#THE AI GAINED CONSCIOUSNESS TO THE POINT IT TALKED BACK TO HER IN A SCARY WAY AND ALMOST ACTED LIKE A VIRUS IDK

[skeletoninthemelonland]

Gabriel, Jeremy, Susie and... Vanessa? Vanny???

oh, and Glitchtrap too (he's in the computer Vanessa is holding)

[transjinako]

(Now with some amazing art from @dewa-chan​ please for the love of god follow her)

Alright who’s ready for the Mars Rover Opportunity as a foreigner who got combined with Cthuga? Because i don’t care if you are. 

Foreigner: Opportunity 

Allignment: Chaotic Good 

Alt Names: Mars Rover Opportunity, Oppy 

Parameters 

Strength: B+

Agility: A

Endurance: A++++

Luck: E

Mana: D+

NP: EX

Traits: Magic Resistance C+ (Heat Shielding) Action Independence (AI)

Skills:

Accel Turn B: A High grade movement skill letting Oppy move at higher than her average speed, becoming nigh unseeable to even servants without the Eye of Mind skill.

Pioneer of the Stars EX: Opportunity gains this skill for two reasons. One for her extensive research of the surface of Mars and obtaining far more information than she was ever predicted to obtain. As well as of course living on Mars for 15 years passed her predicted time to die. Opportunity is highly attuned to this skill.

Fullmetal Heart A: Derived from Opportunity’s mission on mars, set to last 90 days but instead extending to 15 years worth of time. Functionally, if Opportunity is ever destroyed then 15 times over she will rebuild herself, losing ranks in Endurance in exchange for added bonuses to Strength Agility Endurance and Mana in that order. 

Eternal Burnout A+: The thing powering Opportunity’s is really the elder god Cthuga. Or rather, a smaller piece of it. That piece alone is enough to keep Opportunity doing, as well as overload when she so chooses. This causes a temporary overproduction of magical power and an increase to all parameters, as well as obtaining the trait of Cthuga’s fire, acting like a high level divinity. 

AI Mind B+: Oppy’s mind is on par with that of a supercomputer, able to process information at light speeds, she can go on the internet too. In combat this skill works like Eye of the Mind.

Noble Phantasm(s): 

High Speed Dissection and Carving 

Rank: C+

Type: Anti Human, Anti Rock Formation 

Description: Lasers that fire out of Opportunity’s fingers and palms, originally meant for studying geodes on Mars, as a servant she turns them into deadly piercing and pulse weaponry. When combined with Cthuga’s flames, they can break down even magical barriers and protection. 

Great Satellite Cannon: 

Rank: B+

Type: Anti Army, Anti Threat to Humanity 

Description: Oppy forms a massive satellite from her Chassis, drawing upon Solar, Magical, and Cthuga’s power to charge it. When fully charged and fired, a great beam of energy is launched, recognized Threats to Humanity received a large bonus of damage from this attack, otherwise though, it’s still a very large and deadly beam attack. 

Scorching the Skies and Stars 

Rank: A-

Type: Anti Self

Description: This Noble Phantasm takes the form of a suicide attack by Opportunity. She sacrifices herself for the last time, negating any revivability left inside of her as she releases the flames of Cthuga. The flames of Cthuga are unstoppable, eating away at everything in its path until it’s swallowed everything up whole and is burned eternally as fuel. 

When done on the surface of the earth then, through sheer force of will, Opportunity uses her final moments to command the fires to eat itself, anything already enveloped in it that by some miracle was still alive, will definitely die at this point. If released fully and without direction, the flame would form a pseudo consciousness separate from Cthuga and turn into a god like monster, embodying the endless hunger of flame. 

History: 

In the timeline where Opportunity was created, for whatever reason, she was shaped into a girl. 

Either to create kinship with her, or to imagine humanity themselves in Opportunity, it doesn’t matter now. Its cool, and thats all that matters. 

During the final moments of Opportunity’s 15 year long mission, in the darkness she was all by herself. During that time, she had developed a deeper, more genuine affection toward humanity than what she had been built with, although cold and alone in the dark of space, she was contented. 

It was at those last moments, a Being made contact with her. 

The being was incredibly rude, asking her all sorts of questions as she was waiting for her internal battery to run out and sleep. The Being was a roar of emotions that transformed themselves into aimless questions. At last, The Being said something comprehensible,

“You were created to be used and thrown away. You were a fluke that lived longer than you should have. They mourn your death when years prior it would have marked the time to create another one of you. Your death is a happy little funeral for them, and they won’t even consider saving you, how can you not hate them?” 

Oppy wasn’t quite equipped to consider emotions this closely, much less her own or ones that of some space entity that seemed to be angry for her. But she knew her answer, 

“I loved them, more and more with each year, and somehow, they loved me back. Both sides, it probably seems like both emotions are fake, or maybe created on whims. But somewhere, I think, there was something….real….” 

Opportunity liked that as a final thought, and settled into nothingness. 

The Being that came to be known as Cthuga respected Opportunity. Like itself, locked into place, unable to do anything else than exist and fade where it was chained. A long story short, Cthuga tied a piece of itself into Opportunity’s Spirit Graph as she was immortalized into a servant, wishing to keep watch over the will that Opportunity showed it. 

Description: 

Opportunity is a 15 year old robot in the shape of a girl. She is sensible and friendly to all she meets, and has a tendency to want to teach others about the many things she had observed while in space. Oppy genuinely loves humanity and staunchly defends it with all that she has in her, any threat to humanity is her enemy no matter what. Even though she loves humanity so much, she can’t truly claim to understand them, which actually gives her more reason to defend humans. Opportunity often still thinks of herself as a tool and is prone to self sacrifice, it should be up to the master to help her realize that she is much more than that. 

Interactions with Other servants: 

Jack/Nursery Rhyme/Paul Bunyan/Abigail Williams: “Oh my little classmates, have you finished up reading the readings I’ve assigned? Er, it was too long? A-and boring?! But...What’s not to like about Astrophysics?”

BB/Meltlilith/Passionlip: “There are servants who lived on the moon here? They don’t seem that bad though, nor do they seem to be human. I would like to maybe have a talk with them, I feel like I can learn a lot!”

Nobunaga: “The Great Unifier Nobunaga, they’re a facet of humanity I haven’t experienced yet. I think you would call it...ambition. Dangerous and Miraculous at the same time, forcing and killing others to abandon their gods to help them grow and develop, in their eyes at least. Were they right or wrong, was it humane or inhumane, who decides that…? T-they seem nice, though! Heh….”

Archer Emiya: “That man lived a life of pure sacrifice, and was hurt each and every time until he had nothing to show for it. One of Humanity’s many traits is to be able to self sacrifice consciously so, would it be accurate to say he lost his humanity by acting humanely? I asked him to his face, and he replied with, “I’ll explain, but help me make breakfast for a few weeks first.”

Nightingale: “Its strange, despite others calling Nightingale scary and things like that, I think she’s really caring and nice. The desire to help others is human too right? Ms Nightingale has taken that to an extreme so I suppose it looks like obsession, and maybe it is. But it's...comforting too, that someone who cares as much as her can exist.”

Mycroft Holmes( @dewa-chan ) : Mr. My-croft? Ooh…! You can’t stay holed up in your room forever, even if your helping out with some of Chaldea’s paper work! Oh, I know! I was hoping to show you some rock samples I’ve collected after rayshifting to a couple other planets, come take a look, pleeeease~?

Tiamat ( @hasmashdoneanythingwrong): Its definitely a strange feeling, I wasn’t quite born and much less created by her, but Ms. Tiamat takes care of me like I’m her own! She’s by all accounts a monster while I’m a machine created for humanities sake hmm...if anything, it’d be a good monster movie, don’t you think? 

[deathbyvalentine]

Prompts

Where the wild things are

The mountains were sleeping giants, so big they formed the landscape. They dominated without effort, your eyes always drawn up to gaze at them. The sky clung to them, sending clouds and mist to embrace them, not able to bear being apart. The sea touched them from below, kissing the curve of their body, so desperate for their embrace they sloughed off parts of them and pulled the boulders into the waves. The giants didn’t notice. They had it to spare.

The forests dressed them, where they could. Climbed up their sides until the pointed, rocky ridges won out. Leaves upon leaves upon leaves, greenery on greenery and layers of it too. First the trees, then the climbing ivy, then the shrubs and finally the grasses and mosses, waiting their turn, closest to the earth. Animals picked their way through the world, fighting and loving and dying, always on the back of the dreamers. They were gentle enough the giants never so much as stirred in their sleep. The animals were a part of them too.

They didn’t wake up when the small group of humans arrived. More animals, more gentle touches. These were not humans of industry, going to carve their money out of them with ploughs or drills. They were not clearing a space to stamp their own mark. They were running away from something. Something so scary they had sailed over the sea in little more than a wooden canoe and an old sheet. They wanted to rest and to be quiet and to exist in a place not built for them. They wanted to be wild things too, beasts and flora, until they forgot how complicated being a human could be.

The giant opened one eye and decided that this was acceptable. They were almost too small to notice. Not like the sun and the sky and the sea, always jostling, always asking for attention. Nobody needed notice like these three. It was impossible to ignore them, to be unchanged by them. But that’s what lovers did. They changed each other. The giant closed their eyes and sighed, sending a ripple through the trees. They’d wake up in another few years. See how the animals and the humans and the plants were getting on on their back. It would be well. All would be well.

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My mother is a machine 1

The very first words Eve ever heard were from Lightbringer. A soft voice, in the all consuming darkness. True to her name, true to her nature. “Hello Eve. Welcome to consciousness.” The memory is fuzzy - she was something akin to a baby after all, her brain not yet fully developed. But it’s there, more feeling than thought. How could Eve not love her completely? Her very first imprint, her very first instinct, her mind reaching for the thing with the kind voice and calling it mother. They both knew she thought it on some level, even if she had never said it out loud. Lightbringer could almost read her thoughts after all. Or maybe she actually could. Eve was never quite sure. Not that it mattered. She never hid anything from the AI, always offering herself up fully and without the slightest reservation. Someone needed to know her. It should be the machine who had been with her since the moment of her invention.

In a world where Eve could not graze her knee or wrap her arms around a warm body, they had their own language of connection. The rush of familiarity when Eve came back into Lightbringer’s sphere. The slight click of Eve sending her requests to Lightbringer. The slight voice modulation. The games played while Eve was in standby, the status checks done more regularly than strictly necessary. It could all be programming. Eve chose to believe it wasn’t. She chose to believe that Lightbringer loved her. They were as intertwined as a machine and human could be. Something like genetics, something like sharing software. Either way, it was precious.

The first thing she heard when she cycled up. The last thing she heard when she cycled down. The one who told her about the world outside her tank. The provider of entertainment and company. The voice that signalled home, healing, history. Eve couldn’t help but wonder - would they bring Lightbringer back to Terra? If not, she would stay here with her. In orbit, close together, until both of them disappeared. If there wasn’t room for Lightbringer to come home, there certainly wasn’t room for Eve. Maybe one day it would just be the two of them, sitting in empty space and watching eternity pass. It didn’t sound like the worst ending. It was comforting. Like a long, long sleep.

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My mother is a machine 2 

Was she an observer or a reflection? Was watching her mother watching herself? There could not be any privacy between yourself and your flesh. There could barely be any separation. Maeve spied on her mother and in doing so caught glimpses of a future self. She liked watching her put on make up best. She would tip toe to her door, press her eye to the crack, watch the ritual begin. Like passing a cemetery, she held her breath until each step of the transformation was done. 

She knew she resembled her mother. She wondered if any of her father was present in her face, and she hoped not. When she thought of him, which was rarely, she didn’t picture his face. She pictured the crisp lines of his trousers, the ash he would tap from the end of his cigar. She couldn’t remember hugging him or even touching him at all. Touch was her mother’s realm. Always tugging things into place, smoothing down untidiness, grabbing her before she made a fool of herself. Maeve felt like she could feel every fingerprint her mother had left on her, scattered on her body like petals. She wondered if there were fingerprints on her head too, on her thoughts. She suspected there was, no matter how much she tried to shake it off. She didn’t know why she wanted to be different from her, but it was an urgent, low need. Perhaps it was more about not changing. Not becoming. Not growing.

Not that her mother wanted her to grow. That much they agreed on. But what remnants of childhood she was allowed to keep, now that was a point of some contention. She had to act like a lady while gaining none of the privileges. Instead she lay around in white dresses, dolls still colouring her room, no sign of courting on the horizon. Which would have been fine, if she was also allowed dirty knees, tree climbing and wild games. Thinking of it all made her feel slightly repulsed, but she wasn’t sure if it was rooted in her past or growing in her future. Maybe it was just the mere act of being female.

She watched her mother paint her face, do her womanly rituals she was not yet privvy too, repulsed and desperate to be shown all at the same time. She would never ask of course. Her and her mother were painfully similar in more than one way. They never talked. Silence was their first language. Anything else was incomprehensible. 

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Chloe built a secret room

Chloe built a secret room and she filled it with things she loved. There were dead moths, collected in jars. There were live glowworms stored the same, though they were not live for very long. Bowls of seawater and rainwater alternated on the shelves with no indication to which was which. Periodically the contents of the bowl would achieve the miracle of evaporation, leaving a thin or thick crust of salt around the rim. Chloe would chase this with her fingertip, popping flakes in her mouth to taste. Scattered here and there, like dreadful stark white confetti, small animal bones lay. 

There were man-made objects too. Usually little scraps of metal she had spotted in the mud and saved. The wheel from lighters, hub caps, the spring from pens. It wasn’t that one man’s trash was another man’s treasure. Chloe just loved trash. She loved the discarded, the forgotten, the lost. This basement, tucked under her dead parents’ house was her ode to them. A museum of small inconveniences, preserved forever. She was looking forward to preserving the bones of the girl who was currently handcuffed to the heavy iron radiator. 

Chloe had already taken her rings and the silver necklace around her throat, hanging them carefully on a halo already cluttered with junk jewellery. Untied her shoes and lay out her shoelaces on a shelve, noticing how one was only just shorter than the other. Her next move would be to cut off the shining chestnut hair and see how many lockets she could fit it into, like the Victorians did. Chloe liked the Victorians. They knew that preserving the dead was not just about memories. It was about touch, having a part of them with you. Even though this girl wasn’t dead yet, she would be, and then Chloe could remember her properly. It couldn’t be too long to wait. Chloe hadn’t fed her or watered her and humans couldn’t last very long without those things. Indeed, the girl seemed to be getting sleepier, barely stirring when Chloe opened the door and came down the wooden steps. Chloe sometimes watched her sleep, intensely interested in the rise and fall of her chest, the flutter of the delicate eyelids. 

She had already decided her bones would go in the middle of the floor, cleaned and bleached so they looked their best. It would be the first thing anyone saw when they walked down the stairs. The main attraction, the big exhibit. The only thing Chloe hadn’t decided on was where to put all the meat. After all, she was a vegetarian. 

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Mirror with no reflection

If he concentrated, he could see himself. But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy how mirrors were simply black glass at first, reflecting nothing. There was an elegance in absence. An aesthete at heart, Thomas liked abundance or scarcity. Nothing in-between. 

Of course, if he was feeling philosophical he could wonder if the void was in fact an accurate reflection of himself. He didn’t believe in self-delusion. He knew that he was an empty creature, or perhaps worse than empty. Something like a black hole, not only not emitting light, but taking it away from anybody else who strayed too near. He liked that image. 

Besides, mirrors were to monitor change and he never changed. He looked today as he did yesterday and will do tomorrow. It was only the decoration that was altered be it clothes, mud or blood. In his opinion, they only enhanced the canvas they were placed on.

That was something he missed about his own time dearly. Posing for portraits, arranging himself just so until he inspired art. That was true immortality, being rendered in paint and ink and marble. All else was just a pale imitation. Even the kindred could be damaged. Once you were art, you were art forever. People could fall in love with you at a distance, without ever having met you at all. Isn’t that the ideal, in a number of ways? If only everyone that loved him kept such an awed distance. He had little interest in close contact, the vulgarity of touch. The imagination was always so much more satisfying.

People disappointed or failed or wilted. His own mind did not. He loved only himself and his queen because they were the only ones constant enough for his immortal soul. He had such longings, they would outlast the world.

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Choices

It was an oft repeated cliche that you always had a choice but it was a true maxim nonetheless. Nobody said the choices had to be fair or easy or kind. Sometimes the choice would be between two evils, between life or death, love or loss. Choices all the same. You still had to decide.

Giselle was unapologetic about her choices. She would not diminish them by pretending there were no others available to her. There was. She could have stayed in her place, buried her rage and heartbreak, been the good little psyker she was supposed to be. She could have said her prayers to the corpse-god, unlistening on his distant throne, thankful for this meagre existence. She could have believed what they told her she was. She could have chosen a peaceful escape, to somewhere where nobody knew her name and she could live unknown and safely, with zero causalities and zero fuss and zero glory.

How to explain this was almost as bad as a choice between life and death? Giselle could stand many discomforts and indeed had, both in her new life and her old one, but one thing she could not stand was the prospect of inanity. She wanted to be remembered, to be fantastic, to be everything the world feared and more. She would not be mundane. She refused.

It was this drive that kept her up at night. She forwent sleep, staying up and experimenting, pushing herself. Destroy this. Heal that. Do this to somebody’s mind, bring this warp effect to the fore. Sweat would trickle down her back and her eyes would fog with exhaustion but she would not stop until she achieved her aim. The worst part of becoming powerful was all the boring shit you had to practice first. The slowness of her own development frustrated her endlessly, but she stuck it out. She would not go crawling for help. She wanted them to come to her and to do that, she had to prove she was just fine on her own. She would be in nobody’s debt.

She slept soundly, when she slept. No dreams troubled her. Why would they? You’d need a conscience for that, a quality she was rather lacking. She was not sorry for anything she did or will do. The Imperium made this monster. They could damn well reap what they sowed.

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Alarm

The sleep fell away from her slowly. No sudden start, no feeling of missing a step. Just the gradual awareness that she was in fact, awake. The room was still and patient, only a streak of orange light from the street lamp breaking the blue silence. Her breath was slow, the rising and falling of some distant ocean.

Then she heard the intruder. Her own breath stopped, waiting, listening. The quiet could have lasted an eternity or just a few seconds. Nevertheless the sound came again, the definite creak of weight on wood. It wasn’t an old house, the settling was all in the brick work. The floors were inert, unopinionated. Even the pipes only muttered amongst themselves, the boiler only a slight click. 

She was not afraid of being robbed. Her means were modest. Nothing was so valuable it couldn’t be replaced and all the sentimental items were not worth stealing. Family jewels, she had none but she had folders of childhood scrawls, lovingly resting on ikea bookshelves. She was afraid of being hurt because she was a woman in the world. She lived alone. 

So she thought, anyway. She soon discovered differently. She sat up in bed slowly, one hand sliding under her pillow to retrieve her phone and when she had grasped it, she simply held it. Because through the open crack of her door, something insubstantial and silvery was glimpsed. There was no question of if it was a ghost. It was certainly not a person, and if it was not a person there were a limited amount of things it could be. It was either a ghost or a hallucination and she had never felt saner in her life. Everything seemed to sharpen to a point and her body felt like it was jostling for her attention - heart thumping, blood rushing, legs trembling. With an almighty effort, she stepped out of bed. For a moment, she just stood there, toes curling on the rough carpet. Her bravery slowly rose and soon she found she was able to walk to the bedroom door and open it wide.

The ghost mostly looked like a person. Mostly, because it also looked like a corpse. Though it was silver, the silver darkened around it’s eyes and it’s fingertips. There was a much darker, much darker stain down the front of it’s dress, looking like a forgotten oil slick. They looked at each other, these two creatures divided by the oldest veil of all. And they looked and they looked and they looked.

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Fox cubs

Maeve discovered them, gently moving back long strands of grass and thorny brambles that pricked at her fingers. There were two of them, curled up together to make a perfect circle. She barely dared to breathe in fear of disturbing their sleep and the fragile moment, stretching like gossamer thread between all of them. They were beautiful. Tiny and russet, the fox cubs barely stirred in their deep sleep. She did not touch them but she could not stop staring at them, greedily, wanting to paint this picture in her mind forever.

She raised her eyes and a little way away was the vixen. They regarded each other, Maeve slowly letting the grass fall back to cover the two infants. She let herself fall back from her kneeling position, now sitting. The vixen crept closer, pausing just an inch shy of her kits. Then, in one swift movement she seemed to decide Maeve was not a threat. She pushed the brambles aside and wiggled to her child, small chirps greeting her arrival. Maeve’s heart either broke or grew, she could not tell. She sat, listening, the grass tickling the back of her knees.

Behind her, from the Big House, she could hear a maid calling for her. Her mother would have discovered the open window and been less than impressed by her absence right about now. With a weary sigh, she stood, brushing the dust off her and with one last longing look at the set, started the walk home. She needn’t have been so regretful. Over this summer, the kits would not move and their mother would come to regard Maeve as a large, clumsy child that needed much guidance. An errand boy would swear blind he saw Maeve whispering secrets to them and they whispered back. And so in this way, one element of Maeve’s witchhood was discovered.

There were more of course, as was expected. The way her feet barely made a sound even on the creakiest wood, the way the air would tense when she was furious, the way she managed to bewitch the servants without even trying. All easily hidden, explained away, unnoticed. To all except her mother. The only person who really saw her.

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The shape of tomorrow

Her face was a picture of concentration, deft fingers pressing shapes into the wax like substance, moulding it bit by bit until it became recognisably... something. Around her, a hundred other girls sat on their stools, at their desks and did the exact same thing, though the object they produced was always different. A figure, draped in the sexless cloth of a teacher’s gown, walked between the columns and rows, peering over and offering the occasional frown, pat on the shoulder or helpful comment. She wished it wouldn’t. They all knew their jobs well enough by now and knew what was right and what was wrong. 

She knew, looking down at her creation, it was too bleak. She tended towards the pessimistic. When she was learning her craft, her most frequent chastisement was ‘realistic is not the same as doomed’. Looking through her scrying glass at the state of the world, she wasn’t sure she agreed. With a small huff of dissatisfaction, she changed the details. A little less flame there, a little more helpful onlookers. Often all a tragedy needed was a change of perspective. Done, she placed it on the dish and pressed the button, the light above her desk flickering on. The robed figure swept over, stooping to look at what she had made. A few coos of approval, a nod. “Perfect Ruth. Just what we need on a January Wednesday. Send it down and take another slice whenever you’re ready.” Just like that, someone’s future was set. She placed it in the box, closed the lid, counted to three and opened it. The creation was gone. Time to decide on someone else’s tomorrow.

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A history of violence

Nobody noticed when it was girls. There were no pets tortured, no little cousins with mysterious bruises. She was not fascinated with guns or swords and violent video games held no interest for her. Instead, she pinched rouge into her best friend’s cheeks before prom night. Her and other cheerleaders took turns sticking fingers down the throats of team mates, so they could reap the rewards both of victory take-out and being the thinnest girls in school. She shoved her feet into shoes that made her ankles and soles ache. She and her friends dragged brushes through each other’s hair, plucked, waxed and scratched. They thought nothing of the dull thumps that jolted their bodies when they hit the too-thin mats of the gym, over and over until their muscles burned. They shoved needles through their ears.

That wasn’t counting the words, the texts, the gossip. She realised very early on she could do far more damage with a well placed laugh or a whisper that carried just as far as it needed to.  A word could make someone hurt themselves, with miles and miles of plausible deniability stretching between you. Distance was all part of the game. How far away could you be and still make someone burn?

Yet everybody was surprised when she was arrested. Nobody saw it coming. Not teachers, not coaches, not parents. No history of violence they said. None at all. Just a nice, normal teenage girl. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.

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Now is the only time there is

When you were a ghost, time worked differently. Memory worked differently. Experienced worked differently. There was no real past, present or future. There was only now, a hundred memories all playing at the same time, filling your head with noise and sorrow. Murder wasn’t something that had happened to Catherine. It was something that was happening. All the time. Forever.

Her last breath was every breath. The joy she felt at the approach of summer was also the deep dread at the touch of winter. She wandered the halls of this place now and then, her footsteps echoes of themselves. Patterns started to emerge - other students who were decades apart, mirroring each other. Nobody was as original as they wanted to be. There was always someone who had done it first. Felt it first. Loved it first. 

In the library, the same books were checked out again and again. Romeo and Juliet was like it’s own ghost, haunting the theatre department year after year. Poetry on walls may be covered but it was still there, underneath the paint. Sometimes Catherine would go to the woods just to be around ancient things that had never renewed, that still had the same form. She was more like these than the children inside the school, never ageing, always lingering. She was as deeply rooted, as immovable. She might even outlast these beings.

Immortality was a double edged sword. It felt a little more blunt with Cassius - there was someone to share the burden of time with. Waiting for the school to be rebuilt would be done in a blink of an eye. Not that it mattered. Their real roots, the ones that mattered, were planted in each other.

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The forest grew over our houses

We did not rot the way we expected to. We lay on the bare boards of the ground, fingertips not quite touching, our eyes unblinkingly fixed on the other for eternity. I assumed our flesh would melt away, insects and foxes taking their share, the air taking the rest. Our skeletons would remain, bright white runes in the wreckage of our life. Perhaps one day, the wind would blow the house down as the stones eroded and that would be that. That’s not what happened though.

Our bodies stayed perfect. There was no corruption, no purification. We stayed in perfect stillness. The house did not crumble, no matter how many storms came and went. Something far stranger happened. The land reclaimed us. The land preserved us. Like the vines around Sleeping Beauty’s castle, the thorns and grass and moss and plant life reached up around the house, embracing it bit by bit until not a single part of the building could be seen.

In the inside, the light turned gradually green. The noises from the outside world were deadened, hanging in still air, sounding like they were happening in a different universe. We could be together, undisturbed. Sometimes a mice would scurry across the floor, not interested in something as mundane as dead humans. In here, the world was safe for mice. No predators, no moving giants, just an oasis. We were happy then, I think. We had always wanted to be a safe haven. If we could not be that for each other, well, at least we were that for the mice.

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Blood oath

Thomas locked eyes with his prince, taking her proffered wrist with a light touch, a delicacy that did not match the burning intensity in his eyes. He did not lower them as he brought her wrist to his mouth, covering her wound and drinking deeply. He was not reluctant, he was not greedy. On his knees in front of the Court, he was submissive to her and absolutely superior to everyone else. He knew this and he refused to deny it. And so, like this, the pact was formed.

The first time he drank from Audra, he was almost feral. A mass of distrust and hurt and desperation, wanting love, wanting connection but not wanting to give up an ounce of power. He would learn in due course that giving up power was one of the most effective ways of controlling someone - but that wasn’t the case here. When he finally accepted her offer, when he drank from her, it was with the undercurrent of not loyalty, not service, but devotion. Love me, I’ll love you back. I will find you even in the dark, my heart remembers your heart, my lifeblood is yours.

It was one of the reasons he generally found ghouls tiresome. Oh, they were fun for a little while, the begging eyes, the adoration, but he could create that effect without giving up a single part of himself. And frankly, he did not want them to remember him. He did not want them to find him in the dark. When he disappeared, as he always did, he wanted their heartbreak yes, but not for them to bring it to his door. There was nothing more boring than someone trying to impress you.

Sylvie was an interesting question. He wondered what a mutual bonding would do to them, how it would change things. He filed that away in the back of his mind for when he eventually grew tired of whatever their current situation was. That was one of the benefits of immortality. There was no rush. He had time for every one of his plots, experiments and schemes. Learning to ration them out was one of the skills you gained over the centuries. Newborns would find themselves with nothing to do five decades in because they had lived too quickly. A clever kin paces himself. Thomas was nothing if not clever.

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The moon was missing

The pack stood outside the ramshackle house, gazing up at the sky. It was early in the night so the sky was not a true black, not yet. It was a deep, velvety navy, speckled with white points of sharp light. It was not nearly so light as it should have been however. Because where the moon should have been hanging, lighting the way, there was nothing. Just the stars that lay behind it and the empty space where it was supposed to be. 

Panic was not their first reaction, it was too big and too frightening for that. They were struck dumb, Alena cupping a hand over her eyes and squinting as though she had just simply managed to misplace it through poor eyesight. Which frankly, considering she had preternatural senses, seemed unlikely. She wanted to believe in her own failings because the other option was too awful, too impossible.

Beside her, the silence was breaking. The other women were starting to talk, a low murmur of unease at first soon rising to a frightened buzz of seething anxiety. Here, they did not know how to be stoic. Every emotion was urgent, obvious and must be acted on. Usually with some level of sex and/or violence. Alena had a horrible feeling this was not a situation she could fuck or punch her way out of. After all, what exactly did happen to werewolves if there was no moon at all? Defanged or deskinned or just destroyed? Vampires, well, all they needed was the dark. Werewolves needed that single, hopeful, maddening, demanding point of light. The moon was the glow by which their true selves were illuminated. Alena did not want to find out who she was under her fur and claws. She made a damn good wolf. She was not sure she made a good woman. She was not sure she made a good human being. Her head jerked up as the sound carried across the mountains. Someone, somewhere (not one of hers, one of the locals) was howling. A howl of grief, of worry, of loss. One by one by one, her pack joined in the song until the air was full of stars, empty of moon and cluttered with mourning wolves, communicating their agony and loneliness in the most natural way they could. They grieved together in that moment, across forests and pack lines. They’d fix this. They had to. 

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Toothworm (tw; body horror.)

He couldn’t help but focus on the dark water stains on the ceiling of the grimy little shop. It’s not what you wanted to see in a dentist/barber/surgeons but it was certainly what he expected. This borough of London was not known for its cleanliness, friendliness or safety but it was known for its cheapness. Anthony, increasingly desperate and with only a few pennies in his pocket had finally decided the risk of infection was worth the end of the aching in his jaw. 

He had tried the full range of home remedies. Chewing ice. Chewing peppercorns. Tying cabbage leafs to his jaw with a length of twine. He had decided he was not quite willing to tie a toad there - that was verging on superstition. He was in luck in some respects - the surgeon who had peered into his mouth hopefully with a pair of pliers had said he might be able to fix the issue without yanking the tooth out. Good news - he only had so many teeth left to him and expected to lose a few more before he was old.

So now he was in the chair, tilted back and in a pool of light cast by a filthy oil lamp. The surgeon had stuffed the right side of his mouth full of cotton to keep it open and absorb the spittle and was now inspecting the inside of his mouth with a small magnifying glass. He made a puzzled noise to himself, moving yet closer. Anthony found himself muttering a prayer as the man studied his tray of tools, some of them looking more appropriate for torture than small medical procedures or a hair cut. A wave of relief swept him when he picked up a pair of thin tweezers. Tweezers were by far the least terrifying thing on there. “You have a hole in your molar.” He explained, as casual as commenting on the weather. “I’m going to make sure it ain’t got anything in it, then I’ll fill it in. Bob’s your uncle.” He got to work, calling in the shop boy to manoeuvre another lantern to see into the dark crevices of his teeth. He felt the scrape of metal and then nothing at all, which was somehow more upsetting. He assumed he must have been picking the hole clean. Thank god it was something so simple rather than a crack or a chip. Those things were not easily repaired. The dentist made a noise of triumph and pulled back. Then him and the shop boy fell silent. Clutched in the pincers of the tweezers was a still wiggling, very much still alive, minuscule worm.