#Darker Destinies AU | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

meownotgood · 3 months

Text

let us live, if we must die. / chapter one: fate entwined

You are a witch, and since the purging of all magic, you've been forced to live a life of solitude and secrecy. Your destiny was always beyond your control — until, by a pure twist of fate, you unknowingly fell for the kingdom's only prince.

════════════════════

pairing: prince!aki x witch!reader

word count: 5.3k

tags: fantasy au, royalty au, reader is fem, lots and lots of initial worldbuilding, essentially reader is a mage in a world where magic is forbidden, reader has a very well-established backstory, aki is there but you'll be seeing more of him later. warning: some darker themes in this chapter + blood mention

notes: here we go!! mostly establishing reader and the world here... you'll be seeing aki's cute face more after this, I promise. I hope you like it, and please look forward to the chapters to come... 💞

masterlist read on ao3 join the taglist here!

════════════════════

is love like the sea

will it wash me to the shore

or drown me with it?

—

You knew you should have cast a spell for better weather.

As crows shake the swaying trees when they flutter into the air, cawing and dotting the sky with speckles of black, you're drawn to tilt your head upward. Dark knots of gray clouds obscure the sun, blocking its light. Thunder rolls ominously overhead. You breathe a quiet tsk to yourself. The cool air smells of that familiar, earthen promise of rain. Turning back to your work, you hurry to collect the rest of the patch of colorful mushrooms, grabbing fistfuls and stuffing them into your pack.

It was a beautiful day mere hours ago. Sunshine warmed your skin in plentiful rays, before the clouds had taken over. If you were at all aware of a coming storm, you wouldn't have spent so much time dilly-dallying. Your preparations would have been completed way faster. You would have made sure to leave the cottage much, much sooner — No, if you'd known about the rain, it wouldn't have stormed to begin with.

You can't cancel out a downpour entirely. Such a feat is impossible, even for the most experienced of mages. The world can't be broken, no matter the strength of a mage's will — but it can bend. You could have pushed the storm back to the next day, at the very least. It would have given you the time you needed to forage, and you simply would've opted to stay inside tomorrow.

Damn it all. It's no use worrying about what has already been done. You need to hurry. Your distraction spell will wear off in the rain.

You snap the buckle on your pack shut, rising to your feet while clumsily slinging both straps over your shoulders. You shiver; the first droplets of water hit each blade of grass, they tap against your bare arms and the top of your head, but you're already running. You're taking off through the dense forest, following the well-known path you took on your way in.

Leaves flatten under your feet. Running against the strengthening wind, you feel goosebumps kiss your arms and your legs. You run and pant and run some more, until you can finally see the faint, warm light of your cottage, shining through the forest like a beacon of assurance. Trees taper off into a large clearing, with your cottage at the very center.

Your spell dispels on its own. A cool wave rushes over your body, the magic fading, before disappearing. Thankfully, you've made it home, just in time.

The wooden door of your cottage creaks when you slam it shut behind you. Your kitchen is warm. Blessedly warm. You take a moment to catch your breath: your chest heaving, palms on your knees, the fireplace crackling. You toss your heavy pack onto the kitchen counter with a huff, and you plop down in a wooden dining room chair. Thunder splinters, the sound loud and forceful. Rain blankets the cottage's roof, pattering to a persistent, calming rhythm.

You need to stop having close calls like this.

What would have happened to you, if you were out in the woods for even a moment longer? It's not that you doubt your skills. Your magic is versatile. A damn good defense and offense, despite your chosen spells functioning passively, for the most part. Without anyone to assist you, you're still capable enough to hold your own against a handful of demons, should they choose to attack you. But a whole horde of them?

The kind that live in these woods aren't like the ones you learned to deal with when you were younger. These demons are resilient. They're smarter. They stay hidden, until the chance arises to enter a fight they're sure to win. You've seen the prey they hunt. Despite their small footprints — six footprints for each, meaning six legs with clawed feet — they've been taking out magical beasts nearly twice their size.

Great Elk, mostly. Nearly nothing is left of their flesh by the time you find them, making for quite the grim scene. No matter how many times you see it, your stomach still churns. The creatures boast a gigantic set of horns, and you'll harvest parts of them for yourself, to keep your mind off things. You're appreciative of what those elk can provide for you, in death. That'll be your fate, if you ever screw up.

In a way, it's a double-edged sword. The forest is what protects you, those demons are what keep anyone from venturing close enough to discover you here. At the same time though, they prove a danger to you every single day.

You wish this wasn't how you had to live. Of course you want to be safer, happier; who wouldn't?

Gazing up at the long shadows on your ceiling, your mind brews with the same darkness as the rumbling storm clouds. The patter of rain only seems to worsen the longer you stay sitting there. Your stomach grumbles. Darkness looms in the expanse beyond your cottage, as the sun begins to set, allowing itself to be swallowed by the thick clouds and the horizon. Finally, you sigh. You stop your sulking to sit up, and you head for the kitchen to sift through what you collected.

You were hoping to practice potion-making, so most of the herbs you collected are for healing, not necessarily for eating. A few edible mushrooms, and the potatoes you still have leftover from yesterday will have to do.

Your knife chops the mushrooms swiftly and effectively, into small, square chunks that you scoop up in your palms to dump into a pot.

When you were much younger, you lived in the city. You haven't been there in a long, long time. Everything you learned, you had to teach yourself: how to cook, how to fight. How to hone your spells. Books taught you most of what you know now. They were your mother's, once. After she passed, with no-one left to hide you, you fled. You've kept yourself stashed away here, ever since then. The threat of discovery didn't leave you with much of a choice.

You built the cottage yourself. Magic made things relatively simple. It took some trial and error, sure, plus a few nights spent out in the dark when your preparations weren't complete yet. When it rained then, you were woken up by water dripping onto you, getting in from the gaps in the shoddy roof. It's been a long time since you first came here, since you found the farthest clearing in the depths of the forest, and decided to let it encompass the rest of your life. You've managed to make a rather nice home for yourself, you think.

By all accounts, you should have perished a long time ago. The kingdom probably assumes you did. Without magic to help shield you, to feed you, to protect you, you doubt you would've lasted long out here. Perhaps that's why most people fear it.

Where would you even go, if this wasn't how you had to live? Your hand freezes up, knife stopping midair before it can come down on a half-sliced pile of parsley. Suddenly, you realize you've hardly thought about it. Gods, if you could go anywhere, as free as the songbirds you've always been envious of, you have no clue where you'd want to go first.

You could follow the sea breeze to the ocean, allowing the wind to rustle in your feathers. You've never seen the ocean before. Or maybe you'd want to soar over the kingdom, finally, and honestly free. There would be no-one to hunt you, not a soul that could catch you. It's peaceful there. For those unlike you, at least.

To the people who live in the kingdom, the nobles and the knights and the common folk alike, you aren't human. You're less than that — You're a witch, a seer, a miscreant. You are the very reason for this world's ruin: the source of all demons, and to some, the sovereign who can lead them. Ridiculous rumors, every last one. Those creatures listen to you no more than they listen to the cries of the Great Elk they're feasting on.

Still, you don't place blame on the fearful.

More than anything, you wish things could be different. You would do whatever those people wished of you to prove you aren't what they say you are, but none of them would ever give you the chance. Your magic could help people. You want to help people, not harm them. And yet, if you were anyone else — if you were normal, if you weren't you — honestly, you'd be scared too.

Demons are horrifying. They're soulless creatures, who can take a life away in an instant, only to break whoever they wind up leaving behind. And magic, magic in the wrong hands is just as frightening.

It was innocent, at first. Elves were the first to compose spells, the demons simply came afterwards. Death plagued the land; the people's magic grew stronger, but the demons were already learning to adapt. Magic became selfish. No longer were spells used to protect, to flourish a field of crops, to create a light in an endless darkness. As the first war on demons came to a close, a new threat was quick to emerge: near unstoppable mages, wielding a darkness of their very own.

Humanity nearly destroyed itself. In the process, the magic which once brought them the closest they've ever been to the Gods, that filled them with the strength of the sun, and fell into their palms like stars — That magic is all but gone, and forcefully forgotten.

You never forgot, though.

You were a child, you hadn't seen more than six winters, and already, the patriarchs were calling for what remains of the kingdom's spellcasters to be turned in and killed. Your birth was done in secrecy, your presence hidden. You stowed away in your mother's home, while you practiced conjuring simple illusions and small sparks of flame.

Young or old, it hardly mattered to those who sought you. Your father ran. Your mother was burned. In more "lucky" cases, some people would be allowed to live — relatives of knights or officials, mostly. The regency had their tongues carved out, so that they might never speak an incantation again.

Your jaw clenches, your hand tightened around the handle of a wooden ladle. You breathe in deeply, and you force your mind to wander elsewhere. Lest you lose your appetite.

There's places you've heard of only in passing. Towns and cities where magic is not only accepted, but allowed to thrive. It certainly sounds nice. However, the logical part of you struggles to find the truth in such stories. No matter which way you look at it, everything is telling you those rumors are nothing more than traps. They'll do anything to find you, to cleanse the land of what they feel brought it to rot. They're luring you, their detestable songbird, just for the chance to finally cage you in and clip your wings, once and for all.

To remain undetected, one's magic must be sharp, and their mind ever sharper. Those were your mother's words, at least. She taught you to stay focused, to be smart, and you most certainly are.

You aren't unhappy, per se, when it comes to living like this. You're safe, and that's about as much as you could ask for. You've been content for a long while, living off the forest, practicing your magic by your lonesome. It's better than stifling what you were born with. Or trying to be someone you're not, allowing the imminent risk of capture to remain hovering over your head. No, you aren't really free. Perhaps you never will be. But this is the closest you think you'll ever get to it.

The cottage is home. A lonely form of home, sometimes. No-one visits you. You'll talk to yourself when moments grow too quiet, just to fill the gnawing empty space. You aren't the kind of mage who can speak with animals, and even if you could, there isn't much to converse with; the demons have slowly begun to drive out most docile species.

Gods, you miss the kingdom. You miss when you could see the castle from your bedroom window, stone towers reaching so high into the sky, you swore they were touching the clouds. Lanterns shone from every window once night fell, glowing brighter than any of the stars in the sky. A young and hopeful you would dream of becoming an honored guest, or a knight, or perhaps a princess. One day, you'd find yourself atop the heights in the castle, staring down at your old home instead.

Foolish as it is, you miss the peace that came with those childish dreams. You never got to see it, but you remember reading books and hearing stories of the times where magic was nourished, not suppressed. Now, there is nothing. You have no-one but yourself. You miss when you didn't feel so alone.

Though, for now, you should put the rest of those thoughts aside.

Dipping your spoon into the finished stew, you breathe gently to cool it down, before taking a sip. Delicious. It warms you, chasing away the growing chill from the setting sun and the raging storm. Once you're done eating, you'll clean. Then, you think you'll spend the rest of the night rereading an old grimoire, until the complicated spell descriptions paired with the lull of the rain put you right to sleep.

After fetching a bowl from the cupboard and filling it, you sit down at the dining room table. Your hands clasp in brief prayer — a force of habit, considering no plea is actually spoken, no blessing is internally asked for. You don't have anything to say to any God. Not anymore.

Thunder crackles in the distance, like it plans to split the sky open. Rain drums and echoes against the roof. You take a moment to let your stew cool off, you manage just one bite, and —

Something's tripped the mushroom circle.

With a single fast snap of your fingers, every light in your cottage goes out. The candles and lanterns flicker briefly, before they vanish. The roaring fireplace suddenly dissipates into nothingness, leaving ashen logs of wood behind. Instantly, you're enveloped in total darkness, save for the small, floating flame you produce at the end of your thumb, with a murmur under your breath of the spell ignis.

It's been awfully long since the last time you've had to do this. Your heart begins to pound in your chest, in your eardrums. Your mind races, trying to picture the possible outcomes.

Demons have been growing in number around these woods, but they wouldn't be here; they stick to the outskirts, where they've made their dens. With the rain washing away the scent left by prey, they'd go back into hiding, not wander out here.

When you established your home here, one of the first things you did was create the mushroom circle around the clearing. Using your own blood and that of the demons, you fashioned it to inform you of anything hostile that walks over, barring any docile creatures. Wildlife wouldn't have set it off, so it's surely a stray demon, it must be. It will return to its horde once it realizes there's no food here. Unless…

Flame flickering over your trembling hand, you fruitlessly try to stay deathly still. You can't hear a thing because of the rain, no footsteps and no demon snarls. Only the steady downpour, and the echo of droplets, splattering when they hit the roof above with loud, persistent thunks.

Dammit. It's been an entire minute, and the spell is still telling you there's something within the circle. Just one presence; the spell can't tell you who or what is near specifically, but you can detect each entity inside.

You sense your magic, keen and continuous, invaded by the scorching, resolute soul of another. A deep, brilliant ocean, rippling in the wake of a pebble thrown into it. And those ripples aren't stopping — They're surging through your brain and your body, with a forcefulness that bleeds nothing but blood-red danger.

Your head spins faster the longer the seconds tick into minutes. You feel dizzy. The last time this happened, the last time anything stuck around this close to the cottage for more than a minute, it wasn't a demon. It was two presences, two men. They were lost, after they had traveled many miles into the forest from the main road, looking for one of their horses. Apparently, it was spooked on the trail, and broke away from their carriage to bolt into the woods.

They didn't stay for long. You were in your cottage at the time, and you remember not wanting to open the door, but they wouldn't stop knocking and knocking. When you gave in, cracking the door open hesitantly, it was just enough to meet the first man's eyes, but not enough to let either of them see inside.

Their tone was cordial, not suspicious. We weren't expecting anyone to be living out here, so far from any nearby villages, you remember one of them remarking. The first man ran a hand through his messy blonde hair, while flashing you an easy smile. You hardly noticed, because your gaze was focused on the sheathed dagger at his hip, and the glittering pendant hanging around his neck. A menacing shiver twisted up your spine and gripped you tight.

Still, you held your ground. You told them you hadn't seen a horse, and only that. They thanked you for your time, and left soon after.

Fucking hell, those men were knights. The pendant one of them was wearing — it was silver, engraved with text and a depiction of a lion. The knights in the kingdom have that same symbol on their armor, and out of respect, they'd be the only ones allowed to wear it as a necklace.

Those men, despite the clear hostility you must have been showing them, spoke to you so kindly. They told you they'd be nearby for a while longer, and if you needed anything, you only had to ask. The blonde man gave you a polite nod, and told you to be well as the both of them left, May the Gods continue to smile upon you.

If either of them grew suspicious, or if even one of them was capable of sensing the magic your cottage was surrounded with, they would have driven their daggers into your stomach right then and there. Townspeople might hesitate, before proceeding to slit the throat of their loved one while they slept, hoping to claim some sort of bounty for dealing with another wretched spellcaster. But knights do not. They are trained not to hesitate.

Thankfully, sensing spells is something very few can do, and most never know they can. Perhaps they can feel something, but they'll attribute it to an odd uneasiness, to a brief spark they felt flicker across their skin. It couldn't be magic. Not a soul would risk an utterance of the word, because to feel magic is to be able to use magic, and for that, they are better off keeping their mouths shut.

Either way, right now, you can't risk drawing attention to yourself. That day was almost a year ago. You lucked out last time. Anyone else who approaches your cottage next might not be so quick to leave. One wrong move, and you could easily wind up dead.

So, you hold still. Very, very still. A lone cabin out in the middle of nowhere, in the pouring rain, with no lights shining from inside isn't likely to draw much attention. Anyone in their right mind would assume it was abandoned.

Whatever it is, whoever it is, you only need to wait for them to leave, and you'll be in the clear. In the wake of your spell, you can feel the strength of the intruder's presence tugging at you, burrowing into you, cold like winter's breath and absurdly, ferociously sharp — but you'll be fine. They'll be stumbling back over the mushroom circle any second now.

You're probably panicking over nothing, honestly. There's no way anyone would be this deep in the forest during this kind of storm. They'd have to be crazy, stupid, maybe utterly lost. A lost fool isn't your problem. If the storm doesn't deal with them, the demons most certainly will.

Perhaps your magic is malfunctioning. Right, you haven't used this spell in so long that you've gotten rusty, and there actually isn't anyone here, you're simply mistaken. The storm is messing with you, is all. You shouldn't panic, because you have absolutely nothing to worry about.

That would be true, if someone hadn't just knocked on your door.

The sudden sound gets you to practically jump out of your own skin. You freeze up, your breath catching in your throat. When you hear the clear pounding of a fist against the wood for a second time, your concentration slips away, and so does your fire spell. The flame you held in your fingers goes out, leaving the cottage in complete and utter darkness.

"Hello?" Oh, great, that someone is talking outside your door now, "Is anyone there?"

At a pace that could rival only the most sluggish of snails, you shakily rise from your chair, and whisper another small flame into existence to light your way. You tiptoe over to the door ever-so carefully, directing the flame to follow with a wave of your finger. Briefly, you hesitate, before another set of knocks — more hurried, this time, as though whoever's on the other side is growing just as anxious as you — has your cheek pressing against the door while you peer through the peephole.

There's a man leant on the door, your door, clutching his side, and supporting his weight with his other arm resting on the doorframe. The soft light of the moon and stars dimly illuminates him. He's shielded from the rain, underneath the roof's overhang. His clothes are simple: pants and a tunic with long sleeves, fabric clearly soaked from the continual downpour.

It isn't anything you'd place as out of the ordinary. Even commoners would most likely be donning a necklace or a pin or something that'd tie them to the kingdom. You glance the man at your door up and down once, twice, but he seems to carry nothing of the sort.

More importantly, surrounding the hand he has pressed into his side, the off-white of his tunic is stained a dark red you can recognize even in the obscured darkness. His chest heaves as he struggles to breathe, and you feel an ache twist in your gut. His hair is dark, shoulder-length, and tied in a half-up style, his messy bangs in his eyes, with a small ponytail on the back of his head. Poking out from his hair is a pair of distinct pointed ears. They're decorated by an array of studs and hoops, with black, star-shaped earrings hanging from his lobes, glittering in the moonlight.

Your protective spell wanes. When you felt the chill of his presence, and the sharpness of his soul, perhaps you were feeling a fraction of his pain.

You watch the man's jaw tighten, droplets of water dripping from his hair. He raises his fist to weakly knock at the door one more time, and when there's no answer, the bridge of his nose forms a troubled knot.

"Please, I don't mean any harm, I was-" He winces, stumbling slightly, and he sucks a painful breath in through his teeth. "I was training in the woods… and the devils- I'm just an adventurer, I'm not a mercenary. I just want to rest until this storm clears, and then I'll be on my way. I swear it."

Devils?

Wait. Your gaze flickers back up to his expression, his brows pinched slightly as he attempts to hide his discomfort. Then, you look at his side, where his hand is pressed to an obvious wound, blood staining his fingers and speckling onto the sleeve of his shirt.

This is your fault.

When you head into the woods to forage, you always cast a distraction spell on the opposite end of the forest; it'll lure demons over to it, giving you a while of temporary safety. Sometimes there are stragglers, but nothing you can't sneak around or handle yourself. Most of the demons will head towards the area you've marked, drawn by the magical rune without their control. The spell is cast directly into the ground — hence why the rain on the soil causes it to disperse.

This stranger sounds like he's telling the truth, and with the condition he's in, he doesn't have any reason to lie. About most things, anyways. You seriously doubt he's an adventurer. There isn't anything out here of interest. Just endless woods filled with endless demons. Still, he's clearly injured, clearly in need. And you can't help but take some responsibility.

If he came to the forest to train, he must've been expecting a fight he could win. The demons here are strong, but mostly in numbers. If he's at all capable, a handful of them wouldn't give him much trouble. But you sent every single demon in the area to one location. A risky spell, but effective, as long as you know where it's been cast. He didn't.

Even after the rain came down, even once the spell dispersed and the demons ran to hide in their holes, there would still be a ton of them gathered, all in one place. Hell, as far as you're concerned, if he found himself facing down hundreds of those bastards, he's lucky to be alive — let alone still standing. He might be the luckiest man you know, actually, to have escaped that forest with nothing more than a single injury, and all four limbs intact.

But what if there are more wounds you can't see?

Nervously, you take a single step away from the door, clutching the front of your shirt as your heart continues to pound. Rain drums overhead, seeming to only grow louder and louder. Although it drowns out most everything, you can still hear when the man shifts, mumbling a swear to himself through gritted teeth. Gods, your poor heart won't stop racing, and you don't know what to do.

You're scared, for the first time in ages; scared of him, scared for him. You shouldn't let him in. That would be the stupidest thing you possibly could do. You shouldn't help him, shouldn't heal him. You should pretend no-one's home, and leave him be without letting yourself meddle.

You know that, and yet, you can't help but tell yourself you have to help him. No matter how much you try and force yourself to believe the opposite, you can't shake this feeling that you're the only one who can.

There isn't anyone else out here, not for miles. He won't make it out in this storm, and once he leaves the protection of the cottage, it's likely he'll get attacked again. From what you can tell, he doesn't even have a weapon on him. He'll get lost in the darkness. Demons will smell the sharpness of his blood the moment he steps back in the trees, and no matter how fast he can still run, he won't get far. And tomorrow, when you find what's left of him —

Another faint knock at the door has you stirring, your lips parting, although you aren't exactly sure what you should say. It's been a while since you've last spoken to someone other than yourself, not since those knights almost a year ago. Instead, your legs seem to move before you've truly thought about it, and you rush over to the kitchen, fumbling through cabinets to search for whatever medicine you have left.

Perhaps you can't let him in, that much is true. He walked over the mushroom circle with no problem, so you're assuming he isn't capable of detecting spells. Regardless, your cottage is covered in magical items. In potions you've made, and spellbooks that were supposed to be burned with the rest of them. You can't risk anyone sifting through your belongings.

And you already know pressure doesn't bode well with you; if you can't keep your cool, if you say one wrong thing and he somehow figures out you're a mage, dealing with his injuries will be the least of your concerns. He could leave and come back by sunrise with an army of knights prepared to slay you, for all you know.

You shouldn't be helping. This is dangerous. He is dangerous. You're foolish for caring about someone you haven't met, no matter how responsible you might be feeling. But that's the thing. You never get to meet anyone. And maybe, just maybe —

No, it'll be best if you give him some medicine and let him be on his way: some standard herbs, nothing infused with magic. Just something for him to take to ease the pain, and some ointment and bandages to help with the bleeding. You'll crack open the door, tell him you can't accept visitors, and offer him what you can. That's the most you can do. That's what you have to do.

You'll never see him again after this, but you know it's for the best.

You gather the herbs from the kitchen, and the ointment and bandages from the bathroom. You place them all into a small, spare pouch you had lying on the counter, which you hastily work to tie shut. As you walk over to the door, you can barely breathe. Your hands are shaking, and you stop in place, attempting to gather the courage to open it.

It'll be fine. I'm sorry, I hope this will help you. That's all you have to say. I'm sorry sir, you can't come in, but please, accept this. He'll leave, he won't know a thing, and you'll do just fine.

"Okay," The man's smooth voice starts from behind the door, causing you to abruptly tense up. He sounds more out of breath than before: "I don't think anyone is home, so I'm… I'm going to try to come in now. I'm not going to hurt you, just need to get the hell out of this rain- Please, don't kill me."

Shit.

You're unlocking the door in a hurry then. You fling it open, coming face to face with him; the man sways forward, almost tripping. He's rather tall, even taller when he stands up straight to look at you. Deep, worried blue eyes meet yours. Blue like the drawings of the ocean you memorized from your childhood story books. His expression is a muddled mess of pain, relief, exhaustion — and you must be making a face, because he's quickly attempting to make amends.

"Thank the Gods- It's okay," He says, giving you a reassuring look, and raising his hands defensively, his palms stained a dark crimson. His skin is pale, his eyes heavy, like he's lightheaded; "It isn't as bad as it looks. I'll be… fine, I'm-"

With one last stumble, his eyelids flutter. Bright lightning rips through the sky in the distance, and you're watching his knees buckle, leaving him to fall into you. You squeak in surprise, just barely managing to catch him. He's already gone limp in your arms. You're hardly able to hold up his weight, struggling not to just drop him to the ground.

Rain pelts the ground and the grass and your roof. In between the steady drone, tiny droplets of blood splatter onto the wooden floor of your cabin with a plip, plip.

Damn. And you were hoping to eat your stew while it was still hot.

#aki hayakawa x reader #aki x reader #chainsaw man x reader #csm x reader #aki hayakawa x you #aki x you

136 notes · View notes

dalekofchaos · 10 months

Text

Dark!Max Caulfield au

So after looking at a piece of fanart by tovanori

I was inspired to write this post on what a dark version of Max Caulfield would look like My dark Chloe au post

So saving William is the decision on what makes Alternate Max a member of the Vortex Club. What could make Max Caulfield dark? I've come up with multiple ideas

This Max in all three different timelines would wear red and black. Red and black three piece suits or Black hoodie and Red Coyote shirt to symbolize how different this Max would be.“The coyote is a complex dream symbol. … The appearance of a coyote in a dream may symbolize a lack of ambition or a weakness of some kind. It may also indicate that you are attacking those around you who are weaker and can't defend themselves as well. Coyotes represent “tricky” and unexpected elements in life.“ “A Navajo saying holds that if Coyote crosses your path, turn back and do not continue your journey. The coyote is an omen of an unfortunate event or thing in your path or in the near future.“

This is a Max Caulfield who never meets Chloe Price, without Chloe in her life, Max turns cold and more introverted. Only having a morbid sense of photography and her sense of style catches Jefferson's eye. He helps her perfect her craft and lets her in on the dark room. And after taking this apprenticeship, Max's ability to rewind awakens and she uses it to help Jefferson perfect their art. Max lures them under the guise of friendship and a smile, but that smile is bait. Max, Jefferson and Nathan work together to perfect their models, but what changes is Max and Nathan fall in love. Because of this, Nathan is not fixated on Rachel Amber. Max helped Nathan in becoming a more stable and dependent person and Max is the person who helps Nathan achieve the Prescott destiny with Max by his side.

Nathan kills Chloe before her eyes, Nathan kills himself and this leaves Max traumatized. This leaves Max vulnerable and malleable to be indoctrinated and groomed by Jefferson to becoming his new apprentice. Max becomes detached, cold and ruthless. She acts as the bait for the victims and doeses them and delivers the new models to Mark while he photographs them in the dark room and after Jefferson is done, Max disposes of them. It starts as just wanting a new partner, but soon blossoms into obsessive love. Mark loving Max and Max loving Mark and both willing to killing anyone that comes between them. Her powers never come and the storm never arrives. All that's left is Jefferson and Max working together to find the perfect muse for their sick obsessions and no one would ever expect them while they masquerade as the famous photographer and his prized pupil and as lovers, in reality they are wolves among the sheep.(I don't ship the cursed ship, I just felt it was the darker direction for this timeline)

This is a Max who has lived in Seattle all her life, Victoria Chase is her childhood best friend and she meets Mark Jefferson earlier than she would in canon. Jefferson offers to take Max on as his apprentice and Max is so enamored by the famous photographer and her parents couldn't be more thrilled. Jefferson helps Max to become a better photographer, helps her become more confident in her abilities, give Max a sense of style and flair and lets Max in on his true nature and to his surprise, she doesn't flinch, in fact she offers to help him with his victims and gets Victoria to join them. While Victoria flinched at first, she came around. As long as she's with Max and her favorite artist, it's all worthwhile to Victoria. Victoria would be who lures the models while Max and Victoria went to work. The Chases would help finance their "projects" because having a renowned photographer like Jefferson in their gallery is an opportunity they cannot pass up and thinks Victoria's idol will be the role model she desperately needed. Eventually they move shop to Arcadia Bay. Get in touch with the Prescotts and help set up the Dark Room. Eventually Nathan becomes a problem and Victoria tries to help him and Nathan lashes out, Max witnesses this and sees Nathan trying to kill her and that's when her powers manifest. Victoria goes to Max and they begin to plan Nathan's downfall. But as Nathan falls, Jefferson notices and feels Victoria has become a distraction to Max and tries to kill her. Max makes the hard choice. Her best friend and the girl she loves or Jefferson her mentor. Max lures Jefferson into a trap. When he thinks he has Victoria at her mercy, Max doses him and ties him up. Jefferson loses it, raging at her for betraying him after all she did for her and demands she unties him and kills Victoria. Max gets the gun and says "It's like you always taught me, Mark. Always take the shot" and just like that, Jefferson is dead. They go back to Arcadia Bay and see the storm raging. They make it to the lighthouse and see all the destruction. Victoria is distraught and asks Max what they should do. Max kisses Victoria and says "fuck it, let's blow this town and go back home." All that matters to this Max is Victoria and she'll be damned if Jefferson or a freak storm will take her from her.

#Life Is Strange #Chasefield #Caulscott #Jefferfield #Max Caulfield #Victoria Chase

168 notes · View notes

papabirdurskeks · 2 months

Text

Hybrids that can never be, but speculation of what could be!

Little side project of "What ifs" persay if Precursors were able to breed with other species within the Destiny universe!

Going with three thus far as I am aware there are more, but to make it easier as these species play a prominent role in my AU as well. The Hive were excluded for the time being but may be added later for a what if.

-The first of the "what if" hybrids are between Lubraeans and Precursors:

Depending on the carrier of the proposed hybrid child, the gender and look will be based entirely on this. A carrier that is Precursor is more likely to bear a masculine/male child. A carrier that is Lubraean is likely to bear a feminine/female child. Attributes of the feathering that is commonly found on male Lubraeans can be found on both "sexes" though masculine children have a higher chance of this. Feminine children will have sparse spotting of feathers. Feminine children also bear a better crest upon their heads while masculine children will bear a feathered crest.

Both "sexes" have an extra set of eyes and longer fangs/tusks. Colorations are dulled but also different from typical Precursors. Precursor nerve markings are still found/seen on the body.

-Second comes to the Eliksni of "what if" hybrid children:

The sexes of the children are not affected by which parent is the carrier as they retain the same looks mixed between said parents. Children have darker but duller skin lined with the Eliksni plating as well as Precursor nerve markings. However, a reverse is played with the skin patterns in which many children will bear a sort of light and dark mixing of markings from their neck to the torso as well as their own tendrils.

The faces is elongated to fit the Eliksni jaw proportions while also retaining some of the Precursor aspects of a closed bottom jaw and a tongue in view. Four large eyes dotted with a bright iris can be seen each eye, while the ears, small in size, sit comfortably at the top of the jaw.

-And lastly comes the Cabal, the last of the "what if" hybrid children:

Like the Lubraeans, the sex of the child is entirely dependent on the carrier and "father/donor" of the pair.

For male Cabal, it is very common for female/feminine children to be born out of the pair. This child can be seen with the larger proportions of what the Cabal are known for while also retaining some of the nimble frame associated to Precursors. The large tusks are the biggest indicators of the child's determined gender.

For female Cabal, masculine/male children are most commonly produced between the pair. The same stocky frame can be found with this child as well as the lack of tusks females are known to carry. Instead, these children bear large fangs that sit comfortably in their mouths. Female/feminine children do not have these fangs, even in an early age while males do.

Both retain the stocky frame/build and dark skin lined with the nerve markings that are commonly found on Precursors. Glowing nerve spikes can be seen dotting these markings as well, a silent signature to showing their emotions in a subtle way before expressing them. Their eyes, while large and dark, retain the most of their Cabal mixing while they sit comfortably between a nose that will aid them in hunting by scent. Their ears are small like the Eliksni but can still be seen regardless. Their tendrils are dark and short.

Again, these are just what if scenarios per say if they should happen in my AU! The only reason these hybrids are not possible is because Precursor DNA is far too different from the DNA of the mentioned species, therefore not compatible to make a viable hybrid. Such hybrids, sadly, are not physically possible to happen x')

Once more, just some fun speculation stuff for my AU c'x

#destiny 2 #destiny #the witness #lubraean #lubreans #eliksni #cabal #headcanon territory #Alternate Timeline AU #oc #sketches

54 notes · View notes

chironshorseass · 2 months

Note

Imagine an AU where Percy never remembered Annabeth. It would’ve been heartbreaking

girl hi this is what spiraled me into looking at my docs and finding this wip that I may never finish but it's got that concept only I never finished it but here it is:

It starts with rain. The water pelts down on the ground, droplets piercing his cheeks like pinpricks.

He remembers nothing as the ground trembles and as the wolves come out of the foliage.

He remembers nothing when that she-wolf, that goddess Lupa, trains him.

“You will need this,” she says, sword against his throat. “To survive.”

“What,” he asks, “get murdered?”

He’s perfectly still, knowing full well what would happen if he even moves an inch. His skin is iron, sure, but he still prefers not to get cut; there is something about caution that calls to him, like the snare to a fox. He can pretend, for a second, that he is fully mortal.

Meanwhile Lupa’s eyes give away nothing. Her grip on her sword doesn’t falter. “The Romans won’t take kindly to a son of Neptune. A son of Neptune with a Greek curse.”

“If it’s a Greek curse, then why am I—“

“You shall be trained like any Roman soldier,” she says evenly. Finally, her arm falls to her side. “You cannot be seen as a weakness. A weakness of a pack can be the key to demise.”

“You must be fun at parties.”

In a flick of the incoming lightning, her form is changed to that of a wolf. She curls her lip, something he knows is the equivalent of a sneer. “Do not play games with me, Perseus. I do not like it either, but you are a soldier of Rome, now. This is what the Goddess wishes of you.”

“You know,” he says, scooping Riptide from the ground. “For all this talk about destiny and about how some goddess ordered you to train me or whatever, you’ve never once mentioned who this ‘Goddess’ is.”

She levels his stare with her ice-cold eyes. Like the brutal wind. Her fangs glint in the dimming sunlight.

“Patience, demigod. All in due time for those who wait. Besides, you must follow your instincts to find those lost memories of yours. That is what you want, is it not?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Lupa regards him, the space between them filled with howling gusts. Then, she looks up at the sky. The clouds are darker than before, heavy with rain and anticipation.

After some time like this, she finally meets his eyes.

“There is little that I can say.”

She leaves him there, as rain pours down like cries calling for the earth. Perhaps he’s going insane, but he hears a whisper.

“Percy.”

It’s the voice of a girl. Desperate and earnest. But it’s gone as soon as it came; the voice is replaced by the breaths of air that brush past his ears.

A few days pass before Lupa sends him on his way.

All roads lead to Rome.

So he follows those instincts she’d mentioned, trekking across California. Really, it’s the call of the sea that keeps him going.

He remembers nothing as he cleans his shirt in a fountain. And he remembers nothing as he fights countless monsters on his journey, many of which claim that they’d fought him before. It’s no matter.

The goddess Juno, whom he carried across the Little Tiber, promises him that his memories will return. Someday. Ignoring the gawking campers and the praetor with a face made of stone, he holds onto that hope. An invisible rope is there; he grasps it with all his might, fingers laced together in a death grip while Reyna, the praetor, interrogates him. She tells him of grand adventures and near-death experiences. How, because of him, she was swept away from her sanctuary and into the hands of pirates.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “For whatever I did. I’m sorry.”

She raises her eyebrows, eyeing her metal dogs. “You seem to be telling the truth. Strange, though,” she muses. “Clearly, you remember nothing—didn’t know what I was talking about—and still, you apologize. Not very Roman of you.”

He can only shrug. “Just want to make amends.”

Her lips become a thin line, head tilted in a quizzical manner. “I’m curious to see, as a son of Neptune, what will become of you in the legion.”

She didn’t ask, but he’s sure no one knows about the Greek Curse.

He finds friends soon enough. Hazel and Frank. Two kids fighting for their worth just as

hard as Percy, and yet they do all that is possible to promote him to the Fifth Legion.

He also finds enemies. Octavian. Augur. Every time he addresses Percy, there’s a strange light in his eyes—similar to that of Lupa when she’s about to go for the kill. The hate is mutual, really.

So, his dreams are blank, and the day is bleak. He falls asleep to the sound of Frank’s snores and wakes to the sound of kids preparing for War Games.

He remembers nothing, but at least his skin remembers not to bleed when blades crash against him.

To hell with mortality, he thinks, as he grabs a girl’s knife with his bare hands.

Her eyes widen. “What the—”

She never finishes that sentence, because he kicks her away and blocks someone else’s blow. Second after second passes, and people hesitate, now. Hazel throws metallic weapons in the air with just her mind, and Frank shoots arrow after arrow with deadly accuracy.

And Percy? Well, the Romans don’t fear Neptune for nothing.

“Some team you made, you and Hazel and Frank.”

He meets Reyna’s eyes, though he’s not sure what he sees there. “We’re a good team, yeah. But the victory was for the Fifth Legion. They deserve it.”

“No arguing about that,” she says. “But there’s also no arguing that you three were the key players.”

“Why am I here?”

Aurum and Argentum growl in response; Reyna quiets them down with a pat to the head. She glances at Percy. “Right to the point, are we?”

He shrugs, leaning against his leather chair.

It takes her some time to respond. She swishes the jellybeans at her table. Delicately, she plucks one into her mouth, the chewing slow, with control. Deliberate, he might say.

“It’s not because of the exploded water cannons, is it?” he finds himself asking. “Because that was for war strategy; you of all people should appreciate it.”

Her mouth curls into the hint of a smile. “No, Percy, you’re not here because of that.” Again, she eyes him, up and down, and not even the metal dogs make a sound. “When were you going to tell me,” she begins, “that you carry the Curse of Achilles?”

The dogs stare at him, baring their teeth, surely waiting eagerly for him to lie. Something tells him that one wrong move and he’d end up alone in the streets again, surrounded by monsters that would turn to dust and seconds later reform, over and over. He has to choose his words with precision.

“I didn’t…plan to tell you. Obviously, there’s a reason for that, though. Lupa told me I couldn’t say anything.”

Reyna raises her eyebrows, looks back and forth between her dogs and Percy. “Well. You seem to be telling the truth. Again. Any idea of when this happened? The curse, I mean?”

Pain. He tries to remember, and all he feels is pain pain pain. First, burning his lower back, and then traveling to his throat and to his brain.

This happens in just a second, because his mind pops like a bubble, and he anchors himself to Reyna’s dark-brown eyes.

“No,” he whispers. “I don’t.”

She hums. “There are many mysteries about you, Percy Jackson.”

“You can say that.”

“I know you don’t remember anything.” Here, her face opens up to reveal a smidge of sympathy. He stupidly wonders how Reyna would be like as just a regular teenage girl instead of a child soldier in charge of an entire child army. “I can tell that you’re hurting. But the other Romans, they don’t care about that. They care that you’re a threat—Octavian, especially. And believe me, people have noticed how you can’t bleed. You fight like no other demigod, Percy.”

“So? What do you want me to do? Fucking take away the curse?”

She crosses her arms. “Playing dumb with me doesn’t work, you know. Mars issued a quest; Frank Zhang, as you well understand, was made a centurion to lead it, to free Thanatos. Rome is in more danger than you think.”

He can see the toll this is taking on her. The toll of leading alone. The hunch in her shoulders and her cracked lips and the bags under her eyes. But he can also see that she won’t take any pity from him.

Then it dawns on him—the hidden request behind her reminder about all that’s at stake.

“You want me to go.”

“Of course I do. Not to feed on your ego, but you’re one of the best fighters I’ve ever seen. And I’ve watched the Amazons fight. There is also something else: you have to build the Roman’s trust. They already see you as an unreliable weapon—a son of Neptune with a Greek curse is not a good combination. So, you have to earn their trust. If you accomplish this…I have an offer for you.”

Praetor. In all honesty, he might as well go with it.

As Reyna promised, all eyes are on him the next day. Ignoring the hushed comments and the stares and the sneers, he goes straight to Frank and Hazel’s table.

“So it’s true,” Hazel says, studying him. “You carry the Curse of Achilles.”

“How do you know it’s true?” Percy says, sitting next to her. “Those are only rumors.”

She shrugs. “Curses are a bit of my specialty. Also, I watched you fight. I saw how you didn’t bleed.”

“Everyone saw, apparently,” he mutters.

But she doesn’t deserve his jab; Hazel is anything but malicious. Her eyes are big and her face is open—in awe, maybe. To her right Frank fiddles with his medal claiming him as a centurion. Dakota and Gwen—the girl who came back to life just yesterday—merely eye him in wariness. Nico di Angelo, on the other hand, acts as if Percy doesn’t exist, puncturing the act once in a while with stolen glances. The ambassador of Pluto. He’s the strangest of the bunch, and not just because Percy swears that they’ve met before.

Percy decides to only focus on Hazel and Frank, for his sanity. “Yeah,” he tells Hazel. “My skin’s kinda made of metal. Kinda. I don’t know how to explain it, but…”

He takes Riptide, still in pen form. Everyone is watching his every move, he knows. Not just the people on his table. He rolls the ballpoint pen in his hand, feeling the slick coolness of such an innocent object. These Romans, they had never seen a weapon like his before.

Then, he uncaps it; in seconds the innocent pen is transformed into a sword.

Some gasp. The ones sitting with him flinch, except Nico. Percy points his sword down, toward his hand, and his eyes connect with the son of Pluto’s. They are dark as obsidian, glittering, like he knows of an inside joke only he and Percy share. Finally, Percy’s gaze lands on Octavian. Even from this distance he can see that the augur’s jaw is clenched, and so is his fist that grasps onto a teddy bear, knuckles as white as the pillars. He is one of the many standing, ready for whatever trick Percy is about to pull. Even the fauns are gawking.

“Here’s a trick.”

His eyes never leave Octavian, not once. Slowly, the fingers curled around Riptide’s hilt lower down to the sharpness of the glowing bronze. Some cry out; others murmur in wonder once his hand squeezes into the blade and no scarlet comes gushing out of his palm. His other hand is ready, laid out on the table with a serene calmness, even if his palm faces the end of Riptide, point blank. Even if everyone knows he intends to cut himself.

Frank starts, “Percy, are you sure—”

Hazel shushes him. Percy winks at Octavian before the impact comes, rattling the table. He slams Riptide down, into his waiting hand, again and again and again and again. The pain is dull compared with the satisfaction of seeing everyone’s faces.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The sword bounces off his skin—again and again and again.

“See? Nothing can pierce my—”

“Enough!” comes a voice, laced with anger and authority. Reyna. “Enough! That is enough!”

She pushes past the crowd, her eyes wide. Percy stops his little show. She’s right; it is enough, because Octavian’s nose flares and his face reddens like a ripe tomato. Percy bites down his smug smile.

“Everyone,” Octavian calls, but his voice wobbles. He clears his throat. “Back to your tables.”

Reyna doesn’t reproach him for taking over her duty as a leader. She only holds Percy’s stare and disperses into the crowd, purple cape billowing behind her. In his table, Frank begins to clap, slow and appreciative. Percy turns to him and shares his smile.

“That was,” Frank says, mouth wide open, “I mean—”

“Pretty awesome, huh?” Percy grins.

“Fucking priceless,” Hazel corrects, then pauses, her lips pursed. “Um, sorry.”

Percy nudges her. “Why’re you sorry? It’s true; Octavian’s face was priceless.”

“Oh, um.” She waves her hand around. “It’s nothing—just sometimes forget that I’m—”

“Hazel.” Nico gives her a look, stopping her mid sentence.

What that is about, Percy has no clue. He has no clue about many things.

“Catholic school,” Hazel says quickly. “I’m not used to swearing.”

Her tone is too thick, however. Too nervous. Again, he has no clue about many things.

“Anyway,” Dakota drawls, pointing a finger toward Percy, “the one that should apologize is Jackson, ‘cause he spilled my koolaid all over the table, see? All because he’s a masochist, or something.”

They all share a laugh, and maybe the Romans aren’t so bad.

#look mom i can write #lol #pjo fic #percy jakcson #powerful percy jackson

31 notes · View notes

athena-cat-wizard-official · 1 year

Text

Reccomending Gundam is like: "oh, i want to reccomend Gundam Unicorn, but that wont make any sesne if you haven't watched Char's Counterattack. but. hu. that doesn't really work well unless you've seen the original series, or at least the compilation movies. And tbh Gundam Unicorn works best if you've watched Zeta and Double Zeta, but the frst half of Double Zeta kinda sucks? Also 08th MS team is soo sooo sooooo good but its only 12 episodes and not related to anything else. still watch it though. And then i want to reccomend NON UC gundam, but there's so much? Like, watch IBO and Witch From Mercury for sure. but you should also try older stuff. SEED is really good but everyone hated SEED destiny, but theres a new SEED movie in 2023? also watch Turn A gundam and Gundam Wing totally, but i haven't seen them yet they're just in everyone elses recommend lists. Also some AUs feel like they'e connected to the UC canon but aren't at all, like 00 gundam. so like, watch them before or after UC? who knows. also theres late UC which happens, like, 50 or so years after the main series (0079). And that has an entire new enemy and new mobile suits and such, that are really barely connected to the original UC events, but there's apparently some good stuff there, like F91 and Victory (i didnt really like ep1 of victory so i never gave it a go). So do I reccommend that? do i tell people to start with late UC given you dont need early UC to understand it? Oh god oh fuck what about gundam build fighters!??! How do you even explain that" Anyway, if you liked Gundam Witch From Mercury, I think a good place to start is with 08th MS Team for a taster of UC, or Iron Blooded Orphans for a darker Gundam show with similar formatting, characters, and themes to G-Witch, but better pacing.

369 notes · View notes

osha-mirweek · 1 month

Text

Further details on Oshamir Week Prompts

Here are some further explanations on what each of the daily prompts entails (full text below the cut). If you have any other questions feel free to ask and we'll do our best to answer.

Day 1 - Canonverse AU: Works for this prompt should take place in the Star Wars universe but change something (or many things) from The Acolyte canon. Some exmaples include: Sith!Osha and Jedi!Qimir; neither were Jedi; Qimir meets Osha first; Osha never leaves the coven; etc. This includes all things considered canon divergence.

Day 2 - Legends & Lore: Works for this prompt can draw inspiration from myths, folklore, and fairytales from any culture or media! This includes re-imaginings of Greek mythology, Filipino folklore, and classic fairytales like Beauty and the Beast. This is probably a theme where artists and editors can really go wild. We can't wait to see what you'll create!

Day 3 - Bonds: Works for this prompt should include concepts such as arranged marriage, soulmates, reincarnation, prophecies, the red string of fate, etc. Force dyads can also fall into this category. Another name for this theme could be 'Fate/Destiny'.

Day 4 - Free Day: Free Day is for all fanworks that do not fall into any of the other six themes of Oshamir Week. Please do not post any works for 'The Dark Side', 'Fantasy', or 'Earth AU', on this day.

Day 5 - The Dark Side: Works for this day include the darker (and sadder) side of our emotions and favourite tropes. Jealousy, betrayal, possessiveness, as well as forbidden love, mind control, tragic endings: all fall under this category. Dubious consent, brainwashing, somnophilia, captor/captured, etc. should be posted on this day. Dead doves and dark subject matter are all permitted, just be sure to tag accordingly!

Day 6 - Fantasy: This theme includes any fantasy or supernatural elements such as magic, vampires, angels and demons, zombies, dragons, monsters, etc. Some elements may overlap with Legends & Lore, in which case you can post on either day. A Royalty AU with magical elements would post on this day. Works based on other fantasy media would also post on this day.

Day 7 - Earth AU: Any modern or historical AU will fall under this day's theme. This includes any works that place during the Victorian era, Regency era, Tang dynasty, Joseon era, etc., as well as university AU, coffee shop AU, athletes AU, and others. Works invoking dark academia or Gothic atmosphere would also fall under this day.

#rules #oshamir week #oshamir #osha x qimir #qimir #qimir x osha #the acolyte #star wars #osha aniseya #the stranger

40 notes · View notes

guplia · 3 months

Text

How's an au where Morro somehow really is the Green Ninja but neither he nor Wu knows? Do you know in the actual scene where Wu realises Morro won't be the Green Ninja, the sword of fire is actually fake?

Maybe that's what actually happened and it was an honest mistake. Wu had put the wrong sword. But Morro is okay with not being the Green Ninja. He's fuming at first, but then he realises that it must have been for a reason, and maybe his destiny is to protect the Green Ninja instead. Though he stays away from the golden weapons after that to avoid thinking about it and getting jealous.

Years pass, and Wu raises him as a son, and both of them have pretty much forgotten about the prophecy. He helps the original ninja in the pilots, but when they get the weapons back they react to Morro. Everyone is very confused, especially Wu who explains the prophecy to the Ninja. Morro accepts his duty to defeat Garmadon and when Lloyd joins the ninja in S1 and realises that Morro is destined to kill his father, he ends up hating him. Likewise Morro doesn't like Lloyd because Wu gives him fatherly attention. But after understanding how it's important that Morro faces Garmadon, Lloyd eventually accepts the inevitable.

Somehow Lloyd still gets captured by the Serpentine and Garmadon returns, and also finds out that Morro is the Green Ninja. But since Morro isn't related to Garmadon in any way, he ends up capturing Lloyd from the Serpentine and tries to make him evil, while planning to destroy everyone else, including Wu.

I guess the series would have been a lot darker then, because at that point Garmadon probably wouldn't hesitate to kill the ninja. Season 5 and probably 6 wouldn't have happened. What do you think?

#ninjago #Lego Ninjago #ninjago au #morro ninjago #ninjago morro #morro is the green ninja

25 notes · View notes

browniefox · 1 year

Text

Undertale/Deltarune FanComics

I put out a post for some UTDR comic recs, and I've decided to compile them all here, both so that I can easily access them as I make my way through, and also so that anyone else who is interested in it can also check it out :D I've provided brief descriptions next the ones I could uh quickly find descriptions for or knew personally, so if you notice one you know that's lacking a descriptions, tell me and I'll add it.

Also if you think this list would benefit from further categorization in some way, let me know! Right now it's a bit of a mess and overwhelming lol.

I'll also be updating this with new (or old lol) comics if anyone has more suggestions!

Edit: I’m making a collection blog, @utdrlibrary, that way one can go through the posts for which comic sounds interesting, instead of scrolling through a messy list lol. I’m still working getting the comics from this post up on the blog

(a 🌟 next to a comic means that I have personally read and recommend it ^-^ )

Undertale

Aftertale by @loverofpiggies - Complete.

🌟 Darker yet Darker and the sequel Second Son of Gaster by @sansybones - Sans' creation, how he came to be and find his abilites, and his relationship with Gaster and Papyrus. Complete.

🌟 Over the Void by @undertale-over-the-void - Post-Undertale. Frisk, Asriel, and Monster Kid end up travelling to a strange alternate universe where the war with humans seems to be ongoing. In Progress.

🌟 Dogs of Future Past by @lynxgriffin - Post-Undertale. Trying to find Gaster for Sans' sake, Frisk travels to the past with Flowey, and stuck in the body of one of the dogs that make up Endogeny. Complete.

Under/source by @slylock-syl - In Progress.

Ask Fallen Royalty by @askfallenroyalty - An Everyone Lives au. In Progress?

Ask Frisk and Company by @chamomilekitten and @comikatva - In Progress?

Ask Chara and Friends by Miamouse - In Progress.

The Thought by @tratserenoyreve - Sans uses the souls. Complete.

Mercy by @renrink - Frisk, Sans, and Chara during the San fight? Complete.

You Are Not Welcome by @rumay-chian - Based on the ending of a neutral run? In Progress.

Shifter Au by @audaciousanonj, @leshyleaf, and @wilwoo (I think? There's a lot of names on this blog) - Papyrus (the older brother in this au) gives up his form to a shapeshifter who he hopes will raise Sans better than he is. In Progress?

Inverted Fate by @megaderping - A roleswap au. In Progress.

Underline Au - okay so I remember reading some of this, but the blog (@/underlineau) pulls up strangely and my browser says there's something weird about it? If anyone knows why that is let me know.

Ghost Switch by @clevercatchphrase - Switches Narra-Chara with uh someone else? In Progress.

Fallen Flowers by @tarableart - In Progress.

The Old Monster of the Ruins by @knking - Asgore Dreemurr, an old monster that take cares of the Ruins and the humans living in it. Complete?

Name the Fallen by @namethefallen - Papyrus went to sleep in a race car bed and woke up in a flowerbed and is trying to find out what happened. In Progress?

Storyshift by @ut-storyshift - I was unsure exactly what to link for this, or if it is even currently a comic? I think it's a fic now. In Progress?

Altered Destiny by @altereddestinyau - Discontinued?

Entity Neo by @entityneo - In Progress?

🌟 Unexpected Guests by @undertalethingems - Papyrus summons the full form of his Blaster and can't get it to go away. Shenanigans ensue. In Progress.

They Say He Shattered by @emilyparagraph - Neutral Routes start colliding with each other. Discontinued.

The Bar of Sanses series by VanGold - A bar for various Au Sans to visit? In Progress?

Heart and SOUL by @auroragriffon - Sans' and Toriel's daughter ends up in the Underground of the past. In Progress.

Duotale by @ask-duotale-b2fc - An au where it's a different child who is the 7th child? In Progress.

Horrortale by @horrortalecomic - Post-Empress Undyne Neutral Route. A new child has fallen into the Underground, and things have gotten bad. In Progress?

🌟 Handplates by @zarla-s - Papyrus and Sans, creations of Gaster, from creation to and through canon (I'm still catching up lol). In Progress.

Deltarune

🌟 Paper Trail by @lynxgriffin - Canon-Divergent take on Deltarune after Chapter 1 of how the story could've gone. Complete.

The Chara Timeline by @lilybug-02 - Chara is Asriel's college roommate. They're both in Hometown visiting from college. In Progress.

Looking Glasses by @ferronickel - Susie, Ralsei, and Lancer, two years after Deltarune. In Progress.

🌟 Gaster's Great Escape by @moldyjunk - Gaster trying to get back to reality, in Deltarune. In Progress.

🌟 Twin Runes by @akanemnon - Frisk somehow ends up in Deltarune. Mostly rn funny shenanigans but seems to be heading towards story.

#browniefox speaks #deltarune #undertale #utdr #i also have my own comic #but it's like #two pages #so we're not putting that here until it's worthwhile lol

194 notes · View notes

honey-minded-hivemind · 11 months

Text

Okay, this is probably the only au for X-Men Evolution I'll make that isn't a reboot/reimagining. This idea, which I'm sure plenty of people have had, is this:

What if someone from our world/a darker version of our world ended up in the show?

Somehow the reader, who is from what I will call Earth 2020, ends up in X-Men Evolution, possibly dying on Earth 2020 and somehow being dropped into the series proper. And for the reader, they're a mix of emotions, but one stands out the most: Sheer, utter PANIC. They're likely dead, aren't anywhere they've been before, don't have any papers or documents, and are in a world set in 2000 where superpowers are real and adults try to kill kids on a near daily basis. Bby is going through a panic attack as they check what's with them, finding that the good news is they had all their saved money with them in their satchel, but nothing else of much use besides a calligraphy pen, pepper spray, and a ticket with a date that hasn't even happened in this world.

Reader knows they could try to get involved, could pretty much do whatever they wanted, help or hurt or anything they want with the knowledge they have... But... they'd rather do the right thing. They compile notes, writing down every major event of the series for both the X-Men and Brotherhood, warning them about things like Apocalypse, Sentinels, Hydra, Weapon X being back in commission, pointing out the things that should be avoided, such as brainwashing your daughter, tossing children off of cliffs, threatening a bunch of teenagers, manipulating everyone, etc. ... but reader also mentions ways they can change the worst of it from happening and begging them to help Laura and the Morlocks. And then adds final notes, the bad things that could happen throughout the next twenty years, from 9/11, the wars in Europe and the Middle East, the pandemic of Covid, the wildfires in North America and Australia, terrorist attacks in different parts of the globe, tsunamis and hurricanes and tornadoes, pretty much every disaster, they list it, when it was supposed to happen, and pleads to stop it, or alert someone who could... By the time reader is done writing down every disaster and crisis that they remember, they have piles of notes, even some with theories. And finally, the reader sends the notes, praying for the best. Then they promptly go to hide out in some small town far away from everything, because they fear what happens if someone finds out how they know everything and where they're from... If it doesn't end well for other people, who's to say it would end well for reader?

The X-Men and Brotherhood get the notes, and are more or less shocked, because what they have is about twenty years worth of disasters listed, with notes about what specifically happens regarding them. But, for some reason, they decide to listen, wondering if perhaps the writer of the notes was like Destiny, a mutant who could see the future... And somehow, things go better. Less tossing kids around and off of things, helping the Morlocks find a safer place to live, freeing Laura, and destroying the Sentinels before they are finished, it all happens, and everyone is relieved to know that they've avoided whatever was supposed to happen. Yet... where is the person who warned them? So begins the search for reader...

And reader ends up in Bayville, somehow. Apparently they're now in the foster system, developed a mutation (they wonder how that's possible, how would that work, they aren't from that world- ) and so far have been doing their best to get by. It helped that they lived through what was basically a dystopian world, since they know useful tricks for their survival, and with a mutation, hopefully that can keep them alive for just a bit longer.. They end up in the highschool, having to do everything in their power not to feel tense and have a break down. They're in the town where everyone else is in, they only have themself to rely on, and they have too much knowledge of everything around them, plus an ability that could alert others of them. They're glad they helped, elated even, but... anxiety still worms its way inside them. They don't know how to deal with their own thoughts and the world around them, every bit of knowledge sending them spiraling. Because if someone finds out it was them... then what? When do people ever take things like that well, that someone knew, that they're from a whole other world, and that they haven't done much else to do anything? Reader stays alert and tired, but keeps going. Besides all the crushing fear and loneliness, the 2000s are a lot better than 2020: lower cost of living, lower prices on food, less gun violence, less rioting, less noise...

Then, I guess with the help of Caliban or Jean, maybe even Xavier, the reader is discovered. And the two groups have to take a minute. The person who wrote the notes... is some scrawny teenager who trembles whenever someone talks to them, and jumps at the slightest noise? It's confusing. They were expecting someone older, maybe a time traveler, not... whoever this is. And the moment any of them try to approach, the kid just gets wide eyes and tries to get lost, avoiding anyone in the school like the plague. But, they finally are able to corner them and talk... And what they find is... terrifying.

From what they're able to find out from the reader, who's trembling like a leaf and trying not to cry, they're not from around there, they saw things happen, bad things, and thought if they gave a warning, it might help. And what Jean and/or Xavier can read from their mind is downright nightmarish, images of violence and memories of hate, of people hurting them, of destroying others, of a world filled with violence ad wars and plagues running rampant, anything and everything seemingly out to end their survival... Even how they ended up there, a hazy, near-forgotten memory of water and silt in their lungs and the world fading to black, a hand holding forcing them under... And all they can feel for them is sympathy, empathy in some cases, horror at what absolute H*ll they lived through... They offer aid, thanking them for helping them...

And the reader is just... relieved, that no one wants them dead. Hoping that this world truly doesn't want them dead, that they can breathe and not fear for their life...

The characters are glad that the reader is on their side, and isn't some evil genius bent on the destruction of mutants... but it isn't easy to know that the person who helped them lived in a world that sounded and looked like H*ll, and then eventually died, in one of the worst ways to go... And they can't help but feel a little protective of them, a little worried. Sure, their new ally is also a mutant, but they also barely know anything about their powers or how to handle normalcy, used to fighting for themself among peers... Not to mention that their new friend had to explain the reasons they kept a calligraphy pen with them, and the reason scared them, because who knew a fancy ink pen could be so dangerous-

Over time, they all grow to be platonic yandere-ish, if not fully platonic yandere. Reader helped them, it's only fair they repay that kindness. And they don't have to worry about them going back to the h*llscape they called home. It's not like they were going to let them go back, even if they could. Best to not think too deep on leaving, though. They aren't leaving, ever...

(I've been wondering about this idea for awhile now, and I plan to make a playlist for this au, simply because why not? Expect plenty of Panic! At The Disco, and a song from Lemon Demon😊💛🧡)

Bonus:

Reader, staring at the handful of adults for the Brotherhood: For Best Parent of the Brotherhood, at least in the original timeline, I think?, I nominate... Lance

Adults: What? Why him? He's a teenager!

Reader: Well, originally, Mr. Lehnsherr seems to only showed up when he wants something, instead of being there to help his kids, let alone everyone else, and leaves the kids on their own, Mystique had threatened them, left them on their own with no supervision, and tried to toss children off of cliffs, and Mr. Victor doesn't have kids as far as I know, but if he is related to Mr. Logan, I'm not sure he had been a good parent or brother or whatever he is, due to capturing him for the person who put a control chip in his head, and also trying to kill him. So, that leaves the other acolytes. Who are never here. And also tried to kill the kids. Yeah, so, that leaves the actual Broterhood teens. And the only one who has acted anywhere near enough to keeping them alive and taking care of the group's needs is... Lance. So, by default, if not by actual execution, the winner of Best Brotherhood Parent is Lance. Good job👍

Adult Brotherhood Members: Wait, we did WHAT?!

Acolytes: Thank heavens we aren't parents

Erik: I did WHAT to Wanda?!

Mystique: I tricked my own daughter, and lost both her and Kurt?!

...

Victor: Wait, I'm Logan's what now?!

Reader: That might only be a theory, I'm not sure...

One DNA test later...

Test: positive

Victor:😳☹👀

Reader: Well... in my defense, I only thought it was a theory... Um... Should I say sorry, or congratulations?

Extra Bonus:

Reader, presenting each character with a gift: This is hand-made, so I did my best. I'm sorry if you don't like it🎁

Everyone: It can't be that bad opens their gifts

Everyone:

Reader: Do you like it? I'm not the best at this stuff, but, I did read three different books a few months ago... And spent the last three weeks working on these...

Everyone, holding an oddly-made crocheted scarf with their theme/colors: trying not to cry Its... nice puts it on🧣😭

Also them: Don't ever leave, please🥺☹

Reader: Um... I wasn't planning on it

Everyone: Good... because we aren't joking. If you leave, we will find you

Reader, realizing that maybe something might have just changed: Um... that's... sweet... worrying now if they're in danger😟

Everyone: 😊🥰😍💖

#honeycomb thoughts #platonic yandere marvel #yandere platonic marvel #platonic yandere marvel x reader #platonic yandere xmen #yandere x-men #platonic yandere #platonic yandere x reader #platonic yandere xmen evolution #xmen evolution #Earth 2020

69 notes · View notes

shima-draws · 1 year

Note

DARKER DESTINIES IS SO COOL!! So Pip is in the Distortion World, right? Where is Chimchar during all this?

AAA TYSM 🥺

Yes! I’m calling it the Distorted Realm to make it kinda separate from canon Distortion World but it’s p much the same place/concept anyway.

Chimchar is freaking the fuck out because his girlfriend fell unconscious and will not wake up no matter what he does. He discusses it with Wigglytuff and Chatot and they all agree that whatever is going on with Pip doesn’t have anything to do with Darkrai, as they defeated him already and Pip doesn’t look like she’s trapped in a dream or a nightmare. (Cresselia also takes a look at her and confirms this.) Chimchar notices she’s very, VERY still, almost as if she’s dead, or if she’s…empty. Wigglytuff theorizes that this might be connected to souls, but the only person he knows that has a close connection with souls and guiding them to the afterlife is. Well. Dusknoir :’)

They’re all kind of at a loss from there bc A. They don’t know if Dusknoir’s even alive bc he was supposed to disappear when the future was changed and B. He’s a bitch and Chimchar doesn’t want to ask him for any favors ever. BUT Chimchar sees this as a good opportunity to go back to the future and see if Grovyle made it somehow, and let him know what’s going on with Pip. So the guild splits into two groups: one to stay behind and look after Pip (and also try to find any clues of their own about what’s wrong with her) and the other to go to the future and locate Grovyle and/or Dusknoir.

Basically this AU is a split POV between Pip, who’s having a helluva time in the Distorted Realm with the Depressed versions of her friends, and Chimchar, who is Getting the Gang Back Together to try and locate her! I’ve been thinking more and more about making this into a hack and I think a split perspective would be SO much fun to script :’D

#Shima answers questions #Pokemon #PMD #Darker Destinies AU #Shima’s AUs #Pip #Piplup #Chimchar

26 notes · View notes

cuckoo-on-a-string · 2 years

Text

Hello, Mr. Monster (One. Sand)

Morpheus x OC/reader (female), Soulmate AU, Eros and Psyche retelling

Chapter track: "The Killing Moon" by Echo & The Bunnymen

18+ (smut/spice kicks off in next chapter)

Warnings: (non-sexual) violence against a child, tarot, herbal medicine/witchcraft

TAGGING: Tag lists break my posts, BUT I reply to comments the day of new chapters, so you'll get a personal update every time you stop to chat. ;)

A/N: Welcome! Enjoy. Holy shit, friends, we're gonna have some fun.

@moon-tracks: Your much delayed prompt has born fruit! Goblin fruit, I'm afraid. Hope you enjoy!

One: Sand

Soulmates were more dream than reality.

Not that they weren’t real and true in the waking world, but humans liked nothing better than to bury their truths, especially the dangerous ones, the beautiful ones that blossomed with thorns and teeth. Everything that made a soulmate – dreams and desires; destiny, delirium, and despair; even death and destruction – tallied among the Endless and thrived in the subconscious.

And true to humanity’s intrinsic contradictions, each soul wanted nothing more than to find its mate and feared nothing so much as a true match.

Such beautiful, sharp things. The unseelie who kept the little tent at the gates of the goblin market under Brown Bridge liked making terrible, terrible gifts of them. The process was bloody, and the results devastating. Revealing a soulmate required some scratching – deep inside, through a human’s mortality, which kept the conscious and unconscious apart. But what happened next in the months and years of their tattered mortal lives is why they did it.

Parting the veil so one soulmate could know the other without any kind of reciprocity always led to doom. A human would do anything for their soulmate once they found them, knew them. Their intense affections led to obsession more often than not. Sometimes it turned violent, and they destroyed the thing they loved, the one who did not recognize their mate. Despair claimed others who turned destruction on themselves. Because of the damage to their mortality, that often took great effort and multiple attempts.

High drama. A wonderful show.

And the unseelie found the softest victims to dance for their amusement.

Their tent sat just outside the gates of the market proper, where any mortal might see them and mistake them for a homeless citizen warding off the river wind in their simple tent.

The trap was simple: they glamoured a few leaves into dollars and let one or two go tumbling down the way. Any human who snatched the leaves and ran earned a curse. Their pockets and wallets would grow holes. Or they’d lose all love, passion, and interest in whatever they spent the false money on – it could be a bowl of chili or a bauble for a lover. Whether they lost interest in eating or forgot their lover, they quickly lost the unseelie’s attention, too.

The mortals who returned the money had a darker fate. A lovely dream with hidden razor while to tangle them deep. The unseelie thanked them and offered to reveal a bit of the victim’s fortune, to see who they would fall in love with. Most accepted the offer, simply to humor them. An unseelie could be most persuasive.

One snowy day, after the festive season had passed and all humanity’s generosity dried up in the harsh winds of the new year, a little girl picked up the tumbling leaves.

She brought them back, pinched in mittened hands, a smile glowing under her breeze-chafed cheeks. A little adventurer who’d escaped her parents’ attention, all unbroken hope and unsullied naivety. The sort of pretty fruit, the unseelie might be tempted to pluck from her mortal life – if it weren’t for her damned eyes.

They knew what the child saw the moment they looked. The girl saw with true sight. Fighting the urge to cringe away from the attention cutting straight through their glamour, the unseelie smiled back, all teeth. The child didn’t even flinch, only holding out the money out for long, black nails to pluck from her grasp.

“I think these are yours,” she said.

The unseelie snarled through their smile, seething with hate. It flared like a fresh blaze from a banked fire at the child’s presumption. “Thank you. I must give you a boon in thanks.”

Shaking her head so the pompoms on the end of her hat’s ties swung around her neck, she said, “I don’t need anything.”

“I don’t offer toys or trinkets, child. Don’t you want to know the name of the one you’ll love?”

“I already love lots of people.” The child pondered. “That sounds like it would take a long time. I meet someone new to love every year at school. Or when we get new neighbors, or –”

A little sharper than they intended, the unseelie injected. “A soulmate, child. Your true love. Like in the stories your kind so loves.”

That gave the child pause. The unseelie could practically see the animated films rolling behind their eyes, the pretty picture books and saccharine romances.

Careful to maintain their smile, they added, “It’s a secret only someone like me can reveal. You’ve done me a favor. Now I must return it. You would not keep me bound, would you?”

Little eyebrows flew up over wide eyes, and the child all but leapt to accept their offer. “No! I don’t. Okay. You can tell me the secret, and then you’ll be free, right?”

With one long arm, they lifted the flap of their tent, revealing a space much too large for the sagging frame to contain. With the other, they caught the girl around the waist and pulled her gently within. “Of course, of course. Come inside where it is warm.”

The little fool did.

She looked around with eyes of wonder, eyes the unseelie desperately wanted to pluck from her face, but a lifetime of suffering would hurt far more. And they’d promised, after all.

They ushered the child to pile of cushions, and she plopped down like she was about to hear a story before bed. Far too trusting. Far too confident in the kind world shaped by her parents’ guidance and protection.

Their anguish and grief would taste so deliciously sweet.

Without preamble or further misleading truths, they let the fabric fall, sealing them in a bubble realm where no one would interrupt the procedure. Then they lunged, pinning the child to the cushions by the shoulder as they scrabbled between planes of matter to find her mortal shroud.

The impact briefly knocked the air from her lungs, but she started bleating as the unseelie’s talons scraped against the partition between aspects of the human soul, those only united in death. Those cursed eyes watered, overflowed, and the unseelie hissed with naked malice and pleasure as they scratched away more and more of the golden curtain, hunting for the promised name while inflicting as much damage as possible.

The tiny thing struggled, trying to pull the arm away from where it disappeared into her puffy coat. But she was neither strong or magically savvy enough to accomplish the deed. All she could do was shriek and suffer, calling for help that would not come in a world apart. Her tiny fingers, flashing with glittery nail polish, tried clawing back, angling up at her attacker’s face, but her arms couldn’t reach.

The pattern of the child’s wyrd emerged from her subconscious, the weave of action and fate intertwined as paths and crossroads to create a life. The unseelie felt it hum and shudder under their questing talons, watched as subtle shifts adjusted around their presence, forever altering the girl’s course.

And finally – a name.

Morpheus

They froze.

The girl nearly wriggled free as they stilled, elbow-deep in her essence.

For the first time in their long life, the unseelie felt unspeakable dread. They knew the name caught up in the girl’s fate, the one thrumming through her heart, waiting to be found and kindled into waking fire.

They studied their work, looking for an accident, a misunderstanding, some confusion of the patterns behind the tattered veil. But, no.

The little chit was bound to an Endless. No games would work here. Yet the damage had already been done. Should the Dream Lord ever return, he would see what clever fingers tore apart his soulmate’s mortality and come for terrible vengeance. The unseelie was no mortal. The rules that protected humanity offered them no shelter.

Perhaps the Dream King would not return. Maybe he would stay lost for the long, long years of this broken mortal’s life. And it would be such a long life now. She would carry on past missed appointments with Death, a breath away from everything she should have had. It was the unseelie’s doing, that long life.

They pinned the thrashing child flat again and stared into her reddened eyes, the eyes they hated to very, very much, and had an idea.

But broken mortality wasn’t really immortality. Anything might kill a little girl, or a flood of anythings.

The Dream King couldn’t be angry if they filled her heart with him. And if all those lose dreams and nightmares flocked to the tiny, tasty morsel glittering with a bit of their lord’s power? Well. Hardly the unseelie’s fault.

They’d only given her a gift.

Pinning the girl with their knee, they freed their hands to conjure a vial no bigger than the girl’s thumb. They barely had a thimbleful of Dream’s sand, collected over decades from sleeping minds and a couple cursed souls, and now they must use it all. They dipped one long claw inside.

Their arm sank back into the girl’s chest, summoning fresh screams and tears as they groped for her heart. Her wyrd wrapped tight around the pulsing core, and the unseelie worked carefully as they made the first cut, letting the sand fall into the open wound.

The screams – impossibly – rose in pitch.

The Dream Lord’s name took shape in a more literal sense, visible now to anyone with the vision to see it. Fae, gods, and Endless. Gifted humans, dreams, and nightmares. Anyone with a grudge to settle could take it out on her tender flesh. Anything hungry for a taste of the Dreaming need only take a bite.

Morpheus’s name shone with power, and the sand had already started through her blood, binding her even closer to the missing king and his realm. Every inch of her.

Satisfied with their work, they pulled their hand free – away from her heart, through her wyrd, through the tattered curtain of mortality – and licked their talon clean of blood.

Sweet. A shame their first taste must be their last.

Glowering down at the girl lying in a sweaty mess of wet hair and winter clothes, the unseelie felt the tug of their deal on their own heart. They must complete the bargain or be extinguished.

Well.

They’d give the girl a warning, the closest they’d come to kindness. As she panted, drenched from tears and sweat, they leaned low and rasped a truth into their damned eyes.

“Your soulmate a monster even the gods fear.” They felt a shiver wrack the little girl’s prone body under their weight and sneered. They still owed a name. “He is called Morpheus.”

Deal finished, vengeance for the true seeing eyes acquired, they rose, pulling the girl by her hair to the tent’s entrance and hurling her onto the icy pavement. No farewells. No explanations. No offers.

Done and done.

The tent left its place under Brown Bridge, looking for a new market in a new city. Preferably one without unwary soulmates to missing Endless wandering into traps and making life difficult. They would not meet again. The unseelie would make sure of it. The world was a big enough place to get lost in, and an unseelie prospered in the shadows.

Back under the bridge, a little girl stumbled to her feet, clutching her aching chest, aware that something terrible had happened to her, but too confused and upset to explain.

She stumbled home with a name and injuries her parents couldn’t see.

----------------------------------------------

Two Decades Later – 2022

----------------------------------------------

The Magician reversed. The Devil. The Star.

The cards stared up at her with a story she struggled to read, a simple three-card draw she’d hoped would explain what pulled her back to England time and time again, regardless of expense and frustration.

She’d meditated before she drew each card, focused on her question, on her present, on her own energy.

But it didn’t feel like her story.

“Aisling?” the voice on the phone crackled. “Still there?”

Still glowering at the tarot on the bedspread, she reached for her cell, pulling it closer to physically remind herself of the conversation. The puzzle frayed her attention, and she found herself torn between friend and fortune.

“Yeah. Yeah, sorry.”

Tea. She needed tea. Leaving the mess on her bed and bringing the phone to the rental’s kitchenette, she set the electric kettle to boil while explaining her distraction. “The cards aren’t behaving. I’ve pulled nothing but major arcana all week, the same three cards. It’s like someone else’s reading.”

On the other end of the line, her friend hummed. Aisling’s distraction was already a red flag, she knew, and now there’d be questions.

Much as Constantine liked to pretend she had no fucks to give about heaven, hell, or those trapped in between, she had a few attachments she hadn’t fully accepted as such. Good news, really, because once Johanna realized she cared about someone she hacked them out of her life with vicious efficiency.

“Sounds like weird shit. Where are you? What are you doing? You said you were in England but you haven’t come to bother me.”

Aisling peered out the leaded window as she popped a tea bag into the pot. Across the blooming garden, the towering gothic edifice of Fawney Rig loomed.

“Oh, you know.” She turned away from the phone, like she couldn’t even meet the screen’s black stare as bubbles of guilt fizzed in her stomach. Looking for a teacup gave her an excuse. Like she needed one. “Somewhere you’d disapprove of.”

Johanna’s growling sigh made her smirk even as the guilt rose to a boil in her gut.

“I’ve told you: you’ll always find trouble when you looking for it. So, stop looking.”

Despite knowing about – and using – her true sight, Constantine still clung to the belief Aisling could make her life better by ignoring her intuition. But she’d never found that to be true. Normal people could choose to ignore omens and portents, could pack up house and start a new job in a new town to avoid their problems. Aisling’s problems followed her wherever she went. Tenaciously. Her intuition just helped her keep a couple steps ahead. Sometimes, it even let her help other people. Like Constantine, in fact.

Anyway, unless she cut her eyes out of her head, she’d never be rid of that first curse.

“Yes, well, that’s always been my problem, hasn’t it?” She tried not to sound bitter, but she could taste the acrid bitterness as the words left her tongue. Lot of feelings there. Not Johanna’s fault. Even if she didn’t get it. She heaved her own sigh and decided to steer the conversation to new ground. “Anyway. What are you up to?”

Johanna shrugged. Aisling didn’t have to see her to know. “This and that.”

Thready plumes of steam escaped the kettle. She grinned, waiting for the beep that would announce tea time. “Trouble and turmoil?”

“The usual.” Johanna paused and the line went quiet. Aisling could vaguely hear the city traffic echoing through the speaker, and she wondered if Constantine was on her way to a job. “Whatever you’re getting yourself into, be careful. Stop by and see me in London when you have time.”

The kettle beeped, and the hot water burbled into the little teapot like it was rushing to meet an old friend. As the faint aroma of the simple black blend hit her, she looked at the white roses nodding around a nearby trellis, considering what Johanna might need.

“Out of salt?”

“Nah. Just want proof of life.”

She shook her head. Four minutes until the tea steeped.

“Hilarious.”

“Practical.” Spoken like a true magic user. Less fairy tales and pixie dust, more blood and obituaries. “I mean it, Ash.”

She couldn’t ignore the note of warning in Constantine’s voice, and she didn’t fight the urge to reassure her.

“I’ll try.”

“To be careful or come see me?” Johanna asked like she didn’t expect either.

The tea was ready. Steeped or not. Too hot or too cold. She needed it.

And she needed to figure out the damn reading.

“Both. I’ll talk to you later, Johanna. Bye.”

Constantine snorted. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

The call ended, and Aisling poured a cup of very hot, half-steeped tea. She took a sip as she arranged herself in front of the cards and decided she’d had worse, even if it was weaker than her New Year’s resolution to give up caffeine every January.

She should’ve used one of her herbal blends, a magical tisane to open her third eye or ease the gap between her dreaming and waking mind, but she was a little worried her hosts would come knocking and pick up on the smell. Logic and reasoning would have to do.

The reading still didn’t make sense as a whole, no matter how much she stared at it, so she broke it into parts.

She could place herself in it – sort of. A tangential connection or two linked current events to the first card.

The Magician.

It clearly represented Roderick Burgess. Inept, weak-willed, and insecure.

He’d been quite a character back in his day, styling himself a magus when he was nothing more than puffed up cult leader.

In the century since his golden days, the Burgess family sank out of the limelight. While hardly destitute, they found themselves facing the same class struggles as other rich, landed Brits with dwindling incomes and rising costs. Their grand home, once their greatest pride, became the millstone around their necks.

Aisling had no idea what economies they’d taken, but they’d put the outbuildings to use. Or one of them, anyway. A few renovations, and the gatehouse became a small apartment up for rent. The cramped quarters made for an awkward little utility flat, but it served buckets of charm and hinted at a haunted history. Crack for tourists. The house wasn’t open for tours, and the owners requested no photos of the main residence be taken, but it was enough to draw guests for a night or two. Everyone liked a good ghost story, and Fawney Rig was rotten with them.

Aisling rented the space for a week, yanked by the nose after she found the innocuous listing online. Her intuition screamed to go – hunt – search – find… something.

It should be in the middle, though, if it represented her present. The Magician sat to the left, the past position, and her intuition insisted it referenced the magus, not his mansion.

The Devil took the present.

It wasn’t a friendly card. Its range of meanings all tied back to physical or psychological bondage. She’d heard the stories of Burgess keeping the Devil in his basement, but Constantine’s work proved Lucifer was safe and well in the bowels of Hell. Maybe he trapped something else in the cellar. Weak magic users like the magus often pulled on secondary powers, unable to draw from their own. It wouldn’t explain the family’s decline, though, if they still had the beastie in chains.

Her cards were rarely literal, but maybe her intuition simply wanted her to get into the basement.

A nice, obvious suggestion. She’d already tried.

She carried what she considered three curses. First, her true sight. That was an accident of nature or fate. The other two she blamed on the fae she met on a winter night under the bridge. She only understood what it had done when she was older – destroying the veil between consciousness and intuition, then carving a monster’s name on her heart with a fragment of the monster’s own power.

The last two curses made her a powerful oneiromancer. She walked between dreams and reality when she slept, like a mix of lucid dreaming and astral projection. When she entered Fawney Rig her first night as a guest in her sleeping shape, she found all doors open to her. All doors except the one to the basement.

Intent blocked it like a magical ward, dying wishes to keep out magic and dreams.

She’d never seen anything quite like it, and wondered how many members of Burgess’s cult died with visions in their minds’ eyes before they passed.

Roderick’s ghost scowled at her as she examined the door, and she’d flipped him the bird on principle. He couldn’t hurt her. Too weak. An abandoned soul who’d done something to piss off death, he faced an eternity of powerlessness, watching with no control. They hated each other at first sight.

She had three more days in Fawney Rig’s gatehouse. If things went well, she’d reach the basement that evening with a different approach.

Which led her to the third card. The Star, a predictor of opportunity and help unlooked for, a symbol of faith, hope, and dreams.

They were all too close to being meaningful without actually slotting into any order that made sense. Together, the three cards suggested a path tangential to hers, one she crossed or play a part in.

But it wasn’t her fortune.

Which begged the question: whose was it?

She chugged the rest of her tea – a little cooler and still weak as fuck – before sweeping up the cards and tapping the set back into their painted leather holster. As she fasted the clasp, the pattern caught her eye. The pattern wasn’t unusual for a magical tool – a star set in a geometric pattern for inspiration and protection.

Her thumb brushed over the four points of the white mark. Did it represent her? If so, what aspect guided her role, and whose future would she influence?

Her left hand rose to her chest, rubbing slow circles as she considered. The ache was her most faithful companion. It grounded her when she lost focus, anchored her to her physical body and dreaming self with every burst of throbbing pain. People waxed poetic about heartache, but she knew it in all its forms, and there was nothing romantic about any of them. She hadn’t met her soulmate. Probably never would. But the bastard made her hurt regardless.

Tea finished and cards packed, she checked her phone for trains leaving the local station in the wee hours. Once she finished whatever she’d come here to do, she imagined she’d need a quick exit, stage left.

Possibly pursued by bear.

Hours passed, shadows circled the room, and she watched the day melt behind Fawney Rig’s gables.

Her suitcase – carpetbag, really – sat by the door, ready to escape the consequences of her actions. An ocean should be enough distance. The paper trail didn’t worry her. She paid in cash for a reason. But whatever was in that basement… hopefully their fortunes only tangled briefly.

Full again, the teapot waited for her to pour a cup and begin her spell.

Since her sleeping self couldn’t breach the door, she’d need to walk through in her corporeal body. All fleshy and vulnerable to things like the security guards who came and went twice a day through the servants’ entrance her window overlooked. They had guns, and she didn’t want to find out if they were the type eager to use them.

If she had to be awake, they had to sleep.

Fortunately, one of her curses could help with that. It would cost her, but Fawney Rig had good security, and she had few options left. Besides, there should only be five people in the house. She’d survived five days without sleep before. She’d be fine.

So she filled her cup and made her circle. Witch’s salt whispered between her fingers as she drew the shape, leaving black smudges on her skin. She didn’t bother wiping it off. The muted scent of burnt herbs filtered through her senses as she lifted the cup to drink. Skullcap, wormwood, and rosemary washed her mouth and throat clear of waking worries, and as the magic warmed her belly, seeping into her blood, the sand sleeping there woke.

Johanna’s sorcery followed strict rules. Words and symbols summoned and channeled the power. Without them, things went sideways, or they didn’t go anywhere at all. But Aisling was no sorcerer. More of a witch. And while she needed tools and potions to do her best work, she preferred the quiet over chants to guide her.

In silence, she gathered the depthless sensation of REM, honed it with fatigue and a desperate need for rest. Heavy lids. Closing eyes. The sweetly inescapable call of a good night’s rest after an endless day’s work. She held the urge. Fed it. Let it steal her own sleep. When swelled, stretching like a restless child trying to doze, she threw it all in an invisible wave towards the house. Her hands pushed out, physically mimicking the force, and held the pose until the wave crested, crashed, and washed into foam, drenching Fawney Rig with her intent.

She felt the waking minds within sink under the spell’s influence, and she spared herself a minute to release the focus, come back to her thoughts and plans and body. The ring of black salt remained undisturbed. Nothing fought back, then. That was good. It meant she had less to worry about while she broke a few laws.

The empty cup joined the teapot on the counter, unwashed and abandoned. Until she knew if her pretense of a polite guest would see the light of morning, there was no point, and her spell wouldn’t keep them asleep forever.

Blank-faced, the man in the moon watched her stride through the garden, hunting for the little pot near the gazebo where Paul kept the spare key.

They met her first day in the gatehouse when she paused to admire his flowers. He was a sweet old man, and he was happy to share about his beloved garden. His first love at Fawney Rig, though not his greatest. When he explained he used to be staff, she’d given him her very best smile and laughed.

“I guess that makes you Cinderella.”

Clearly a romantic, that one. He smiled at his feet, saying it “Wasn’t quite like that,” but obviously pleased with the vision she’d spun him. When he found out she was staying by herself, he’d shown her the key.

“For emergencies. The gatehouse isn’t the most secure, and we’re a ways from town. You know, just in case.”

If both hosts were so sweet, she might not have heeded the mysterious call to the old house. Her world had more dark than light, and she’d hate to leave tar and ash in Paul’s beautiful flowerbeds.

But then she met Paul’s husband.

She couldn’t say exactly why she didn’t like Alex, but he had a brittle edge like a rusty knife lifted against the world. He wore the fragility of the perpetual victim, eternally on-guard, someone who’d been hurt but could never move on from their pain, because if they did, they’d have to admit they were also an abuser.

He had ugly secrets locked away in his grand house, festering away like septic boils, and every inch of her being insisted it was her task to lance them.

She took the key with regret, but she still took it, and the heavy front door opened like she’d been invited in.

Everything she’d picked up in her days outside the manor proper landed twice as heavily as she stepped inside, shoes tapping over the polished floor. Her dreaming form had limitations. It walked a path between awareness and the unconscious, and it had trouble picking up on much beyond what she went to sleep intending to do or find. Now, she breathed in every detail.

The old manor creaked with the burden of death obstructed. It choked on lives unnaturally extended, ghosts kept alive by magic and petulance until the world left the estate behind. It had become more museum than home, and though Alex and Paul had cleared out a few places to call their own and wired in modern conveniences as they were invented, the place seemed to hold its breath. It laid largely undisturbed with the glassy eyes of balding taxidermy guarding the sins of a dead man.

Because Roderick Burgess was a sinner for sure. Wild tales aside, the angry ghost silently raging at her from on high wasn’t that of a benevolent soul. Sleeping or waking, her eyes looked true, and a ghost was a ghost in any world it walked.

She spared him a middle finger again. Just for funsies.

Prick.

He wasn’t worth any further attention.

The door, however, was.

She pulled back the curtain shielding it from the hall and examined the lock. It had many keys. She’d seen the heavy, jangling rings of them the guards carried, and Alex Burgess must be paranoid enough to keep one on his person. But in her sleeping quest, she’d discovered lots of things about this door. No one needed to tell her where the spare key hung on a hook under the aged buffet in the hall. It practically glowed to her dreaming eyes, and her waking fingers found it quick enough.

It slotted in the hole and released the bolt with a click. Easy as could be. Just like the key from the garden.

All these little treasures stashed away in case of emergency were about to cause one.

The portal to the basement yawned wide. At long last. The hollow silence warned her away, but the place under her ribs twisted. Determined.

So, through the door. Down the stairs. Trotting, quick and quiet on her nameless mission into the bowels of the Demon King’s estate. She could imagine Johanna’s voice cutting across space and time, picking apart her plan, shitting on her magnetic attraction to the cursed and unfortunate corners of the world. No back-up. A vague idea of an exit strategy. No clue what she was walking into.

What could possibly go wrong?

The goosebumps on her arms forecasted doom, but she couldn’t ignore the sparking current running through her chest. The farther she went, the clearer the sensation became.

Despite the electric lights, shadows clung like dust, growing deeper and wider as she neared the bottom of the stairs. The basement sucked the life out of the LED bulbs, refusing to share its secrets with an outsider. Hush, it whispered, hide it, bury it, keep it from the daylight.

Each step charged the static creeping over her skin. Her heart threatened to fall out of rhythm with the little shocks as it swelled around her like the sea. Something she could taste. Something she could drown in.

She didn’t have to look into the room to know the guards slept. She felt it. Their resting minds hummed in the space like a pair of bees. If that wasn’t proof enough, a snore echoed between the bare walls, carrying up the stairwell.

At the end of her descent, she found an iron gate. Whatever the Burgesses had ferreted away, they feared it. But she’d have time to find her own fears in just a moment. First things first. An important life lesson, even in darkest dungeons.

Especially in darkest dungeons, actually.

She didn’t look through the bars, keeping her focus on the lock. Bolted from the inside, a simple keyhole begged for a pick or a spell to let her pass. It wasn’t her area of expertise, but the mechanism had soaked up decade up on decade of magic, and it was nearing the tipping point between magical artefact and mundane tool. Magic stained everything in the basement, to the point she wondered if she might see her own footprints lingering, like marks on a sandy beach down the stairs.

Johanna had taught her a few tricks to handle locks over the years, and this one begged for something more than traditional keys. She slipped her fingers between the bars, resting her finger over the keyhole as she listened for what it wanted. It asked for something. It was tired of standing guard for so, so long, and it just wanted a reason, an excuse even, to let go. It wanted a fucking rest.

Poor old thing.

She found a word, matched it to her intent, and whispered.

“Deditionem.”

The lock turned with a creaking groan, and the gate sighed open on rusty hinges.

Sparks rippled like fire through her chest, and she shoved her hands deep in her pockets to stop herself from rubbing the ache.

She was not alone.

Her eyes swung along with the gate, drawn to the bright center of the dungeon, where a prisoner sat in a glass cage, like a hollow moon in the void of the underground.

Human eyes might’ve mistaken the hostage for a man, and damn if he didn’t look like one. A beautiful one. But she saw something more.

Even in the smothering dark of the cellar, his shadows glowed sharp. Threats whispered through the angles of his stiff posture, and the stars in his eyes glittered red.

He sat like a king, straight and cold, holding himself apart from the petty creatures who’d snared him with dignity and poise of inexhaustible grace.

He’d already noticed her. Unblinking eyes fixed on her face, unimpressed, but attentive. Not friendly in the least.

She held the staring contest for a full minute before she snapped, lashes fluttering as she floundered for something to say, not quite ready to look away.

“Hi.”

Inspirational. Truly.

Still, it broke the standoff – or at least the quiet – and she moved further into the room, looking over the moat, the glass cage, the arcane circle painted on the floor. Her eyes stayed on the restraints. The… whatever he was sat very naked in that globe, and she’d gladly bet it wasn’t voluntarily. That gave her plenty of reasons to look away, and a beautiful excuse to avoid as much eye contact as possible.

She made a full circuit, and though he didn’t turn more than his head to watch her, his attention prickled. Her own footsteps haunted her, filling the room like a shadow army. If he wasn’t going to participate in a conversation, well, she wasn’t above talking to herself.

“You are angry.” Somehow, he sat even straighter, and she tripped over herself to explain. “I don’t blame you. If I was in your position, I’d be pissed, too. But I have to be… careful.”

She squinted at the golden circle, baffled by the sigils. She needed a better look.

Backing away from the edge of the moat, she got a running start and jumped over the long pit. It was a close thing, and her arms pinwheeled on the brink of a fall. Gravity took pity on her, and after tipping back and forth on the balls of her feet, she recovered her balance.

There wasn’t much space on the island, and she found herself very near the glass – and very near the entity within. He regarded her with the same, impassive judgement, but one eyebrow had drifted higher than the other. He didn’t need to speak to tell her she was an idiot. There was a bridge, after all, between his island and the rest of the basement floor.

She shrugged. “Never trust the obvious.”

Never trust clear routes when their owners had reason to boobytrap them. Never trust pretty men kept under glass.

Looking away before she got lost in those starry eyes, she crouched at the edge of the symbols trapping him. She recognized most of them, but the configuration eluded her. A summoning circle, but for what? All she could see was what it couldn’t do.

“You’re no demon,” she muttered to the floor. “You’d have offered a deal by now. Or a few choice threats. Hellfire, and brimstone, and all.”

The quiet remained undisturbed as her voice faded, and the pressure mounted in her chest. Trying to soothe the sting, she let herself rub over the invisible damage, aware she was revealing a weakness, but even more aware of the gross imbalance of power. She could strip down and show him every scar, tell him every mistake she’d ever made, and it wouldn’t make him any more powerful. It wouldn’t help him out of his cage, either.

Too quiet. She needed to think. As her fingers skated in a figure-eight above her heart, she continued her debate aloud.

“You’re beyond any dream or nightmare I’ve ever met. I doubt you’re a djinn or a faerie.”

She looked up with a question blooming on her lips and froze in place.

He’d moved.

As she studied the magic keeping him prisoner, he’d shifted closer, balancing with one hand against the glass as he scrutinized her. His burning gaze dared her to look away again, demanding something, and for an instant, she forgot how to breathe.

He had hair like the night wind. She imagined if she broke the glass, that wind would become more than a metaphor, sweeping the world clean of the house, the people inside, and any soul foolish enough to earn his wrath through the long years of his imprisonment.

She didn’t need to know the entity’s name to feel his presence, the chained power ringing through his cage. Whoever – whatever – the Burgesses trapped, they had good reason to fear setting it free. When the defenses fell, that power would tear through the immediate vicinity like a river breaching a dam. Intelligent eyes tracked her, analyzed her, judged her. But a force of nature sat in that bubble. Not a man.

Pieces of an old story sat around her, and she took her time, anxious as they grew into a simple tale. Roderick Burgess snared a power beyond himself, confident in the way men looked at mountains and saw gold, the way clever folk tamed lightning and harnessed the wind. But he’d miscalculated. This creature moved in spheres beyond mortal reasoning. He trapped his family with a curse, a burden they could never release, that would never bow to bargaining. Something that never should’ve been locked away in the first place.

And now she’d gotten tangled up in its wyrd, according to her cards.

She must be very careful if she wanted to survive this. Intact. Wrath had a tendency to spill over on bystanders, and she stood very close to the boiling cauldron.

Holding that demanding gaze, she said, “I’m going to help you. Whatever you are, I don’t think you belong in there.”

Doubt soured his expression, but some of the red faded from the stars. He heard her. He was listening. And he was jaded as all hell. She wasn’t the first to make promises.

“I am going to get you free. But –”

He sat up again, hand still on the glass, to peer down his nose in naked distain.

She scoffed. Gods. All men-shaped things really were the same. Proud, impatient bastard. “Calm down and let me finish.”

Whatever the summoning circle’s origin, it stank of fragile, dead magic. It remained as a rule, but nothing living fueled its power, and she could break it easily.

As she drew her athame from the sheath at the small of her back, she continued, “I don’t think I want to be here when you get out. Like I said, you’re angry, and I have people depending on me.”

She held the blade up so he could see it, and she wondered if he could feel her comparatively feeble magic as she lifted it across the magical boundary. Simply cutting the air over the marks weakened them, and she saw him stiffen, nostrils flaring before she bent to finish the job.

Her athame was beautiful – a steel dagger crafted in a friend’s forge. Silver filigree twisted down the blade like a gale between seven-pointed stars, and lacey wormwood leaves glittered in the same material over the handle. The basement air left the shapes cool against her sweaty palm.

The tip touched stone just within the ring, and she pulled the sharp edge through the concentric rings of gold paint in a clean stroke, encountering no resistance as she severed the lingering power. The fine cut was invisible to the naked eye, but the magic crumbled like a dead leaf under a boot.

Smirking to herself, she tucked away the dagger and gleefully thought of how upset old Burgess would be. No wonder the family needed two damn guards to protect such shitty casting.

Her eye wandered back to the entity, and she slowly rose to her feet, rubbing her chest as he stared with wide eyes.

He looked like she’d slapped him. Surprise mingled with awe or horror. He wasn’t easy to read. But it wasn’t gratitude glowing in his expression.

Something had happened.

Did she do something?

Her heart was on fire.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

He didn’t answer, though his lips parted. Either he wanted to speak and had forgotten how, or he feared to share his thoughts, though they begged to escape into the open air.

It wasn’t her business. She took two steps back, sweeping the glass sphere for signs of a latch or door. It looked like it had been built around him. Hell. It probably was. Like Wendy in the little house the Lost Boys made her, but so much worse.

The cosmos in his gaze stirred, swirling like a whirlpool as the fire under her skin continues burning. Dangerous. This was dangerous. He was dangerous.

It was time to leave.

She’d done her part.

“If you need more help, you have to tell me.”

She had to check. The sphere and the circle clearly worked in tandem to keep the prisoner sealed away from the world, and breaking the sigils affected him somehow. Would he be able to break the second barrier on his own, or would she have to put herself at further risk?

He glanced at the sleeping guards. Looked her over again, eyes growing harder as he buried that raw shock she’d unwittingly triggered. The barest shift of his head relieved her of further responsibility.

“Fine. Good luck.”

One of the guards jolted in his sleep.

Oh, most definitely time to leave.

She risked the bridge on her way out. Faster that way. She didn’t look back as she pushed through the iron gate, didn’t hesitate on the steps, or in the hall, even when gunshots rang out below.

A burst of panic that had been hiding beneath the curiosity and pain sprang free, fraying her nerves with its teeth as she fled the manor. She took her waiting bag from the door to the gatehouse and sprinted down the dark road towards town.

The sun would find her miles away, on her way to someplace further still.

The tarot reading solved. The captive entity freed. Roderick Burgess forced to watch it all from limbo.

Now came the reckoning.

She had every reason to leave and not a single one to stay.

She could move on. She was very literally doing just that.

So why, as her feet pounded down the long gravel drive, did the scars in her chest burn to turn back?

Next Chapter

#morpheus x reader #morpheus x oc #sandman x reader #dream of the endless x reader

714 notes · View notes

magicaldragons · 7 months

Note

different anon, but is it possible to know more about the assassin and twins au ? pretty pleasee I love how you think

hey! :p i'm kinda excited to share these, since they're both planned out and half complete

• the assassin au:

Deva is the kingdom's most prized weapon, though no one truly knows what the man truly looks like. He is a myth, a whisper rampant throughout the darkest parts of the kingdom. ‘The Devil’, is what they call him. Varadha is Khansaar's jewel, first son of the King's favourite queen. He is hated by his kin, for the same love he recieves from the people of his kingdom. They aren't meant to meet, opposites in every way, but sometimes, when destiny's threads are altered, she takes paths that would have seemed impossible otherwise. Varadha, with an alliance in his future he cannot refuse, wishes to save the people he will leave behind, and Deva, wishes for anything apart from the miserable monotony of his existence and the bloodshed that fills his days. In each other, they find the answers they seek. But how far will they be willing to go to hold onto what they have, especially when fate herself forsakes them?

• and the twins au:

Deva and Devaratha are both in line to inherit the throne, their personalities perfectly matched to rule Khansaar. In the month leading up to the coronation, one of the palace dancers, Varadha, catches their eye.

(imagine if we split canon Deva into two of his extremes: Deva is firm, yet diplomatic, and Devaratha is darker, better suited for war and violence) there is plot, but if i described any of it, i'd reveal too much lmao

#thank you for giving me the opportunity to obsess lmao <3 #salaar #varadeva

43 notes · View notes

aedonys · 1 year

Text

Day 5 of #LcmdFatedAu event: Classic fantasy.

Inspired by the "Harry Potter" series, featuring lucemond as tomarry.

(Hogwarts AU!hotd)

The entire wizarding world held its breath in anticipation of the next realm's delight, the boy who was promised, wondering whether he would join the ranks of Hufflepuff considering his charming personality, or follow in his brother's Gryffindor footsteps.

When the moment finally arrived and he stepped into Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat's declaration was immediate and resounding: "SLYTHERIN," it cried as soon as it dropped on his head.

Lucerys found himself face-to-face with his uncle, who was his senior by four years.

The smirking and smug of face Aemond Targaryen, familiar yet different, gave Lucerys a pause in his carefully written life plans. Slowly, he returned the smirk.

In contrast to other families, the inbreeding in the Targaryens did not produce squibs; however, they couldn't evade the madness that coursed within their blood. Lucerys was always aware that his uncle fell under that predicament, thoughless and cruel, a certain belief confirmed further by the eye scar incident five years ago and the discovery of his dragon dreams.

Aemond's affinity for the dark arts was an open secret, yet his mother, hailing from one of the lightest families of the Sacred 28, took it upon herself to "guide him onto the path of light." This was despite the fact that all her offspring bore the blood of dragons.

Lucerys embraced the task of dismantling Aemond's tyrannical notions regarding purebloods and Muggle-borns. Moreover, it wasn't a secret that Aemond had developed an unsettling fixation on him. Still, Lucerys couldn't find fear within himself nor reject the attention he garnered.

It was alluring in a way, the freedom from not having to live up to being the world's saviour, to be wanted solely for who you truly were.

In time, their connection deepened into love. This became another scandal, coinciding with his mother and Daemon's marriage. History doesn't repeat itself, but it certainly carries an inherent rhyme that keeps on playing in the background.

But love alone couldn't shield Aem from his destiny. Despite Luke's plea that he forsake immortality & unreasonable power, it all came to nought. His ominous dreams held a promise for a miserable future for both of them; one lost in the shadows and the other buried under flames.

Aemond's darker inclinations ultimately consumed him. He betrayed Luke's trust and oaths, fully embracing his Voldemort identity during the four years of separation from Lucerys. Luke was left heartbroken, grieving the loss of the love he believed they shared.

Luke tried to confront Aemond about soul magic and its consequences. Regrettably, Aemond remained obstinate, his mind frayed, his magic nibbling at his rationality and logic. He realized too late that his lover was irretrievable.

His aemond was lost to a morbid dream.

"My affection for you was never as innocent as children's fables; it was much more insidious. It engulfed the world, expanding ceaselessly. My love's threads were void, consisting only of myself, and the days elapsed until they could no longer bear me. Nothing had ever carried me away from this world until I thought my soul was forfeit, that perhaps I had died." - Lucerys Velaryon

When the moment of reckoning arrived, a crucial decision compelled Luke to decide between saving Voldemort (or what remained of Aemond) and protecting the Wizarding World. The love he held for Aemond clashed with his duty as the "Chosen One," leaving Luke shattered by the heartbreaking decision he was forced to make. Yet, as difficult as it was, he persisted.

After destroying the 7 horcruxes (where a piece of him shatters along the vanquished soul pieces of aemond), Lucerys sacrificed himself to deliver the final blow that destroyed the last horcrux, which Luke discovered had dwelled within him since the eye incident.

Without looking back, and after believing his love was forever gone, Luke departed from the station on the train to the afterlife. He didn’t wait for Aemond to follow or spared a glance for those who were still alive, ready to serve him up like a pig for slaughter.

As the train carried Lucerys onward, he held Aemond's Slytherin cloth pin, passing through the tapestry of his memories. His soul pounded against his ribcage, pleading to be released, seeking his heart, yearning for its holder.

He understood the bittersweet truth—there was no "everafter" for Aemond. there was nothing real in his story except himself, alongside the companionship of his missing heart. For his love, his lover, their world, & all the creations their love spawned held nothing of reality.

#fanart #hotd #houseofthedragon #asoiaf #aemond #aemondtargaryen #lucerys #lucerysvelaryon #lucemond #lucerys velaryon #LcmdFatedAu

78 notes · View notes

cnnmairoll · 1 year

Text

An Enchanted Masquerade Tale

Pairing : Sampo x Reader Genre : Fluff, Fairytale AU Summary : In the midst of an enchanted masquerade, a chance encounter between a noble soul and an eloquent mercenary sets off a captivating journey of unmasked identities and burgeoning love. Disclaimer : reader has hair, long enough for sampo to tuck a strand behind their ear a/n : My entry piece for @masked-fools Fairytale au!! Please check out the other writers there, they're very talented ♡

In the heart of the enchanting kingdom of Eldoria, where tales of magic and romance intertwine, a grand masquerade ball was underway. The night was aglow with the soft radiance of a thousand candles, casting dancing shadows on the walls of the opulent palace. Nobles, aristocrats, and dignitaries from far and wide had gathered, all elegantly adorned in their finest attire and elaborate masks that concealed their true identities.

Amidst the swirling sea of silk gowns and velvet suits, you, a member of a prestigious noble family, stood masked in an attire that befitted your regal lineage. But as the night progressed, the initial excitement began to wane, replaced by a lingering sense of monotony. The ballroom was alive with laughter and music, yet you found yourself yearning for something more.

It was then that destiny intervened, leading you to collide with a captivating stranger. Your mask brushed against theirs, and the two of you locked eyes. A mischievous glint sparkled within their emerald orbs, igniting an immediate connection. With a flourish, the stranger introduced themselves with a fabricated name that held an air of secrecy.

You engaged in a dance of words, the kind that transcended mere pleasantries. Your conversations flowed effortlessly, like a river of shared thoughts and dreams. Time seemed to stand still as the two of you exchanged stories, anecdotes, and witty remarks. The masquerade around you became a distant hum, as if the world outside your bubble of conversation ceased to exist.

As the night grew darker, the chatter in the ballroom intensified, threatening to shatter the intimate cocoon you had woven around yourselves. Recognizing the need for solitude, the gentleman suggested a stroll in the palace garden, where the fragrant blooms and moonlit paths could offer a refuge from the prying eyes and intrusive voices.

Outside, the garden was a paradise of flora and twinkling lights, casting a magical spell upon the night. The breeze whispered secrets as you walked together, the moon bathing you in its silvery glow. The connection between you deepened, each revelation drawing you closer to this masked enigma.

But just as the bond between you seemed to solidify, the delicate thread of your encounter snapped. Panic rippled through the crowd as alarms sounded—the masked stranger was exposed as a "Thief." Gasps echoed, and the night took an unexpected turn as guards rushed to apprehend the man you had grown so fond of in mere hours.

Before he vanished into the shadows, the thief's true name was revealed: Sampo Koski. With a heartfelt apology for the abrupt departure, he made a promise—unfinished and suspended in midair—that he would see you again.

Since then, he had been occupying your mind, the memory of that enchanting night at the masquerade ball etched into your thoughts. You often found yourself lost in daydreams, imagining what it would be like to see the masked thief, Sampo Koski, again. The thrill of his presence, the intriguing conversations you shared – it all felt like a dream you were desperate to relive.

In one fateful night, you were just reading a book in the dimly lit chamber of your family's grand estate, your thoughts wandering to the enigmatic stranger who had left such an indelible mark on your heart. The moon cast a soft glow through the window, illuminating the pages before you.

Interrupting your solitude, a light but distinct knock resonated against the glass pane. Startled, you looked up, your heart racing. Could it be him? Your mind raced with both excitement and trepidation. With cautious curiosity, you approached the window and slowly drew aside the heavy curtains.

There, standing on the window ledge, was a figure in a familiar black ensemble, adorned with a mask that concealed their features. Your breath caught as you recognized the emerald eyes that glinted mischievously from behind the mask – it was him, Sampo Koski, the charming "Thief" from that magical night.

With a mix of excitement and trepidation, you quickly unlatched the window, allowing him to step inside. The moonlight danced across his emerald eyes as he removed his mask, revealing his charming smile. "Surprised to see me?" he quipped, his voice a blend of mischief and warmth.

His eyes met yours, a mixture of playfulness and gratitude shining in his gaze. "Thank you for not betraying me that night," he said, his voice a velvet whisper.

You offered a faint smile, unable to deny the spark of attraction that flickered between you. "I could hardly bring myself to expose someone who had shared such an enchanting conversation with me."

As the two of you stood there, masked and shrouded in the moon's embrace, the air was thick with unspoken emotions. It was as though the world outside had ceased to exist, leaving only the two of you suspended in this stolen moment.

Thick with unspoken emotions, it was as though the world outside had ceased to exist, leaving only the two of you suspended in this stolen moment. Time seemed to stand still, the only sounds the hushed whispers of your breaths and the faint rustling of fabric. The intensity of the connection you shared was palpable, an invisible thread binding your souls together.

Sampo's emerald eyes bore into yours, his gaze unwavering and filled with a mixture of longing and vulnerability. His fingers brushed against yours, sending a jolt of electricity through your veins. With each heartbeat, the distance between you seemed to diminish, until it was almost imperceptible.

Sampo's lips curved into a gentle smile, his fingers entwined with yours. "You know, there's an old tale I once heard," he began, his voice a soothing melody that seemed to wrap around your heart. "It's about two souls who find each other in the most unexpected of places, bound by a fate that refuses to be denied."

You listened intently, captivated by his words, your breath hitching with every pause. "And what happens to these souls?" you whispered, your voice barely audible in the intimate space between you.

Sampo's gaze never wavered, his thumb tracing soothing circles on the back of your hand. "They must make a choice – to embrace the connection that defies reason and convention, or to let fear dictate their path."

The weight of his words settled in the air, the gravity of the decision hanging over you both. You felt the rapid beat of your heart, a steady rhythm that seemed to synchronize with his own. With a newfound determination, you took a step closer, your bodies now nearly touching.

"Perhaps," you began, your voice steady despite the butterflies that danced within you, "it's time for us to make that choice."

Sampo's smile widened, his eyes gleaming with a mixture of surprise and delight. "You're right," he agreed, his fingers grazing your cheek as he tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear. "It's time to let our hearts guide us."

In that moment, the world around you faded into insignificance, and it was just the two of you, standing on the precipice of something extraordinary. Sampo's gaze dropped to your lips, his breath mingling with yours as he leaned in, his touch a feather-light caress against your skin.

Sampo's forehead rested against yours, his gaze filled with a newfound intensity. "I may be a thief of treasures, but you, my dear, have stolen something far more valuable – my heart."

A soft laugh escaped your lips, a melody of pure joy that danced between you. "And you, Sampo Koski, have captured my heart in a way that no mask could ever conceal."

His fingers tightened around yours, his touch a reassuring anchor in the midst of the swirling emotions. "I've always known that life is a delicate balance of risks and rewards," he mused, his voice a low murmur that resonated deep within you. "But meeting you has shifted that balance, made me see that the greatest risks are often the most rewarding."

You nodded, your heart swelling with an inexplicable warmth. "I used to think that my world was confined to the walls of this estate, to the expectations that come with my name. But you've shown me that there's a world beyond, full of mystery and adventure."

Sampo's thumb brushed against the back of your hand, his touch a soothing caress. "Then let us explore that world together.”

As the night wore on, the two of you continued to talk, your conversations ranging from dreams and aspirations to shared stories of past adventures. It was as though time had become an afterthought, and the connection between you grew stronger with each passing moment. The barriers that once separated your worlds had crumbled, leaving behind an unbreakable bond that defied convention.

Eventually, as the first rays of dawn painted the sky with hues of pink and gold, you realized that the night was coming to an end. Sampo's eyes met yours, a mixture of reluctance and determination in his gaze. "I wish I could stay longer, but the morning light is not my ally."

You nodded in understanding, a bittersweet smile tugging at your lips. "I know, Sampo. But this is just the beginning, isn't it? We have a world to explore, adventures to embark upon."

His fingers brushed against your cheek, his touch tender. "Indeed, my dear. And every step of that journey will be more vibrant and alive because you're by my side."

With a final, lingering touch, Sampo turned toward the window, his silhouette framed by the soft glow of dawn. As he prepared to slip away, he cast one last look in your direction, his eyes holding a promise of a future yet to be written.

"I'll find you," he whispered, his voice carrying a certainty that sent a thrill through your heart. And with that, he vanished into the early morning mist, leaving behind a sense of longing and anticipation.

As you watched him disappear, you knew that the story of Sampo Koski and the mysterious masquerade had only just begun. The pages of your own adventure were waiting to be filled, with moments of laughter, challenges to overcome, and a love that had the power to transcend even the most formidable of obstacles.

With a heart full of hope, you closed the window and turned back to the room, the memories of that enchanted night etched into your soul. The world beyond your estate's walls beckoned, and you were ready to step into it – unmasked, unafraid, and in love.

#˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗ mai writes #hsr #honkai star rail #sampo #sampo koski #sampo koski x reader #sampo x reader #hsr sampo #honkai star rail sampo #sampo honkai #hsr fluff #masquerade ball #au

65 notes · View notes