. She didn’t need to know what he was truly thinking about. He gave her a simple nod in response, wanting to steer the conversation towards whatever was haunting his girl.

“While I do agree, don’t you think there’re much more… pressing matters to attend to, my love? You’re tenser than a tightrope.”

He responded quietly, leaning forward to place his elbows on his knees while waiting. Margie certainly could dance around the topics for long enough, but he could bring it all out of her with a few simple cues. Now that she felt he was truly listening…

“I don’t think this’ll work. We won’t.”

What.

Tapping the wooden frame of the chair he was sitting on, Sergei’s gaze swept up to meet the performer’s. Was she serious? After everything he’d done for her, all the care and love and effort, this was how she repaid him? There was only one logical reason for her feeling this way, and he had little time to deal with it. With them. A laugh burst forth from his lips, incredulous. It was just too much to process that late at night. Straightening his posture and clearing his throat, he lied flawlessly, as he’d been doing far too many times to keep people happy. Didn’t he deserve his happiness? That was what Natalie was to him, and he’d already fought tooth and claw to have her. Never again would she willingly slip through his grasp.

“As your friend first and foremost, my dear Natalie, I’ll drive myself to the edges of Hell before I fail you. Whatever you feel is best for you is likewise best for me. Now, I should be going… Rest, will you? Your dreams may treat you better than this unkind world.”

Sergei replied as curtly as he could muster, forcing a smile onto his cheeks. He’d smiled for too long, but then wasn’t the time to break. Pulling his collar straighter, he nodded toward his companion and pushed to standing, bracing against the arms of the chair. He looked towards the windows where darkness had set in, but his job wasn’t done yet. He had places to be with new and old friends alike. What Margie had said wouldn’t deter him from what he’d planned. If anything, the words she’d given him made the blood boil fiercer in his veins. 

Still seared into his thoughts was the cabinet in the Acrobat’s tent. Surely there was some sinister thing going on, and he wanted to know what that was. Despite the strange colour of the liquid in the vial Mike’d dropped earlier, he’d given no indication what it actually contained. Slipping off his boots in order to soften his footsteps, he hid them behind a nearby lamppost and (luckily still wearing socks) proceeded to creep about the exterior of his ‘friend’s new room. It was the dead of night by that point, and the unpacking everything had completely exhausted the young man, so there was very little stopping Sergei from going about his business in peace.

Said business, of course, began with finding a specific loose board on the outside of the room that Mike himself had located beforehand. This would be the only way Sergei could enter without disturbing the performer, seeing as he’d proven to be so sensitive to noises that he could be driven to waking up from paranoia. The shifting of the doorframe would be too obvious, when he could instead set the board down to lean against the softer fabric. Fingers curling around the nearly-splintering wood, he finally located the gap thanks to the tent’s cover being torn and caught in it. He shifted it aside and stepped through, ruffle at his neck having been wisely abandoned alongside his shoes beforehand. Who knew what he’d knock over if he wasn’t careful? He certainly didn’t intend to find out after getting that far.

Sleight of hand wasn’t his strong suit, but that was why he’d chosen the cover of the night. Steps as light as his girlfriend’s, he raised onto his toes to prevent as much noise as possible while advancing toward the cabinet. He raised one trembling hand to sweep hair obscuring his ear, only to be met with the terrifying sound of the young man rolling over to face him in the bed. Poised, Sergei kept as still as he possibly could. His heart pounded in his chest like a jackhammer. There wasn’t even enough space to breathe properly, so he didn’t. Just when he felt like his head was going to pop like a balloon, Mike rolled in the sheets again and faced the wall. Thank god. 

The clown relaxed so slowly it felt like he was moving one muscle at a time, just in case anything went wrong. His fingers closed around cold metal, and he exhaled all of the tension he’d been holding in his body abruptly. Edging towards the cabinet, ever careful not to bump Mike’s bed, he grabbed a vial of acid and bolted towards the ‘exit’. Every bit of caution he’d exercised up to seconds before simply wouldn’t mean anything if he didn’t get to Joker’s tent, and fast. A small portion of his waistcoat’s fabric was snagged on the wood, but he moved too quickly to give it a second thought. The rush of blood in his ears was all he could hear, so he wasn’t even aware of the alarming sound.

There it was. Joker’s tent was the largest in the area even though Bernard had sworn they were all the same, and despite what others claimed Sergei thought he was the ringmaster’s favourite instead of the starry-eyed blond he’d met earlier. There was a quick detour he needed to make, though, and it was one that made the ticking of the clock even more evident: he swooped into his own room and picked up a palette to tuck into a small bag and bring with him, relocating the vial from his jacket into the front pockets of it. Taking his time to get back to where Joker slept, he knocked on the door and tried to ignore the tension running through his whole body. The wait - though it only lasted a couple of minutes as the other stirred and came to the door - felt nigh-eternal.

Joker rubbed his eyes before stepping aside, face free of makeup but gaunt and tired as ever.  He just wanted relief from everyone unless it was Margie, and was very tempted to shut the door on Sergei and let everything fester. But the other would use his foot to block it from closing if that’s what it took; there was no way he could afford to back away from reality now, especially if that meant jeopardising the steps he’d planned out meticulously. Disregarding his own tired body, a showman’s grin stretched wide to shift his expression and mask his sinister intentions.

“Hello, Joker… I apologise for the early morning intrusion, but I was wondering if you’d be available to help me. You see, I have my big debut performance with Margaretha tomorrow, and I cannot find an appropriate make-up look. Surely an experienced clown such as yourself would have some advice? I have my own supply of greasepaint, so you needn’t bother with that, but if you could give me a demonstration of some of your own work I’d appreciate it greatly.”

At first, the man truly did intend to close the door. But that would result in more trouble, seeing the time sensitivity of the question. So, with his every muscle telling him to stop, he ushered Sergei in and closed the panel behind them. 

“You’re lucky I couldn’t get rest. Maybe this’ll help me for a while. You sure can talk a person to sleep.”

Joker huffed, gesturing for Sergei to sit down. His large hands weren’t the best at applying finer make-up, so he usually had one of the dancers do it for him, but he had no idea how basic the information was that the other really needed. To belittle the person who was hurting the target of his affections was one thing he planned to accomplish. Taking a seat himself, he heaved a case full of palettes and brushes onto his dressing table, switching the bulbs on. The zipper on the top of the case was straining. Sitting straighter, Sergei’s eyes were trained on the case, and he shifted forwards on his seat when Joker retrieved a specific range of colours. He was almost breathing down the other’s neck at that point, but the larger of the two was too tired to care. His eyes were already drooping, though not another word was spoken. It didn’t matter. 

For a brief moment, Sergei became unsure of his actions. The weight of the task was looming over him, heavier by the moment. There was no other choice. Conveniently enough, his companion needed to wash the brushes from the previous night’s applications. This raised Sergei’s lips in a bemused smile. If Bernard were to find out the utter carelessness of this act, he’d surely be questioned. Proper clowns knew the greasepaint brushes needed thorough overnight soaking the majority of the time. Notifying Bernard could only happen tomorrow, and the plan left no room for tomorrows… 

Watching until the weeping clown left the room, he spun into action. Taking the container of acid and one of the spare brushes, he became occupied combining the ‘ingredients’, dropping the emptied vial back into his bag and setting the liquid with powder in its pot. When all was said and done, he cleared his throat and waited for his ‘friend’ to return with the fresh brushes. Shaking the tightness from his shoulders, he sat his own palette down and began to idly apply a white base onto his face. Act natural. He was lucky that the greasepaint was liquid normally, because the consistency of his companion’s didn’t change noticeably. Soon enough, Joker returned, practically slamming down the cup of water he’d placed the brushes into.

He was angry about something, but Sergei was in no hurry to ask. He simply had to wait and confirm the other clown would take their own step into his plan, and then could leave and flee into the night with Natalie for good. Exhaling heavily, he stripped his calloused hands of their gloves and placed those aside. The next few minutes were spent in silence as Joker applied the base coat, this being as pleasant an experience together either would likely get that morning.

Those precious minutes were all Sergei needed as screams met his ears.

Joker gripped his rival’s shoulders with the adrenaline-fuelled strength of a thousand men, melting face glaring as much as it was able. He used this grip to heave himself onto a chair, sure he was going to die. But surviving was more agony than death, and the man who pushed him unceremoniously back to the floor knew this. He twisted back on his heel, well aware that Joker would no longer be able to speak his protest. At least not for that night. Thus. Sergei contentedly returned to his own tent, sleeping soundly for the first time in an age.

Mike Morton, on the other hand, stirred early. There was a strange draft coming in from outside, and the warmth coming from his thinning sheets wasn’t nearly enough to stave it off. He sat up and let out a groan of tired protest, peering with bleary eyes at the clock on his bedside. Six in the morning? Bernard had insisted on meeting with him at eight… there wasn’t much point in sleeping more. Despite however much he wanted more rest, his body didn’t shut down very quickly, so one of those hours would be likely spent trying to sleep anyway. He stretched for a moment, wincing at the cracking of his joints. A thought hit him like a train seconds after, and he shoved his hand underneath the pillow, exhaling in relief. The letter was still there.

There was no clear reason to be paranoid, but the hairs on the back of his neck were prickled regardless. Slowly pulling on his clothes, he came to strapping on his silver belt. The round in the centre could click open, so he was tempted to place something in there for the comfort, but decided against it. That which had once been habit made him feel self-conscious now that he was older. The other members of Hullabaloo made him feel young and inexperienced, but he knew better than to believe that. His relentless optimism in the face of mockery would have made him a good smiling clown, but the acrobat’s path was one he was more than happy to walk down.

After a few minutes of daydreaming and getting ready, Mike turned to his cabinet and pulled on the thicker black gloves he used to handle his materials, humming an idle tune as he went about clicking things to his belt. Something was amiss. He looked about, brows crinkling at the sight of an empty space on the shelf. Murro had warned him about such accidents - “I noticed that your cabinet wasn’t locked. Watch out for thieves.” - but he’d let it slip his mind. It felt like a betrayal of his friend’s memory, almost, but he shook the negativity away. Walking to his desk after double checking the cabinet was locked, he scribbled a note for Bernard and read it out loud. He could feel the key safely resting against his neck, entirely obscured by his collar. It made him feel a little better about his mistake, but the fact remained that he’d have to go and get more acid.

“Dear Bernard: I have an errand to run. When taking stock of my equipment, I miscounted and now have to retrieve something from a supplier. I may not be able to make it to the meeting as soon as I’d like, if at all. Apologies for this oversight. Regards, M.M.”

Folding it in half, the young man stuck it in his pocket and exited the room. Soon enough, he reached the ringmaster’s tent and slipped it under the door, hurrying to exit the premises so he didn’t disturb any of his fellow troupe members by making too much noise.

Two were already active, and that wasn’t something Mike needed to know. Sergei had told ‘Natalie’ to escape the circus grounds that previous night, after his altercation with Joker, just to make sure she never got mixed up in it all. He didn’t even need to considering what she’d confessed, but his own feelings for her were greater in that moment than any jealousy or accidental harm he may have caused otherwise. The Weeping Clown, in agony, had never let things rest. He’d dragged himself to his rival and mutilator’s dressing room just before the performance rehearsal, armed with clawed gloves so sharp they were nothing short of gauntlets. He’d sworn revenge, and he’d have it even if it turned out to be his last possession. 

Swaying lightly due to his prosthetic being knocked out of place, he braced himself against the doorframe, leering in at the smiling clown. Even though only his face - and not his throat, for the most part - had been burnt, he hadn’t had the courage to speak. The side of his face remained thickly bandaged, and the lack of depth perception was truly throwing him off. Disturbed by the noise eventually, Sergei looked up to see Joker, scowling for the one time in their mutual feud’s duration. Oh, how lovely it was for Joker to see the Smiling Clown crack even for a moment. He then lurched forwards, using his pure unstable weight to pin Sergei down. Things weren’t over until one of them was dead, and Joker didn’t intend to submit to the darkness. 

With a deafening crack, Joker bought the flat side of his fist down onto the side of his enemy’s head and rendered them unconscious, pressing the pad of his glove to the impact site in order to prevent bleeding as best he could. Due to how early it was, nobody present was awake, so he was free to rig up his tent in preparation for his little project. Nobody much visited him without Margie there, so he could also bar the doors and windows without raising much suspicion. He was in need of a new face, and had always wished to smile.

The pain that he felt performing self-surgery was little compared to that he felt in his heart without the woman he’d tried so hard to keep under his thumb. Even though he’d nearly succeeded in eradicating his only competition, she wasn’t around to see it and revel in it all. He’d liked to have thought he’d freed her from Sergei. Fuelled by this unspoken sorrow, this untamed anger, he affixed a mask over his face just in case people started asking questions. Keeping his head down, he became increasingly grateful for the cloaking darkness even though it began to fade. The work was easy enough… Nobody would get in his way for the first time in his life. He’d give his nemesis a grand send-off, if only to celebrate the loss more than the life of the clown.

Mike, completely oblivious as to what was happening back at Hullabaloo, had retrieved his acid and was slowly making his way back to the circus. The road was long and confusing, though, so he’d had to stop on the side. Sitting cross-legged, he retrieved some water and an apple from his bag. As much as he had his friends to keep him going, things became notably quieter since Murro left, so he’d been eating a lot more of the distinct red fruits simply to keep that memory alive to a degree. The Wildling himself had wished to disappear, but that was the last thing the Acrobat wanted to happen. He was the first one who’d shown true kindness in the troupe.

Joker knew that the power had been diverted to the main tent, so he made his way there and bashed in the door with his shoulder. Luckily, it didn’t possess a lock. With one hand, he held Sergei’s corpse, unceremoniously dragging the feet against the carpet. In the other, he heaved a bulky case of unknown materials, this being the first thing he thought to set down. It was up against the door as an extra layer of barricading just in case. There had to be an electrical box somewhere, or at least a few switches that he could mess around with… the sun was beginning to rise, and looking out the window nearly knocked him off his feet with the pain. Even though he’d donned a mask to help with the exposure, whatever acid managed to get near the opposite side of his face had messed with the light sensitivity in his singular good eye.

He knelt down to the case, running his fingertips along the edges before finding two small notches on the sides. Pressing these inwards, he twisted the lid off. Trying to grab the handle and open a clown’s bag of tricks would almost never work, and this was proof of that. Mike had never been the only one with a darker interest. Contained within were the makings of several different firelighting strategies, including gloves suspiciously close to those the Acrobat had put on to deal with corrosives earlier. Picking out all manner of tools, he was soon able to locate the electrical box, which was only guarded by a simple lock the clown would’ve been able to pick within a matter of seconds.

But he went about things more precisely, loosening things here and there to more or less dismantle the front panel before examining the results. Now this was something that all of the incessant tinkering work with his rockets had prepared him for. Electrical currents may have been less familiar to him, but he wasn’t trying to learn how to stop or initially prevent an electrical fire - he was going to create one, and intended to succeed. Squinting through yet another pounding headache, his hands trembled as he pulled a pair of rubber gloves onto them. As destructive as he wished to be, the only person he intended to burn (yet) was Sergei.

Revisiting the chest multiple times, it dawned on him that the whole ordeal was far more tedious than he’d accounted for. But the rigging was all ready, and all he needed was to flee. The case also contained the essentials from his tent, so he was perfectly capable of simply running. There was nothing he needed to go back to get. Everything was so meticulous, and yet the pyre would raze it to the ground. Sergei, in a sense, would represent Joker’s own rebirth. The Weeping Clown would finally be able to grin.

So he pulled the switch, and everything came to light.

The spread was fast, and the searing heat kept the clown on his toes. If he did so much as look backwards, he’d lose enough seconds to potentially jeopardise his own life. He powered forward with the chest in his arms, staggering more than he cared for but never falling. It’d all come down to that minute, possibly less time. All he could do was continue moving, stumbling near-blind and choking due to the heavy haze of smoke and ash that was being fed into the atmosphere. The main tent had caught entirely by that time, and it was creeping to the outskirts at an alarming rate, where some of the smaller tents were positioned. The knowledge that his own was already reduced to ashes was nothing. He’d begin a new life, one where he could always smile.

He was knocked down eventually by his prosthetic’s melting together, as he’d predicted. No time remained for him to get it fixed in the moment, so he took it off and dropped to a crawl in the dirt to get away from the rest of it all. There was no telling where he went after that, but the fire never did catch up to him. He left the smouldering wreckage of his workplace behind, though the weight of what he’d done would always carry itself upon his back. With a rattling cough, he dragged himself by his forearms (hands shaking too badly to help) into the shade of one of the last unburnt trees in the vicinity. Before his fatigue forced him into an uneasy sleep, he saw a silhouette emerge from the horizon that he stared out towards, embers popping behind him.

And Joker’s eyes hadn’t lied to him. Mike had returned from the supplier to find this carnage, immediately shielding his eyes to peer into the debris. Were his eyes deceiving him? The entirety of Hullabaloo, reduced to nothing. He didn’t even know where his tent was in the heaps of seared fabric and wood. The young man’s voice died in his throat, and he wouldn’t have been able to make any noises regardless of the oppressive air. Mike’s only thoughts were occupied by his friends, but he hadn’t seen Margie since the day before. Lethargy and grief pulled the Acrobat to his knees, and a fact made itself so obvious then that he wished he could be reduced to nothingness. 

Murro’s letter had burned away, just like the rest of his hope.

[luminescentlyricist]

⚔️ A Change of Heart ⚔️

A BIT OF CONTEXT :: This is my birthday short for my dearest friend @sunbites! Vaguely inspired by this post, mostly just because she wanted a villain arc.

Here’s the music I composed as a companion piece to this writing.

also. I went nuts.

Happy reading!

~

Carrie had never been gladder that they moved to America, because it meant less travel was needed to go and see one of their many favourite people. This person, of course, was none other than Valdis. Lying in wait was incredibly boring, so they’d picked up a job at their local bookstore in order to get some extra funds. However slow the going, they slipped away with book upon book detailing their hobbies and whiled away the time when their tasks were done, beyond grateful they weren’t working at the front desk. That would have resulted in losing their mind, surely, what with their ever-present lack of social skills.

Overall, it took them a couple of years to get there, but their bags were relatively light. They didn’t have nor need much in terms of material possessions, especially because their upbringing had told them to be scarce with better things and rely mostly on the library resources to entertain them. What they had in their bag when they arrived at Valdis’ home, however, was a thousand times more valuable than anything they had anticipated owning. It’d hopefully allow the two to bond further. The few books they had packed were guides for the game contained within a couple of discs carefully nestled within their bag. Research was good, of course, but their memory was already waning. Something solid would help them out more than they could help themself in that situation.

The biggest issue was that they hadn’t been able to find any accomodation for themself that would suit the meagre funds they’d pooled together (separate from a flight there, of course) for their journeys. Work would be harder to get than ever because they weren’t in Australia where they were accustomed to everything, and they’d barely thought of updating their resume. However much they were adjusted to homelessness, all the time they’d spent on the streets when they were younger was more than enough. They never wanted to go back to that ever again. So fending for themself wasn’t an option they wanted to consider yet. Val lived alone, Carrie was sure of this at least, and they were hoping to move in until they could sort themself out.

Carrie had taken a taxi from the airport to wherever their friend resided, nervous energy casting repetitive shivers down their spine. Thanking the driver and stepping out, they noticed just how badly their hands were trembling as they handed them the appropriate funds. They nearly dropped them all, but managed to catch themself and the notes both before they floated away. Leaving that behind as best as their nervous mind’d allow, they pulled the scarf they wore further up to their chin and knocked on the door, exhaling softly. A small part of them was so consumed by anxiety that they had started convincing themself it’d be better not for the door to be answered. 

But it was too late as Val stood at the door. The two hadn’t made any arrangements to meet, nor did Val know that Carrie had come to America in the first place. As soon as she had processed who exactly was at her doorstep, there came a scratching at the wooden floors leading into the house, and the other’s attention was diverted almost immediately. Her lizard Albey had made their presence known, so Val had to stop and let them onto her hand then shoulder before looking back at her long-time online companion. Despite how she smiled, there was still tension in the air until she spoke. Her voice was soft, tinged with more confusion than anything malicious.

“Carrie? What the hell?”

The person in question only laughed nervously, and Val watched as they rubbed the back of their neck sheepishly. Both appeared to struggle with awkward social situations, but they would have to get past that if it meant playing Sburb together. Communication behind a screen was more natural for the two as it stood, but there wouldn’t be cause to type to each other for long within the session itself. Over development, the Sburb team (theoretically, as no one knew who or what they were) had decided to give players the Gift of Gab mechanic right upon entering the Medium to supposedly make things easier, though for the two it presented yet another hurdle to jump over. Val’s attention was once again turned to her lizard, the small reptile sticking out its tongue habitually and catching the side of her face. She laughed, taking a tissue from her pocket and wiping at that spot as she gestured to her friend.

“Since you don’t seem to wanna give me an explanation - no offence - come right in. I didn’t plan for visitors, but there should be a little bit of space in my room if you’re good with sittin’ on a cardboard box.”

The host chuckled when Carrie mumbled their thanks, leading the way through her house into the room she slept in. Her computer also sat open on a chat client. In the menu bar was the phrase “BEETLEBICKER” emblazoned in bright green, and there seemed to be a variety of insects crawling across the display. This window obscured the fact that Val had been searching up various Sburb guides. This was a good thing in the long run due to the game’s tendency to throw vicious and unpredictable curveballs at its players early on. Val checked BeetleBicker quickly for any notifications before turning around in her swivel chair and looking to her friend, who had found a borderline-comfortable box to sit precariously atop. 

“So, uh…. what’re you here for anyway? I woulda been better prepared if you’d at least shot me a message, y’know. Before making a half-day flight to me.”

There was an edge of irritation to the girl’s tone, but her teal eyes were glittering. There was no use in keeping the displeased facade any longer, since her lips were trembling and she broke into a smile. She’d remembered what Carrie had told her, and the sheer excitement of it all crashed over her in a tidal wave of emotion. Her eyes widened almost in tandem with this thought, and she couldn’t stop her gaze from wandering to the other’s only bag as she blurted something out.  

“You…. you got them, right?”

She watched excitedly as the other nodded, bent over and retrieved something from their only bag. Between three of their fingers, they held two disc sleeves, looking decidedly triumphant about the reveal. Though Val had known Carrie wasn’t the most talkative person, the silence lent itself to tension and even more awkwardness. She didn’t say anything about this, though, instead relaxing into her chair as one of the two discs was handed to her. Her nails, painted the same bright teal as her eyes, curled around this sleeve. She smiled and nodded her thanks, taking the iridescent disc from its packaging. The packaging in itself was intriguing enough - the familiar SBurb logo, printed in white upon a black sleeve, yet encircled by two crescents to form an eye with the spirograph representing a pupil - but the rest was on a whole other level. 

The pure joy that radiated through the room was near palpable, as Carrie did all they could to stop themself from bursting out in exhilarated laughter. Everything was finally coming together. They’d been able to get to America, meet their friend, and now… their hands shook badly enough that they were forced to place the disc down atop its cover, lest it become damaged. That was the last thing they needed - to come all that way for nothing. There was always the hope that seeing their friend had bought them, but everything had been building up to a climax they didn’t want to lose. Playing SBurb would actually give them something of a chance, which was certainly a rare thing for someone as unlucky as they were.

Pulling themself back into the conversation and hoping they hadn’t spaced out too much, they forced their own expression into neutrality and hoped their voice wouldn’t embarrass them by making everything clear regardless.

“Indeed I did, Miss Val. Just for us. D’you have any idea how expensive these things are? And the stocks were going down, too… Just my luck, really. Had to look around, and I don’t trust the dude who gave ‘em to me as far as I could throw him. But they look genuine enough. If you really want, I could take them somewhere to get checked for malware and stuff, but I don’t want to lose them either. It’ll probably be fine, given these sleeves look like they’re from some special earlier version. The later the version, the more room for viruses, right?”

They shrugged, a grin spreading across their cheeks after a few more seconds of unexpected silence. Val had turned to her laptop and was messaging someone else on the vibrantly-coloured chat client, though her fingers would pause on the keyboard every so often as various bug graphics obscured the text she was trying to write. Reaching out towards it, she swiped at the bug and it flew away. Carrie had never seen such uses of touch-screen technology, at least where monitors were concerned, and couldn’t stop themself from gasping out loud when it happened.

Turning to look at her friend, Valdis raised an eyebrow, leaving the person she was typing to - one ‘CC’, though their full handle was never shown on-screen - to wait a little longer for a response. 

“You’re ridiculous, Carrie. Of course it’s better to get them checked,”

She paused, frowning and glancing back at her screen for a moment before continuing.

“But I have the feeling neither of us want the fun we might have to go to waste ‘cause some sketchy dude took ‘em, right?”

She smiled again, tapping the screen rapidly to send a beetle or two fluttering off the chat client’s interface. 

Her companion only shook their head but never raised their gaze or made any noise, continually mesmerised by the design on the disc sleeve. They were gently tracing the eye’s spirograph over and over, breathing so softly it was a miracle they hadn’t fallen asleep. It was more like they were stuck in a trance than anything else. Just as soon, Valdis had decided to take it into her own hands - literally, with a gentle tug. Carrie’s eyes followed the sleeve as it was taken from their lap, but they didn’t bother asking for it back. Instead, they redirected their attention to a case they’d bought and unzipped it, lips curving into a frown when they opened the laptop within. Taking a small brush from the case, they quickly dusted away a myriad of unidentifiable crumbs from in between the key spaces, making a noise of approval just as Val broke the silence once more.

“We might as well get started… The day’s only getting later, and I’d rather not have an irritated lizard to deal with.”

She remarked with a chuckle, gesturing towards Albey’s cage. It’d had a cloth draped over it, but the friends both knew the reptile would be active for a while yet before settling down. 

Carrie nodded again, opening the lid of their laptop and typing for a while before almost shutting the lid on their fingers in frustration. This was a bad choice, naturally, as a jagged crack already ran across the width of the screen. On top of this, the chat client they’d always used was so corrupt it barely worked, and despite their many attempts it’d never allowed itself to be installed. They were obviously choosing their words, even though they’d spoken to Valdis online with no trouble for a few years. Their voice came quietly, edged with concern they couldn’t have smothered if they tried.

“Are you sure about that? I’m all for the excitement, naturally, but I can’t find the GameFAQ walkthrough for SBurb everyone was talking about… it must have been taken down. I was really hoping that we could follow it so that this whole thing doesn’t fall apart. You know the risks of a two-player session, don’tcha? Even with the failsafe in place, I think there are a myriad of things that could go wrong without anyone moderating the whole showdown - take, for example, the inaccurate scaling of the objects due to breaks in coding, or holes in your walls from errant map errors and my own bad eyesight, or the complete failure of the game to even run and the misery that’d come with it because i really don’t want to waste your time and money on something that doesn’t work out-“

Already red in the face from beginning to ramble, Carrie found themself beginning to flush more and trail off as Val placed a gentle hand on their shoulder to draw their attention.

“Hey, hey. Come on, man! Look forward to this! You’ve earned it, and I’m grateful you’re here. So what if it doesn’t click together perfectly in the end? We’ll have seen each other, and I’m sure we could auction off the faulty discs to some other poor souls if you really need the money. What? Nah, I’m jokin’. But you really shouldn’t beat yourself up. Hell, we haven’t even booted the game! I’m sure it’ll be great. Besides, we’re only going to destroy my house with the building, so if anything goes wrong there’s less damage with the two of us in here. I’m sure I have enough room for the necessary equipment. Let’s face it. If I need to knock down a wall, then we’ll be busting out of this place soon enough. It’ll hardly matter.”

Carrie hesitated before nodding, though doubts had already crept into their mind. They looked towards the sleeves once more, wondering silently why the developers hadn’t translated to fully digital copies yet - not knowing, of course, the nature of the discs within. Retrieving their copy from the desk, they placed it gently in the disc drive of their laptop and watched Val do the same. CrypticConverse, as expected, was uncooperative. Hastily, before the chat client could dominate the screen with glitches, they force-quit the program and crossed their fingers. Sometimes that didn’t even work. 

Against all odds, battling with what seemed like the very forces of nature, the disc drive on Carrie’s laptop whirred shut and began to process the data being fed to it. With an exasperated groan, they rubbed their eyes vigorously as they waited for the download to begin. Val’s was already up and running, which was a good thing. Though the two had never discussed it out loud, it had been silently agreed upon that Val would be the server admin and Carrie the player. Given the latter’s penchant for unluckiness, it seemed to be the configuration that would allow for the least amount of mess, even though they were just expected to be placing machines and toying around with their creations.

That was what SBurb was always meant to be: A game of creation, not destruction. When Carrie succeeded in loading the file, a black screen met their eyes, featuring only one thing - a spinning silver spirograph whose edges pinched and widened rhythmically, from an eye’s shape to a circle and back again in a mesmerising loop. They sat quietly for a few moments, staring at the loading screen and silently hoping nothing bad would happen. Pinching their nose, they stood, captchaloguing the laptop using their dice modus. They wouldn’t need to deal with getting Val into the Medium with them just yet.

“I have not the slightest idea what to do now, Val, so I suppose I’ll… go in first. To the Medium, I mean. You need to help me set up though.”

Val was clicking through the menus on her computer with a concerned expression, leaving her companion to wonder just how hard SBurb was going to be if their friend couldn’t work it out. After a few more minutes of sitting in the tense quiet, she pumped her fist in the air and smiled at Carrie.

“This is it, bro. You should be good to go. I’ll set the machines out one at a time, and if we shove Albey’s cage outta the way - lizard extracted, of course - we should have enough space to at least get the first few down in the one room with minimal destruction.”

With trembling fingers, Valdis took a piece of paper, scribbling down the order that she’d need to deploy the machines in. In hindsight, it wouldn’t have really mattered as long as each was down on the floor, but the girl knew her friend’s horrible luck perhaps more than they themself did.  Ordering everything and planning things out was the only way she was going to ensure the game’s boot, at least, ran smoothly. She was using a black ball-point, and splotches of ink were already beginning to leak from it, so she abandoned that endeavour rather quickly and set to work. Standing, she twisted a switchblade around nervously, testing how it felt and shrugging. It’d have to do for now, since both sets of underlings would be descending in the one area and it’d rapidly become Hell. She swiped a blank strife specibus card from her mess of a desk and set it to “swtchbldkind”. Afterwards, she hooked the switchblade into its designated small pouch, placing this in her pocket. 

Carrie was all prepared, of course, having chosen a set of tabletop-style dice with the intention of using them for both a fetch modus and a strife specibus. The bright pink cards fuzzed into the air as Val watched, attempting to clear any doubts from her mind. It’d have to go correctly, right? Even after the idle plans she’d made in her own time, having intended to play for a long time, she wasn’t so sure any of them would click for a volatile, two-person session. There was simply no room for error, or time for doubt. They really were throwing themselves into the deep end now.

“Alright, man, you’re gonna hafta help me move Albey - outside is fenced in, so she shouldn’t stray too far even if you do have to let her out. She likes scratching at the windows until I do sometimes… with how she never lets up, you’d think I’d adopted a cat instead of a lizard!”

There was a brightness in Val’s voice that was hard not to notice, and Carrie’s ears pricked to it even as they quickly moved the cranky reptile to the appropriate spot outdoors. By the time they’d returned to their friend’s room, several small claw-marks were evident in their clothing, but they were still smiling, bouncing from foot-to-foot as an anxious habit while they waited for the Server Admin’s guidance. After a few moments of clicking at the screen in front of her, Val whirled around to properly face her friend, standing up properly for the first time in Carrie’s presence. Letting out an irritated groan, she stretched, her mouth settling back into a gentle smile nonetheless.

“Can you push Albey’s cage outta the way? Or do you need my help? I can put down the first machines with the space we have cleared now, but I’d like you to shift her just in case. I don’t want you to hurt yourself before we even get this show on the road.”

Carrie, ever nervous in their friend’s presence, simply nodded and set to work. Wiping their palms on their pants, they noted that the lizard’s cage was positioned precariously atop a white trolley with black wheels, similar to those they’d have used to cart books around the library. It was a welcome sight because of its familiarity, however strained the connection. They pushed it to be flush in the corner of the room, waiting in silence for further instruction after that. Their confidence would have to boost if they were going to work alongside their friend later, but there was nothing preventing their speechlessness. Their fingers drummed across the sheet thrown over the enclosure as they carefully adjusted it.

“Got it.”

With a few clicks and a whir increasing in volume, Val gave Carrie a thumbs up as a glow begun to manifest in the air around the room. Slowly, the luminescence gathered itself into a yellow-tinged shape. A mere second passed and there it was - the cruxtruder, suspended above its eventual location against the wall, looking much heavier than it had any right to be. A heavy thunk echoed out as the machine was put into place, both friends cringing as the impact was made.

“Man, that’ll leave a mark.”

Carrie murmured half to themself, checking the wheels were in the correct positions before clicking the locks into place with their shoes and thus stabilising the lizard’s cage. One by one, the server owner set down the other machines, and her player was left in a state of nervous anticipation. Shaking slightly, they walked over to the first of these, looking up at the metallic contraption with a wholly - stupidly - unpredicted level of dread. They couldn’t back down, though, and they knew it. Reaching up with too-short arms, they attempted to lift themself up to sit on the lid. Despite their efforts, their fingers repeatedly slipped away from the rim, as there was nothing to stabilise their hold on it at all. Just as Carrie was about to give up, however, a gleeful cackle came from the other side of the room. A teal glow reminiscent of their friend’s eye colour had enveloped the trolley on which Albey’s cage lay, and it was lifted into the air before Carrie had a chance to react. They’d bring Albey back in later, but that would hinge on the enclosure still being intact.

Val’s actions resulted in a grating noise that made Carrie recoil, but they were nonetheless washed with relief when Val decided to place the trolley down. She’d decided to deal with that later, as her own Medium entry was critical in the scheme of things. instead, she searched about for something heavy to force the lid with, and as soon as she took her eyes off Carrie a predictably bad thing happened - a spider, large and black with a distinctive red hourglass shape on its back, scuttled onto their hand from inside their only bag. They were more disaster-prone than anyone Val’d ever met, and she knew to act on her own impulses before they did and made things worse.

Hurling whatever she had on hand at the insect seemed the best course of action, so she did - pelting a ceramic angel statue at the spider, yet another crash was heard as it splintered on the floor, but Carrie seemed to be fine. Spooked, but okay and without a bite, which was miraculous all things considered. They rushed to retrieve a cup and piece of paper to put it on and trap it, since it was still twitchy, and only relaxed when they were sure that was all finished. They also swept up the angel’s shards, placing them on the table with the intent to gather them up and glue them as best they could. For now, though, they spun on their heel to face their friend.

“Thanks for saving my ass, Val. We would have had a lot more trouble getting the game started if I had to be rushed to the ER, naturally.”

Val was busy enough finding a suitable object for the job at hand, and had settled on the obvious one - the teal glow returned from earlier, but this time positioned around Carrie’s own midsection, and they were lifted onto the machine with a slight lurching drop. The impact caused the lid to spring open, but the player was unharmed because of their admin’s quick reflexes, and hovered away from the machine as the kernelsprite took form. The object pulsed with a strikingly familiar pink luminescence, thereby marking itself as the player’s without much doubt. They could barely look at the thing comfortably, but a deep imprint of colour remained burnt into their vision when they closed their eyes.

Wriggling in their suspended state, Carrie wordlessly indicated how they wanted to be set down. Their server admin acknowledged this, lowering them down, but was quickly distracted by something else as usual - carefully removing the plastic cup from the now-deceased spider and placing it aside. Without time to process anything nor protest, a blinding flash came from the kernelsprite as the kernel’s data was whooshed up into the stratosphere and their resulting sprite took shape. Between the chaos that was happening around them and Val’s delighted, cackling laughter, there came another distinct sound: a pinging. This indicated that someone had sent a message to their mobile, so they took it out of their pocket and peered down at the cracked screen with a squint.

For once, CrypticConverse was working, but they knew it wouldn’t last long.

[ eclipticCorrosion [[EC]] Began Bugging luminescentLyricist [[LL]] at 20:30 ] 

EC: Spider in the blender, I repeat, spider in the blender

[ eclipticCorrosion [[EC]] Ceased Bugging luminescentLyricist [[LL]] at 20:31 ]

Carrie was struggling to process the message with how scrambled their mind had become, but tucked their phone back into their pocket and stood up to face the sprite. Spidersprite… It’d certainly take time to get used to, and time they weren’t sure they had. They did their best to ignore the pulsing pink-white form in the corner of their vision and continued onto the next task, using the little grist they had gathered from the damages to alchemise a pair of gloves and yank the wheel of the cruxtruder around. It was certainly harder work than they’d imagined it to be, but they weren’t quite dissuaded yet, and this irritated the server admin. 

Val was tired of waiting. Drumming their fingers on the desk and just watching. They wanted it to be over. Sure, they were helping Carrie through the game, but felt no satisfaction in doing so. She wanted to be able to act for herself, but at the same time had no way of getting the point across - her friend’s emotions were fragile, and she couldn’t risk breaking their trust so soon, not before she made it into the Medium in her own right. The spider wasn’t venomous any more, yes, but there were certainly safer options for a prototyping. The girl’s intentions were becoming murkier by the moment, and her companion was too naïve to suspect a thing.

With a few more cranks of the wheel, the cruxite dowel was revealed - an obnoxiously pink crystalline pillar that nearly forced Carrie to their knees when attempting to lift it away from where it initially sat. Setting it back down, they turned to their friend, who’d forced a smile onto her cheeks. Despite thinking she’d rather let her friend’s toes be crushed, she went along with it and quietly used their admin privileges to levitate the pillar to its proper space on the alchemiter. By this point, Val knew how different this edition of the game was to any that were supposed to be released. Carrie’s own bad luck had worked in her favour instead. Her plan would be changed from there on out, due to Early Access SBurb’s unpredictability, but that was nothing she wouldn’t be able to handle. In fact, it’d make it easier.

The alchemiter was ready to go after that, but Carrie was left without a pre-punched card to help activate the totem lathe due to the nature of their strife specibus. The dice were handy when it came to most anything ; they were able to assign it as both their strife specibus and fetch modus, which was a plus - this instance even being labelled a ‘multimodus’ in the game’s files - but it presented just one problem. Since it wasn’t one of the more common strife specibi or fetch modi, there was no pre-punched card included with it like most conventional, store-ready ones. The Wallet modus had been their next consideration, and now they were really regretting their decision. 

Walking over to their bag and beginning to rifle through it on the off-chance there was something of use in it, Carrie had obviously struck a chord with Val. With a violent lurching feeling in their gut, they were pulled back to their place at the machine. However silent it was, the atmosphere carried a heavy sense of dread, and an unspoken message hung between the two players however much Carrie wanted to block it out. Valdis was the leader of the game, and what she said went.

“You could’ve told me you wanted something, y’know. We don’t have time to stuff up - just look at the clock.”

The tone of the normally cheerful girl’s voice had dropped almost into graveness. She had a duty, and wasn’t prepared for it to be derailed by whatever her unlucky player had in mind. Retrieving something from one of the many teetering piles of her desk, she winced in anticipation and was visibly relieved when the stack didn’t fall. Clearing her throat, she then held the pre-punched card out to Carrie - being a normally indecisive individual who went with whatever fate had in store, she’d certainly gone through her fair share of modi and specibi before settling on her current set. The Wallet, as it provided ease of access, and the switchblade (a subcategory of bladekind, which she’d also be able to choose from) for its versatility and quick deployment. Carrie nodded and quietly turned away from the other, trying to still their hands.

Within a few seconds, they’d steeled themself enough and placed the pre-punched card where it was meant to go in the lathe. The lights on the machine burnt their vision, and they wanted nothing more to look away and plug their ears when it lit up and begun to whir. The machines were all humming and making noise around them, and it put them on edge a lot more than they’d anticipated. They almost felt closed in. Stuck. Val looked entirely unbothered by the noise, too, which made them doubt their sanity more than usual. With a dinging sound not unlike a finished timer, all of the totem lathe’s lights had ticked on. They lifted the cruxite dowel onto the machine with a grunt, unwilling to bother Valdis with their pettiness if they didn’t have to. They’d convinced themself that their friend’s newfound irritability boiled down to lack of sleep, and wasn’t willing to question that further. They were, after all, easily intimidated.

A sharp blade and other smoothing tools concealed by a conical guard descended to cover the cruxite, and a series of clicks indicated to the two that the various objects had started their work. This work, hopefully, was carving the crystalline form of whatever would allow Carrie to enter the Medium. It felt like they were standing there for an hour waiting, but just as soon as they’d thought this the guard raised. It revealed a totem with far more detailed twists than they would’ve expected, modelled to the likeness of a spiral staircase without the railings.

Exhaling, Carrie nodded to Val as she watched, seeming pleased with the progress and seeing no need to intervene. If anything, they didn’t want to do anything that would upset her for fear of something bad happening to them, which was never an issue before. They’d never had to feel like their trust was fragile, but it was thin as ice in the heavy environment the two had unwillingly cultivated. They’d keep their head down and do their work if it meant they stayed safe. Stomach churning, they carefully picked up the new statue and looped back to the final machine in the process - the alchemiter would reveal their artefact, and finally allow them to cross over into the Medium.

Their arms were shaking more than ever, and only the comforting presence of the lighter in their pocket could soothe them. They weren’t an arsonist by any means, but since they were small they’d tended to burn papers with whatever angry scribblings on them - words and pictures alike - as a form of release, which had stuck with them until the present day and even become something of a habit. Taking it out, they clicked it on and off a few times, delighted to notice it was one of their special ones. Different chemicals and such had developed coloured flames in lighters, and that one was pink. Their favourite colour. 

Sighing with ill-disguised resignation, they placed it down onto the alchemiter and pressed a small button on the side of the contraption. Carrie couldn’t stop themself from yelping and scrambling backwards as an almost blinding pink light radiated from the crystalline object, steadily brightening into a perfect white. When this cleared, their cruxite artefact was there on the platform. All of their past work had culminated into that moment, and the beating of their heart magnified the exhilaration tenfold. Though a small moment to Val, Carrie’s pride was enormous, and they wasted no time in heading towards the machine that still crackled with sparks of energy.

Their artefact appeared to be a book with gleaming pages, bound in such detail that they could have opened it up and read what was inside - if there were any words to process. The pages were blank because of their being carved, naturally. This didn’t deter Carrie, however, who leafed through it to check a few times before dragging a chair over to their position in front of the alchemiter. After a few seconds of blankly staring down at it, they set it down at their feet and bought out their lighter, clicking it on and off as a nervous habit. 

Val watched this wth disdain, nose wrinkling. What a waste of time it all seemed. The two still had so much to get done, and so little time. But what Carrie didn’t have was patience - they rushed forth without hesitation into the unknown, something that would ultimately assist the other. 

“Carrie, will you stop that? It’s making my ears hurt.”

She asked, knowing well enough that her request wouldn’t be denied. Either her ‘friend’ did what she asked, or she used her power as the Admin to make them. It was all in good graces, Val told herself, because she deserved the chance at a higher position. But she didn’t really need to convince herself because she was finally sure. Sure of her position in the game. The grand scheme of things. Carrie continued clicking the lighter absentmindedly, clearly unable to hear their friend.

The admin did the obvious thing - with a quick motion across the trackpad of her laptop, she took hold of the lighter in her client’s hands and, with no qualms about possibly burning their fingers, dropped it down onto the book.

The artefact shattered on impact, and Carrie looked on in horror, speechless as they backed away from the spreading fire. The guides they’d managed to find about recent versions of SBurb included a failsafe - the cruxite artefact would never allow itself to be destroyed and thus prevent Medium entry - but despite the smoke, it all became a little clearer. There had been text scrawled on the back of the disc sleeves, defining them as Early Access. Was that what Val wanted? Without any more time to mull over the growing list of questions and anxieties dominating their thoughts, the server client quickly looked around themself for a source of water. Anything would have helped, but nothing seemed to stand out to them enough. Just when they thought their time was up, they were surrounded by the very same pink flames from the lighter and squeezed their eyes shut.

But they were alive, and that was what mattered.

When Carrie came to, Val was hard at work defending the house from encroaching underlings. Though these enemies were simply imps and basilisks, most considered easily dispatched, the spidersprite that hovered over their right shoulder had caused a myriad of problems. The most evident of these were the extra limbs the basilisks possessed, with the imps having a vestigial pair around their torsos. Carrie shuddered to think what awful thing could happen in their second prototyping, but pushed that thought to the back of their mind as they struggled to a standing position. Everything felt tender and they would’ve preferred not moving over anything else, but they also recognised then wasn’t exactly the best time to be whining.

Taking their trusty dice from the pouch, Carrie rolled the familiar set around in their fingers for a moment. For ease of access, they’d managed to memorise a list of categories - each die could represent one on its own, and countless others when certain dice were rolled together - that would be of most use. Much of it was still a mystery, but they only needed the D10 to give them a weapon and a little bit of luck. That wasn’t something they normally had, but they closed their eyes and dropped the die. Within a few seconds, the weight of a blade settled itself in their left hand. It felt flimsy and easily breakable, but was better than nothing.

Switching to grip the hilt as tight as both of their anxiously shaking hands would allow, they swung the katana a few times to test it. Though the sword was light, it was too easily manipulated by the player’s unstable right hand for their comfort, so they switched to wielding it one-handedly. This, combined with the slick of sweat already forming on their palms, didn’t help the situation. But they had no time to consider solutions, judging by the foreboding creak of the walls around them. They decided to keep silent and not disturb the Admin while they fought, however much they desired comfort or not to fight alone.

Battling their way over to the window, they peered out, brow crinkling. On one side, a featureless expanse stretching as far as they could see. On the other, a land bathed in sunlight heedless of the nighttime. This Land featured tall cliffs and jagged crystalline formations, with a wind fierce enough to wreathe its way through the holes and across the tops of the seemingly hollow rhodochrosite. Carrie had closed all of the doors and windows earlier on, but they almost thought they could hear the breeze carrying a melody. Discordant and unpleasant in the moment, sure, but a tune regardless.

The Land was their own. The Land of Song and Fortune had finally begun to take shape during the time they were unconscious, but Val’s environment was barren. This concerned them, and they returned over to where the Admin’s desk was to tell them. Carrie rapidly thought against this, seeing how dark the other’s expression was, and bowed their head, fending back the growing swarm of underlings. Somehow, this wasn’t what they’d pictured fighting alongside their best friend would be like: forced into a cramped room, stumbling over obstacles left right and centre, without the emotional leverage talking and active assistance could provide. Val’d certainly moved many of the boxes aside, but that meagre amount of space did little to ease the twisting in her friend’s gut.

When the constant stream of underlings did ease, it was only for a few seconds. In these, Val turned to face Carrie, an impressive and shining sword in her own hands. Evidently, she’d had more luck with alchemising using her ‘friend’’s grist, doing so with little to no regard for their own safety. Val had been able to rig some kind of Grist Generator out of spare parts when the initial three machines were destroyed in the rush of underlings, and it hid safely in a closet, passively generating materials save for those linked to the Lands specifically. Carrie didn’t know this, though, and Valdis never intended to let them know. Rhodochrosite and Onyx would exclusively drop from the underlings, which was a large part of why Val wanted to get to her own Land.

“What are you standing around for? This house is going to cave in around us. Take these, and use them to complete your sprite… Trust me.”

There was the faintest hint of a smile on her lips, and that was more than enough. Positive reinforcement was something that Carrie relied on very heavily, especially when their brain was being uncooperative. Dropping a black pouch in Carrie’s hands, Val drove the blade into the ground in front of her, causing a gust of wind to spread outwards from the impact site and knock over some of the enemies threatening to sabotage the two. All she had to do was convince Carrie she cared, and she’d done a good job of it judging by how immediately they left the room to find their sprite without a word of hesitation.

Just in case anything bad happened, they took a detour to grab their bag with their laptop, hugging it to their body protectively as they sliced through a few errant opponents on the way. Dropping it and unzipping their jacket, they slung the bag’s strap over their shoulder diagonally, tightening it as much as possible and leaving it to dangle at their hip before continuing, pulling their jacket back over themselves and zipping it up. Hopefully it’d be a little more secure.

The spider was crawling about on the hallway walls, its abdomen thinning out into a wispy tail but nonetheless possessing all of its legs. Carrie had no idea why this was the case, as all of the sprites they’d read about in the long-forgotten books forfeited these in exchange for the flight and wisp. They stuck their hand into the pouch, quickly recoiling as something pricked their hand and drew blood. Instead tipping the contents on the floor where they were visible, they crouched to examine it all and were pleased to find their sprite followed them down. Disregarding the droplets of red beginning to swell to the surface of their palm and fall to the wood, they retrieved one of the shards of pink crystal and examined it. They weren’t sure where Val’d retrieved them from, but wasn’t about to interrupt the momentary peace in the environment by asking. Instead, they held the shards together, rummaging in the pouch for something else helpful but finding nothing.

After a few seconds of badly-needed contemplation, Carrie sighed to themself and retrieved the pocket lighter from their jacket. They weren’t fully sure that would be enough heat to fuse the unidentified crystals together, but it was their only option. Every moment without action was one closer to being ripped apart by underlings, after all, and that was the last thing  they wanted to happen to them. Fumbling for the switch of the lighter with their thumb, they lowered it to meet one of the pieces and gradually heated the edge. Once it’d begun to melt, they quickly pressed it onto another piece, unevenly but otherwise effectively fusing the shards back together. Pleased with their thinking, the player continued the process until all of the crystal had been melted into one disc. 

They couldn’t allow for it to cool, but held their arm out to allow the spider down from their shoulder, unable to communicate properly with them because of their non-humanoid nature but nonetheless pleased when it scuttled down as if it understood them. Retrieving the pouch from the floor, they huffed and walked to the hallway door, jamming it with their body weight and watching as the arachnid continued its journey. Shielding their eyes, they cried out as light flooded the area, searing itself into the backs of their eyelids even as they turned away and shut them as tightly as possible. 

When everything calmed down, they moved gingerly. A hole had blasted itself through their jacket from the searing heat, but the rest of their clothing remained intact for the most part and the straps of her bag remained undamaged. As a failsafe, however, they rolled their dice to store their bag and its contents in their fetch modus. They had no time to make themself a new jacket with what little grist they had, so they dropped it on the hallway floor and focused on finding their sprite. Hot flushes ran through them, and all they wanted to do was sleep their lethargy off, but there was too much on the line. Not everyone could pause time at their whim. Soon enough, they found the nearly convulsing pink form of the spider on a far wall, walking unsteadily over to it and trying not to look at it too directly.

Val was busy with the underlings, but her sword was helping immensely. She’d been able to combine her switchblade with the wing pieces of the shattered angel statue to create Zephyrus, a sleek ice-blue blade that could create gusts if enough force was used in any impact. The only thing stopping her was its defensive nature - when combined properly with enough Onyx, it’d create Shadow’s Bane, the ultimate in swords that she’d be able to wield while mortal. Zephyrus’ main usage lay in keeping enemies away, not letting them attack in the first place. The swarm was almost too much for one person to bear, but she held out well enough. It was her only choice if she wanted Carrie to properly use their Sprite without getting distracted or injured too badly.

Meanwhile, Carrie’s Sprite clung to their shoulder after a few minutes of irritated coaxing. The spider’s every movement sent shivers down the player’s spine, and they wanted nothing more than to just have it float beside them, but they weren’t about to complain. Proceeding to the end of the hallway, they were surprised to discover the door was jammed shut. Something hung off the door handle, which itself had been bent to keep the note underneath it in place. A pendant hung from the handle itself, a black disc of metal carefully engraved with the eye and spirograph in gold. They picked up the pendant, hanging it around their neck and unfolding the note, squinting down at Val’s all-too-familiar script. For no reason other than to hopefully drown out the deafening silence, they read it aloud.

“I know how you are with spiders. When you reach this, assuming it hasn’t been obliterated along with the rest of you, let your Sprite into the pendant and crush it under your heel. I know, it’s a rad-looking accessory you probably don’t wanna get rid of, but I won’t be able to get to my Land if you don’t. Chances are, I’m fighting for my life, and you’re barely safe as it is. The underlings will find you if you keep your Sprite around for too long because of the obnoxious amount of energy in that thing. You won’t really need it where you’re going, anyway. Meet me in the Witherstrip - that big white blank line more or less protecting the lands from merging - outside when you’re done. I’ll be waiting for you. V. PS - just kick the door. I had to jam it so you’d notice this.”

Rolling their eyes good-naturedly, Carrie tucked the note into their pocket for safekeeping and twisted the pendant around in their fingers for a moment. It felt wrong, in a way, to trust their friend so blindly, and that made their stomach tie itself into knots with anxiety. So much was rushed in the session, and Carrie couldn’t keep themself from wishing for more time. Softly tapping their palm to get the Sprite’s attention, they gestured vaguely and then lifted the pendant into view, dropping it just as quickly. The metal wasn’t as ice-cold as they’d expected, and their palm came away from it red and sore. With a sense of urgency, they pulled the chain from their neck as it, too, began to burn. 

The entire pendant was steadily heating up into a red-hot and blistering glow. Backing away as much as they could, their shoulder knocked backwards into the door handle and the Sprite dislodged, falling onto the floor. Rocking its body and waving its legs in the air, it experienced a few brief seconds of helpless ness before Carrie hesitantly bent down and placed it on its feet. Despite it being their Sprite, they didn’t trust it. It immediately crawled closer to the burning pendant, Carrie wondering how on Earth the thing hadn’t properly melted or - assuming it was the proper material - burst into flames.

Kicking down the door and bursting out of the cramped hallway, the player made a break for the door, running as fast as their tired body would allow and barrelling through the underlings attempting to hurt them with the sheer power of their panicked state. Carrie didn’t want to be caught in the shockwave and burnt to a crisp when the spider inevitably found the pendant and made the entire house implode or explode. They weren’t sure which it’d be, but the entire point was that they weren’t going to stick around long enough to find out. Gasping for breath, they reached as far as their body would allow, collapsing onto their knees as the monsters suddenly turned toward the house, drawn to it by some other force. Soon they were upon it, breaking it to little more than a pile of rubble - and probably crushing Val’s Grist Generator in the process, among other things. Albey was nowhere to be seen, but judging by the amount of dirt disturbed in the once-green lawn, she’d escaped safely.

Crawling further to the edge of the fence on their hands and knees, Carrie was jolted by a shockwave rippling out from somewhere in the house. It shook all around them, similar in ferocity to an earthquake. They were soon knocked unconscious for the second time that day by one of the pickets of the fence falling in on them. It ended up hitting them harshly on the head upon being dislodged from the ground. There was no telling how long they’d be out for, but judging by the redness of the hit site it didn’t look pleasant. The rumbling continued for five more minutes, rising in intensity, and it was a wonder more damage wasn’t done to the surrounding area. It was almost as if the effect had been localised to the location of the game and the game only. The Witherstrip - the previously indicated stripe of pale land surrounding the house and separating the two Lands - was preventing the effects spreading into them as well.

Valdis stood some distance away, unable to spare so much as a glance in the direction of her companion’s plight. The underlings had left her alone for the most part, incinerated by the unholy heat of the Sprite’s crushing, but there were a few stragglers who were stronger than ever. Worse was the fact that The Land of Slate and Frogs was forming, and there’d likely be more joining the hoard. Despite the Witherstrip’s ability to seperate the Lands from each other, the few monsters that had formed from the newer LoSaF weren’t drawn to the wreckage any more. The imps, basilisks, giclopses and others were immediately attracted to Val herself, who had collected enough Onyx by that time to upgrade Zephyrus, but lacked a safe place to do it. Evidently, scaling a tree was her only option for a moment’s two-handed safety.

Slashing Zephyrus through the air and generating a pulse more than enough to deter some weaker enemies, she hauled herself up onto the first couple of branches of the tree, waiting until she had a stable foothold before letting go and sheathing the sword. Fumbling with her cellphone, she opened GristGetter, an inconspicuous-looking application that then projected her entire grist hoard into the sky holographically. The app had been installed on her phone for months, ever since she’d first heard of SBurb, but she never imagined she’d have to use it. Lurching around and almost dropping her phone, Val looked downwards to see a very angry giclops shaking the tree. As quickly as possible, she selected the onyx in the hologram, muttering to herself as a hole opened in the display.

Unsheathing Zephyrus, Valdis inserted it into the slot, using the sheathe as a weapon to drop down onto the giclops and distract it briefly. It worked, to her delight, and her sword was soon coated in an insidious black crystal finish. The design in the centre of the grip pulsed with energy as she touched it, warm and nearly alive. The server admin, though short on time and sanity both, carefully drew the new sword from the holographic compartment and clicked her phone off, smoothly placing it back into her pocket as if everything was fine. Thus far, her plan had proceeded with few drawbacks, which she was certainly glad for. Though the guards were made of an incorporeal smoke-like substance, they wreathed themselves up her arm and stayed there with a steadiness unlike anything she’d expected of the blade.

Shadow’s Bane was finally hers.

From then on, Valdis knew that things would go her way. If her player did what they were told and held down what little was left of the fort before joining her in the Witherstrip, it’d give her ample time to complete her Land Quest and ascend to the God Tiers. She’d not been paying attention to her echeladder, as it was a trivial mechanic that would hardly matter in the scheme of things. She was a SERPENT’S SCOUT at the moment of the sword’s final upgrade, and could practically feel the first golden rung within her hands. Unintentionally tightening her grip, she leapt down the tree and rolled, jarring her left shoulder upon meeting the ground.

Grumbling, she rolled onto her right side and struggled to a sitting position, biting her tongue to stop herself reacting to the rapidly increasing amounts of pain in her shoulder. It was something she could ignore for the time being because Shadow’s Bane was connected to her right hand, but it wouldn’t make anything much easier. Slashing the underlings around her as she stood, the blade left a black residue on the corpses where it sliced before it spread and completely swallowed the bodies in darkness. All that was left of them when she proceeded past the tree-line were curls of black and purple smoke, as if they’d never been corporeal at all. 

Gradually, she forged a path through the underlings, using her blade to shatter the hard, crystalline and carapace-like armours that the cruxite had given them before stabbing at anything soft. She would’ve preferred being able to dual-wield and crack the armour with something else, but it was effective enough. The resulting smoke clung to her clothing and left a trail, but she wasn’t really worried of anything else reaching her. All Valdis had on her mind was completing her Land Quest and ascending, and she’d sacrifice anything and everything in her path to get there.

Soon, she’d reached the border of the Witherstrip, feeling around the invisible wall for a weak spot. Pressing her palm over a small- nigh-unnoticeable - splinter in the field, she slipped her nail through it and jerked her hand downwards, the sound of tearing fabric echoing across the environment. It wasn’t fabric. She was hardly sure what the forcefield was made of, but it was some Skaian material that she hadn’t been able to research. It felt strange, knowing that her fingernails were enough to pierce through such an imposing-looking barrier without any resistance, but that was just what she needed. More reason for fighting and using her new weapon was always satisfying, even if it meant jeopardising her server player in exchange for a few more moments of glory. They were past that, in any case. Carrie needed to be able to survive on their own. Val wasn’t even aware that Carrie was unconscious, but they weren’t bleeding from the hit enough to be in danger. 

They’d wake soon, but the underlings had bigger things to feast upon - the activity on Val’s part was more attractive than something that didn’t move. Hulking Liches and arachnid-like Acheron had joined in the fight as well, and they were more of a problem than ever. The session had become Void by virtue of Carrie losing contact with their sprite and Val being unable to form hers in the first place, but the cruxite armour rendered any skeletal fragilities useless. There was only one option: To run. Although the Witherstrip didn’t exist any more, and they’d be able to reach her easily enough, the girl’s Denizen would be helpful in the end. Some things were written out from the beginning, and she didn’t have to be aware of that. To manipulate such things would’ve taken a greater power than she could hold.  

She stepped over the border between the two Lands, finally entering the Land of Slate and Frogs for the first time. The sky was pale and clouded without a hint of colour. Dotted about, as far as she could see, there were tall spires of rocks. Water ran down their sides from where it spurted out the top, as if they were all miniature geysers. Where the water pooled, it had eroded the ground beneath it, resulting in deposits of calcite and onyx whirling underneath the liquid in an impressively marbled display of black and white. Staring at this for a while, mesmerised, the admin was only shaken from her thoughts by the rise of an uneasy chorus.

Various lily-pads were beginning to float on the surface of the pools in one way or another, all in different colours, sizes and shapes. Each of these possessed a frog, unrelated to the cosmic tadpoles of later SBurb, trapped in a water-filled bubble that burst when they were safely anchored. The last of these was just white, settling itself on the lily-pad of the pool nearest to Val and letting out a croak that slowly but surely united all of the others’ previously grating tunes. It made for a pleasant introduction to what would be a more-than-gruelling journey through the environment. A deafening screech rang out across the Land a few moments later, shattering the moment and causing Val to cringe backwards and clamp their hands over their ears.

Medusa had awoken after years of silence in SBurb’s expanse of cosmic coding, and she was angry. 

The Denizen immediately cast their gaze across the Land, enveloping the first row of ponds in a blazing green hue as her innate ability took hold. The few frogs possessing these ponds were slowly turning to stone, pale grey slate, and the lily-pads they sat atop sunk into the murky depths as the newfound statues weighed them down. Val took cover behind a spire,  momentarily terrified for the first time in her experience with the game. But she didn’t have to be. Not yet. Looking downwards, she twisted Shadow’s Bane in her fingers, admiring its shining black surface. She would grasp the golden rung and pull herself onto it even if it were by a single finger. Valdis had always yearned for power, and now it was in her grasp. So she stood, facing the monstrous figure head-on.

Their head twisted to meet where Val stood, but she ducked back, closing her eyes and thinking as hard as she could. Her left arm was still useless in combat because of her previous drop down, but she dragged it across the dusty earth in front of her, doing her best to sketch out a plan with rough pictures. The frogs were certainly something to be used because of their status as consorts, a game mechanic; how was an issue, considering she doubted her ability to communicate with the animals. They couldn’t talk, and all of the sites she’d previously visited indicated they were either too unintelligent to be of much assistance or as cryptic as she’s have expected a Sprite to be. She didn’t need nor want guidance though, and her lack of a conscious Server Admin was making that clear. In the Medium, she was almost alone, and it was fate’s dance that was keeping her on her toes.

Sweeping the earth in front of her with her arm, the hard planning she’d been doing was erased. Nothing was set in stone, contrary to what her Land told her every step of the way. Val had finally realised that she could forge her own path forwards. With that, she revealed herself triumphantly to the snakelike figure, nearly taunting them with her very presence as she moved across the open plain. The first time Medusa’s stare could reach her, she put her thinking into action, picking up one of the frogs - heedless of its unsatisfied croak and struggling - in order to cover her face until the creature calmed. She dropped it back into the pool again without a care in the world, feeling her heartbeat even out after a moment of relative silence. With each new step, the area became quieter, but this time the discordance was more than welcome. She knew she was moving forward. 

As far as the player knew, the serpent was tiring quickly, and frequently had to close their eyes again. It was during this time that Valdis urged her aching body forwards, using the Shadow’s Bane only to deflect attacks and not to disintegrate any underlings. While this seemed counterproductive for the most part, everything she was doing at that point had been  calmly calculated beforehand. It’d all be worth it. True to her thoughts, the player was forging her own path through the trial, and unwilling to wait unless necessary. Her shoulder healed quickly, even though she’d dropped from a significant height. Everything was beginning to bend to her will, save for Medusa. that was the next stage of her master plan. It’d all proceed smoothly, of course.

Carrie had regained consciousness by that time, letting out a low groan and putting a hand on their head. It came away clean save for a few crusty flecks of dried blood, and the persistent pounding of a headache told them it was better not to move. They knew otherwise. Valdis needed their help, and they’d sworn not to abandon that mission. Shifting their weight to lean against one of the only remaining trees, they stood, taking their D10 from the pouch and dropping it onto the ground. A moment later, a trident appeared, fully alchemised thanks to their rolling a perfect ten. It’d never happened before, but it was good it did because the player needed something to support themself. Leaning heavily on the weapon - dubbed “Dread of the Abyss” - they came to standing, legs shaking like they’d give out at any moment.

Dread of the Abyss, like Zephyrus, was more defence-based than able to attack, though the name was fitting. Whenever the forks made contact with an enemy,  the underling was trapped in a black bubble so dark they’d hallucinate after a while. Unable to move, they’d be subjected to this torment until the bubble was burst, and it would’ve been more merciful if it left them dead at that stage. But they’d be alive and otherwise well, forced to live the rest of their days with the horrible memories induced by the ‘harmless’ weapon. 

They managed to traverse the Witherstrip, only using the trident when necessary to prevent themself getting hurt. Unlike their friend (who still held that title in their mind regardless of what she’d done), they felt remorse for every enemy they had to slay, so preferred not to do so at all. As far as they were concerned, though, the trident only trapped the creatures in a bubble, and nothing else. Scaling their tree for safety’s sake, they leaned against its trunk, obscured from harmful gazes by the leaves. Before long, their eyes slipped closed. Being unconscious was misleadingly exhausting, since they had no time to adjust to being awake.

Valdis had used up all of her consorts as shields up until that point, and dropped the last - a once-black toad, already crumbling to dust between her fingers - into its pond without a care in the world. They were disposable. The consorts’ pain had been practically broadcast to Medusa, however, as they had been her acolytes and friends. She would not be so forgiving. Twisting her heels into the dusty ground, Val bought her sheathed blade in front of her body, upright and steadied. Her left hand hovered next to the guard, ready to grip the hilt and strike. The time would come when Medusa finally opened her eyes, and-

There it was. The moment. Movements almost too quick to be detectable, the hero unsheathed the sword, aiming its shining reflection in such a way that the denizen witnessed their own gaze for the first time. Falling back, Valdis witnessed as the great tyrant was rooted to the spot, thrashing and letting out a howl so splitting it reverberated across the entire Expanse - the two Lands - and shook Carrie from her slumber. As soon as it started, the noise went quiet. The serpent was silenced, but Valdis wasn’t done. With a single slice, she cut off the beast’s head, catching it deftly with her left hand.

This caused a strange effect to echo out across the Expanse once again, though Carrie was unaffected by it because she was a Player and not naturally of the Lands. Everything, save for the tree where they sat, turned into stone. This included the Dread Trident’s bubbles, but they turned into rhodochrosite half-spheres where they lay in the Land of Song and Fortune’s borders.

The tower that Medusa had been guarding was the tallest spire, once covered by the coils of her snakelike body, but now coated only with a thin layer of dust. Lying inside the archway, in the ruins, was her Quest Bed. It was made of pink stone and emblazoned with the Heart symbol. Valdis approached it, stepping carefully, drinking in the sight with uncharacteristic reverence. Laying upon it, the Hero placed Shadow’s Bane on the floor. She didn’t need it to get damaged, nor wanted its effect getting in the way of her ascension. The golden rung was finally in her reach, and with hand outstretched, she grasped it as all went dark.

Her left hand, holding a dagger she’d taken from her companion’s belt, dropped limply to the side. But the Hero’s heart only skipped a beat, and then she arose anew. The Knight was finally awake. 

Discarding the dagger, she sat up, gazing down at the soft pink fabrics of her Knight garb and standing, gently beginning to float. Perfect. After getting her bearings, she picked up Medusa’s head, unaffected by it but making sure to slip the eyelids closed regardless. She also slipped Shadow’s Bane into her own belt, however useless it’d prove. Valdis only had a couple of final tasks to complete, and that was simple. Carrie had already been lured down into the Witherstrip, so she took a quick trip up to where the other’s quest bed was. Driving Shadow’s Bane down into the stone, a satisfying crack met her ears. There would be no escape for them now. Derse and Prospit were long gone, Carrie being plagued with shackling nightmares preventing them from floating to their dream moon since birth.

Marking their territory, they left the smoking sword in the broken Bed. Proceeding down to the barren white border, Valdis let their smile return, flattening back their God Tier hood and raising a hand to greet Carrie silently. The server player immediately went to hug her, but was stopped in their tracks by the sight of their friend’s sudden wardrobe change. The one pause was all Valdis needed. Grin falling into indifference, they flew into the air, the Denizen’s head held firmly in their hands. Checking around themself for all of the underlings and deciding there were enough in the vicinity, she finally let the statue drop. 

When it shattered on the ground, Carrie had moments to process what was going on - the effect was reversing, and every underling wronged by them unintentionally or their companion with every intention in the world was awakening - before the monsters surged forwards. Looking up at the Hero floating triumphantly above it all, they didn’t even have time to call for help. After everything that’d happened, Carrie’s faith in their friend had never wavered. There was one thing wrong with that, however. 

Valdis was a Knight of Heart, but the only one she’d protect was her own. 

[luminescentlyricist]

[[Undertale]] FRAGMENTS

SPOILER WARNING FOR THE TRUE PACIFIST ROUTE! 

~

"I... I'm so sorry... I'M the monster... Such... a monster." The woman sobbed, claws raking the ground as she sank to it in defeat and refused to look them in the eyes. So many mistakes, so many inaccessible solutions, so much of everything that was overwhelming and heart-wrenching. She had made her biggest mistake yet, and it was never going to be fixable. At least, not in her lifetime, and likely not in... theirs. Her life's work could not be saved from destruction, no matter the efforts that many other monsters would not be willing to give.

She trembled, finally bringing herself together enough to look at them. They were more than she was, even though they were weak and confused. She sat up and raked her claws down her face, forcing herself to keep her eyes open, even though the pits of black underneath them were enough to kill her, and she thought she might as well have faded. Of curse, she didn't think Asgore would be particularly happy with her if she did, but Alphys held the unspoken knowledge that he could always just as easily find another Royal Scientist. She had run, run away like the coward she was and always would be, away from her only friends and comforts into whatever this was. This Hell. They were getting hungry, hungrier and hungrier by the second. She had her tail between her legs, metaphorically and physically.

Yet, she was unable to get away from the troubles she had so blindly created. Once, once upon a time when she was so much more hopeful, Alphys had tried to give them substance again. To split them into their original forms, to make them become less of a monster than they were fated to be because she had made such an error. They refused to regain proper form, much too confused and, so she believed, pained, to accept the Determination she had artificially placed into their already shattering SOULs. They had all merged with each other time and time again, each formation more hideous than the last. "Well," she thought, a hollow laugh bursting from aching ribs, "They all seem to have the Determination to at least do that." Alphys was shaking badly, worse than the previous day when she'd initially trapped herself in the True Lab, and she believed that she wouldn't be able to last long enough to escape. The elevator she'd used was too broken to fix now, it seemed. At least she found comfort in the fact that at least one monster in the Underground held Determination, her dearest friend and partner Undyne that she had abandoned for a lost cause, such as the one she herself had become. Maybe, she thought, she held Determination too. If Undyne could, then so could she... Right? It was a hollow hope, close to shattering like the SOULs and monsters she'd condemned to the darkness, but it was all she had and all she'd ever be able to have.

She grit her teeth and attempted to bite back a scream of rage, the only thing she found the strength to do in expressing her inner turmoil, but it spilled out of her, not a scream but a warped sort of keening sound, one of deadening anguish and debilitating mental and physical pain. It was pathetic as she now was, no longer filled with emotion in a remotely distinguishable range but a mixed sound of confusion, sadness and anger at herself for being such a fool. The confused and fearful creatures before her stumbled back, not yet coordinated in their movements requiring some level of dexterity, or their fragmented minds, warped and crushed and moved and smashed beyond being able to form coherent or logical thought patterns. She looked at them all with an expression that was meant to be one of apology and pity, but was only worrying because it wasn't clearly expressing any type of emotion or emotions at all, though she had tried. It seemed that she, too, was deteriorating at a rate perhaps even more rapid than the hybrids, a prospect that terrified her even more than her alarming quantity of psychological weaknesses.

The monsters, or whatever they now were, seemed to be more scared of her than she was of them, which was something she had found out that was entirely unprecedented. Alphys thought that she was more of a monster than they were, and she was most likely right. They were far, far gone, but the dinosaur woman was fading as they were. She looked down at the dust coating her lab coat, choking her because the space was loaded with it, and so much so that the only nice dress she had was covered as well from where it hung in her closed closet. Nothing was safe and clean from the dust, the cloying matter whose true origins Alphys could not force herself to speak, no matter how much she resisted her instincts, the one that told her, at all costs - no matter the later consequences that she would surely suffer for - to keep it silent. Not many knew of the dust, of how it came to be; she intended to keep it that way. Ignorance was bliss in this world, it was true, for so much was gruesome, the true details hidden beneath glossy fairy tales. The overworld humans had opened her eyes to true fear, to horrors she could not bear to utter, and the dust was one of the few things she had not forced herself to forget. The fallen humans were better, much less... Barbaric and they seemed to care, care far more for the monsters and respect them as people. All except for one, that was, the one that☝✌💧❄☜☼ and Sans both had warned her about. That one was worse than the overworld humans, reportedly. It had no mercy. The dinosaur woman coughed harshly, and with each shuddering breath she felt herself growing weaker against her wishes. She staggered to the machine, the creatures too disoriented to follow. She gazed into the sockets that would have served as holders for eyes that were blinded by death, shuddering. Why ☝✌💧❄☜☼ had wanted to use a skull, she had no idea. She didn't know anything about him, she realized, in a thought: nobody truly did. That was the only thing he had indicated to her before the disappearance, to use this skull, though for what she had no idea. Certainly not for this... Now she wondered whether he was truly even there. He seemed like an illusion, anyway. She then wandered to her worktable, the dust covering it both fake and true. She saw the bloom upon it, sighing as she remembered how much Asgore liked them, if only for the sickly sweet flavour of the tea Toriel had made for him before she, too, disappeared into the Ruins. How naive she was. The golden head of the flower seemed to glare up at her, a pain to look at among the metallic greys and blacks of her Lab.

The woman grasped the stem of the flower, muttering a string of tired curses under her breath in a variety of Monster speeches, different dialects, as well as human's speeches, what they had called languages. Alphys knew of this because she had tried to save the other humans in the underground before Asgore had torn out their SOULs. She had sworn as thorns stabbed her luckily scaled hands, but hurt nonetheless. She wasn't sure that the blooms had been thorny when she initially saw them, but she couldn't spare even so much as a thought to that ridiculous notion. Flowers did not simply mutate of their own accord, as far as she knew, and she was a very knowledgeable person. She was far too busy to be considering such fairy tale rubbish.

She placed the flower down again, hurriedly getting bandages from her supply closet, as her scales had not quite protected her from the prying thorns. She was shaking too badly to apply them, though, so she stood, watching for a moment as droplets of her blood hit the floor, the only burst of colour in the greyscale world she'd forced herself into. The creatures, the ones she'd decided were called Amalgamates, slowly gained their footing and got used to their bodies. She knew deep in her heart that there was no chance of her escape with or without those monsters. They'd most likely rip her apart, once they gained some form of coherent thought, enough to realise that she was the one who'd done such a wrong thing to them all. She sighed once again, the sound shaking and weak, and turned back to her worktable, untamed claws raking at her palms as she balled her hands into fists. Alphys looked at the glaringly, artificially bright flower again, but did not do so for long. She had a job to do. She shut all of the doors accessing her portion of the Lab, so that she was at least a little bit safer from the horrors that were the Amalgamates. They couldn't reach her now. She travelled deeper and deeper into the catacombs of her Lab, past mistakes and failures in experiments on monsters that still haunted her all this time later. She flicked on the fans to clear all the fog cloaking her form as she passed, making her way to the freezer room, with fridges and freezers both in which various non-food items rested, such as syringes upon syringes of artificial Determination, all of which she wished she had never made in the first place. She slipped on gloves as a precaution, still uncertain about how good her scales were at protecting her, especially since she had injured herself earlier. Then, with a huff of resentment, she took one of the syringes in her claws and began her journey back to her dusty worktable, navigating the Lab that she wished she didn't know like the back of her hand.

Her heart was pounding more than she thought it would be, and that only stressed her out even more. She needed to calm herself, but thoughts of what she was about to subject herself to kept her on the tip of her toes. The syringe was in danger of falling off and onto the floor as she sat at her desk, claws shaking far too much. The Amalgamates were getting angrier, more desperate, and she could hear them bashing against the door, feeling the ground also shake beneath her feet as a result of that. She felt her claws digging further into her palms, so deeply that the tough, virtually indestructible scales there were being practically gouged out by her own accord. She released her fists, picking the syringe up once more. This time, however, she sighed. She hated needles, but it needed to be done for peace to be bought to the Underground, or so she believed. So, she placed the syringe full of Determination against her arm. The ground gave a mighty jolt as the group of horrifying Amalgamates slammed viciously against one of the many hastily, desperately constructed barricades and doors that separated them. Again and again the creatures burst through doors, seemingly stronger at every attempt, although they should have been weakening. Maybe she was the one weakening... She counted as loud as her wavering, all-too-weak voice could manage, counted the doors she had left. "Five. F-Four. Th-Th-Three..." She coughed, a harsh noise that cut the air, "Two..." There was a crash, and the Amalgamates broke the last door. She had no time to protect the syringe, and it flew through the air. The Amalgamates advanced and pounced, bypassing her scales as if they were no more than paper as they tore through her.

The last thing Alphys saw before her eyes closed for good was the syringe shattering atop that golden flower, the one she so despised.

[luminescentlyricist]

🍃 Aether 🍃

The strings were thin, but the boy knew there was no way he would be able to escape them, binds of spider-silk and plant fibre that his sisters had once woven into their dresses. He was only a small nature spirit, and there was nothing much that could be done against the behemoth army that met his tired eyes over the horizon line. This was what his fate was: Gaea had decreed it, and so it would be. Those few who had dared to rise up against his mother were being sought out, some captured and tortured and interrogated to an inch of their lives.

The high-pitched whine in his ears was torture enough, but to see his brothers dying right in front of his eyes was horrifying. He could do nothing at all, and that was somehow more devastating than fighting. Hoshi's vision swept over the field, spires of flame licking at the trees.

There was never supposed to be fire.

Hoshi had been made to heal and create and nurture and *grow,* but that was far behind his sisters. He'd live, of course, if he could protect his Core. The glowing ball of energy in the centre of his corporeal form was what sustained him, so no damage to his flesh would ever harm him. But all the young spirit saw was orange and black, and all he heard was screaming. He wanted to go deaf and blind, if only to have release.

One of his sisters - one he had never known, as it turned out - had eventually dragged him away from the epicentre of the fighting, but that was long ago. Too long, it seemed, for he had been forgotten. She had planned to torture him. The ash from the raging fires stung his eyes, but he forced himself to keep them open. If he dropped his guard down his Core would be crushed and he'd never open them again. Every so often, there was a sharp burst of sound, not unlike a water balloon popping.

He allowed himself to blink, but only then. Every burst was a spirit's Core shattering, and that wasn't something he wanted to watch, even with half-lidded eyes in a battlefield so packed he couldn't tell where it was coming from. His vision blurred with tears, and with his every twitch and movement another string seemed to catch on his clothes. If he were going to survive, he needed to keep as still and calm as possible.

Hoshi was sure that he was being watched, in some way. With another flinch, another death, he clamped his teeth to his lips in a fearful bite. Sure, his teeth weren't all that sharp, but something translucent and pallid pink in colour trickled down from where there might have been blood. It bore the colour of cherry blossoms, but it was far more sinister than the flowers themselves. It appeared to be... sap. Running his tongue over the wound, his gaze travelled back to the sky. There wasn't much hope left for him, he feared.

His wings appeared to already have been damaged when he fled from the scene at an earlier time that day. At least he thought it had been earlier; with the sky blotted out in fierce swathes of grey clouds, there was little to no indication what the time of day was. His feathers ruffled, just a little, but it shot pain through his spine so intense he couldn't help but exclaim. With a gasp, words blurted from his lips, a run-on sentence that expressed his hurried pain more than screaming ever could.

"I wish I'd never come here I don't want to be her-"

Like a veil fell over the battle, for a moment, everything was silent. He gasped, taking in the heavy air that made his heart burn and his head spin. But the vegetation and the wings of others did nothing to help filter it out, and the young boy could do nothing but watch and attempt to hold his breath for a little longer. He didn't know what had happened to his wings, but he felt heavier and more sluggish than any creature blessed with flight should.

They had likely been cut to pieces by the bramble walls he could make out, rising from the haze in gnarls of vine to attack his brothers and sisters alike. There was no mercy on the field, and the bloodbath was only beginning. His world was slipping away from underneath him, but his siblings were thick in the middle of it. It wasn't really clear what was going to happen to him, but Hoshi had all but accepted that he'd never escape the fight. He was fighting his own body, fighting not to go limp, and fighting the smoke that crawled into his airways, stinging like a noxious poison. A more natural herbicide.

With a cough enough to shake the tree he was bound to, the boy doubled over, heedless of the binds. They sliced into his skin, causing that same weak colour as before to coat the strings. He was shuddering and pathetic, but he refused to close his eyes and have the darkness smother his light. That would be a cowardice that he couldn't afford. Sure, he was likely going to die there, but the slimmest chance in the world that he wouldn't was enough for him. He began to think, conserving his energy as much as possible.

The glow in his Core even dimmed, and it became abundantly clear how little time he had left.

Hoshi's body was giving up on him, and his breath only came in laboured, short bursts. He didn't know how many of his brothers were left in the battle, but it hardly mattered because of the stench of death. Blurring figures darted around at supernatural speeds, doing whatever they could to fight. In a closer examination of the figures, they were even letting themselves bleed, hardening their sap-blood around the feet and bodies of their assailants as a temporary immobilisation tactic.

He had figured out, however, that he could manipulate his own, and he attempted to harden it around the deceptively harsh silken weaves that kept him tied down. After that, he twisted his body even more, even though he knew it was jeopardising his chance at getting away if it didn't work. His natural body was being destroyed, and it would start to matter very soon if it was too damaged to let him escape. It wasn't as if he could reform and heal without the clear sky.

The sap slowly thickened over the strings, so he would be able to manipulate them without moving his body. The glossy coating also contained as much of the strands as possible, so that he could protect himself from further harm while he was trapped. But there was no real way he could stop the bleeding once it had started, due to his bound hands, and there was always the looming possibility that he had gone too far in his naivety. Luckily, he was quick-working and always had been.

After a few moments, the boy began to cry from the smoky fumes in the air, breathing becoming even more shallow than ever. The situation was easily deadlier than it could've been, but Hoshi was weak and his thoughts were following suit. He moved as if he were in slow motion, becoming jerky and disoriented. His struggling caused the hardened material coating the strings to crack and crumble, taking with it the razor-thin threads and freeing the nature spirit from his restraints.

Falling from the tree onto the scorched earth beneath it, Hoshi's first tear dripped down onto the black. It spat and sizzled, regardless of the fires not straying to his captive area. He found himself unable to stand, as his legs were too weak, so he collapsed onto his hands and knees at the first attempt. Staying low, he wheezed in breaths, trying to draw his focus away from the stuttering rise and fall of his chest. The colourless liquid of his steadily increasing tear streams mingled with the pale, rose-like hues in his blood as he braced himself for what he was about to do, knowing that he might have had no option left.

He spread his wings, and a crack echoed out into the choking darkness.

Despite the pain, despite the ash, he moved on. Dragging himself by the beats of one wing, he retreated into the darker parts of the forest and away from the battle. The boy's legs were dangling limply, knees roughly scratching up from the dirt. His Core was whole, undamaged, and he could breathe a little easier. But with such a combination of factors working against him, there was little he would be able to do to save himself if he wouldn't stop bleeding. Light was all he needed, and his one wing would help him heal faster than a natural human ever could. Nothing else could save him, but it was what he was least expecting to find.

Using a combination of limping, crawling and flying, Hoshi ventured deeper still. He didn't expect to fly, because his left wing felt as if it had been left to dangle in its shoulder 'socket', pulled out and torn just enough to be barely functional. Tripping, stumbling, he never stopped even though the forestry seemed dense enough to be infinite. The boy's quest for refuge was absolutely hopeless. His sap-blood created droplets of light pink, hardened to resemble small gemstones on the floor. It was almost beautiful to his deluded mind.

But there was no beauty in bleeding, and even less in death.

[luminescentlyricist]

🦴 The Collector 🦴

The boy hummed to himself as he took in his surroundings, even though the interior of his house was something he'd seen a million times. He wasn't a very talkative person, even when he was around those he knew well. Hayato Kura was planning to go to the entrance exam of UA High, one of the most prestigious Hero schools in all of Japan.

He was lucky enough to be in the 80% of people who were born with a Quirk, though in his generation it was theorised to have risen to 95%. His Quirk, however, was largely useless, and turned out to be much more of a hassle to use than it was worth. Wings Of Bone had always been more offensive than defensive, he found, which would do him no favours in combat training if he even passed the entrance exams.

Hayato was calm, though, and found that he didn't particularly care whether or not he got in. While he decided more freedom, if he didn't put his life on the line by getting his hero license sooner, he would be at no risk. His mother possessed a shielding Quirk, and his father wielded flames as the rising hero Ignite. This perfect balance of brutal attack and sturdy, reliable defence had inevitably led to a lot of coddling in his earlier years.

The boy's constant humming had blended into a single note. He stopped humming, then, rubbing his eyes in a gesture of idle discomfort. Hayato subconsciously turned his hums - which he regarded as a sort of hobby - into one of three things: A minor note, something dissonant or one of the gentler tunes that Haruhi - his dear mother, who he had gradually become much closer to than his father - had taught him as a child.

Swinging his legs, the boy made little effort to move from his bed. He didn't want to socialise with anyone, and when he looked out the window he realised just how early he had been getting out of bed those last few mornings. It was a bad habit, really, because he went to bed at times resulting in about four hours a night, often less. Hayato rubbed his ears, ringing persisting from the grating noise he had subjected himself to before.

He wanted so badly too get into UA, no matter how many doubts pushed into his mind at a constant rate. Despite how hard his mother had tried to hide it from him, the boy had known for years that she had never made it into the prestigious school. Above even his yearning for freedom, to mould his own identity, he wanted to make his parents proud. Especially his father, who he didn't particularly bond with over anything.

That said, the man had always been invested in becoming a hero to be held in high regard. So, as he finally stood up after a minute or two deep in thought, he rung his dad. Usually, Homura, better known as Ignite, would pick up, but the line seemed to be dead. With a soft, resigned huff, he reacted no further to the circumstances. All things considered, he never really expected the man to stop anyway.

Endeavour was his father's greatest influence, role model and source of jealousy alike. Unlike Haruhi, he had been able to get into UA, and had been training his whole life since. Endeavour was to Homura as All Might had been to Deku, but the comparison ended quickly. Both boys had been obsessive, but they held different views, and Deku's had helped him rise. Hayato often worried that his father's viewpoint was clouded with too much jealousy to be healthy.

He pushed all of his doubt to the back of his mind and begun to pace irritably. He often worried that everything would get so much worse because of all the time the man spent away. He couldn't seem to get the hurricane of thoughts in his head to still. Once more, he attempted to call his father, but the ringing was just too loud. He hung up, fingers skittering across the screen with a feverish intensity.

All of a sudden, he hauled his middle school backpack from under his bed, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. He packed it with one of his newest notebooks - he had taken a proverbial page from Deku's book, and was fond of documenting Villains and Heroes alike - as well as a bottle of soft drink and a couple of snacks. He knew that he had to escape for a little while, and there was only one place where he could do that properly.

There were a series of caves deep in the darkness, the likes of which could only be accessed via a hole high in a rock wall. Not many people bothered to go further than the main cave mouth, where the obstacle lay. There was evidence to suggest others with flying Quirks had attempted to get up to the crevice, in the form of gouges and crumbles. Even though it was dark and uneven territory, Hayato found solace in it.

Weirdly enough, Hayato didn't use Wings of Bone much, scaling the wall with a certain practiced ease, using the natural and unnatural wear alike as footholds. Unbeknownst to his parents, he had been visiting and mapping the caves for years. He didn't mind how dark and frightening the caves were in the least. He was adjusted to it. If anything, he appreciated these circumstances because they prevented other people coming to the place he had deemed his own.

The high ceiling of the cavern in which he stood was unreachable without both flight and speed as well as stamina. As such, he had been steadily training his endurance across the whole time he had known of and was visiting the winding and intricate underground network. That was one of his goals, really, to be able to get up closer and to observe the mighty stalagmites on the higher reaches of the cavern.

He laughed joyously, listening intently to the way his voice echoed and was slightly warped by the environment. For now he'd go no deeper, as it was quite the effort to get into in the first place. As a whole, from where Hayato lives, it was anywhere from a half-hour to forty-five minute walk. This was punctuated by hills and uneven ground, however, and the student often found himself flying over much of it to avoid stirring the earth or tripping completely and being injured.

He sat on a jutting rock, the smallest of smiles etching itself onto his lips. This place was his, and his alone. It was a Monday, and he'd likely be yelled at by his classmates or teacher for skipping school, but he didn't think that was important. Hayato's careless nature punctuated his worries and would, undoubtedly, force him to change his ways. All the boy seemed to care about when he was in his special refuge was the environment itself as well as the peace and quiet it provided.

Hayato took a small pouch from his blazer, the likes of which he had sewn extra pockets into, and opened it. Inside was a small vial, containing preservation fluid and a pair of tweezers. He set his bag down beside him, unzipping it with trembling hands. They weren't actually shaking from anxiety, apart from the fact that Hayato didn't really want to damage anything when he did what he had initially come to do.

Upon coming to the caves a few times a week, the boy had observed the formation and growth of crystals over the years. Now, after so long, the gems were ready and waiting for him to collect. He had more than one vial and container in his bag, as the boy had made sure to be prepared. Letting his Quirk activate - the process slow because of all of the adrenaline coursing through his body - Hayato rose through the air, humming once again and letting the noise wreathe around him, providing additional comfort.

It was nerve-wracking, really. The mere thought of destroying what he had waited for so long to grow was mortifying. Hayato was no archaeologist, but he had educated himself well on the subject. So, he observed the crystals at the entrance to the caverns, cringing at all of the chipping and damage they had sustained. He'd leave those ones alone. Slowly, across at least five hours of flying back and forth through the network - careful not to go too deep - Hayato had collected at least thirty crystals.

He wrapped the vials and other containers securely in towels, tightly packing them so that they wouldn't be damaged in any way by the rough journey ahead. The boy wasn't quite sure of exactly what he'd do with the precious objects when he got home. All of a sudden, there was a deep rumbling outside the main cave that made his heart beat faster, so loudly that it throbbed in his ears and almost drowned out the panicked screams of the civilians outside. It seemed there had been a Villain ambush, and some kind of attack had impacted the rocks.

Hayato bolted.

He had no idea if he'd even be able to escape. If he did, there was the glaring issue of what was happening outside the caves. His feet pounded across the uneven ground, and all thoughts of using his Quirk to get out escaped his mind. All he could think of was to run, run, run away. Rocks were breaking all around Hayato, his legs, lungs and the rest of his body burning. As the place he once thought was so safe crumbled, he kept moving by sheer willpower, though his body protested every movement he made.

Leaping into the air, he activated Wings of Bone, knowing that there was a no other way he'd get out fast enough. He lurched towards the rock wall, but that was when it had just begun to break. The sheet of rock fell inwards, towards the frightened boy. He had fallen from the air because of the debris pummelling his every side. He curled up in defeat, accepting his morbid fate as it finally collapsed.

Now, however, the student's body seemed to burn with a different energy. Time was slowed - or that was what he thought, due to his groggy eyes and mind that wanted to give up on him - as four soft, choking words were smothered by crashing stone:

"Special Move... Marrow Mould!"

Of course, Hayato had never used such a move before. It was a blind guess. Puns aside, he felt the power in his very bones. When he felt as if he were going to die, the boy pushed all of his power into visualising a shield. His arms may both have rendered useless, but at least he was alive. It had worked, against all odds. The dome of pearl-white bone was circular, bubble-like, exactly like the ones his mother always used to protect him.

[luminescentlyricist]

BETWEEN TWO GODS

Below is a Pesterlog-style conversation between my Maid-turned-Muse of Void (by virtue of an AU) Lucy [LL/VV] and my dear friend Aaron's Lord of Light, Erin [SO].

I no longer have contact with Aaron, and unfortunately haven't for the better part of a year now. But when this is posted [on 18/6], it'll be his birthday, so my posting it is sorta my way of saying happy birthday to him.

Additionally - I apologise if the pink and blue are a little hard on the eyes. Those were simply the closest I can find to their natural text colours, shown below.

VV's text is grey naturally.

LL: WeLL. I didn’t reaLLy expect to be here, but that is the way of the worLd. LL: Always fuLL to the brim with surprises. LL: So. LL: What brings you here, then? LL: Have I Lured you from the depths of the Furthest Ring, wherein you dweLL with abhorrent and wrathfuL creatures somehow Less disturbing than your own fate and appearance? LL: Are you seeking a match and an opponent to wrestLe with in cosmic staLemates for the rest of your eternities? LL: Or wiLL you Leave, and deny yourseLf the fate you have spent so Long seeking out? LL: There is no point in denying it. LL: Even you, Lacroix, can not run fast enough to snap the strings that bind you. LL: You’d said yourseLf, one of those days, that I couLd not. LL: Don’t you feeL fooLish now? LL: My Legs were buiLt to do just that. LL: Run and escape from the greatest machinations the universe can thrust at me. LL: Though I may stumbLe, and oftentimes faLL, I am so far ahead that it hardly matters. LL: I am a God. LL: Just as you preach your hoLiness, though a faLse pretence I reaLise that practice is, I whisper the words and pLeas of the faLLen, so that they may weLL be heard as the Living are. LL: What eLse did you expect? LL: I am a ControLLer of the Void that caLLs your name. LL: It does not sing so sweetLy for you. LL: There is one fact. LL: Blatant as ever, but too easily ignored, hanging now in the air as hazardous as cobwebs, sticky and cLoying and Left to rot. VV: youre going to have to kill me, or die trying.

SO: Unfortunately, my priorities have not become so skewed that I am prepared to squander aeons of forethought and visionary rumination upon a deluded conductor with a grandiosity complex. SO: If you truly desire to pivot me into this altercation, I am not going to prevent you from doing so. I am not going to let the stubbornness of a pet project gone awry derail the grand design. SO: My curiosity is piqued, however -- you seem particularly confident in your capacity to thwart this. SO: Given our established fashion of duality, I am operating under the assumption that you do have some sincere leverage in making such grandiose claims. SO: It’s the song-and-dance of sovereigns, I suppose. Lord and Muse, thesis and antithesis. One meets the other in the interest of deposing their converse, and thus proceeds the contest of the purblind. SO: But you’re better than that, aren’t you, Lucy? Your entire modus operandi thus far has been to defy fate time and again. SO: If you want to continue advancing this particular sequence of events, I shan’t stop you -- and if I’m defeated? Surely, I’d go into the peaceful dark without complaint. SO: But you’ve sincerely not stopped to wonder about your own participation in things? Beneath all of this fanfaronade and pontification and in all these attempts to defy fate, have you really not recognized why we are here? How we are fulfilling our intended purposes without contestation or uncertainty? SO: I suppose I’m making an idealistic assumption that you understand what a Hegelian dialectic is.

LL: You work in ideaLs, and that is how you wiLL aLways be. LL: I have aLways kept myseLf tethered to reaLity; one wouLd assume that I was the Light pLayer between us. LL: Yet, times are changing around us. LL: As readiLy as I may have been pLaying into your mind games, Erin, I have aLready begun my descent into the darkness. LL: BeLieve me, this is not the end of our fated dance. LL: There wiLL be darknesses even you cannot iLLuminate. LL: It is a dance entangled as sureLy as the cherubs are bound to each other. LL: It is a Laughter deafening enough to crack the cosmos, and yet a cry enough to spLit the earth. LL: The dance of thorns. LL: DuaLity foLLows where we traveL, and there are aLways two decisions to be made. LL: The jester inside me is bLooming stiLL, and she cries for reLease. LL: Tricks and Lies are yet to be toLd. LL: Have you ever Looked back at yourseLf? LL: You are a Light pLayer, gifted with knowLedge. LL: I was, once. LL: In another time that has come and gone. LL: And yet. LL: I am the FooL drawn again and again from the tarot; a new beginning, a spontaneous change, a naivety that comes in tandem with controL of the deep. LL: I am not so different now. LL: Look back on yourseLf. LL: TeLL me who you were.

SO: As much as I appreciate your talent for digression, I believe we have something more vital to address than bygone aeons -- and, yet, I suppose that is not an entirely irrelevant question, now that I think of it. SO: It’s been quite a time since then, hasn’t it? I rarely think back to when I was Erin Lacroix, but not the Pontifex Gaul. I suppose I have never had much reason to do so. SO: If you really insist, then I can enlighten you. I suppose you’d not be aware of this, but it was quite a period of political and social upheaval . . . SO: Yes, I was squandering my talents for the purposes of satisfying my country’s side of a conflict of infinitesimal scale -- it seemed so large back then. Yet, nowadays, I could simply say “oh, seventy . . . eighty-five million died,” and that would seem a jolly wheeze - the best outcome, in fact! SO: I’ve grown used to that scale, haven’t I? People simply die now. They do not have names, or personalities . . . their relevance is no longer a mystery to me. I’ve watched a hundred-million insignificant dirtballs spiral away to the annals of history, then fade to legend, then become lost to all somatic planes. SO: It was nineteen-fourty-three, and I’d found something, because I was wasting my talents as a fucking messenger boy for revolutionaries who were sincerely impressed that their little chunk of some dirtball held any more importance than the other chunks. SO: I found something in the old catacombs beneath the local church. There was something scrawled on the walls - carved into them, in fact! I recognized it as being the same kind of code they used for encrypted communications. I didn’t quite understand all of it, but I picked up quite quickly from observation alone. SO: Yes, it’s all sort of a blur . . . but I recall running the code through something, and the whole routine began for me, as it did for everyone else. And all that dross about the war became useless nonsense.

LL: You have been born with the stars in your veins. LL: It is a priviLege, one bestowed to the minority. LL: Sure, you may have had to face the war outside of you. LL: WhiLe I faced one inside. LL: Regardless, I think you are Luckier than you thought yourseLf to be. Light is not just knowLedge, after all. LL: It is chance and the path to fortune, which you have exerted your command over as a truer Lord than I am a Muse. LL: Though we are supposed to be equaLs, in terms of power, as we are engineered in the timeLine/s then, here and now to become Locked in eternaL debate, I find that there is a marked imbaLance. LL: Rather… gLaring, actuaLLy. LL: Do you feeL it? LL: There is a tension mounting between us, buzzing in the frequencies necessary to create something horribLe and terrifying and bLinding when it is broken. LL: An imbaLance, as it seems, tiLted in your favour. LL: CouLd it be reLated to the vesseLs we once used? LL: Or are you the red-cheeked cherub, and I the green? LL: To push and puLL, to stop and go. LL: Are we weaving the intricacies of the battLe in a more LiteraL manner? LL: Have we simpLy adopted that system of dominance and ruLership, whether or not we wish for sovereignty? LL: TeLL me, do you think me your inferior? LL: I feeL so. LL: I am Losing it, Dearest Pontifex. LL: I have simpLy begun to sLip away more than I ever have predicted. I am afraid that I am not reaLLy controLLing my aspect, but having it controL me instead… LL: Haha. LL: Yet, I am restraining it quite weLL, I think. VV: wouldnt you agree?

SO: The fashion in which you ask if I consider you my inferior conveniently seems to preclude the fact that I consider everyone my inferiors, and for very good reason. SO: Whatever delusions you may have of my intrusive demands, or the images you have of a cupidious villain, and whatever frail reasoning you use to convince yourself to continue this pursuit, you have to understand that I have exceeded anyone you are ever going to meet that has touched the program with a fifty-foot pole. SO: I alone have done something that has never before been done. I have altered the fundamental qualities of reality time and again, and I have become the architect of destiny. SO: Do you know where I am going next? Do you have even the slightest clue as to what I have in mind for the future? The conclusion to twenty-three billion years of planning? SO: Whatever advantage I may have over you, it is not an advantage given to me by luck. Whether it is the incarnation of destiny, or a consequence of my own merit, I cannot tell you. But I do know that whatever I am, it is something that has never been seen before. SO: And my predecessors? Those who were antecedent to me? I am going to definitively prove my superiority to them. What took the great antagonist, the four-hundred-thirteenth villain, everything in his power and the efforts of countless grovelling sycophants to do, I am going to do with a small collection of those who could possibly nearly deem themselves my equals. SO: But I digress -- you claim you are being swallowed by the darkness, and you fear that you are losing your mind. SO: For this, too, I have a solution. SO: This is the final offer of countless offers I have made to you through history. I am going to bring you back to the world of forms, Lucy, and I am going to give you a ground-floor opportunity in the most important enterprise in Paradox Space. SO: Here we stand upon the precipice of the beginning of a new age. Never again are the deluded antagonists going to cause harm to the vision of Paradox Space.

LL: You and your choices. LL: My memory fades with every second as it is, and I do not wish for more of your insistent drabbLing to push more criticaL information out of the way to make room. LL: That is to say that carapacian reproduction techniques or simiLar depLorabLe topics wouLd even take priority over anything that comes out of your mouth. LL: You are an insistent fooL, but a God nonetheless. LL: This fact allows one to harbour a God Complex, and yet you take it so far. LL: You are conceited and narcissistic. LL: FLawed although you refuse to admit it. LL: Am I not enough of a bLatant exampLe of this fact? Do you truLy stiLL beLieve in your iLL-fated deLusions of perfection bought by godLiness? LL: It is time you grew up and reaLised that even you are not perfect. LL: Pose the question, give me the choice, to show that you are not a coward. LL: See where it gets you. LL: You are the ‘deluded conductor with a grandiosity complex’, and I harbour the opposite mentaLity. LL: Is my question not evidence enough that I aLready consider you my superior? LL: I have never Lorded my position over anyone. LL: After aLL, that is the Lord’s more metaphoricaL job. LL: Ha. LL: Anyway. LL: What do you want me here for? LL: What other moronic, two-sided ‘choice’ wiLL you offer to me, knowing that neither truLy ever benefit me? I know you too weLL, Lacroix. LL: As sureLy and openLy as I am the Void PLayer, I can and wiLL aLways shed the necessary Light on your infantiLe schemes.

SO: I suppose this is less a choice so much as an offer, but it could be posited as a choice as well - one between cleanliness and rot. Between the slow decay of the universe and the manufacturing of a new soul for the dross-pit that Paradox Space is becoming. SO: Do you remember what I said to you aeons ago? Of course you don’t, provided your circumstances. SO: It was regarding the very circumstances that we are now seeing come to fruition, and the decay that has taken root in the universe. I was quoting T.S. Elliot, a poet from my world, though I doubt your society had any equivalent, and I felt that it summarized adequately the situation. SO: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” SO: I am here to provide the remedy for Paradox Space’s derailment. The cure for the regurgitation of unprecedented and gross twists of fate that brought us here. SO: Your arrival was unprecedented for me; provided what you told me, I suppose it was unforeseen for you, as well - but now that we are here, I figure that you could be there to witness the conclusion to the aeons of planning of which I have partaken. SO: Years of scheming, considering, forethought and calculation, all leading up to this. SO: This is not in relation to the pet project that I had with your reality, of course - this is something much, much more important. It connects back to the old place - do you remember the one I showed you? The culmination of decay? SO: I have initiated the creation of a new nuclear sun, around which every universe can revolve.

LL: ALthough I do not remember, there is no choice to be made here. LL: Are you suggesting that I Let it rot? I wouLd not do that in a miLLion aeons. LL: As connected I am to the essence of rot, as cLose to Doom as Void, its aftereffect and fated journey, I wouLd not wish for it to be destroyed. LL: Or are you suggesting that I become obsoLete? LL: I cannot die, but I know that I couLd just as easiLy waLk away from you and my cosmic destiny and feeL as though I died. LL: I wiLL not Leave you, Dearest Pontifex. LL: As much of a pain as you are, we are entwined, and that is written deeper in our cores than either of us can even comprehend. LL: Two sides of the same coin, as it were. LL: ... LL: Give it to me straight. LL: I am tired of you and your meaningLess chatter, now. LL: TeLL me what you want me to do or just shut up, because we both must be getting tired of aLL this rambLing about different topics. Yes, I found you because of whatever buLLshit ‘fate’ has dictated to me for the past aeon or two, and the buzzings of the Horrorterrors became too Loud as to prohibit my sLumber, yeLLing arcane and awfuL obscenities in my ears untiL I heeded their aching words. LL: But you decLine to teLL me even now. LL: And if you do end up teLLing me my roLe in this creator’s narrative, we may both finaLLy have reLease from our physicaL and psychoLogicaL cacophonies aLike. LL: MutuaLLy beneficiaL, see? ??: > B) <

SO: If you have truly become so impatient for the exegesis of my design, I am offering you an opportunity to participate in the genesis of a new actuality. You are not going to become obsolete, because you are part of what is necessary to maintain a stable reality - and to ensure the stable release of a certain program. SO: Do you understand? This is not an ultimatum - this is an invitation to the most exclusive group in the history of Paradox Space, the very few who have not only become relevant, but crucial to the structure of everything. SO: We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams - wandering by the lone sea-breakers, and sitting by desolate streams. I know that I am not alone in my significance. SO: Whatever complex we may have, our grandiosity is no illusion. Not from what I’ve seen of you - not from what you’ve seen of me. Bright lights in the ocean of tenebrosity that is Paradox Space. SO: We are the architects of millennia. I, you, and whoever else accepts my invitation. I have already taken interest in a few individuals who have had similar experiences, drawn from all walks of life, sessions both failed and successful. SO: You govern ignorance and stagnancy, and that is exactly what we need to forge our new reality. Meandering idiots who are going to perpetuate the reproduction of new universes without question. SO: You cannot be plagued anymore by the Horrorterrors, because they are long dead. What you heard were ghosts - vague echoes of a time bygone. It is time that we return to the age of prosperity, and exceed it - an age of perfection revolving around my new Lavender Singularity.

LL: Ah. WeLL, that is… not too different from what I expected from you. LL: To teLL you the truth, I have often wondered whether or not I wouLd even find my counterpart. That was a fear I was not ready to face. A Muse without a Lord, whatever species they may be, is a Loss. WeLL... I didn’t think I’d reach God Tier in the first pLace, Let aLone fiLL the roLe of a Master CLass. LL: Again. I do not and wiLL not ever truLy beLieve in the machinations of Fate, but I can acknowLedge that a path has been forged through the cosmos by some force, whether it be that one - the force you so vehemently live by, but a force that I deny in all other instances save for when I am avoiding it - or pure coincidence. LL: And yet, here I am. Standing on the precipice of a so-caLLed new age, and I have at Last found my match. LL: However uneven the stance may be, wiLL we ever fight? Or will you prefer to talk my ears off, and then see the work you have spent so Long preparing meticuLousLy go to waste in an effort to prove a point that I wiLL never Listen to? LL: Am I simpLy to create waste in your new worLd then? LL: To throw away my power on a whim, to just suit your insuLting interpretation of the void? It is Lying and obfuscation and darkness and more than ‘ignorance and stagnancy’ or creating ‘Meandering idiots who are going to perpetuate the reproduction of new universes without question’. LL: You mock me, and I do not appreciate that. I have worked just as hard, if not harder, to finaLLy breathe in the cosmos, or whatever Location we are now in. I wiLL not stand in wait for you to absolutely bastardise and beLittLe my own variant of creation, when it is just as important - or maybe even moreso, for without decay there is no chance for rebirth - as your growth. LL: You are an insoLent, immature piece of shit, and I wiLL not caLL you Pontifex any more. It is a titLe and a faLse name you are not deserving of, Lacroix.

SO: I’ve offered you an opportunity to witness - and contribute to - the total restructure of the universe firsthand, and you refuse it? SO: Have you somehow forgotten what I showed you? Has it not occurred to you what happens when you defy fate? Did you forget what I said when I brought you to the remnants of the world that was? SO: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” SO: You would toss away the opportunity to finally shape fate instead of blindly raging against it in favor of fulfilling the dross prophecy spewed by whatever serpent that SBURB pulled from the ground for you? SO: What I proposed was not to “waste” in the new world - it was for you to take the place that you are supposed to take. You are a Muse of Void, and you inspire ignorance. I expected you to oblige my request, but it appears that I was misguided in expecting you to use reason. SO: And for you to claim immaturity and lack of growth whilst continuing to regurgitate qualities of the past? Living through the people that should be your lessers? SO: Dross! SO: Think realistically! This is the alteration you have been waiting for since you were born. The opportunity to actually take fate into your hands, rather than meander through life at the behest of others. When this kind of opportunity came for me, I did not deny it. SO: This opportunity to decide our fates is what separates us from others. SO: I am sure that you are familiar with the argument of the purblind. SO: “You don’t have to 8e a good person to be a hero.” SO: But heroes only exist in storybooks for children. There are only the architects and the dreamers destiny has permitted to reshape reality. I thought you were one of them - was I mistaken?

LL: I have not said anything to confirm directLy nor done so much as impLy that I have refused your offer yet. You needn’t do that job for me, you know. LL: There you go again. “inspire ignorance”. LL: I couLd rear up the darknesses inside your souL and have your own thoughts swaLLow you as if they were a part of the gaping maw of the most horrific and inescapabLe beast in the Furthest Ring. I wiLL shape reaLity however and whenever I Like, if it does its job and separates me from you. LL: CaLL me foolish, naive, idiotic - aLL of the empty words that you can throw in my direction in a sorry attempt to scaLd me and get me to Listen to you - aLL you want. It wiLL not make any difference to the stance I have chosen to take on this matter. LL: The onLy thing you couLd possibLy do to redeem yourself in my eyes wouLd be not to speak so crassly of my power Like that. I am not a narcissist - far from it, as far from it as you are far from being a haLf-way decent and empathetic person - but I simpLy wish I was treated with a LittLe bit more respect in your eyes. You are too far entrenched in your god compLex, and I too far in my inferiority. LL: We think differentLy, and do not see the error in our respective ways. Why do you find it appropriate to view Void - and the abiLities that I have gained from and with it - with such disgust? I have onLy admiration for you and for your power, veiLed though it may be behind spitting hatred because I am only retaLiating against your judgement. LL: Even gods are fLawed, and need time to make decisions about things that may aLter both their fate and the fate of the universe itseLf. LL: What is another year or two of thought, when compared to the empty and unbearabLe aeons you have spent pLanning and scheming to rewind the rotting pLanet-corpses Littering a universe, one that was doomed from its very cosmic conception? LL: ALLow me this, and then I may accept your offer. LL: I wish to enter this as an equaL, and not an inferior, though our own internaL compLexes and whatnot may fight against it. Does that not seem reasonabLe to you? LL: ShaLL we reconvene in the bLink of an eye? LL: Or wiLL you have to search for me again, in and out of the vision of your Light Like a shuffLing deck of cards? LL: You decide.

SO: Hrm - I suppose I should be shocked that you have some quality of admiration for me, but I suppose that is only the response to expect, isn’t it? Most people couldn’t even wrap their little heads around treading the same ground that I walked upon. SO: Alright, then. If you want acknowledgement, then I can grant you that -- an acknowledgement of your success to satisfy the primate urge for triumph. SO: If I didn’t think you deserved a quality of respect, I wouldn’t be making this offer to you at all. I would have worked under the assumption that you were best fit as an expendable proxy, rather than a vital part of my scheme. SO: You assume that I connect a slave with its master when I speak of ignorance, but I can assure you that is the furthest thing from the truth! When I look at you, I see a person fit to replace the things that were lost with the Furthest Ring. A propagandist, a censor, someone who can twist the morals of the people to their needs -- and someone who can see to it that the remnants of the past are swallowed up. SO: It’s not as though I see your most important qualities as being your only qualities, as well. I am simply acknowledging what is most important to me, and to the rest of the universe. If approval is what you crave, then I can satisfy that in acknowledging that we are opposites, so the best we can glean of one another is what most properly compensates the things that we cannot do, and the things that we lack. SO: Whatever else you bring with you, I am more than welcome to see firsthand added to the new reality. SO: The reason I have chosen you instead of someone more . . . acquiescent . . . is because I don’t need you to do any of this. I am offering you this invitation because you have the merit and, so much as it pains me to confess, the intelligence to count yourself among the administrators of the new universe. SO: This is not an offer I make lightly, nor without sacrifice, nor is it one which is even necessary. You seem to not understand how much I have had to do to allow you to come even this far. SO: If that has satisfied you well enough, I have something very vital to attend to. Are you going to oppose me, or assist me?

LL: I suppose, at Last, we have come to a point of convergence. LL: ALL options have henceforth been expLored, and - despite the pain it causes me, cosmicaLLy and universaLLy insignificant though that pain may be - there is only one way. LL: Two words, fated to fall from my lips as smooth as your plans have been set in motion for all these aeons. LL: Ah, no. LL: Not swearing, as appeaLing as that option is. LL: I suspect you’ve known it aLL aLong, but have quite enjoyed pussyfooting about that certain truth as a Last chance to exercise your role as puppetmaster. LL: An architect of destiny. LL: Enough of this prattLing. I wiLL say what needs to be said for your wrath to be queLLed, though know now that I wouLd rather be Lost to the darkness of a decayed Land than admit such under any normaL circumstance. LL / VV: “Assist you.”

[luminescentlyricist]

Warm Again

( This is a short for my dear moirail / best friend! They know who they are. )

~ The girl, nameless in the hazy darkness behind her eyes, settled into her bed at last. She became heavier as if pushed by something unseen, sinking into the plush mattress and pulling the covers up with fingers topped in chewed nails. There was only one place she could get relief, and it was here. The waking world was not hers, with all of its sharp edges and loud demands. Luckily, the journey to her space was only a moment away. She exhaled a soft breath, feeling the tension melt away in her shoulders, jaw unclenching. Finally free from the day’s stresses, shed like a smothering cloak. This, despite being hard to adjust to at first, was what she considered the highlight of every waking moment. Being able to leave everything behind and start anew, with no expectations or criticisms. 

Cold air was blowing through the crack underneath her doorframe, and it made her shudder even beneath her sheets. The room was dark, her curtains drawn tightly to block out the light, and she had no interest in shifting positions and leaving her bed to block the drafts from entering. Nothing much mattered as she squeezed a plush toy between her arms, grateful for the comfort it provided considering she wasn’t used to sleeping alone. Raising a hand out of the sheets enveloping her body just enough to swat a strand of hair away - despite the black impeding her vision - she set the plush down beside her pillow and rolled to face the wall, tucking her left arm away in a bent position under her body. It had always surprised her that she’d never woken up with that arm having fallen asleep, but the strange scrunching position was the only place it felt comfortable in.

Normally, it took a while for her to sleep, but she’d busied herself through the evening to ensure she’d crash. Her parents had initially been confused about her sudden appreciation for an earlier bedtime, but had come to realise that all it meant was more quiet for them and an easier environment for their own windings-down. They had no idea how important those hours would come to be for their daughter. There was no true way of telling which days would allow her to use her gift, but the girl was confident in her instincts. Having had the trick up her sleeve for what seemed like ages led her to notice the signs of good nights and bad nights with ease. There was no moon in the sky to impede her rest with light, and the twinkling stars became an afterthought when blotted by heavy curtains. The black beneath her eyelids rose to consume everything within a few minutes, and she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. 

The shift was quicker than most nights, where she often stayed motionless for hours on end trying to float herself away. But after a year or two, the forceful tugging of the dream-powered currents swept her up quicker. Though her physical body was heavy with the weight of sleep, she felt mentally and physically lighter than ever in her space. Soon enough, her eyes opened to a black void. This wasn’t it yet. Floating, suspended above an invisible path momentarily, the girl took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to lie to herself and pretend that the journey was always easy. Near her chest, enveloped in a deep red glow, she found the darkness’ sole source of illumination within herself. However foolish it seemed, her heart would guide her in the perilous scape, and she already knew where her destination lay. There was no physical indicator that told her where, but her feet already seemed to know. 

Her fingers were tingling with a familiar sensation. She was already anticipating the trek ahead, but found it easier to relax than ever before. Hope built inside her and the luminescence surrounding her heart swelled to become nearly blinding. Seconds appeared to stretch into minutes as she rested, steeling herself as much as possible. Excitement threatened to turn her plan into a reckless dive, but she swallowed it down. There was nothing, negative or positive alike, that was going to threaten her goal. Everything remained wreathed in darkness, save for her own glow. It was barely enough to see her feet, let alone what surprises awaited her. But the entire point was to prove how little she needed except for what awaited her on the other side. That was where her people were, or so she thought. The unpredictability that greeted her whenever the dreamscape came was a part of the fun, though it also lent itself to the fear that prickled the hairs on the back of her neck.

Testing the waters with one of her feet, the figure allowed herself to make enough contact with the unseen path that she could push it through. Suddenly, the once-solid ground had given way to a texture halfway between liquid and gel, cold wreathing around her body from her toes to the tip of her head. Pulling back with all her might, she became unstuck with a suction-like pop, propelling herself up into the air with the overwhelming force of the action. The girl would’ve become dizzy, had she not done such a thing countless times before. Sometimes, the path stayed solid, and she’d have had to force herself awake. Doing this both interrupted her missions and made her feel horribly nauseous - the thought alone pulling at her stomach in the haze of a world - so it was a relief that all went smoothly. At any point of her journey, unless she completed the night’s ‘quest’, being awoken would have dire consequences. Humming a soft note, she lowered herself back down onto the path. Pulling her jacket around her - knowing full well it’d do nothing against the bitter chill - the yet-nameless girl forced herself to relax, the release of her muscles allowing her to once again enter the gel-like substance beyond the surface.

Here, her glow was dimmer than ever, but the pull of her desires led her as if she were magnetised. She travelled wordlessly for an indeterminate amount of time, unable to discern such things when it felt like she was being moved in slow-motion. Below her rested a void of unfathomable depths, where other creatures who only rested in nightmares dwelled. This served as a warning to a dream-walker like herself; you move too much, trust too little, become wary of the path that’s set for you, and you die. Once, when she first entered the dark world, she’d nearly fallen. But there had been the thoughts of someone to keep her stable, one of the few people she’d cared for at the time, but they themself had been forgotten eventually. She cared too little for those she knew in person, so technology was one of the few ways she could tether herself to those doomed awake. 

A lack of self-confidence was an issue that plagued her in waking and sleeping alike, but here she only needed to have hope and faith in one thing - the belief that she’d not lose her way in the black. Moving forwards at a slow pace, she looked around, never truly expecting to see a thing. The low thrum of her space grew louder, emanating through the gel-currents beneath the false path and sending shivers down her spine. The world shuddered around her from the force, but she kept herself safe. There was only one thought in her head, and it matched with her goal. The nearer she got to her destination, the warmer she felt despite the otherwise relentless chill. The pull of the currents that had dangerously influenced her journey until then was lessening, and she felt herself regain a degree of control over her own movements once more. This was immensely relieving.

Soon enough, she was able to walk along by her own will, letting out a hum that disrupted the stillness of the air. It’d felt stale earlier, making her want to cough with each inhale. She could finally breathe. Her heart was at its brightest as she quickened the progression of her journey, and the fear that was once so prevalent melted away. It gave way to a feeling of pure elation that she’d only felt once before: the first time she’d dream-walked was the best, and the fact that she’d been more of a child then meant she was able to tell everyone around her about the strange power without judgement. Nobody had believed her, of course, but it hadn’t phased her at the time. Now, it would’ve shaken her. At this thought, the surface beneath her feet trembled as if warning her, and one of them slipped through it, dangling in the void. She inhaled sharply, breath catching in her throat. It was the world’s strangest self-esteem training, but it was certainly effective. Once more, she freed herself.

The red that’d surrounded her chest had since given way to a white-hot glow as the path solidified once again. Small white flowers sprung up sporadically where she stepped, making a smile spread onto her cheeks. She was almost there. Stopping to bend over, she picked up one of the flowers and tucked it behind her own ear before continuing. The breeze that disturbed her hair was little in the way of a deterrent, due to her vision locking onto a figure in the distance. They were crouched down in a patch of the blooms, plucking one from the ground and watching as the petals turned a deep shade of blue. Their eyes and the rest of them were colourless, but as they turned on their heel to wave at the awaiting girl, the petals’ colouration leeched into their fingers, spreading through their entire body until they practically glowed with the bright colour. Starting slightly at this display, she stepped tentatively closer, smiling and waving to them before she realised just who they were. This revelation stopped her right in her tracks.

“Valdis?”

Her voice carried across the dreamscape, lost in the emptiness, but she was all too aware of this. Her friend. She’d never been able to choose where to dream-walk, yet her heart’s guidance always led her to the right places. Almost. Those past slips didn’t matter because of the joy that filled her from head to toe. She ran towards the blue figure, enveloping them in a messy embrace. The liquid from the flower seeped into her own skin, running into the white of the bloom behind her ear and giving it life once more. Slowly, she felt the other’s arms wrap around her too, and she squeezed back as if they weren’t just a figment of her dreams. After a few more minutes of this embrace, she let go and moved on, though her steps were heavy and reluctant. There was something nagging at the back of her brain that told her to stay for a while more, but she had to move on. Still, the imitation of her friend stared wordlessly toward her, having solidified into a glossy statue in that same hue of indigo. It filled her with a shame that was difficult to ignore. Stepping backwards and twisting on her heel to face the now-motionless Valdis, she reached up and tucked her blue flower behind the statue’s ear. That made her guilt lessen slightly, enough to allow for her to confidently pass the figure.

The world that greeted her after the burst of colour was bleak as ever, and she wandered in silence, feeling the excitement from her friend’s appearance slowly drain away along with her energy. Usually, within the dreamscape, she didn’t get tired because of her being asleep, but this also happened to be the single most immersive dream-walk she’d ever experienced. Her feet felt heavy, but she dragged herself forward, the light in her chest flickering as hopelessness set in. Gradually, the air around her became thick with dust and choking particles. She squinted against the dust, staggering forward and falling onto her knees. A strange sound echoed out on her impact, and it made her laugh despite everything working against her in that moment. Was that… a honk?

Sitting up straighter and dusting off her knees, her expression warped into a grimace just as soon. The girl had never had sensation in her dream-walks, and certainly not pain, however little. She drew them to her chest, sighing. A sudden voice split the silence, accompanied by a large and bony hand gesturing down at her, held as if she were supposed to grab onto it and hoist herself up to standing. 

"Aw. C'mOn, SiStEr. YoU dOn'T hAvE tO sIt ThErE mOpIn'. ThErE's SoMeOnE wAiTiNg To MeEt YoU. hErE, tAkE mY hAnD." 

No matter what way she did it, she didn’t expect to be greeted with the face of a clown. He’d already turned into a dark purple statue by the time she stood properly, of course, but the familiar face of Gamzee looked at her. Idly, she tucked a flower into the nearest crack running through his shirt - just large enough for it, and positioned where any other self-respecting clown would have a prank flower to squirt water - and moved on. The petals turned purple as she left, greeting various familiar figures on the way. Strangely, there were two Auto-Responders. One was green, and the other red. She waved to each figure as she passed them - the red AR, orange Davesprite, yellow-gold Mituna, and green AR among others. She talked to some, but others had crystallised before she’d said a word. Soon enough, she’d collected a rainbow-petalled flower, having bestowed each character with a white-petalled one in turn. This one she kept clutched in her left hand, forging forward. The statues cracked and splintered behind her, leaving a prismatic pool of shards in her wake.

They were all leading her towards one place, whether that was by verbal instruction or vague pose indications. So she walked, passing what felt like a million different still people, created only to guide and instruct to the end. And the end she reached. There, standing in a patch of white flowers was a calmly standing statue. It was made of black crystal, but she couldn’t quite work out who it was. Walking in repetitive circles, the girl unknowingly tracked colours onto the flowers beneath her bare feet, mixing the hues onto different petals as she went. Something about the statue was familiar, but she couldn’t quite capture it. Reaching out and placing her hand around their chest, she stared absentmindedly at her own reflection in the fractured surface before it hit her. 

“Of course.”

The words fell from her lips before she had time to stop herself speaking, an embarrassed flush dominating her cheeks even though none of the statues around her held functioning ears. Stepping back a little, she stumbled again, but was able to stabilise herself without damaging the flower as she’d feared. There was a crack spiralling outwards from the statue’s chest cavity, and she gripped the stalk in her hand before exhaling and placing it in. She’d had no idea whether it’d work, but found herself shielding her eyes from a growing light. The colours from the petals flowed like paint, dripping down the crystalline statue and coating it in a thick rainbow. This myriad of colours became stark white instead of murky brown or black, which was what she had expected. The light engulfed her vision regardless of her efforts, and she shut them tighter than she ever thought possible.

When the light cleared, the statue was gone, and a familiar face looked at her from where it’d stood. After a moment’s silence, she broke out into laughter, the piercing but nonetheless joyous sound enveloping the area. Holding out her hand to him, she squeezed his gently, wanting to hug him with all of her might but knowing that mightn’t be the best thing to do. The petals of the flowers were scattered along something that looked like a trail, interwoven with bright shards of the statues showing the two a different path to travel. At the end of this path laid a pool surrounded by the white flowers. Excitedly, the girl let go of her friend’s hand and walked over to the pool, kneeling at the water’s edge and peering down. The surface didn’t reflect her face, but it whirled with a thousand different colours, and she knew where she had to go. Her friend soon joined her at the pond, placing a hand on her shoulder to get her attention. 

His voice was the last thing she’d expected to hear, but it filled her with a warmth that wiped out the chill of her dreamscape entirely.

“Hey, Carrie, let’s go home together.”

[luminescentlyricist]

AICHMOPHILIA

[[Aichmophilia: Obsession with knives or sharp objects]] ( if you don’t want to read such things, it’s under the cut, and tagged appropriately, )

The nine-year-old called Eli was grinning stupidly, eyes glazed over and thoughts in another place as he gently ran his fingers over his newest prize. His parents were discussing putting him up for adoption in the other room, and he didn't hear a thing, and he wouldn't have cared a bit if he had heard. They'd eventually end up keeping him, anyway. Eli considered himself far busier than he would have had to be to care about something like that. 

He was never calm, anyway. The needle he had stolen from his parents' supply cupboard was about seven inches long, and he held it as if it were made of gold. The obsession had started when he was younger than he could even remember, and he had found a small collection of needles in a poorly-made fabric pouch under his bed that was falling apart. He had been cleaning under his bed, and pricked his finger on a stray needle, then he had discovered the pouch. Since that day, he had stitched up the pouch and started a bigger collection. 

An obsession had bloomed, a deep connection with his needles as their volume grew steadily. Furthermore, the boy's mother had been a nurse, and she often needed to drop Eli off outside while she worked. As the years flew by, he came to resent her and his father for their lack of attention towards him, and one day he decided that he was sick and tired of waiting for it. He had began to pickpocket, specifically stealing needles from the hospital and stowing them in his pouch, which he had modified the straps of into something of a cross-body belt so that he could hide them with him. Still they refused to notice, even though he had done something so drastic.

As such, he had never achieved a very good medical knowledge, unable to get them to apply him for schooling. Each time he was hurt, he'd stitch himself back up with needle and thread. Now, he had begun to stitch patches of fabric into his cheek and jaw, having fallen and almost broken his jaw. The boy had an unusually high pain tolerance, and had never actually broken any bones, despite the many scars and bruises littering his body that seemed to multiply by the day. 

Eli sighed softly, the needle slipping as his fingers become wet from his own blood, cursing hesitantly in a way that revealed he was too young to know proper swear words, a soft "Damn," that was followed by a wince. He didn't wince from the immense pain radiating from his jaw and cheek as he worked stitches into them. Eli was only making such a face because he still thought his soft, childish way of 'swearing' was the worst thing in the world.

He was surprisingly naive for a child who'd been through so much. In some ways, though, he was mature: he sat on a black towel while he worked because he didn't want his parents to know what he'd been doing, and didn't want to do a second batch of laundry that day. This way, he could just wash the towel with the next load instead of having to go through his bed sheet, clothes, and scrub the blood from the carpet. It stained, he knew that very well. 

He soon finished, scampering to the bathroom to clean his hands, throwing his towel in the star-patterned laundry hamper at the end of his bed as he went. He also carefully polished and rinsed his needle, though he polished it with stolen materials, as was his way of getting by some days. His parents by no means neglected or forgot him, they just didn't seem to think a nine-year-old - or a child beyond infant years, one that was conscious of their own actions and, as far as they were concerned (according to Eli) able to walk straight - should depend on them for help any more. 

Some days, he relished the quiet. It helped him think, and he didn't seem to mind that he didn't have any friends. He sometimes worried that other people would make fun of or find him scary for his habits, especially because his needles looked menacing. It would be safer, he thought, for him to be alone. He sighed, returning to his room and locking the door with a soft click, taking off his jacket and exposing his pale arms to the frigid air. Goosebumps rippled up his arms, but the boy didn't care much for it. He liked the cold anyway, and much preferred it over heat. 

He worried that his stitches would melt in the sun when he was tired, because he tended to become less and less logical the earlier the day or later the night became. 

He gently took off his pouch when he'd finished daydreaming, smiling. He'd since improved the unskilled patchwork, making it from scratch with strong, cotton-like material, and it had a zipper to keep his needles safe. His stitches on the pouch were done with a technique that meant they couldn't be seen, furthering the neatness of it. He set it down on his bed, noting how heavy it now was. This furthered his grin, until it looked somewhat maniacal. He'd collected so many... he was so happy with himself. 

Gently, he pressed down on the sharp ends of each needle, counting them as he went. Soon enough, however, the sharp needles began to tear at his skin, collecting blood on the tips of them and staining the silver metal crimson as a result. He seemed amused by this, in a morbid sense, and didn't reveal that it was painful in the least. His expression was blank, but that didn't change the fact that his eyes were as sharp as his needle points and very much aware of what he had done to himself. 

He soon finished, words rolling off his lips as smoothly as the blood droplets coalesced and fell down his finger. He'd finished his counting, and declared a result in a whisper, grin even wider.

"Fifty... With more to come."

[luminescentlyricist]

Important Announcement!

From now on, I’ll be posting both Homestuck fanfiction and my own stuff on this account! I want you to be able to have more content from me while I’m stuck in this block, and wish to expand my reach a little more. Expect uploads of original shorts in these coming days.

#✨ shimmering shorts ✨  is my original fiction tag!  

[luminescentlyricist]

VD: y⊙ur turn, buddy :o)8 (if y⊙u want t⊙, that is)

VD: n⊙ full ⊙n pr⊙mpt, but h⊙w ab⊙ut just s⊙me b⊙nding? maybe putting my makeup ⊙n ⊙r fixing up my hair, y⊙u kn⊙w, getting int⊙ the r⊙utine. can g⊙ any directi⊙n y⊙u want, ⊙r y⊙u can use an entire different pr⊙mpt. i just want t⊙ hear y⊙ur take ⊙n me :o)8

;; Gotcha!! Hope you like this :o)

🃏A Road To Recovery ⊙

Being the newest troll in the circus troupe, as unintentional as it was, Jezakk often stood out like a sore thumb when it came to showcasing his skillsets. He was unbearably graceless, even though he had never adorned the classical shoes that the clowns seemed so fond of. He left trails in his wake, whether or not it was a physical presence. Scent trails, more often than not, that were unbearably easy for a certain other troll to pick up on. While the tinkerer had never established himself as a sociable troll, he kept himself silent despite his yearnings for interaction of any kind. It was a strange fear that helped him maintain his otherwise unassuming nature, though it did nothing to deter one Othamo Oculus. If anything, the smaller of the two had the feeling he was being watched around a corner more often than not, regardless of Othamo’s lack of sight.

Then, there was always the heaviness. Although noticeably thinner and smaller in stature when compared to the other purplebloods around him, there was an uneasy leadening feeling that occasionally swept him, and it was nothing that he could yet explain. Of course, there were quite a lot of things that he had failed to glean from his short time in the facility, when he was conscious. The only conclusion he could draw was that it was a power-based backlash from his time as Othamo’s chucklevoodoo puppet. Jezakk felt there were also things that he had been told then, critically, that his amnesia - as a result of the unfortunate puppetry - had made him forget.

This was one of those times that he didn’t want to forget. Jezakk sat out in the hallways leading to one room of the Mordant King, the ringmaster of the whole group and undisputed Lord of the Circus. Panton Magnic was his name, but that title had been long since forgotten in favour of raw greed and want to establish his power with a title. Sometimes, his tinkerer mused that Othamo was no longer the main puppeteer of the troupe. He fidgeted restlessly with the small golden pendant he had been given on his first day, twisting it around in his claws and glancing downwards to catch the Capries as it flashed in the light of the windows. These windows, Jezakk thought, were unnecessarily large, and depicted circus acts in manners more suited to scenes of the Sufferer’s preaching than entertainments.

He looked around himself, heart beginning to pound in his chest. Panton’s name was the only memory he had retained from the many-sweep-long amnesia, and he wasn’t sure why. It barely mattered. If he shared it with anyone, he feared being exiled from the troupe and never seeing Sealdad again. And the healing of his father’s injury was exactly what landed him in the troupe in the first place. It was strange how desperate he had once been to get into the area, because all he wanted now was to escape. But there was a moral dilemma to deal with, and that was the fact that he would have to choose between his friend and his father if he wanted to get out. As much as Othamo gave Jezakk the creeps, he remained one of the lucky few that held his attention for long enough.

There were vaguely familiar voices behind the door, those of Ferrum and Mierle, two of the other purplebloods that he often crossed paths with. They were friendly enough, but he was wary nonetheless. Tilting his head and standing, he realised that there was no way he was going to hear the conversation. After a few moments, they exited together, looking quite shaken. Laughing dryly to himself, Jezakk shivered in anticipation and dread. He’d not been looking forward to any sort of meeting with the ringmaster, and the unnaturally hesitant appearances of the other trolls did nothing to reassure him. Smiling at them as they passed, he forced his hands to his sides and entered the room without waiting for Panton to call him through.

First mistake.

There was something unnerving about the way that Panton swivelled on his heel to greet the other, and the calm smile that he wore did nothing to soften the sharpness in his gaze. Something told Jezakk silently to turn tail - literally, as it squeezed around his waist tight enough to hurt - and get out of there before he was sliced into. Instead, the tinkerer bowed his head to show his respect, stepping forward. Despite his acquaintances’ nervousness, the naive tinkerer saw next-to-nothing that he should have been concerned about until the ringmaster raised an eyebrow, clasping his hands in front of his body neatly and beginning to speak. His tone was soft and disarming, made to rekindle a false sense of security. Although the smaller knew this, he couldn’t help but begin to let his guard down.

“Y/o\)u( KN/o\W, JEZAKK, I’VE BEEN THINKING AB/o\)u(t Y/o\)u( RECENTLY.”

This caused Jezakk’s eyebrows to raise in alarm, but he was otherwise still. He’d had to work on suppressing his fidgeting in fear of irritating the other troupe members, which had also caused him to unintentionally become skilled in preventing general movements and emotional displays. Raising his head to look at Panton, he remained silent.

“THERE’S A SMALL J/o\B I WANT Y/o\)u( T/o\ D/o\ F/o\R ME, AND THERE IS N/o\ /o\NE ELSE Q)u(ITE S)u(ITED F)o(R IT. Y/o\)u( ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE BEES, I TR)u(ST? I HAVE SPENT AN ADMITTEDLY L/o\NG TIME SEARCHING F/o\R S/o\ME/o\NE WILLING T/o\ C)u(LTIVATE THEIR H/o\NEY, AND I HAVE N/o\W C/o\ME T/o\ A RECENT F/o\REG/o\NE C/o\NCLUSI/o\N THAT Y/o\)u( MAY J)u(ST BE THE PERFECT CANDIDATE.”

Jezakk often spoke without foreseeing consequence, and lacked much of a social filter. It proved itself a dire slip to make more often than not.

“I’Ll do IT, sir.”

Panton’s smile widened, showing off rows of teeth more suited to a shark than any troll. It was less comforting than it was menacing, and the ringmaster’s next words sent a chill through his subordinate’s whole body for no clear reason.

“AH, GOOD! I AM S/o\ GLAD I F/o\UND Y/o\)u(, JEZAKK. Y/o\)u( START IMMEDIATELY, N/o\ Q)u(ESTI/o\NS ASKED. ASK /o\C)u(L)u(S F/o\R ASSISTANCE IF Y/o\)u( M)u(ST AND BEAR IN MIND THE AM/o\)u(NT /o\f FAITH I AM PLACING HERE. D/o\ N/o\T BREAK IT, F/o\R THE C/o\NSEQ)u(ENCES WILL BE DIRE.”

And with that, Panton Magnic returned to his work. Jezakk shifted in his stance. There was a creak as the door was leaned against by another from the outside, and the man only looked up once more from his work before smiling - almost threateningly, despite the lack of teeth - and waving to dismiss the troll in front of him.

Leaving the room, the little tinkerer never expected to see Othamo already there and waiting for him to follow. Placing a hand on the blind troll’s shoulder to indicate where he stood, he looked towards his companion.“WElL shIt. DIDn’T expEcT TO hEar thaT. UH… wEll. I KNoW yoU caN gENERaLlY SMEll yoUr waY AROuNd pRettY weLL, oThAMO, Sir, BUt I thINK I’ll LEAve THe hEAvY LIfTin tO VIZeRA aNd LUmIra WHen I CAn GeT THeM to LIsTen ENOugH.”

Othamo raised an eyebrow, waving to Jezakk as if trying to snap him out of some kind of daze. There, on the palm of his hand, was a carefully drawn eye. Jezakk looked dumbly at it, placing his hand over the one seemingly offered to him. This caused the other to flinch back, curling his nose in disgust. The scent of lemons was heavy in the air, which made him smile despite the distaste he’d show moments prior. He treated those inferior to him as they should have been treated, and never once considered that the tinkerer - a newbie, fresh meat, the perfect little puppet for his games - would be any different, regardless of the time he had in an uncomfortably close proximity and seeing through his eyes. Although it was normally an unpleasant, sharp scent, the undertones of fruitiness unique to the other made fear smell inviting.

“i can see a little bit, y⊙u kn⊙w. en⊙ugh t⊙ want t⊙ c⊙mment ⊙n h⊙w idi⊙tic that was t⊙ assume.”

He murmured, pointing towards the eye on his palm and inadvertently causing Jezakk to look down towards it, even though he had nervously averted his gaze prior. The lemon still hung in the air between them, and the smaller’s appreension was unrelenting. Tension ran through his every movement, and the stiffness was what caused him to fumble and almost trip over. He likely would have, had Othamo not reached out to steady him, unintentionally knocking their bodies a little closer than was comfortable. The taller chuckled, letting his arms fall from around Jezakk and noting how powerful his lemon scent was after that, enough to make his head spin.

“i can generally see thr⊙ugh eye shapes as well, n⊙t just y⊙ur eyes. thatd be selfish, d⊙nt y⊙u think? als⊙, the legends are true. y⊙u smell ⊙f blackberries and fear.”

Jezakk nodded silently, seeing that Othamo would notice the gesture without shifting his arm. He couldn’t help but laugh in fear, even though his words were stuck in his throat, making it near impossible to muster any vocal reply. There was something disarming about the puppeteer, but he was entirely aware of what he was doing. It was making Jezakk on edge, constantly, and he hated it. As such, he sped up his walking, attempting to get as far away from his companion as possible. Due to his dismal height difference, it only took a few rapid strides for Othamo to catch up.

He still intended for the others to help, however, so he continued on his merry way while periodically checking whether or not his ‘friend’ remained at a safe distance from him. There was really no use bothering him further. The first section of the journey to his practice room - as it was in an entirely separate tent to the Ringmaster’s quarters - was filled with a tense silence, which at least one of the pair seemed to heavily regret. The tinkerer was spinning his Capries necklace about in his fingers as an anxious fidget once again, something he performed under stress frequently enough that he took no notice of the action more often than not. Attempting to break the silence, Othamo spoke. It was more of a private mumble than anything directed towards Jezakk, despite that he was wrongly addressed.

“i have n⊙ idea why that jerk th⊙ught it was a g◎︶◉d idea t⊙ put me in charge ⊙f the bees, jazakk.“

“JazAkK? I’M jEzAkk.”

To this, the puppeteer simply shrugged, giving his companion a toothy smile. There was no true joy in the action, and it was unnervingly similar to the Ringmaster’s in that it was more threatening than anything else. Othamo never appeared to drop his grin, which was one of the other reasons Jezakk found it hard to detect whether or not he was being genuine about his expressions. Reaching to place a hand on Jezakk’s shoulder in a mimicry, his claws dug deeper than necessary. He spoke in a hiss, though there was some lightness to it that was reassuring. As if he never meant to threaten, but it was habitual.

“well, y⊙ure n⊙t t⊙ me. y⊙ur ⊙fficial nickname is jazzy n⊙w.”

“I- fiNE. BuT You cAn’T LEt anyONe eLsE knoW… Ah, hERE we aRe. WaNnA CoMe in fOr a BIT? I dOn’t miNd thE cOMpAnY. NObOdy elSe mUch PUTs UP wIth me THeSe daYs. SoRRy… Uh, sOrRY AbOUt thE mEss. I’VE bEen tiNKerINg QUItE a BIT. sEcreT PRoJect.”

The tinkerer, still fidgeting restlessly, rubbed at the back of his neck.

“I SHoUld proBabLY gO anD sOrt ouT the BEE buSINess foR a Bit. NOw thAt I knoW yoU don’T wannA dEal WITh thEm. FeEL frEe to LOOk arOunD, i guEss.”

With that, he left his friend to his own devices for a moment, which likely wasn’t a good idea. There were things scattered all over the place in a frantic manner, as if there had been a fight or something had occurred very quickly. Otherwise, the room seemed relatively empty on the ground, instead hosting shelves that lined the walls filled with boxes of all shapes and sizes. These were Jezakk’s pride and joy; the jack-in-the-boxes were what he was known for among his friends, and rightfully so. He’d definitely honed his craft, making them with an unprecedented love and precision.

Luckily enough, certain trolls - such as Othamo himself, and Jezakk - had been born with tails, according to whether or not their lusus had one, although it was rare. This enabled Othamo to better navigate the room, sweeping objects aside and out of his path to sit and wait for his friend’s return. Closing his eyes, the troll noticed soon enough that there was a strangely printed pair of leggings discarded across a chair, and his grin widened. Perfect. Their ocular design - unnerving to some, and even more so to Othamo himself because of his phobia - would enable him to see properly, though significantly blurred. He had chosen to sit on Jezakk’s recuperacoon, which had been fitted with a cover. It seemed nearly unused.

Activating the chucklevoodoos he was so adept at using, feeling about for the eyes and latching onto them, he made sure to keep his own closed. He wouldn’t need them. Observing the room through his ’new’ sight made his head spin, more than it ever had before. But the fruity scents were like a comforting punch in the nose, so to speak, and it helped him relax slightly and disregard the strangeness of it. There was nothing he could see that would possibly reveal the secret Jezakk had mentioned beforehand, or so he thought. The truth was that he wished to sell his jack-in-the-boxes to help him gather enough Caegars and ensure a safer escape from the troupe.

Meanwhile, Jezakk had located one of the two trolls he wished for help, and he was glad to find that ze was pleasant enough for him to avoid losing his composure. Vizera was slightly too loud for his tastes, and he kept his distance from the acrobat beside him, recalling the enthusiasm with which she had accepted his comparatively gentle plea for assistance. It was not exactly his ideal bottle of Faygo.

“LuMira? YEs, hElLo. It’S… JEzAkk, AND i Don’t THiNk we’VE reaLLy spOken, bUT i wAS WOndeRIN if I couLd HavE soMe heLp mOVIn thEse BeEhOUsEs inTo mY roOm.”

“YEAH, LLLLLUMIIIIIRA! HELLLP THE KIIIID OUT, WON’TCHA? HE’S A NEWBIIIE, AND YOU KNOW HOW THE RIIINGMASTER GETS IIIIF NEWBIIIES GET THIINGS WRONG!”

The troll at the door wore a pleasant smile, directing zir gaze towards Vizera and nodding before looking back towards the little tinkerer, who was significantly shorter than both of them.

“oh!! of course i’ll helP you, jezakk!! i suPPose i have enough time, and i wouldn’t wish for you to get in trouble with the ringmaster!!”

With a small sigh of relief, Jezakk smiled towards Lumira - still, unfortunately, finding it rather difficult to speak because of the new people around him - and led the two through the task, eventually saying his shaky goodbyes to the two and returning behind the safely closed doors of his room. His heart was pounding in his chest, and there was nothing that could have possibly prepared him for the sight that greeted him in that moment. It was an absolute mess. Everything that was scattered on the floor beforehand had been shoved to the side messily. The fact that a few of the jack-in-the-boxes had fallen from their shelves had just established itself as the second most distressing sight there.

The first, of course, was Othamo.

Immediately, the smaller’s hands retrieved his card deck, and he began to rapidly shuffle them as a reaction to his nerves. There was nothing else he could think of except the boy on the floor, but his body completely refused to move in a way he wanted it to. It was hard to decipher what had happened, exactly, but Othamo was laid out on the floor, staring blankly towards the tapering ceiling with eyes weakly flickering purple. He looked as if he’d been almost paralysed. Tears dripped their way down his cheeks, an even paler lavender than his eyes themselves. The only sound in the room - that Jezakk could hear - was the beating of his own heart, so loud and panicked that it drowned everything else.

Jezakk wasn’t used to this at all. His claws were trembling as he shuffled his cards around, silken gloves at risk of unravelling from where they were pulled high to his shoulders. He wasn’t truly expecting anyone to be with him within his practice room, let alone when he returned to it after Othamo had scheduled a busy day at the shows. Because he was new to the troupe, everyone else tended to have more performances than he did, which left him lonely. But here Othamo was, finally giving him the company he so craved, and he had no idea what to do. Everything was just a little bit too wrong, and no amount of physical messing around could fix it. So he distracted himself first, because his thinkpan wasn’t letting him make any lateral solution to the problem yet.

Tiptoeing around so that he didn’t disturb anyone else, Jezakk let his mind drift away from his friend for a moment. He placed his cards away, attempting and failing to regulate his breathing. How could he, when his pan was being wild? Instead, he walked around and picked up all of his boxes that had fallen, softly humming a show tune under his breath that he was fairly sure Panton himself had composed. He wasn’t sure why his pan had strayed to it, but he didn’t like it much. There was a funny taste in his mouth about it, because it meant that something about that suave, manipulative asshole was genuinely likeable. Shaking his head physically in an attempt to clear it, Jezakk placed the last box upon the shelves and redirected his attention to his friend.

Clearing a space to sit next to Othamo, he crossed his legs and began to sing a little louder. Even though his voice was croaky and awful because of the tears that had begun to greet his eyes and blur his vision, he continued, hoping that his voice would at least rouse the one on the floor. There wasn’t much else he was able to do, because he couldn’t properly attend to someone who was unconscious. Othamo was practically a dead weight as it stood, so manipulation would prove difficult for Jezakk. Nonetheless, he continued to sing to his friend, the frown lifting from his lips into a smile.

However negative, he enjoyed the time he spent with the puppeteer, and hoped Othamo felt the same. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, the clown gently wiped the tears away from his friend’s cheeks and eyes, which caused them to flutter and Othamo to stir. He flinched back, seeing the purple sparks that licked at his fingers, and shuffled his position so that he could give him some space to properly orientate himself.

“Ah, SHit, sORRy otH. DidN’T, UH, didN’t meAN tO hUrT YOu or ANytHIn…”

Othamo’s unseeing gaze followed Jezakk’s voice when he struggled into a sitting position, and he shrugged, not having gathered enough composure to vocalise his thoughts. Everything was spinning, and he felt dizzy even though there was no visual indication of it.

Although there was no longer a smile upon the tinkerer’s face, he was relieved beyond expression that Othamo had actually stirred. His fears often caught up with him, and he’d panicked about leaving the other troll to get into a bigger accident. Observing the smudging face paint smeared across his puppeteer’s cheeks in blackened tear trails, he pursed his lips. Softly telling Othamo to wait - as if he could do anything else - Jezakk left the room, locating Othamo’s own and entering it. It was cluttered, sure enough, but he was soon able to locate some liquorice-scented face paint among the jars of scenting strings and return to his friend.

“HOLd on. I thInk YOu smUdGed, mAn. LEmMe heLp yoU.”

He murmured, lifting the puppeteer into his arms with a groan and placing him on top of his recuperacoon once more, back against the wall. He hopped onto the cover himself, settling beside Othamo with his supplies. Taking a makeup brush and some remover, he began to gently brush away the crust of old makeup and remove the rest. After he was mostly clean, Jezakk preceded to wash his friend’s face of the smears with warm water on a cloth, all the while mumbling rapid-fire apologies whether or not he’d actually hurt the troll. He didn’t know how long it’d been since the blind troll had been able to reapply it himself or bothered to, but it couldn’t have been good.

He wrinkled his nose upon twisting the paint’s cap off, the scent making him almost vomit. Why Othamo liked liquorice was something he’d never understand, but he dipped the brush into the pot and began to carefully outline the boy’s ‘mask’ nonetheless. Subconsciously, he found his singing beginning again as he worked but reducing itself to a vague hum. It was a habit he’d suppressed, like many others, but Othamo made him feel safer about expressing himself. Filling it in gently, with slow and rhythmic strokes, he was pleased to find that the paint was drying rather quickly.

“YOu shOuLd gET soMe reST, BRoTHer. I CAn’T be sURE hoW loNg yOu weRe ouT FOr, buT yoU SEEm tiRed AS alL hEll. I hoPe I DId yoUr FACe PaInt WELl enOugH. I guEss I’M prEttY LucKy THaT YOu cAm’T SEE it… I’LL chEck On yoU LAtER, but I SHouLd go DEaL witH acTaLLy geTTin ThE bees FOr thE hOuseS. YOu caN usE mY reCUPerAcoON toDaY, lOokin IN no RIgHT sTaTe tO BE MOvIN.”

Once again using his unprecedented, caste-granted strength, the boy moved Othamo enough to slip the cover away from under him and help him ease into the slime underneath. Jezakk remembered how warm and relieving the sopor was, especially for physical pain. He’d installed a special heating apparatus underneath it so he - or another recipient - wouldn’t get cold in the harsher Alternian months. Turning this on and walking towards the door, Jezakk flashed Othamo an equally warm smile that would go unseen, but was nice regardless. Feeling a deeper sense of satisfaction than he had in sweeps, the tinkerer flicked the lights off and partially drew the door closed.

“HAve A gOOd rEsT, BRoTHer. yoU dEsERvE it. I’m pROuD oF yoU.”

[luminescentlyricist]

𝙲𝙰𝚁𝚁𝙸𝙴'𝚂 𝙷𝙾𝙼𝙴𝚂𝚃𝚄𝙲𝙺 𝚁𝙴𝚀𝚄𝙴𝚂𝚃 𝙲𝙾𝙽𝙳𝙸𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝚂!

IN INBOX :: 0 REQUESTS :: OPEN

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1)) Give me time, please! I have a minimum 1000-word standard for myself with short stories, and this will likely hold for requests. I would like to be giving my best efforts to the stories, and I don’t want to be distracted. 2)) I retain the right to refuse a request if it makes me uncomfortable to write! I will make an effort to let you know - via messages - if I refuse it, and why, so that a negotiation can be reached, and perhaps a new ship/scene/outline can be requested so you don’t have to give up your slot!

3)) I will not write: ★ Smut ★ Ab*se ★ Ships, therefore, that are ab*se, p*dophilia, inc*st and such. ★ S*icide  ~ Despite inferring this in a previous short, it was for venting purposes and thus personal. 4)) Don’t request if slots are full! Please let me know, also, if you’d like to forfeit your slot! I’ll understand!  ~ Three will be open by default, but I may narrow the number or close requests when I feel overwhelmed. ★ PLEASE NOTE : If I close them, the requests submitted prior will still be completed!  𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕟𝕜 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕤𝕦𝕡𝕡𝕠𝕣𝕥! 

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MY IMPORTANT TAGS:

🏠 stuck at home 🏠 - homestuck fanfiction 🗺️ around the universe 🗺️ - other fanfiction ❤️ a world of our own ❤️ - homestuck fancharacter writing ✨ shimmering shorts ✨ - original fiction

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★ By the way, the emojis in the titles don’t necessarily represent a ship! They’re more like main character tags, and just for fun. :]

- Carrie ! :)