#Putting a large scale protection spell on every person in the city in an attempt to keep the civillian casualties down

[viohra]

Koiđu-zin

[ˈkoj.ðuˌz̪ɪn̪]

Seen as both saint and monster and commonly referred to as just “Koiđu”, he was arguably the most important person of all Viishy history.

Koiđu was born on Earth somewhere near modern day Estonia more than 10.000 years ago. Moments after birth, his magic unleased a fire that consumed his tribe, killing everyone. Another tribe that saw the fireball went to investigate and found the child unscathed in the snow among the charred remains of his people. They took the child in and he was adopted by a couple who had just lost their child weeks prior. He was given the name Koiđu, which in their language meant birch tree.

As a young boy Koiđu learned to hunt and fish and fight. People noticed that despite his young age he was as strong as an adult and as fast as one too. Koiđu was also adept at finding game to hunt almost instinctively.

As years passed, he became an important member of the village and at age 17 was made chief of the tribe after the previous chief died from disease. Koiđu even made a wife from a neighbouring tribe and they were about to have a child.

A few months after being chief, the neighbouring tribe that his wife was from snuck into their encampment and started killing Koiđu’s people. Koiđu’s wife cut his throat in his sleep. Koiđu awoke choking on his blood. Noticing her husband was still very much alive, Koiđu’s wife started stabbing him until he stopped moving, she then left the tent and rejoined her tribe as they were finishing off the rest of Koiđu’s tribe. Koiđu woke up almost immediately with his wounds healing before his eyes, Koiđu left their tent to find carnage and his tribe fighting against his wife’s tribe. Koiđu watched as his wife killed his best friend and in a fit of rage, Koiđu unwittingly let out a wave of energy that ripped apart everything around himself on a molecular scale. Koiđu stood alone in a crater of dust knowing everyone he ever knew and loved was dead: his tribe, his wife (despite her betrayal), and their unborn child.

The next decade Koiđu walked alone eastward, the entire time he met with different people and lived with and helped them in any way he could. He learned many languages, which came as easily to him as water to a stream, and their cultures. He practised his powers and discovered he could do anything he could think of except travel in time to save his village. Once he met the ocean, Koiđu walked into it and travelled under the water for another year, learning and strengthening is abilities against the crushing weight of the water, creating air to breathe, warming his body, etc. He made it to another land with strange peoples. He lived in this warm, perpetually sunny land for 3 decades before again moving eastward again. By his late twenties he had stopped ageing, but he was far into his sixties by the time he left what will later be called California. He crossed North America in 5 years, taking his time to meet the various people through the land as he did prior in his youth.

Once he met the sea he decided to see fly above it and see as birds see, this time it only took him 3 days to reach the new land. And as before he took years the travels, meet people, and learn, but now he travelled by air. He circled the planet a few times, discovering that it wasn't endless like he previously believed. Before he knew it, hundreds of years had passed. He knew hundreds of languages and was able to think of any location and be there in that immediate instant.

He turned his eyes to the stars and set out on a 2000 year journey where he finalised his abilities with the single greatest magical achievement being his terraforming of a large Earth-like planet (3 times the size) to support life. He hollowed the planet and put in structural supports so that it was stable yet had the same gravity as Earth. He brought in flora and fauna and increased the the passage of time around the planet so that the life could spread to every inch. Finally he made the spin of the planet and its orbit align so that time can be accurately kept. When he was done, he settled on a temperate island continent (which will later be called Elensia) since the region reminded him of his 30 year stay in the New World.

For the next few hundred years, Koiđu would visit Earth and build portals to his planet, which he named Wudžemaħ (New Land). He kept time faster on Wudžemaħ because he could spend thousands of years on the planet yet return to an Earth he could recognise, which was not the case the last time he left for two thousand years. At some point he heard legends of powerful people like him, so he travelled to what will later be called the Balkans. It is there he found entire villages of people like him, albeit far weaker. He discovered that somehow he was somehow (re: genetically) related to them, so he told them of a realm they could live and practice their abilities without fearing retribution from other peoples who them as monsters.

For the next few hundred years, Koiđu searched the earth for people like him and planted them onto Wudžemaħ. Then he started noticing magic attacks on human settlements as realised his mistake— he left portals to earth open on Wudžemaħ and the people like him were exploiting peoples on earth. Angered by this, Koiđu drew up the first spell in history and in 4119 BC he activated the spell which send out a blinding light which removed all present people like him and sent them back to Wudžemaħ. He then destroyed all portals and returned to his planet. He forgot he left time sped up so he returned to a planet covered in war thousands of years a bead of his time. He returned the time to a normal speed and set out to fix his mistake. In the city-state of Elensia located on the same landmass he first settled on were a people called the Vyykai (who called Wudžemaħ “Õri‘a”, meaning Fertile Soil). Koiđu found a school there run by a woman named Letha who taught people how to control their abilities. She was one of the strongest people he ever met besides himself, and he traded ideas with her.

Their alliance and magic studies led to the creation of the first magic language (later reformed into Imperial Magic) and the curse which stops children from using magic for twenty years to prevent unnecessary death.

Finally Koiđu thought to better the relationships of the different peoples of Wudžemaħ (now called many different names) by performing a spell that erased their memories of life on Earth and of their languages and replaced their language with that of the Vyykai. This sparked a war with people on one side believing what he did was right fighting against those who thought it was unjust, that he destroyed all their cultures simply for conformity and uniformity, with Letha taking role as their general.

After hundreds of years of war which Koiđu never once participated in, the sides took their places in the world with Koiđu’s supporters living on the continent he first settled many many year prior (now called Elensia after the founding city).

Letha now lived on an island in the southern ocean with a people who will later be called the Vashi. Her group protected information and were attempting to find a way to reverse the damage done by Koiđu. Koiđu visited her and convinced her he wasn't here to fight, but help. He recounted to her the things he saw and did, and his reasonings. These were all recorded and preserved by her order. The only thing he omitted was the location to Earth and he also told her his removal of their language and memories was irreversible. His last act was to use his magic to destroy every atom in his body and finally die after living over 9000 years (4000 or so from Earth's perspective).

The Vyykai would later become ethnically different from one another and call each other different names in the different tongues derived from the Vyykai language. The word to describe the peoples of this world Vyyši (Viishy) comes from this term.

Koiđu is seen as a hated figure for most Viishy cultures, however the Zehzhics see him as a saint and/or demigod. After his death he was awarded the honourific of -zin because he embodied the titan of chaos, change, and death.

[twitchesandstitches]

Wedding Eve in Hoard Keep Commission

Another comm for @alt-hammer set in their Noblestuck AU, this time featuring Porrim and Bronya visiting the land of the Pyropes before the historically unprecedented wedding of Latula and Mituna, introducing Terezi, Karkat and Kankri, as well as Redglare!

Featuring hyper pregnancy, unbirth, size difference, hyper boob, hyper butt, hyper belly, Redglare being really very large, and Kankri attempting to cause musicals.

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There were many ancient buildings from before the modern age of the noble families, of the like that probably would not be made again for many ages.

They were something from an older age; buildings inherently magical, aetheric essence pulsing through them and their own strange functions and unique enchantments like blood through a living thing. There were factories in the underlands of the Zahhak castles, daily pumping out scores of weaponry, armor and the foundations of architecture under the watchful eyes of mechanists who would be sorely loath to admit they had no idea what they were working with. To look inside those factories was to see… well, nothing. Nothing at all in there but a solid, tangible and black emptiness, staring right back with a presence all its own. No one was quite sure what happened to the material they put in.

And there were the massive and ancient ships of the Amporas and Serkets, enormous war machines that could end entire civilizations with the fearsome weaponry at their disposal; larger than some city districts, flying beneath the ocean itself or skipping on the waves with no apparent means of production; death itself to anything on the water. The means to make more was lost, and many felt this was absolutely for the best.

Every one of the noble families (the Megidos in their halls of the dead, the Captors atop the universities of magic and lore, the Pyropes and their dragons, the Leijons in the distant jungle lands and the Maryams in the oasis secured from the walking corpses of long dead monsters, the Zahhak aristocrats and the sea-faring Serket pirate lords, the Makara priesthood atoning for the sins of their blood, the Peixes and the Amporas of the shorelands, and most recently the Vantases and their human kindred-in-arms) had laid claim to one of these mighty relics.

It might, depending on one’s perspective, be a prerequisite. Each of the families was descended from people who had laid claim to one of these relics or taken it for themselves, worked out how to get it operational, and then used it for all it was worth. They had largely remained in power because they were untouchable, some more literally than others. Even the Vantases, who were only a single generation into being a noble house, had done so when they had been found worthy to use such an artifact.

It wasn’t surprising that war had plagued the continent until only recently.

At the far west of the continent, there was a mighty mountain range, covering much of the entire coastline, all the way to the magocracies of the Captors and their metropolitan libraries, and it was the land of the Pyropes. They were the dragon riders, among the largest and strongest of knights, blessed with insight, and empowered by the mighty blood of their ancestors. In the wars of the dragon riders they had won out, and they had laid claim to one such relic that was greatly prized by anyone who wanted to hold their land, for it was literally untouchable in war.

The Pyrope lands were marked by the trees growing across much of the mountain range. These trees, in their many varieties, were probably magical in nature: there were several thousand species alone across any given direction; needle-leaf conifers growing on the highest reaches, flowering trunks that grew into the supports of tree-cities around the cliff sides, expansive banyan trees near the wetter areas of the Vantas wetlands, and massive greenwood trees that were big enough to be mistaken for mountains themselves closest to the sea, but all the trees had this in common: their leaves flowered bright teal, the same blue-green shade as the blood of the dragons that called the land home.

The dragons, and the trolls who ruled and had long since bonded with those dragons.

Fortresses of various sorts were a hallmark of the continent, especially here with the many various dragon rider lineages having warred against each other for eons, and fortifications had featured heavily in the conflicts. But against the largest mountain in the entire mountain range, there was an especially massive castle, one so large that it wasn’t legally considered a castle at all, but a sprawling city with fortifications.

It was older than any troll bloodline to still be extant. It was older than any modern civilization; it had been there before the humans had come, it may have been there before the trolls had arisen from their swampy origins, and it would likely be there long after all else was dust.

See it clearly; think of a mountainside, soaring high into the heavens, one of the largest mountains in all the world. Now imagine around it, an impossibly large castle assembled around it; perhaps even grown in some fashion, considering the strangely organic pattern in the stone work that wasn’t likely for something that had been assembled.

Imagine its walls clinging tight around the mountain, around terraces and plateaus, over cliff sides and descending along the paths of rivers. Imagine bolt holes and tunnels into the mountain, veins for the castle and the lifesblood that was its people; and within its massive depths, thousands of people living there. Farmers and artisans, clever craftsmen and wise scholars. Writers, sculptors, and dragons. Hundreds of dragons, of many different varieties from the Red Queen famously bound to the Pyrope line itself, to the many different varieties and sizes, all the way to tiny coal-stokers just big enough to fit in a human’s lap. And humans! They dwelled here, freely, without fear, in open defiance that they had once been shackled in other lands not so long ago, and that said something of the character of the trolls who owned this keep now.

The keep had been passed down over the ages, from one owner to another. It had been hotly contested by both warlords and settlers, and why not? It’s powers were not fully known, but anyone knew of its famous ability to generate a massive shield that no sword nor spell could pierce, not even the mountain-breaking superweapons of the Serkets; to hold the keep, and to master its powers, was to be truly untouchable in your own lands.

And the size, and curvaceousness, of its seer-warriors was well known in the modern day. The keep channeled its energies into them, making them far larger than normal, and it's magic now ran in the blood of the Pyrope line, so that its daughters grew bigger and more bountiful than any other save perhaps the Maryams.

This keep had been kept for eons, from many hands won over another, until its present owners had slain the most vindictive of the old dragon riders, burning their history down so they could start fresh; some, less well disposed to their uncompromising ways, had suggested they started the war to do the same to the whole continent.

But, all the same, the Pyropes sought to protect others. They’d bonded with their dragons, internalizing some of their mentality, and they believed that dragons ought to protect what they cared about most. What they cared about was their people. And thus this great city-castle was the Hoard Keep.

Porrim Maryam, in one of the grand plateaus near the peak, enshrouded in the warm and protecting walls of the Keep, thought it all sounded very nice.

Certainly, she thought, it was very different from the home she’d known. Porrim was a vampire, of the Maryam clan that came from an oasis city considered a center of refinement and culture, and she was familiar only with the desert. She knew well the open sky before her, and the sun beating down. But here? It was colder, and the sky a small sight between the towering walls of stone.

It was… surprisingly cozy.

Personally, she thought the whole thing kind of looked like a big iridescent cake someone had smashed into the side of the mountain.

It was just like a multi-tiered cake. At the bottom was a vast terrace, of sprawling little villages bordering farmland and caves that their fungal farming and crawler-beast ranching was done on a scale to feed their entire territory with ease. The villages got bigger, clumping into micro cities until you got to the border of one of the upper walls, and then you got another, rather larger terrace, where much of the industrial and artisan workers lived, keeping the sewer systems functional, the rivers and canals streaking through the castle properly maintained.

And the terraces got narrow as they kept going up, the upper classes and nobility poised up high as if to leap down and strike anything that threatened the people who kept them alive. In turn, the dragon nobles (as they were called) were honorbound to swoop down and defend their people, with flame and blade.

Porrim looked up into the sky as she walked. Great leather-winged shapes flew, periodically belching clouds of flame, their eyes burning bright like small suns.

There were many reasons the Pyropes had never been ousted, not even during the greatest conflict between them and the Makaras when the humans had sought sanctuary with the dragonlords. Having fiercely loyal living siege breakers was certainly a factor.

But respect might have been a greater factor, and love for the protecting dragonlords was something the other trolls who had claimed this keep in the past hadn’t managed. Certainly, the Pyropes were much loved by the humans, Porrim thought as one showed her around town as a proper tour guide, much to the consternation of the actual tour guide.

“Anyways, if you tilt your eye-jigglies that away,” he said, pointing towards a large building across the street. “I’m pretty sure that’s one super big library. Dunno what the name of it is but it’s huge, I’ll give it that.” He was a little below average height for a human; to Porrim and her friends, who naturally stood far larger than humans, he was adorably tiny. A slender human, his skin a deep brown and his hair curled, he bore a few details that suggested he’d been trained in the magical traditions of knighthood. The flowing capes he wore suggested it, and his were a bright red, rather than the teal clothing seen elsewhere.

Porrim rubbed a hooked horn, rising from her dark hair; her other horn was slightly curved instead of hooked, and both were very long, and as per the traditions of her people, heavily carved with the heraldic symbols that indicated full status as a vampire matron among her clan. The same curves, spirals and flowering designs carved into her horns ran down her black skin, over her broad shoulders, her heavy arms, and especially the massive belly slung out in front of her, nearly as big as she was and wiggling with something inside. Or rather, multiple someones; Porrim had absorbed several people in order to reform them as vampires, and the process left her quite big!

Their tour guide led them onwards, apparently deciding on a whim that it would be a good idea to lead them there.

Porrim didn’t mean to make her hips sway so seductively, so enticingly, the hems of her robes fluttering around her knees. They’d just grown so large, and the width of her pelvis so great, it had affected something in her stride; she couldn’t help but advance like each step was carrying her upwards, her other hip swinging sharply down, for a delightful rhythm that attracted attention to her with each. She felt eyes nervously shift to her and then away, as if embarrassed, and beneath her veils, Porrim smirked in delight.

In front of her, her tattooed belly wobbled heavily from within, the occasional hand pressing out against its surface, or a leg or torso just barely visible. Distending so far its lower slopes nearly touched the floor, supported by a number of oiled straps from her shoulders and tied to a huge round brace holding up the bottom of her belly, she was very clearly pregnant. And in the particular traditions of the Maryam clan, pregnant with adults; absorbed through powers particular to her own clan, her body remaking them into new vampires. This detail was common knowledge around here, and Porrim glanced aside, smirking beneath her glossy veil when she saw people’s eyes lingering on her massive belly. Do they want to be in there too? She wondered.

‘You bet, babe,’ said a voice that was not her own. The people inside her, while they were being reshaped into true vampires, were usually completely out of it in a dreamless slumber connected to her mind, filling her pleasurably as their half-thoughts soothed her own. But sometimes, a strong enough emotion or thought made itself known, and briefly, Cronus awoke from his own dormancy in her to say this. She smiled and put a hand against her stomach, and thought she felt his hand press back.

They were nearly to the library and Porrim found her breasts constantly bouncing right over her face as her belly jogged them up. The noble families tended to get… ample as they grew more powerful, owing to certain arcane traditions and quirks of their magical bloodlines, and the Maryams grew very rapidly, so that Porrim wasn’t entirely used to having breasts nearly as big as her entire upper torso bounding and overflowing on top of her gravid belly. They projected out by at least three feet, each nearly as wide around as her torso and their motion a soothing, pleasant friction. She did have to walk carefully to avoid walking right into someone.

Each step, her huge hips swaying here and there in step with the forward moment of her massive belly and breasts, felt terribly uneven. Something was throwing her weight off, and Porrim tugged at the insufficient fabric bolt securing the fabric around her breasts.  “We should have brought a poet. Your home is lovely, Latula!”

She spoke to a taller troll standing beside her. Porrim Maryam was a tall woman as trolls went, and Latula was much larger, as befit a scion of the dragon line; Porrim’s horns were only on level with her shoulders, and when Latula threw a playful punch into her shoulder, it nearly knocked her off stride. This was no mean feat; Maryam matrons like her could shrug off direct impacts from falling buildings, and it was hardly a surprise that Latula was so strong; the teals were enormously strong for the greenblood trolls, and Latula had trained in the magical ways of a knight, adding to her physical power.

“What, Kankri doesn’t count?” Latula joked. She was built on broader lines than her friend; while Porrim was a tall and curvy (and heavily pregnant) figure of a troll, her body adorned in the Pyropian attempts to replicate the gauzy silks and heat-resisting veils and robes of her homeland, Latula was much more bottom heavy, her breasts a little bigger than her head but her butt was as big around as a lot of Porrim’s whole body, her big belly outslung in a firm, maternal mass, and her hips absolutely enormous. Watching thighs more than six feet around slam into each other in an aggressively friendly swagger was certainly a thing to see.

Porrim wondered if it was like a warning bell for the Pyropes, who tended toward this kind of figure. Listen for the clap of mighty thighs and the smacking of a huge butt, it suggested, and be unafraid for nothing is stronger than the dragonrider near you!

Latula’s fastened a furred cloak around a body-glove that carefully outlined her entire body, streaks of yellow visible in patterns on her sides, and in her cleavage, there was a small medallion worn on a necklace, disappearing between her cleavage to be held safe and snug between them. It glowed faintly, and Latula made a show out of tucking it and giving her breasts a bit of a flounce, as if to keep it secured as close to her heart as possible. She looked a bit proud, even bashful.

Porrim glanced at her, smiling faintly.

Latula tilted her head up, awkwardly pushing up smoked red glasses to her eyes. The furred collar couldn’t quite hide the blush rising up to her cheeks.

They were now at the doors of the library and passing into it, their tour guide (who was named Dave, according to a neat script on his cloak) headbutting it open for no apparent reason. Then again, he had been trained in the Pyrope ways, according to the iconography on that robe as well; the terminal scales were only granted to those that were authorized to use Pyrope magical techniques and were up to their specifications. Some of the others were a bit more enthusiastic about popping into a random library.

In particular, Bronya hopped forward, her hands clasped with some difficulty in front of her own bustline; she was even more ridiculously big than Porrim, her breasts rising up in front of her face so much it must have been hard to see, the sides of them spilling past the diameter of her massive hips, but even they looked small compared to her gigantic belly. It was even bigger than Porrim’s, dipping nearly to the ground, and it would have been flat on the ground if not for an elegant and unobtrusive brace hoisting it up to somewhere around her knees. Just like Porrim’s, the forms of slumbering people being reshaped into vampires surged against her skin periodically, but it seemed like there was a more in Bronya than in Porrim; as big as Porrim was, she could have used Bronya’s belly as a bed.

Bronya’s long hair fell down past her hips, a streak of bright green flowing past her curved horns and ending somewhere past a backside that distorted edges of even the Pyrope-style robes she’d put on. The tailors hadn’t had any more luck getting her outfit to fit properly, and until they could find something that fit, she was making do with robes that at least fit.

“I’ve always wanted to see the libraries of the Pyropes!” She said excitedly, bounding forward and almost trampling a few people with her huge, gravid belly.

“Me as well,” said Kankri Vantas, the last of their number. He was smaller than either of them, closer to the diminutive humans in height; a muscular, broad shouldered troll, he was surprisingly wide for his size, and when he moved you got the impression it was best to get out of the way. The carefully controlled expression of his round, dour face abruptly opened into a genuine expression of true delight; the half-cape worn by a Vantas knight swung back behind as he flourished his arm in a dramatic gesture. “Just think of it! Books gathered from across the entire landscape!”

Bronya leaned down and carefully took hold of his hands, fingers wrapping carelessly over his palms. “Works of art discussion and techniques through the ages!” Impulsively she spun him a little, right in front of her belly and allowed him to support himself off it like a climber on a happy cliff.

“Records of lectures from famed philosophers of golden ages!” He declared, letting himself be spun around!

“Architectural designs and fashions throughout the ages, in numerical order of objective fanciness!” Bronya spun him around; above them the library was a sort of hollow tube, with a circular staircase spiraling upwards. Many floors fanned out from it, each one dedicated to a broad subject (Such as works of fiction, artwork, and at the very top, a collective ‘we don’t really know where to put it so here it goes’ floor). Around them, librarians paused in surprise, contemplating the sight of so much jiggling and belly poking out. They took some interest for academic reasons; a glowing woman with prominent fangs, tattoos and green clothing read ‘Maryam vampire’ pretty clearly.

“Comprehensive maps to the most ancient ruins known to trollkind and ruminations on their cultures!” Kankri declared passionately, and with even greater passion, added “Damara even donated some!”

“And little joke books that Karako might like!” Bronya said, referring to her adopted child, who was currently off at a daycare.

“I feel… so passionately about this,” Kankri said as she stopped twirling. “It could almost…” he placed a hand on his chest. “Make a troll want to…”

The others, detecting the warning signs, winced.

“Want to sing!”

Bronya and Kankri both prepared themselves, breathing in deeply…

Dave tapped them both on the shoulder… or at least on Kankri’s shoulder, Bronya got an impatient poke in the hip. They both looked down at Dave, who gazed up at a solid wall of shapely troll to gaze as sternly as he could without really caring that much. “Guys, chill. You’re not allowed to do musical routines in the library on this day of the week.”

Bronya frowned sadly. “Ohh…” she perked up. “Still, I have always wanted to come here!” She hurried off, trying not to knock anyone down with her huge belly. Some cautious researchers, intrigued by the Maryam rites of unbirthing and recreation, followed after her softly.

Kankri put a hand to his nose, frowning deeply, and as he finally caught up to events, a scandalized look came over him, mingled with horror. “I almost… defied local customs! Me, an outsider! Invited to these lands and I almost broke a taboo!”

“Ehh, I wouldn’t say it's a taboo,” Latula said, behind him, waving a hand. “It’s just supposed to be done on certain days…”

He fled to her, clasping her hand. “Latula, I swear, I did not mean to break the ways of your people!”

She patted him on the head. “Chill, dude, you’re cool.”

Kankri turned to Dave and bowed to him. “I thank you, tour guide. Without your advice, I may have committed a terrible wrong.”

“Yep, without me you would have been the worst criminal in two hundred years,” Dave said, not blinking.

Kankri hurried away, perhaps to find a book to drown his shame in, and Latula glared at Dave, who was now grinning a little. “Dude! Don’t mess with him like that, he thinks you’re serious!”

Dave just kept grinning. “He makes it easy.” He thumbed at the door. “I’ll be hanging right here if anyone needs me or when you wanna bounce from here. Just… standing there. Being all cool, and fancy. And with a really cool cape. A cape way cooler than what you got.”

Latula growled. “I wanted to be the tour guide!”

Dave pointed at her while walking backwards. “Hey, dragon princess, brides don’t do dirty work! And not just because your mom thought it would be funny to annoy you like that.”

Latula made a few inarticulate noises of strangled frustration as he left.

Porrim, a book on sculpture techniques and cultural relevance through the ages in her hand, waved to her. “Please, Latula, please sit down.”

Grumbling to herself, Latula walked back over and sat down. The bench creaked as she sat down, her massive butt overflowing both in front of it and that, rising up a couple feet higher just because of how much butt she had. Porrim was much the same, but given that her belly was so huge that she required a couple people to carefully put some pedestals beneath it for support, it wasn’t so apparent.

Kankri and Bronya didn’t feel the need to come back; they would, Porrim supposed, meet up with them when they were done here. Perhaps they would spend the day here; they had several months before the big event was upon them, and with that thought, she glanced at Latula, who was still fuming but calming herself down, tugging something on a string out of her cleavage.

Porrim watched her with a faint smile; her fangs were long, protruding over her thick lower lip, and it was about as menacing as a goldfish. (And not the fire-breathing, mile long ones either.)

It wasn’t common for the nobles to leave their home territories, she reflected, even on business. Though this was business of a sort, given the need for the allied noble families to show solidarity.

It was particularly important for the Pyropes. History lived with them, in libraries like this; in the grand court archives where every crime in their lands was recorded, and in other records. The ones where historical crimes were marked down. The Pyropes had a particularly vindictive view when it came to justice: ‘a perpetuator for every crime, and a noose for every perpetuator.’ They looked at history and they saw the wrongs left to fester, both recently and in the distant past, and it was their pleasure to repair it.

So much of the continent’s history was a crime. To the trolls, but by other trolls to them. There were injustices down to the carapacians that had arrived from across the sea, and most of all to the humans that lived under troll rule. Porrim glanced at some humans walking by, their sleeves long and their faces staring down by habit, and she wondered how many of them bore the marks of shackles burned into their wrists, or ownership stamps bound into their foreheads.

Many tealbloods had owned this keep. Not all of them had been kind. There was a lot of blood soaked in these stones, and she supposed the seers the Pyropes trained were specifically trained to come to terms with the horrors in their past. But it was the Pyropes that had set the humans free; it was Redglare herself who had broken the chains of humans, told them they were free, and declared who was responsible for their torment.

It wasn’t the Pyropes who had started the war that had burned the continent down and had killed thousands, but it was the Pyropes that had flown down on their dragon armies, and left nothing but ashes and vengeance behind.

It was Pyrope blades that cut the Makaras down to nothing but a few bloodlines, their ash-stricken homelands a suitable punishment for the horrors they had inflicted. It was dragonfire that had scorched keeps and castles, barracks and naval fleets, and had turned entire kingdoms to soot and grisly chunks.

Porrim had been trained to think of these sort of things, for the days when she might set policy. Her own oasis city had been a neutral ground and sanctuary for ages, maintaining careful balance and kept secure by the inhospitable dangers of her homeland, and she had taken to politics quite well. She kept thinking about the significance of the Pyropes inviting others to such a big event as this, and it struck her that it was very much an extended hand of friendship.

Now she observed that Latula had pulled her trinket out from between her boobs, her claws lightly tracing it, her bright teal eyes looking distant as though she were thinking of something, or someone else. Latula stared at it longingly, sighing softly to herself and clearly lost in thought.

It was a chunk of teal crystal inlaid with gold; chipped right off from a variety of pseudo-floral mineral that grew very quickly in the underground cave systems where a lot of the local agriculture was grown in conditions that didn’t require sunlight; edible mushrooms, cave-dwelling giant bat livestock, digger beasts, and so forth. These crystals naturally glowed faintly and had a unique beauty, lustrous and gleaming like fine metal when properly treated.

It was a tradition among the Pyropes to offer them carved medallions, necklaces, medals or other such things as an engagement gift. It meant something; the crystals below had been traditionally allowed to grow to such size that their immensely strong structures could carry massive weights, and serve as the foundations of cities and castles. Even a small one, properly treated, could be the seed of something that carried houses and lifted up mighty realms. And they had to be decorated, carved; you had to make it look pretty, had to put a creative spark into your gift; that made it personal. Inlay it with precious metals, or an abstract image of hands clasped together, and the more tastelessly ostentatious, the better. The people of the dragon lands tended to have all the fine artistic discernment of a concussed magpie.

Now Latula’s claws traced geometric lines and sharp angles arranged into a lovely, if clumsy design. It was an artistic peculiarity of the Captor mages, who rather liked patterns based in mathematics. It was not a well-carved piece, though; the edges were chipped everywhere, cracks were visible here and there when the chisel had bit too deeply. But the carver had tried, working around some very severe motor control difficulties; fingers that spasmed and twitched on their own had nonetheless worked hard, sheer stubbornness triumphing over the limitations of his body. Space had been used to convey as much a design as the actual carving, the design was as simple as possible for the carver to manage it without too much difficulty, and while it was hard to say what the design actually was, it looked pretty.

Latula tenderly cradled the medallion and its gold-colored necklace strings, and she kissed it softly.

There was a soft popping sound. Latula tilted her head up and stiffened when she saw Porrim grinning at her, and even glowing faintly.

Porrim opened her mouth to say something.

“Nuh uh!” Said Latula, waving a finger and tucking the medallion back into her cleavage, the slight impact making the lower crest of her breasts shift slightly around her belly. “You keep those dirty thoughts to yourself, vampire lady!”

“What makes you think it was going to be dirty? I promise you, all my thoughts were about how romantic it is.”

Latula sneered. “You know my magic is all about foresight and seeing the future, right?”

“...I wasn’t going to say exclusively dirty things about you imagining that medallion as being Mituna, now was I?” Porrim said innocently.

“Yes, and you were going to be explicit about it!” Latula crossed her arms with an indignant ‘hmph!’.

A long moment passed between them as the banter wore down, after that. People walked past them, perhaps word spreading that today the scion of the Maryam Clan was visiting. People came to peek, and Porrim noticed a few people poking their heads from around bookcases, and she felt the warm caress of their gazes upon her stomach.

She placed a hand upon the upper crest, and it was a little higher than her jawline. Her breasts, rising over her belly by at least four feet straight up, interfered seriously with normal vision from the front and so she made do with rather more esoteric senses granted by the fertility powers of her bloodline, the same ones fed and amplified by the bodies being reshaped by her busy womb. Cronus, in some approximation of awareness, thought some miffed thoughts about them being so open about it.

Porrim certainly loved showing her body off as much as possible; she worked hard to get such a splendidly massive figure! Impishly, and to test the waters of public reaction, she tugged at a swath of translucent green fabric flowing down the side of her breasts, insufficient to provide full coverage, flowing down the sides of her body (both belly and back completely exposed, her tattoos flowing across exposed skin) and bundling up around her massive hips, finally trailing off in a slit-thigh style around her knees. As it was, her belly and breasts stretched her clothing enough that the fabric was pressed hard, and she was perilously close to a wardrobe malfunction at all times.

She didn’t actually mind, though.

Further thoughts on this matter was interrupted by something very heavy dragging on the floor, and a bookcase being pushed aside by a weight so big that even the shelf and its payload couldn’t ignore it. They looked and Latula’s mouth opened as her future vision flashed through all possible events of the next few minutes to settle on the most likely one. She sighed. “Bronya, really?!”

Eventually, Bronya shuffled out. It took some time for the actual Bronya to appear; at first all they saw was a huge belly, more and more of it coming into view with various laborious steps. It didn’t bounce or jiggle, as was normal with such big attributes. It was too heavy for that, dipping low as gravity and the weight of many new residents made it even heavier, and finally Bronya came into view, still eclipsed by her own belly.

Bronya had been big before. Now, her brace had snapped at some point before she’d dared seek out Porrim after what was very likely a moment of weakness, and Porrim’s first guess was that her stomach had grown to the point that even the distinctive braces of the Maryam’s couldn’t cope with the new weight. Her belly rose higher than her horns, the typical distended shape of a gravid vampire belly more sphere-shaped from all the weight of the new residents in her womb filling it out.

Some part of Porrim, overeager to stuff as many as possible into her womb, was quietly in awe. She wondered how Bronya had even moved down here with all that weight!

Porrim rolled her eyes. “Not to repeat Latula but… really, Bronya?”

“I’m sorry!” Bronya squeaked, her belly now pregnant even more with new residents. “But the head librarian was so very cute, and her staff was really cute, and I just couldn’t resist!”

“The staff!?” Latula said. “What’d you do with Stelsa and her girls, hrm?”

Dave emerged beyond Bronya, his usual expression of practiced aloofness bubbling away. “So, hypothetically speaking… how bad would it be if pretty much the top five administrators were suddenly out of commission for a while?”

“Um. That’s a good question. How long is a while?”

Bronya looked speculative. Porrim leaned forward into her belly and after thinking, said, “It depends on if Bronya fully vampirizes them. It could be anywhere from a few days if she doesn’t, to… a lot longer if she does.” she thought about doing a rough calculation, and then decided it’d be funnier to let Latula try to work it out; she usually made some amazing expressions at those times.

Bronya looked appalled. “I can’t let them go so soon!” she said, with an edge of dismayed shock at the very notion. “I just got ahold of them!” Various hands pressed fervently from inside of her belly, protesting the very idea.

Latula, with her own mystical connection to thoughts and minds, certainly heard what they had to say. “...Ah. Well…” She frowned, considering this deeply, tapping a claw against the side of a horn. “Huh. Guess we could word it as a diplo-whatever thingy. We could get someone to wrap that up in fancy words?”

“That’s grand to hear!” Bronya said brightly, hugging her heavy belly with a delighted sigh. “We only just met, it wouldn't be fair to depart so soon!”

A short moment passed.

Then Kankri came, a big stack of books in his arms. “I cannot believe you have the entire series of the transcribed Letters From an Anonymous Lout Complaining About Copper Grades! All eighteen volumes! This is such a rare…” He paused, peeking around the books in much the same way as Porrim had to do from her own monstrous bustline. He blinked at Bronya’s newly massive belly, the wary but entranced crowd of onlookers, and Latula apparently unsure if she ought to be amused or annoyed.

“Did I miss something?” He asked.

-----------

Their time in the keep went on pretty much like that, and for the next month as they settled it, more of the same came and went.

Bronya did her best to restrain herself, and Redglare herself, the Dragon Queen of the keep, took an interest in the legal consequences of her impetuous ‘adoption’ of the library staff; what their clan status would be if fully vampirized, how that might be a tie between their houses, whether this would magically make their position as part of the Pyropes void in a magical sense, and other such questions that weren’t that interesting to Porrim. She was an activist in improving the lives of others, but she didn’t pay much attention to the legal issues.

It would still be some time before the actual wedding, and Porrim was well aware of the momentousness of the occasion. The grand war between the noble houses was still fresh in people’s minds; there were still places burning from Pyrope attacks, or lands left leaderless from night-time Maryam vampires striking in the dead of night. Places where the Makaras had detonated forbidden magical weaponry and it would be generations before anything could dare inhabit them again. And there were worse nightmares than that, still lingering in the quiet places people hadn’t yet opened up.

These rather gloomy thoughts were on Porrim’s mind as she went to meet up with Latula, her betrothed, and Latula’s younger sister Terezi, and with her was Kankri’s younger brother, Karkat Vantas.

“That’s the history of the world, I suppose,” she said softly to Karkat, as they walked up to a former dragon roost. “The ancient families break the world, and then our descendants clean up the mess, and do it all over again.”

Karkat made a thoughtful noise; his voice was deep enough, and his blunt fangs broad enough, that it sounded like a growl. He walked up the stairs a good distance from her; not out of dislike, as she was pretty sure he’d had a crush on her as a younger boy, but out of bashful fear of accidentally bumping into her belly or huge hips. Even a single misplaced swing of his hand might be more inappropriate a touch than he was comfortable with.

Porrim chuckled at the thought. The Vantases were just so… bashful.

“I dunno about that,” he said eventually. He was even smaller than Kanri, though perhaps only by half a foot or so; he was slightly built, broader at the hips and thigh than typical for a troll boy, his round face as delicately featured as a statue built of soap, even his horns round and stubbly. He looked fragile, like a lovely glass figurine that would crack at the touch, and it was quite a contrast to his usual grumbling, manic energy.

They stepped out into the staircase and into the dragon roost. He looked around for someone, briefly distracted. Today, there were many trolls, some humans and carapacians mingling among them; some of them were tending to the few dragons left around, while most were simply reading or gazing into the sky. A few wearing the revealing, comfortable robes of the trained seers sat there, staring out as they allowed their minds to wander freely and their magic to take hold of the could be and grant them the future sight.

(Metaphorically. Most of the seers sacrificed their senses in exchange for seeing the abstract and the possible futures; sight was common enough, and Latula had lost her sense of smell, and she was far from the only one to do it like that.)

Not seeing who he was looking for, Karkat continued. They walked past dozens of house-sized stalls, designed to accommodate dozens of dragon breeds, and now, almost all of them were empty. It was the same story across all the roosts; once there had been ten dragons for every troll, the keep always abuzz with the distant beat of leathery wings. But that had been before the war, and the loss of so many.

“Mituna and Latula’s wedding isn’t political,” he said. “Sure. There’s the usual political crap around it, and I guess they can use it, but… in the old days, they’d have been married off. Hell, what’s the chances the dragon seers and the high mages would have bothered ever talking to one another? But… this war changed stuff, Porrim.”

They came to a balcony, overlooking the lands and lower levels, and there were several others there; a large seer bigger even than Porrim, and resting on a couch, a particularly massive knight apparently dozing, her bustline bigger than the couch she was napping on.

They stopped at the balcony, and it struck a thought in Karkat.

“The dragon riders set the humans free,” he said. “They defended my home when the brownblood knights tried to take it over for the war effort, and they declared us nobles when all was said and done. And now… the kids of that war are becoming friends. We’re getting married.” He leaned on the balcony, still looking out with a contemplative air at the sky. “Does that sound like the kind of world that would be made in the old days?”

The large seer Porrim had seen was sitting there, larger than anyone else there, perked up at the sound of his distinctive voice. She turned, and first Porrim realized how big she was, taller than Porrim even sitting down. As she stood up, there was a lot of wobbling from various outlying parts of her body, her robes cut to show off as much of her as possible. When she stood to her full, imposing height, her seat was left creaking behind her, sinking inwards without her massive body to put weight on it.

Oblivious to this, Karkat gestured outwards to the horizon. It was hard to honestly see a horizon in the circumstances; the keep was simply so huge, it’s walls so high and extensive that if you looked onwards, in any direction, you’d probably just end up seeing more of the keep. The fortifications loomed high into the sky for miles around, in the distance terrace forms and mountainside lakes defined warmer edges around some of the most distant walls far below the descending lowlands. Rivers winded, rather like glistening ribbons, all the way from the mountain itself and spilled downwards, splitting into dozens more, and the sunlight made them glow at this time of day.

And from wall to wall, it was filled with more city. Buildings built upon other buildings, rope-bridges connecting to one another in lieu of traditional streets, the architecture flowing up the walls and climbing higher; there were a few houses or civic buildings that peeked over the walls, many hundreds of feet up. The sound of it all was a physical presence, or perhaps the sound of a dance; a single vast sense of movement from below, the pulse and breath of so many people creating the life of the city. Humans, trolls, and other beings all living together without any real interest in how historically unusual that was, that only a few generations ago so many of them would have been in chains in other lands…

Them living together, in peace, had been as unthinkable as a tealblood marrying a goldblood mage. Or perhaps a mutant being raised to knighthood.

Now the seer that had gotten up approached. She was powerful enough to have picked up on his thoughts, and now she spoke aloud, “We’re in a better position than our ancestors were, and I guess we got a duty to keep doing better.”

“See, that’s what I’m saying,” Karkat said as Porrim turned towards the seer, her eyes a bit wide with surprise. “We can do better! I mean, look at where you came from; best as anyone can guess the whole place used to be farmland and then someone let loose something bad there, and now the whole place is one big undeath zone. But you’re fixing it; it's actually getting better than it’s been in hundreds of years. We can actually fix the crap going on!”

“Or look at where you’re from,” said the seer, now standing directly above Karkat, and she was not only tall but… thick, her breasts jutting out so that Karkat was put into shadow beneath them. He blinked upwards, the experience familiar enough that it instantly made him realize who it was. “The lake your guys live on. It used to be a fishing village where people tried to hide away from everyone else, and now? When you make a challenge, everyone listens. Hell, it’s a place where humans get to have a voice.” She grinned, her teeth big and sharp, and the scarred eyes staring out were glassy and a dull red, seeing nothing at all.

“Ah, there you are, Terezi!” Porrim said as Karkat whirled around and sank his arms into her stomach in a very serious hug. His expression remained as dour as usual even as his shoulders heaved with the strength needed to really sink into her, but at least her outfit had the right kind of cut for skin-on-skin contact, cut around the sides to make room with her expansive belly.

Terezi Pyrope laughed warmly, reaching down past her huge breasts to sink her claws into his robes and pull him clear off the ground into a face-smothering hug where her breasts overflowed his entire head and shoulders, pulling more and more of him right into her cleavage and against the flat plane where her breasts joined her body. Despite him being abnormally heavy for his size, she carried him easily with the frankly ludicrous strength honed by the mystical bond to dragons that her ancestors had passed on; the power of the great beasts flowed through her, as surely as any other seer of her kingdom took the spirits of dragons and stranger creatures into their bodies (whether through a sort of mystical pregnancy, or other means) to empower their foresight.

Karkat was an intensely private person; he might have come off as manic and emotionally expressive, and certainly he never lied about what he felt, or what he really meant by what he said, but he kept as much as he could to himself. He was naturally suited to have been a spy or perhaps an inside agent if he had lived in more troubled times; as it was, he never really let himself be too open, perhaps out of a sense of propriety; more stringent and grim than Kankri. It was a bit of a Vantas thing, Porrim supposed.

But he was… well, he wasn’t smiling, but he was clinging tight to her, openly and unashamed of doing so in public where everyone could see; his arms sank into her breasts now, and he didn’t appear to care about the intimacy of being in her cleavage, not in the heat of the moment, or its own curious romance.

It was, in Porrim’s view, adorable.

She felt bad putting a pin in it. “I know you two enjoy yourselves,” she said dryly, noting the distinctive outward curve of Terezi’s belly. “But there is such a thing as time and place…?”

Terezi, unabashed, slowly let go of Karkat and allowed him to slide down her front. He dropped to the ground in a little crouch and stood up, and both of them mirrored each other, instinctively adopting the same pose; it wasn’t quite insolent, but it was definitely heading that direction.

Terezi grinned, providing a great distinction from Karkat’s more serious demeanor. Every bit of her was a contrast; where Karkat was short, she was abnormally tall for a troll, towering above him so much that his horns were somewhere around her waist, at best. Where he was generally on the slim side, she was enormously wide; even bigger and curvier than her older sister Latula, her hips were over five feet across and big enough to cause serious trouble getting through doorways; she nudged one hip against Karkat’s face, trying to get a reaction out of him.

The slit hem of her robes rode up against that hip, sliding away from incredibly wide, soft thighs that Karkat could easily use as a mattress, if he didn’t mind sinking in. Her robes were teal, and modified somewhat; a deep cleavage hole provided a grand view of her bustline, her clearly pregnant belly protruding out by about a foot and dipping low over her waist line, and the hemline was cut short around her knees. IT showed off a lot of her body, just as Terezi liked, and incidentally was easy to move around in. An important consideration, for the adventurous lifestyle of a Pyrope seer; they were often called to direct action, as their foresight was generally demanded in a combat capacity.

It was honestly hard to imagine Terezi moving fast, though Porrim felt this was a bit of a slight. Even without a butt big enough to serve as its own ultra-cushioned seat, Terezi’s breasts were so big that the automatic assumption was that they would hamper movement. They were almost as big as Karkat was, and would likely eventually be considerably larger than his whole body; already, their lower crest dipped below her waist line, almost over her hips, swelling out wider than her torso was broad… about twice as wide as her torso for each breast, in fact. They looked heavy, and Porrim knew from experience that such massive assets were not to be taken lightly.

Apparently on automatic, Karkat and Terezi’s hands came together. Porrim chuckled and went to sit down.

Karkat and Terezi came after her, and paused in midstep; Karkat turned to look at something behind them. “Um, Porrim? We have company.”

“It is a public space,” Porrim said, adjusting herself for the complicated task of sitting down when equipped with a belly bigger than most of your body, a butt bigger around than most seats were really designed to accommodate, and breasts big enough to give even more weight to that belly, even without all the people in her womb making her balance a tricky thing.

“Uh, not that kind of visitor.”

“Hi, mom,” Terezi said cheerfully.

Porrim froze up, and turned around. She suddenly remembered a pillar… or someone big enough to be mistaken for one.

It was said that magic and the essence of dragons ran in the blood of the Pyropes; Terezi and Latula, growing as big as they were and as ludicrously strong as they could be, were strong contenders for the idea. Sitting in a particularly oversized chair and overflowing a lot of it was an even better case example.

“Hello, young Maryam,” said the cool and authoritative voice of Dragon Queen Redglare, the undisputed leader of the Pyropes, commander of the dragons by right of guardianship, and the troll who had personally ended the seemingly eternal wars of the nobles through both diplomacy and force of arms, and now that Porrim realized she was there, the full weight of her presence set on the area like a lead weight.

You couldn’t look away from her. Even sitting down, doing nothing, attention was pulled her way, like flames being drawn to a much brighter, hotter fire, and it had nothing to do with her beauty, or her great size. There was a word for what she had, but somehow charisma seemed insufficient to fully describe the subtle qualities of grace, inspiration and power that Redglare could give off.

Latula was tall, Terezi was big, and both were curvy enough to do terrible things to doors when they tried to move through them in a hurry, but even laying down, Redglare made them both look small. The chair creaked beneath her as she sat up, her immensely long and pointed horns arcing up slightly as she settled into position. There was a faint noise as the knightly attire she wore, richly decorated like a sort of wearable tapestry, did its best to accommodate a figure packing more mass than some crowds did. Breasts taller than even a Makara bruiser rose up high above her, pooling over her powerfully built and matronly body like a couch stripped of framework, and as Redglare moved, it was sincerely humbling for Porrim to see so much… mass moving around.

She was even bigger than her mother, the Dolorosa. That was a very intimidating thing to live up to.

Redglare sat up fully, her massive butt making a notable dent in her clothing and the chair. Behind her broad back, the couch was severely bent, her fearsome weight far too much for it to survive; her lust for drama had taken out yet another bit of furniture. Beside her, Porrim saw Latula sitting on another chair and holding hands with a smaller, incredibly handsome goldblood troll with four horns poking through his wild hair, a contented smile on both their faces.

“Isn’t it inappropriate for a bride and groom to see each other before a proper wedding?” Porrim asked, unable to stop herself from being impish.

“Not around here, it isn’t,” Terezi said dryly. “Dunno where you heard of that kinda tradition.”

“I haven’t any idea what you’re talking about,” Redglare said, affecting an air of innocence. “Why, if I saw them being so inappropriate, I would have already said something!” She very pointedly looked away from the pair.

Latula giggled. The goldblood next to her did as well, sticking his tongue out cheerfully. It wasn’t easy to see his eyes beneath his hair, though it was easy to see the scars webbing around from below his eyes; he took a more... reckless approach to magical experiments than was perhaps wise, and it had left its damage. His hand jerked and twitched in Latula’s grip, but she held him firmly and securely and without any reaction to this.

In only a month, Latula’s belly had swelled hugely, its firm and distended shape suggesting something a little more internally complex than just gaining weight; while not as massive as Porrim’s belly (and for good reason!), she was still getting big enough that she needed her own supportive brace to support it. Her belly hung low, the lower crest about even with her knees when she was standing, and looked about as big as a couch for the goldblood that Porrim suspected was the reason her belly was so big and, well, gravid.

Latula was very obviously pregnant; this wasn’t a big deal in Pyrope views, which regarded marriage as a vague formality in any case, but Porrim still worried about the diplomatic repercussions that might come about, what with heirs and all. Trolls lived long enough that getting an ideal heir was usually a matter of just waiting long enough, but getting them early on could pose some tricky questions with educating them; something that normally required life experience from the nobles in question.

If Porrim had to take a guess, she suspected that Latula’s growth wasn’t just additional children being gestated as the result of frequent personal time with her beloved. Magic had an emotional component, and it was pretty likely that being so affectionate and loving was adding to her growth, or double-impregnating her in some unexpected, mystical fashion.

Her beloved, Mituna Captor, looked quite proud of her growth. He leaned into her, and Redglare tilted her head aside, like an ancient nest lord proudly regarding some mischievous but very skilled dragons at play. “Sure is a good thing I have no idea where my kid or kid-in-law are,” she said laconically. “Otherwise I might have to pretend I actually want to bother with what they do on their own personal time.”

“Yup,” Latula said.

“Sure is a good thing I don’t know where they are, then.” Redglare sat up completely, and slowly stood off the couch; it creaked complainingly as she left it, and watching her stand up was a sight all on it’s own; her massive hips produced a sort of moving eclipse behind her, and her breasts were so incredibly massive they were visible even from behind her.

Redglare took a step to the balcony, resting the massive shelf of her breasts against the wall. “Hey, kids. Come here a sec, would you?”

Porrim, uncomprehendingly, cautiously raised a hand. Redglare turned, and nodded at her. Meekly, Porrim approached, the overwhelming size of the towering dragon lord like a magnet.

Terezi and Karkat followed, still holding hands, though with a dutiful air. Latula and Mituna followed too, but at a bit of a distance, perhaps unsure whether to drop the pretense or not.

There was a long moment before Redglare said anything else. A tension of a sort, not taut but loose and fraying, settled around them as she gathered her thoughts.

Eventually, Redglare spoke. “Huh. A wedding with a Captor mage, with my own daughter, with nobles of the other kingdoms attending. All on their own, too.” She adjusted herself, resting into her imposing bustline like her own moving cushioned table. “Believe me, kids. When I was your age, I’d never have believed I’d say something like that.”

“Yes, mama,” Latula said meekly.

Redglare snorted. “Boy, if my Latula were here and being all ‘dutiful daughter’ and stuff, I’d tell her to quit it. I didn’t make rivers run rainbows with blood so you guys would have to be serious and crap. Live a little, y’know?” Behind her, Latula nodded seriously. Mituna rolled his eyes… or Porrim supposed he did, his head tilted in the right way anyways.

“But. Yeah. We’ve spent hundreds of years just fighting back and forth over scraps our ancestors screwed up, and doing our best to screw up what’s left. I mean, look at all the monsters the Amporas have to clean up.” Redglare started to count things off on her fingers. “The desert you Maryams are fixing up; the rogue monsters that keep popping up here and there, hot spots of wild magic making the land rot and go insane… lost experiments wandering the world, all along and miserable… automatons that are slaves to their programming, and war machines that don’t have any thought but just killing whatever they think is an enemy… and that’s not even getting into the literal demons appearing from where too much hate and despair sank into the ground.

“This whole land has been screwed up for a long, long time. I hate to say it, but the work of fixing it doesn’t stop with me. I’d love it to. But my generation isn’t going to be the one to make sure it gets fixed. Probably not yours, either; this is a job you pass on.” She turned slightly, breasts dragging on the balcony, her half-lidded eyes pausing on Terezi’s belly. “And you’re making some headway on that so, hey, congrats on getting your boy before he wises up to you being a total smart ass, kiddo.”

Terezi nodded sagely. “Yeah, that’s the plan.” Karkat snorted.

“But, jokes aside, fixing it permanently isn’t your job. But keeping it going is. Same thing for making sure there’s no backsliding, either.” Redglare’s expression softened, loosened, her eyes distant. She winced, and looked for a moment as though she were remembering something sharp and painful. “There’s too much of that. Every inch we get, someone wants to pull it a foot back into where we were. So don’t give anyone even an inch. Understand, kids?”

“Yes, ma’am,” they chorused.

She chuckled. “Smartasses. But yeah, you get the idea.” She looked into the sky. “Me, ‘Rosa, Karkat and Mituna’s dads, the Leijon chief, and the others… we started this. But we don’t finish it.” She turned, looking square at them, and the intensity of her gaze, the fervor of her belief, hit Porrim like a ton of bricks. “You don’t either, but you can take it further than we ever did.” She grinned. “You can do it. I know you can.”

Porrim tilted her head down. She wasn’t sure she believed she was the one to do that.

She stood close enough, though, that Redglare could tilt her head up, her touch light and gentle. “Hey, kiddo. None of that. I believe in you. Follow me? C’mon. Chin up.” Porrim cautiously smiled, and Redglare grinned: wild, fierce, a dragon in all ways but the physical.

Redglare shifted tacks, her point made. “Come on, no looking all serious and crap.” She spread her arms wide, turning and her huge breasts sliding down, lowest slopes somewhere around her knees once they came to rest, and projecting out more than Redglare herself was tall. “It’s a wedding! Cheer up a little, dorks.” She flounced off. “Don’t let a cranky old dragon knight pester you any, huh?” She headed off, to leave them to their own devices, and she stopped.

She paused, in front of Latula and Mituna. She peered down at them, her expression suddenly caught between the cool exterior she normally tried to project, and something more raw; something red and wet and enough to bring tears to her eyes, and her lip tremble, just for a moment.

She looked down at her eldest daughter, her proud and skilled child, and at the goldblood she’d thought of as a son for quite some time, but never really hoping that she’d be able to say so for real. And here they were; to be married soon, sealing a bond between their kingdoms, not out of political necessity but because they wanted to.

She reached down, producing a startled pair of squeaks from the two as she hugged them tight. “I’m proud, of the both of you,” she said softly.

Redglare let them go, then, and left.

Porrim watched her go, thinking about what the dragon lord had said.

She supposed they really did have a job to do.

It was a duty as nobles.

[paladin-andric]

Blackheart, Chapter 24: Shattered Memories

“A gorgeous day, is it not?”

Basilrin lay in the fields of the park. Wind swept across the grass as the clear skies bathed the area in sunlight.

“Indeed it is,” his brother answered politely, staring off into the sky. Basilrin could sense he appeared...anxious.

“Is something the matter? You seem restless...or bored!”

All around them, the people of the city were crowded around the two dragons, all gazing at them in awe and admiration. The family lived in the caverns below the city, which were off-limits, at is was considered their “residence” and therefore private property.

That didn’t stop several “dragonchasers” as they were called, from delving into the caverns without permission to see them. The family of dragons were welcoming, but as they broke the law, the city guard were less amused.

As such, it was a rare treat to get to see the large and powerful beasts up close, and when they lounged in the park, many cityfolk visited to see them.

Most numerous among their admirers were the kobolds, who, for reasons relating to their very existence, were inexplicably drawn to seek out and serve dragonkind.

Julroul hesitated. His eyes narrowed just enough for Basilrin to notice, radiating awareness of something that no one else could notice.

“Are you...cold?”

Basilrin frowned. “Of course not. It is sunny and warm!”

“I feel a chill in the air.”

His brother closed his eyes and focused, hard. He blocked out the rest of his sense as best he could and felt every inch of the wind in the air, lightly breezing across his form.

The air was indeed quite warm, but...he could feel it. A tiny sting of coolness across the end of each gust of wind.

Something he wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t looking for it.

“...I suppose the wind is cool. What of it?”

“That is not the wind. Something is different. Surely you can feel it?”

Basilrin tried again. He closed his eyes and focused.

“Mmm...no. I do not follow. What is different?”

Julroul smiled. “I do not know, but...it excites me, for some reason.”

It was after that remark that everything changed.

Before Basilrin could ask what his brother meant by such an odd statement he noticed something truly bizarre.

Everything was getting darker.

The various people around the pair noticed as well. A koutu looked up at the sky and frowned.

“Huh? It’s getting dark? But it’s midday…”

The dragon looked up and, sure enough, that was the case...at least partially.

The people of the city seemed to think the sun was setting, or the sky was getting dark, but Basilrin could tell what was really happening.

His draconic senses, superior to all others, honed in on the strange and near-unnoticeable patterns in the sky. Slowly they were wrapping around the entire skyline in a sphere, and began to grow in size.

Mist was starting to form above them, building in intensity.

As soon as he noticed that, the dragon could feel the air growing colder, ever colder around him. This was what Julroul had been talking about.

“What in the world…?”

Someone in the crowd had uttered it, though Basilrin was thinking the same thing himself. As he focused, he noticed something else. Something far in the distance, that the crowd surely couldn’t made out.

Screams.

“Something is very wrong,” he spoke hurriedly, rising to his feet, “We should-”

“Do nothing!”

The voice had come from nearby, but it was...all wrong.

The distorted, otherworldly voice immediately set Basilrin on edge. As he turned his gaze to the person it belonged to, he realized his instincts were all too reliable.

The creature was very large, at least by “normal” standards. Compared to the dragons of course, he was still small. He wore armor that looked scorched by flames and had nasty, pointed edges all over. His helmet had horns...or perhaps, they had openings for the beast’s own. He was outrageously large and stocky, and in between the gaps of his gnarled armor, the dragon could see purple skin and black eyes. The beast also had a spaded tail to top it all off.

“D-demon!” someone in the crowd screamed, the others quickly joining in with terrified cries of their own. They all backed up, hiding behind Basilrin for protection.

“Good eyes,” the demon spoke mockingly, “But unneeded.” He looked over at the two dragons, a predatory glint in his eyes. “You pair, however…”

“Begone!” Basilrin snarled, putting himself in front of the frightened crowd, “Crawl back to the hellscape you came from!”

“Eheheh...not an option. This place will be my home, now...as it will many others. This land belongs to the Underworld, but we are not adverse to letting you live under us. Now, rejecting me is a dire mistake, dragon. I will give you one last chance to change your tune. We are looking for champions, and dragonkind would make mighty warlords indeed. There is so much power you could have in exchange...”

Basilrin lunged forward, slamming his claw into the ground the demon stood on, smirking in satisfaction as he smashed the earth with murderous strength.

As he lifted his claws however, he found...nothing.

“W-what?!”

“A fair attempt,” the demon offered, several yards away, “But even your kind cannot match our might. Perhaps a demonstration will show you who you should strive to please…”

The demon gestured wildly, but before Basilrin could even move to stop the fiend, it was already over. The demon’s arms rose into the air, and Basilrin felt a sudden, intense pain in his feet. A boiling, blistering pain.

The dragon looked down, disbelief overwhelming him as he saw fire emerging from the earth itself, coating the entire area in a sea of flames.

It didn’t kill him, or even wound him. It hurt, certainly, but it took more than fire to kill a dragon.

The same couldn’t be said for the others.

He turned to see that massive crowd behind him, so varying in appearance and size and manner...being utterly consumed. The fire rose up to their heads. The wolf and birdfolk, the kobolds, the insects and lizards and everyone in between...all were being enveloped.

Their screams of agony were cut short as they collapsed into the flames, cries dying out as they breathed their last.

“NO!”

Basilrin could barely comprehend the terror and fury coursing through him. As the hellfire died out, sinking back into the soil, all that remained was the now barren soil...and the charred corpses of all the citizens that had been happily watching the dragons just moments ago.

The young dragon was hardly even an adult. He had lived a sheltered, innocent life during his very short stay on this world. In his time being raised by his mother and father, and growing alongside his big brother, he had not seen so much as a scuffle.

He knew of death, understood it...but he had never witnessed it.

“You...you MONSTER!” Basilrin screamed, lunging out towards the demon. Anger and heartache overwhelmed his rational senses, and he ignored the gestures the demon made as he closed in.

With a flick of a finger, the demon cast another mighty spell. Suddenly Basilrin was no longer flying towards the demon, but away, further and further. He slammed into the ground and rolled along it with the speed he was launched with, leveling several trees as he kept going.

He finally slammed into one last tree, knocking it over as he came to a stop. He groaned as pain filled his body. To be tossed aside so effortlessly, he, a mighty dragon…

“Wow…” Julroul muttered, breathless.

“Indeed. Incredible, isn’t it? And it could all be yours…”

“You...you could truly give me such power?”

The demon grinned. “Indeed. All you need to do is let me give you my gift, and you will have the world at your mercy…”

Basilrin snarled as he climbed back to his feet. “Hah, as if we would ever join you…”

“Yes, give me the power!” Julroul cried, “I want your strength!”

“W-what?!” Basilrin shook his head. “What are saying, brother?!”

The demon’s grin widened. “I knew you had it in you. Come here, and receive my power…”

“He just slaughtered everyone!” the younger dragon bellowed, “Get back, brother!”

“Do not tell me what to do, whelp.”

Basilrin blinked, having trouble believing his brother’s now cold and distant tone. “B-brother?!”

“A worthless bond. All my life I knew I was destined for greater things. You and father blathering on and on about peace and love...soft things, you are! It is why we pathetically submitted to the humans...no more! I will make them pay! I will crush all who oppose me!”

“Brother...this is not who you are! I know it to be so!”

Julroul grinned as he stepped forward and leaned down to the demon. “You have forgotten what you are, ‘brother’. For so long I knew I was superior to humans, yet they thought they could order us around?! With a flex of a claw, we could crush dozens without a thought. It is time they understood and respected that.”

The demon worked his magic, dark mists flowing from his hands and into the dragon. As the corruption flowed into him, his thoughts only darkened further and further…

“Mmm...yesss...I will show them their place...they will kneel...they will ALL kneel!”

Julroul snarled and growled as his mind slipped, becoming more feral and guided by instinct. His new dark, base way of thought made what were once inklings at the back of his mind full-blown wishes and fantasies.

“Gaaah...yes...no more kneeling, no more submission! I will show them what happens when you strike out against your betters!”

“Brother, get a hold of yourself!” Basilrin pleaded, “He is controlling you somehow! Fight, you must fight it! Reclaim your true self!”

“This IS my true self,” Julroul answered with a laugh, “I have only been hiding it, to placate my weak family.”

“Yes, embrace it!” the demon shouted, “Show them who you REALLY are!”

“Yesss,” Julroul hissed, mind unraveling, “Who I am...who I am…”

His body began to warp just as his mind had, swelling in size. Basilrin watched in shock as he grew past the size of their parents, and kept going. Not soon after, his scales changed. The once vibrant green began to dim and darken, growing to a pure black and becoming reminiscent of jagged glass in shape.

Not soon after, the color left his eyes as well, the blue and gold bleeding away until only pure white remained. His irises and pupils left him as well, giving his visage a new blank look about them. Soon, even his brother could no longer read him.

A coating of mist enveloped him, the same, purple mist that seemed to emanate from the demon. It was at that moment it all came to a stop. The demon lowered his hand as the ritual came to a close.

It seemed that somewhere along the way, he did truly change. While his evil urges and dark thoughts had already been there, merely teased out into acceptance, his desire to be a ruler and master were quickly thrown away as the now demonic looking dragon dropped to the ground and lowered his head in submission.

“Master Helical...your servant thanks you.”

His voice now carried that same distorted, unholy tone the demon possessed.

“A mere taste, my slave. Your new power will grow as you embrace its use.”

The demon turned his gaze to the other dragon, who felt very small all of a sudden. “Kneel.” What was once his brother turned to face him, his maw now bearing a blank, wild looking grin.

“Join us! Feel the might, the sheer power coursing through you, and discard all other thoughts…”

“Never!” Basilrin cried defiantly, “Murderer, I will never submit to the likes of you!”

“I see.” The demon turned to the other dragon and nodded. “Slave.”

The beast, now looking like a dragon made entirely of shadow, stepped up to Basilrin, that unnaturally wide grin seemingly plastered there for good.

The much smaller, green dragon shook his head, beginning to step back. “Brother...I know you are still there, somewhere. I cannot hurt you. I shall not.”

That grin, though it already appeared too wide, only grew wider as his words.

“But I can hurt you.”

That was the only warning he needed. Basilrin threw himself out of the way as his brother lunged forward with blinding speed. He only just cleared the larger dragon as he slammed his claws to the ground, causing the earth itself to shake.

Basilrin righted himself just in time to avoid yet another lunge from Julroul, who seemed remorseless in his attempts to kill the smaller dragon.

“Stop this!”

Julroul laughed as he continued swinging, the other dragon just barely moving out of the way each time.

“Come to your senses! I am your brother!”

“I know. You are also dead.”

Another swing. Basilrin backed up, holding a defensive stance.

“Please, stop this!”

There was no answer as the larger, corrupted dragon lunged at him again. This time he actually grabbed onto Basilrin’s leg as he leapt away, but the smaller dragon slipped free before any harm was done.

There was no way for him to win this. His brother was so much more powerful now. A single, well placed swing from those claws and…

Basilrin shook his head. He couldn’t do this. Not only did his brother massively outclass him, but his heart wasn’t in the fight. He didn’t want to hurt Julroul...but his brother seemed all too gleeful about cutting him down.

He kicked off, launching himself into the increasingly dark sky and looking back at his brother fearfully as he flew away.

“I...I will get help!” he cried, “I will purge you of their influence! I promise!”

Julroul moved to pursue, crouching low to launch himself into the air, but the demon raised his hand.

“Don’t.”

The dark dragon looked at the creature in confusion.

“Let him come crawling back with others. Then we will have more to swell our ranks.”

Julroul got out of his crouching stance and stood up. He turned to the demon and bowed deeply.

“As you wish, master.”

Many days and nights had passed since then. Basilrin did indeed make good on his promise, and returned with the rest of his family to seek out Julroul.

They found him, and he managed to push them all aside, even slaying his mother in the process. Aurelio was badly wounded by him, and so he and Basilrin retreated back to their caves.

It was there they lay, despair overwhelming them. Aurelio couldn’t get up and Basilrin fearfully crept out into the park to find what little there was left to forage for.

Basilrin had nearly given up all hope...until he spotted a certain, familiar dragon flying towards the academy one day.

“...and that is how all of this started!” Basilrin finished.

Razorwing sighed. “My goodness. This evil...it has ruined everything. Even dragons aren’t safe from the destruction.”

“The true extent of the darkness’ might is frightening,” Charles noted, “I can only imagine what would happen if we don’t stop it…”

“What’s been keeping them in the city, anyway?”

Alexander scratched at his face as he asked the question. “I mean, we’re damn lucky they’re not moving out, but...why aren’t they?”

“The corruption,” Andric answered.

“Huh?”

“That’s right,” Leianna agreed, “They can’t go without it.”

“What are you talking about?”

Lexius stepped forward. “You know by now that the demons and their minions spread the corruption wherever they go, correct? You can see it in the sky, the stone and the very earth in this city.”

Alexander nodded. “Of course.”

“Well, they had to work to make it that way, and if they have plans of world conquest, they’ll need to do this a million times over.”

The knight shrugged. “I’m...not following.”

Andric chimed in again. “Think of it like this: Imagine a priest or magician’s magic. The more they use, the more they exhaust themselves. Use too much and they need to wait until they regain their energy, correct?”

“I get that.”

“Well, if they leave the area they’ve corrupted for untouched ground, they’ll begin to die. They subsist on the evil as much as they spread it. A sort of balance, like how humans and trees need one another for air.”

“Well, why don’t they make more? They did a damn good job of it here.”

The paladin gestured toward the cave exit. “The entire city’s been corrupted, and only a few demons have actually crawled out of the hole that is their homeland. The ones that have obviously used up all their dark energy corrupting the city and sealing it in a fog of darkness. Hell, they still need to work on the park, it’s still pure, mostly. While the fog and the corruption in it is ever so slowly growing on its own, it’ll be ages before it can swallow all the land around it like that.”

“So the demons are...recharging?” Alexander probed.

“Correct. Also gathering more of their ilk. Once a demonic army is assembled, they’ll be able to spill out into the kingdom and quickly corrupt the land, claiming more and more for themselves.”

“So we’re on a time limit,” the knight said knowingly.

“Indeed...which is why we should hurry and kill that abomination!”

Alexander sighed. “Right...off we go, than! Tourthun, Basilrin and Aurelio! We’ll need all of you to beat that thing, even if it isn’t immortal anymore. I can’t imagine my blade would do much against something that large…”

Tourthun rumbled quietly. “...whatever is needed to stop this, I will do.”

Aurelio nodded. “I shall fight to my last. It is...the least I could do.”

“Perfect!” Basilrin shouted, “Let us be off!”

The group left the caves, preparing for the confrontation with the monstrosity that had kept them trapped here for all this time. Once the way was clear, civilians could flee and the army could be brought in. Soon enough, the final battle would truly begin.

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[evolutionsvoid]

Ver'Rahl constantly balances on the brink of madness. His failed soul transfer has led to dozens of voices in his head, filling his thoughts with mournful cries, wails, laments and voices that insult and belittle him. Despite his great power as a necromancer, he cannot be rid of them, as they are embedded in his own soul. To add to this state of insanity, he has to deal with unruly undead, failed experiments, a backstabbing minion and an order of freaks that somehow thwart his best laid plans. Needless to say, his fortress is not the place to be after a defeat, as his rage is unleashed and he destroys anything in front of him during his mindless rampage. But one of the biggest things that constantly annoys him and brings him misery is the fact that he has created a lethal abomination of insane power, and has no idea how he did it.

It all started when Ver'Rahl assaulted a nearby village and captured the survivors for experiments in his fortress. The news of his actions reached The Knights of the Wrong Table, who infiltrated his fortress and freed the trapped villagers. His undead put up a valiant fight, but the order won the day and escaped his walls. Ver'Rahl watched from atop his spiked walls and became enraged at his loss. As the prisoners got to safety, the order finished off the pursuing undead and looked to Ver'Rahl, who could do nothing but hurl necrotic blasts and obscenities. Feeling confident in their victory, Vikus shouted out to the furious necromancer, telling him that an army of undead could never defeat the justice of a knight. Already angered in defeat and drowning in the screaming voices in his head, Vikus' remark was the final small push that plummeted him into madness. Ver'Rahl flew into a blind rage and called forth every ounce of energy in his being. In the boiling stew of chaos within his mind, one goal emerged: Make a knight. In languages unknown to him, and with spells he didn't even know existed, Ver'Rahl twisted and shaped the many defeated dead that lay before his fortress. Lightening and fire blasted the corpse-infused earth, as he hurled everything he had into this one insane maelstrom. The earth and flesh rose up, mimicking his movements and forming into a humanoid shape. The tempest of dark energy embedded itself into the form and brought forth twisted life. With a final pulse, the mangled form hardened into rock and became still. The exertion of this madness disintegrated Ver'Rahl's skull head and caused him to collapse. General Nekrosis carried the unconscious necromancer to safety, as the order stared at the immense statue before them. The rock cracked and crumbled, revealing the abomination that lay inside. Tearing off its stony skin, Darkest Knight emerged into the mortal world. The order wasted no time in attacking the monstrosity, but the previous battle had tired them, and this being had just been freshly risen. Its long limbs swept the order away, its strength toppling even Golem Knight. The monster was fast and fierce, and it wasn't long before the order was forced to retreat from the abomination, lest it harm the villagers. Darkest Knight did not pursue the fleeing enemy, it only turned away and scaled the fortress walls, searching for its master. Ever since its bizarre conception, Darkest Knight has fought on Ver'Rahl's side. The massive creature is Ver'Rahl's greatest siege weapon and is always called upon when he seeks to topple a castle or fortress. Attitude - There is not much to say about Darkest Knight's personality, as he is a rage-filled beast that just seeks to destroy. It smashes and devours without pause and obeys Ver'Rahl's orders without question. It enjoys destroying structures and buildings, and bounds through shattered cities with reckless abandon. To many, Darkest Knight is another mindless undead monstrosity that seeks to devour life. A few though, like Ver'Rahl and Nekrosis, have noticed some odd moments with the creature. Strange occurrences that last only a few seconds, and leave even the necromancer questioning what he just saw. To them, there is the wonder if Darkest Knight is smarter than they believe. He obeys commands without question, but bizarre incidents have left them wondering if there is a hidden intelligence within that screaming, muscled mass. Relations - Ver'Rahl is the only real being Darkest Knight has a relation with. Darkest Knight is loyal to its master and will abandon its battle to protect him if he falls. It follows his orders and commands without question or hesitancy, and is so reliable to Ver'Rahl, that he has used Darkest Knight in ambushes, sieges and even has used himself as bait so that Darkest Knight can attack. Outside of battle, Darkest Knight will just ahng around the fortress, waiting for orders from his master. If Ver'Rahl is outside, he will often follow him around. At these times, Ver'Rahl treats Darkest Knight like a pet. He has even been seen feeding Darkest Knight remnants of things that he has vomited up during tantrums. Strange otherworldly substances that Darkest Knight enjoys eating like dog biscuits. With this amazing creation, Ver'Rahl is always on a quest to try and replicate the spells that birthed Darkest Knight. But the things that happen during his insane bouts are lost in the whirlpool of chaos, and most of the knowledge only emerges during these tantrums. Much like the experiments for smarter, stronger Undead, these attempts have led to failures and seething piles of flesh. At times, the image of Darkest Knight is frustrating to Ver'Rahl, as it is a reminder of one of his greatest achievements he cannot even replicate. Besides these few occasions, Ver'Rahl views Darkest Knight as his greatest weapon, and only unleashes it during missions of great importance and need. Darkest Knight is rarely sent out on its own, most of the time Ver'Rahl is there to give commands and oversee the operation. Darkest Knight has also aided Ver'Rahl in times of madness. In some instances, when Ver'Rahl falls to insanity, he may summon creatures from another realm that he cannot control. If these beings turn against Ver'Rahl, he will work to destroy them so that they do not harm his master. At times, that means working alongside the Knights of the Wrong Table so that this new alien being does not wipe them all out. Despite being completely obedient and loyal, there is something unsettling about it, even to its creator. There was an incident with the Darkest Knight that only Ver'Rahl and Nekrosis know about. One time after a loss, Ver'Rahl was on his usual tantrum, shooting bolts of energy and breaking furniture. During this anger, Ver'Rahl lashed out at Darkest Knight, hitting him with a blast of magic. This attack was not dangerous or destructive, with the shot leaving just a burn mark on its skin. The retaliation by Darkest Knight was brief but intense, leaving Ver'Rahl beaten and bruised, but with no major damage. The brutal attack though, made a clear message to Ver'Rahl: Don't do that again. This attack has left the two disturbed by the idea that there may be something else to Darkest Knight that they don't know. His obedience to orders and this attack on his own master has Ver'Rahl wondering how much Darkest Knight is under control, and how much is Darkest Knight just following along with it. Subordinates - None Abilities - Darkest Knight combines agility, power and ferocity to make an undead powerhouse. Its long limbs allow it to sprint, swing, climb and leap with surprising speed. Castle walls are either climbed or hurdled over. Fleeing enemies are outrun and slaughtered. Spears, rocks and magic spells are dodged with ease, as it contorts its body to avoid damaging attacks. Arrows aren't even dodged, as they uselessly embed themselves into its flesh. Its strength allows it to smash through most structures and take down heavy hitting enemies. Catapults and huts are seized and flung by it. Iron gates are battered down and trampled. Combining this strength with its speed turns Darkest Knight into a battering ram, plowing through the battlefield. Its claws and spikes are used to tear through prey. Its long arms can sweep large areas and spring into devastating punches. Its mouth can stretch open to engulf man-sized prey, and its rows of teeth impales all caught inside. As an undead, Darkest Knight can take a high amount of punishment before being out of the fight. Wounds and cuts don't phase it, and even the most brutal injuries are shrugged off or ignored. In one case, Alvea broke its jaw with a pillar, and Darkest Knight still fought with the same ferocity. The only way to kill Darkest Knight is to dismember it or turn its body to ash. The monstrosity has to literally be beaten to a pulp before it succumbs to death. But though it seems to be a mindless beast, Darkest Knight knows when to retreat. After receiving too many wounds, Darkest Knight will flee the battle and return to the fortress. In the safety of the base, it will form a fleshy cocoon around its body, and use it to heal its wounds. The length of time it is in the cocoon depends on the number and severity of the wounds it received. With its arms and jaws broken, body covered in slashes and embedded with dozens of arrows, Darkest Knight has emerged from its cocoon weeks later looking good as new. Tools - Darkest Knight's greatest tools are his own limbs and impossible strength. The only real times he uses tools is when he grabs chunks of buildings or towers to smash opponents with. Slinging boulders and rubble is a common strategy of his, usually taking out siege weapons that are pestering him. Weaknesses - Darkest Knight's sheer size makes him an easy target to hit, allowing siege weapons to be used against him. Though Darkest Knught feels very little pain, this can be a problem. Attacks from behind or the side can be ignored to the point where a foe can cause lots of bodily damage before Darkest Knight realizes the threat. Magic is effective against him, as he has no armor or runes to protect against spells. His ignorance to pain and damage can cause him to charge right into devastating spells, forgetting the importance of dodging during his blind fury.

[queennataliaofathoria-blog]

The Circle Is Anew || Final Self Para

In Athoria

Word comes quickly to Queen Natalia of Athoria that Brailston City has fallen siege to the rebellion lead by Delaina Bloodruler, Grimm Daire, and the Triplet Nymphs.

There is a moment of panic inside of the castle as Natalia’s knights, fearless men and women that are thought to be something else besides human, surround the Queen and take her to Keep. Natalia is begging for Bethory, the princess, but the Knights are required only to protect the Queen. Natalia’s cries and angry shouts are heard throughout the castle walls, echoing down the long, cold corridors. She understands her position, but it does not mean that she has to like it.

Inside of the Keep, the large metal doors are shut behind her and several locks are set in place. And now it is quiet, but Natalia is not alone.

“You,” Natalia sneers at her only company, an old woman dressed to impress. “You did this,”

“You are looking for someone to blame,” the old woman says calmly back. “Perhaps you should look into a mirror,”

Tabitha Montgomery is gazing through a barred window into the grand country of Athoria. They are high in the castle, the highest tower that is meant to protect the keeper of the land. No one person could scale the wall, and to enter the keep they must go through the many guards and knights stationed far and wide. They are safe for now.

But only for now.

Queen Natalia is fuming so much that fire is practically exploding from her ears. She removes her cloak and any added garments and takes a weapon in her hand. Let them come. She begins to pace the room in anticipation.

“When I called for you I asked you to read the spell on the parchment, nothing more. I do not need your council, I never did. My husband King Damian might not have fallen for your dark sorcery but I always saw right through you and your demonic soul, Tabitha. That is why you will never see Bethory again. That is why you will save this Kingdom and you will do so out of obedience, and not because you owe me a favor,”

In Tabitha’s hands is the spell on the parchment that Natalia’s doppelganger had left for her. Why wasn’t it complicated? Tabitha looks over the spell and notices how the curves and loops of the writing are in a direct mockery of her very own work. And she realizes that this is a spell that perhaps her own doppelganger from the other dimension had written. Did this doppelganger hand the spell to Natalia’s twin so that she may have it in this lifetime? Though the thought is chaotic and confusing, parts of it make sense. All things will come full circle, it seems. Internally, Tabitha humors a laugh at the expense of Queen Natalia.

It is not a tough decision; in fact, it is the only option. But Tabitha sighs with a breathy shake to her voice giving the illusion to Natalia that it is, indeed, difficult.

“I will do this immediately if you listen to this old woman’s tale,” Her head turns towards the panicked monarch with an elderly charm glint to her eyes that are hidden behind brass spectacles. Natalia rolls her eyes.

“I am listening, then,”

In England

Jezebeth hands the staff to Freya Montgomery. With the exchange in power, the human vessel holding the Demon of Trickery stumbles back into Donovan Hayes with weakness. They are not meant to wield such power, and never have been. Jezebeth is ironically happy to hand off the magical artifact to someone who is capable and trustworthy to do the right thing. The two of them exchange a heated glance of attempting neutrality. He is trusting Freya, trusting The Montgomery bloodline to set the world straight, to bring order to this chaos that has ensued due to a mad Queen. He trusts her, or at least he keeps telling himself that.

Freya breaks the gaze with the demon king and steps towards the window. With the staff in her hand she can already feel its power emanating with her own magic, begging to be used. Control is imperative; it seems that she has waited her entire life for a moment she did not know was to come, and yet here she is standing in the King’s chambers about to change the entire course of the world.

Donovan puts the King in a chair and presses a cold towel to his face.

“Freya?”

The voice of Tabitha Montgomery enter Freya’s mind. Freya closes her eyes to tighten the telepathic bond between two of the most powerful witches in the history of the world.

“Yes, Tabitha. War is upon England. I am holding the Staff.. It contains the four phantom souls of the Forsaken, the magic of both earth and hell, and –“

“It seems our fates align this night. Maybe this is where the circle begins anew,”

Freya smiles. Communicating with Tabitha Montgomery had been forbidden for centuries, and even if she were in charge of the Coven of Sol these days it does not mean that she broke order. Freya can feel their emotions intertwining with old magic that the two had been birthed with. Even though they are an ocean apart, it comes easily.

“The King only has one spell in mind on this night….yours,”

“If you focus carefully, you can see how it is done,”

Freya complies, reaching into Tabitha’s mind as if it were an impressive library of information for her at her disposal. The invasion is full of trust and sadness. Freya pulls the spell from the confines of her mind and reads it over with a shaky and awful realization of breath. This spell will drain her considerably, and it will require immense power. Freya feels the staff reacting to her own thoughts and emotions at just the glimpse of the spell in her mind. The staff will power the spell, but at what cost?

“What will you cast in Athoria, then?” Freya asks Tabitha. A part of her is fearful that she will not like the answer.

“I believe in what I said. The night of the doppelgangers gave us all insight that most did not take for granted. I am sure Queen Natalia sees a future and ending in her favor. But I do not know for sure...I do know that I stand prepared and that if it is meant to be, then the dragon will answer,”

Sadness plagues Freya and tears suddenly fill her eyes. Her hands are gripping at the staff while she listens to the last words of Tabitha Montgomery.

“Freya, it is time for Athoria to rest once again. Do well to keep everyone safe,”

In Athoria

Tabitha and Natalia share a heated connection that is only fueled by distaste.

“I am sure you have read much in your time as a ruler,” Tabitha begins to tell the Queen exactly what she wants her to hear before beginning to cast the spell. As promised, Natalia listens with a sneer on her face, unhappy that this situation is now being controlled by a woman that she despises. “There is one detail that no scribe has ever encountered, not in your royal journals or books, or even in the grand library in Brailston. I now wish you to know this detail,”

“And what is that?”

“On the eve of The First Supernatural War one thousand years ago, I left my post as Coven leader in England and came to fight for Athoria, by orders of The King of England,”

“That is impossible,” Natalia is still ignorant to the power that the supernatural possess.

“Is it, now?” Tabitha rises from her place by the window as cascades of fabric from her dress fill around her ankles and spill onto the floor. She rests the parchment on the chair where she had sat and lifts her hand towards the rune. “On that day, the circle was reset in a peaceful manner. Life continued, but it seems it was doomed to be only temporary. This spell that your doppelganger has given to you will be the opposite. I pray for you and your family and the beautiful people of this horrid country that this permanency will be more successful,”

Queen Natalia is curious about the rune and the scribbles on the parchment and steps cautiously towards Tabitha as she begins to work. “Stop speaking in secrets and riddles, Tabitha,”

It is an important moment of reflection for Tabitha. The choice she had made so many centuries ago to aid Athoria in a war against themselves due to impractical supernatural entitlements had been a great sacrifice. The catastrophic reasoning behind greed would always make her unhappy, alongside acts of revenge, anger or dismantling pride that shrouded the reality in which humans and supernaturals attempted to survive.

This had been why Tabitha wanted Bethory Athor to grow into a Queen, to reflect the best traits the ancient Athor’s, the ones who first ruled the country fifteen hundred years ago when the Franco Athor Rebellion was still sang about in taverns and the Kings of Athoria were kind and blessed without poison or prejudice. Those Athor’s were who Bethory could have become. Those Athor’s set the stage for the country of Athoria to be unified in both human and supernatural. But still, the supernaturals were plagued in greed, always fighting over land or titles that meant little to society. In the end, the evil Athor’s were simply a result of evil supernaturals, which in turn made Athoria quite evil itself.

It is time to restart that circle.

In England

“My King,” Freya turns to bow to Jezebeth as the words of Tabitha left her with loss. “I am being told that Athoria will be made to rest,” 

The select few patrons in the room exchange heavy glances, but Jezebeth has already seen and known Athoria to be at peace, and nonexistent. Still, this official news causes his chest to swell with grief. 

“This spell will erase Athoria from every mind,” Freya waves her wand in front of her until a rune of blue light begins painting the floor. “Even those who were once from there, even those that have children there or have traveled there, or know of history there...they will cease to remember as long as they are currently standing on England soil. This will end the war immediately,”

The staff causes black lines to carve into her pale skin, corruption leaking into her bright white magic in a clash of resistance that she is using to her benefit. The rune on the floor closes and shoots upward in a pale light, forcing the space into a static charge of energy that makes her rise gently into a suspension.

“Is this truly what you want? There is no way to take it back without great repercussions,” Freya tilts her head towards the King. Tears are burning down her cheeks, feeling her connection with Tabitha strengthen from their contact. 

“Yes,” is all Jezebeth is able to say, the black of his irises blinking away at any emotion.

“Athoria will be no more soon enough. If Tabitha Montgomery follows through with her spell...the Nymph Brothers will do whatever it takes to protect Athoria. Say it -- “she bravely commands from the King. “Say you want me to do this--”

In Athoria

Tabitha inhales and begins to chant.

“On grantors of our ancient familial power. Let me call upon Dragos, the oldest of the Dragons, the one who sleeps in the deepest bellies of our lands. I grant him freedom once more. I, Tabitha Montgomery, High Priestess, oldest and purest magical line of the nymph Din -- I break Dragos’s chains with offerings of all the richest of this castle. With the blood of the Queen Athor if they so want it. Take us back to a time where the country can heal. Let all the sacrifice be enough to save the future of Athoria,”

The rune shoots through the window without shattering it, racing towards a place in the Athoria Gardens where it collides into the earth. A pressured release of air explodes into a straight line through the ground, cracking it completely open to reveal the deeper parts of the earth. The fissure of air slices the entire ground from the Gardens towards Brailston and further east, trembling the land into a massive earthquake until it finally strikes Trinity Lakes. Water blasts into the air from the underground impact of the cell of Dragos, 

A horrific and utterly bone-shaking roar fills the entire land of Athoria as Dragos is awoken. Their claws peel away the confining land surrounding its underground cave within the belly of the lake. Destruction is immediate, and when he is free, Dragos shoots upward into the sky with a terrifying explosion that rumbles across the country. 

A storm appears instantly where Dragos has pierced through the massive collection of darkened clouds in the atmosphere, blackening the sky with thunderous accompaniment. As its magic is let free into the world, lightening strikes by the hundreds accompany the dragon as it flaps its massive wings and heads towards the Castle of Athoria, where Natalia, Tabitha and the Rebellion watch in both fear and amazement. 

“You see my Queen...Dragos is the first dragon. So much has been hidden from you because of one simple reason --” Tabitha turns to her majesty as earthquakes rattle the castle violently and fires from the lightening strikes begin to burn furiously. “The Athor’s will always be why this world dies. But with it comes rebirth. The circle continues, history repeats. Our story ends now with a new beginning,”

In England

“I want this,”

The second that the word from King Jezebeth is issued, Freya begins to cast the spell. The staff floats from her palm to the center of the massive rune and explodes into a million shards. The pieces appear like mirrors, reflecting memories of Athoria in all the minds throughout their lands. She can see weddings and children being born, old monarchs giving encouraging speeches and the building of cities and castles. She can see wars and turmoil, alongside supernatural murders and chaos. Life fills the room with a collected whispering as if these memories wish to tell their story before they disappear forever. Blood slips down her nose and catches along the edge of her mouth.

“Oh grantors of our ancient familial powers,” Freya swallows thickly, lifting her wand to perform the final piece. “I command you to give me your strength. I, High Priestess of the Coven of Sol, ancestor to the all might and powerful nymph Din. I demand you shatter these memories. Protect my people. Bring internal peace to those who come to war and realign their memories with England as their home,”

Tethers of light connect the millions of shards in streams of unified magics, forming a giant ball of light. “I demand Athoria be forgotten,” she reaches out to pull on the thread of magic. 

“I demand Athoria be forever….forgotten,”

The light burst outward in a ring of power that spreads across the borders of England in a protecting ward. Her toes land back on the ground, feet folding flat as she looks at the physical proof of the spell before them. The patrons in the room blink in confusion. 

Around England, the war comes to an immediate stand still. Those with memories of Athoria begin to question what they are doing and why they are killing each other. Others go about their day as normal, acting as though the memories of Athoria had never been there to begin with. Members of the war help each other to a stand, look to their leaders for an explanation. But there is none...

“It is done,” she turns to smile sadly at the King. “The circle is anew…”

Jezebeth closes his eyes and lets out a long, exaggerated sigh. He reaches out his hand to Freya. “We still have much work to do. England will recover. I am so sorry for your loses,”

In Athoria

Athoria’s lands tremble in massive quakes. The split from Trinity Lake expands, dividing the lakes in half while a fissure floods in the center of the eastern side of Athoria. The Ports of Athoria succumb to a massive tidal wave and sinks into the water. The lands in the center of the large island slump into the earth. Rock slides from the mountains shatter downwards, consuming the lower grounds of Athoria in unshakable craters that conform and break and sharpen into the giant cracks that are consuming the plains of the countryside. Water seeps up from these incisions flooding Athoria cities on lower grounds. Waves the size of the castle crash along the entire shoreline of the island, flattening anything in their path and drowning everything in massive tides. A sleeping volcano near Monir shakes and erupts from the incision as well, pouring hot lava and molten liquid over the water and floods, causing fires to erupt where necessary and steam and ash to drip from the skies in deadly snow colored blankets.

Din, Naryu, and Fafore are encircling the island from a few miles out in the ocean. Naryu, the Nymph of Water and Law, encourages the waves that destroy the island on its coast. Fafore, the Nymph of Time and Wind, consumes the flow of time surrounding Athoria altogether allowing every single human and supernatural to feel the affect of the spell, while placing Athoria into its own realm of existence where time and space is unlike that of its surrounding earth. And Din, the Nymph of Earth and Fire and great ancestor to the Montgomery bloodline, aids in the spell itself.

As Athoria succumbs to the monstrosities of Dragos and the natural disasters that comes with the dragon being released, the siblings take each others hands and transformed into their original orb-like state. With speed unseen to the human eye, they repeatedly circle the entire island from miles out, warding it, guarding it, raising protection and invisibility spheres so that the devastation is hidden and never to be seen again, and so that no creature can ever leave.

Din, Naryu and Fafore, the original protectors and forgers of Earth, travel back to the Realm of Seven Islands and leave the country they had once loved behind to its ruin. 

EPILOGUE

Due to the magic of the nymph siblings and the warding of Athoria, the country was forgotten for many years. Englanders ended their confused war and any Athorians that were in England at the time of Freya Montgomery’s spell fell into England norms as if they had been there the entire time. Other countries from around the world were not so easily convinced; they traveled the ocean to the west of England endlessly searching for Athoria, a country that many other Kingdoms in the world had been a part of, but it was not there. Old history books and information was questioned, research became endless as many great witches and supernaturals searched far and wide for answers of the island that had mysterious vanished...but these answers, like the country of Athoria, were no where to be found.

England conformed to a land of supernatural and human unity lead by Jezebeth, who no longer hid behind fake vessels and lies. This transition was difficult at first but with the guidance of Freya Montgomery and The Coven of Sol, the country soon faced peace once more.

With the warding of Athoria came the disappearing of Dragos, though the great dragon has become a classic myth and legend and is said to be seen during times of peril or devastation. 

Din, Fafore and Naryu await in The Realm of Seven Islands for the country of Athoria to grow anew. Perhaps one day they will return to earth to see what has become of what was once Athoria. 

[foxofthedesert]

RQ OUaT FF | OGA: Ch. 15

Chapter 15 – Goodbye is Not Forever (Ao3 Link)

Regina bites back the bile rising up the column of her throat.

In extending the gnarled olive branch to Snow, she has not only abandoned a decade long crusade, but done so at Daniel's expense. Now he will never be avenged. Now, he can never rest in peace as he so deserves. Of the thousands of people she has come into personal contact with, there is only one person aside from her stable boy as worthy of both. Red. And it is for Red alone that Regina has forsaken attaining those things for Daniel. In the cold recesses of her mind where her weaker tendencies live and where reason has no foothold, she fears that wherever his soul lingers, whatever latent energy is left of him, is observing this capitulation with marked disgust.

That she is being ridiculous right now does not register against the swell of self-loathing squeezing her chest and clogging her throat. Is this how Red felt when she regained her senses only to discover the beast inside her had killed and consumed Peter? If so, Regina can imagine why Red very nearly came unglued in the aftermath of that tragedy. Failing the person one loves most is, without question, the worst feeling in the world, and this makes twice now Regina has let Daniel down. First she failed to exact vengeance upon his betrayer, the very same Snow White with whom she has now formed an alliance.

Crippling waves of acrid humiliation inflame Regina's cheeks as, still beaming, Snow returns the handshake and confirms their verbal agreement. "Agreed, Queen Regina. We have an accord."

Unwilling to maintain contact with her nemesis-turned-ally, Regina drops Snow's hand unceremoniously. To regain her composure, she reminds herself why she is doing this and that Daniel would surely understand. Gentle soul that he was, he would want her to save Red, even if that meant sacrificing his honor. Although she is not so sure he would feel the same about her sacrificing her own, as that is essentially what she is doing by parlaying with enemies she had once sworn on her honor to kill.

In the back of her mind where that cold fear lurks, she hears a voice that sounds suspiciously like Red's respond to that thought. "Stop it, Regina," it says. "This is pointless. Torturing yourself over the past won't help you save me in the present. So get over yourself and get back down to business!"

Rather than examine her apparently tentative grip on sanity, Regina decides to concede to what is ultimately sound advice. Shaking off the bonds of shame that were slowly constricting her ability to think or breathe, Regina raises a sable brow at Charming, who had been most vocal about his concerns.

"Are you now satisfied about my intentions, King David?" she asks, brow arched pointedly.

Although Charming does not look convinced by the speech she gave or her offer of an unofficial peace to Snow, he does not dissent or further question her motivations. A prudent decision.

"I am for the moment," he says in a clipped tone that indicates wariness Regina can somewhat respect.

In response, Regina levels a mocking smirk at him. "Ah, but the moment is all we have, good King. It would be wise of you to embrace it." She then swirls on Granny, who is still regarding her with a narrowed, suspicious gaze. "And you? Are you satisfied that I am innocent in the matter?"

Granny swears under her breath and mutters something that sounds like, "Gonna kill that girl for tellin' you my name," before giving Regina a proper response. "Fine, I admit to being wrong about you," she hesitates and then peers at Regina over her glasses, "this time. If you can fix her like you said, then I guess I can learn to live with my granddaughter's questionable choice in a mate. But if she doesn't make it, all bets are off."

Regina does not doubt the sincerity behind those words. She has on more than one occasion surveyed the grisly product of Granny's crossbow work and knows of few individuals less likely to make idle threats. There is far more to the Widow Lucas than meets the eye. The world at large may see only an aged grandmother who, though a bit prickly, can disarm anyone with a dimpled smile and is probably the best cook and seamstress they have ever known. They have not been given the unfortunate privilege of encountering the killer instinct kept on a very tight leash. But Regina has, and she has no desire to get another glimpse. Not that she has to worry; she will never experience Granny's promise being fulfilled.

"You don't have to worry about that," she replies. "If Red dies, then it will be because I perished in the attempt to save her."

Granny nods sharply. "In that case, I'm good."

The simplicity of that statement is something that perturbs Regina for a moment. But then she considers that Granny is a simple woman who sees the world in blacks and whites and has little tolerance for the myriad grays that exist in between. To Granny, simple and straightforward math is all that matters. As long as the sum of the equation comes out to Red being alive and well, she is willing to accept any additional variables that must be factored in. In that way, Regina finds herself on common ground with her wife's grandmother for perhaps the first time.

After inclining her head in acknowledgement to Granny, Regina returns her attention to Snow. "Now, then," she says, "as for your earlier question in reference to our departure, the sooner the better. My sister will stop at nothing to prevent us from obtaining what we seek. However, she is reeling from a defeat she suffered earlier at my hand. Haste is key, I'm afraid. So if you are prepared to set out immediately, we will do so. I have already arranged transportation, and we need not carry supplies outside of whatever weapons we wish to avail ourselves of. I don't imagine us being gone more than two days, and should we encounter obstacles that delay us, I will bring along plenty of gold to purchase food or any other additional supplies we may require on the road."

The only silver lining to Snow's delayed arrival is that Regina was afforded plenty of time to plan. The first step of that process was pouring over every available resources regarding Oz. While pickings were meager, they auspiciously included a tome which featured a roughly scaled map of that realm. Thanks to Rumple, she has a good starting reference as to the location of the grove she is seeking, and were time on her side that would be enough information to set out directly in search of it upon breaching in to that world. Sadly, she is hard pressed to conclude the expedition as swiftly as is humanly possible. To that end, she figured her best bet of finding a precise location of the grove would be in the Emerald City, where detailed records of such a place should be kept. With any luck, she and Snow might even encounter someone who has seen the grove in person, thus allowing her to use an arcane technique involving probing someone's memory to derive a target for a transportation spell. This plan relied much upon luck, too much for comfort, but it was the best she could come up with considering the rigid constraints she was operating under. That Jefferson's hat portal opens up in Oz less than a day's brisk walk from the Emerald City seemed confirmation that this was the correct, and most expeditious, course of action.

A dubious look crosses Snow's face at Regina's confident assessment of their timeline. "I thought you said what we need is in Oz? How are we supposed to get there and back in two days?"

Regina smirks condescendingly. "That, my dear, is what you are about to find out."

"And what about me?" Charming injects, looking put out at not being included. "What am I supposed to do while you two are off risking your lives in another world?"

Regina wants to tell him that he can do what he normally does, which is sit on his ass and look pretty. Objectively speaking, he is quite accomplished in that regard. Instead of saying that, which she normally would, she takes the high road of necessity and offers him an objective to focus on.

"For starters, you can watch over Red. Should my sister defy my expectations and not follow us to Oz, she will eventually discover my absence. Soon thereafter she will deduce that I have discovered a cure. With me long gone to procure it, her only options will be to abduct Red as leverage or kill her outright where she lays. It will fall to you to prevent either from happening." For emphasis, she sizes Charming up with her eyes, satisfied to see him squirm under her sharp appraisal. "I'm entrusting you with with what I hold most precious in this world. Is that something you are capable of handling or shall I appoint my Knights to do so until General Mulan arrives?"

"No, no," he replies quickly, hand instinctively falling to his sword at the affront to his manhood. "I can handle that, and would do so even if you hadn't requested it. Red is my friend, too, in case you've forgotten. I swear on my life to keep her safe."

"That is a wholly appropriate oath, Shepherd," she tells him unmercifully. "Because if you should fail, I will make sure it comes to fruition."

To Regina's surprise, he does not object to her unsubtle threat, but rather nods with a measure of respect. "As well you should," he says. "You have my word as a King and a spouse that I will protect her with my life."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Snow adds, looking a bit nervous over the brief showdown between Regina and her husband.

"Yes. Let's," Regina agrees, tilting her head slightly as she meets Charming's unwavering eyes. "In that case, King David, as sovereign of this realm, I hereby place the Citadel and all forces therein under your command. Deploy them as you see fit to safeguard my wife and the many people who make their abode here."

He gives a soldierly tip of the head to her that is surprising to see coming from a man raised a shepherd. "I'll see to it the second you are both away."

"I suppose you'll want me to sit around like a useless lump of do-nothing," Granny grumps, arms folded across her chest. She again peers at Regina over her glasses.

"I expect no such thing. Do whatever you please," Regina tells her irritable in-law. "You are the Queen's grandmother. As such, the staff is at your disposal. Have the run of the place if you wish, and make yourself useful in whatever way you deem appropriate. Only swear to me two things: that you will not, under any circumstances, risk your life and that you will stay with Red as often as you are able."

Granny scoffs at the notion that she'd do anything else. "I'm too old to fight unless I got no other choice. As for the other, I watched over that girl for twenty years all by myself. I can handle a day or two more, Regina."

Although Regina rolls her eyes, she is secretly pleased to hear Granny say her name for the first time. It is a marked improvement over the previous address, which was either a snidely spoken "Your Majesty" or "that woman."

"Very well, Eugenia," she says, and then to Snow adds, "Do you remember how to make your way to the courtyard?"

"Of course I do," Snow replies with a scoff very similar to Granny's.

Regina gestures toward the door. "Then do so presently after you have changed into more suitable attire for our journey. You may use one of the guest rooms down the hall or your old bedroom if that's more to your tastes. Red had it restored for you not long after she moved in." Regina ignores the moon-eyes Snow makes at Red and then turns on her in recognition of her having allowed such a gesture. To Snow's dashing spouse, she says, "As for you, Charming, you'll find Captain Rodrigo in the garrison. Snow can show you where it is after she's dressed. Introduce yourself and inform him of the change in command while I'm away. I'll join you both in the courtyard shortly. I want to say goodbye to my wife before we leave. Privately."

"Okay," Snow agrees, smiling softly in overly saccharine sympathy. But before she departs as Regina instructed, she glides back over to the bed then leans over Red so that she can place a lingering kiss upon a feverish forehead. She then sits gingerly at Red's side and, once settled, gently sweeps her hand over her sweat dampened hair. Tears pool in Snow's eyes, and it is difficult for Regina to bear witness to the fathomless reserves of love and devotion for Red she sees reflected in those expressive green orbs.

Snow and Red's unbreakable friendship has always been something that Regina avoided conversing about, and not only because she preferred to not even think of Snow if at all possible. Red considers that relationship almost sacrosanct, something not to be mentioned in Regina's presence as she would invariably attempt to disparage it with cruel gibes and negative opinions. Mostly that criticism would have stemmed from pure envy.

Regina has always been and always will be a jealous woman, something Red is painfully aware of since she has been the primary object of that jealousy over the seven years they have been together. It does not take much in the way of inappropriate interest directed toward Red for her to fly off the handle. That Red is a woman of extraordinary beauty means subtle leers and tawdry comments are directed at her far too frequently. Frankly Regina has lost count of how many times she has issued threats of violence should the unwelcome and impolite behavior of certain tactless individuals continue. Of course, she only confronts the perpetrators once Red is out of earshot, not wanting to be on the receiving end of a disapproving pout or worse, a stern lecture once they are alone, from her highly sensitive and compassionate partner.

It comes as no surprise that Snow's tender, lingering kiss provokes that jealous streak to rise to the surface. Of the many diverse individuals which whom Regina has to share Red's affections, Snow is by far the most infuriating. For a moment, she considers issuing a terse warning only to bite her tongue when she hears Snow begin to speak.

"I love you, Red," Snow says, her abiding friendship and deep concern for Red reflected in her tone. "I always have and I always will. You are my most beloved friend and companion. But more than that, you're family. You're my sister in every way but blood. I'd do anything for you. You know that don't you? I hope so. And that's why I have to go with Regina to Oz. You have saved my life so many times, now it's my turn do the same for you."

She pauses to tenderly cup Red's face with both hands, thumbs gently stroking Red's cheeks.

"Regina and I are going to save you, and you know why? Because we love you too much to let you go. So you just hang on, Red. Fight to stay alive while we're away, and just know that we'll be thinking of you every single second until we get back." She then stands, picks up Red's hand and places another reverent kiss upon the unnaturally pale skin, streaked with stark blue veins, covering the back. "This is not goodbye," she then states, and Regina can tell that this is something that has been said between them many times so as to be elevated to the status of a venerated promise. "This is, 'I'll see you soon.'"

With that, Snow replaces Red's hand at her side, and then nods to Charming, who clutches at Red's hand briefly. It looks as if he wants to say something, but decides against it in lieu of allowing his wife's sentiment to stand for his own. After releasing Red's hand, he looks at Snow, and something unspoken passes between them that is evidence of the love they share. That ability to communicate without words is something that Regina has developed with Red over the course of their relationship. Only time can teach to those willing to learn the full intricacies of the person they love, and thus is a reward to those devoted couples who have chosen to forsake the arena of choice for that of profound commitment.

Before Red, Regina used to loathe couples who could engage in whole conversations with nary a word being verbalized between them. Now, however, she relies on that very same ability to alert Red to her needs without needing to speak, or to translate Red's needs in the same manner. In social situations where propriety must be adhered to, they often entertain themselves by giving looks that only the other can decipher and which go completely unnoticed by the oblivious nobles that surround them. Their ability to mock the pretentiousness of such individuals without alerting them to their disdain is a great source of amusement for both. Much more rewarding is the ability to convey her love with only a glance in the midst of a boring council meeting and to then read Red's equally heartfelt response in expressive green eyes that never fail to take her breath away.

The moment between Snow and Charming passes quickly, as such things are wont to do. Before Regina can even formulate a response, they have declared their intention to wait for her in the courtyard and then made their exits.

Only Granny remains, and she is staring at Red in a way that is disquieting. She looks so defeated, a woman suddenly feeling every last one of her seventy-one years. Regina cannot tell if it is due to a belief that the efforts to save Red will fail or because Granny feels as guilty for failing her granddaughter as Regina does for failing her wife. Either way, the troubled look does not remain long before resolve replaces it. In three firm strides, Granny moves over to the bedside and then ducks down to kiss Red's brow.

"You get better, you hear?" Regina hears Granny say as she hovers over Red. "I love you, Red. I know I don't tell you enough, and I know I've been hard on you for the choices you've made, but it's just because I care so damn much about you. You're all I've got in this ole, godsforsaken world. So do what Snow said. Keep fighting, girl. For me. Hell, for that woman, even. Whatever it takes. Just keep fighting. Don't you dare give up. 'Cause if you do, grown woman or not, I'll hunt your ass down in the Underworld and put you over my knee. Got it? Good." She then pats Red on the hand, turns to give Regina a curt nod, and then leaves the room.

At last alone, Regina takes a solidifying breath and then crosses over to her the bed. After perching in the same spot Snow had previously occupied, she leans over Red's body, supporting herself with her arm extended to brace on the bed at Red's opposite side. Tilting her head to the side, she bites her lip as she sifts her fingers through Red's thick curls, damp with sweat, but still somehow silky and voluminous.

Her obsession with Red's hair is something she has never kept secret. She delights herself by braiding it whenever Red is amenable to sitting still for five or ten minutes. Over the years, she has learned to create many complicated designs via experimentation. Although Red's patience is intermittent, she never fails to praise Regina's handiwork and then show if off to every lady in court. To repay the frequent indulgences, every night before bed she coaxes Red to sit at the vanity or upon their bed facing away so she can brush a hundred strokes through the luxurious mane she envies almost as much as she loves. It isn't at all uncommon for Red to fall asleep under the deliberate and careful ministrations, which is brings a satisfaction unto itself. Knowing how good and relaxing the attention is for Red makes the effort all the more gratifying.

As she sits there brushing her hand through her wife's hair, Regina momentarily frets over whether or not she will ever get to do so again. Or if she'll ever get to feel Red's body slump against hers as she succumbs to exhaustion from another long day of courtly duties or outdoor adventures. Those simple pleasures have come to mean the world to her, and the thought of never again sharing them with Red is yet another reinforcement of just how much she has to lose should the upcoming quest fail.

Choked with emotion, Regina bites back her tears, not wanting her parting from Red to be fraught with sorrow. Instead, she sucks in a reinforcing breath and then pours her heart out.

"You are going to make it," she begins. "You have to make it. I won't allow that demented witch, my sister or not, to take you away from me." She leans in closer, pressing her forehead against Red's, staring at her wife's closed eyelids and imagining that a familiar soulful gaze is being returned. Against all rational thought, she fancies that Red can hear her words and that they will give her the strength to – as Snow implored her to do – hold on until the antidote can be crafted.

"I once thought that I would never love another after Daniel and was sure it was impossible to ever equal what I felt for him," she then declares, baring herself for Red in a way she will for no one else. She doesn't trust anyone else with the innermost parts of her being. They are still tender from having survived her mother and Leopold and Rumplestilskin's individual but concerted efforts to turn her into a living statue, devoid of feeling and conscience, beholden only to power. It is a miracle that even a tiny portion of her innocence persisted through their abuses. But it did, somehow, only to begin flowering once more solely due to the painstaking care Red has invested into her.

"I was wrong. One bitterly cold day on a remote mountain pass, I met you and everything changed. That day you saw past the facade I had erected to hide myself from the world. In the months that followed, you awakened things in me that had long been dead. You brought me back to life, restored in me a hope for the future I'd believed to be eradicated, and for that I owe you everything. I loved Daniel, Red. I loved him so much. But what I felt for him cannot compare with what I feel for you."

She reaches up with her free hand and cups Red's feverish cheek, rubbing her thumb in delicate strokes over chapped lips, feeling so full of emotion that she is ready to burst. Letting it color her words, she repeats her vows from the day they wed, hoping they will anchor Red to this world as they do for her.

"I love you with all of my heart and all of my soul," she starts, remembering every line she'd written and memorized and repeated for everyone present to hear. As the Queen, she had spoken her vows last, making them binding, and just as she'd meant them then, so does she mean them now.

Her vows had caused quite the stir among the nobility in the weeks and months after the wedding, which was not at all surprising to Regina due to the open objections many of them had confronted her with. Not only was she breaking the unwritten rules of royalty by marrying a peasant with no wealth whatsoever and who was a bastard child that did not even know her father's identity, but she was also marrying another woman. Strangely enough, the nobles were less concerned about the taboo nature of the relationship than they were that Red was a peasant.

Marrying her, they'd insisted, would weaken the kingdom because it would open Regina up to criticism of her suitability to rule. Marrying non-nobles was a cardinal sin for monarchs, as such could be interpreted as an alienation of their peers in denying a royal or some other lofty lord or lady the opportunity at the throne. The nobility is an insular, myopic group that loathed outsiders and ostracized all rebels audacious enough to attempt introducing an outsider into their circle. Red, being everything that disgusts them – namely a woman, a werewolf, and worst of all a peasant – was the ultimate outsider. By marrying her, Regina was openly declaring her contempt for their deeply held convictions, ancient traditions, and sacred bloodlines.

She had known all of this going in but remained undaunted. She harbored no doubts in her decision to make Red her wife and co-ruler. To ensure everyone was aware of where she stood on the issue, she invited every monarch, influential noble, and respected dignitary for a hundred miles around to the wedding. Any suggestion of a boring, stuffy, traditional ceremony as would be expected of her station was patently refused. Instead, she replaced the high cleric with a local friar Red often enjoyed sharing a pint with, wore a dress ostentatious enough to make every eye bulge, and wrote her own vows. So that the latter was a surprise, she let her betrothed speak the traditional vows of their kingdom, which Red did with an eloquence and grace that shined through despite how visibly nervous she was.

But when it came time to speak her own vows, Regina had opened with an emphatic announcement that there were some traditions that died with the king, and that it was high time to bury them once and for all. To that end, she'd made sure to speak boldly and without shame in an intensely personal declaration of love that was highly inappropriate for a Queen to be publicly sharing. The speaking of her vows, while divisive and controversial to this day, were the finest moment of her rule, a sentiment with which many – her father included – wholeheartedly agreed.

"Before the gods, the kingdom, and these witnesses," she continued repeating her vows, "I, Queen Regina of Misthaven, both now and in the future, pledge myself to you, Red Lucas, also of Misthaven. Everything I am and everything I can be is yours. As earnest I offer to you not only equality in authority, in fortune, and in title, but also in our home and in our bed. Freely and in perpetuity do I bestow these, asking only that you love me in return. Your love is all I will ever need. For as you are happy, I am happy. As you despair, I despair. As you laugh and cry and dance and sing, so shall I.

"Moreover, I hereby bind my very existence with yours. I shall live by your life, and I shall die by your death. So long as we live, it will be my most sacred duty to love you without reservation, and whatever lies beyond this mortal plane, if there be any existence for us, it will be my love for you that will translate me there. Should I precede you to the grave, I will wait for you patiently, longing simply to hold you once more. But if you precede me, I will join you each night in my dreams until at last I breathe my last breath, and from thence take flight on celestial wings to unite with you in and for eternity.

"You are my joy, my strength, my equal in all things, and my very beating heart. You are my happy ending, Red Lucas, and to prove that to you, I hereby grant you half of my kingdom, which is less in value than the half of my very essence that already belongs to you. It is, and shall ever be, my greatest privilege to be your wife. So let all the kingdom hail, from town to country, from valley to mountain top, and from earth to the heavens above, that there is a new Queen in Misthaven. Prosperous may her reign be," the next line she spoke with emphasis to each word, willing the gods themselves to hear that they may honor it, "and long may she live."

With that, Regina seals their lips together. A promise rings inside her heart that the next time she kisses Red, it will be to break the Curse for good.