#He can be a primordial beast over there just. Not behind me

[lionblaze03-2]

desperately trying to use my bathroom whilst being pursued by an extremely fast centipede

[yeyinde]

I'm gonna mention this to you because you also like slashers and COD so I imagine there's a little monster fucking in there possibly? But god imagine Ghost as a non-human tho. Just like an actual beast of a man. Sharp canines, solid black eyes, bigger than what you had thought possible for a human. You barely notice when you first start because you don't want to inconvenience your Lieutenant. But things start sticking out. When he's not working, you notice the way he moves is like he's stalking something. Sometimes he huffs like a wolf. You make eye contact on a mission and really finally look, but there's nothing there. Just glossy black.

You're getting fucked by Soap in your cot, on top and facing a wall and he clicks his tongue and something moves behind you. Ghost steps out of the shadows, panting like a dog, and Soap is like "you don't mind if he joins do ya?"

Also calling him a good boy and patting his head 😌

I just think it would be hot and would explain some of the ways people write him as if he's an inhuman creature

sooooo on board with all of this!!!!

i try to be sneaky about it but i've described this man as a Cimmerian not just for the darkness aspect but the mythos too since it kinda fits him (and i love relating things that have no right to be related).

Ghost AU where he's some primordial being. a monster. a werewolf, perhaps. it has so much potential. i kept thinking about it, and this kinda got away from me. sorry!

When you join the 141, there is a heaviness in the atmosphere. A strange, stifling weight you can't make sense of. Tension. An unease. 

They tell you you're full of life when you walk in the room, smiling at them—but it sounds like a curse. They whisper it, as if they're afraid of speaking it aloud. Eyes filled with a gravity you can't begin to understand. 

You turn to leave, and they say stay away from him.

The him in this equation is made known when you set your eyes on the behemoth they call Ghost. 

When you cross his path, he stops completely. The world around you falls dead. Deafening silence. His eyes are a perfect polynya when he gazes at you. His head tips back, baleen lines stretching out. And then breathes in deep. Scenting the air.

His broad chest expands with it. A rumble sounds from low in his chest.

No man can be like this. 

(He was once a man, Soap muses. Maybe. Probably. Called him Simon. Simon Riley.

How can someone probably be a man?

His eyes are grave, shrouded in the mourning fog that sits low on the tombstones. You don't wanna know, bonnie.)

They tell you little about him, but you notice things. They keep their distance, and drop their chins when men go missing. No one looks. No one says a word. 

They're just—

Gone. Forgotten. 

Everything they once were is hidden away in a closet that can barely shut. 

Don't worry about it, hen. 

Just happens sometimes, mate. 

Don't go sticking your nose where it shouldn't be. 

You should listen. Heed their advice. 

But he's enthralling. A being made entirely of death. 

A strange feeling that settles low in your chest. There is a yearning inside of you that wants to know everything about this behemoth shrouded in tenebrose—a siren's call, beckoning you closer. It calls to you in the dead of night. spools over your thoughts until your head is full of him, him, him—

He's an enigma. A mystery. 

And then you see in battle. A shadow. A myth. No man can spill that much blood. 

Dread spools thick on your guts. A man like him should not exist in this moral realm. He does not belong. 

You turn to Soap—a man (human: flesh and bone, real)—but it does little to stem the fever inside.

He catches you when you sneak out of his room, smelling of alder and sex. 

He stares at you. Midnight hour, devils night—the warnings are tucked into the recesses of those unfathomable depths. Fear pools, knots inside of you.

"Have fun, pet?"

There is a chill in his voice, a growl deep in the pits of his being that resound through the corridor and make your bones shake. 

He stares at you—a greedy, covetous tinge in those Stygian depths. 

You're playing a dangerous game. Waving your breakable fingers in front of the maw of a starving beast. 

Stay away, Soap says. You really don't know what you're getting into, bonnie.

You smile. I know. I will. (Liar)

Something breaks. Curiosity. Obsession. Your neck prickles when he's close. You hear a rush of water when those black eyes pierce you; the call of a river thick with the stench of death. You think of the Styx when he turns to you. Hands shackled to your wrist; grip tight. no escape. terror blooms inside of you.

run run run run

"Watch your step, rookie."

Is that a warning in his voice? Why does it sound so—

Beguiling. Taunting. He gets under your skin. spellbinds you. You can't stop thinking about him.

You feel him in the shadows. Liquid black; death. Sometimes, you look at him, and you think you hear a hiss in the back of your head when your feet move, bringing you closer. An augury. a portant. 

Aeons ago, they warned naïve wanderers like you to be wary of the quietus in the fog.

—he leads you not into salvation—

You find him waiting for you, covered in blood and reeking of death. His head lifts. The Styx in his eyes. Damnation in the tilt of his head. He'll be your ruin. Your demise.

Your name falls from his lips.

(Too lost in the magnetism, that primal draw that brings you closer and closer, you miss the anathema that taints the word.)

His hand reaches out to you. Deadly, dangerous. Each breath he takes rumbles the ground around you. He smells of hellfire and rot. Sulphur. Ichor. It leaks into your lungs, your marrow. 

You're drenched in the ashes of Zaqqum.

A distant, almost atavistic warning rears in the back of your head tells you to run. But why? He's just a man. Just your Lieutenant.

Your fate is sealed the moment you place your fingers in the cup of his palm.

—but into perdition—

[kyokutsu-sama]

Hear me out : Primal play Kenpachi Zaraki x Fem!Reader Heavy nfsw, but only if you're comfortable with it, of course! ❤❤❤

Author's note: Hi !! I've never write something like this before but when I scearch about the topic I think it really suit his personality fr. I hope you like it ❤️ Primal play : From what I understand, it's a kind of role play in which they act as a kind of "Hunter and prey" and where they try to explore the basic and primordial impulses that can be "animalistic". Tw: Nsfw content below (it's heavy!)

You were feeling a little defiant that day and when you were like that you always ended up overdoing yourself and teasing the wrong person, which in this case was Kenpachi. You were looking for him and ended up finding him in the bedroom, he was taking a nap and you smiled when you saw him "too quiet". You went to him and sat on his lap running your hands over his body over the clothes, he seemed to be sleeping soundly but he was perfectly aware that you were there. When you placed one of your hands on his neck he grabbed your wrist and opened his eyes, making you startle a little.

"What do you think you're doing?" He said in a low and sleepy voice.

"Don't worry, I was just watching you sleeping" You said smiling teasingly

He let go of your hand without taking his eyes off yours, you lowered yourself until you were level with his ear so you could whisper your true intentions.

"I want to try something"

"What ?"

"Have you ever heard of primal play?" You whispered

"What the fuck is that?" He frowned

"A kind of hunter and prey game where you show me a little of your more animalistic side. I'm going to be your little prey and you can do whatever you want to me if you catch me" You bit his ear, giving emphasis to your words

It took him a while to process it but once he realized it he chuckled and you smiled when you realized he was playing along.

"Are you really sure what you're asking for?" He said, holding your neck and whispering next to your ear

"Why not? Do you think you can't handle it?" You teased

"Are you tempting me?"

"Maybe" You said before moving away from him and starting to run

"Where are you going?"

"Come get me" You blinked and ran

He sat on the bed and looked at the door when you ran out, he didn't like chasing his opponents but since you offered to be his prey so he got up and went to get you.

You were running around the corridors of the division and looking back and to the sides to see if he was behind you. You heard footsteps and hid behind the hallway wall and peeked a little, he was coming towards you and you smiled thinking you could lose him but when you turned to the side he appeared right in front of you making you hit him and fall on the floor. You wondered how he had gotten there so quickly and caught you, but what could you expect from a man like him? Not only was he strong, he was also fast and you underestimated that.

"You didn't really think you could run away all the time, did you?" He smiled sadistically as you got up from the floor

"Actually, I…"Your sentence was cut off when he turned you around and slammed you against the wall

"You are my prey and now Ill do whatever I want, don't forget it" He said biting your neck and taking a slight moan from you

"Yes…I didn't forget"You said feeling your body heat up

"You better not" He put you over his shoulder and taking you to the bedroom

He closed the door, throwing you on the bed and starting to undress while you were still trying to process everything that was happening around you, you wanted to play so he would play too.

"You talked about the animalistic side, get ready then because you're going to see a beast"He said before placing himself on top of you and ripping off your clothes in a matter of a second

Your body was shaking and your breathing was starting to become unregulated, he kissed your lips voraciously and you could barely follow the way his tongue swirled with yours which made your legs tremble. He moved his lips to your neck and he sucked and bit your skin, leaving bruises and bite marks, you moaned a little in pain and pleasure when you felt his teeth dig into your skin and draw even a small trickle of blood.

He seemed so out of himself at that moment, the way you had submitted to him and the way your body seemed to be wanting him. He moved to your breasts where he ended up leaving more marks and where you arched and grabbed his hair while he devoured you, his lips felt like fire that burned you and made the moisture between your legs increase. He left your breasts and placed himself between your legs, keeping them open with his strong hands and starting to kiss your slid. You opened your mouth to moan when he started devouring you as if he were starving, you tried to close your legs a little but his hands were holding you to keep your legs completely still. He passed your wet folds between his teeth making you whimper and your body shiver, you felt drops of sweat run down your skin and the heat accumulated even more.

"Are you enjoying this?" He asked between strong sucks around your clit

You couldn't say in words how much you loved it and so he insisted again

"Answer me"He said slapping the side of your thigh

"Yes I love ahh…I love it" You said between moans and whimpers

He laughed at your expressions and continued using his tongue and lips to give you one of the greatest pleasures you would ever forget and maybe so you wouldn't tease him like that again. You felt your insides tighten and your cum flow out as his tongue drank everything that was dripping out, you pulled his hair and arched your back. You had already had plenty of proof that he was fierce, but asking him to treat you like prey and do whatever he wanted with you turned him on in a way he couldn't explain. You felt your legs weaken a little as he was coming, he however didn't stop tasting your flesh until you were coming into his mouth for the second time, he seemed insatiable. He let go of your legs and licked his lips, he was dazzled by the sight of you being so submissive and with your body covered in sweat and his marks that only made him even harder.

"You have no idea how hot you look right now" He said in a breathless voice

You only had time to give him a little smile before he turn to your body and pulled your hips up placing himself behind you. He held your arms behind your back with one hand and you moaned when you felt his hard cock slide through your folds before entering you and making you arch, he started thrusting into you from behind and it wasn't at a slow pace, his other hand squeezed the flesh of your hip, marking you with his fingers. Being filled like that was something that made your body weak, he didn't slow down for a moment and the more you called for him the more he felt the need to fuck you.

"You don't seem so strong and full of yourself now, what happened? Do you like being helpless prey in my hands so much?" He asked thrusting hard into you

"Yeah…" You whimpered

"Tch! You should see yourself now" He let go your arms and held your hair in his fist which turned you on

You grabed the sheets to try to relieve that heat that was running through your body, you knew you were close to come when his body was slamming against you harder now.

"I'm going to fuck you until you can't run away from me anymore, that's what you wanted, isn't it?" He said pulling your body against his chest and kissing you hard

"Fuck yes" You moaned against his lips

He bit your neck as he felt your insides tightening his dick and your fluids gushed out, you were coming and your vision became blurred when you felt him continue thrusting into you. One of his hands squeezed the flesh of your hips while the other pulled your hair, keeping your head lifted back, at that moment you could no longer feel your legs and your entire body was exhausted. He let out a heavy sigh against the skin of your neck as he came inside you, his hot cum filled you until it was oozing out. He withdrew from you and used his fingers to put what was dripping out back inside you.

"Do you still think I can't handle this?" He whispered next to your ear

You shook your head in denial and he smiled satisfied, he kissed the marks on your neck and then laid you down on the mattress. You looked completely ruined, he really didn't fail with the words.

"You’re such an animal" You said, giggling and taking a smile from him

"I warned you but you doubted and ran away like a weakling" He lay down next to you

"I'm not weak"

"It wasn't what it seemed like moments ago when you was there almost unable to breathe properly, defenseless prey" He grabbed your chin and looked deep into your eyes

"What wrong? You're not thinking about running away and trying me again are you?" He asked after seeing that you hadn't responded

"When I feel my legs again, maybe I'll do it again"

He licked his lips and laugh, he couldn't wait for the second round.

[wintertimestoryteller]

Vermeil Adoration

Fierce Deity x Implied Deity Reader (can be Linked Universe or not) Drabble

Me, working on Act IIII and Act V of the LU Fairy Tale Collection: Alright so if we do this with slightly more sleep on us and figure a few things out for First I think it should be good to go-

Also Me: *remembers that because of the nature of the Fairy Tale Collection FD will be missing, is immediately assaulted with an idea, sighs, opening up a new WIP* You know what I'll come back to that, I can't not write for him if he's going to be left out.

For the FD Simps/lovers plus myself as I work on the Fairytale Collection, want to post two chapters at once and also crosspost on Ao3 plus life's been busy, apologies for the delay.

You were created from the breath of life itself.

You are the divinity found in the howling of winds cutting through the woods, the snarling of lightning down to the earth, attempting to touch something it may not have and scorch it so deeply new growth would flourish in a maddened frenzy, the sunlight kissing the ice tenderly though it may never do more than bring the crystalizing to shine, tears dripping knowingly from it's cold gaze as the water turns to rain, watering the land in it's unknowable grief in the closest way it could ever touch the sun in the sky. The joyful sound of wolves singing the moon's beauty with their howls, the birds merrily carrying the melody ever onwards so the sun may also partake of it, gleeful frolicking of fawns and foals discovering the world that the Golden Three left in their wake, the symphony of every animal and nature itself at it's finest.

You look at life itself and find divinity in everything.

So by the nature Farore so lovingly made sure you'd have, one would think you and the one hylians, hyruleans and beasts had dubbed 'The Fierce Deity' would never be able to coexist.

You've heard the one's watched over by your sister in divinity, ever watchful time herself with her diamond wings and gaze who pierced to the end of eternity itself with Nayru's patience whisper in primal terror and avarice drenched loathing about him to the trees in every corner of the land, heard beasts under the watch of death and rot himself curse his name to the winds and rain with as much ferocity and fury induced fear as the restless whispers of those denied existence, your brother in eternity with his shell of obsidian and the flames of Din's desire of consumption ever burning in his gaze daring not cross where the ivory and jade forged spirit passed. And of the horror and wonderment of your wild beings as they've hissed and howled and growled and screeched to the flowers and stones of nature.

A man like the hunt itself, divine without the vermeil breath of the primordial ones. The unrelenting slash of the blizzard gales in winter against any unfortunate to stand in their way, leaving the cold emptiness and silence behind, stealing the air from the lungs of living beings like the ocean for those unfortunate enough to fall with no sign of land. An ivory specter of death whom seemingly clawed himself from the void, an harbinger for the End with seemingly no rhyme or reason for those who he set his sights into, either to devour their divinity for himself or favor or bless.

A being like that should have been anathema to all you are and stand for. Or at least it's what anyone, including your divine sister and brother would reason.

Which is why you couldn't help but find it slightly comedic that the so called 'awful beast', capable of enacting such violence to consume divinity on a whim if tested. Was so very careful with you, head laid upon your lap in a rare moment of rest as you carefully weaved flowers into a crown.

You were curious, awfully so, like the foxes who roamed your woods in search of amusement and play, you just couldn't help yourself. You knew he was coming, how could you not, when the primal fear of living things echoed in the back of your mind, warning you as it warned animals of a bigger predator in the food chain? But you didn't run. Not in the face of narrowed, calculating pale eyes and alabaster hair and the scent of iron in the air, thick and old you couldn't mistake it for anything but blood and the marrow deep certainty of a lonsdaleite persistence.

Maybe you should of, in hindsight.

Instead you just blinked with evergreen curiosity, fascination bleeding from your lips before you could even think of stopping yourself, head tilted.

"My. Rumors are certainly exaggerated, you're beautiful."

The memory of his bewildered, flustered caution makes you smile a bit, as everything in between flowed naturally like spring petals on a breeze. You feel an armored hand on your cheek, so, so soft and careful, as if you were as fragile as a flower, and a calm, relaxed rumble of tourmaline lazy curiosity and aquamarine fondness, "Anything on your mind, my breath?"

You couldn't help your chuckle, emerald fondness running around the mosaic of your divinity as you gently run your hand through starlit hair, nuzzling the hand on your cheek and hoping to convey even half the warmth he gave you, "Reminiscing, worry not. Rest a bit more before you must go." You hear him sigh as you place the flower crown on his head, as pale as his hair, but as delicate as your sister in divinity's wings, threaded pthalo like the flame of his existence.

"... Must I? I was late this time, it's only proper I redeem myself for making you wait." He questions, reluctant and guilty in equal measure, fondness blooms over your lungs as you poke his nose, smiling bright, if dim as you answer him, "I'd dare not attempt to deny you your nature, I do not know what you hunt, what you're searching for. But it would be cruel to chain you."

The man many had dubbed 'Fierce Deity' nuzzles into your hand, nestling in close like a wolf over catch, you catch the hints of a frown on his face, "It's hardly chaining when I wish to stay, is it?"

Your breath almost is trapped in your lungs, but you shake yourself out of it, chuckling as you brush your lips over his markings, crimson affection as the carmine and lapis lazuli of his Hunt. The cheek of this man, for that's what you all are in the end, divinity or not, "Maybe not, though for all you rest here with me you still itch to run and hunt. Do you not, my dear warrior?"

The silence is only broken by the whispers of the leaves of the woods carried by the wind and the curious chirping of birds, his unwavering moonlit gaze giving away nothing. And it tells you enough.

You smile, brushing your noses together, spring breeze playful and sun warm, "If you're that worried, then just come back earlier, if you can. I'll have something new for you to look at, and I'll always wait. We have time."

In a flash, you find your positions reversed, your back and hair to the flowers and your wonderful, ever mischievous hunter above you, you yelp and you can't help but laugh before the sound is stolen by his lips. And he cradles your cheeky gently, so very kindly, and when he leans back he looks at you as if you're the first glimpse of water for a man in the desert, or the way a wolf longingly looks at the moon, and it cracks the phosphophylite of your soul and fills it with the gilded gold of emerald love, "... Thank you. I will not keep you waiting long again. I shall remain for now, though. The call can wait."

I love you. I want to stay with you.

"I know." Your hands gently thread through his hair, gleeful as you notice the rare curve of a smile as his cap lays abandoned in the glass, but your flower crown remains, "Be safe, when you do go. I'd be lovely if something happened."

I love you too.

He shakes his head, giving you an unimpressed look, "I cannot be harmed in any way that matters."

You fondly roll your eyes, pressing your index and middle finger to your lips, then touching it lightly against his own, he all but freezes. You refuse to allow him to distract you with admittedly charming affection, and you take the opportunity to tug him into your arms, shifting your positions so you can utilize him as a pillow, safer than you ever felt in your many eons of existence, more comfortable than the stars painting the canvas of the sky with their dance, "Promise me you'll be safe, and you can claim what's yours once you're back. For now I tire of your stubbornness."

You feel his chest rumble, maybe a laugh, maybe a purr or a growl, but he holds you close, steady and lovelier than even the world the goddesses created. "As you wish, my dearest blossom."

You both fall asleep to the songs of nature, you know he'll hunt again, you know he'll be gone soon like late night mist. But for now, a promise for an eternity of this, like how the mortals speak of, is enough.

[talentforlying]

☎️

she's the first person he rings before he realizes it's a mistake.

you never call the one who'll get it, first. you call the people who DON'T, first, so the empty platitudes burn away the pond scum oil slick of terror and nausea and leave behind the thin, flickering flames of burgeoning rage. so you can cure your rambling, shit-scared diatribe down to the pinpoints of memory that will really need banishing, wrangle the beast off your back and get it out at arm's length — so when you DO call the one who gets it, the calm, rational ease with which they accept your practiced explanation makes it all the more easy to strangle the life out of the whole fucking thing and put it to rest in a way that will keep.

but she's the first person he calls, and his stomach's still in his throat when she picks up the phone, and he doesn't know what to tell her. hasn't stumbled his way through the haze of lead-tongued knee-jerk mind-not-here-anymore to fish up the lie with just enough truth in it to pass muster.

' oi oi. ' great start. good ground. he sucks in a breath that sounds painful and obvious even to his own ears: the kind you see in the movies before someone starts their big, flashy monologue, the one that got them the role in the first place. that's not the kind of thing they go in for, him and scully. less drama, more substance. straightforward answers to sideways problems.

' i think. ' his voice sounds distant, tinny, like a bad radio play of himself. christ, he's good, to sound so calm when everything around him is warping like a hall of funhouse mirrors. or else this is what he's always sounded like when he's scared. ' think i lost time, earlier. didn't realize it, right, 'til i looked up just now an' this book i was readin' was sixty pages down from where i'd left off. s'funny, right? i've done that before, got really inna something and forgot t'check the clock, but this . . . this en't my place. doors are all on backwards, like, used t'be the handles were on the right. there was a — light? '

in the hallway, like a lighthouse beacon. spinning and spinning and spinning. was it in his head, or was it real? he doesn't know, but some certain, stable cornerstone of reason settled in the back foundation of his mind says that she would. could shut this shite down in a heartbeat, put him right back on planet earth where he ought to be. if anyone could, it's her.

he's been sitting with his back against the wall for over an hour. nothing's come down from mars to get him, nothing hurts, but everything's off-kilter. time slipping away in leaps and bounds. heh, it'd be fucking funny if all this is just in his own sodding head. demons, angels, the tumultuous embodiment of the primordial darkness before god flipped on the lights, all fine — but you find out about aliens and it all goes topsy-turvy. fuck that.

' just . . . sod this. tell me somethin' real, alright? anything. i'm asking nicely. please. '

@beyondthescully / MIDNIGHT CALLS

[ultramagicalternate]

ULTRAMagic Interlude Chapter 1

Prelude | First | Next

Master Post

It was a time of great change for the mighty Descendants, sons and daughters of the ancient Primordial Hunters. They had just come back from The Great Hunt… after learning that it was a giant ruse. They and The Beast of Old had been tricked by Dunja and the loathsome Milosh Proch. Thankfully the Descendants had protectors looking after their great city, but the whole affair was still cause for concern. The Lich of Old was a mighty ally of Milosh, so it was anyone’s guess as to how the rogue would respond. Either way, the heroes that had pursued The Lich needed to be located and retrieved. Blood-Wraith and his compatriots had earned a well deserved rest for the incredible deeds.

Duke Radovan was making good time getting to the Basalt Monolith Forest as his car rocketed across the Unlight. Close behind was Brenna Thompson, in her military truck. King Englehart had asked her to tag along and make sure Radovan did not get himself into trouble. Brenna could sense that time was on their side, but the duke was steadfast. He would rip the Lich to shreds with his bare hands if he had to. After a trip across the Northern Living Ocean (via a highway created by Proteus), the two found themselves in the Deep Unlight. Naturally Brenna was a little uneasy. No matter how many times she visited it, it always gave her goosebumps. His grace was not phased in the slightest.

Over at the Basalt Monolith Forest, Blood-Wraith’s group was approaching the border of it. “Well that wasn’t so bad” he playfully remarked.

“Yeah: Tusk lost an arm, Desislav feels like crap, my life flashed before my eyes! No biggie…” Dragoslava chided back. This made everyone chuckle and giggle.

Vexation looked over to Ekaterina. “Perhaps you should make yourself more modest before his grace shows up.”

She looked down at her beat up clothing, an armored one-piece. “Do you have anything else for me to wear?” Ekaterina seemed a little on edge.

Vlastimir looked like he had an idea. He then reached into an odd rift and pulled out a set of men’s dress clothes. “Here you go! That's all I can do on such short notice, ha.”

“Um, a bit formal, but I guess it’ll do…” Ekaterina slipped behind a rock formation and put on the pants, shirt, and shoes.

Desislav gave her a thumbs up. “Looking pretty spiffy to me.”

Dragoslava nodded. “Agreed”

Tusk was scanning the horizon, looking for something. “So, where is his grace?”

“Tusk, you can call him by his name. He’s cool like that…” A very familiar engine roar could be heard in the distance. “There he is!”

Radovan could see a group of people in the distance. His heart relaxed, he let out a sigh of relief, and brought his car to a gradual stop. Getting out and seeing Dragoslava put a smile on his face. 

“You’re just like your mother. You know that, right Drago?”

“Dad! Dad! Dad!” Dragoslava exclaimed as she ran over and hugged him. “I’ve missed you, dad!”

“Same here, sweetie. Same here. Ha, I’d dare say you earned your indomitable title…”

“Dad, not in front of the others…” She was a bit embarrassed. 

“Speaking of which, where are you, Blood-Wraith?”

He nervously approached with his hands behind his back. The Duke was quite intimidating and imposing, towering above Blood-Wraith. “Um, right here…”

Radovan took a good look at the boy… then picked him up and gave him a big hug. “Welcome to the family, Blood.”

Blood-Wraith was simultaneously surprised and happy. “Thank you, father…” As  Radovan put him down, Brenna’s truck came rolling up. “Who’s that?”

“That would be Brenna Thompson, a royal guardsman one of Drago’s best friends.”

“Jeez, just how fast is your car, Radovan?” Brenna called out as she climbed down. She had brown hair tied back in a ponytail, blue eyes, dark skin, and wore an Iron City military uniform.

“356 miles per hour was my last recorded top speed.”

“Brenna!?” Dragoslava said in surprise.

“Drago!” She replied as she hugged her friend.

“How do I keep missing you on my adventures? Anyways, good news: I finally have a…”

“Boyfriend? Yeah, I know. I’ve met him. I think it was while you were checking out the sky mountains.”

“What?! Excuse me?”

“Yup” Desislav replied. “Hey Brenna, long time no see.” 

Radovan walked over to the rest of the group. “Desislav Robles I presume?”

“Indeed I am, sir. It’s an honor to meet you” he replied as he shook hands. He was very nervous.

And it’s a pleasure to meet you too… also my goodness boy, you look like you’ve been through an active war zone…”

“When? Back on Earth or thirty minutes ago?” Desislav smiled, but on the inside he was screaming at himself. What was that? Was cracking a joke in front of his grace really a good idea? He must have been delirious from exhaustion…

Radovan laughed in sympathy. The Satyr had moxie and he liked that. “Haha, don’t worry, my boy: We’ll get you all settled in once we get back home so you can rest up.” He then went to Tusk. “You’re one of Sigmund’s boys, aren’t you?”

Tusk nodded. “Yes sir!”

“Goodness, ha, maybe I should have reserved my warzone comment…” Now Radovan felt bad. The lad was missing an arm…

Tusk gave him a thumbs up with his stone arm. “My crazy plan to weaken the Lich did cost me an arm, but I think it was worth it. I will never do that again…”

Radovan shook this hand. “You’ve done your father proud. If there is ever anything me and my family can do to help you in the future, do not hesitate to speak up.” This made Tusk smile like a giddy goofball. “Now you wouldn’t happen to be Vlastimir Bartholomew Dracul, would you?” Radovan asked the pink haired man.

He nodded multiple times. “Yes, yes, yes sir!”

“Your father, Zoltan, came looking for you while we were out on the great hunt. You wouldn’t mind staying in the Iron City for a bit while we get in contact with him? Your parents appear to be worried sick about you.”

Vlastimir was surprised by this. “Oh, um… uh… well, I got a date with Ekaterina here, so sure I guess…”

“Most excellent.”

Ekaterina had a sinking feeling when she looked at the duke. There was no way she could have ever defeated him and she knew it. “He-hello, your grace…”

“Dad! Dad…” Dragoslava interrupted. “So I fought… fought her as one of the Lich’s commanders. I lost, but Desislav covered for me. Then we spared her. Can she come home with us?”

“Well I don’t see why not, since you vouch for her… but how in the Unlight did she beat you?”

Dragoslava nudged Ekaterina with a metal arm. She began playfully wobbling a magnetic strip, then it clung to Dragoslava’s arm. “That…”

Radovan stroked his square chin. “Mm-hmm… I see. We’ll have to work on that, Drago.” Finally he arrived at Vexation.

“Yes, Blood-Wraith spared me and wishes for me to stay with him.”

Brenna immediately realized something. “Hey, Blood? You realize that’s a Primordial, right?”

“Wait, really?”

“The Hexer of Old, if my studies are correct” Radovan pointed out.

Vexation gave a dignified bow. “Indeed, I am.”

Dragoslava thought back to the feast at the Dark Grand City. “Wait! Why did you hide that from us?”

“I wasn’t sure how that information would affect the situation at the time. Plus the focus was on Leif and his passing. I figured it would be gauche to divulge such trivial matters during such a heavy event.”

Brenna spoke further. “In particular he’s a reincarnated Primordial… but why were you working with the Lich?”

“To spare all of you a needlessly long explanation, I planned to betray the Lich for selling me out to the Descendants. I was not ready to move on, so I planned to do to him what he had done to me, one could say”

“Even as a child, I knew something wasn’t right about that hunt” Radovan reflected. “I suppose we’ll have to update the history books now. Either way, you are free to come and go as you please, Vexation. It’s the least we can do.”

“You have my gratitude, your grace. Know that I bear no ill will towards you or your people.”

Radovan cleared his throat and clapped. “Now as much as I would like to keep admiring the strange beauty of the Deep Unlight, let’s head home. Drago, Blood, Desislav, come with me. Brenna? Could you accommodate our friends here?”

“Righty-o! Come with me, guys. It’ll be a bit bumpy, but we’ll be back in no time.”

As everyone got into the vehicles, Radovan looked towards the sky. “I don’t know if you can hear us, Leif, but thank you for all the help. Have a good rest, you magnificent dragon.”

Riding in a car was a new and fun experience for Blood-Wraith. The sights zipped past them as he relaxed on the comfy back seat. Desislav was at a slight awkward angle due to his legs, but enjoyed the ease of the trip regardless. In the front seat was Dragoslava, who was loving the nostalgia. Looking out the window, Blood-Wraith could see Brenna’s truck following close behind. He was curious to know what riding in it would be like, but that would have to be for another time.

“You’ll have to pardon the mess” Radovan apologized. “I rushed right out once I knew where to go when we got back.” 

“It’s alright,” said Desislav. “I’ve lived out in the wilderness for the longest time. It takes a lot to phase me.” 

“Dad, it’s not that messy in here” Dragoslava pointed out.

“I know, but still. It’s unbecoming of someone of my status.”

Blood-Wraith then remembered the quest he wanted to embark on. “Oh, father? I want to go find mom…”

“Oh? Do you now? Rose is currently in the Magician’s Labyrinth. I don’t doubt your abilities, given all that you just went through… but are you sure you want to undertake such a task? Like I told Kresimira before I left: I would’ve done it myself had things not been so dire.”

“Yes! Yes I am!”

“You’re not going to stop him, dad,” Dragoslava pointed out once more. “When Blood sets his mind to it, he does it.” 

Radovan chuckled. “Well now, I can't argue with that tenacity.”

Eventually the two vehicles made it back to the Iron City. It was surreal seeing the streets full of people again. Seeing Radovan and Brenna bring home the heroes of the city brought smiles and joy to the citizens. Dragoslava could not help but roll down the window and wave back to everyone as they passed. This was the happiest she had been in a long time. Pulling into the city square, the group were greeted by the king, the royal court, the nobles, the royal guard, and their friends and family.

“Haha, where’s the young lad?” Englehart inquired. “Where’s Blood-Wraith Raynot?” 

“Right here!” He stated as he walked up.

First Englehart gave him a hug, then set him down. “My boy, it’s a pleasure and an honor to finally meet you. I may be repeating myself, but I cannot begin to express my eternal gratitude for all that you have done…”

“Dragoslava Juniper Raynot, don’t you ever do that again!” Kresimira scolded… then she hugged her sister. “I was so worried about you!”

Blood-Wraith and Englehart smiled as Barna stepped over. “All that done and that boy’s just a newborn too. Nice to meet you, Blood. I’m Barna, Corentin’s father.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Schindewolf,” Blood-Wraith replied as he shook hands.

“Oh my goodness, Blood!” Corentin exclaimed. “Look at how much you changed.” 

“Hey, Corentin! Um, yeah It kind of just happened with my ULTRAMagic and whatnot…”

“We’ll definitely have to discuss this later. For right now, I got a bit of a surprise for you and it’s not the basement, ha. I’ll let him tell you about it…”

“Blood!” Aureolus hugged him. “I got adopted!”

“Aureolus!... wait, pardon?”

Barna chuckled. “Yup. I couldn’t let the boy go without a family and since Radovan is a bit busy, I figured I’d take care of it. Plus Corentin needs a little brother.” This made Corentin chuckle.

“Don’t worry, Blood, I’ll still stay with you. But yeah! Barna and Uncle Englehart are really cool” Aureolus stated.

Englehart then looked around and figured it was time. “Since we got most of the introductions out of the way, let’s proceed to the ceremony.”

“Ceremony?” Blood-Wraith asked.

“Well of course, my boy! Someone needs to commemorate your deeds after all.”

Next: Chapter 2

ULTRAMagic Alternate © 2022 William Ford II (ChaoticTempleKnight)

[noirsvault]

The two Misiah told Izuku they're two sides of a primal beast with multi personality disorder probably. Izuku is So Confused ╮(╯_╰)╭

My primordial brain just barely started to put one and one together with these two. I wonder if Izuku can understand what they're saying.

Btw she mentions "symbol of hope" agdhgfj I don't know if the writer's aware of it BUT the English(?) speaking girlies (I don't know what the Japanese girlies think) often predict Izuku won't fully follow All Might's footsteps to become the new Symbol of Peace, but will find a path for himself to become a Symbol of Hope. So I'm feeling unreasonably happy right now in this totally-not-pleasant-at-all situation ajdjgk

Oh he's just like me fr TOT

YOU TELL THEM SWEETIE!!

There are also similar questions in the hero world actually? No matter how many Heroes they have, no matter how many Villains they caught, the dark side of the world never fully disappears and crimes will still happens? And even though society keeps trying to move on from its dark era, there's always someone left behind in the corner, struggling to be accommodated, only to be written off as a new Villain?

Misiah of Despair in her usual Down And Doom manner says they have been looking for salvation for many years without result. Izuku couldn't give them an answer because he hadn't found it in his own world either LOL Because apparently the hero society also Sucks In A Way That You Can't Pinpoint But Definitely Sucks Assss (ಥ‿ಥ) Even though at this time he hasn't had a crisp and clear view about it yet. Don't worry son, soon enough you'll find yourself already knee-deep in it ╮(╯_╰)╭

No...?! NO I UNDERSTAND YOUR FRUSTRATION BUT SPAWNING MONSTERS THAT KILL PEOPLE IS NOT BEING FUCKING HELPFUL!!!!

So they picked the heroes and villains from the other world separately. And apparently Despair chose Jin & Toga because they're shunned by society? And how is that related to your Salvation Operation anyway?

??? Why did THAT world's problems become THIS world's fault??? DON'T JUST COPY & PASTE THE ANSWER MINDLESSLY LIKE THAT!!

... (Too tired don't wanna talk anymore)

(Btw I'm going through this episode very slow because I'm cracking my head over Misiah's fucking complicating topic ughh)

[ezra-iolite]

Pirates and Dragons

I don't know why, but @tigracespace's Pirateformers AU is becoming a comfort writing thing for me. XD It's just so easy and fun to write up all these ideas for my usually Mary Sue and bland OC. But through this, I can actually make her interesting and enjoy a world so many badass and creative people have enjoyed as well! So thank you, Grace, for making this awesome world and for making me feel so included in it.

As thanks.... Have some angst and lore I just fancied making, purely for fun! XD

Asya refuses to talk about the life she had before she began her journey across the seas, and even more so about her scars. However, should someone find the means of gaining the right info from either intel on her desert homeland, one she has rarely said the name of stubbornly, or from managing to get either one of her husbands drunk enough to go on a tangent, they will discover three main things about her past...

The first is a tale about the savannah kingdom itself, one that has now spread to its boarders towards the seas around Primus through the grapevine of merchants... It tells of the beasts that once roamed the sands of the foreign kingdom, who were terrifying but sentient and noble creatures that soared through the skies and bore bodies of vibrant colours stronger than any metal known to man. No weapon could pierce their jewel-like armored hides and no army could offer even a challenge to the strength of one mighty beast, and when humanity first began to settle amongst the dunes of this land a war soon began between man and beast. This primordial war only ended when a union was declared between the two sides, and thus peace began as humans and beasts coexisted. However, peace was quickly forgotten when the greed for victory overcame both their senses, and soon the beasts were hunted down to near extinction, the remaining few vanishing as herds gone into hiding where no man could ever hope to find them. And yet, their noble lineage remained through those born with the blood of the beast within them... granting them defining features such as luminescent eyes, fangs, pointed ears, and both a thunderous roar and rage-based strength akin to the beasts of old, but with the amplified greed of mankind serving as punishment for driving away their forefathers.

The second piece of info follows this tale into reality, as those same merchants eagerly share eyewitness stories about the current ruler of the savannah, the baron named Lord Omari, and the battle that was said to have occurred within his domain, in the marketplace of the savannah's capital city. Occurring just shortly after the death of his consort, a thief was said to have run out of the noble's palace and began to flee the capital towards the main river outside its city walls. Giving chase, the baron himself caught up to the young thief and the two revealed their true beastly strength as they wrestled and fought with fangs and claws mixed with fists and shouts of blame. Some say their words were supposedly blended with roars of the fabled beasts that shook the very streets around them, while other witnesses claimed that the lord and the thief were in fact beasts rather than men who fought like wild dogs over a scrap of meat, fangs gripping the other's throat and scaled claws upon dark human skin...

No matter the perspective, it all ends the same way... With the thief landing the final blow in the form of a deep bite on the neck and a claw slashing over the baron's face, leaving behind four long scars across the entire face of the snarling lord. In a fit of rage, the bleeding lord took the young boy by the throat in one hand and threw him far across the city square, through walls of brick and sandstone before landing in the river and using it to escape the lord's further damage to his already scar riddled body, including the four prominent scars on his belly. The so-called thief was never seen again, and the Lord has since proclaimed a bounty on his head, should he ever return to the lands of the desert. However, no face is said to be on the wanted posters within the savannah and upon the docks along the boarder. Instead it shows only a name and a price;

Sir Andres Omari, former Heir Apparent Wanted: Dead or Alive Ten Thousand Gold

Through the story of the baron, the final snippet of info can be found when simply comparing Asya's appearance to the warning every merchant will offer when asked about the savannah kingdom, especially in regards to the baron and his more well known nickname...

Beware the wrath of the Dragon Lord.

[jaigeye]

An Instrument of Memory.

The darksaber is haunted by all those who have possessed it. Din seeks council with the ghosts; they are here to help.

Read on AO3.   |   My own more benevolent take on the ghosts of the saber.

______

Din Djarin is eight years old, and he is afraid. 

There are many people here, metal-and-flesh people who are loud and strong, and some of his fellow villagers among them. 

The Mandalorian who saved his life has not set him down for hours. He clutches his neck for dear life- a lifeline in this unfamiliar aftermath. The man has not yet chosen to deny him this comfort, and he sits down with the boy in his lap, arms curled around him. 

"This is my wife," says the man, and he points to a helmeted figure across from them, clad in dark blue durasteel.  "She and I will care for you." 

Hesitating, Din turns in his arms, loosening his grip. Her helmet shines in the dim light of the homestead. "Why do you wear that," he asks, pointing to the armor that covers her from head to toe. 

The woman leans in and tilts her head just so. "It is our unity. Together we are strong. Nobody can hurt us this way." 

"Okay," he says, watching as she kneels before him with her hands on her knees. 

“What is your name?” 

"Din."

“We will take care of you, Din. You are safe with us.”

"Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad," She whispers to him in a language he does not understand. It is soothing nonetheless. She pulls her helmet off her head; her hair is done in tight black braids against her scalp, and she has the darkest eyes he has ever seen. “Ner’ad.”

The Mandalorian brushes over his hair with one hand and translates. "... I know your name as my child. You are our Dinui. That means gift. You are our gift." 

                                                    •

In a cave by the sea, Din sits in stillness with the darksaber in his hand. 

The sun’s reflection on the water flickers over his armor like primordial fire, casting strange, fragmented light over the stone. 

The saber hums in his hand. It is so quiet here. 

He feels an odd tug on his glove, another on his sleeve. An urge.

He flicks the switch, and the black bar bursts forth from the hilt, encased in its eerie white glow. 

His breath catches.

The cave bursts to life. Across the stone walls, there is a shifting expanse of black handprints-- from the marks sprawls a strange oozing dust. They move as if they are crawling, flowing in and out of the rock, dribbling to the floor and reappearing elsewhere. 

There are figures at the edge of his vision. They stand in his periphery and dissipate when he turns his helmet to look at them.

To anyone else, the sight of a room clamoring with ghosts might initiate the instinct to run. He does consider it, for a second-- but he doesn’t, because Mandalorians look death in the eye. He’s seen a great many strange things as of late, and he figures he may as well get used to it. 

Sitting straighter, he folds his hands more firmly around the hilt of the saber and says; “What do you want?” 

“That’s not the question you want an answer to,” whispers a melodic voice from behind him. 

“Maybe not number one on the list, but I have a few,” he mutters, and chooses a better place to start. “What are you?”

The walls of the cave bend around him; the gap in the stone where he entered through transforms into a mirror. The only solid figure he can discern in the room is the sight of himself. Cross-legged, helmeted, tense. 

From all around, he can hear a steadily intermingling throng of voices. You don’t deserve it, says one, good on you for showing that Imperial scum what our folk are made of, says another. Zealot, zealot. He cranes his neck, but the half-remembered ghosts flicker out of sight. 

Where is your heart, a soft voice murmurs, you keep your heart in a bag on your hip or on the crook of your arm. 

“We wielded the saber, we died by it, we live by it.”  A woman’s voice, deep, sincere. “Ask your question.” 

Images blink across the cave walls. Paintings of mythosaurs, spears, dead civilians, razed villages-- great herds of beasts cascade over the stone. The handprints divide and scatter, oozing together into black sludge that smears strange markings across the walls. Words in Mando’a, in Aurebesh, in alphabets he has never seen before. Stories he will never understand. The ghosts whisper now, ask us, speak, we are listening...  

“I have brought Grogu to the Jedi. I completed my quest.” 

Unsatisfied. Discontent. Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad, ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad. Wind rushes through the cave; the ocean laps against the rocks. 

A deeper voice emerges from the hum. “Every Jedi is a child his family decided they could live without.”

“That’s--” Din pauses, swallowing his retort. He watches as the air burbles, a geometric miasma scattering out from the cave-paintings. “I want him to be safe. With or without me.” 

“Every time you have left him with another, it has gone afoul.” The ghosts blacken and flicker. He feels a firm hand on his shoulder-- one he can feel but cannot see. “It should be you.”

"What if I do it wrong. I'm not- I’m not a Jedi. I do not understand the force." he cuts himself shorts and sighs. "I'm afraid."

There is a metallic taste on his tongue. The air stinks of ozone. He feels the phantom weight of Grogu in his arms, and he can't help but instinctually cradle that empty space.

“You think your buirs were not afraid?” A rustle, the sound of bells, the sound of a hammer in a forge. Ner’ad, we will take care of you- 

“Will you-- as long as I have this saber, will you help me? Tell me what to do?” 

“We will not always be with you,” says one. “You have lived without us very long, and did well even then.”

“Hm,” he murmurs, unconvinced.

“You know what to do. You will not be alone.”  Buirkan, responsibility, whisper the ghosts. You are like a father to him- be afraid, and do it anyway. 

Named and nameless, real as they are not, the souls who belong to the darksaber touch him. They press their palms into his shoulder, brush where his kneecap transitions into thigh, flutter at the base of his neck, squeeze his shoulders, lay their weight against his back.

“It must be you. It has to be you.” 

“I will try,” he says, and watches as all the strange forms in the cave retract into the black bar of the saber. He sheathes it, holding it in the palms of his hands. “I will try.” 

                                                         •

Din is thirty-eight, and still afraid.

The strange planet that Luke Skywalker chose to build his temple upon is lush and green. The humidity crawls between the gaps in his armor. Moss covers the earth; his footsteps feel light as he sinks into that softness. 

Overhead, strange birds called out. A ziggurat rears its head overtop the dense treeline. The darksaber weighs heavy on his hip. Sweat cloys in his helmet; Din swallows, watching silently as a silhouette clad in black emerges from the greenery, cape billowing about him. 

They meet in the middle. Luke Skywalker's smile is as reassuring as it is gentle. "I’m glad you came," says the Jedi. "He asked for you every day."

From a bag on the man's hip, the child reaches for him. 

Din's fragmented heart clicks back into place, whole and trembling. 

He plucks the child from the pouch and cradles him against his armored chest. The ghosts linger about him, press their thumbs into his shoulders, touch his back and murmur kindly. He taps his helmet against the child's forehead; the baby gurgles, pressing his claws into the concave slope of Beskar.

"Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad, Grogu," he whispers to his son. “I know your name as my child.”

[astaroth1357]

Leviathan's Odyssey 5:

God

*Mammon is happily about to break into Lucifer's study yet again when he hears the sound of banging metal and high-pitched shrieking coming from the kitchen... Knowing what the likely source, he swallows his reluctance in order to go check on what's happening*

*Beel is in the kitchen when he runs in, having narrowly dodged the flying butcher knife that lodges into the wall next to his ear… Little Satan is strapped into a high chair, wailing at the top of his lungs and banging his fists against a nearby countertop*

Mammon: BEEL!! What the hell is goin’ on in here!? Weren’t ya in charge of feedin’ him??

Satan: DIE!!!! DIE!! Diedie!!!

*a frying pan appears to float off of its hook and goes flying towards Mammon’s face but Beel manages to grab its handle before it knocks him out*

Beel: I was! But I think I made him mad…!!

Mammon: *gulps when he sees the metal pan just an inch from his nose, but has to push it aside quickly* He’s ALWAYS mad, Beel! What'cha do this time??

Beel: Nothing! *ducks a riocheting butter knife* I just…! Well…

Mammon: Spit it out already!!

Beel: I was trying to teach him how to eat, okay?? But he poked himself with a fork and lost it!

Satan: DIIIEEEE!!!!! 

*previously thrown kitchen supplies lift off of the floor and start flying at them for a round two. Beel rips a cabinet door from its hinges to shield them while Mammon takes the frying pan to bat away the murderous forks and spoons*

Mammon: Beel!! We agreed that we weren’t givin’ him that stuff yet! He’ll kill us all!!

Beel: Yeah, yeah I know but it’s not fair! He should learn how to feed himself like the rest of us!

Mammon: Now’s not the time for “fair,” Beel!!

*apparently hearing the commotion himself, Asmo storms into the kitchen wearing nothing but a bathrobe and a beauty mask - but even covered in cleanser, he look PISSED*

Asmo: WHY IS IT SO LOUD IN HERE!?!

*Mammon grabs Asmo by the arm and pulls him out of the way of an iron cauldron careening his way. Asmo shrieks at the sudden pull and clutches onto Mammon for dear life following the close save*

Asmo: What is the little monster doing now?!? Why are things flying??

Mammon: Quit callin’ him a monster and hell if I know! It’s not like he knows any spells!!

Beel: *whacks away a meat tenderizer aimed at Asmo’s cheek* I think he’s just really mad!

Asmo: *throws his hands up in despair* Of course of all the babies in all the world, we managed to get one that radiates homicide!!

Mammon: Shut your trap and go wake up Belphie! Lucifer’s still with Diavolo so he’s gotta be the one to put him to sleep this time!

Asmo: Me?? Why me??? Belphie won’t get up for me, make Beel do it!

Mammon: Are ya blind AND stupid?? I need Beel here with me! Just scream or something ‘till Belphie wakes up! It’s all you’re good for anyway!

Asmo: Shut up, you money-grubbing dirtbag!!

Beel: NOT THE TIME!! GO NOW!!!

*Asmo yelps a bit at the volume, but he manages to run out of the kitchen without much injury*

Satan: DIE!! Die! Die! DIE!!

Mammon: *pops his head out from behind their cover* Yeah we get it little buddy, ya don’t like us! But would it kill ya to cut it out??

Satan: DIIIIEEEE!!!!!!

*Mammon quickly jerks back behind the "shield" as a set of five knives all lodge themselves into it*

Mammon: Fuck, okay nevermind!!

*it only takes a couple minutes of fighting off the cutlery for Asmo to come back with a drowsy, but upright, Belphie in tow*

Belphie: What’s happening here…??

Mammon: No time for explainin’!

*Mammon swiftly grabs Belphie and sticks him behind Beel before taking the cabinet door from him*

Mammon: Grab another, Beel!

*while Beel rips off the other door, Mammon keeps shouting over the chaos*

Mammon: Belph, ya gotta knock out the kid! Beel and I will protect ya, just stay behind us then get’em outta the chair! Do what ya gotta do after that!

Belphie: *stays right behind Beel but groans* What did you do this time…??

Mammon: Shuddup and move!!

*the three of them start approaching the baby in the high chair, still wailing at the top of his lungs. Between the two cabinet doors and their combined reflexes, Beel and Mammon are able to keep Belphie more or less shielded from the flying utensils until they finally get close enough from him to make a move*

*Belphie jumps forward enough to grab the buckle to Satan’s seat, ignoring his little fists as they try to rip his hair out, and he gets the baby out of the chair as quick as he can manage*

Belphie: Ow!! Okay, lights out, kid!!

*Belphie sticks his hand over Satan’s eyes and, gradually, his struggling loses its gusto until the little baby falls asleep in his arms. All the kitchen supplies fall to the ground and it seems like his tantrum is finally over…*

Mammon: *drops the “shield” he was holding* Oh thank fuck that worked!! No more forks for him, Beel!

Beel: *also sets down his “shield” and looks down guiltily* But how is he ever going to eat right…?

Mammon: We’ll just have to teach him when he gets better.

Belphie: “If” he gets better…

*there’s a silence between the brothers as the gravity of that thought sinks in… What if he never gets any better…?*

*But then the little boy yawns*

Satan: *yaaaawn* Pa…

*all heads in the room snap towards the baby demon and everyone holds their breath. That was a new sound… right?*

Satan: Pa… Per… wish…

Beel: “Per… wish?”

Belphie: I think he meant, “Perish…” 

Asmo: *groans* Of course his second word also means, “Die!”

Mammon: But he’s learnin’! That’s what Lucifer said, right? 

*Mammon comes over and carefully takes the sleeping Satan from Belphie, holding him not unlike how he used to do all of them when they were young*

Mammon: He’ll get better, alright? Believe your big brothers for once! Ya guys weren’t all that different than this...

Asmo: *rolls his eyes* That’s such a lie...

Mammon: Shuddup Asmo, I’m serious! We just gotta be patient…

Beel: Do you think Lilith could have calmed him down…?

*again, there’s another silence in the room… aside from Satan’s soft snoring. For once, it seems like his little brothers are looking at Mammon for something… comfort maybe?*

Mammon: Lilith… *he fights the urge to bite his lip by holding Satan a little tighter* Lilith woulda been patient with’em… Levi too. They’d have helped us out… 

Belphie: If they were still here…

Mammon: *sighs* Yeah Belphie. If they were still here… but we don’t gotta focus on that part, ya know?

*Mammon starts walking towards the exit, patting little Satan on his sleepy head*

Mammon: I’m puttin’ the little shit to bed. Ya got feedin’ duty again tomorrow, Beel. No forks this time.

Beel: *nods quietly* Alright…

Mammon: *stops at the doorway and looks back* Oh. And “not it” explainin’ this mess to Lucifer. Ya gotta figure that out yourselves!

*as his brothers start to shout out in protest, Mammon just laughs triumphantly while he starts down the hallway. Looks like something isn’t his fault for once*

~Meanwhile in the Deepest Depths of the Ocean~

*for the first time since his conquest began, Levi is completely alone in the darkness. Having conquered every part of the seas above, all he has left is the deepest trenches to explore… home to the nightmares even his army refuses to face*

*perhaps being a stranger to this world has helped him. Whatever force commanded his troops to stay above has no sway on his mind. Even Lotan, his most trusted general, wouldn't follow him into these shadows...*

*he's told only one thing lives here. A creature beyond all comprehension... A being without form, without thought, and without convention, and yet festers into consciousness like a blight on all existence... A creature for which all other monsters fear to the point of insanity yet, strangely, Levi remains undaunted...*

*his mantra of loathing shields him as much as it consumes him. He’ll bow to no beast who believes they're better than him, no matter their size or strength. No one can think they’re better than he is... He’ll prove their lives are worthless in the end*

*finding the creature proved easy. He only had to follow the strings of insanity attempting to strangle his mind, growing ever thicker the closer he’d come. A lesser being may have felt helpless approaching it… a shattering insignificance compared to One that Defies All: a primordial essence from which those below the depths are connected and yet through denial believe to be their own... A Greater Power. A God*

*... but he’s fought a God before. All he saw before him now was an Abomination*

*and what he eventually saw skewered on the end of his trident was just another step on his journey of conquest - even as blood the color of madness plumed in the water around him, boiling his skin and contorting his bones... When the ranting clutter in his mind finally quieted, Levi was something new entirely…*

*he didn’t need to return to his army to feel their presence now. His metamorphosis completed when a ghastly wail that escaped his throat, carried telepathically through the waters around him. A clear signal to all who felt it... Above the sea, you’d hear nothing. But below...*

*a cacophony of shrieks. A chorus of howls. The roar of a new Master and the response of an entire ocean now at his disposal...*

*An army of unspeakable terror flourishing just out of sight…*

Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

[handy-dandy-monster-candy]

Ruathym, part Two

Rating: NSFW Words: 1219 Pairing: Male Drider x GN Reader

The second part of this dark “romance” for @kim-monsterlings

xxx

You play a game of cat and mouse, avoiding Ruathym in his own castle until he has no choice but to summon you through any servant who can manage to track you down. You learn the passageways like the back of your hand, daring to dart into any room at a moment’s notice to avoid the maids and soldiers and giant spiders that patrol the halls.

You’ve made a habit of crushing the little spies you find scuttling in the corners of the rooms you’re in for any period of time, checking every little crevice for webbing and four pairs of eyes. Instead of enraging him, your vehemence at maintaining some semblance of privacy seems to amuse Ruathym, who only continues to send smaller and smaller spiders to their deaths at your hands. Despite that, the back-and-forth between you two was just a way to pass the time. Ruathym himself never truly threatened or frightened you; that particular honour fell to his wife, the Queen.

Larger and more volatile in nature than Ruathym, the Queen hated the very air you breathed. An arranged marriage, there was no love lost in the relationship between the monarchs, but nevertheless there was a begrudging fondness between them that meant that she allowed you—his “pet”—to live. You learn very quickly to stay well out of her way, especially when she goes on one of her infamous rampages throughout the castle at any real or perceived slight.

The one spider you don’t avoid is Tinki, the kitten-sized spider that Ruathym gifted you with when you first arrived at the castle. Tinki is a colourful little ball of fluff who differs greatly from the earthy tones of most of the other spiders—incredibly venomous even to driders, but tame as a babe in your arms while you carry her around and rub her little thorax throughout your musings. She squeaks to let you know when you’ve been found, which is the only reason you see Ruathym coming before he can get a literal jump on you in the castle gardens.

“There you are.”

“Here I am,” you sigh back at the King, placing Tinki on your shoulder and scratching along her head as she wiggles her pleasure.

Ruathym lifts his brows. “I wasn’t aware I’d gotten a parrot. Get out of the dirt, you filthy little worm.”

“Worms are good for the earth,” you feel the need to reply, needling him even as you make yourself obey.

“And they’ll eat your eyes out when you’re dead,” Ruathym shoots back, wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you against him.

You grimace. “Charming.”

Ruathym looks amused. “You can’t avoid me forever.”

“I can try.”

“And waste both of our lives? You’d be better off humouring the man helping you carry out your schemes.”

“I see no man,” you flatly reply, keeping your eyes on the King’s chest. “Only a very big bug.”

“Arachnid,” Ruathym grits out, though you can still hear a smile in his voice. “We eat little insects like you.”

You roll your eyes. “Bitch, bitch, posture, posture. What is it you want? I’m not giving it up in the garden again. You got thorns in my thighs the last time.”

Ruathym laughs, and you curse yourself for thinking that it’s one of the only truly lovely things about him. “I came to tell you that we’ve broken their ranks,” he says, startling you into a rare bout of speechlessness. “I have agents poised to strike at your beloved brother at my command. All you have to do is say the word.”

You take a moment to gather your thoughts. You remember being stabbed in your sleep in the shattered safety of your chambers by one of your most trusted advisors, the people turned against you by your charismatic younger brother. You remember your flight from the palace, stumbling and bleeding in the dark, the barking of hounds at your heels. You’d stolen a horse and fled into the forest, but the huntsmen chased you all the way to the cliffs where you tumbled with the poor beast into the frigid waters below.

You remember drowning, and you remember coming up for air against the rocks of the far shore after what felt like hours of being battered against rocks and down several mercifully small waterfalls. There, you were picked up by a scout of the driders who recognised your face, and you were saved from the brink of death just so that Ruathym could interrogate you and strike your deal.

Your fingers find the fresh scar tissue on your chest through your clothing, ice growing in the pit of your stomach. Ruathym is watching you expectantly when you finally look up into his ruby red eyes, and you give a short, sharp nod. “Do it.”

The King of the Driders flashes a feral grin down at you, all sharp teeth and gleaming fangs. Days later, distant smoke curls black and acrid from the direction of your former home, and you know the deed is done. You feel no triumph or grief; the fields in your heart have all but been salted, leaving you feeling only raw and tired. You almost sag back against Ruathym when he wraps his arms around you from behind like he had all those nights ago, drawing you away from the balcony and undressing you slowly. You don’t quite know why you allow it—the terms of the agreement had been fulfilled, after all—but you know that there is nothing left for you now that isn’t ash.

This time, when Ruathym takes you to bed, you don’t offer the token struggle. Instead, you surge up into his kisses with a desperate sort of passion, hands working the man’s thick, slippery cock once it slips free of his body. There’s a question in his eyes and you’re grateful that he doesn’t voice it, instead pushing you down against the bed and caging you in with his limbs. You hook your legs around his slender hips and push up into his thrusts when he slides into you, ignoring the burn of the stretch in your search for pleasure—for the ecstasy that you know will make it so that you don’t have to think about what you’ve done.

That night, he’s especially rough with you, but you’re not gentle with him, either. You pull his hair and bite his lips until he hisses and swears and fucks you until your voice breaks. He claws at you when you ride his dick, breaking skin, but you can’t bring yourself to care as his neurotoxin obliterates every flicker of coherent thought you might have had, leaving you a wanton mess. He’s never touched you this way before, kissed you this way before, fucked you this way before; it’s as if you’ve awoken something in him, primordial and deadly, and you’ve become his willing prey. You come hard when he pushes you over the edge again and again, fingers cramping in the sheets, spine arching until you’re almost bent backwards in his arms.

You regain consciousness later in the night with his fingers in your hair petting you as gently as one would pet a sleeping pup, and you know in your heart that you will never leave him. You have nowhere else to go.

[frowningfox]

What inspired Asim's Divine Form? I love me some creachers! Do you just start drawing and figure it out as you go, or start with a particular animal as a base, or another method? Does the shape/colors or certain details have any symbolic meaning or are they just there to be incredibly awesome?

Hi! I'm gonna need you to bear with me for a minute, I love both Aim and designing monsters so much and I'm writing this between working on the finishing details of a Really Big Art

EDIT: Big art finished time to go rabid at this bear with me x10

A lot of it is just... thinking up some concepts and putting things on paper and seeing how it works.

The double form, wiith double limbs, double arms, double face, is based on how the form came to be - he merged with a monster that was a representation of how he felt others saw him. How it's pulled off and put together takes heavy inspiration from a really old sketch I did years ago.

It's not the first time I've revisited the double torso concept and it'll probably not be the last time either

It's just the way you can make the hip muscles mimic the clavical muscles. It's just so ... yeah.

I kept the mane somewhere between a horse's mane and lion's mane like in the original design and made it ... more. Longer, and more. To fit with Asim's hair. I kept the cyrstal horn from the original design too, but moved it to where his right eyes should be. This part is a bit of "because it's cool" and a bit of symbolism.

Asim lost his right eye when he was killed by a gunshot to the head, he's worn a mask over that part ever since then. He's the sort of person who knows he's handsome as hell and while he doesn't necessarily flaunt it, he doesn't shy away from it either. He knows he's all that and a bag of chips and he's not going to sell himself short. Having to hide a decent portion of his face behind a mask is a bit of a blow for him, even his closest loved ones won't look at his face without the mask.

The crystals here are a manifestation of those feelings, a desire for beauty to be seen in this part of him, despite the gunshot/crystals mutilating the face beneath it.

The star on his chest:

Whether or not he's in beast form this is here!

It was originally a part of a tattoo hiding a near fatal scar, but it turned to crystal after being blessed by a god.

when it was a tattoo:

The tattoo has it's own meaning, but to keep it short:

tentacles - the god of healing

guiding star: symbol to the god Asim serves as a paladin and a a symbol of the archfey his culture respects as analogous with that celestial god

spinal column: Heart. Instead of a normal heart, elves have a spine like structure where there sternum should be. This is a bit like having a heart shape tattooed over your heart.

Marigolds: a symbol of Manaan, the ferryman, the archfey Death.

I'd love to incorporate more of his tattoo as real physical manifestations the higher level he gets....

The colors: (I don't have a fullbody finished color of him yet so bear with the mockup colors I put together for reference during an art exchange)

I wanted to keep his Zaixaudai(drow/orc) colors as being a zaixaudai has important meaning in his culture. So blue leaning iridescent white, and teal leaning iridescent black.

Red on the crystal for the children's hospital Bloodish feel to tie it back to the wound.

Patterning: For how to arrange the light and dark I took inspiration both from monkeys and where there hair is densest vs. where you could see the skin on them, and siamese/point cats and their dark markings. He still has fur where the colors match his skin, monkey fur just felt like a good jumping off point for where to put the skin tone fur.

A NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES: gold and turqoise/tealish

Important colors in dairau(dark elf) culture. It is the colors of home, heaven. Makhir/Makhirau. Home is... a god who became a primordial forest. Lots of fungus trees and other fungus adjacent life. Lots of shimmering golden and turquoise light and particles. A good set of colors to integrate for his divine form, and what better place than the god-blessed star and his tusks which are a manifestation of his zaixaudai heritage?

SHAPES AND ANATOMY:

Already touched on the double bit, but the general shapes and inspiration.

Largely his face is an exageration of the facial features he already had

You can see it a bit in this clip that I made to talk about the marking on his face that I forgot to talk about earlier so real quick uuuuuh

This marking is where he got kissed on the forehead and blessed by the god he serves. But when transformed it's... More. Oh and it's an abstraction of a fiery eye

You can see it a bit better here, but it's still pretty abstract. I'll draw a less abstract version eventually but for now you have the holy symbol icon versions

BACK TO SHAPES. But yeah, largely an exaggeration of features already present. I did look at some baboon pictures to get a feel of how I might exaggerate some things.

I call him a big puppy a lot for fun, but no dog reference came near his beast shape. I have in the past used bull terrier as a vague jumping off point for designing his normal people shape face shape though so I guess you could count that as a bit of a distant base.

His neck... largely horse based inspiration there. pretty much 99% horse.

The rest of his anatomy was just me messing around, cross checking muscle diagrams, and making it Weird and Monstery. I do a lot of "muscle studies" which are just me looking at muscle diagrams then applying them in New and Interesting Ways. I've been doing it for several years now and it's kind of become the way I pose characters. It makes me sad when I have to cover them up with skin and body fat and fur and clothes but I at least still have the copy where it's just the muscles because I do everything but color with pencils and lightboxing.

And I think one more anatomy before I go

his back peeties.

Monkey feet+large birds/birdlike dinos and of course chimkens. This is just a rough sketch And I'll probably workshop it a bit more once I do a full drawing with him standing but this is where I am currently with it.

I uuuuh, think that's where I'll leave it for now. If I missed anything you were wanting to know you can always shoot me another message to ask specifically about that.

[2lim3rz]

How Foreign Nightmares Are [40K FIC]

I butchered the timeline a lil bit cause ehhh fuckkk it, why not?

Magnus having nightmares, lets go! Thank you @gracia-regina for the prompt! Y’all feel free to send in more primarchs and prompts uwu

Not quite kid!Magnus, more like teenage Magnus? Ehh it’s close enough..?

----

It was in a dream he met him. A dream where a single, questioning word was uttered.

“Who..?” it was an exhausting dream, a tiring dream somehow. He was sleeping, how could he be tired? There was no response, but a sort of feeling. The feeling was powerful, it was as though he had stepped into a blazing inferno, but not the painful sort. It was almost welcoming, but still all the more ferocious.

When he awoke, he was covered in sweat and panting. It truly was an exhausting dream.

Of course, at once he was scrambling off the bed, dressing hastily to rush and tell his dear mentor what the dream was. He told Amon of all his dreams that had the same feeling as this one. He was, after all, the only one who understood the certain realness to it.

His days were spent in study, for that is what he found the most joyous. Sitting on a comfortable cushion with a book. Or, when he was allowed, looking through the great telescope to view the wondrous skies of Prospero.

Of course, nothing was always so streamlined. For his dreams of the feeling grew more vivid until he found himself during the daylight hours thinking. Well, it wasn’t quite thinking, it was a sort of layered sensation. His eye closed, he could perform many of his feats without closing off mental contact to the world, sometimes it felt more.. befitting almost. It was also dramatic, which was something he enjoyed sometimes.

As it always did, it began with a question, and he was startled when he garnered a response.

“You know who I am, Magnus” the resonant voice of the man? Yes man, it was surely a man echoed in his mind. The thoughts of alluding it to fire came to mind, but it was something more powerful, primordial even.

“I do? How can I know who you are if I don’t know your name? How do you know mine?” a wary edge cut into his own tone. Who was this stranger? This oddly familiar presence?

“I do not have any specific name, no longer. Though all of humanity calls me the Emperor of Mankind.”

Emperor.. of Mankind? It sounded like a pompous title.

“It is the truest title.”

“You read my mind? How! I’ve guarded it well!”

“Not well enough, evidently.”

Not all of their conversations went that way. Some were pleasant, others left Magnus frustrated at how secretive the Emperor of Mankind turned out to be. At how it turned out he was his progenitor.

Most of all, Magnus had brothers. Blood brothers! All were scattered across worlds like he was, but were quickly being found as quickly as one could!

His dreams were wondrous and never quite dreams.  Which was why it all the more terrified him when he had a true nightmare. For no vision could ever be so nightmarish and horrible. It started off well enough. As it began with he and Amon walking in a massive library.

Then suddenly the sights changed to Amon, his body cocooned in gleaming red armor, but his head was bent too awfully wrong! The skin was pocketed where insects had made their feeding burrows and he felt as though he were sick at the sight.

Magnus stumbled backwards and raised his hands, hands that had shifted to massive wretched claws. No! He was too tall! Too large! He felt something on his back and massive feathered wings enfolded him. His wings! He did not have wings, he was a man! A true and simple man! This was not his body!

Too red, too big, too..too feathered! A scream erupted from his throat, deep and guttural as though he were a crying beast.

The sights shifted again, there was a man before him. The light behind him was too golden, too bright to see who it was. What little he saw were faint glimpses. A strand of braided blonde hair, mouth with human teeth but over-sized canines, a snarling scream.

Who was it?! Where was he?!

Magnus stood and ran. He ran and ran but went nowhere, he was in the plaza again. The central plaza where he was first found in infancy.

Magnus.

His name. But who said it? The voice was quiet, a snide whisper. The red cyclops twisted and turned, and shrieked as his feet were no longer plantigrade with five toes, but digigrade with wretched claws. A monster! A beast he was! The flashes confused him, smells he never smelled, sounds he never heard. What was this hell he was in? Was he flying? No! He was falling, spiraling down and down again. There was a scream but it was not his own. The scream multiplied to a chorus and he discovered he could hear voices he knew before a single, angry scream drowned out all the others.

Magnus stopped falling and was surrounded by a fierce blue and many eyes. There was a cacophony of atrocious laughter that shook him to his bones. A beaked maw appeared and began to speak, it spoke-

“Magnus!”

The red man lurched up, nay, he lunged and held onto the thing that shook him with trembling arms. His eye was wide and filled with tears. He had never felt so small, so vulnerable since he was an infant in the unknown.

“A-Amon..” he sobbed “Amon, you’re alive!” Magnus hated the disbelief in his voice as he hugged Amon tightly. The vulnerability he felt moments ago fading as the hug was returned tightly.

“Of course I’m alive- Magnus.. did you-” the elder man began to gently pry Magnus’s shaking arms away, his stern voice turning to concern and fatherly worry.

“No!” he practically snarled the word “No- I’m sorry it was.. just the most horrible nightmare, Amon..”

Magnus let go and wiped at his face, he felt cold and clammy and saw that it was still well into the evening. How was it that dreams felt as though they were eons long?

“..Let’s get you some tea, Magnus. Take a break from your lessons for a few hours tomorrow, do something besides read.”

“But..”

“No, come along. Would you like to talk about it?”

Amon knew what was best for certain, Magnus settled as he stood to follow the man out.

“..I would, thank you.”

[ask-them-bois]

The Scorpion’s Web, part 1/3

TW: ask to tag

TLDR: Musrio finally gets some answers.

.

Musrio stood in the livingblock of the Arcanaeum, staring out the window and into the rainy night as he downed the last of his coffee.

Drayco was seated on the loungeplank, watching him with concern.

“You okay?” They asked gently, slinking their ferret from one hand to the other.

Musrio swallowed his mouthful of bitter, poisoned brew and sighed. “No.” He said, deadpan, as he set the mug on the counter. He stared down at it, taking a deep breath. “I’m terrified, Dee.” He confessed, “This is all almost over.”

“That’s why you called this meeting, right?”

“Right. But…” He looked out the window again, reaching up to touch the scar slashed across his nose.

“But?” Drayco prompted.

Musrio shook his head; there was something pressing on his thinkpan, a concern that had been building for nights on end, but now wasn’t the time. It wasn’t something he wanted to speak into existence. “Forget it. Let’s go see the others. Ribbit.” He turned away from the window, holding a hand out to the bronzeblood.

Drayco got to their feet and took his hand, shouldering their backpack.

Musrio led Drayco out of the block, and they stepped into the main area of the ancient bookhive.

Musrio had spent hours, nights, restoring it, and had protected it with heavy magic to keep it undetected and left alone, deep in the forests around his hive. The only frequent visitors were himself and the spirits; but now, six others- plus Drayco- had gathered in one of the many areas meant for lounging.

He could hear them chatting amongst themselves as he approached, and they all fell silent as he stepped out from between the shelves.

Makeno Faslet, Corden Blalit, and Vornik Gorsin- the three descendants of the three ancestors this insanity seemed to weirdly center around.

Gehero Urfath, Rufuss Wacoba, and Ashhur Jaybez- the descendant of a murderer, the descendant of the murderer’s caretaker, and the murderer’s apprentice, descendant of a monster. The three related to the fourth.

Finally, there was Musrio and Drayco themselves- the descendant of a thief, and a pirate. The outcasts, once murdered and twice lived.

The rustblood was far removed from calling the others friends; he knew a handful of them didn’t like him, and he’d barely spoken to the others. But now, for better or worse, he needed them.

“Thank you all for coming.” He began, releasing Drayco’s hand so they could take a seat. He reached up with one hand and fiddled with his necklace. “I apologize for the suddenness of the summons, and the difficulty reaching this location, but I had to be sure we wouldn’t be disturbed. Ribbit.”

“What’s all this about, Almawt?” Makeno asked; despite the animosity between them, the seadweller seemed relaxed- more concerned than upset- with an arm looped around his morail.

“It’s about a lot of things.” Musrio sighed, “It’s about our ancestors, about the Black Hand, about Neviserrath- and how they’re all connected.”

That roused some attention and surprise.

“What do our ancestors have to do with it?” Vornik asked, tipping his head to the side.

Musrio closed his eyes for a moment, silently wishing he’d drank the rest of the coffee in the pot.

“Here’s what I know,” He began, “Oliver is trying to bring an eldritch entity known as Neviserrath Apocriyna into our world. She intends to bring about an “age of nonsuffering,” heralded by a “chosen child, brought on a wave of blood.” I don’t know where those ideas came from, but that’s what Drayco told me. Ribbit.” Musrio nodded to the bronzeblood, who nodded.

“Oliver found an old book about the Black Hand that mentioned those things.” Drayco explained, “He interpreted its texts as… a prophecy, I guess.”

“But that’s not what it means?” Corden guessed.

“We don’t think so. From what I’ve come to understand, this “wave of blood,” or whatever, is referring to our bloodlines- our ancestors, and the way they are all connected. I’ve collected samples from eight of our ancestors, but tests are… inconclusive. Ribbit.”

“Why though?” Gehero spoke up, “Why do you need their blood?”

“I don’t know.” Musrio admitted. He dropped his hands, before spreading them helplessly, “I don’t know why I was told to bring back the ancestors, or why I’m doing what I am doing.”

“I believe I can help with that.” A new voice suddenly spoke behind them.

Musrio whirled around, instantly alert, as magic sprang into his hands. The others jumped to their feet, too, as a figure emerged from between the bookshelves, followed by curious shadows.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Musrio Almawt, second Harbinger of Neviserrath.” The Hierophant said, coming to a stop before them. For the first time in his life, he deferred to a lowblood by bowing his head.

“What are you doing here?” Musrio demanded, clearly not enjoying the same pleasure, “Aren’t you Bohwie’s ancestor? Why would you-”

“My descendant’s loyalties are to the new Black Hand. Mine are to the old.” Dmitri said briskly, raising his head. He looked forlorn for a flickering moment, before it passed, “Please, allow me to explain myself, and all of this nonsense. Our god-”

“Your god.” Musrio snapped, bristling.

“… my god, has kept you in the dark long enough.” Hierophant finished.

Musrio searched the old cerulean’s face for a long moment; he was hesitant to trust anyone, ever, and especially not the ancestor of one of his enemies. But…

But the Hierophant had just offered the one thing Musrio had been desperate for, for so long now:

Answers.

Slowly, he let the magic dissipate from his hands, and he eased his guard. “… Fine.” He said at last.

He stepped aside, allowing Hierophant to pass. The older cerulean stepped into the center of the ring of loungeplanks and chairs, turning in a slow circle to observe the group as they sat down again. “I see, I see… Very interesting.” He murmured to himself, before he turned to face Musrio. “Well then, where should I start?”

“How about the beginning? Ribbit?” The rustblood suggested, rolling his eyes.

Hierophant smiled. “Ah, but with many things, my dear Almawt, the beginning is… muddled. I suppose it started with me, didn’t it? I, who was once so confident in myself that I thought I might ascend the realms of reality, to face off against the Messiahs themselves.”

“You tried to meet the Messiahs?” Gehero repeated, surprised.

Hierophant looked over at the purpleblood, a momentary flicker of disgust passing over his expression. “I did.” He held up his left hand, where his pointer finger had been sliced off, “The Messiah’s worshippers were none too kind to me, and I believed the gods themselves should be punished.”

“You cannot punish gods.” Ashhur spoke up for the first time; the mutant was sitting upside down in his chair, all four eyes boring into Hierophant, “Gods punish us, when we kill one another. In turn for our beatings, we kill gods.” He made several clicks and chirps after that, which no one understood.

Hierophant blinked. “Erm… yes. Well, regardless, my attempt failed. Mind control abilities can only get a troll so far, I’m afraid. In the end, I made it well past whatever realm the Messiahs inhabit, and met… it.”

“Neviserrath.” Musrio said.

“Neviserrath.” Hierophant agreed, “Neviserrath Apocriyna, the God of Nothingness and Oblivion, Keeper of the Primordial, The Many Named and Yet Faceless.” He prattled off the title almost whimsically, like it were the lyrics to his favorite song.

“I was the first mortal thing to ever contact it, it said. When I explained my plight, it thought of me as amusing, and imbued me with powers. The powers you yourself now possess.” He nodded to Musrio, sweeping a hand down to indicate their similar robes, “In thanks, I established the Black Hand, as a place of worship for my new lord. We feasted, drank, partied, and I hosted bucket festivities in its name. It was, oh…” he sighed longingly, “the best sweeps of my life.”

Musrio looked down at the robes he wore, suddenly disgusted; he wanted them off, he wanted to tear the cloth from his back and burn it. He knew they were a gift from Neviserrath, but the thought of sharing so much with the founder of the Black Hand made him sick.

“So how does that explain the chosen child? Ribbit?” He asked at last, fidgeting with his necklace for the time being.

“Patience, my dear Harbinger. You see, the “chosen child”… was a joke. It was what I was referred to as, by my followers, much like how Oliver is revered as the Blind Phoenix. There was no chosen child, other than myself. The “age of blood” was an inside joke we passed around after our lewd festivities. Not everything would end up in a bucket, floors would get messy, and it would look like… well, like a wave of blood. It was all for fun, you see. We were a cult, after all, everything had to be dramatic and theatric.” He shook his head, chuckling, before his good humor vanished.

“However… I do believe that has changed, thanks to Oliver. Because of his desperation to find this nonexistent child- or create on, as he’d attempted-” Dmitri nodded to Drayco, “I believe Neviserrath… made one for her. The Unholy Blight only wishes for amusement. If a chosen child is what its most devout seeks, then it will provide one, to see what they do with it. Much like how a grub gives a bark-beast a ball, to see if it will fetch.”

“So… there wasn’t a chosen child, but now there is?” Drayco repeated slowly, bewilderment growing on their face, before they dropped their head into their hands, “I died for nothing?”

Musrio’s blood-pumper squeezed violently with sympathy. He ran a hand through Drayco’s hair, attempting to comfort them.

“Thousands of trolls die for nothing, Afasia.” Hierophant said, unbothered, “But yes. Oliver could not make you into the child, because the child already existed. They just do not exist here.”

“Where are they, then?” Musrio frowned, looking up.

“No clue!” Hierophant smiled, “This chosen child nonsense is after my time. But this time around, the “wave of blood,” as you correctly guessed, refers to the bloodlines. I’m afraid I do not know why they’re all needed, but my guess is a ritual, to bring this chosen child to us. You have gathered the blood of those here?”

“From their ancestors, plus Oliver’s.” Musrio nodded. “But I thought that I needed the ancestors themselves, too. Ribbit.”

Hierophant hummed. “It’s possible, you may need them. Would that be a problem?”

“Yes.” Musrio nodded to Rufuss and pointed to Drayco, “Their ancestors have died once again. I can’t risk returning Forsaken again, and Bluegill... has told me he’d rather not suffer a third time. Ribbit.”

“He told ya?” Rufuss repeated, looking up.

“Yeah. He’s still around, just- not physically. He flickers in and out, between my hive, Arrach’s, and yours. Ribbit.” Musrio shrugged.

Rufuss stared at him, then reached up and took his hat off, a dawning look of disbelief on his face. “... That’s mighty comfortin’, Mr. Almawt.” He murmured.

“Well, then.” Hierophant continued briskly, “Let’s hope you just need their blood and not the bodies. So, if I’m not mistaken, you still need the fuchsia, teal, and jade ancestors, then.” Hierophant twitched his fingers as he counted in his head, “I believe Oliver is on a fast track to bringing the teal back, and finding the fuchsia, which takes care of the first part of that problem. However, we still need to find the jade.”

“Hang on a second.” Vornik spoke up, twisting the hem of his cloak through his claws, “I’m a little lost here. Why are we trying to perform this ritual? Isn’t it Oliver that needs this kid?”

Musrio shook his head. “Neviserrath gave me the instructions to revive the ancestors, and find their descendants. My guess is that I’m supposed to be the one who summons the chosen child, while Oliver believes she’s supposed to, too. Does that sound right?” He looked to Hierophant.

“Possibly. The Black Hand- as it is now- believes they are due a chosen child. However, Oliver stole his powers, where yours were given. I do believe Neviserrath has set this up much like... like a chess match. Both of you have the same amount of power, and the same goal. However, your number of pawns, and the way you use them, are vastly different. This is a game that pans across several boards, and Neviserrath is watching to see who wins. Should you win, and you get the child, then this “age” Oliver desires will not come around. If she wins…”

“It means the end of Alternia.” Drayco whispered hoarsely, raising their head.

“It does?” Corden frowned.

““The age of nonsuffering is an era where no troll suffers. The sick, crippled, weak, and mutant are cared for. The hemospectrum can be flipped. The Empire will crumble.”” Drayco intoned, their eyes gazing into memories.

“That sounds… great, though.” Corden shrugged.

Drayco took a deep breath and sat up, staring at their friend. “No one will suffer, and the Empire will crumble, because we’ll all be dead.” They said heavily, slowly, “Oliver intends to use the chosen child to bring Neviserrath to Alternia, and use the god’s power to launch a genocide, until there’s no one left to oppose him.” They laid a hand over their chest, over the scar the knife had left. “They’ll be cared for, by the drones that do away with corpses.”

Hierophant grimaced. “Alternia could certainly uses changes, but the annihilation of our kind is not a way to go. Still, there you have it- the terms of this battle laid out plainly: there is a child both sides are fighting to summon. If Musrio wins, the child can be saved, as can Alternia. If Oliver wins, the child is corrupted, and we all die. The bloodlines are being used as conduits in a ritual to bring the child to us, and it is a race to see who can gather the blood first.”

“Well, that sounds easy, then.” Makeno shrugged, “We outnumber Oliver’s group. We don’t even need to count the Black Hand, since they’re not part of the bloodlines. There’s all of us, against, what, two others? Our ancestors seem to have a grasp on what’s going on, I doubt any of them are just going to hand over their blood to Oliver.”

“That’s true, but we don’t know how much of the blood Oliver has. She’s a crafty liar- if she wants something, she’ll get it by any means.” Drayco sighed, their breath gurgling.

“Hm… So let him.” Hierophant said thoughtfully.

“Let them? What, let them win?”

“Well, no, not in the end.” Hierophant chuckled, “But you can let them do the work for you. They’re already working to find and bring around the fuchsia and teal ancestors, so… let them. Once those two are here, you can step in and take their blood, too. But again… it seems this all comes down the jade. I advise you seek her out, while Oliver does as he will. Or, if you wish, wait until the other two are here- I know Lucina dealt the death of one, perhaps that will draw her out.”

“Yeah… there’s one problem with that.” Musrio scowled, “I can’t. I’ve tried. I’ve spent hours searching for her soul, in every afterlife and realm, but she doesn’t answer. I’ve used Ruthless, their wedding rings, her old weapons- she doesn’t respond to any conduit. Her soul is just… gone.”

“Not gone.” Hierophant corrected, suddenly smiling, “It was never gone. You cannot find it in the afterlife, because it never went there.”

“She’s a spirit, then? I would have still been able to-”

“No, no, my dear Almawt. The jadeblood lives. Lucina is alive- at least, partially. She roams Alternia’s soil.”

“She’s alive?!” Musrio repeated, incredulous, “She can’t be! She lived four hundred sweeps ago, she died in Ruthless’ arms-”

Hierophant only laughed. “Oh, by the Afflicted Ebonblack- are you not a supernatural being yourself, Musrio? Or you, Drayco? Or even some of your friends? You sit in a room with a shifter-beast, and you wish to tell me it’s impossible? The answer is right in front of you!”

Musrio stiffened, staring into a fixed point as he tried to piece that apart.

Then it hit him.

Then he hit himself for being a moron.

“Oh my FUCKING god. You mean she’s-?”

“Yes!” Hierophant laughed.

“What? She’s what?” Makeno asked, sharing bewildered looks with the others.

“She’s a fucking rainbow drinker!” Musrio and Hierophant shouted at the same time. Thunder cracked outside, as if the sky itself was laughing at the rustblood’s stupidity. “She’s been alive this whole time!”

“Exactly, exactly!” Hierophant applauded. “Well, partially. You know how rainbow drinkers are. I’m certain if you find her descendant, you’ll find her. For now, however, I believe we best brace ourselves for the two that will soon grace us with their presence.”

[twitchesandstitches]

(Commission for @alt-hammer of a fantasy AU where Jade, a talented alchemist, has greated a boob expansion potion and refines it, gradually getting more enormously buxom as she and Dave get closer together.

This is set in, broadly, the same continuity as the godess terezi commission; some liberties were taken so, where there are differences, assume them to take place in their own micro continuities.)

----------

The town was an old one, near a vast forest that lay in the shadow of a temple consecrated to one of the old gods: the teal dragon goddess of mentality, rumored by some to be incarnate in the modern age. The era of magic and gods, though, was long behind them, and simply reverse engineering even a tiny shred of its power was a game-changer, especially for such a minor town.

Jade Harley, alchemist and adventurer, thought she had just about worked it out.

Okay, she thought, peering at a list of ingredients. Body expansion and modification. It used to be so much more common, in the old days. Did I figure it out?

I think I did.

She poured over the ingredient list, checking things off, and she was so busy in her work that she heard the bell over the door go ‘ding’.

“Yo-hoy, Jade?” Came the voice of Dave Strider, her best friend, with big quotation marks around the ‘friend’ bit. She smiled and stood up. Jade was a tall woman… a very tall woman, even bigger than some trolls, which was unusual for a human. She had a curvy frame, packed with power, and lately she had been thinking: not curvy enough.

And then, she’d heard stories about the old days. Ancients who had transformed their bodies in impossible ways, with nothing but their knowledge of magic. And she’d thought; if they did it, why not me?

Dave was waiting there. He was not a particularly tall man, or broad; he had the sort of wiry, vaguely feminine look that was quite popular these days, and paired well against Jade’s more voluptuous frame. She just looked big, especially next to him. Nevertheless, when he stood up, it was with a real sense of genuine strength and power that belied his seemingly frail look.

“You sure you wanna do this whole… thing?”

Jade indicated her chest. It was pretty ample, and again, especially for a human. But Jade had thought about records from the old days, that described people changing themselves to be… bigger. More buxom. And she had thought; if they’d done it, why not her? What was the missing keys to that kind of power?

Besides thousands of years of magical knowledge and infrastructure, she admitted. But they’d been learning, and she thought she might have rediscovered the key.

Jade wanted bigger boobs. She wanted really big boobs. It was a pretty silly thing to want, she would be the first to admit, but when she thought of herself, of the shape that Jade Harley ought to have, it was with boobs so big that they’d have to reshape the doorways when she left the house; pathway-clearing plows of a bustline, big and bouncy boobs so massive you could sit on them.

Or even bigger than that!

The default assumption that most men would have, in helping such a task, would be ‘yes please!’. Dave was surprisingly ambivalent; she had no doubt he’d be pleased by the results, but the actual experimenting was going to be an issue.

He worried a lot. About her in particular.

“I'm sure!” Jade put her hands on her hips. “I just… oh, I’ve been spending years on this, and I’m so close! I can practically taste it!”

“Right, right, cool. Passion project, I get that.” Dave patted her on the shoulder, the gesture completely reflective. He probably didn’t realize how intimate it felt.

Probably? Jade pondered that, for a while.

“Well, I got a map.” Dave laid it on a table; now they were free to plan, since no one came in after these hours. On the map was a chart of the most magically potent parts of the forest outside the town, where the most magically powerful ingredients… and monsters… were likely to be found. “I think these are the places we should start looking.”

“Right!”

For hours, they planned it out. The kinds of things they would need to hunt up, of course. The gear they would need to harvest things effectively, and explore the forest.

And the monsters they were likely to face, the mindless beasts generated by raw magical energies and attacking anything they perceived as intruders. Dave faltered a bit at the thought; not in fear, but he was looking at Jade as if thinking too hard about her getting struck by some beast’s claws.

He swallowed. “You sure you wanna do this? For… to get bigger boobs?”

Jade grinned. When you put it like that, the whole thing sounded silly, and she really didn’t mind that at all.

“Absolutely!” She insisted.

------

After that, Dave came in regularly, when he could.

At least once a week, in his official capacity as a courier. As much as possible when he was off work, or just playing schemes to pretend to be doing things on the clock, goofing off at her work place and racking up paid hours when deliveries slowed instead of doing paperwork. She was pretty sure that he definitely was not allowed to do that; his boss, Mister Slick, was a stickler for the letter of the rules for everyone if not himself, and he in turn answered to the chief courier, the Mendicant.

Jade had to consider that. She didn’t know the chief courier personally, but everyone knew of her; she was married to the mayor, who was something of a gremlin with a chip on his shoulder but a pretty relaxed attitude. The chief courier was a lot more strict, and probably wouldn’t approve of Dave doing that, so of course Jade kept the whole thing secret.

Dave had been scouting out the places they were going to hunt down; slaying a few monsters, scrounging up what he could for Jade to examine. It all worked out for her; monster flesh and bone, fungi and moss and roots all growing in places absolutely drenched in magic… it served her purposes perfectly.

She made her potions; not testing them on herself yet, though Jade tended towards the belief that a TRUE alchemist used themselves as a test subject before anyone else, but that was for a product proven to have the effect she wanted. Until then, she’d taken to quietly giving the uncertain batches to the cattle that grazed just outside her home, pouring it into their food when no one was looking. The cows, she was pleased to see, wound up moving unsteadily with obscenely massive udders so stuffed that they were propped up by them, and the consistency in it satisfied her.

Putting in magically charged milk, she determined, seemed to help. She imagined herself with such massive, swinging breasts and trilled with delight.

And they would need to go to magical places to find ingredients to make into potions; plants, fungi and the parts of monsters, all rich with magical energies. Alchemy was, as she explained it to Dave, the art of melting down magically potent substances and infusing them with arcane ‘aspects’ to effectively make liquid, drinkable spells. The trick was finding things powerful enough to infuse the solution, and for that…

Well, to the old forest, they’d both go.

-------

The days came and went. Experiments went by. Batches, failed and otherwise, were tested; the cows grew bigger and bigger, so much so that Zahhak dairy farming family found something of a glut of their product, and Jade jotted down their boasting or complaints under a list of things to bear in mind for the future batches.

Dave came and went. When he could reasonably swing it, playing off his ingredient hunts for Jade as part of his job; she paid him, at least, which generally satisfied Mister Slick, according to Dave. Jade did see the chief courier, glistening in the sun like a polished ivory statue, studying her shop as if looking for signs of slacking off, and she quietly told Dave the next time she saw him (complete with him bringing several baskets of mushrooms, roots and the occasional monster part) that they would have to probably save this for his free time.

So, in the end, they went together.

Deeper into the forest, where anyone had ever gone. Under the shadow of the ancient temple of the dragon goddess, where its primordial magic seeped into the trees, turning them and the crawling moss into living, teal crystals…

And where the monsters dwelled.

-------

And one day, they came back from there. Both of them bloodied, battered; panting with exhaustion and still trembling; with terror, at least for Jade, tinged with exhilaration. “That was amazing!” Jade said as they stumbled into her shop, her chest heaving and her travel robes hanging over her front like a mobile tent.

Dave put his sword down and flopped down onto a cot Jade kept around, in case he wanted to take a nap whenever he dropped by. “I warned ya, Jade. I warned you about the imps.”

Jade sat down on a chair, and it creaked under her considerable weight. She was simply too thick for most furniture; the legs were bending ominously, as she rocked back giggling to herself in a mix of post-adventure shock and genuine excitement. “The way they came out of nowhere! And the way you just cut them! Swoosh! Slash! That was so cool!”

“Am a little bit concerned with how easy you’re dealing with this.” Dave sat up. “You blasting them was pretty cool…”

Jade turned around. There was a lot of bouncing, possibly on purpose, and green spirals of magical energy swished around her. She’d cast so much magical energy that it was leaking out of, rising out with relatively small gestures, and it make her tingle all over; crackling like her blood was lightning and a sun beating in her chest-

She grabbed Dave and spun him right around, off his seat, and he squealed as she pulled him close to her in a tight not-quite-hug. She was too caught up in the exhilaration to realize it. “Let’s do that again!”

“Ye?” Dave said, lying on the floor now, red-faced and apparently losing the will to move on his own.

Jade was too full of vigor and excitement to stop now. She took one of the bundles of ingredients, plants and fungi and the harvested monster parts they’d been able to secure, and took them up to her work station.

Dave had time to recover, sitting up and recentering himself and not thinking constantly about the feeling of Jade’s body against his own (at least that’s what he would insist, later) as Jade took the things the ingredients they had found and prepared them for distilling. She chopped with knives, she crushed with a motorized pestle, and repeated this until she had a number of small chunks and fine dust. She placed that into a large flask she placed under a burner, but the flames she produced from it were a bright green.

It didn’t burn the chopped and crushed plants, meat and mushrooms. Instead it softened them, until they started dripping through a grate at the bottom of the flash. That became a fluid, propelled onwards through a series of tubes. There, other solutions and mystical fluids were dribbled into it; things to add in mystical formulas and spell-aspects, amplifying other aspects of the potion… negating the flavors and aspects of the substances they originally had been, purifying it into something completely divorced from its origins.

It eventually flowed, much thicker now, into a beaker. Jade poured a hint of something that looked a lot like milk, her magic flowing into it, supercharging it. A bit of milk to give it the right aspect for what she wanted. And a little bit of amplification, mixing with the raw power of the other ingredients...

And under the heat of the magical flame, which burned away solid matter and left behind only magical essence made fluid, Jade waited for it to finish.

She grew quiet, and intense. Dave, recovered by now, had long since learned to pick up on her moods and he knew she was getting very excited.

“I thought you didn’t use spells,” Dave said, to break the silence. “What was with all that… fwoosh?” He wiggled his hands, in the manner of the green fire he remembered Jade shooting all over the place.

“Fwoosh?” Jade said, absently.

“You were shooting attack spells and stuff.”

“Oh! I mean. I know how to do that kind of magic. Not so much in my job, but I know about the theory of magic in general. I couldn’t do alchemy right if I didn’t.”

“And the fire stuff?”

Jade giggled. “I always did wanna put that into practice!”

“Wait, you mean you’ve never fought until today?”

Jade, a woman who had turned a small part of the forest into a crater and probably infuriated the local spirits, looked bashful. “Did it show?!”

“...No. Not really.”

“Huh. Good to hear!” Jade suddenly shut off the flame, stirring it a few times; despite the constant heat, there was no sign that it was particularly hot. “This batch is done!”

Dave stood up. “You sure? I’d thought there’d be… more sparkles.”

“I might put something like that in a consumer batch; people expect sparkles, you know. But this is the testing phase!” Jade examined the potion, studying it. Her magical senses, and eye for detail, picked out things Dave couldn’t possibly have made out. Apparently satisfied, she put it up to her lips and started to tilt it up.

“Whoa!” Dave staggered forward, his stoic exterior cracking just this bit. “Is that safe?! Shouldn’t you test it on, i dunno, the cows?!” He gestured towards a herd visible right through the window, where the shop brushed up against a pasture (as the Zahhaks, as one of the older families, had the authority to simply build their homes into grassy places for the cattle to feed). A cow looked right through the window, hindquarters lifted right off the ground by an obscenely stuffed udder.

Jade lowered the flask, just for a moment. She briefly gave the cow a solemn look, her eyes wide and impatience seething from her; she looked at the cow with an expression all but screamed, to Dave: I want that.

She made a ‘tsk’ing noise, wiggling a finger scoldingly at Dave. “Oh, I’m sick of letting them have all the good stuff! I want that for me!” She grinned, wildly, and Dave knew that there was nothing he could do, short of slapping it out of her hand, to stop her, and he thought that it would be wrong to do that.

“If you’re sure…” Dave said, clearly dubious.

“I’ve never been MORE sure.”

And Jade tilted the potion up, and drained it in a single, powerful swig.

Dave winced, but didn’t argue.

She smiled, though, as her stomach briefly glowed green, the potion taking effect. “It’s nice that you worry, though.” She patted his hand, still upraised in protest, and impulsively, she kissed it.

His hand felt so warm against her lips; a heat flashed there, against her teeth and tongue, and down her neck. It lingered there in her chest, mixing with the magical energies and transformative vibes now swirling inside her. It felt so fine; a gentle euphoria rose inside her, and she couldn’t help but smile through an intense blush.

Green light swirled around her, and especially over her chest. On her breasts, swirling around them and outlining them, supercharging them with magical energies speaking of more and BIGGER, but brightest of all was her heart.

Dave felt the magic flowing from her, before any changes actually happened, and he took a step back; a little awed at what he felt flowing inside her, and maybe stunned by the kiss.

Later, he contemplated how and why he sensed anything. He wasn’t trained in magic; he knew the martial applications, the tricks to make yourself stronger and faster with the spiritual energy inside a person, or the energy around you, but he didn’t know how to use magic itself. Jade’s work was a mystery to him, and he was quietly impressed with people who did know how to bend magic more directly. The actual mechanics of how it was supposed to work was all a bit beyond him.

Nonetheless he felt it, right then. Right there.

Maybe, he theorized later, he’d learned to sense magical energy somewhere, in all the training to harness it. Flex a muscle hard enough, you learned to get a feel for when it was straining. A similar principle could apply, right?

In any case, he stumbled back, more and more, as Jade started to get bigger.

He was far from the only one to notice it, though; there were many people who’d worked out how to manipulate magic all over the town, or those who benefitted from thep precious and rare remaining bits of lore from older days. And some who were something else altogether.

Even people who didn’t live in town felt Jade growing: the professional spellcasters, the priestly high classes, and the hedge-mages learning it all on their own. Even those completely untutored, but sensitive to magic all the same, felt it. And those who knew their stuff felt it happen in intimate detail, like Miss Roxy Lalonde, probably the best student of magical theory in town, and she perked up at the sudden flare from Jade’s shop.

Karkat Vantas, living outside town in the old and long-abandoned manor, felt something even as he slept. His fiance, Terezi Pyrope, sat up and silently eased him back to sleep as she looked up. Her eyes were blind and felt very old, just like the ancient statues in the very temple Jade had walked in the shadows of. There were murals there… that looked just like Terezi Pyrope; as if those ancient sculptors had modeled them after her.

She tilted her head up, head craning and focusing right at the precise location of Jade.

She grinned. “Interesting~!” She said aloud, already making up her mind to pay Jade a visit as soon as she could.

People, intrigued or afraid or obnoxiously curious, gravitated towards Jade’s shop. The market outside her place broke up, the people in it drifting over to see what was going on. So, quite apart from Dave, Jade had an audience.

And in the shop itself, there was no blast of magic. No eye-searing pyrotechnics, as might be associated with a surge of magic so strong it made the cattle outside bounce and gush away in shock, or made Jade squeal with a mixed noise of joy and shock; she staggered back, as if her limbs suddenly were sapped of their strength, or something new flooding it and pushing out the old energy to make way for something fresh, strong and wild…

She gritted her teeth. They seemed longer, sharper; she took a step forward, and her legs kept shaking. No, wait. IT took a moment for Dave to realize, but they weren’t shaking.

They were getting wider.

Jade’s thighs slowly grew, leg muscles gradually bulking up and expanding outwards, a thick and appealing sheath of fat covering them. Not growing much past the knees, making them look surprisingly small past the thighs.

Her hips swayed and wiggled; first Jade just moved in an unconscious groove, and then it was a pattern of growth, and her hips expanded outwards in a smooth swell. Several inches added themselves on, and then about an extra foot of hip growth, to both sides. Jade stumbled as her thighs grew so big their sides were mashing together, and then made an embarrassed noise as her butt suddenly surged out, so bubbly and round that it was making the hem of her skirts rise up!

Her chest was still glowing, the focal point of all this. She dipped forward as they felt very heavy, her hands instinctively cupping her breasts. They wobbled at her touch, all on their own with indifference to gravity, and swelled. Jade made a squeaking noise of surprise, and then it melted into delight; waves of pleasure flooded into her from her chest. Oh! It had felt good, growing like this with her test batches, but nothing like this!

A cup size fluxed out, and then another, pushing at the fabric of her robes. Two more swelled out, pushing her palms down to support them, and they flowed out over her hands. They kept growing; bigger and bigger! The weight of them, rising with each sudden bouncy surge, was making Jade lean forwards, her breasts rising outwards. More than extra cup sizes, now, her breasts were almost doubled from what they’d been.

The magic surged and amplified her body, adding more mass, more flesh, more everything. Her breasts kept expanding, growing outwards, so heavy that she was bent nearly double, her robes straining out and pulling up from the weight. “Yyyeah!” Jade cheered, the delight coursing through her.

And the magic was slowly expended, totally absorbed and transmuted into more Jade. She breathed out as the growth slowed, a couple more inches adding on with each breath, and then it stopped altogether.

The sensation of power and pleasure alike faded from her. Dave gaped as she stood up to her full, imposing height; her breasts were huge, and Jade’s fingers gently traced their expansive outlines, the fabric stretched and almost translucent against her skin now.

Down, down her hands went, feeling her breasts. Much bigger than anticipated. She heard a distinctive sloshing noise, too, when she jiggled enough. Down, all the way past… goodness! Past her ribs, and then when she found the bottom of her breasts, they lay near her navel.

Almost two and a high feet high was each breast, she guessed. She shifted upright, and felt a very pleasurable bounce. Slung out by at least three feet, two, perhaps four!

She breathed in, hissing it out through a grin that was a little bit manic, and she said “Ohh, yes, this is definitely a success.” Now, she panted heavily. “Ooh…” She breathed in and out again, her newly expanded assets heaving with such weight she felt dragged forward. It felt like so much of her was in front of her now… it felt good. “That’s… that’s a fun sensation….”

Impulsively, Jade took Dave’s hand, her fingers squeezing gently around his palm. She smiled just a bit impishly, sharp teeth glinting behind her lips, and she felt Dave’s pulse quicken. His expression didn’t change, not one bit. Not a single muscle even twitched, and his expression was like stone. And Jade knew about stone, and a little bit about geology, and she knew enough that there was always a lot going on beneath mountains that looked all calm and steady, but on the inside?

They were exploding. And Dave could keep his face steady, but he couldn’t do much of anything about the hot blush coloring his cheeks.

Jade leaned in close and gave him a soft, brief kiss on the cheek.

Her breasts, so recently swelled by her potions, pressed against his chest. His body was thin but so firm, so strong; the ideal surface for her bustline to squsih against, and press out, the pulse of her heartbeat passing into his body. Against the plane of his chest, her own chest squashed deep, and she thought in a wild and romantic suddenness that it was like pressing her heart against his own.

She felt their breath twin, for a moment, and then his own stopped. She exhaled, gusting it against his chin, and she kissed him again in the cheek, in the same spot.

And finally Jade pulled away. Her breasts, bouncing freely in their sub-par restraint, wobbled heavily as she moved back, and it was completely on purpose.

Dave’s shades were slipping. The red glow beneath them was nearly visible. “Holy shit,” he said simply.

She realized he was staring, and she grinned, a little sheepishly and a little smugly. Pride welled up in her, at a job well done.

“Hey, I’m freaked out too, but watch the goddamn language,” a laconic voice said from the window.

Both Dave and Jade whirled around; towards the window.

Where what had to be at least a good third of the town was ogling her, and her new ‘features’.

The speaker was Dirk Strider; looking very much like a somewhat older version of Dave, a bit broader overall, his arms crossed over the window. Behind him was the Chief Courier, her porcelain-white shell glittering in the sunlight; she looked, as much as her face could be seen beneath the concealing uniforms she favored, a mix of amused and intrigued. Most people there seemed to have the same vibe.

Terezi was there too, looming over everyone else there, a big dragon-like troll with wings furled around her like a cape, and now she was grinning knowingly.

Jade instinctively covered herself, eyes wide, and she hurriedly thought: ‘What do I do!? What am I supposed to say?! Oh gosh they’re all looking at me!”

And then she thought: ‘Wait.

‘Isn’t this an opportunity?’

She stamped down the embarrassment and frustration at being watched, and declared, with a cheery tone, gesturing at herself, “So! Who might be interested in purchasing the next batch of my beauty elixirs, that’ll give you a body like this!?’

Her mortified feelings felt a bit dimmer at the glee of all the hands shooting straight up.

------

A couple weeks passed, after that.

There was a lot to do: adjust to her new body (oh, how doors were starting to be a problem! And clothes! She had to get them made special, or they’d pinch), going back with Dave to get the ingredients, preparing the next batches of potion for the rush of demand she was suddenly being met with…

Between the constant brewing, hunting down the ingredients from the most magically potent parts of the forests, needing to negotiate with the tailors, and all that, Jade had hardly any time with Dave.

That was a little sad, actually.

--------

But, as fortune would have it, he dropped in not long after that; he didn’t get to witness Jade testing more of her potions on herself, once she was satisfied with consistently bigger growth, and without Dave, she suspected her growth was being slowed. Warm feelings had something to do with it, she was sure.

“Dave!” Jade said, rushing over to him, nearly knocked over a couple people who were milling around her shop. Her breasts alone knocked a few people out of the way, and others quickly moved aside to get out of the way before they were bowled over.

Dave started to speak, but all the wind went right out of him as Jade lifted him clear off the ground, into a powerful and happy hug. “It’s been way too long!” Jade said happily, to some happy but muffled noises from Dave. He was pinned between her boobs, so it wasn’t surprising.

The other people in the shop awkwardly looked away, or giggled, or thought wistfully of envious thoughts for Dave’s position. Jane Crocker, a long-time friend of Jade’s, grinned at the pair, her own table slightly shifting weight from the pressure her potion-expanded breasts put on it; fully one side of it was covered by them, and she’d discreetly adjusted her coat to prevent any wardrobe malfunctions.

“Jade, help, need to breathe,” Dave managed to get out.

“Oops! Sorry!” Jade said. She dropped Dave, with a sheepish smile.

A voice cleared itself from behind her.

Jade turned around; the shop was fairly crowded now. But it had been, ever since she’d brought out her new line of potions. People had come to her all the time in any case; for potions of fertility or physical enhancement to strength and resistance, or giving big claws or aesthetic features like that; the occasional transformation for more height, or shrinking themselves a little bit. The healing potions had been quite popular, too. But her shop wasn’t built to have as many people as it did now waiting around, especially when after taking the potions they tended to hang around for a while, adjusting to their new bodies. Results still varied; some people got only a modest boost, while others grew as big as Jade had after months of careful experimenting and gradual growth (at least up to the first line of her bust enhancement potions, anyway). Jade remembered the kiss to Dave, and the warm feelings in her heart, and how much stronger the magic had felt then.

She was considering advertising them as best with mushy feelings.

The point was, Jade wasn’t very good at picking people out in the shop, since it wasn’t something she’d had to deal with until now. But now she realized that someone had come in with Jade.

Terezi Pyrope grinned; nearly twice as big as even Jade herself, looming over even the tallest people in town, she was a giantess among them, her body scaled in a way no troll normally was. A thick tail curled around her, and a great pair of wings flapped just enough to ensure that people steered clear of her. Jade found herself unconsciously ogling her; Terezi was big, enormously stacked on a scale equal to Jade herself, but somehow she felt… even bigger. The boobs were proportionately about the same as her own, but Terezi herself was so big that Jade could have used her breasts as exercise balls… or even cots!

Karkat was there, as he usually was; it was very rare to see one of them without the other. He hovered around her like an attendant, or a priest from old stories when the gods had walked the world, their clerics in tow. Jade had her own theories about that, given the sheer power radiating from Terezi…

But that was a thought for another time. Now she smiled. “You here on a professional level, or is this a friend visit?”

“A bit of both,” Terezi said. “You, uh, doing okay. You’ve been… going through some changes.”

Jade glanced down, and she felt aware of the eyes of others right on her expanded cleavage. She didn’t mind and laughed, privately cheering at all the attention on her hard work, with a great feeling of pride and confidence. “You could say that! But it was all on purpose so I don’t think it’s anything to be concerned about, you know.”

Terezi chuckled. “Yeah, I figured. See? And Karkat was all worried about it!”

Karkat scoffed. “Someone had to. And Dave wanted someone to say something!”

“Dude, noooo….” DAve said meekly.

Jade turned towards him, head tilted. “Oh? Was someone concerned?” She grinned.

“...Maybe.”

“Oh, you should just hear what he says all the time,” Karkat said loftily, with the air of someone dropping a relationship rock right into a crowded social event. “It’s mortifying.”

Jade giggled. “Oh? I hope you’re saying nice things about me!”

Dave looked about ready to melt. “I dunno what they're talking about,” he said, trying to find refuge in denial.

“It’s so sappy,” Terezi said in a stage whisper.

“Aw!” Jade kissed Dave on the cheek, right in front of everyone. He made a precious ‘Hr-RK!’ noise that made her giggle again.

Terezi giggled as Dave awkwardly shuffled away, finding a desk and trying to recover his dignity. “But, seriously. I was wanting to buy a couple of these potions, maybe.”

That was a surprise to Jade; as the thrill of teasing Dave faded, she looked up and saw just more of Terezi’s massive, vision-filling bustline. They were so big already! As big as her own! “You don’t think you’ve got enough already…?” Jade asked, cautiously.

Terezi snorted. “You can always go bigger. And that’s kinda funny, coming from someone who’s still sampling her own goods.”

“Hmph. I don’t know what THAT means.” Jade tried to cross her arms over her chest but her breasts had gotten too big for her to do so easily. And true to Terezi’s words, they were in fact bigger than they had been during the initial growth, during the public event that had gotten all this attention. They were starting to tip closer to her waistline; it wasn’t too MUCH bigger, a product of Jade carefully watering down the samples as she kept experimenting on herself, and downplayed by her heavy work robes, but it was still a fair point. At least half a foot outwards, if not too much deeper.

“Well, I dunno. Let’s give you a baseline to outdo, hrm?” Terezi grinned. “Say, how much ARE these potions?”

Jade listed a number. It was a comfortable price that wasn’t too expensive, but didn’t diminish the effort it took to get the resources to make them; she viewed peddling them as a public service, in some ways. Terezi tossed some coins her way, and Jade handed her one of the bubbling flasks.

Terezi immediately popped the cork off. “Oooh,” Karkat said, eyes wide and amazed, realizing what she meant. Terezi lolled her massive tongue out and picked up the flask with her tongue, popping it into her mouth and draining the whole elixir down her throat in a single, heavy draught. Her thick tongue probed the flask, looking for every drop.

“You might wanna get closer to Terezi,” Jade quietly told Karkat. “It, uh, helps the change.”

Karkat hugged Terezi’s thigh, his arms squeezing deep into her ample flesh. “What do you mean-” He started to say.

“Eep!” Terezi exclaimed, magic radiating from her body, tinged with that special flavor of affection; her hand drifted right towards Karkat, and Jade knew that was just the right thing. “That’s the key!’ she thought. ‘That’s how to get big!’

And perhaps just to prove her point, Terezi grew. A little bit taller, but not much; a few inches, maybe. Just as well, given she was already a giant. Her hips swelled out, packing on a few extra inches; perhaps a finger span wider on both sides, and she was already so massively curvy that there might have not been that much to grow. Her clothes creaked heavily, especially as her big butt filled out even more, a few people behind her making awed noises at the wealth of butt they must have seen pushing up from the fabric enclosure. Her tail swelled, getting a little rounder, a little bit more like an eel’s tail…

Her breasts, though, erupted. In a single fluid motion, they swelled outwards, fluxing out like a cup being filled with water. They billowed, the teardrop shape growing more pronounced; from her gut, down to her waist. Her breasts expanded, and sideways too, swelling out so much that Terezi’s broad shoulders couldn’t even be seen. Most of her formidable body shape, in fact, was obscured; just her big hips, her huge thighs, the tail and wings, and those massive boobs.

Fabric tore. Her gut forced her boobs apart as it settled down, her stomach rising through the cleavage, and her shirt started to fray under the impact.

It was the quickest growth, and a particularly dramatic one; it was over almost immediately, and Jade gawked when she just had to acknowledge the reality of Terezi’s bustiness.

“Hah!” Terezi thrust her breasts out, openly delighted. “Beat that!”

Jade huffed. “Oh, I will!”

Karkat goggled. “Okay oh wow that is BIG.

From the side, Terezi’s breasts stuck out at least several additional feet; she probably couldn’t gather them up even if she stuck her arms out and pulled as much of her boobs in as possible. And given how big she was, they were big enough to use as exercise balls, or to sleep with. And from Karkat’s size… they must have looked so massive.

Terezi was probably thinking about that. Still smiling, she picked up Karkat, ignoring his usual token protests at being manhandled, and stuffed him right into her cleavage. His head popped out, expression suddenly completely calm, and then she pushed him down, completely contained.

Her face looked so peaceful. “Ooh yeah. That’s the stuff.” She grinned at Dave and Jade, gawking at her. “Hope this gives you ideas, Jade. Buh-bye!” With that, she walked off, Karkat encased in her cleavage.

Dave watched her go. Even her back was hypnotic, butt swelling up like a pair of wagons attached to her. “Sure did a number on her,” he said weekly. “What do you think she meant by that, anyway?”

“I dunno,” Jade lied. She thought about being so big she could do that to Dave.. stuffing him so close to her…

Her shirt felt tighter. Her breasts wobbled all on their own, and suddenly surged  a few sizes bigger. Dave saw the growth. “Did-did you just grow? Without taking any potion?!”

“Ooh, that’s… new!” She wasn’t really thinking about it, though. She was still watching Terezi strut off, all sexy and big.

“You’re not worried? Huh. Neat, I guess.”

She wasn’t really listening, either. Privately, Jade felt a surge of… envy, she supposed. Not that wasn’t quite it. It wasn’t that she wanted what Terezi had now.

She wanted more than what Terezi had now; it was like a competition, in some way. Terezi had outdone her, for now. But… her eyes narrowed. She wouldn’t let herself stay outdone!

She glanced up at Terezi’s mammoth body, where Karkat peacefully resting between her breasts, and she thought that maybe she DID envy Terezi having a boyfriend she could fit into her boobs. She then looked at Dave with an appraising look that made him feel strangely snuggly.

------

It had been quite some time since Chahut and Konyyl had been in town. The pair of them spent a great deal of time traveling abroad, to the other scattered townships and city-states, trading where they could and gathering things to sell back home. To be honest, and they’d had to correct others on this point (Konyyl irritably, and Chahut with a gentleness belying the terrible violence she could perform), they didn’t do the actual trading. They were hired muscle, protecting the merchants from bandits, overly strict travel policies, and sometimes shaking down someone trying to weasel out of paying on a deal.

They enjoyed their work; the traveling, and the hitting things. Still, while they’d been very well paid for what they did, staying on constant work wasn’t as appealing as the thought of going home until the next trade season rolled around.

Chahut was a very tall woman, even among trolls, who were generally bigger than humans or carapacians. Konyyl was a big woman too, and the two of them had similar thick-set body types; Konyyl with more obvious musculature, but given that Chahut was nearly twice her size, she looked bigger in every way. The two of them normally had no trouble clearing the way, with size and dark charisma and sheer force of ‘don’t mess with me’.

‘Normally’ being the keyword.

“I don’t, uh, recall everyone being this big,” Konyyl said as they walked past a crowd. She stood head and shoulders over most others, her own head somewhere around Chahut’s elbow, but that wasn’t the kind of big she was concerned about. Two carapacians, a few trolls and a human tottering behind them all went past them, diverting around them like water around a stone, and each of them had breasts as big as prize-winning pumpkins; the smallest had breasts as big as their heads, and the largest… their torsos, and some of their stomachs, couldn’t even be seen behind a wall of cleavage.

In fact, just about everyone they saw was sporting a bustline that dwarfed the pair of them. Konyyl crossed her muscular arms over her chest self-consciously. It was making her feel… small.

“Me neither,” Chahut said eventually. She sounded diffident, calm. But then… was she? Her voice had a slight tone of uncertainty. She glanced down at herself. Chahut wasn’t exactly a proud beauty, and Konyyl supposed that Chahut had never regarded her amplitude as anything except a minor facet of her physical form, but still. This was concerning.

“Something must have happened while we were gone,” Konyyl said, looking very off-balanced. “Some kind of weird magical event… maybe a weather thing, loaded up with magic?”

“A boob-storm?” Chahut’s tone dripped with amusement. “Now there’s a weird image.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Like to see you explain what’s going on here!”

Chahut turned. Their latest employer was hurrying over to them, and she noticed something else that way. “A potion that makes boobs bigger got real popular, maybe?”

“Well, maybe.”

“Look, little beefy.” Chahut pointed, and Konyyl turned. Down that way, there was a small advert board; freshly painted, from the smell. It displayed a grinning Jade Harley (a familiar figure to the both of them, though they didn’t know her closely, but everyone bought from Jade; they’d spent a lot of time at her shop, taking deliveries for a trading run), her face squeezed into a corner. The rest of it was taken up by her breasts, flooding over the entire billboard; absurdly massive, they were, extending out by at least five feet! The style of the ad was fairly cutesy, as fit her tastes in artwork, but they looked big enough to dip to her thighs, so big she could sleep on them.

ON the ad, between the art-drawn Jade, there was a bottled potion. “Want a bustline like mine? Come down to Jade’s Alchemical Esoterica for all your bust expansion needs!” the ad’s text said, in a cheery green font.

“Konyyl! Chahut!” said their employer, a human, and pointed at the ad. “Did you see!?”

“Kind of hard not to,” Konyyl quipped. Chahut nodded gravely.

“Not that! I mean… whoa, that’s a hell of an eyecatcher… but no! I mean, Jade’s shop is that way! Have you seen her yet!?”

“No?” Konyyl tilted her head. “Why?”

“I just… look, I gotta get a group together. We’ll need to find a demonstrator, and a caravan equipped to transport potion goods… gods, we’ll make so much money! But, ah!” The human fretted, trying to balance too many things at once in the mind, and thrust two large pouches heavy with coinage at them. “Here! So I don’t forget! Your pay for this trip. I gotta go, just… you might wanna drop in at Jade’s?”

And then, the human ran off, so full of excitement that there was a little bit of hopping and dancing. The two troll women watched him go. “Well,” Konyyl said. “I don’t have anything else going on. Azdaja’s got a while before he meets up with me. What about you?”

“Eh, same here. Not the bit about Azdaja,” Chahut replied, with a wry tusk-filled grin. “Let’s check it out, eh?”

The two of them followed the path to Jade’s shop. As they went, they were struck that navigating the marketplace was a more tricky affair than they remembered it being; almost every woman there was obscenely buxom, occupying at least a couple of feet in front of them with enough boobage to produce scandals in some of the more prim places they’d been. Both trolls moved very carefully to avoid bumping into someone’s breasts, and considering how much of that there was, it was very hard going.

It seemed demand for whatever Jade was selling was dropping; there weren’t that many people there, though all of them tended towards the same buxom frame. The few exceptions were doing their best to fix that; as they entered, they heard Jade’s cheery voice: “And try to drain it down in a single gulp! It won’t do any good to save some for later, it’ll transform you just the same. Be sure to drink lots of water and have plenty of food, you’re gonna be hungry!”

There was Jade, standing in her shop, her back turned to the entrance. Konyyl and Chahut were momentarily stunned. Jade looked so… thick. Even more than she used to be, even more than Konyyl! (Though at least, Konyyl reflected, Jade didn’t quite have the muscle.) A fairly slim dress as vibrantly green as her namesake jewel, clinging tightly to a body that seemed to be a waterfall of slowly expanding curves; a broad and huggable torso, an expanding waistline straining the limits of a dress, with hips so broad that it must have been hard to get through a doorway. At least a couple feet across!

Her butt, plump and round enough that a very small caparacian could have sat on it with room to kick up their legs, waggled back and forth as she spoke. Quite a lot of her big, unbelievably wide thighs must have been taken up with that butt. Konyyl felt her mouth go a bit dry, just at the sight of it. Even Chahut seemed impressed.

Though she did seem to have other things on her mind. “What’s that she’s got in front of her?” She wondered, squinting.

“Not sure,” Konyyl said. Two objects spread out in front of Jade from their angle, taking up a lot of space directly in front of her. She shrugged. “Let’s go in and get some answers.” They both stepped in, the bell atop the door ringing. A few people saw them and greeted them; at the door, sitting on a chair and off-duty, was Dave, waving to the both of them.]

“Sup,” He said pleasantly. “Try not to let her mow ya down.”

He sounded like he was talking from experience. He grinned a little saying it, so it wasn't a bad experience, either. Konyyl didn’t get a chance to ask about it; Jade had started turning around when she heard the doorbell, and the prospective potion buyer had already left with their purchase, and both Konyyl and Chahut stopped cold, mouths open and thoughts empty, when they saw Jade from the front.

The advertisement had not exaggerated, in the slightest. Completely obscuring the front of Jade’s body was the biggest… widest… roundest…

Konyyl’s brain shut down, a little bit. Jade approached. The shutting down got worse. There was just so much… bouncing. And that dress! The cleavage deep enough for her to sink into! Over four feet deep! Cut down to the belly, rounder and firmer, and it was making her look so curvy, just like a fertility icon of the Dragon Goddess…

(Distantly, Terezi had a vague feeling that someone was referring to her, or at least her true nature. She shrugged and got on with what she was doing, which was beating Karkat in a game of strategy despite not even knowing the rules.)

It had been a while since Terezi’s big transformation. Jade had taken her challenge to heart; she’d been growing periodically on her own, but she’d boosted the effects with regular intakes of potion, and spending lots of time with Dave, whenever possible, and the effects were definitely knocking the two trolls about.

Even Chahut was completely lost for words. Well, most words. She managed to get out: “...Hi, Jade?”

“WHAT THE HECK,” Konyyl demanded. She flung her beefy arms out, gesturing at Jade. “We leave for like a few months and you’re all… all… everyone is all…” She inhaled. She let it out with a cry of “Big! WHY.”

Jade swept both trolls, taller than her, into a powerful hug. The both of them, by no means frail, made squeaking noises as Jade’s surprising strength shoved the remaining air right out, or perhaps that was the full weight of her monstrously huge boobs shoving into them. From throat to Jade’s legs they spanned her body, probably weighing more than she did. It had to be her own enormous strength that prevented them from being a physical hindrance, or some kind of wacky magic?

Jade parted from them, the pair still stunned. “So!” She said, a flirty tone in her words. Dave watched, grinning expectantly. “How do I look~?”

“You look… good,” Konyyl said weakly.

“Big,” Chahut agreed, and it was so very surreal to see her look so shaken.

Jade grinned. “You guys haven’t been in town a while. I bet everyone’s looking a little bigger than they used to, eh?”

Konyyl made the connection; the advertisement, Jade’s potions, Jade’s own size… “Was it… did you do a magic thing?”

Jade pulled out a basketful of potions that could have fit into her cleavage with ease. Given that she did a little twirl before bringing it out, it was entirely possible she’d been hiding it in her cleavage for such a dramatic moment. “I might have come up with a potion that does some boob embiggening, yeah!” She grinned wickedly, dangling one in front of them. Both women stared at it, sense of intrigue naked on their expressions. “What do you think? Might you be interested?”

“I might,” Chahut said.

Konyyl tugged out her coin purse. “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY, SEDUCTRESS!”

Jade giggled and passed their purchases as Chahut and Konyyl got a couple each. “Be sure to take them when you’re with someone that you’re close to, or at least makes you feel happy. Like a friend, or something romantic.” She looked at Dave for a moment, across the shop, and absently tapped a massive breast, as if to say ‘he is responsible for this’. “It, um. Seems to help make bigger growth.”

Chahut and Konyyl glanced at him, and then Jade. Chahut made a heart-shape with her fingers. Konyyl said, “You and him…? Is that a thing?”

Jade fluished. “Well, I dunno. Um.” Her confidence, so recently ironclad and as abundant as her bustline, faltered. “It might be?”

The two women chuckled at that, with the tone of someone who had suspected it was a thing for quite a while, and left. Well, Jade thought, People were going to assume it was a thing, the way they liked to talk!

She didn’t really mind the thought, though.

It felt… official.

-------

And then, a few weeks onward, and word spread: even faster and wider than Jade’s bustline, or the average growth rate in town. Word of Jade’s marvelous bust-enhancing potions, and the increases many people had reported in their physical strength.

Caravans had already left, loaded up with bust potion, to peddle them to distant lands. Already, people who’d heard of it from travelers bearing incredibly massive breasts had come there, and left with potions and mighty busts of their own. And they’d told people, who came and told others when they got back…

And word had spread, of this town with its genius alchemist who’d captured a little bit of the past and its faculty for body modification elixirs for fun and profit.

Now, people were coming to town every day, caravans of them, traders zeroing in on the town, and not just for the potion, but for the other goods the town offered.

So, feeling rather dazed, Jade found herself being handed a big trophy, and a hearty handshake from the mayor.

A small, impish figure (so similar to the imps that lurked outside town, in fact, that Jade felt bad when her excursions required fighting them), his black shell glistening in the light like a little playing piece in the kind of games Terezi liked to play. Jade felt enormously self conscious and smiled awkwardly as what must have been a good portion of the town sat expectedly in the auditorium, listening to his speech. Or what bits they could understand; the Mayor spoke exclusively in the private language of the carapacian people, and the Chief Courier translated hurriedly, as best she could. Judging from her winces and split-second word swaps, the Mayor’s actual words were probably fairly profane and coarse at best.

“...And so, for your breakthrough in aesthetic transfigurations bringing such trade to us, we have prospered as we never have before!” The chief courier said. “Food, valuable minerals, magical substances of every kind, and livestock are flooding in, and we are doing better than we ever had!’”

“I didn’t mean to start an economic revolution,” Jade said meekly. “I just thought people would find my invention cool…”

“Well, we’re getting filthy stinking rich,’” the courier said, her expression implying this was the nice translation. “‘So all’s good! In my book! Now, go on, take your… um… yeah, I can’t translate that.” The mayor scowled at her, and waved a hand at Jade.

Jade took the award, a heavy gold thing that would look very nice on a necklace, though it’d probably sink into her cleavage. “Oh, very well… thank you so much! I’m glad to be of service!”

She bowed to the enriched crowd as they applauded, but she tried not to bow too much. Her boobs had continued to grow and grow, and her experiments had finally died down a little in efficacy; regardless of what she put in them, she was only getting a little bit of growth, and she figured she had reached the peak of what her potion could reasonably do, for the present. Her breasts had reached the biggest size she could manage for now.

But what a size it was! Most of Jade’s body mass was now in her breasts, she wasn’t any skinnier or less thick (indeed, her hips had continued to grow, so much so that doorways were too skinny for her now; four feet across, and counting, with a butt sticking three feet out and just the right shape for Dave to sit on it), but if her weight was to be counted, so much of it was in her breasts that she thought of them as the core of herself now.

She wasn’t sure of the actual weight. The scales kept busting. But they were so large that their bottoms dipped down, down, all the way past her knees! Each breast was four feet height, and over eight feet across, obscuring almost her entire body when seen from a front, a size proportionately equaled by no one. The weight of them moving, when she did, was so divine; she felt such pleasure at every bounce and wiggle, a micro-burst of euphoria whenever it surged forward and dragged her along with it.

She glanced at the crowd; she saw Terezi, looming over it, grinning and wiggling her claws at her, and Karkat on her head like an excitable crown, mirroring her friendly gesture. Near them was Chahut and Konyyl, their own breasts as big as the most abundantly fertile gourds; at least down to the naval, and she felt proud in making such big and beautiful women even larger.

Again she thought: No one is as big as me! She felt proud, and more than the award she held, her own body felt like a testament to her willingness to experiment.

She glanced at Dave. He’d helped. Not just the stuff he’d gathered; just being there for her, and the feelings he brought out in her. That was part of it, she was sure. Every time she’d started to grow really big, he’d been there, making her feel big. A feeling in her heart, expanding out and her body growing to match…

It was wonderfully, obnoxiously sappy. She had to love it.

The Mayor followed her gaze, and misunderstanding her thoughts, spoke at length. “The mayor would like to thank Mister Dave Strider for his tireless efforts in helping Miss Harley… despite it being on work hours,” The chief courier added in a stern tone. The mayor nudged her as if to say ‘get on with it!’. “Oh, right. Anyway. Please step up to the podium?”

“What?” Dave stepped over, looking surprised. “What? Oh, come on. This is all Jade!”

“I couldn’t have done it without your help,” Jade said sincerely, gazing down at him, eyes half-lidded and warm.

He flustered in the light. “Don’t be sappy, come onnnn….”

“I mean it!” She thought of a way to convince him that, yes, she really was saying it to be honest, and a wild idea came in front of her. In front of all these people, though? Part of her qualed at the thought…

But another part of her, proud and reveling in having such a massive, buxom bustline, retorted: ‘If we’re gonna be shy now, what’s even the point of having such magnificent boobs!?”

Jade thus leaned forward, her breasts clearing the floor, and encircling Dave’s whole body; he was caught up in boob-age, enwrapped and captured, and he managed a squeak of alarm as Jade tilted her body up, bouncing him even deeper into her cleavage, his whole body imprisoned and his face closer to her own-

And she moved her face to his own, and kissed him firm, softly, right on the mouth.

Lip to lip, the kiss deepened, like a promise she hadn’t realized she’d made

Dave initially didn’t respond, in his shock. And then, to her delight, he deepened the kiss on his own, sincere and honest as she knew he really was afraid to be. She didn’t think about it being in front of so many people, but later she thought: this was the best way to do it. To prove she was serious, showing it on her big moment.

The mayor, blushing, said something like “oh my!” The chief courier goggled for a moment, and she glanced at the mayor, and considered buying a few potions from Jade later, on the quiet.

“What’s going on?!” Terezi asked impatiently, her senses not able to compensate for her blindness this once.

“Dave and Jade are hooking up, I think,” Karkat said laconically on her head. “She’s doing the kinda thing to him that you like to do to me.”

“Boob sandwich?!”

“Yep.”

“Hah! I knew she’d do that!”

Chahut whistled, very much impressed. Konyyl nudged Azdaja by boob-bumping him; as it was, he’d been sitting down in front of her, his horns and height just right for her to rest her new bustline on top of his head. “This give you any ideas, eh?” She asked, grinning wildly.

“Yeah but I think you beat me to them,” He replied calmly.

The kiss kept going on, as the audience took it in. Dave and Jade, together? The overall vibe was less surprise, or shock or scandal (the town being a fairly amiable place, after all), and more ‘oh so that finally happened’. Not surprising, given the general opinion of the pair.

“All right, all right!” The chief courier said, shushing the smooching pair. “That’s enough! On your own time, you two!”

Jade allowed her breasts to settle, and down Dave went. He gracefully slid through her cleavage and back onto the floor, and awkwardly stepped away. He remembered the heat of her body, blushing intensely. He rarely showed clear emotion, or expressed himself too openly…

But now, he was smiling.

Dirk and Hal, in the crowd, both cracked their own smiles at the sight. “There ya go, little bro,” Dirk said softly.

“You owe me money now,” Hal said gleefully. “And here you bet it’d be another half-year before they hooked up!”

Dirk rolled his eyes and passed the construct some coins. “It was a safe bet. Took them this long to hook up!”

The ceremony ended soon enough, after that. People filed out, one after another, some of them pausing to congratulate Jade again. Others went to congratulate Dave.

But soon enough, the two of them were alone. Dave had some trouble marshalling his thoughts, the feeling of Jade’s warmth everywhere around him so beguiling that it was easier to just lose himself in the memory, not in the now....

He did his best, though. “Hey, Jade?” Dave asked.

Jade, thinking about the lovely feeling of Dave’s whole body in her cleavage, pinned and safe there, his heart beating into her whole-breast pulse, made a soft murmuring sound. “Mm?”

“What do you think about, eh… going on a walk or something. When things quiet down, I mean.”

She smiled sweetly. “I’d like that.” She leaned to the side and kissed him again.

It was the kind of kiss a lover gives.

[mystech-master]

Blazblue rewrites Part 1: The Age of Origin and beginning of the Looping World.

(put this on my Reddit may as well put it here)

As we all know, the Blazblue series is one of the most convoluted and over-complicated pieces of media ever. Mainly due to its quantum physics talk and very chuuni dialogue and a lack of good explanation for a lot of points. Naturally, one good thing about being a fan is that through the power of hindsight we can look at the entire series and basically fix what we think was messed up. Of course, we have this freedom since we are usually individual people, don't have a massive writing staff and marketing we need to appeal to, and pretty much the entire skeleton and pieces are there, they just need to be rearranged and/or be tweaked a bit.

I remember getting into Blazblue around the end of high school/beginning of college, almost 5 years ago. I thought the setting was neat and I am into anime action BS. Of course, the story was bonkers and made no sense until I started looking deeper but the main thing that has bugged me were the characters. There is just so much Bullshit that the characters do and brush off that just irritates me, especially when it comes to Ragna. This series has made me rethink the meaning of life, of showing kindness to people, or if "doing things because it's right" is a good enough excuse, how much should you desire your own happiness? All sorts of existential questions that Blazblue has made me think, not from the plot, but just from the BS character interactions.

If you check out my Ragna the Bloodedge tag, or have just been following me for a while, you will see/know how much I will defend this guy to the fucking grave because of all the bullshit that this guy is expected to take and deal with and it being seen as"inspiring" or "heroic" when it is really just sad to me. It isn't me liking the character, it is just a massive amount of pity and feeling sorry for him, to the point where I kind of have a massive bias towards him and end up making him an all-powerful unstable badass in most of my fic ideas with him. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I wanted to lay out my ideas for how I would make a Blazblue rewrite. If anyone wants to use these in their own fanfic, feel free. I don't give a shit about credit.

Starting with the timeline, we have the XBlaze series, Bloodedge Experience, and the core C-Series (ft.

the Phase Shift Novels, and Remix/Variable Heart Manga). In the actual story these are all separate “Possibilities”, or Timelines/Universes. That is dumb and I think that we can tweak things to make it all one linear timeline.

XBlaze takes place in the year 2050, 50 years before the Dark War is stated to begin, and 149-150 years before the main games start. This is plenty of time to make things different. We know from the backstory that Takamagahara, the god-supercomputer that mankind made, was not completed in this possibility due to Touya’s mother iirc. In my idea, all this does is delay the inevitable, Takamagahara will be made, just at a later date now. (edit) There is also the Mitsurugi agency, which was kind of behind the Wadatsumi incident in XBlaze's backstory. With their connections to the Mage's Guild, the Amanohokosaka Clan, and their desire to get the Azure, we could say that this is the agency that discovered the Susanoo, the Boundary, and did most of these experiments to the Prime Fields.

I do not know the exact year when Bloodedge Experience takes place, but I am going to estimate around 10-15+ years from XBlaze, putting it at 2060-2065+, since they do mention Mei as the head/leader of the Amanohokosaka Clan. I am not too sure what the branching-off point is here, Valkenhayn mentions Clavis having killed Naoto in the core C-Series Possibility so maybe it was during their initial meeting. But is Naoto surviving gonna change that much? The only other detail that would need addressing would be Raquel’s relationship with Rachel. According to the wiki bio “Raquel was created when a user of Soul Eater went havoc and killed hundreds upon thousands of people. Clavis Alucard stopped the user and killed them, but was forced to take the lives of 128,932 people in order to do so. When this happened, he held an Embryo. Three years later, the Embryo became Raquel and she was born. Maybe sometime later Raquel could end up being killed or something and another Embryo results in Rachel. I mean we never see or hear mention of a mother, or maybe it’s some reincarnation thing? IDK. We see how stern Clavis was with Raquel, so maybe seeing his first “daughter” die he ends up spoiling the next one rotten, leading to the kind of haughty holier-than-thou Rabbit we know today.

However, all of this needs to be put in perspective of the Origin and Terumi. I may mess up some of the finer details.

The plot of Blazblue started when Susanoo ditched his body, the Susanoo Unit, and then mankind discovered it underground. They excavated it, dug deeper, and found a Cauldron which led to the Boundary, within which they found the Master Unit, the God Computer that would allow them to control reality, and beyond that, they found the Azure, basically the primordial absolute force of the Blazblue Universe. However, the Master Unit can only respond to something anthropomorphic/humanoid and humans can’t survive the Boundary. So they made the Prime Field Devices, Androids meant to go into the Boundary. Pretty weirdly specific criteria that results in robot girls but I don’t see how I can mess with this.

One of them manages to reach the Master Unit and upon touching it she gains the Eyes of the Azure which gives it the power of the Azure and basically becomes not only sentient, but basically a god. The Humanity, freaked out about her new free will and the power she now has, tosses her back into the Boundary. Within the Boundary, the PFD, the Origin as we know her, sees her “sister” units all being tortured. Most likely to break any souls they have so the scientists don’t have to deal with their “free will” getting in the way of their plans. Maybe to bring in Terumi telling Noel that they became weapons, other groups heard of the guys making the PFDs and them getting god power and obviously would be trying to stop them/take this power for themselves, so they decided to make the PFDs into mindless robo-soldiers to fight them off. Origin gets mad and ends up making all of them sentient. Probably by Observing them as sentient, like she sees all of these things “like her” so obviously they must be sentient or at least have the potential for sentience. Kind of like Jotaro going “It’s a similar type of Stand '' to DIO and then getting Time Stop.

Anyways now mankind is fighting these robot girls who want revenge for being treated like tools, all humanity sees is all these in-human weapons killing them for no reason, just because destroying is what a weapon does, and with the Master Unit’s Phenomenon Intervention, they can just rewrite all of their failures into victories. Mankind sees the Origin and the Master Unit as basically the same thing, an evil machine god. His leads into why the Origin and Amaterasu can’t just be separated so Ragna doesn’t have to sacrifice himself to stop the time loops, the world sees The Origin and Amaterasu as one, there is no distinction. This is also apparently the time period when Clavis Alucard helped mankind make the Izayoi, with its Immortal Breaker and ability to resist Observation to fight against the Origin and the PFDs. Ironic that it eventually became known as the prototype for the Lux Sanctus: Murakumo, but I’ll talk about that later.

So what does mankind do? Make a Black Beast to destroy it. I mean we are told to believe that a Black Beast is the result of Azure Grimoire (or just a piece of the Azure) + Murakumo Unit = either a Black Beast if the fusion is imperfect, and a powerful Kusanagi God Slayer is done right. But tell me, why the hell would they build ANOTHER Prime Field Device to fight the PFDs? I will be getting into the exact nature of Black Beasts later. Mankind is apparently cool with the Black Beast destroying the world because so long as they can get the Azure and plug it into Takamagahara, which is basically a manmade Master Unit supercomputer, they can just reset time. But due to a bug or something, the Master Unit stopped this and when the world was destroyed she just made a new one based on her memories. This is the world the characters live in now. And since the last thing she remembers about the world is the Black Beast and obviously she doesn’t want the world to hate and try to kill her, the Black Beast enters the world with everyone having no context to its existence and no other enemy to fight, leading to the Black Beast going from a weapon of Mutually Assured Destruction, to the new Ultimate Evil Enemy of the World.

A few things we need to take note of here.

XBlaze and Bloodedge Experience would need to take place during the Age of Origin, between mankind discovering the Boundary but before the Prime Field War starts. I mean the two things needed for that part to start would be Prime Fields and Takamagahara, and while there is Es who is sort of a PFD, you could simply say that her model isn’t suited for full Boundary Exploration. I know I am really glossing over the Embryo stuff about her but I haven’t seen XBlaze stuff in a while and I would need to find a way to connect it with the Embryo in Centralfiction.

Apparently, there was some off-screen war in which Hihiirokane (the Soul Cutting Sword protected by Jubei’s clan, used by his brother Tomonori to fight Terumi, then put in Clavis’ grave) was used to fight some enemy, “Outside of logic”. I have no idea what this is and it feels like something that shouldn’t be glossed over.

Mankind made a Black Beast on their side to get the Azure and fight the Master Unit, which A. means that in a weird way the Black Beast was sort of on mankind’s side at first before the Origin retconned it into being the destroyer, and B. mankind would have needed to make a Murakumo Unit to fight the Murakumos, knowing that the Origin is making them sentient and turn on them, which kind of feels like a dumb move. But again, I will get to this later.

This will all lead into the Looping World. Now, this is weird because of the main thing which the loop revolves around, The Black Beast. It is either A. as Terumi says in CS, a Cauldron that went batshit (which is precedent by the short story That Which Is Inherited where Sector Seven tries to smelt a Nox but everything goes tits up and a Black Beast forms from the Cauldron (no souls or prime field required), or B. a Time Displaced Ragna and Nu. The Black Beast is a Self-Observing weapon. Observation in Blazblue basically means “deciding if/how something exists” by Observing itself, the Black Beast declares its existence in this time period, which means that no matter what time paradoxical BS you may try to pull, it will always appear (Kind of reminds me of the Time Medallions Clockwork gives team Phantom in Danny Phantom). But a less mind-mushing way to look at it could simply be that, no matter what, this will always happen. Like, say the Assassination of Kennedy is Observed as an event that must ALWAYS happen, then even if you find and stop the sniper. He is gonna still die. Maybe there is another sniper, maybe the sniper gets a good hit on you and manages to make another shot down the road, but anyway you slice it, Kenedy gets shot. That event is permanently locked in history and no matter what you do, this event is inevitable.

But suggestion A is weird because it could either mean that 1. He is talking about the first Black Beast from the Age of Origin, or 2. Since that part of the story probably wasn’t written yet and they are talking about this specific Beast, he is talking about the Dark War Black Beast, in which case there actually was a bit of time before the time loops started, or at least the very first loop, so then there was a bit of time before shit went sideways.

Maybe the Origin didn’t make a Black Beast war and it was all Terumi’s idea. The world would’ve continued as normal but since Terumi hated the Master Unit and mankind wanted power, they tried to make a Kusanagi but it fucked up and made a Black Beast, but without a publicly known Prime Field War to justify it, mankind doesn't see this as a necessary evil which will get the Azure and then reset the world better for them, it’s just a big evil monster.

Okay, that is my interpretation of the Age of Origin for my Blazblue rewrite idea. Not many changes since this is all pretty self-contained and not much needs expanding on. Just make sure to justify some actions and connect the three timelines. I probably missed out on a lot of finer details but I think I got the broad strokes of it. Feel free to correct me.

Next time I will cover the Dark War and hopefully go into explaining how I would make the Powerset make a bit more sense (Ars Magus, Grimoires, Nox Nyctores, the Azure Grimoire, and the Black Beast).