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larkspyrr · 10 months

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chapter viii — deeper than the truth (wc. 4.1k)

prev — masterlist / ao3 — next

reblogs are appreciated!

NOTE: i made some changes to the last chapter bc im fickle and didn't like it lmfao. you can either reread for the new context or check the tldr i posted on ao3

You had been right about one thing — Wriothesley was not a stupid man.

He was not unaware of himself. It was this self-awareness that had been key to Wriothesley's ascent from the very bottom to the slightly-less-so — to making the most of his station, regardless of whatever Celestia-forsaken obstacles had been thrown into his path. That, and his dogged determination to get there, at any cost, even if he had to fight tooth and nail.

And, by the Archons, he was going to fight now.

He understood precisely what it was that propelled him forward as he rose to the overworld the morning after you left, fast enough that one might think the Abyss itself nipped at his ankles like an angry hound, snarling, snapping. He’d known for a while the name of the beast that curled around his ribs and squeezed , even if he hadn’t been brave enough to yet speak it aloud. He was afraid that to utter it would be to invite it in closer, ever closer, leaving no room in his chest even for breath, for the frantic thundering of his heart. No room for the inevitable break once your arrangement came to its conclusion and you went on toward your future and Wriothesley stayed exactly where he had been all along, fractured but trying to mend.

Maybe he should have named it. Maybe then you wouldn’t have walked away.

He’d known there was nothing more for him to do when you left; that to follow you out would only push you away further. So he had stayed, and plotted out the next course of action he would take, so long as he was able to bide his time until the morning—if what he'd gathered from vague correspondences in Paquette's office was correct.

Paquette was clever, that much could be said. He'd covered his tracks with an almost masterful finesse and it had been a challenge to glean so much as a date from what seemed like mostly mundane communications with Thibeault.

He was good, sure. But Wriothesley was better.

After you’d left, Wriothesley had waited, sleepless, and then allowed himself no more than the time required to dress and make the Fortress’ arrangements for the day before he fled his quarters, not even sparing the bronze doors to his office a passing thought as he blew by.

Wriothesley had never been one to stand down from a challenge, not even those who crash-landed into his life bedecked in pearls and lace and more spirit than he knew what to do with; witty, and kind, and dutiful to a fault; a fallen meteorite from somewhere else, somewhere more.

And Wriothesley would sooner dive into the Primordial Sea and become no more than a ripple in cold waters than let you march to your death. Before he allowed you to throw away your life for the sake of the people you cared about.

Before he let you go.

So he ran, and the hounds howled in his wake.

When he arrived at the stables, half-wild, muscles screaming, his heart nearly stopped its thrumming at the same moment his purposeful strides came to a halt. The sun hadn't even fully risen.

Lucy’s stall was already empty, neither the mare nor her rider anywhere to be seen.

“So she’s accepted the job?” asked Thibeault, bony fingers curling delicately around the handle of the fine china teacup he held — an imported piece from Liyue, hand-painted, and worth more than most of the working class in the Court of Fontaine would see in a year. Thibeault’s mouth was as straight a line as it ever was, but his eyes glittered with something that looked dangerously akin to delight.

As close to delight as a miserable bastard like Thibeault could achieve, as it were.

Paquette, by contrast, smiled; a luxury he didn’t often allow himself, as frugal and dignified a man as he was, but he postulated he could spare himself a moment of frivolity on the eve of his triumph without too great an impact on the perception of his unblemished decorum. A smile would not be remiss, not amidst the host of more secular pleasures he wreathed his lifestyle in; though if you asked Paquette, and you should, they were simply par for the course for a man of his rank, so long as his taste remained staunchly on the side of ‘classy’ and gave a wide berth to the realm of ‘gaudy’, a feat he was loathe to say still escaped some of the peerage—present company very much withstanding, he noted, observing the garish hue of magenta in the tie his companion donned, not an ounce of shame in sight.

Dreadful.

Paquette tutted quietly, sipping his own tea. A custom blend, catered to his very specific needs and preferences. He swallowed thickly. He’d send this one back, as he had the others.

They still hadn’t gotten it right. Clearly, they hadn’t heeded his generous advice that the best mint was grown on Kannazuka Island.

“But of course she did,” Paquette said, placing his cup down on the tea table between the gentlemen. “As I told you she would, my friend.”

Paquette fought back a sneer at the word on his mouth; a cheap lie, but one he had to maintain if he wanted to remain on good terms with the sniveling man across him. They didn’t need to like each other, per se, in order to work together toward a common goal, but he supposed their machinations were easier to architect if there was some degree of civility between them. It would make it much easier to coexist while they awaited their vision coming to fruition.

A vision so very in reach now. Paquette looked quite forward to the privilege of dispensing with the pleasantries and he imagined Thibeault felt much the same.

While Paquette had certainly become adept at maneuvering around the other members of the court over the decades, he certainly hadn’t grown to like it any more than he had at the start. Especially that old bat Vellerot, a man (loosely called) made of little more than wealth and rot.

All in good time.

Thibeault leaned back in his chair, folding two withered hands in front of his stomach, a self-satisfied gesture that might have been reminiscent of a well-fed house cat if he weren’t so serpentine. His lips curled, teeth bared, and Paquette started; it was a gesture far too vicious to ever be considered a proper smile, though it was an effort nonetheless, even if it was as tasteless as the rest of him. “Once she’s little more than a smear in the woods, the rest will become much simpler,” he mused, drumming his fingers against his abdomen, a rhythmic tap-tap-tap that made Paquette wonder if it was an unconscious gesture. An appalling lack of composure. “The old man hasn’t paid attention to the world beyond his cups in nigh on a decade, and the two younger ones haven’t got the intelligence nor the fortitude to accomplish anything at all. She would be the problem. One terrible accident and she’s gone. Then the old man drowns in his cups from ‘grief', at least as far as anyone is concerned.”

Paquette hummed. “It also takes that delinquent whelp out of the equation, what with all the sniffing around he’s been doing. He will be utterly shattered at the loss of his love, I’m sure. Might do something reckless.”

“I still can’t believe our luck on that front,” said Thibeault. “Two birds, one stone, as the commoners are known to say.”

“Tale as old as time,” agreed Paquette.

Thibeault grimaced again in that way which was so unlike a smile. Paquette fought against his every instinct telling him to pull back from the frankly upsetting expression.

“The Viscountcy has been wasted on him for far too long,” said Thibeault, and he sipped his tea.

Neuvillette stood at the edge of the bridge, his hands folded primly behind his back, chin tilted towards the rolling sea.

Wriothesley heaved a breath as he approached and the man turned his face towards him.

“Neuvillette.”

“Wriothesley,” said the other man, eyebrows rising ever-so-faintly in surprise and interest. “I wasn’t expecting you. You look flushed.”

“Went for a run,” Wriothesley panted. “Can I have a word?”

Something flickered in his eyes, but Neuvillette merely gestured his chin towards the Opera without a moment’s hesitation and made his way towards the structure. Wriothesley fell into step behind him easily, fighting every cell of his being that was telling him to rush the other man, to urge him to walk faster, Archons damn it all.

He bit his tongue, yet it seemed Neuvillette sensed Wriothesley’s urgency and picked up his pace nonetheless.

Finally, after an eternity and then some, they settled into Neuvillette’s office at the Epiclese; a smaller rendition of his office at the Palais, though no less elegant and organized. It was a bright space, walled in books and ornate masonry, bathed in the light that sparkled off the water just beyond the stained glass windows. It smelled like the sea and romaritimes; a light fragrance that Wriothesley had come to associate with the Iudex over many years of knowing him.

Neuvillette looked over at him from behind his desk, his face kind but eerily calm, a direct juxtaposition to Wriothesley’s own storming, blazing heart.

Wriothesley inhaled. Exhaled. “I’m sorry to impose but this is an emergency.”

“It’s no imposition,” Neuvillette said. “I am at your disposal.”

Wriothesley held the other man’s gaze. “Which Melusine Marechaussee Phantoms are off-duty today?”

You clicked your tongue and pulled, bringing Lucy to a halt just before the clearing Paquette had described came into view. You dismounted her, quickly hitching her to a nearby tree, tucked safely behind a dense thicket. She looked at you, ears pitched forward, eyes restless. You moved to pat her gently on the nose, but she tossed her head away from your touch. You frowned, letting your hand drop back to your side.

The last time she had rebuffed you like that, there had been a hilichurl hiding in a nearby tree.

You would be on your guard. This time, you had the element of surprise on your side.

You tried again, satisfied when Lucy allowed your pat this time, and moved onward alone. The sun was high in the sky, casting the upcoming smattering of tents a warm golden hue as they slowly came into view, a collection of brightly-colored headstones in an otherwise silent graveyard.

Immediately, you missed the rhythmic beat of Lucy’s hooves on the dirt as you entered the soundless clearing. Even the wind, forever a comfort at your back, seemed to hold its breath.

It was empty.

You surveyed the camp with careful eyes. Five tents, hastily constructed, flaps lowered to conceal the interiors of all but one — large, royal purple, dead-center. A table sat in view from within. A fire pit, lush with kindling and several freshly cut logs, though it appeared to never have been lit. A hitching post, though there wasn't a horse in sight. A weapons rack, battered but vacant.

You continued to inspect the area with growing unease.

But then, you saw it. In the purple tent, on the wide table. A folder.

The documents.

Emboldened by the silence of the deserted camp, you moved in.

You did not make it far.

You heard a twig snap from somewhere to your right, and you whirled, your heart leaping into your throat. Leaves rustled from all around, every corner of the clearing, and you heard the sharp crack of a slap, followed by hooves — Lucy’s hooves — barreling away into the wilderness, away and away, until you couldn’t hear her at all anymore.

Slowly, one by one, as though they were visions from a nightmare, men emerged from within the dense brush, cloaked in shadow, smiles jagged and cutting on the faces whose mouths weren’t clothed.

Your thoughts came to you rapid-fire, like bullets firing from a pistol.

An ambush.

They had known you were coming.

This was a trap.

Wriothesley had been right.

Your limbs shook. Your mind went foggy. Your fear was streaked with shafts of other emotions—regret, shame, resentment. Longing.

You shook your head to clear the haze, clenching your jaw, flexing your fists.

You didn’t have time to regret; you didn’t have time to wish.

You would get out of here. You had no other choice.

You had to get back to him.

But you were alone. They had known you were coming. Lucy had been scared off. No one was coming.

You were alone.

They began advancing.

Blades with wicked edges glinted in the afternoon sun as they emerged from the shade of the trees. You clutched at the hilt of your sword, savoring the tiny fraction of power you reclaimed at the feeling of the warm leather against your shaking fingers. Fingers that you found were getting increasingly difficult to control.

You fought to master your breath.

One man stepped ahead of the others, brandishing a razor-sharp rapier in your direction, your eyes following the way it swayed in his loose, unworried grip, light and free as wild barley. His eyes gleamed with profane delight from over the cloth secured around the lower half of his face. You didn’t need to see his mouth to know he was smiling.

“Right on time, my lady,” he sneered, voice reedy and meandering. You had never hated the honorific more. Several of the others snickered. “We’ve been expecting you.”

You met his gaze, willing yourself to maintain your composure as you assessed the situation—two, three, four Treasure Hoarders stood in the clearing with you. They didn’t appear to have any horses themselves; at least, not any that were nearby, so hijacking one to make a swift escape was not an option. It seemed all four men carried various swords; not a bow nor arrow in sight, but that could only help you, as you wouldn’t need to concern yourself with avoiding or deflecting ranged attacks while focusing on the close-quarters combat. On defending yourself from their blows. Looking for an opening to make an exit.

You unsheathed your sword, the metal hissing against the scabbard. You widened your stance, rolling your shoulders, willing your breathing to a slow, controlled pace.

Dozens of lessons swam through your mind and you fought to sort through your learning.

So many lessons. So little to show for it.

Wriothesley’s voice floated to the forefront, a memory as sharp and piercing as ice.

Don’t overthink it, he’d told you, over and over, lesson after lesson.

Muscle memory and instinct are your greatest ally.

Trust yourself.

You tensed, ready to trust yourself, to trust him , even if it was too late, to at least try —

Something slammed into your arm and side and you gasped, your sword clattering away across the rocks and into the thicket. Gone.

“Ah, ah, ah. I don’t think so,” sing-songed a new voice.

A low, feminine laugh warbled from over your shoulder and the four men echoed, reveled in the cruel mockery of it. You felt as though all the blood drained from your body. The edges of your vision darkened in panic, further blurring the tangle where your sword now lay, hidden. Out of reach.

Five. There had been five tents.

The woman slowly made her way around you, inching into your line of sight excruciatingly slowly, playfully, circling around you like a vulture circles its prey before it dives. Her eyes glittered, impish and hostile. She held an enormous claymore in her hands.

She opened her mouth to speak.

Don’t overthink. Trust yourself.

You lunged before she could utter a word.

Wriothesley hurried, urging the mare forward, faster, faster.

The Melusine in front of him froze, going stock still in her place on the saddle. Her shaggy, dusty rose hair whipped in the wind and she placed a tiny hand on Wriothesley’s wrist, drawing his attention to her.

There was another horse barreling through the woods, not far ahead. Chestnut, with an auburn coat. A familiar leather saddle.

A saddle which was empty.

Wriothesley wasn’t sure he remembered how to breathe. He pressed into the stirrups, signaling his mare to stop.

Lucy, in the distance, slowed her gallop, noticing the new arrivals; darted directly to them.

Trow frowned as the chestnut mare came to a sliding stop a mere few feet away, tossing her head and stomping, hoof to hoof, more agitated than Wriothesley had ever seen her. He hopped off the mare and went to her, checking her over for injuries or any sign of her rider. She seemed fine, if stressed. Nothing on her to indicate what might have happened to cause her separation from you.

“Your Grace,” Trow said abruptly, blue nose wrinkling. Her eyes flicked away from Lucy and towards the denser forest ahead, narrowing in concentration. “I smell something… just over there. Sweet, but bad. Like gasoline.”

Wriothesley’s stomach flipped. He looked ahead at the thicket, but beyond it was utterly silent. Unmoving. He could vaguely make out the trampled shrubbery from where Lucy had emerged. His hand felt heavier than stone against the side of Lucy’s quivering neck.

He flexed his fingers against her, scratching lightly. For her, for him.

“Wanna help me save our friend, Luce?” he asked softly.

Lucy, of course, said not a word; but whether or not she understood what Wriothesley was asking, her gentle brown eyes seemed to agree with the sentiment.

Wriothesley turned his gaze back to Trow.

“Can you ride?” he asked.

She hesitated before nodding shallowly. “I can get by, sir.”

“Go back,” Wriothesley said. “Notify Neuvillette of what’s happened and where we are. I will take it from here.”

Trow's look was long and searching and for a moment Wriothesley wondered whether she would protest his order. But then her worried lilac eyes softened and she nodded once more. Her tail flicked behind her. “Be safe, Your Grace.”

Wriothesley took the reins in-hand and quickly mounted Lucy. He gave the Melusine a small smile. “Thank you. You too.”

He didn't even have to signal for Lucy to go before she was off, hurtling back towards the trees.

Back to you.

Falling back on your months of training in the Pankration Ring was easier than breathing; particularly at the moment, when it seemed breathing had suddenly become very difficult.

You acted without thinking.

You shot forward, swiftly sweeping a leg out from beneath the prowling woman, sending her hurtling onto her ass before she could register you had even moved. She made an undignified squawk, throwing her arms out to try and save her fall, the claymore slamming into the ground, fanning dirt out around it.

The others burst into action, trying to ascertain the best way to subdue you, kill you, you didn’t know, it didn’t matter — you didn’t allow them even a second. You dove for the woman’s claymore, unclaimed at her side, your fingers closing soundly around the hilt before spinning to face your attackers, the new weight unfamiliar and unwieldy in your palm. You would adjust. You had no other choice.

The woman had clambered back to her feet, yanking a dagger from her boot with a vicious snarl that raised the hair on the back of your neck. A lock of dark hair had shaken loose from beneath her hood. Her eyes no longer held any trace of the violent glee they’d had a moment ago; searing rage was all that was reflected in them now.

The masked man dove, rapier swinging in a wide arc towards your side; you deflected it with ease, the clang of metal on metal ringing in your ears as the heft of the claymore easily intercepted the strike.

You adjusted your grip, the shift in weight causing your fingers to slide on the hilt.

Another lunged, sword pointed for your gut. You narrowly avoided impact, sidestepping on already unsteady feet and directly into the range of the woman, who was ready to pounce on your moment of imbalance.

Clearly, subduing you wasn’t part of their plans. And you were sorely outmatched.

You weren’t quick enough.

Swift as a viper, she lashed out, bronze dagger flashing in the sun the only warning you received before you felt its bite. She nicked your dominant wrist, loosening your grip on her claymore—your only weapon—

You dropped it, your hand disobeying your order to hold on as blood dripped down your trembling fingers from the wound on your wrist.

You wouldn’t walk away from this, you realized then, as the claymore fell. No level of skill would allow you to overcome this.

Fool. You were a fool. And you were about to die for it.

You scrambled for the claymore once more—

One of the men sent his boot hurtling into your side, throwing you off course and forcing all the air from your body.

You slammed down onto the rocks and curled in on yourself instinctively, defensively, tucking your legs into your chest before pushing yourself away, away from them; from the threat. You fought to catch your breath, but your lungs and throat burned like ice.

Your back hit the base of a wide tree and you could go no farther.

The woman gestured angrily at one of the men, who then yanked the claymore off the ground. She stalked over to your hunched form, eyebrows lowered.

She flipped the dagger in her hand and squatted before you.

“That’s enough,” she cooed, flicking the tip of the blade across the curve of your neck, softer than a kiss. You felt a sting followed by the feeling of—something warm collecting at the base of your throat. “This is pathetic. It's getting hard to watch.”

She swung her unarmed fist then, and the resulting impact on your head set your ears ringing and your vision blurry. You vaguely made out the sensation of...of being tied, restrained, bound at your wrists and ankles.

You thrashed, but you were too late. You could barely move. Your wrists burned as you pulled. Your head pounded. Your legs would not—could not—obey.

“Get the canister,” one of the men ordered, the words hitting your ears as though delayed—you felt like you couldn't keep up with the pounding in your skull. Another man disappeared into one of the tents, reemerging after a moment with an opaque container in hand.

Your nostrils flared at the familiar smell.

Gasoline.

The woman clicked her tongue, looking down on you. She wiped her dagger on a pant leg, smearing your blood onto the fabric. “Disposing of evidence. Those pesky Melusines. You understand.” Her voice was as casual as if she were discussing the weather or the latest play at the Epiclese. “You know, I had planned on killing you first ,” she explained evenly as the man sloshed the liquid from within the dark canister onto you. You gasped and recoiled, the liquid colder than you would have anticipated, overwhelming your senses as it sank into your clothing, onto your skin. The woman leaned forward, gently taking your chin in her hand, forcing you to meet her gaze. She stared at you hard for a few long seconds. “But then you went ahead and pissed me off ,” she hissed, pushing your face away roughly and stepping back, out of the spreading pool of accelerant.

You couldn't suppress the coughs that wracked your body as you continued to inhale the fumes, as you continued to fight. One of the men approached you slowly as all the others retreated, a torch lit and flickering in his hands. The sun was still high in the sky; this flame was not meant to offer warmth or illumination.

It was meant to ignite.

Something in you cracked and fell away as you realized... this was it.

There truly was no way out. There had never been a way out.

You couldn't do any more against them now than when you were a child, quivering and confused and helpless. The faces before you were different, yet you had not changed at all.

Powerless.

You had failed. You’d failed your family. You’d failed yourself. And there would be nothing left to show for all your efforts, for everything that you were or could have been but ash and regret.

You wished you had been able to protect them.

You wished you'd been braver when it truly mattered.

You wished you'd been a little more selfish.

You wished… You wished—

Everything went white and chills wracked your body at the sudden onslaught of freezing air against your wet clothes.

The world erupted into chaos—hail and snow and shards of savage, unforgiving ice. Shouting rose from somewhere in the camp, but you couldn't make out who they had belonged to or what was said.

The blizzard glittered beneath the morning sun. You fought not to squint, to try keep your eyes open in the face of the storm to see—to see—

There he was. Wreathed in the torrent of rime and burning frost.

And finally, you breathed.

a/n: title from 'war of hearts' by ruelle

it goes without saying that the ‘updates on saturday’ plan is no longer going to happen lol. im a STEM girlie and my job is very mentally taxing so i don’t always have the energy leftover to write, no matter how much i want to. and tbh then i end up rushing to get something out on time that i’m just not happy with lol

on that note: like i mentioned above, i was still not satisfied with the last chapter so i made some changes and it shifts the context quite a bit

essentially i had 2 paths in my mind for how this could go angst-wise, chose one, heard a loud WRONG buzzer, and then changed it so it is instead the other lmao

aaanyways my b one of these days i will actually have a work finished before i start publishing it (no i will not)

hope you enjoyed xo

#wriothesley #wrio #wriothesley x reader #wrio x reader #genshin impact #genshin #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #genshin x you #genshin imagines #reader insert #reader inserts #lark.writes #🌊

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6okuto · 1 year

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Niaaaa //wailing, heaving, rolling around on the floor

I cannot stress enough how much I adore your works and love rereading all of them from time to time

Am here to ask if you have any more touchstarved hcs,, or thoughts,, im dying over here

Literally starved for content

gn!reader | REG!!! //waving both hands, jumping up and down giggling. Thank U. this is an honour and incredible compliment. scary bc my old works are...old... but Thank u. U mean the world 2 Me. i didn't thoroughly check what hcs i've already said so sorry there's repeats orz

i'm not saying the LIs would all go to the barbie movie but if someone does make art of that please let me know and tag me especially if it has the i am kenough shirt

they ruined my life saying kuras doesn't eat how is he going to join my girl dinners now. /j but i'll continue to believe he can appreciate how good a meal looks! & he can still sit with you and try to get his hands on your favourite meals for you to enjoy :-)

that thing where they do push-ups and kiss you when they come down with...leander was the first one i thought of tbh. but if you aren't able to lie underneath him he'd just ask for the same amount once he's done!

leander doing the thing he did in the prologue where he took his glove off with his teeth every so often just to see your reaction. like if you react in an amusing flustered staring at him kind of way. i couldn't relate personally (lying) (liar) (huge lie)

i'm sorry for my leander bias but if one of his favourite things is MASQUERADES and we don't see him at a MASQUERADE well it's so joever like him in a suit and mask and showing off how he knows how to fit in because of his past and also he can waltz now or something I'm dizzy i can't breathe

ais using 0.5 camera on people while they're caught off guard. him asking you to take a video of the fight For him because he's going to be part of it. vere selfie folder. mhin 5 followers no icon no posts gc lurker.

mhin would stick to enough of a routine that they'd have a specific spot to sit at different places,,, like a cafe or the library or bus... corner. it's one of the corners. and when someone's taken the spot they're thrown off then have to walk around for a new one (not happy about this) but take it back once they leave. you spend enough time together and they start keeping the spot next to them open for you

^ also they'd always order the exact same thing at restaurants. wouldn't like going to a new place because now they have to find a new default order. just like me fr

is no one going to talk about the idea that vere doesn't like snow because he's chained outside and it's cold . to be fair it could Totally be for a less sad reason like how it gets his Fur Wet (valid) but i've been thinking about that possible angst

also his gloves are just. like. ? odd. inverse drawing gloves. claws... but why only the 3 fingers.... btw his outfit means a constant thigh holding opportunity

kuras and mhin having long conversations about alchemy and sharing their findings with each other ;; mhin at some point getting just a Little excited about something and kuras choosing not to comment on it but being happy to see them let their walls down a little ;; o(-(

ais coming into your room and wordlessly lying next to you in bed and when asked if he needs something he says no? with a smile. he was just feeling lonely and wanted to find you

saying "you look like you can't swim" or "you are an odd individual" to any and all of them . something about it is amusing to me

if you celebrate christmas or like the idea of kissing underneath some mistletoe,, i think it's a good thought that you hold one over your head and wait for a kiss Or that Some of the LIs would Definitely do that themselves.

who do you guys think has the saddest birthday celebration (/no celebration at all.) who's relating to girls who spend their birthday alone and crying and be honest with me

rambling but i just want to say kuras's monster form looks sick as FUCK and i'm so excited for it. it looks like whatever left the scar on his hand seems to be there.. in his monster form...? i thought it was a claw but the positioning is under/through the hand so like??. do i have to bring up the significance of that if true

also is his outfit (minus his jacket)...like a jumpsuit... or can i just not tell because of his three (?) belts. that's not how you wear belts btw /lh. and is the sheer part Part of the top or is he wearing something sheer underneath the white. his sleeves are also sheer but the neckline means his shoulders are out . take off ur jacket

also mhin !! i want to know how big they get and if the transformation is sickening to watch and if they're still aware of everything around them and !!! THERE IS A SPINE(?) COMING OUT FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE SILHOUETTE THAT I NEED TO SEE NOW! & i'm assuming the senobium is Shit so even if we do get in there and get 'help' there would be another shitty price to pay. possible bad ending...??

scenes with all their monster forms where you're asked if you're scared and you say no / yes but you care about them and they falter because they didn't expect that

true good ending is everyone meeting at the wet wick and making a toast and laughing and saying this truly was our touchstarved before the credits roll

#touchstarved #touchstarved ais #touchstarved leander #touchstarved kuras #touchstarved mhin #touchstarved vere #redspring pls continue to drop lore. gimme. GImemeeme...#not a single one of these birthdays sound good to me btw. closest to happy is how leander would say all drinks on him for the night #but it doesnt change the fact he has no close friends 💀💀#Im serious about the masquerade scene bc i need to see him in a formal setting. how hes different but still charming/the same in a way etc

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cherryeol04 · 11 months

Text

In Darkness (M)

➻ Pairings: Minsung x Jisung

➻ Genre: paranormal au, horror au, psychic bond au

➻ Additional: humor, lust at first sight

➻ Word Count: 3.7K

➻ Warnings: N/A

➻ Author’s notes: This story is cross posted on multiple sites under the same username!

"This is going to be so easy." Jisung grinned as he reread the email for what felt like the millionth time. It was a simple request from a corner shop owner needing Jisung's help to figure out why “unexplainable” things were happening. Jisung was sure it was probably just another prankster ghost that didn't want to move on for one reason or another and a simple talking from Minho would get them to move towards the light. They had done it a dozen times.

Or maybe this time it would be a hoax - a rare situation but one that Jisung thoroughly enjoyed exploiting. It was fun watching the hoaxers trying to keep up with the lie when Jisung had an actual ghost with him that could cause so much more chaos than any human.

Speaking of Minho...

"What do you think?" he asked as he turned around, eyes meeting nothing. Yet the air around him crackled with electrical static that assured him Minho was there. Or at least listening. "Minho?"

"I think fame is getting to your head. No case should be easy, Sungie."

The words echoed through his ears as if spoken aloud, but Jisung had long since realized that Minho was only speaking in his mind. A neat "ghostie power" that Jisung loved, though it had brought up concerns that Minho could read his mind.

He couldn't, thankfully.

"What do you mean? All our cases have been easy. A poltergeist that needed to be cleansed. A weeping mother reunited with her dead child. A young woman's bones finally found and laid to rest. Cut and dry cases, my man." The earring dangling from his left ear twirled and swung at Minho's obvious displeasure.

"I am not "your man"."

"You're right. You're my kitten." The static around him faded and Jisung could just picture Minho standing there flustered beyond belief, his ears a pale shade of red. Jisung never would have guessed that ghosts could blush, but ever since discovering Minho, he was learning a lot about the paranormal that he never knew before. "Your silence says it all, my cute little kitten." He cooed.

"Jisung!" Jisung winced at the sudden hiss, recoiling violently because fuck if that wasn't right in his ear brain. "Shut up and we're not doing this case. We need to stop."

"Why?" Jisung asked, confused. "I just said he was going to be an easy case. We go in, you do your ghostie thing, I tell the person the deed is done and we're out of there."

"Mmm." Jisung didn't like that noise. It never bolded well for him. "Yes, that's how it'll go. I'll do all the hard work and you'll take all the credit."

"Well duh, it's not like I can just say 'hey my ghost friend is gonna speak to the other ghost and get rid of it'. They would lock me up so fast." Jisung frowned as a thought ran through his mind. "I'm not crazy anymore," he muttered.

"You could be a little more appreciative of what I do, instead of jumping onto the next case."

"I tell you "good job" all the time!"

The air around him suddenly turned stale and Jisung realized that perhaps that wasn't the right thing to say. Sighing softly, he turned back in his chair and leaned back into it. "Min, come on. I'm sorry." He quickly apologized, swallowing thickly at how dry his mouth felt. "Babe, please? Let's just do this one more case."

"Do it yourself."

The finality in the tone that rang in his ears was chest clenching. Jisung hadn't meant to piss off Minho, but surely the other knew how much Jisung appreciated him. He really couldn't do this ghost-solving all on his own.

Or could he?

It shouldn't be that hard. Sure he wouldn't have an actual spirit to tell him what was going on, but Jisung had done enough cases to know the basics of it. It shouldn't be that hard then. Grinning, Jisung sat forward and hit reply on the email, typing a quick message agreeing to come out to the shop and do an initial consultation and walkthrough.

He's got this.

----

Jisung winced as more fireworks went off above him. He completely forgot that Saturday was the Cherry Blossom Festival. If he had remembered, he certainly wouldn't have scheduled the walkthrough that night. At least the roads and sidewalks were practically empty, the majority of the city folk were at the national park to celebrate. The walk from his apartment to his destination was made in silence, his earring dangling lifelessly. Minho had been giving him the cold shoulder for a few days now and Jisung was really starting to miss the spirit. It was like a part of his soul was missing, even if they were still connected through the earring.

"I can do this. I'll show him. I'll solve this case all on my own." It was a useless pep talk, but somehow seemed to encourage Jisung regardless. Checking the map on his phone, Jisung stopped in his tracks and looked to his right. There stood a moderately sized building with a neon sign reading "Red Lights Toy Shop." The windows were tinted, so Jisung couldn't see what was inside, but just from the outer context clues, he was pretty positive that this wasn't a kid's toy store. With a deep breath, Jisung walked up to the door and opened it. He was greeted with bright lights and shelves of vibrant adult toys.

"Just my luck," he muttered as he stepped inside and looked around. Right off the bat, he could see rows of dildos and vibrators, a few shelves of lube, and a couple of glass cases that held some sort of weird medical devices, or so he assumed. Jisung wasn't too versed in all the types of sex toys in the world. He was only familiar with the basics and the sizes they can range in.

"Hello?" Jisung's voice seemed to echo in a way that wasn't possible, but perhaps that was just his own mind playing tricks on him, making him believe the place was just as empty as how his head and heart felt without Minho being around. Or maybe that was just philosophical bullshit and the acoustics in the shop were just shit. "Anyone here?" Jisung trekked deeper into the store carefully, eyes drawn to the multitude of pretty colors on display, one in particular catching his eye. It was a ghastly pale dildo, unnatural in both length and girth. The name on the box read "Ghost Rider" and just under it was a small sticker exclaiming that the toy glowed in the dark.

There was an obvious reason Jisung was drawn to it, mind wandering right back to his ghostly partner. Reaching up, he touched his earring gently, a small crackling sizzle sounding as an electric current coursed through his fingers causing them to tingle. It was a small sign from Minho that he was there and the weight that Jisung didn't even know he was carrying was lifted. Relaxing slightly, Jisung grabbed the box off the shelf and turned it over, reading over the item description and functions.

"That's one of our most popular items."

Jisung let out a terrified and high-pitched scream, dropping the box in his hands as he whipped around quickly, eyes landing on the man standing behind him. A tall, blond and handsome man that hadn't been there fifteen seconds ago.

"Oh my god, are you okay?" He sounded concerned, but the bemused smirk gracing his plump lips said otherwise.

"F-Fine." Jisung squeaked out, heart hammering in his chest. He took a deep breath and swallowed, trying to will his fear away. "Warn a guy next time."

"Sorry, thought you heard me." Mr. Handsome shrugged. If it wasn't illegal for someone to be so breathtakingly gorgeous, it should be. And Jisung just may start that petition. But at a different time, he needed to focus on the job at hand.

"It's fine." He cleared his throat and dusted off the front of his white shirt. "I'm looking for Mr. Hwang."

"That would be me." Mr. Handsome Hwang flashed a charming smile.

'Don't swoon. Do not swoon.' Jisung chanted over and over. "Nice to meet you, I'm Jisung."

"Ah!" Recognition flickered across Mr. Handsome Hwang's face. "Mr. Han! Thank you so much for coming. Please, call me Hyunjin." Hyunjin grabbed Jisung's hand and shook it enthusiastically to the point that the rest of Jisung's body was shaking with it.

"Pleasure's all mine." Jisung carefully extracted his hand from the other's grip, shaking some feeling back into it before letting it fall. "So, would you like to give me a little bit more backstory?" he asked.

“Of course, of course.” Hyunjin ran his fingers through his hair, simultaneously looking so innocent and hot. The man should honestly be a model. Why was he running an adult shop anyway? “Let’s go to the back room.” The shiver Jisung experienced was completely involuntary, or at least that’s what he told himself as he nodded and followed Hyunjin to the back room.

The moment he entered the room, another shiver ran through Jisung, and not a good one. It was so cold, unnaturally so. Though Hyunjin just waltzed in seemingly unaffected. Maybe this was the normal temperature of the room? “Have a seat.” Hyunjin motioned to the empty computer chair. Jisung hesitated for a moment before walking over to it and taking a seat. “So, where should I start?”

“From the beginning.” Jisung grinned. “When did you first notice things happening?”

Hyunjin hummed as he moved to lean against the edge of the desk, facing Jisung. “About six months ago.” His expression was pensive. “I bought this place second hand and at first everything was fine. I had it remodeled for a better layout for the toys and I’ve seen enough ghost shows to know that activity starts when remodeling happens.” He snorted. “So imagine my surprise when remodeling finished and it took another three months before anything even happened!” The longer he talked the more animated Hyunjin became, arms flailing and Jisung was a little scared he would get hit.

He did want to interrupt him, however, letting him know that not all activity starts when the resting place of a spirit is disturbed. It could take any amount of time. But Jisung felt like if he did interrupt Hyunjin, he would somehow be on the receiving end of an accidental blow from excitement. So he thought it better to just stay quiet for now.

“But once it got started, it really took off.”

“What exactly has been happening?”

Hyunjin paused, staring long and hard at Jisung, unnerving him. It almost felt like Hyunjin had just ‘shut down’ in a way. Like he was a robot. After a few long, suffering moments of silence, Hyunjin blinked and nodded his head slowly. “So at first it was just items being moved to different locations. Like instead of a bottle of lube being on its shelf, it was actually at the checkout counter.” he explained. Jisung reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, opening his note app and jotting down the activity.

“I just thought maybe I forgot where I put something.” Hyunjin shrugged. “Then it increased to the alarms going off at night. The motion sensors would be triggered and I would get calls from the alarm company and police and after reviewing the security cameras, there was nothing suggesting someone tried to break in.”

“No blind spots?” Jisung instantly asked, brow arching though he never looked away from his phone.

“None.”

“How often did the alarm go off?”

“At first it was only once every few weeks, but recently it became a daily occurrence to where I had to get rid of the alarm system altogether.” Hyunjin sighed heavily, shifting his position to lean the majority of his weight on the arm propped up on the desk.

“That sucks.” Jisung frowned and looked up at Hyunjin. “Anything else?” It really seemed like a simple case of a trickster ghost. One that just enjoyed playing pranks on the mortals and probably would easily move on if cleansed. Of course, cleansing was something that Jisung hated the most because it was difficult for him to get the ritual right. It was always easier to just have Minho convince the ghost to move on, but Jisung didn’t have Minho for this case.

“Well, yes.” Hyunjin whispered and the hesitation in his voice had Jisung perking up with curiosity. “More recently the activity has grown…physical.”

“Physical.” Jisung repeated, swallowing the lump that suddenly formed in his throat. “H-how so?”

“Employees would get pushed or scratched. It’s cliche I know.” Hyunjin shook his head. “And at first I thought they were just joking. It’s a running joke at the store that it’s haunted. But then one day I came in early to help with a shipment we just received and in the middle of taking inventory, I watched as my employee was shoved to the ground.”

“Shoved? Like, shoved?” Jisung asked stupidly, demonstrating with his hands a pushing motion.

“Yes. They were standing there and I could see their shoulders suddenly lurch forward and down they went.” Jisung nodded, making more notes. “They said they were pushed and their back was on fire. I was worried they had hurt themselves when they landed, so I went to look and there were four large scratches running from the top of their right shoulder, all the way down to the left side of their waist.”

That was just great. Scratches. That was more than just a ghost. Not that a ghost couldn’t be mean and physical. It wasn’t uncommon for intelligent hauntings to have some sort of physical activity but the scratches felt so malicious. But Jisung didn’t want to just jump to the conclusion so fast that it was a demon or something. If it was, then that meant this wasn’t an easy case and couldn’t be solved. Jisung had no experience with demons and had no religious affiliation.

Taking a few calming breaths, Jisung locked his phone and stood from the chair. “That’s quite a long list of activities and since it’s physical it’s really important that I start now to figure out what is really going on here and how to cease the activity.”

“Do you really think you can do that?” Hyunjin asked, eyes shining with skepticism that Jisung didn’t take kindly to. The other was the one who reached out to him in the first place. Why would he be skeptical that Jisung could help?

“Of course! I’m sure you’ve read on my website, the extensive experience I have and the many people I’ve helped. I’m confident I can help you too.” Hyunjin smiled and Jisung’s heart fluttered. God he really was a beautiful man, and so tempting. So so tempting.

“Alright, if you think so, then I’ll believe it too.”

“Great, so then if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just wander around a bit and get a reading of the store.”

“Sure, just be careful though. I’ll be back here if you need me.” Hyunjin moved and took a seat at the computer chair, waving to Jisung as the younger man left the room and headed back into the store front.

For a split second, the air sizzled and moved before dying down. Jisung looked around carefully, searching, but saw nothing. Reaching up, he touched his earring, but unlike earlier, he was greeted with stillness. He had hoped that the sudden current had meant Minho manifested and was ready to work with him. He was wrong. Minho was still avoiding him.

“Fine, I’ll do this myself.” he muttered lowly, flicking the earring in spite. It was stupid to fight about this, and Jisung knew it. But his pride wouldn’t let him apologize properly to Minho. The other really was just trying to look out for him, for them. Jisung wasn’t a greedy person, really he wasn’t. He hardly charged enough for the trouble they went through when confronting ghosts to get rid of. It wasn’t about the money. It was about helping others rid themselves of their paranormal nuisance.

No. That wasn’t right.

It was about helping the dead finally move on. To break their earthly ties so they could finally find peace. It’s what they all deserved.

It’s what Minho deserved.

Walking back into the store front, Jisung scanned the open area. It was the typical boxy layout, shelves lining the walls with a few free-standing cases in the middle of the room. There wasn’t a lot of product, but it was certainly enough variety to keep people coming back for years (or days depending on how quickly they went through toys). Nothing seemed out of the ordinary and while the place had a ‘creepy’ vibe, there was nothing that screamed “ghost!” Jisung sighed, shaking his head. This was usually the point in the investigation where Minho would walk around and tell him what entities were residing in the place, what their motives were and the best way of getting rid of them. This was definitely going to be harder than he thought.

“Okay, so if you were Minho…” Jisung trailed off as he wandered to one of the shelves in the middle of the room, taking in the various types of lube displayed. Flavored, silicon based, water based, even anal specific. It still amazed Jisung of the variety that exsisted. He always thought there was just one type of lube, but that’s what he got for shopping for lube at the local grocery store. As he was staring at the product, a chill ran down his spine - so freezing cold that his teeth chattered.

Turning quickly, he had expected to see Minho hovering behind him, but there was no one. From the corner of his eye, Jisung thought he saw something move, however, when he looked over, there was nothing there. Another chill ran through him, though it was less cold this time and more paralyzing. As if he were a deer caught in headlights, pinned down under an unseen stare. No matter what he tried to do, Jisung just couldn’t get his body to move, eyes locked on the corner of the room where he had thought he had seen movement.

Fear gripped his heart as he watched shadows crawl up the wall. A swirling mass of inky blackness that coiled and morphed into a figure. At first glance it looked like a solid mass, but the longer Jisung stood there, the more he could see that it wasn’t solid. The shadows were still swirling, twirling about in a mesmerizing rhythm. He felt like he was falling into a trance, the fear that once gripped him slowly melting away. Jisung knew this was bad, and that he shouldn’t be giving in. He should be fighting, but the shadows were calling to him, beckoning him to join them.

He took a step forward and the shadow creature growled, low and guttreal. The hairs on the back of Jisung’s neck stood on end at the sound. Another step and another growl followed, this time even deeper than the last - something Jisung didn’t think was possible. He could feel the rumble of it in his chest. A third step and Jisung knew this was it. Silence suddenly fell over him and not just the typical silence any person could find themselves in - this silence was devoid of any white noise. The absence of sound unnerved Jisung. He felt like he was in a void and maybe he was. This creature - entity - had sucked all the life out of the surrounding area, leaving him in an empty abyss. While he could still see the store, it was like he wasn’t physically there.

The entity growled again and against his own will his body took a fourth step. That was his undoing. The entity lurched forward and in a split second it closed the distance between them. A searing pain knocked the wind right out of him and Jisung was all too aware of the large fist now embedded in his chest- right over his heart - the pain radiating from it. Weakly, Jisung reached out and wrapped his fingers around the shadowy wrist. To his surprise, they didn’t phase through.

“F-fuck off.” he struggled to get out and while there were no noticeable facial features, Jisung could feel the anger radiating from the entity. The hand tightened and Jisung cried out in pain - his heart stuttering and struggling to continue pumping. His vision blurred, the edges growing black. The only thought running through his mind was that this was the end, this was how he was going to die. He really should have listened to Minho. God, he was such a fool!

“Jisung!”

As the world faded to black, Jisung felt the pain in his chest disappear.

----

Jisung groaned as he slowly opened his eyes, pleasantly surprised to find himself in a dark room. Yet the cold water of reality washed over him as the previous events came rushing back. Jolting up, he looked around frantically, searching for the entity that had tried to kill him. He realized, probably a little too late, that he was laying in his bed, in his room. How he got there, he had no idea, but at least he was safe.

“Fuck.” he whispered, reaching up to rub his chest lightly. It was still sore, a faint ache throbbing as a reminder of how close to death he had been. The thought frightened him, but what terrified him the most was that Minho had been right. They shouldn’t have taken the job and it wasn’t as easy as Minho made it seem. Jisung had been so stupid to think he could do it on his own, and he nearly paid the price for it.

…

But he didn’t? He wasn’t dead. Why wasn’t he? The entity had literally been squeezing the life out of him, but he had somehow survived? It wasn’t adding up. Closing his eyes, Jisung thought back, shuffling through the fury of memories and emotions in hopes of figuring out what happened.

“Jisung!”

The scream echoed in his mind, Jisung’s eyes shooting open. “Minho.” he whispered.

“Finally awake?” Jisung screamed at the sudden voice sounding next to him. His head whipped around, eyes narrowing as they landed on Minho’s face, mirth dancing in his eyes.

“Jesus Christ! You scared the shit out of me!” He gasped out, wincing as he clutched at his chest, a sharp pain shooting through it before dulling.

“Jisung.” Minho whispered, the bed dipping around Jisung’s body as the other climbed on. Minho reached out and swatted Jisung’s hand away, replacing it with his own. Warmth spread gathered under the touch, slowly spreading outwards, Minho’s hand glowing in the process. It eased what dull ache was left and Jisung had to wonder if this was just a ghostly power or if Minho had been a healer in his past life. Silence fell over them, the light slowly dying, the warmth waning. “I’m sorry.” he whispered softly.

The apology caught Jisung by surprise. Mainly because he thought he should be the one apologizing. He was the one that had been stupid and got himself nearly killed. Reaching up, Jisung rested his hand over Minho’s for a moment before pulling it away so he could lace their fingers together. “Don’t be sorry.” he whispered, lifting his gaze to meet Minho’s. “I’m the one that’s sorry. I-I should have listened to you. I was stupid and thought I could do everything-” The snort Minho let out had him pausing.

“Yeah, you were stupid.” Minho scoffed before sighing. He moved himself into Jisung’s lap, sitting down carefully on him. “But I’m still sorry. I should have-” he stopped and Jisung could see him struggling with the words he wanted to say next and Jisung was pretty certain he could see some wetness welling up around the rim of his eyes.

“I should have stopped you the moment you walked into that place. Should have told you to just leave.” Minho lowered his head, brows furrowed. The temperature in the room started dropping and Jisung flashed back to that entity. But unlike that creature, this temperature drop was all Minho’s doing and that was the only reason Jisung freak out. He watched as ice and frost slowly began creeping along the walls. “But I didn’t because I was still mad and you nearly di-” Minho’s voice cracked, and with it the ice on the walls as well. “I should have done something sooner!” Minho forced out as he tried to swallow his sobs. Jisung wrapped his arms around Minho’s shoulders and pulled the other against him. Minho latched on easily, burying his face in Jisung’s neck.

Jisung’s chest ached for a different reason this time around. It wasn’t often he saw Minho upset and emotional. The ghost was usually very calm and collected or spent most of his time invisible to Jisung, the only giveaway of his presence being the static emitted from the earring Jisung wore. In the time he had been with Minho, Jisung couldn’t recall a single time the other had cried. This was a whole new territory for them, but Jisung wanted nothing more than to comfort the other. “It’s okay Min.” he muttered softly, pressing a gentle kiss to the side of his head. “I’m fine.”

“Only because I intervened.” Minho sobbed, fingers curling into the material of Jisung’s shirt. “If I hadn’t … If I had been one second too late,” Jisung hugged Minho tighter as his sobs grew in intensity. He didn’t need the other to finish the sentence to know where he was heading. Jisung was thankful Minho intervened when he did, grateful to be alive and able to hold the other like this. “I’m so sorry.”

“Min.” Jisung frowned and tried to pull the other away from him. Minho fought, struggling to stay cuddled against Jisung’s chest, but he gave up after a few seconds. “Baby,” Jisung started as he slid his fingers under Minho’s chin and lifted his head. Minho’s cheeks were ruddy and tear stained, eyes red and swollen, and yet he still looked absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about. I’m the one that’s sorry. I shouldn’t have upset you and I shouldn’t have let our argument carry on for so long. It’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Yes it is.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is.”

“Don’t argue with me, Han Jisung.” Minho snapped. Jisung stilled, staring at Minho cautiously. “I’m the one in the wrong.” The finality in his voice gave Jisung the urge to disobey, but he held back - this time.

“Okay fine.” Leaning in, Jisung brushed their lips together in a ghost of a kiss. “Thank you for saving me.”

Minho snorted and rolled his eyes, looking away. “It’s not like I was just going to let you die,” he muttered. No, Minho wouldn’t let him die. There were various reasons for that, Jisung was sure, but the main reason was that Minho loved him, at least he hoped it was. Because Jisung was absolutely head over heels for the ghost. It hadn’t been something he wanted to happen, it just did.

“Thank you, Minho.” he whispered. Leaning in, Jisung kissed him softly, a hand cupping Minho’s face gently. He could feel Minho melting into him, body leaning heavily against him. On any other occasion, Jisung would be able to support the added weight, but given the circumstances it came as no surprise that he fell backwards on the bed, Minho following. His hands rested on Minho’s waist as the older male settled over him.

Pulling back from the kiss, Minho sighed, resting his forehead against Jisung’s. Jisung took the time to look him over, the way his brows were still creased together. He could tell that Minho was still blaming himself, even though Jisung never thought it was his fault. He wasn’t entirely sure how to get that through Minho’s head though. He did notice that the temperature in the room was slowly rising once more, an indication that Minho was calming down. That was good. Jisung didn’t want a repeat of the last time Minho was angry and he broke every mirror in the house.

“Ji-” Jisung cut Minho off with another kiss, not really wanting to hear what the other had to say. If he had to guess, it was going to be another apology and those were just getting boring now. He had already forgiven Minho, even though there wasn’t anything to forgive. But they were both stubborn and getting Minho to understand it wasn’t his fault was like talking to a brick wall. Breaking the kiss, Minho huffed, sitting up fully as he stared down at Jisung, eyes lidded with an almost unreadable expression. “I love you.”

The words echoed in Jisung’s mind, sending a shockwave through his system. Not because Minho confessed his love, but because he had never heard Minho speak in his head while staring directly at him. Another ghostly ability that Jisung hadn’t been aware of. Everyday he discovered something new about his lover. “I love you too.” He replied easily, smiling at him. Minho gasped softly, face softening, allowing himself the tiniest of smiles that would have easily been missed if Jisung didn’t know what he was looking for. His hands left their perch on Minho’s hips, slipping under his shirt and dragging slowly up his sides, pulling his shirt up in the process until it suddenly disappeared, along with the rest of their clothes.

Sometimes Jisung wondered if there were any limitations with being a ghost, because it just seemed like Minho was able to do magic. But there was a limitation to all the ghostly powers. Minho could only do things for so long before he needed ‘recharge’, which usually meant he returned to the astral plane and communication could only be made through his grounded object - talking in Jisung’s mind. It wasn’t a horrible trade off, considering Minho made it hassle free to have sex.

“Min, you know we don’t have to do this. I kinda almost died earlier and-”

“I need to.” Minho whispered, his voice cracking once more. “Need to know you’re still here.” He swallowed thickly, voice shaking. “Need to know you’re still alive. Please?” Jisung honestly couldn’t say no to him. Not when he sounded like that - not after everything they’ve been through. And truth be told, Jisung really wanted it too. He just wasn’t sure he had the stamina to please Minho at the moment.

He nodded. “Of course, baby.”

Minho grinned, rocking back against Jisung, pulling a strangled moan from him. “Just lay back and let me handle everything.” Jisung was more than okay with that. He could handle Minho taking control and doing everything right now. Minho rocked his hips again, Jisung’s cock nestled snugly between his cheeks. Occasionally the head of his cock would catch on Minho’s rim, pulling shuddering breaths from both of them. “Fuck.”

“Please Min.” Jisung whimpered, hips lifting slightly. Minho’s eyes narrowed and he raised up onto his knees. The sudden lack of warmth against his cock had Jisung whining, a pitiful pout on his lips, though Minho didn’t appear to be swayed by it. Jisung jerked at the cold touch to his legs, eyes widening as he looked down but saw nothing. It slowly climbed up his thighs, to his hips with a great force, pinned them back down on the mattress. “Babe.” he gasped out, trying to lift his hips, but they wouldn’t budge.

“I told you to let me handle everything.” Minho replied sweetly, running his fingers through Jisung’s hair a few times. “Are you going to be good and listen?” The sickening sweet condensing tone in his voice had Jisung shuddering, head nodding rapidly, eager to please the other. “Words.”

“Yes.” Jisung exhaled.

“That’s my good boy.” Cooing, Minho slowly lowered himself back down, hips rocking against Jisung’s achingly hard cock. And despite just promising to be good, Jisung tried to gain more friction only to find his hips still pinned down by the ghostly force.

“Aw baby.” Minho tsked, shaking his head. “You promised you would be good for me.” The disappointment was evident and Jisung wanted so much to make back his actions. But he couldn’t help it, Minho just felt so good against him and he wanted so desperately to be buried inside the other. “I guess you don’t really want this.”

“I do!” Jisung shouted, cheeks flushing in embarrassment as Minho raised a brow. “I’m sorry for being bad. But it just felt so good. Please, I need you Minho.” Jisung wasn’t above begging, that was for sure. But he doubted he needed to do any real begging to get Minho to actually move this along. Minho hummed in thought, and for a split second Jisung thought he might actually deny him.

“You’re lucky you’re cute.” It wasn’t an outright no, which Jisung was thankful for. He watched with bated breath as Minho lifted himself just enough to grip Jisung’s cock and position it at his hole, a wanton moan falling from the other’s lips at the touch. It still amazed him at how much and how quickly Minho could turn him on - leaving him a leaking and aching mess. Minho waited for what felt like an eternity, and when Jisung finally looked up at him, he smirked - sinking down down on him, his hole stretching easily around the other and engulfing him in one go.

“Oh fuck.” Jisung gasped out in pleasure. Minho seated himself fully on Jisung, Jisung’s hands shooting out to greedily grab and palm over any bare flesh within his reach. His fingers sunk into the soft, supple flesh of Minho’s ass, squeezing a few times. “You feel so good baby. So perfect around me.” he babbled. Minho groaned softly, swirling his hips slowly and pulling another moan from the male beneath him. “Please baby, please.” Jisung whispered, biting his bottom lip in an effort to keep himself still. He wanted so much to just start thrusting into Minho. But he promised to be good and besides, his hips were still being pinned. “Don’t tease me.”

Grinning down at Jisung, Minho lifted himself before sinking back down - a shuddering breath escaping him. The drag of his cock against Minho’s walls felt incredible, his length twitching and pulsing almost uncontrollably. Jisung knew he was probably leaking copious amounts of precum, not that Minho needed the extra glide. Minho repeated his actions again, going incredibly slow and driving Jisung slowly crazy. His hands squeezed Minho’s ass again, following Minho’s movements. He thought about guiding the other to make him go faster, but Jisung was afraid it would have the opposite effect and Minho would stop completely and now that they started, Jisung wasn’t sure he would be able to survive if Minho suddenly stopped moving.

Leaning down, Minho brushed their lips together in a tease of a kiss, a smirk playing on his lips as he watched Jisung’s face. His eyes were so dark and intense and Jisung found himself suffocating from the stare. Minho was gorgeous, but up close like this he was breathtaking. “You’re doing so good.” Minho cooed, grinning as Jisung preened at the praise. Sitting back up, Minho braced himself on Jisung’s chest, hands careful to not press directly over his heart. “Remember, don’t move.”

The reminder fell on deaf ears, Jisung barely able to process the command before Minho was impaling himself on his cock, over and over again at such a rapid pace it left Jisung dizzy. His lips parted, desperate cries leaving him - body pulled taught as he fought to keep himself still. It was a difficult challenge with the way Minho was riding him like his life depended on it; or more appropriately, his afterlife. “So good Ji.” Minho moaned out. “Filling me so good.”

“Ah, fuck!” Jisung gasped out, his hands shifting from Minho’s ass to his hips, gripping it tightly - nails biting into skin. He tried, he really really tried but Jisung just couldn’t keep still any longer as more beautifully filthy words fell from Minho’s lips. Arms flexing, Jisung helped to lift Minho up before guiding him back down, dropping him harder than the other had before. He felt himself slip further inside, something he didn’t think was possible and Minho tightened around him - a startled cry echoing in the room. Jisung expected Minho to stop and scold him, but it never happened. In fact, it seemed like Minho gave up all control, letting Jisung guide him over his cock. There was a gentle pressure against his hips before it disappeared, warmth flooding the area once more. Jisung gave a small buck, hips free to move.

Staring up at Minho, he grinned at him before reaching up and pulling him down into a deep kiss. Minho barely caught himself in time to keep their heads from colliding, arms shakily holding himself up. Jisung carded his fingers through Minho’s hair, gripping the brown locks at the base of his neck to keep him locked in the kiss. Lifting his legs, Jisung planted his feet on the mattress and gave a quick thrust up. He swallowed the choked moan from Minho, arms wrapping around him when Minho’s own arms gave up and he collapsed against Jisung, subsequently breaking the kiss.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Jisung groaned deeply, burying his face in Minho’s neck as the other chanted in his ear. He was getting lost in the pleasure of fucking Minho, driving his cock hard and fast in the other. He was so close to the edge already, he knew he wasn’t going to last but he didn’t want to cum before Minho. Reaching between their pressed bodies, Jisung managed to wrap his fingers against Minho’s cock. It was hot and heavy and pulsing and with one stroke Minho was crying out into his shoulder as he came. The rhythmic clenching of Minho’s hole sent Jisung into his own orgasm, burying his cock deep inside the other and filling him with his cum.

With the last twitch of his cock, Jisung went lax on the bed, panting heavily. His hand tiredly ran up and down Minho’s back, the other relaxing against him as well. Jisung was content to just lay there with the other, despite the mess coating their stomachs and his hand. Turning his head, he pressed a gentle kiss to Minho’s temple, the other grumbling and hiding his face further into his shoulder. “Fuck that was so good.”

Minho hummed in response, but still refused to lift his head. That was fine with Jisung. “We should shower.” Minho mumbled and Jisung shook his head.

“Don’t wanna move.”

“You’re going to hate yourself later.”

Jisung shrugged and sighed. “That’s a future Jisung problem. Current Jisung wants to cuddle with his boyfriend.” Minho snorted and finally lifted his head just enough so Jisung could see him roll his eyes affectionately.

“Fine, whatever.” Pleased to get his way, Jisung planted a wet kiss into Minho’s cheek, snuggling closer to him. “Silly brat.”

“But I’m your brat.” Jisung snickered. “Love you Min.” Minho only hummed in acknowledgement, curling up further on Jisung. “Say it back.” he whined.

“Love you too.” Minho paused before sighing. “I guess.” Jisung couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the comment. It was so Minho to have such a sarcastic response, but Jisung surely wouldn’t have him any other way.

Tags: @jisungsjheekies @hanjisungismybaby @sauceracha @babyskz @slinekyu @schokoshaker @rejemi @bxddiebang @eastleighsblog @hydrawaterdragon @3rachasninja

( If you want to join the list, you can find the info here! Also I’m sorry for those listed in the tags but not getting tagged. For some reason tumblr can’t find your blog to tag. I’m hoping it figures it out soon like it did for others.)

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veliseraptor · 8 months

Note

Psst top Wheel of Time ships and characters? (Also can I ask for any of your thoughts on Nynaeve?)

I should do a whole separate post on Nynaeve honestly but suffice it to say for this one that I love her very very much, didn't appreciate her nearly enough on my first read but appreciate her more every reread since.

since I love lists, here's a couple lists for you

CHARACTERS

Rand al'Thor. I don't usually latch onto protagonists but when I do they're depressed and a mess! And that's Rand for you. I really appreciate the way that Jordan plays with the Chosen One archetype specifically by looking at the damage it does/can do to a person, and the way that Rand is gradually wrecked by the weight of prophecy and expectation such that the only way to escape it, in the end, is to become not himself. Whatever my feelings about his ending (not entirely positive), I think there's a very painful and poignant statement in there.

Ishamael/Moridin/Elan Morin Tedronai. Who doesn't love a fatalistic villain longing for oblivion and believing that serving evil is the only way to get it! I'm sure that's universal. I wrote sort of a character study of him and I think personally it is one of my underappreciated fics. Couldn't say why, I don't know how this isn't a subject that everyone is clamoring to read.

Min Farshaw. My beloved since the first time I read the series and I don't think it's just because she had short hair like me, though that's probably part of it. I think I just enjoy the way she thinks, her narration, the way she's simultaneously deeply caring and a little bit snarky, the way that she interacts with fate and inevitability. I don't know, I struggle to articulate it. I just know that I loved her first as a character and I still love her.

Tuon (Fortuona) Athaem Kore Paendrag. My problematic fave (other than, I guess, the aforementioned nihilistic actual antagonist). I just...she's fascinating. She's a cipher. She's the embodiment of an evil empire and absolutely going to oversee its downfall. She craves absolute control and copes poorly with not having it. Her dynamic with Mat is my favorite relationship in the series. What a gal.

Nynaeve al'Vere. In contrast to Min, I didn't appreciate Nynaeve enough on early reads (I didn't dislike her, I just didn't appreciate her enough), but that's thoroughly changed and at this point I do think she's one of my favorite characters. She's so contradictory and an unreliable narrator but in a very particular way that I feel like I don't run into very often. She's so much fun to read about, and also trying so hard to prove herself, and so determined to help people (even when they maybe don't want to be helped). She's a healer first and foremost and never loses sight of that, or of her resolve to protect her people. What a gal. But in a very different way than the above.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Mat Cauthon and Aviendha.

SHIPS

Mat/Tuon. I said their dynamic was my favorite in the series and I meant it. They have such a good courtship, the way they dance around each other and play off each other and play their relationship like a game of strategy is so much fun for me.

Rand/Min. If Min was my first favorite character then Rand/Min was my first OTP (and incidentally the first pairing I wrote porn for!). I think my favorite thing about them is the way that they're friends, or feel like it, in a way that Rand doesn't always feel like friends with the other ladies. Sometimes I appreciate that in a pairing. They just seem like they enjoy each other's company even outside of the romantic aspect, and I love that for them.

Aviendha/Elayne. Welcome to the gayest ostensibly sister relationship in the whole series!!!! No honestly though on reread I was like "how is this not explicitly a thing, I mean, I know why, but Jordan you've established some people are gay in this universe and you have Aviendha lovingly describing Elayne's naked body and, again, the gayest sister-making ceremony I've read, and tell me that they're not totally and completely, romantically and sexually, in love? Fie, I say. Lies and foolishness. They're in love and they're so valid for it.

Nynaeve & Rand. Sneaking an & ship on here! Especially as the series goes on, their relationship is soooo important to me. There's a short list of people who care about Rand-as-Rand with no ulterior motives beyond that, and Nynaeve is near the top of that list. And I love, too, that their dynamic isn't romantic in the least.

Tuon/Egwene. @highladyluck pretty much single-handedly sold me on this one and I'm so glad she did. Absolutely brilliant and galaxy brained. Egwene should've lived just so she and Tuon could have a hideously complicated enemyship. The missed opportunities.

BONUS: Rand/Min/Morshamael Tedronai.

#conversating #anonymous #will say that faile/berelain almost made it on as a bonus #wheel of time #wot book spoilers

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audriel · 5 months

Note

hi audriel! Didnt know you had tumblr and had to double-check. I really love your fangrui fics on ao3! I noticed some were taken down? And thank you so much for always posting fangrui pics on discord!! Really appreciate it. Really like how approachable and friendly you are on discord, feels like talking to a friend who you can gush about fandom stuffs with, hope you have a good day ahead!

questions, when did you first started to like qzgs, and what made you do it? What are your top 3 fav chars? Did it ever change? What do you like about them?

hi anon! actually, i made my ao3 and tumblr account almost at the same time, so you're safe! i joined discord pretty recently, that's why i unfortunately lost my chance to use the name audriel there >_<

another fang rui lover! thank you! i'm glad you like them! <333

i'm just so happy that i found people who loves qzgs to gush over together. and to spread all the fang rui love. so thank you for being so kind and welcoming! it took quite a lot of courage for me to finally ask to join the server, and participate actively. it's thanks to everyone in the discord.

are you asking the moon in autumn? it's still there, but only accessible for ao3 users since it's a long fic, and i do have concerns for data scraping for fanfictions. if let's start thinkin' bout it gets long enough, i might end up doing the same. i might only unlock them for few days when there's a new update.

now onto your questions!

i'm pretty sure it's due to the pandemic. since i started to read a lot of korean webtoons/manhwa that's almost always adapted from webnovels, i ended up reading a lot of them during that time (there was not much to do but stay at home after all). however, they were very rarely completed. oh the horror. so i looked for recommendations and there was quan zhi gao shou/the king's avatar on the list. it's highly rated and reviewed, and it's completed! even though it's chinese webnovel and not the genre i usually read (online games, more so professional gaming), so i gave it a try, and boy i'm so very glad i do. i'm hooked.

it has everything i love to read in a story: a smart, powerful protagonist; rich, complex characters and world; and a wonderful storytelling.

the only downside? i'm late to the the fandom. QAQ

i think we all love ye xiu, it's no brainer right? he's perfect but also imperfect at the same time. his strength in character and in his belief is so admirable that i sorely wish i had a fraction of it. but at the same time as a protag, we didn't see much from his perspective. so he's not the character i resonate with the most. definitely top three, but not the top. qiao yifan was my best boi then. i can relate with his struggle the most. and i love seeing him learning and growing under ye xiu's wings. from the transparent tiny herb player to the most stable, reliable happy rookie. i'm so looking forward to the person he'll be in the future.

then there's fang rui. he's overshadowed by huang shaotian at first. huang shaotian is so lively, so distinctive, so difficult to look away from. so at the beginning my top three was qiao yifan, ye xiu and huang shaotian.

only on my reread that fang rui finally caught my eye. at first, he and huang shaotian look so similar and differ greatly with other oh so serious captains and god-level players in that they are bright and lively, and they are open with their emotions. but i end up thinking twice at the latter. huang shaotian is an open book, fang rui is not.

wait, wait are we reading the same novel?

fang rui feels like an open book, because we have seen his own perspective, we've seen his thoughts and emotions. but whenever we've got outsiders' perspective on him, fang rui is always playful even he performs badly. if anything, he acts out, hams it up, just like when he miscommunicated with mo fan or when he lost so badly that he sat in the corner to reflect. when he's troubled, most often he closes up, just like when lin jingyan approached him when tyranny dropped by or when he was so tired after beating xu boyuan.

meanwhile, huang shaotian can put up a public persona like the celebrity he is, but overall he doesn't really bother to hide how he feels, just like when he didn't want to talk after he lost in the finals and when he questioned yu feng after he went to hundred blossoms (even he got the first turn in beating up liu hao lol). in summary, huang shaotian is the real open book. we can count on him for being honest, and also being loyal. while at the same time, he's such an stealthy assassin and deadly opportunist on stage. it makes him such an appealing character and a favorite among the fandom.

but for me, the complexity and contrast of fang rui really caught my eye. that there's more to him that it meets the eye. which is admittedly my favorite type of character. it shows that he has an exceptional emotional intelligence, he understands emotions, his own and others, and he doesn't shy away from it, more so, he owns it. i have admiration for calm and composed characters, but i admire more those who obviously struggling with his emotions but still retain their calm and composure. and that fits fang rui to the t.

because damn, when we put it into context, fang rui has the hardest time in season 10. ye xiu (and qiao yifan) did have a hard time with their previous team, ye xiu can be also said as the reason for excellent era, his beloved team's demise. but the fans and later qiu fei gave him hope for the team to be reborn, then su mucheng joined him in happy, all he needs is to focus on the championship that he's back in the alliance. fang rui?

he has to leave his beloved team and account, then he transforms to a completely different class with a wholly new account, at the huge risk to himself, then he has to fight his former partner/mentor repeatedly until being the one to end lin jingyan's career. the latter feels dramatic, but considering how fang rui's performance is visibly affected by lin jingyan's decline, i'm not surprised if that's how it feels from his perspective. and yet... he gives himself the hardest time when he performs badly in the finals, for not giving his best for happy. he just wanted to return the trust given to him. even though he was exhausted, he still did his best to assure the team. i just... the moment i put things into perspective, i think fall in love right then and there, and there's no coming back from it.

so my current top three: fang rui, qiao yifan, and ye xiu.

i think there's a pattern right there. all three are happy. all three have transformed. all three have left their teams, not by choice. all have suffered rejections and come up victorious.

thank you for the wonderful ask! i don't mind if you have more questions! i enjoy it very much! i can do the same for you if you wish. just let me know!

#ask me anything #quan zhi gao shou #the king's avatar #qzgs #tka #fang rui

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gojonanami · 2 months

Note

lovely, lovely, lovely sab,

first of all, thank you, thank you, thank you for allowing us to read your brilliant stories. i feel so lucky that i can go on my phone, open up tumblr, and be faced with the realization that i can read and reread your stories again and again, and find comfort in that.

secondly, sab, thank you so very much for writing your professor geto suguru series. i really, really, really enjoyed the process of how this series came to be!! each chapter was absolutely brilliant, and i loved the process of rereading chapters while anticipating new ones!! and i am so impressed by the way in which you managed to tackle such a difficult feat of writing such a long stories!! on top of that, all of the discussions which were had on this blog were super, super fun and enjoyable!! they were really something that i looked forward to after finishing my work, and they really did make me smile.

now, sab, i also enjoyed a lot of your other stories!! your fic where suguru consumes an aphrodisiac curse is super, super fun!! i love the moment when he first consumes the curse, and there is a moment of confusion where his thoughts take over, and he imagines what he wants... just the way his thoughts are tracked by the text is super cool.

Even under the water, he felt like his body was burning — a slow fire that lingered under the surface of his skin, burning and aching, the frigid water barely doing enough to soothe it. Running his hands over his body seemingly helped, a shiver running down his spine as he washed himself, but he knew it would have felt even better if it was you. ….what? He tried to shake that thought from his head — it wasn’t the first time he had thought of you like this. There were many times where his mind would drift to you at night, the warmth of your touch from a few hours ago still lingered, as his hard-on pleaded for his touch. Guilty gnawed at his conscious when he indulged, the first time being after a particularly vivid dream of you pinning him down while training — your mouth kissing down his body, eager fingers tugging at his shorts until that smirk met— This wasn’t helping.1

i thought that this fic was really very fun, very sexy and also very memorable! i really did enjoy it and i often find myself thinking about it months after i'd read it. it was really super fun reading it! truly! and i just thought that the way it progressed was so smooth and so gripping, and very, very sexy.

but i also enjoyed a lot of your other stuff, too!! one of your stories that i keep thinking about is your story about satoru and grief. it's short, it's one that i think has too little notes, but one i'm very fond of. the way he responds with positivity and strength in the face of utter (inevitable?) heartbreak is so satoru.2

i also really enjoyed your nanami fics!! i must confess, although i really enjoy nanami kento as a character, he's not really a character i find myself... attracted to. i'm not sure why. i can understand and appreciate that he's an attractive man and has very good qualities, and that he's a green flag, but for some reason, i just... i can acknowledge and understand why others find him attractive, but i don't necessarily find myself attracted to him. while that was a little tangent, and i'm sorry for that, i just put this all in to say that despite all that, i adore your nanami stuff!! especially, especially, especially 'five times nanami wanted to propose but didn't' because it's just so deliciously sad.3

there are so, so, so many other stories of yours that i could have mentioned, too. like, 'would it be enough if i could never give you peace?' i adore the ending of that fic. suguru keeping the cards feels so utterly heartbreaking and gut-wrenching.4

i also adore hearing your thoughts and ideas regarding fics that you're thinking of writing. curse suguru? frat boy suguru? guitarist suguru? post-kenjaku suguru? househusband satoru? (and nanami... and suguru...) mindreader nanami?? outlaw suguru?? and so, so, so, so many others!!

i think i'm especially lucky in that i have found a writer whose work i really enjoy and i am lucky in that i get to read your stuff so often. but i hope you do know that you're not obligated to update all the time, right?? we know that you have a busy, demanding but an awesome job that requires you to use up a lot of energy. we know that you want to spend time with your family, your sister and your nephews, and your friends. and honestly? currently, i'd much rather you go out into the sunlight, bathe in the sun, dip your feet in the toes, than feel guilty about not putting out a story on tumblr because you don't feel like it. i'd love to read your stories, sure, but i'd prefer to see you in a happy mood, eating delicious ice cream and playing with some cute dogs with a big smile on your face.

sending the very best wishes your way xx

gojonanami. tumblr post. february 3, 2024. https://www.tumblr.com/gojonanami/741261455786147840/%F0%9D%90%88-%F0%9D%90%89%F0%9D%90%94%F0%9D%90%92%F0%9D%90%93-%F0%9D%90%96%F0%9D%90%80%F0%9D%90%8D%F0%9D%90%93-%F0%9D%90%93%F0%9D%90%8E-%F0%9D%90%85%F0%9D%90%94%F0%9D%90%82%F0%9D%90%8A-%F0%9D%90%80%F0%9D%90%8B%F0%9D%90%8B-%F0%9D%90%8D%F0%9D%90%88%F0%9D%90%86%F0%9D%90%87%F0%9D%90%93?source=share.

gojonanami. tumblr post. september 21, 2023. https://www.tumblr.com/gojonanami/729035915211702272/bigger-than-the-whole-sky-satoru-gojo-summary?source=share.

gojonanami. tumblr post. november 11, 2023. https://www.tumblr.com/gojonanami/733656338931023872/five-times-nanami-wanted-to-propose-but-didnt?source=share.

gojonanami. tumblr post. february 4, 2024. https://www.tumblr.com/gojonanami/741365183814975488/%F0%9D%90%96%F0%9D%90%8E%F0%9D%90%94%F0%9D%90%8B%F0%9D%90%83-%F0%9D%90%88%F0%9D%90%93-%F0%9D%90%81%F0%9D%90%84-%F0%9D%90%84%F0%9D%90%8D%F0%9D%90%8E%F0%9D%90%94%F0%9D%90%86%F0%9D%90%87-%F0%9D%90%88%F0%9D%90%85-%F0%9D%90%88-%F0%9D%90%82%F0%9D%90%8E%F0%9D%90%94%F0%9D%90%8B%F0%9D%90%83-%F0%9D%90%8D%F0%9D%90%84%F0%9D%90%95%F0%9D%90%84%F0%9D%90%91-%F0%9D%90%86%F0%9D%90%88%F0%9D%90%95%F0%9D%90%84-%F0%9D%90%98%F0%9D%90%8E%F0%9D%90%94?source=share.

bb this ask has been sitting in my box because I keep rereading it and it literally makes me so so happy.

I feel so lucky all of you are here and look forward to reading my work at all!! prof Geto was such a special experience and has been such a wonderful series to write that it makes me long recreate that experience with another series 🥹💕 you guys were the reason I truly was able to write that series and it means so so much to me.

ahh the aphrodisiac geto fic is def one of my fav things I’ve written on here. I was very inspired when writing that fic and it’s one of those fics that was really easy for me to frame and set up.

I always love writing about grief and loss and I know those fics will never do as well but I love writing them anyway. I’m so glad you enjoy my nanami fics 🥹💕 I feel like he’s a character that’s difficult for me to nail down. I totally understand getting why someone is attractive but not being attracted to them haha

you are absolutely the sweetest 😭🥹 I’m so glad you look forward to the fic ideas I do plan to write!! I promise I’m gonna do it. I love you — and thank you for the much needed reminder haha. I am trying to focus on real life more then fiction but I’m still writing while I’m at it :).

wishing you the absolute best because you truly deserve the entire world for being such a wonderful and sweet person 🥹💕

#sab [asks]#sab [anons]#sab [praise]#long ask #I love you

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taleweaver-ramblings · 7 months

Text

Taleweaver Rereads Prydain: The Book of Three (Part 2)

I decided to do these as separate posts instead of reblogs because otherwise the post will get really long. Click here for Part 1 (Chapters 1–9, also a lot of facepalming at Taran and appreciating Gwydion.)

Also, as a note, I am putting very little effort into avoiding any but the most significant spoilers. The books are 50+ years old. I know the lucky 10,000 is a thing, but yeah.

Chapters 10–13 Thoughts

Despite the fact that Fflewddur Fflam is, again, my fourth-favorite literary bard, I apparently forgot about half of his backstory. Shame on me.

(It's ok, Fflewddur. You may not be an official bard, but I like you anyway. You can still be on my list.)

I cannot remember if the fact that Fflewddur is technically a king is ever addressed again. What is going on in his kingdom? Did he abdicate? Or is his kingdom just small enough that it can run itself without him looking after it?

While I retract none of my past comments about Taran's intelligence or common sense, I will give him this: once he gets some weight of responsibility on his shoulders, he learns fast. He's still a goose at times, of course, but he's less of one.

Contradicting this: "There is risk enough without having to worry about a girl." Taran. Dude. Eilonwy is, at this point, arguably the most competent member of your group. I know part of this is that you've been taught to protect girls, but trust me, you want Eilonwy along.

"In Caer Dalben, he had dreamed of being a hero. But dreaming, he had come to learn, was easy; and at Caer Dalben no lives depended on his judgement." Like I said: Taran does learn fast. Also, a lot of wisdom in that statement. Dreaming is easy. Doing is harder.

I do not ever remember reaching a point the first time I read these where I liked Gurgi. I could tell that I was supposed to like him, and I remember appreciating that he had a good character arc, but I didn't enjoy his scenes.

On the reread, thus far, I still don't enjoy his scenes (mostly because I find his manner of talking annoying), but I do have a lot more appreciation for his character (notably, the fact that he has more courage than it seems at first) and his situation (having "lost the wisdom of the animals without gaining the intelligence of men" — not an exact quote, but close enough; it's an interesting state to consider).

All Taran's conversations with Eilonwy seem to go sideways from how Taran wanted them, and sometimes that's his own fault, but sometimes that's on Eilonwy, and I do feel for Taran in those cases. "Somehow I can never seem to make it come out right" indeed, dude. I know exactly what you mean.

I forgot that there was a reference to Culhwch and Olwen in this book! (Though Alexander spells Culhwch as Kilhuch.) That's my second-favorite Welsh myth!

I also appreciate the implication that the in-world version of Noah is just hanging out in Prydain, never having died, looking out for the animals. It's great.

I may or may not finish the book tonight; if not tonight, 'twill be tomorrow for certain. We shall see.

#taleweaver reads #taleweaver reads prydain

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autumnalwalker · 9 months

Text

Empty Names - 20 - Changeling Child

Author's Note: In which Ashan helps out a fairy that just realized they aren't human and draws uncomfortable parallels to his own experiences. Also, Lacuna horrifies everyone with mad science. There were a lot of delays with life generally getting in the way of this chapter being written, but I am a little proud of myself for just barely squeezing this in before the year ends, as per the goal I set for myself a month ago (in my home time zone anyhow). That said, I didn't manage to give this chapter my usual once-over full reread before posting, so I won't be too surprised if I edit this post later, if only to add the spoiler commentary to the tags. Hope you enjoy, and Happy New Year, everyone. Minor edits to wording/typos have now been made and additional commentary has been added to the tags. Word Count: 11,337 Content Warnings: Fantasy fight scene violence. Attempted (but failed) mind control. Passing reference of blood and gore without detail. Mild body horror. Deadnaming and misgendering a trans person (not Lacuna for once).

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It is a strange thing, to suddenly obtain a new material possession when one has previously made a point of keeping as few as possible. Stranger still when that new possession is slightly too big to fit into the folded space within the sleeves of your robe to keep safely on your person at all times. Eris did however include a white carrying case to go along with the matte-black laptop she gifted to Ashan last week, so that is something. It is not quite the same shade of white as his robe, but it is close enough that Ashan appreciates the thought.

For the time being, that laptop has stayed hooked up inside the guestroom within Bridgewood Manor that Ashan has been occupying since that first mission with Road nearly two months ago. At Lacuna’s urging he has tried to incorporate it into his morning and evening routines, if only to check the electronic mail. Thus far that has mostly just consisted of messages from Lacuna containing images with humor he is still grasping, the occasional suggestion from Eris regarding educational resources, and one from Bridgewood congratulating the three of them on connecting to the Manor’s WiFi. That last part had been nearly as esoteric process as Lacuna’s explanation of memes, and that had rapidly devolved into a rambling lecture about long cats, defunct deities, a philosopher called Plato, dual linguistic meanings lost in translation, and the ultimately futile and deceptive nature of the written word.

Whether it had been Lacuna’s intention or not, that extended feline rant led to his spending even more of his downtime on the computer than in the Bridgewood library since then. Not for the memes, but to find out who Plato was. That reference to an (apparently) historic figure as if familiarity were assumed once more drove home the fact that being stolen away before even completing an elementary-level education made him a foreigner in his own homeland. True, Aliana had tutored him on mathematics, logic, literary analysis, and other such skills in addition to magic, but none of the history or philosophy he learned under her guiding hand came from Earth. And why would it have?

But now this strange little bifurcated box offered a way to, if not fully amend, then at least mitigate that ignorance. While Ashan had long been aware of the Internet and its theoretical use as a store of knowledge and a communication medium, between a childhood in a home without a computer and adolescence spent in world without electronics he had never really experienced it until Eris showed up at the Lonely Walk office and handed him a surprise gift. To hear about it is one thing, but to actually scroll through the pages upon pages listing titles for tens of thousands of transcribed books free for access and hyperlinked inter-referencing encyclopedia articles tracing an interwoven tapestry of conceptual linkage from ancient philosophers to arboreal bearcats was another thing entirely. Ashan had known scholars on Orthon who would weep with joy and envy at the mere idea of such a library.

Admittedly, there were some complications with exploring the wider Internet caused by his translation charm not knowing how to handle trying to use a keyboard. Writing words by hand had been bad enough ever since the onset of his condition, causing whatever he wrote to come out as a pidgin of a dozen or so different languages - many of which he had never even personally encountered before - that was effectively gibberish to anyone without translation magic of their own or a very intense interest in linguistics. Trying to force his thoughts through a single achingly unrecognizable symbol at a time to try to form words specifically in a language that had been stolen from him was… distressing. Speech recognition software had proven no better, with the device - as Eris explained it to her - responding to specific physical sound patterns without any true perception happening for his charm to tap into. But he still has the collection of links and bookmarks his friends had sent him, and that is proving to more than suffice. Just those first two resources Eris provided him with were more than could be read in a single human lifetime.

Friends. What a wonderful thing to be able to call someone. How had he never realized what he was missing?

So now, on this particular morning, after his long-standing morning rituals of exercise and meditation (and a breakfast that he is perfectly capable of remembering and not putting off when there are not more pressing matters to attend to), Ashan turns on his laptop and checks his electronic mail. There is one new message, sent from Lacuna at two in the morning.

Its subject line reads “Simulations are done.”

Ashan is not normally one to hurry or rush things. Ashan barely takes the time to skim the full text of the message before closing the laptop and departing from Bridgewood Manor and the surrounding Estate at the quickest possible pace that will not leave him visibly winded. The brief time that it takes to reach the tree bridge that will transport him to its twin tree across the street from the office feels like an age in his excitement, and he tries to remind himself that after this long of a wait a few extra minutes will not make a difference. It is certainly nothing worth breaking decorum over, even with no one else around.

An eager grin the like of which has not graced his face in years creeps in all the same as he steps out of the Bridgewood Estate’s secure transit between the trees and into the early morning sunshine.

He crosses the street and then the sidewalk, and then the outermost of the security wards surrounding the Lonely Walk Outreach Agency. Invisible to the mundane or inattentive eye though they might be, after all the time he has spent adjusting and fine tuning them it is difficult for Ashan not to perceive them as a shifting rainbow lattice-work overlaid in concentric bubbles around the refurbished antique building.

The front door is unlocked, indicating that Lacuna must already be inside, given that Road and Eris were not expecting to be back from the followup to their most recent mission for another day or two. Ashan heads straight downstairs towards Lacuna’s basement lab; the woman is hardly ever anywhere else these days.

And yet, when the door slides open he finds her usual chair unoccupied despite all the computer monitors surrounding it being turned on. Ashan’s first thought is that she has simply stepped out for a moment to feed or relieve herself, but then he notices the figure displayed on the monitors. Eight different cameras at eight different angles and levels of zoom are displaying eight live feeds split across two screens Eight mechanical eyes watch a faceless white mannequin in worn and baggy clothes standing almost perfectly still in the middle of an evenly-lit blank white room. Its chest and shoulders rise and fall to the rhythm of slow and steady breaths despite the lack of mouth or nose. A timestamp on one of the video feeds tells Ashan that the recording has been running for nearly five hours now.

Ashan crosses the lab to the testing chamber door where he finds the clothes Lacuna was wearing yesterday lying crumpled on the floor. Curiosity morphing into concern, he hits the large red button to open the testing chamber doors and steps inside.

The mannequin takes no notice of him.

“Hello,” Ashan softly calls out to the figure.

No response.

“Lacuna, is that you?” Ashan asks, sliding his wand out of his sleeve and into his hand in a practiced gesture.

A shudder runs through the mannequin.

“Lacuna,” Ashan emphasizes the name, “are you alright?” Cautiously easing closer, he realizes that the mannequin is making a fist around something in one of its hands.

The mannequin twitches and jerks, contorting its limbs.

“Lacuna, may I see what that is you are holding?”

The mannequin goes still again before slowly turning its head down to eyelessly look at the hand it has brought up to chest level. Its fingers uncurl to reveal a sphere of interwoven plastic tendrils that rolls off of its hand and shatters when it hits the ground.

In an instant, the mannequin grows three inches, shifts its skin from blank white to a mere sickly pale with the occasional freckle, sprouts hair, and contracts its blank face to reveal the contours of features.

It surprises Ashan just how light Lacuna is when she falls forward into his arms. He is barely even eye level with her shoulder on the rare occasions she stands up straight, but he realizes now just how much she is skin and bones beneath the loose-fitting clothing she always seems to favor.

“Don’t tell Eris,” Lacuna breathes into his ear before passing out.

*******

“I’m sorry,” Lacuna apologizes for the tenth time since waking up. The first three times had come in quick succession upon regaining consciousness a minute or so after fainting. The fourth came when asking for a moment of privacy to change back into her clothes from yesterday, and the fifth when emerging from her lab some minutes later. The sixth was a part of turning down Ashan’s advice to put herself into the autodoc suite. The seventh was instigated by her stumbling on the stairs ascending out of the office’s basement, which in turn led to the eighth when accepting Ashan’s offer to help her up. The ninth took the place of thanks when Ashan unstuck the cap she was struggling with on the bottle of apple juice she retrieved from the refrigerator. What this latest one is for is less immediately apparent.

Now she sits at the other end of the kitchen table from Ashan, staring down at an empty wrapper of plain salted crackers. Stripes of morning light cut between the window blinds and divvy up the space between them.

“For what are you sorry this time?” Ashan prompts.

Lacuna flinches at the question, withdraws momentarily, and hesitantly answers, “I’m doing it again, aren’t I? That must be annoying, sor- Gah! Why do I keep - I mean -” She stumbles over her words a few more times before closing her eyes, holding up one finger, and taking a long drink to drain the rest of her glass. Setting down the glass, she opens her eyes and tries again while drumming her fingers on her arms in a rolling motion.

“I should have gone to bed and gotten a decent night’s sleep after sending you that message. So that I’d be able to help you today. Instead I got over-excited and tried to squeeze in a little bit of time now that the server load was free. For a personal project. Selfish.”

“Apology accepted,” Ashan says, keeping the disappointment out of his voice. He tries to tell himself that just one more day of waiting will not hurt him. And if Lacuna is a reckless enough enchanter to run some manner of botched transmutation ritual on herself, perhaps it would be for the best that he does not let her try to experimentally “help” him. “But why did you not want me to tell Eris? Friends are supposed to aid one another when distressed, are they not?”

“I don’t want her to worry about me. Same for Road,” she mumbles.

“You mean to say that becoming stuck as a faceless imitation of a human being all night is not cause for concern?”

“It’s fine!” Lacuna snaps defensively and then shrinks back from her own raised voice. “It’s fine,” she says more quietly. “I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s a problem I’ve been working for a while now and that’s not even the worst thing that’s happened to me so far. And the enchantment had a safety timer built in, so I would have been fine.” She raises her head, looking through Ashan rather than at him. “Compared to some of the other mishaps, this one actually felt… nice? It was quiet. Like all the thoughts going in my head all the time finally shut up for once and let me just be. Awareness without a sense of self to be aware of and in a room with no external stimulus.” She slaps a hand to her forehead and laughs. “Okay, wow, that does sound bad when I say it aloud, but I promise I’m fine. It was actually about as restful as sleeping, I’m just a bit frazzled right now from the sudden jolt back into things. And probably dehydration. And maybe low blood sugar. But I’m good now. Mostly”

As Ashan opens his mouth to form a reply to that, several other noises interrupt him at once. The sharp ringing of the outer barrier detecting an intruder with violent intent. A shout of fear. A howl of pain.

Before Lacuna can even make a surprised exclamation of her own, Ashan is already out the kitchen, past the repurposed check-in counter, and throwing open the door. The frightened and haggard individual sporting a denim jacket covered in enamel pins on the other side stops dead in their tracks at the motion of a wand coming within an inch of poking their eye out. Looking under and past the unexpected visitor’s placatingly raised arms, Ashan catches a glimpse of a smoking pantherine shape on the sidewalk dissipating in a sparkling green haze. The tree-lined street is left empty except for fallen petals and parked cars. The blue electric hatchback with claw marks on the side parked nearest to the former bed and breakfast had not been there when Ashan arrived barely half an hour ago.

Ashan’s eyes flick back to the individual standing in front of the door, locking gazes.

“What was that?” he asks.

“I was hoping you could tell me. Now please, you gotta let me in. Before it -”

They double over groaning in pain. With effort they crane their neck up to reveal a face flickering between two forms. One of an unremarkably average brown-eyed human with two or three days of unshaven stubble, and the other violet-eyed with smooth, waxy leaf-green skin. Violet eyes or brown, the look of desperate fear and confusion is the same. It strikes Ashan how young they are. No more than late teens.

“Help me,” they gasp.

Ashan guides them to a couch in the nearby living room, locking the door behind them. They recover quickly enough after lying down - Lacuna catches up just in time to see the surprise guest’s face flicker for the last time - but even after their face settles back to human their left arm remains green. They cradle it to their chest, as if it were still in pain. Or as if they were trying to hide it. Shame? Fear? Embarrassment? All of the above, Ashan guesses.

“Name,” Ashan says, instruction more than question. He remains standing, alert for the first sign of treachery from whomever he just invited in or of another attempt at entry from whatever that was outside.

“Tam,” the individual on the couch stammers. “Tam Lin.” Their green left hand clutches tighter at the utterance.

Ashan stares this Tam Lin down. On the one hand, that sort of fear - the bewildered fear of having been abruptly thrust Backstage for the first time - is as difficult to fake as it is recognizable. On the other hand, that which he suspects them to be are known to be excellent actors and none of their kind would so easily give away their Name.

“Tell me Tam Lin,” Ashan asks, “what brings you here today?”

The green hand twitches at the Name’s emphasis, even without any attempt at nominal magic infused into his voice. Yes, definitely one of the fair folk, but why the guileless deception? Why take such risk with a Name freely spoken, as sensitive as their kind are to that?

“The website,” Tam says, “it said you can help with weird stuff like this. You can help me, right?”

“Most likely,” Ashan answers, “but first we need to know more specifically what your problem is.”

“If I may,” Lacuna speaks up from where she has perched on an ottoman at the other end of the couch from Tam. As she slips her phone back into her skirt pocket and intently looks Tam up and down all her earlier disorientation has vanished completely. Ashan knows that eager, almost hungry look. It is a look he has seen on experimentally-minded wizards presented with a unique specimen and alchemists greedily eying rare reagents. And on children seeing their favorite animal in the flesh for the first time.

With only the slightest misgiving, Ashan nods in assent.

Lacuna’s eyes light up and she leans in even closer. “Right. So. Tam. Let me know if I miss the mark anywhere. As a kid you saw all sorts of fairies and similar magic. When you got older you wrote them off as childhood make believe, but ever since you had strange and vivid dreams about them. Maybe you even were one in your dreams. When you hit puberty, those dreams got more frequent. More intense. Easier to remember. Almost a second life whenever you were at your lowest points. Still just dreams at the end of the night though. Nothing you couldn’t put out of mind and focus on the ‘real world.’ And then one day. A recent day. I would guess. One or both of your parents died. Ever since, you’ve started having those dreams every night. And then every time you closed your eyes. And then when you looked in the mirror, wide awake, you looked like you did in your dreams. That’s when something started following you. Not knowing where else to turn, you turned to the Internet, and found us. No one answered your calls or the message you left. That’s my bad. Real sorry about that. So you hopped in the car and drove all night to our address.”

Tam stares at her, eyes wide and jaw agape. “My moms are still alive, but everything else is - how did you know?”

Ashan tilts his head, surprised and curious to know himself.

Lacuna slips back into her usual discomfort, awkwardly rubbing the back of her neck. “Sorry. That was weird of me, wasn’t it? Got carried away. Touches on a… special interest of mine. So. Basically. You’re a changeling. A fairy swapped with a human baby to be raised in its place to take its Name.”

“You’re joking,” Tam denies.

“You were quite literally shapeshifting in front of me,” Ashan points out.

“Not intentionally,” Tam says.

“It wouldn’t be,” Lacuna says. “Historically speaking, most children accused of being changelings were just some flavor of neurodivergent. The real ones tend to blend in as normally as the baby they swapped with would have, fooling even themselves. Not that there isn’t overlap between the two from time to time. A Name isn’t just the name it’s tied to, it’s a whole identity, physical and mental. Most changelings have no idea they’re not human until something triggers a change, at which point whatever fae liege made the bargain will come to retrieve them. Or send a servant to do so. Kinder ones will be upfront about it and explain things. Maybe even make an offer to continue living as you are.”

“And crueler ones will send a hunting beast to drag you back kicking and screaming,” Ashan posits.

Tam’s nervous nod is all the confirmation Ashan needs as to what tripped the wards around the office.

“What I’m still hung up on,” Lacuna says, “is what triggered your change. Normally it’s the death of whichever parent made the deal, but…” She trails off as her eyes alight on one of the pins adorning Tam’s denim jacket. A heart of four stripes. Yellow, white, purple, and black. “How long ago did you start calling yourself Tam?” she asks.

“A little over three years ago.” Tam answers. “Just before I turned sixteen. But, come to think of it, the dreams actually stopped for a while when I came out, if that’s what you’re getting at. The therapist my moms had me see told me it was probably just a repression thing that didn’t need an outlet anymore now that I’d accepted myself. I’d just about forgotten about them until this all started out of the blue a couple weeks ago.”

“You said ‘moms,’ plural,” Ashan observes. “What about a father?”

Tam shakes his head. “I asked about it once and they told me they went through a fertility clinic. Anonymous donor. No legal way to know who.”

“Oh, that’s clever,” Lacuna says. “Dirty dealing and a really messed up way to get around the classic ‘firstborn child’ contract, but clever."

“Clever or not,” Ashan says, “I suspect it is beside the point at the moment. The more pertinent question is this: What do you want Tam?”

“What do I want? I want to stop being chased by a giant monster cat! I want to stop randomly turning green! I want my life back!”

“Do you truly want that? Even knowing what you know now? Even with the knowledge that it may not be your life to begin with?”

“Of course it’s my life! So what if I was switched with some other kid at birth? It was me that everything happened to. It’s me that everyone in my life knows. My moms, my friends, my experiences, and my life!”

“And you are not the least bit curious about what else your life could be if you found more answers and embraced what you really are?”

“Oh screw you and your mind games. Do I look like I give a shit about some absentee fairy king dad wants for me? I know who I am and don’t you dare imply that my life hasn’t been real.”

“Good answer,” Ashan says. “Now hang on to that conviction. You shall need it.”

“What for?”

“For when we go tell a fae liege unused to being told ‘no’ that they cannot have what they want.”

*******

“Last check if you want to wait until Road and Eris get back,” Lacuna’s voice says through Ashan’s earpiece as he stands just inside the picket fence marking the border of the office and the unwarded sidewalk.

“Road left me behind for the express purpose of helping any clients that show up needing help while they are away, and that is exactly what I am doing now,” Ashan responds. “We have taken the necessary precautions and I see no reason to doubt my ability to resolve the matter. Or are you saying that you would rather wait?”

“I’m nervous, not gonna lie, but what else is new? You’re the one with the hard job here, so we’ll be fine. Anyway, mirror charm’s still holding strong on this end. Tam still looks like you in here, and you still sound like them. Let’s just hope it fools everyone else as well as it fools me.”

According to Tam, the beast that has been hounding them for weeks now only shows itself when no one else is around, which presented a complication for any plans to assist them. Fortunately Lacuna had been able to dig up a pair of bracelets she had enchanted some time back as part of one of her ever-vague “personal projects.” Allegedly they operated via a modified perception filter to cause observers to perceive one wearer as the other while leaving the wearers’ perception unaltered. That last part had caused Lacuna to deem the bracelets “an experimental failure but exactly what we need now,” while leaving Ashan and Tam to take her word on their efficacy. While even now Ashan can tell that the bracelet is doing something whenever he glances down at his wrist, actively focusing on it is nearly as nauseating and disorienting as that concealment ritual of hers.

The same goes for the little metal rectangle engraved with a not-quite-fractal on either side now hanging from a cord around his neck and tucked beneath his robe. According to Lacuna it is supposed to provide protection from anything trying to get into his mind. It was the one amulet out of the whole clinking mass she had tried to foist upon him that he accepted, and mostly just to placate her, if he is being honest. She had been busy these past weeks with enchanting trinkets from her library of pre-recorded rituals from her old job and if Ashan had hung all that she had offered around his neck the combined static noise of their auras that close to him would have run the risk of making him sick.

Once again, he wonders how she has not accidentally killed herself already. Or at least blown up her lab.

But enough of that. What comes next requires a clear mind free of distracted musings.

A static tingle runs over Ashan as he steps through and beyond the outermost ward and onto the unprotected sidewalk. He continues forward, past the car Tam hastily and crookedly parked on the curb. The claw marks on the vehicle are long and deep, and numerous enough to indicate multiple attempts at retrieval. He comes to a stop with one foot on either side of the painted divider line bisecting the empty street.

“I am ready now,” Ashan says to no one. “Guide me to your master and I shall follow of my own free will.”

A sudden breeze carries the scent of dry leaves and kicks up a swirl of sparkling green dust. The same synesthetic mapping that allows Ashan to “see” the wards around the office shows him a rapidly growing ring within the verdant haze. A low growl rumbles out of the hole within the formless ring and a pantherine shape slinks out from behind the breeze.

The great cat sharing the street with Ashan would be longer than he is tall even without the tail that coils and unfurls as it slowly sweeps back and forth. The beast’s baldness only accentuates its bulging muscles and the isolated shock of dark hair atop its head. The brown eyes that stare up into Ashan’s look just like Tam’s. It snarls, barring too-human teeth for the shape of its head, and then turns away.

Ashan follows the hunting beast across the street to a fairy ring of white mushrooms near the bridge tree that most certainly had not been there when he arrived earlier this morning. It pads around to the far side of the fairy ring, looks back to Ashan, gestures downward with its head, and flexes its claws. Its front paws have thumbs.

The message is clear enough: Step into the ring. Run again and claws will catch.

If the earlier swirl of dust was a tunnel, the fairy ring is a hole beckoning him into its depths. Ashan knows better than to let himself fall in.

He leaps.

He does not look before nor during the leap. Such transitions do not wish to be perceived. It takes longer than it rightly should for his feet to touch the ground. He keeps his eyes closed and tries not to heed his less biological senses lest nausea take him as he falls. Not that “falling” is the correct word for it. That would imply an up or down.

His arrival is signaled not by an impact but by the smell of dry leaves and the tickle of inhaled dust. He pinches his nose to stifle a sneeze and opens his eyes.

The space he finds himself in cannot seem to decide if it wants to be a forest or a castle. He is surrounded by pale-barked twisted trees. He is standing in a solid-walled narrow corridor. Fallen leaves crunch under his feet as he shifts his weight to look around. A neat carpet stretches behind him off into shadows and before him up to an ornate beaded curtain. A cloud-muted sun filters down through a canopy of desiccated foliage. A star-backed moon shines through a high vault of stained glass. Either way, motes of dust catch the weak light, shifting through the slow motion gyre of a breeze too weak for flesh to feel.

“Are you alright? We lost the feed for a minute there.” The static crackle of signal decay does little to conceal the concern in Lacuna’s voice. Is that not the tone she normally reserves for Eris? Are she and Ashan closer than he realized, or does she worry like that with everyone she considers a friend? He has little basis for comparison to correlate sensitivity of concern for safety with emotional investment.

It is a distraction.

He wants to ask her what she sees through the filter of the camera atop his ear. To verify the chimeric nature of his environs that shifts with every turn of his head and blink of his eyes. To tell her that her charm of mental protection does not work to shield his senses.

But he is playing the part of Tam Lin right now and Tam would have no reason to ask such questions of the empty air.

He nods and hopes she takes the cue to be silent when the hunting beast pads past him toward the hanging moss (beaded curtain).

For all that Ashan prides himself on stepping as lightly as any thief or dancer, he cannot help but stir up puffs of dust from the carpet (pulverize dry leaves into blooming clouds) with every step. The hunting beast’s guiding passage leaves no such trace. It is its master’s creature within its master’s demesne. Unlike Ashan, it is not showered with gray powder when passing through the moss (curtain) and into the throne room (parched glade) beyond.

The hunting beast crosses the space and seats itself on its haunches in front of a tangle of roots (a bas relieved throne), from atop which presides the fae liege with whom Ashan has come to bargain. It/He/She/They/Fae wear(s) wears robes of gray that are in the active process of becoming moth-eaten before Ashan’s eyes. Fingers and forehead alike are adorned with bechained jewelry; metals tarnished and patinaed, gemstones dull. Its/His/Her/Their/Faer face is an overlaid multitude that blurs expressions into an indistinct haze of imperfectly aligned features.

Ashan nods his head and sweeps an arm in a gesture of respect. It is not something Tam would do, but while Ashan has not dealt directly with the fair folk before he has been trained well enough to know the danger of losing oneself to a role in a place such as this and a true wizard bows to no higher authority. Fortunately, this lukewarm obeisance does not seem to perturb the figure on the throne.

“The Seventeen-Named Count of Curses and Dust bids you a welcome homecoming and congratulations on joining the ranks of the Named, Carter, my little changeling.”

With that proclamation one of those seventeen unspoken Names is chosen for temporary prominence and a conceptual waveform collapses. Ashan’s surroundings solidify into a single hybrid of a forest woven together into the shape of a castle. Tight-packed trees interlace branches to merge into solid walls. Leaves fallen from the canopy above have been carefully arranged into patterns on the forest floor. The fae liege now sits upon roots that have been expertly coaxed into the shape of a throne and wears only a single grandfatherly face. The hunting beast at the foot of the throne winces.

“You honor me with this audience, great Count,” Ashan says. “Pray tell, what next lies in store for a newly returned changeling?”

“So you do still recall the tongue of your true people in waking as well as dream. That shall save us much time in preparing you for your role as one of my emissaries. Once you have resworn your oaths of fealty to me your training in the ways and arts of my court shall commence. There shall be no time wasted on pointless festivities, for ours is the dominion of the dust to which all things return. To be my emissary is to weave the curses that will hasten that return, especially for those foolish enough to believe they can postpone it indefinitely.”

“Well, there’s your offer,” Lacuna says to Tam on the other end of the comms link. “Magic and probably a bit of world-hopping. Still want out?”

“Hell yeah I want out,” Tam exclaims loudly enough to be picked up by Lacuna’s microphone. “Screw this dust-to-dust reaperman crap.”

Ashan nods in silent acknowledgment of the expected response and addresses the fae lord in front of him. “O great Count, thank you for your answer, but I must now take my leave. To be one of your emissaries is not my place.”

“You misunderstand your position, little changeling,” the Count says, “your role here in my court was ordained long ago. Now Carter, kneel before me and renew your oaths.”

The hunting beast crouches and growls. Ashan stands unbowed and serene.

“I do not answer to you.”

“Such impudence! Have you no gratitude for your liege who saw fit to grant you a Name purchased in fair contract? By that very Name, Carter, I command thee kneel and renew your oaths!”

The Count’s voice echoes through the forest and shakes the dust from the trees. The roots of the throne writhe and the leaves stir from the floor. The hunting beast yowls and Ashan stands unbowed and serene.

“I do not answer to you.”

Another of the Count’s Seventeen Names takes prominence and the parched forest glade closes into a vaulted stone audience chamber. Fallen leaves sew themselves together into a threadbare tapestry of a carpet. Soft wrinkles stretch smooth and tight over a sharp-featured skull. From atop a marble throne embossed with arboreal motifs, the steel-eyed Countess of Curses and Dust glowers down at Ashan.

“You are mine. You. Shall. KNEEL!”

A will that is not his own claws at the edge of Ashan’s consciousness, ancient and vicious. The mental wards he was taught early on and has diligently kept up ever since fray and fracture. The invasive presence reaches in and touches a stray surface thought, withering it down to a vague sense of something forgotten. Perverse delight seeps in from the outside at the prospect of doing the same to every other thought until his very self is reshaped by erosion into an ideal servant.

The amulet beneath Ashan’s robe oscillates between burning and freezing against his skin. The intruder in his mind recoils and retreats. The Countess of Curses and Dust lets out a scream from her throne that sends the feasting moths fluttering away from her regalia.

“I. Do not. Answer. To you.” Ashan gasps. He has denied the fae liege for a third time. By the Law of Threes he should be safe from that avenue of coercion for now.

“What trickery is this?” The Count(ess) asks. Their face and hall flickers between aspects on every third word. “You are not my changeling. What are you? You are full of shards of glass and shattered iron that writhes and drips with rotted ichor. I will have no dealings with mad and broken gods or spawn of the eldritch.”

Suppressing a shudder at the thought of what Lacuna has hung around his neck and wrist, Ashan slips off his bracelet and the glamor disguising him as Tam Lin with it. With an audience gained and the nature of Tam’s would-be master displayed, there is no further need for that ruse.

“I am the student of Aliana Glassgaze, wizard, warder, and master of the Dancing Dream Paints style. I am here as the appointed champion of Tam Lin whom you would call Carter to speak on their behalf. I have judged the treatment you would afford your vassals and would now negotiate their release from your service.”

The room settles back into a hall of stone. “Interloper,” the Countess accuses, “you have no grounds on which to negotiate. Carter was one of mine when still Nameless and accepted the offer to become a changeling with full knowledge of and agreement to the terms that would come after. Whether or not he still remembers that agreement is immaterial.”

“Contracts made before a change in Name are not binding except between the Name’s new and original owners, and you were merely a middleman in that exchange. Elsewise you would not require a renewal of oaths.”

“You argue semantics of the general where it is the spirit of the specific that matters. Changeling contracts are always between intermediaries for neither the unreal Nameless nor the unborn Named are fit to negotiate. This contract was made and fulfilled in accordance with custom. All services to the blood father of the prior Name-holder were rendered as contractually agreed upon and fairy was swapped for child as payment rendered.”

Ashan puts one of the practiced smiles he copied from his mentor; the narrowing of eyes and lopsided upturn of the lips that lets an opponent know they have just walked into a trap. He never was able to muster the emotion she put behind it, but it remained an effective tool of intimidation and unbalancing provocation whether applied hot or cold.

“You would invoke the spirit of tradition, but this contract violated even that. You failed to account for the realities of modern anchor world humans. The exchange of child for changeling as a valid price is predicated on the bond between parent and child, but no such bond existed between the contract holder and child in this case. This so-called blood father was a mere anonymous donor of seed who met neither mother, child, nor changeling. It is doubtful he was ever even aware of the stolen child’s existence and certainly had no part in the bestowing of a Name.”

The audience hall shrinks down claustrophobically close. Peeling wallpaper faded to gray surrounds the empty and dust-covered royal nursery. The petulant Heir of Curses and Dust pouts from atop a pile of broken toys.

“That doesn’t matter,” they insist.

“Does it not? You were tricked into providing your curses to a human for free and in the process inflicted harm upon an uninvolved third party. That Name was not sold but stolen and was given to the changeling on false pretenses.”

“Liar!”

“If you truly thought I was such, you would not be wearing that face.”

The Count of Curses and Dust regains his composure and returns to being an old man on a throne of roots. The moths return to resume their eternal feast on his regalia.

“All of this is beside the point,” the Count says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “By my station, it is well within my rights to compel any courtless fairy whose Name I have command over into my service.”

“Then let us make a bargain,” Ashan suggests. “What is your price for leaving Tam Lin whom you call Carter and their friends and loved ones alone in perpetuity?”

The Count stares into Ashan’s eyes for a long moment and once again the young wizard feels an alien touch brush against the edge of his consciousness. This time the Count’s will does not seek ingress but instead traces the outermost border. An assessment of general shape if not interior contents. Twice Lacuna’s charm grows warm and twice the presence momentarily retreats before returning more cautiously. On the third time the Count breaks the silence.

“You would deny me the return of a changeling whose Name I bargained for, so it is only fair that I receive the means to create another in return.”

“My Name is not for sale.”

“Neither of them? You have two, do you not? One you wear now and one you have all but abandoned since childhood. A childhood name for a new changeling child would be most fitting indeed.”

“My Name is not for sale.”

“Are you sure? I would think I would be doing you a favor to unburden you from it. I can tell that all the recent times you’ve worn it have been marked by loss and longing. Wouldn’t it be better to let that pain go? To allow yourself to be fully the you that you are now?” The Count leans forward with a smile that is kindly at first glance. “Think about those loved ones you wish you could be with but cannot bring yourself to embody that old Name like you would need to. They could have the you that they remember back and the you that you are now could finally move on. You would be doing them a kindness.”

“My Name…” Ashan hesitates. It would be a kindness. As he is now, he cannot possibly hope to return to his parents without causing more pain than healing. But a changeling with his old Name unburdened by everything he has been through? A fae liege of the Count’s power could probably even alter memories and spin a story well enough to avoid a Masquerade breach. Without that wounded Name, perhaps he could even find it within himself to forgive Aliana and they could travel together again the way things were. Maybe he could even talk her into joining with Road and working with his new friends.

Maybe…

*******

“Maybe we’re wrong,” Eris said to Ashan the night after their mission with the vampire crypt beneath a suburban basement. Hot drinks late at night in the office’s kitchen had become something of a post-mission ritual between the two of them. At least when the two of them were both well enough to stand.

“Wrong about what?” Ashan asked.

“About family. Love. Broken bonds. All that stuff.”

“I am not sure I follow. Perhaps having been drained of blood is still affecting your cognition.”

“Eh, I’m mostly fine. What I’m saying is the Masquerade's done a number on both of us. You feel like you can’t go home after running away and my parents straight up disowned me after I came home covered in blood I couldn’t explain one too many times. But maybe we’re wrong about not being able to go back.”

“That is highly doubtful.”

“Doubtful, but not impossible. Look, let’s make a deal. If you ever change your mind and decide to try talking to your family again, I’ll go with you to support you and back up whatever you decide to tell them. Masquerade cover story or the truth, doesn’t matter. Then after, we’ll go see my folks. If it works out, then great, and if not, at least we tried and we’ll still have friends here to come back to. So, what do you say?”

“I say that blood loss and blunt force trauma are impairing your judgment, and even if I were to accept your deal I would not change my mind on this matter. But…”

“Buuuuut…?”

“Maybe I am wrong.”

*******

“My Name is not for sale,” Ashan says for the third time to the Count of Curses and Dust within his wilted forest glade.

“So be it,” the Countess of Curses and Dust proclaims, her voice echoing throughout her gloomy stone audience hall. “In that case, let us balance the deal with a more finite service in exchange for the denial of a servant. A favor of my choosing to be decided upon and called in at a later date, as is the most traditional price of contract between fairy and mortal.”

Ashan imagines the way Aliana would laugh off such an offer but chooses not to mimic it. “Do you think me naïve? Once again you invoke tradition, but this is a tradition that any knowledgeable mortal would know to avoid.”

“Then this negotiation is at an end, for you have nothing else to offer me. If you will not offer me your lesser Name, then you would certainly not part with your far greater one, and if you would refuse a single favor then I cannot hope to extract any other oath of service from you.”

“I have access to the library of the sorceress Bridgewood,” Ashan proposes. Any payment out of the Bridgewood Estate would need to be negotiated with the current Bridgewood of course, but this fae lord does not need to know that.

“So that is why your mind is so hideously warped and sharp to the touch. Speak that name no further in my presence. I have never known a more unclean thing with a refusal to return to dust than that sorceress, save for the attack dog she made her consort. If you claim to be her ally, then we truly have no more to negotiate”

“If you truly put such stock in tradition, then let me make one final offer on behalf of Tam Lin whom you call Carter. Let us both put forth the prices we would otherwise be unwilling to pay as stakes on a wager. My aforementioned request for noninterference against your request for a future favor.”

“The favor, and your childhood Name. As the price of mentioning that hated sorceress in my home. What is to be our game?”

Aliana’s way of doing things it is then. Yet again. Did she too try and fail to avoid this route time and again before giving in and making it her first option at every occasion? Unlikely. She always enjoyed it too much.

“I invoke the rite of trial by combat between appointed champions, to be held on neutral ground.”

*******

Hours later, after extensive negotiations regarding the precise wording of the terms of the duel and subsequent prices the loser must pay, Ashan finds himself standing on one of the few level rooftops in Crossherd’s outskirts. This far out from the pocket dimension’s heart geometry and geography get strange. The buildings here were dreamt up to give the impression of an endlessly expansive city skyline, not for use or habitation, so while they look normal enough from a distance upon closer inspection they quickly become nonsensical. Overlapping windows tilted at odd angles, doors that open up to the outside seven stories in the air, fire escapes that connect to neither windows nor the ground, sometimes even whole buildings intersecting with their interiors leaking into one another and corners erupting from each other’s faces. The interiors are even worse; where they are not completely hollow facades they are unnavigable mazes of doors that open into flat walls, stairs that recursively loop back on themselves, and floors with no route between them.

This particular rooftop however has become something of a fixed point in the city’s inconstant periphery owing to its repeated use giving it a firm place in the collective consciousness in a certain portion of the city’s residents. In other words, while Ashan was handling the contract negotiations, he had to send Lacuna out ahead to make sure that no one else was already using the rooftop to violently settle a dispute away from potential collateral damage today. Or rather, Lacuna sent one of her remote drones which even now hovers on paratech repulsors above the scorched and pitted ring of concrete where the half-formed air conditioning units and ouroboric ductwork has been cleared away to give would be duelists, pit fighters, and blood feuders room to do their work.

Crossherd has ever been a city built on symbolic stereotypes and tropes, and the climactic rooftop showdown is a powerful one.

Ashan’s opponent - the very same hunting beast that had been sent to retrieve Tam Lin for its master - impatiently paces the far side of the rough ring. Someone has clad the nearly hairless felid in ill-fitting pale gray plate armor and strapped a rusty sword that it has no good way to wield to its back. If it were not for the anger burning in its too-human eyes every time it glances his way Ashan might pity the poor creature.

Behind their two designated champions, Tam Lin and the Count of Curses and Dust stand witness. In the Count’s case he is possessing the body of one of the Nameless fairies under his command. Much like the surrounding buildings, the empty-eyed wretch looks normal enough at a glance but the illusion falls breaks apart and tumbles down into the uncanny valley under scrutiny as if someone described what a human looked like to some skilled alien sculptor who had never seen one in person and thus thought the eye whites and teeth should be the same material and was left to guess as to whether clothes were part of the body or not. The fact that Tam has been having trouble maintaining human form every time he looks at their distant cousin whose fate they presumably once shared has not escaped Ashan’s notice.

“This is your last chance to put aside this foolishness,” the Count says through his Nameless vessel. “Call off this farce of a duel Carter and renew your oaths to me. Do it now and I will not hold this tantrum against you, for you are young and confused. You do not realize the value of what you are and what you would be with me.”

The emphasis of the Name elicits a scowl from Tam and a growl from the hunting beast.

“That’s not my name anymore, old man!” Tam shouts back. “So you can shove your offers.”

“Nonsense,” the Count says. “You cannot simply create a new Name for yourself. That is a privilege reserved for mortals, and no matter how much you believe you are one that can never be.”

Ashan tunes out whatever further barbs Tam has to exchange with his erstwhile and would-be master. He slides his wand into his hand and takes a stance, already envisioning the anchor points from which he will draw his conjurations. He focuses on the hunting beast, the way it moves, the range of motion of its joints, the places where the armor hangs loose. Which way will it dart once the duel begins? Can he incapacitate it before it gets the chance to close the distance between them? Should he open by tying it down with point restraints or start with a loose encapsulation and tighten his grip from there?

No, do not overthink it. Remember Aliana’s advice: A duel is a dance and he must adjust his rhythm to that of his partner. He has already avoided the mistake he made with Logos and set the stage in a locale that does not favor his opponent, now all that is left to do is wait for the signal.

Somewhere in Crossherd’s heart, a clocktower bell tolls the changing of the hour.

The hunting beast lurches forward, then to the left, then to the right. It leaps with claws out and fangs bared.

Five fingers on one hand point to five points on the rooftop. The hand makes a fist and five threads tie themselves to four limbs and a neck. A wrist twists and the threads pull tight enough to keep claws from reaching throat. The fist falls and the hunting beast is dragged crashing down to the concrete. A wand draws a circle in the air and a shimmering disk appears. The wand slashes downward and the disk falls onto the hunting beast pressing it further into the rooftop until the conjuration molds to its target’s shape, sealing off any struggle.

The duel is over before it begins.

But then the threads go slack and the disk goes flush with the concrete below.

The hunting beast is gone but for a shimmering emerald haze.

Ashan spins a glass cocoon around himself just in time to block the claws seeking to tear out his spine. The hunting beast disappears once more from behind him and then reappears to his left. Then to his right. From behind again. In front of him where the prior conjurations have since dissipated. Each time it reappears it strikes at Ashan’s conjured barrier, probing for weaknesses and finding none, then disappearing again in a cloud of green.

Ashan holds steady and examines his foe’s movements for a way to counter them. The delay between reappearances rules out true teleportation. No sign of active cloaking magic or illusions, so probably not invisibility. No active magic signatures at all save for a fraction of a second when the green haze appears. A phase shift then, or possibly stepping in and out of its master’s demesne. Either way, he can work with that.

He pushes outward on his translucent cocoon, turning it into a tight bubble just big enough for him to properly move his arms and legs, but too small to fit both him and the hunting beast lest it try to reappear inside the barrier. Bending down, he begins drawing the first of a sequence of glistening symbols on the ground to turn the surrounding area into a planar-locked ward.

“Arise, my servant!” the Count’s name echoes across the rooftop. “Be not a savage beast, but my noble knight! Become my Champion of Curses and Dust!”

Bone cracks, pops, and knits back together. Skin stretches, tears, and heals. The armored hunting beast stands upright on its still-feline hind legs and hisses through its muzzle protruding from beneath its helmet. It reaches a forepaw-now-hand behind its back and unslings the rusty sword.

The Champion of Curses and Dust charges Ashan once more. The wizard speeds up his drawing of the ward and begins the chant for the spell to activate it. The air inside Ashan’s bubble grows cold and frost covers the ground. The sigils flash. The spell completes. No more teleporting to worry about.

When the rusty sword makes contact with the conjured barrier it passes right through, melting a hole that causes the rest of the conjuration to unravel. Ashan barely manages to spring backwards in time to keep from being impaled. Instead the rusty sword cuts through the ward’s central sigils and into the concrete beneath.

Staggered as he is by the dual backlash of two actively maintained spells being violently disrupted, Ashan fails to press the opportunity presented by his opponent’s blade getting lodged in the rooftop. As the Champion of Curses and dust works the sword back and forth the concrete cracks and crumbles with a century of erosion passing in the blink of an eye. When the sword is at last prised free, a hole in the rooftop the size of a grown man’s torso collapses into the room below, exposing rusted pipeworks and corroded wiring.

With the ward destroyed before it even got a chance to do anything the Champion disappears into green haze once more. By reflex, Ashan throws a hand behind himself to conjure a shield in anticipation of the next strike before realizing his mistake. He jumps to the right quickly enough to dodge the worst of the blade’s path when it reappears and once again passes through his barrier as if it were nothing, but the tip of the rusty sword manages to clip the edge of his arm, just above the wrist. The wound itself heals before blood can be spilled but his hand grows old and wrinkled before his eyes and he can feel the same happening to his arm beneath his sleeve. Arthritic pains flare up from his fingers to his elbow as joints seize and grow stiff, forcing a strained gasp from the otherwise young wizard’s lips.

A twist of his heel sends Ashan spiraling into the air to gain distance from his attacker but the corkscrewing conjuration propelling him is cut down, disrupting his trajectory and crashing him into one of the remaining air conditioning units halfway across the rooftop. He rolls to his feet but still finds himself on the back foot with precious little to do but avoid and evade. Bereft of his usual kinetic barriers he resorts to retooling his technique to conjure streams of fire, wind, and lightning, but even those do little to deter an opponent that can effortlessly shift in and out of this plane of existence, and is an inefficient enough power draw that his breath quickly stings his lungs from the cold air.

All in all, it is nearly as bad as trying to fight Eris when she is wearing those dispelling gloves of hers, a sparring setup that Ashan is yet to emerge victorious from in their regular matches between missions.

A memory flickers in the back of Ashan’s mind of waking from unconsciousness when his mentor thought a monster had just killed him. In her cold fury she had filled the cave with conjured wires and floating shards of glass. The monster’s own weight had forced it through the deadly web like so much cheese over a grater. And then his mentor had set the wires and shards in motion and it became more like meat through a grinder. The sight had given the young Ashan nightmares for weeks afterward, but maybe if he could now duplicate the technique at a lesser scale to merely injure…

Ashan begins to envision and draw the net of monomolecular wires and spinning blades around him for his opponent to cut itself on but hesitates just short of funneling in the energy to make them a reality. Unfortunately, a lifetime of being careful to never kill nor maim with power that could easily do both deeply ingrains inhibitions that are not so easily overcome. That hesitation very nearly costs him the use of his other arm. Fortunately, a lifetime of training for blows coming from the periphery of vision ingrains reflexes that are not so easily overcome.

Another burst of flame buys him some breathing room at the cost of a chill seeping into his bones. If only he could buy himself a moment to draw another planar ward. If only that sword could be taken out of the picture. If only the Count of Curses and Dust hadn’t transformed his Champion mid-fight.

If only…

Gods take him for a fool.

“I call foul play and outside interference,” Ashan manages to say between dodging sword strokes. “By the agreed terms of the duel you must either forfeit or allow a counterbalancing interference.”

“Counterbalance accepted,” the Champion of Curse and Dust laughs from the mouths of Nameless servant and hunting beast simultaneously. “Let us see what my wayward changeling can do to earn his freedom.”

Ashan locks eyes with the frightened Tam Lin watching from the sidelines and shakes his head. No need for them to act. They are not Ashan’s only ally present to act as witness and second.

“Lacuna!” Ashan shouts.

“Already on it!” her voice calls back from the hovering drone above.

The projector mounted on the underside of the drone flickers on and shines a ritual circle down onto the rooftop in the center of the designated arena. The shifting glyphs spiral into a nauseating self-recursive mess that makes the incomprehensible guts of the building beneath seem logical by comparison. The drone’s speakers begin screeching an ear-piercing white noise and the accelerated, computer-generated ritual begins.

The second sight of a well-trained wizard and the sensory organs of a beast tailor made to hunt prey across dimensions are sensitive things capable of picking up on the subtle shifts, folds, stains, and cuts in the fabric of reality that make up what is known as “magic”. Whatever Lacuna is doing is anything but subtle. From the sensation of hooks digging into his skin and intestinal lining, Ashan would guess that it is meant to be a combination of planar lock and teleportation anchor kicked up to a degree that would be overkill for anything short of a demigod or one of the eldritch. Or perhaps a fae liege. Even without that, the sudden chaotic mess of metaphysical noise is enough to set him clutching his head and retching out his breakfast. Blurry glimpses through tear-filled eyes suggest that neither Nameless vessel of the Count/Champion of Curses and Dust are faring any better. Tam Lin however seems unaffected and comfortably human once again.

Having experienced a few of Lacuna’s abominable rituals before - although none nearly this horrific - Ashan is the first to recover. A flick of his wand is all that it takes to wrench the rusty sword from his howling opponent’s grip. By the time the Champion of Curses and Dust is back on its feet, Ashan has already conjured chains linked to each plate of its armor. He stabs his wand forward then pulls it back and the chains strip away the armor in a single motion. His opponent attempts to disappear but there is no green haze to vanish into, only the pain in its gut and the noise in its bones as it drops back down to all fours. A simple dome is all it takes to contain it to the point of being unable to fight any further.

Ashan staggers over to his trapped opponent. Doing his best to ignore the wretched droning of Lacuna’s ritual he asks, “Do you yield?”

The hunting beast in the dome whines.

“I said, do you yield?”

The hunting beast looks up at him with human eyes and whimpers. Once again Ashan is struck by the similarity of those eyes to Tam’s when they are in human form.

“My champion yields,” the Count of Curses and Dust says through his Nameless servant on the sidelines. “You have bested us both, now stop that accursed spell. Not even that hated sorceress would resort to a distortion so vile.”

“Lacuna, please stop,” Ashan says.

The noise, audible and metaphysical, cuts out and the projector goes dark. The drone drops down to eye level with a flurry of apologies from its speakers.

“Was it really that bad?” Lacuna’s voice asks. “It took a bit out of me, sure, but I didn’t think it was that far off from standard parameters.”

Ashan merely stares into the drone’s camera at a loss for words.

“I did not know the sorceress had made constructs that could speak and work magic,” says the Count. “Little wonder such a thing is insane. As are any who would trust it. No matter, the duel is done and the contract sealed.” The Count’s vessel turns to face the approaching Tam. “Enjoy your freedom, Carter. Love and lose those mortals you think you can be one of. And when the pain of outliving everyone -”

“For the last time, old man, that’s not my damn name!” Tam shouts. “My name is -”

“I introduce to you, Tam Lin,” Lacuna interrupts while maneuvering the drone between them, “whom my friend and ally Ashan Glassheart has acted as champion for today. Tam and Ashan, for whom this formal introduction serves to prevent the accidental giving away of Names by acknowledgement, you know the rules, don’t blame me, oh goddess that was incredibly rude of me I can’t believe I just said that to a fae lord please forgive me just trying to help just ignore me and forget I exist I’m going now.”

There is an audible pop of static from a microphone being turned off and the drone rises back into the air.

“A thoroughly insane construct,” the Count mutters before turning his attention to the still-recovering hunting beast. “Enough of this. We depart. Now.”

“I’m not done yet!” Tam says. “Yes, that’s my Name. The one I chose for myself. Because ‘Carter’ was never my Name.” They turn to address the hunting beast. It’s yours, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you dare,” the Count threatens.

Tam ignores him and kneels down eye to eye with the fallen beast and touches hand to shoulder.

“I return to you the Name of Carter, which was wrongfully stolen and passed into my care. I return it to you, its rightful owner. I return this Name to to you, Carter, my brother.”

This time the shifting of Carter’s form to a more human one is smoother, not wood being hacked apart and nailed back together but water poured into a new container. When the transformation is done the two fall into a tearful embrace. Hoarse “thank you”s choke out between sobs from a throat that has never been allowed to make its own words but now knows how thanks to the experience of a well-used Name. Carter’s nails and canine teeth are still a little too sharp, his body's muscles still bulge from years of hunting prey, and the vestige of a tail still protrudes from the remaining cloth scraps of underarmor, but otherwise he could very likely pass for being fully human with minimal effort. He and Tam could even pass for twins who just happened to take very different paths in life.

It occurs to Ashan that that is exactly what the two of them are.

“Remember,” the wizard says to the Count, “the terms of the contract include non-interference towards family as well, and non-retaliation towards the winning participant or participants of the duel.”

The Seventeen-Named Count(ess) of Curses and Dust scoffs and its/his/her/their/faer Nameless vessel steps behind the breeze to depart without further comment.

“So, now what?” Tam asks. They and Carter both look towards Ashan expectantly. The fear of the unknown future for a life that has just been turned upside down thrice over is already beginning to creep into their relief at their ordeal being over.

“Now, we return to the Lonely Walk Outreach Agency. We have multiple guest beds there where you may spend the night in safety. When our leader, Road, returns they will be able to help the both of you find a way to return to the life that was stolen from you. Or to help you find a new one Backstage now that you are in the know. Balancing the two is always difficult, but it is also an option.”

The new twins nervously nod in unison.

What would Aliana say here? Better yet, what would Road say?

“Not that either of you need to worry about any of that just yet,” Ashan says with a nearly genuine smile of reassurance. “You have both had a long day and deserve to rest. Tam, you have handled the sudden revelation of the existence of the supernatural as well as anyone ever has. You should be proud. Carter, while I hope you never have to do so again, you fought well today and I am honored to have faced you. May that strength keep you safe in the future. Now then,” Ashan looks around to hide his sudden embarrassment with the act of searching, “let us find a way down from this rooftop.”

“Hey,” Lacuna’s voice says directly into Ashan’s ear through the comm piece he forgot he was still wearing, “you did good too today. The real hero here.”

“Thank you,” Ashan whispers back. He conjures a platform to take him and the new twins down to the ground and suppresses a shiver.

“You’re welcome. And sorry if this is weird to say, but if you ever want to talk about whatever that was with you having two Names, I’m here for you. I don’t think it’s quite the same thing, but I’ve got some experience with that.”

“I will keep that in mind. Thank you, my friend.”

No, it is not the same, not nearly. But a friend’s experiences need not be identical to share a burden. And who knows, Ashan considers while looking at Tam and Carter already smiling with wonder and comparing memories of mothers that only one of them has met in the flesh, perhaps a change in Name and a foot Backstage need not be the end of everything.

Maybe he is wrong.

Today is not the day to find out though.

He has plenty of time.

Maybe one day he will be ready to find out for himself.

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#Eris introduced Ashan to the Internet with Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia.#Lacuna introduced Ashan to the Internet with tumblr memes and the Homestuck “Detective Pony” fanfic's Longcat Rant.#She has the rant memorized because she used to recite it as voice feminization practice.#writing #original fiction #urban fantasy #web novel #WIP #Writeblr #Empty Names #serial fiction #writing practice #writers on tumblr #creative writing #literature #prose #writers #novel #fantasy #fiction #my writing #emptynameswriting #I pulled the names Tam Lin and Carter from the song “Tam Lin” by S.J. Tucker.#The overall chapter concept was born from hearing the first few lines of “Looking Like This” by Lyre Le Temps #and imagining a first-time shapeshifter freaking out from not understanding what's happening and then sort of ignoring the rest of the song #Then I realized that there are some nice parallels between Ashan's backstory and the changeling myth #and there are some connections between change of Name/identity manipulating form and Lacuna's ongoing transmutation experiments.#Once again the SCP Foundation influence is leaking through in my conceptualization of fairies taking Names to replace people.#And then that mixes with the not-subtle-at-all trans themes throughout Empty Names.

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