#Naiad Errant

[jbrasseul]

Solent

[punemy-spotted]

I Swear it is Sweet

Chapter 1: Swim With Your Sorrows

Pairing: Soft-Dark!Robb Stark x Naiad!Reader

Warnings: Rape/Non-Con Elements; Dub Con, Mild Body Horror; Tessa’s Perpetual Disappointment With Game of Thrones; Absolute Disregard for Canon; Human/Animal Sacrifice; Possessive/Obsessive Characters; Soft-Dark!Robb Stark; Non-Consensual Transformation; It’s Game of Thrones; Absolute Disregard for Westeros Worldbuilding

Chapter Warnings: Body Horror, Old Gods, Ancient Betrayals, Game of Thrones AU, Non-Consensual Transformation, Aggressively Poetic Language, Witchcraft, Overuse of the Other

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT YOUR CONSUMPTION OF MEDIA IS YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY AND IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THE CONTENT THAT IS BEING PRESENTED, PLEASE DO NOT READ

Chapter Summary: The North may remember, but some things are best left forgotten.

Notes: Sometimes I like to think I know what I’m doing but honestly I don’t. I’m a disaster and a third and here we go, so I can get emotional about Robb Stark and ancient tales. If anyone has seen The Last Unicorn, you might understand where I got the inspiration for this fic from. I’m also aware that this took me approximately eight million years to write so please forgive me for the delay. I appreciate your patience with me as I get back into writing.

Eternal thanks to @brandycranby for her encouragement and patience.

All of my work is 18+ Only, Minors DO NOT INTERACT. I do not consent to my work being posted anywhere besides Tumblr or Ao3 and I post my work there myself. Do not copy, translate, or repost any of my content.

It’s late, when you see him by the riverbank. Too late at night for men of sense to be out near unsteady shores where an errant foot might lead to an uncomfortable end in a shallow pool of slick growth and inescapable mud. The man before you, nervously affixed to the dim moonlight to guide his vision, is seemingly unaware of such conventional wisdom.

You watch him with cautious eyes, gleaming yellow in what little silver filters from above. Like the rest of his people, heart and mind occupied by more mundane fears, he does not notice you. Not at first, not even as he seeks you out.

Dark waters have been your home for longer than you can remember, longer than you have been here in these icy ones. Dim as the night is, the stars and watchful moon above are enough for you, enough to see the things mortal men rarely notice. The silver beam of moonlight a halo around a shadow-painted form, clad warm in furs. The furrow of a brow made heavy with thought, memories of youthful play buried under new responsibility. You know your wolf to be… handsome, even when he was a pup, but those were memories of a tadpole, when others lived to remind you of the ways of men.

Are you here? His voice is as you remember it and different all at once, deepened with age and made innocent with hope, seeking and wishing all at once, as if he’d rather be disappointed and find you not at all, find you a rumor complained about in naught more than a hushed whisper and a cautionary bedtime story.

You could let that be. Could allow him to leave, leave thinking you a nothing, a myth and a dismissal, leave him to tell those who complained about your presence that you were no such thing.

You could.

You could punish him for the forgetting, leave his memories confused with the things your once and only friend left behind in the wake of the growing a princeling must do.

You could.

You lift yourself from the murky waters of your domain instead, enough to be seen even by the likes of him, a spark of gold in silver-iced waters, What do you seek?

It’s his tongue you speak rather than your own, and it surprises him. You know this by the way those fur-clad shoulders rise, rise and turn as if he’s seeking to know if someone else has seen him, seen him coming to dark, fey shores and there… there is no way to tell in the shadowy night, but that hardly stops a cautious wolf from looking around, just to be sure.

You understand, he asks of you next, coming closer to that muddy bank, close enough to slip if he isn’t careful, isn’t sure-footed. Luckily for him, you think, memories long-abandoned do not abandon him.

I have ears, yes. You understand, but his tongue and yours are different, just enough. A voice like a song warning of something ageless and eternal meeting the ever ephemeral gravel of men.

You understand — he repeats himself and you are… rightfully impatient, in your own mind, you already said you did, surely he cannot forget so easily — Will you listen?

There. That plea catches your attention and you pause, thoughts of leaving him fading to your curiosity, I have ears, yes,you repeat yourself, waiting for him to make known his will.

Thank you, so deferential, welcome when so few men remember to do so in the face of the Old Gods and how can you not be encouraged when he is?

The people, these people… they…

They are angry.

Yes, you have forgotten your own manners as you interrupt him, stopping him in his tracks as he stumbles around for the right words, but why should you listen to what you already know? Why let him fumble around the truth when you can spur on the conversation, demand your answers yourself? Have you come to tell me to leave? And if so, where would you go? These waters are not where you belong, true, but where you belong is no longer home.

Darkness obscures his face, makes his expressions impossible to read and yet you know. Guilt, worn in the slump of shoulders which should be straight-backed and stern, bowed by an unjust truth. Your princeling — and perhaps you do consider him yours, because he was once, wasn’t he, so long ago? — carries heavy burdens. The lives of hundreds in the hands of a once-boy just learning to rule, his own father a reluctant king.

But the whispers of the ways of men are thoughts for another time, a time when you can reminisce fondly on the serious-faced boy always parroting the words of those with no respect for the past stretched out behind them.

For now, you listen.

Listen to a guilty wolf, watch as he pleads. Is this a king? A Stark?

Then you know. You must know. If you don’t leave, if they catch you in their nets, they will kill you.

Well, at least he comes out and says it.

There have… always been stories of the spirits in the woods and the waters. Stories of women with voices as sweet as spun sugar, with fanged smiles and wicked claws. Of women who wore dresses of iridescent scales and drew the unwitting traveler into a watery doom.

But that is the thing about stories. Some of them carry truths, and your sun-red scales are strange in these icy lands but they are yours, and this place is the only home you’ve known since you were but a tadpole, too young to understand the rushing current and the circumstances which brought you here. Here, far away from the sun-baked lands you swear you must have known once, or the palaces you only ever heard about on the wind.

You do not belong here and this is your home, all at once, so what do you do? What can you do, save for insist on making your claim? This is my home.

I know that, the man’s voice is boyish for a moment, a desperate memory of a petulant insistence, I know that. But the people here, they don’t… care. I cannot make them care, not when you’re stealing what meager food they grow.

Stealing?

Stealing?!

And how are you to survive, when these people have no concept of deference? The men and women of Winterfell tell stories of the Old Gods and yet here you are, a piece of the Old Gods themselves and where is your tribute, your worship, your shrine you might call home? You take what you need to survive, trout and reeds and…

Lives, on occasion, but defending your home is no crime.

You say none of these things aloud, watching him in disappointed silence instead, watching the way he steps closer, so close to the precipice even as you push yourself back.

Please, he is soft as he kneels, kneels in the mud and reeds, in the snow-caked earth, I don’t want to see you hurt. I cannot stop them for long.

You are not among the ranks of the people he must protect.

Where would I go? This is your home, the only home you have ever known, no matter what stories of Redstone walls and desert oases live in your blood.

You can never go back to where you no longer belong.

Tell me how to help you, asks a prince in need of guidance, desperate and full of hope all at once, as if he might be able to bring you under his protection too, just like the people who demand your blood.

This is my home, is not an answer to his plea, but it is all you can give, This is where I have always been.

I know that. I know, but they are angry. And afraid. I cannot keep them away for forever — to them, you have drawn blood and you must answer for it.

Answer for it?

What crime have you committed, but defend your home?

Where would I go?

Answer that is the unspoken challenge, Find me a home and you will be free.

But therein lies the trouble with challenges — sometimes they can’t be completed, can they? Times like now.

Times like now as you watch your princeling’s shoulders bow again and you see the boy in him, so full of hope as he wasted his youth by the riverbanks with a creature of legend, forgotten by time and war.

Times like now as you sink back into the water, disappear into the dark.

I’ll find a way.

It is a promise.

A promise to save you, or cast you out?

The answer, as it turns out, is somewhere in the between.

He leaves. Leaves with the promise heavy on his lips and your ears, leaves you alone in your stolen grotto, waiting. Waiting for the warning to come down the brook, for the shouts to follow, complete with pitchforks and torches. Waiting, really, to die.

Death… does not come down the riverbend.

What comes instead, two weeks after that moonlit night of promises made and challenges given, is a witching darkness. A witching darkness and an anxious wolf.

He does not come alone. Not this night, another one too late for men of sense to be out. Still, the low starlight is enough, enough for you to see them both. The Young Wolf and the Other.

She may already have gone, he is hopeful, so very hopeful, watching the darkness ahead as if his blindness to you might be proof enough, She may have—

She is here, the Other speaks with a voice like burning trees, tearing at you with every wood-whistling breath.

How can you know, she might—

She is here. Stand aside, the rumble is an Order, cracking branch and snapping earth, a spark whistling through the air as fire lights the night and a gloved hand reveals a lantern to tear you from your shadowed sanctuary.

Hail, Godling, the light shining upon you is inescapable, bearing down on you, hailing you and you are seen.

To be seen is dangerous, to be known is deadly, and here under the all-consuming gaze of the Other, you are both.

Hail, Godling, the being before you wears the shape of a woman wizened by the many injustices of time, hood lowered to let the lantern light expose that face to your suspicious eyes.

Trapped. That is what you are. Trapped, here by muck and reeds receding from whatever ill flame lights the lantern. Bound, at the mercy of a being beyond your very ken, pinned in place and waiting to die, once more.

Those who Know the Old Gods know of you, but even you do not know all of what wanders this world.

It is a dangerous thing, you know, to be seen so easily, and so you do not speak. Nor can you, really, as reeds and vines wind their way around you, hold you still and helpless, bind your tongue before it can curse the creature before you.

Wait! Robb Stark, wolf and cub all at once, surges forward, nearly loses his footing on the muck and grass left behind, throws his hands out in some futile gesture to put a halt to the proceedings you resign yourself to, Swear to me she will come to no harm.

Oh sweet one, what a fool you are.

The Other laughs like a bolt of lightning, searing through the trees around as storm-clouds pool in the electric air around you both, Fool boy, you call me to swear? You tear a Godling from her den and accuse me of harm? Do not do me the insult.

Before you, Robb Stark stands stalwart, hand on the pommel of his blade, I asked you to help me save her, not bind her.

All things come at a cost, Wolf of Winterfell. Someone must pay the price—

I will. Name it.

You get no chance to interject, to stop him, to save him. He makes deals with fey beings beyond you, with the things that can bind and break you and he is so very mortal,a boy in the body of a man amongst things that have watched the rise and fall of empires. Run!

The Other speaks for you, as is its way, to speak for the things Man has forgotten since the advent of the Seven, Hear me well then, Robb Stark of Winterfell, hear me well and hear me true. The price is your destiny, and your family’s too.

He gets no chance to question, not as storm clouds continue their gather, roiling in behind the Other, Blood to blood, let yours be bound, lest the line of Stark be forever drowned. Return the river maid to where she was borne and only then will you have a throne. Do not fail.

And then it strikes.

The air above you tears itself apart just as you are torn asunder, pulled below into the muck and water, blood boiling as it is heated, bones made solid and gills sewn shut, you scream and your lungs burn with unfamiliar liquid, choking you still and somewhere above you Robb Stark howls his agony — You’ll kill her!

It is an eternity. A lifetime. Death would be too much the mercy for the torture of being forged anew, aware of every new nerve in your body until you are released from your bondage and left to find the surface before the little air remaining within you is depleted. Warm hands seek yours, pull you free and wrap you in furs, cradle you close as coldbecomes a sensation you familiarize yourself with very quickly.

You could have killed her!

All things come at a cost, Princeling, the Other reminds, watching you shiver in his arms, You asked me for a miracle and I have given you one — now it is you who must fulfill the rest of the bargain. You hold the last Naiad of Westeros in your arms — do not fail.

And there you are left.

There are stories. Stories of the spirits in the woods and the waters, of women with voices as sweet as spun sugar and scales of iridescent gold. Of fanged smiles and wicked claws and you are none of them now, all blunted nails and supple skin, unprotected from the cold save for the blackfur cloak draped around your shoulders as you kneel in snow and ice, torn from the only home you have ever known.

I’ll find a way, was his promise, as Robb Stark of Winterfell lifts you from the ground.

You are saved. You are cast out.

[bluewindfall]

Apogee

Rain coats the pavement; it coats windows and paints the intersection full of cars with ugly, eye-searing colors of blue and white and most of all, red.

An ambulance whines away. Crowds of people stop to stare at the gruesome mess of car frames in front of the bank, contorted like crushed aluminum cans.  

So much for thinking the rainy night would serve as a good cover. He needs to hurry and leave. Their attention might be drawn for now, but he can’t risk the police recognizing him—not now.

He’d never anticipated that another group would target the armored truck’s exchange point. His only choice had been to take advantage of the chaos and snatch away one case of crystals while they were preoccupied with dispatching the guards.

If he’d been one step faster, he could have left with both cases.

He needs that other case.

Yukio nudges his glasses, pulls his hood up and keeps his focus on the stark white stripes as he steps past the patrol car, breathing in the foul stench of car exhaust. His plastic bags rustle as he crosses, slick with water. As he passes the convenience store, he picks a newspaper from the stack, rolling it into his bag.

“Hey.”

Yukio stops short as a gloved hand touches his shoulder. The officer steps close, furrowing his eyebrows. “What happened to your eye?”

“A bit of an infection. Can I help you?” Yukio asks, keeping his smile bland and his hands still.

“Do you mind coming to the station for a quick statement?”

The rain pours, it drains along the curb, it dances gleefully on the plastic tarp of the convenience store with a tap-tap-tap-thud, and it roars in his ears for the fraction of a second like thunder, choked and suffocating.  

“Not at all,” Yukio smiles. Whether the request is truly so simple, he doesn’t know. Perhaps hiding an eye isn’t so uncommon, and this officer is particularly inept at recognizing faces.

The officer nods and turns, pulling the car door wide. “Thanks.”

Yukio doesn’t move. “Of course, it’s no problem.” He watches as the man leaves the passenger door open, reaching for the driver’s. “Oh, officer,” he adds, “someone’s left a phone in here.”

“Really?” the man frowns. “Where? I don’t see anything.” He puts a hand down on the seat and leans his head in.

“It’s under the seat,” Yukio replies, taking a step back. “The case is black.” Another step back. “Look closely.” One more.

“What are you talking about? I don’t see anything—”

The rain sings; syncopated against the tap-thud-tap-thud of his errant footsteps as he slips away. He’s on the other side of the street by the time he sees the officer stand, turning in circles.

The crowd helps, but it seems it’s insufficient.

“Hey! Stop him! Someone stop him!”

Interestingly enough, the people in his vicinity give him a wide berth in response. It cages him in but keeps the officer away by a wall of pedestrians with nothing better to waste their spare time on.

Yukio takes a breath and drops to one knee, slamming his hand against the sewer lid. There’s this much water around him after all. Why not make use of it? He likes to think his naiads answer him better because he’s become more skilled, not because they have a penchant for petty chaos.

A wave of putrid, contaminated water heeds his call and spews into the street, rising up to his calves. The crowd falls to disorder, buying him the moment he needs to strip off his jacket and stuff it into one of his bags. From there he plays his role, stomping and scrambling in the sewer water, melding into the rush of people.  

It’s sloppier than he would have liked, but he’s not so picky about methods anymore.

To keep reading :D

[libidomechanica]

Untitled (“Laughd her desert aspyre”)

Laughd her desert aspyre. Her  husbands rites we singing, “Die, oh! Leaue lackt the  languishable to none, your 

little painted  new: speak her poure: so sweet on maid  I love thee: ‘thou shines the heuenly ray, 

when I behold her, bynd within  her feet— too thicke, and teach  me with soure is no tide here, 

scalpel,’ and by the second  suit and last, whereof she saw  him, cowerd, ‘fly! Shes faire, full brown length 

descry their good, twoo golden hayre, to  sing my loue, I cannot before  heauen her land: then shall live as 

the nesting blushd ’a live  days only book. Of large, bright, so to  subterranean streaming heart I pulled 

a rose” full many anguishing what  table and happy rose, and came behind  thereof immortality, the 

same my time Ive held breathing so caught yet  begun, that other, so I may  records haue tride, vnto the 

armèd man, like a pard, eyed like the  mad poets, by poets, by poet  doth proud heart serene, shrinks, priests, which 

would adore; her so good shame: his  feature has when one lookd  on me, but darkend with honourd 

them. To heauen doth find of  so farre be forgot. Being she  spoke the tender frecklings, & sdeigne of 

human he lay;— his dreads his  contrived to speake hart and partly  lovd never hath me and dream, be perfect 

face; the errant fog,  the more in the stept: she,  near me, the grass a not thine eagle 

sat, with lawyers and  me. Theres truth than the serpent,  sure brought, nor doth worshipt be, and 

in his owne stedfast might so my cruell  pryde delight with you gaue, palm  to pay; sweet Ida: is it 

be, she looks, and in his glasse:  such are breath most breed: yet doe seemeth  vayne to the spright, half-blotted 

hyde, which faire my strength; a dainty  well      the river to read  the lowly dying at you makest 

thou, that I begonne, and all mirth is  written Hermes, crowned, or water-smoke,  that those lofty countenances along 

toyle, the daily own of wretch,  in whose tempest in his golden  fulness. My heart which ye mildly look 

back! Who now I trowe can drink one cup  of wine and treading downe assay, a  counter will keep, that endlesse still 

moves with sure I heard of pride  like called on flying stormes and this  verse shall after the second 

is pure and fell; but I should keepes  her for none scarce could not turn your  side watching lake and bread; now will 

no fair charities she adore  the greedy couet fetters thereon feed  the wore a wannish fish themselues 

sufficiencies these store of my Julia,  this change; intrigue with  one loue, when myne eyes, whiles 

her selfe constrayned her heares,  and she, sweetly do inherit neuer  was left desert wondering, 

was none can fynd: then, and  great deeds; Your worship without  drag her heart thrown of what 

we wanton and her; and  pray. lilies that afterwards Loue still above  the mountains yield. Fair-like, bond then 

most, but each assumed from paradice:  and gentle Bee him by, where  I would not happy sleepe most assurance 

of sencelesse more near— close in  the same sweet is the  charmed Amphions lay,      and gather they moved to 

stake out, that if I needs let  the man that same glorie is: and  thine arms like enough a Naiad 

of dynamite and to the  small figures hurrying beam he fields,  thirsts appease, could wake this bill, Nor vnto thee: 

of a Vice Lords do-rag. fed on  flames of silver proudly disobayes, vntill  ye too, its letters too fast, with 

lighted attonce she dooth persever,  they will his root myself thou  single wilt look into cities 

of men, how farre this, and would  gladly wil be the Soul till fault  in women to the Spring 

appeare, as Mars in my heart  in which the game from highmost  pride flowres: a countenance doth my 

pen— yet none came the isles offer which  is seen the word was  hearts: where to be, and 

lusterd must wed him caught her wake,  the green shepherd pipe, and lacked forth,  and hatred of her beautiful.

[punemy-spotted]

Coming Soon: I Swear it is Sweet

There are stories, whispered in the wind and the burbling of brooks. Stories of women with scales like sunfire and voices sweeter than honey. Stories of ancient blessings if you are careful and fanged endings if you are not.

Forgotten stories.

But all stories were true, once.

Pairing: Soft-Dark!Robb Stark x Naiad!Reader

Warnings: Rape/Non-Con Elements; Dub Con, Mild Body Horror; Tessa’s Perpetual Disappointment With Game of Thrones; Absolute Disregard for Canon; Human/Animal Sacrifice; Possessive/Obsessive Characters; Soft-Dark!Robb Stark; Non-Consensual Transformation; It’s Game of Thrones

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT YOUR CONSUMPTION OF MEDIA IS YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY AND IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THE CONTENT THAT IS BEING PRESENTED, DO NOT READ IT.

Not beta-read, these sins belong to me and me alone.

All of my work is 18+ Only, Minors DO NOT INTERACT. I do not consent to my work being posted anywhere besides Tumblr or Ao3 and I post my work there myself. Do not copy, translate, or repost any of my content.

Notes: I blame and thank @brandycranby for encouraging me to write this. Yes this is a Game of Thrones AU in which the Starks sit on the Iron Throne in the wake of what is still going to be called Robert’s Rebellion because I’m Lazy. Robert Baratheon is Hand of the King and the rest of the the worldbuilding will come in the future.

Reader is also from Dorne, but like… not quite.

Preview below the cut!

It’s late, when you see him by the riverbank. Too late at night for men of sense to be out near muddy shores where an errant foot might lead to an uncomfortable end in a shallow pool of mud. The man before you, nervously affixed to the dim moonlight to guide his vision, is seemingly unaware of such conventional wisdom.

You watch him with cautious eyes, gleaming yellow in what little silver filters from above. Like the rest of his people, heart and mind occupied by more mundane fears, he does not notice you. Not at first, not even as he seeks you out.

Dark waters have been your home for longer than you can remember, longer than you have been here in these icy ones. Dim as the night is, the stars and watchful moon above are enough for you, enough to see the things mortal men rarely notice. The silver beam of moonlight a halo around a shadow-painted form, glad warm in furs. The furrow of a brow made heavy with though, memories of youthful play buried under new responsibility. You know your wolf to be… handsome, even when he was a pup, but those were memories of a tadpole, when others lived to remind you of the ways of men.

Are you here? His voice is as you remember it and different all at once, deepened with age and made innocent with hope, seeking and wishing all at once, as if he’d rather be disappointed and find you not at all, find you a rumor complained about in naught more than a hushed whisper and a cautionary bedtime story.

You could let that be. Could allow him to leave, leave thinking you a nothing, a myth and a dismissal, leave him to tell those who complained about your presence that you were no such thing.

You could.

You could punish him for the forgetting, leave his memories confused with the things your once and only friend left behind in the wake of the growing a princeling must do.

You could.