#and then so cold and punishing that she destroyed him and made him do something drastic

[halechief]

fellas the nonconsensual aspect of tom and claire’s relationship at times has got me seriously fucked up in the club.

[ajaxwfe]

One glance, eternal mistake.

Zhongli x God!Reader

Angst with no comfort, regret, mention of death, character dying, blaming someone innocent.

"maybe it would have been better if we have never met y/n."

Summary: Y/n falling in love with the god of contract, who knew it would turn out this way.

_____________________________________________

Stars of the teyvat... Yes, the fake sky and the stars. Y/n was indeed a magical creature type of god. Y/h color with a fading midnight blue to blend in with the sky, her eyes glowing like the stars that rises of up in the middle of the night. Watching all over teyvat, reporting back to the heavenly principles.

Y/n was no strong or weak god, all she could do is control over stars and look over the world. Until she fell from sky when khaenri'ah's fall started. Watching archon's destroying the innocent khaenri'ah people turning into a monster. She can't interfere, it would be illegal to the laws of teyvat and would get punishment from the upper gods.

She wake up at the mountains of liyue, Morax's territory.

Traveling around the liyue and bumping to morax accidentally, of course from her appearance morax would know she was not a ordinary mortal.

"you are not from here are you?" A cold masculine voice sent shivers down her spine. From his gaze and his stand she knew she was not a match for him.

"I came from the stars, the sky, god of contract. I watch all over the teyvat." She tried to look at him like he looked at her, trying to scare him. Well that was a dumb mistake that lent her to embarrassment.

"I see mind exchanging names, heavenly god." Who was y/n to decline that offer. Time by time they got to know each other, they made lots of friends and had fun hanging out.

All teyvat knows a heavenly god shouldn't be falling in love with someone on teyvat. Principles knows why that stupid law was there, y/n can't put up with her feeling that called 'love'. İt made her like a person who is too drunk, can't find a way to stop her day dreaming about morax. She can't keep running away from him.

She loved him so much it was hurting. Everytime she see how he looked at guizhong with those eyes, it hurt. Everytime he hold her hand it hurt. Jealousy was filled in her head but who was she to do something bad to guizhong.

The day came and y/n was ready to confess her feelings, walking to the Qingyun Peak with a foolish smile on her face.

"I'm sorry y/n but my feelings belong to guizhong." Yes, a foolish smile on her face. Which place you look you can see her face slowly turning to a sad expression. Tear in her eyes as she lowered her head accepting the truth.

They returned back to liyue harbor in silent, not saying and words to each other like they used to. Sharing a few glances but looking away quickly trying not to disturb each others presence. Or that's what morax thought, how could she be disturbed by him being next to her. That's what she needed after all.

Only after a few days, everything fell apart. Everyone turning their backs on you, you never knew why until the guizhongs death rumors came to her ears. Quickly searching for morax only to be met by his angry face towards her.

"Why are you looking at me like that morax?" That's right she doesn't know why, why did everyone suddenly turned their back on her, why did guizhong die, why morax was looking at her like he was disgusted?

"Are you really going to act like you don't know? İs that it y/n? Were you so jealous that you had to kill her?" No...no she really didn't understand what was going on.

"What are you talking about morax, I didn't do such a thing!"

"Watching over teyvat? What an absurd thing for a god. Watching over teyvat so you could spot guizhong and kill her?" Morax scoffed at the first part of his sentence, making you tear up.

"İt's not an absurd thing! İf it weren't me this world would have been nothing but a chess piece for heavenly principles! I don't use my power to kill someone morax." She ended her sentence.

"Really? So why the liyue's people are telling that they witnessed you killing guizhong?! Maybe it would have been better if we have never met y/n." The ground started to rumble as he shouted.

"I didn't do it, I am telling you! I would have already be killed by principles if I did that to a minor god!" She shouted back.

Back and forth arguing for 20 minutes led them nothing but a prison inside the cave for y/n. She did nothing wrong, it wasn't her. No creature would look exactly like her.

Days after days, weeks after week and a month. She was stuck inside that cave that morax threw her in. The rumors started to vanish like a wind. Y/n already gave up there were no stars inside the cave and she couldn't watch over teyvat. She knew she was going to be executed. Heavenly principles already planned her execution.

The false rumor reached to everyone's ear in Liyue, it wasn't y/n who killed but her another creature sent by upper gods. God of contract, morax was devastated hearing the news. He was walking to the cave where you were in really fast almost sprinting.

Only to be met by you who was already got killed, a spear pierced through your chest as you looked at him smiling for the last time. Throwing himself on to her, catching her before she fall to the ground, Holding you.

"I lied y/n, my heart and my body only belongs to you, my feelings too. I was a coward y/n, I couldn't say it that they but I really thought it was you who killed her, I was wrong. I was wrong for the first time and I am letting you die like this." He confessed.

"İt was probably principles order morax don't blame yourself" y/n said through her coughes.

"how can I not? I shouldn't have done this in first place at all. I should have trusted you, I love you so much but I couldn't trust y/n. Don't forgive someone like me."

"Morax..." Her breathing got slower.

"No...no don't- just don't die on me like this! We still have lots to do y/n, once we get back to Liyue we can spend our times together! So...please.." his voice broke at the end begging to her stay more. She caressed his cheek wiping his tears away.

"Morax, I'm getting sleepy..." Her hand fall to the ground closing her eyes and breathing his scent in for the last time.

"I understand, please sleep well my love. Dream about being on the sky and flying around the stars again my dear..." He carried her body to a high mountain that had great views at night.

He sat next to her grave watching the stars that no longer shine as bright as before. The feeling of guilt pressing down on his heart, crying like a toddler. He looked up the sky once again as he saw a shooting star.

"you must be flying freely now, you look happy."

[spacebarbarianweird]

Burn, Butcher, Burn!

Synopsis: Before leaving Baldur's Gate for good, Tiriel and Astarion have one more thing to do.

Thanks @themadlu for beta-reading!

Tags: fluff, traumatized Astarion, things and places are burning

Read on AO3

Masterlist

Headcanons

Please! Let me out! Please!

Cold. Hunger. Pain.

How long has he been there?

Months? Years? Decades?

Astarion has bitten his wrists to get at least a few more drops of blood. But it only made him hungrier. He dreams of fleas and rats and worms because at least those vermin are alive.

He hasn’t moved for so long. He wishes only for death.

But he is already dead.

And it’s only getting worse.

The torture will never end. His skin will be flayed. His body will be raped. His bones will be broken.

Over and over again.

The reverie lets Astarion go. He stares into the darkness – full of shades of grey thanks to his elven darkvision. 

He isn't in the coffin.

Astarion licks his lips. Memories slowly crawl back dispelling the nightmares.

Could it be…

Something moves beside him. A body.

Is it another conquest? Another victim? Is it?

Astarion elbows up fearing he will see an unfamiliar face.

Tiriel nuzzles into his chest. Her breathing is steady and so is her heartbeat. She is as warm as a fireplace. She has a bandage on her neck, and Astarion catches a subtle scent of blood.

It is real. All of it.

Freedom. 

Love.

Satiation.

Warmth.

Astarion stares at Tiriel’s face.

A month ago, they both got rid of the parasites and Astarion had to return to the darkness. 

He expected Tiriel to abandon him once she saw him for what he really was.

She didn’t.

And she is still there, by his side.

He watches her, studying her facial features. Tiriel hugs him, sharing her body warmth with him, and he knows his cold touch would feel uncomfortable to her if it wasn’t for an extremely thick blanket covering them.

Suddenly Tiriel moves and opens her eyes.

“Hm? Are you awake?” she asks.

“Yes”

She turns on her back, tugs her blanket and falls asleep.

Of course, Astarion realizes she woke up because he was staring.

Astarion sits up, putting his legs on the floor.

He needs something to occupy himself – it’s still daylight outside, almost noon. And Tiriel needs to sleep.

Sleep. Such a strange concept. Elves need to get absolutely wasted or drugged to experience what others have to go through daily. Would he be happier if he could sleep? He remembers his siblings – Petras’ stupid smile, Leon’s peaceful face.

It seems like he and Daylria suffered the most – elves who couldn't escape from their misery to the dream world.

Astarion stands up and sits on the floor.

What to do?

Boredom was such a weird concept – he never experienced peace in the two centuries of misery.

And now he has all the peace in the world.

And Astarion doesn't know what to do with it.

He opens a book. Closes it.

So many books to read. And he can't choose any. He lacks concentration. Before, he could have only dreamt of indulging in all these simple luxuries, but now, he simply can't make himself.

He fears being punished.

Beaten. 

Astarion curls at Tiriel’s side. Plants a kiss on her back. Deep down, he wishes to wake her up, to hear her voice soothing his anxieties.

What if she were an elf like him and didn't need to sleep…

Nonsense. Astarion can wait a few hours before Tiriel returns to him. 

He lets Tiriel go and leaves the bed. He approaches a small window and hears voices from the outside. He doesn't dare to open the thick curtain for even the small amount of sun will leave him in pain and burns.

It's been a week since the netherbrain, and the city was being slowly re-constructed – whole streets were destroyed. Astarion knows the city will never be the same again.

He doesn’t feel sorry.

Astarion hates Baldur's Gate.

He hates these streets and these houses, these taverns and inns. The streets are full of homeless people and beggars. The whole city used to be his hunting ground. The whole place used to be a brothel. How many people of different races did he bed? How many times did he lie on his back or on his stomach while yet another ‘lover’ used his body to their liking? How many times did he use his mouth to go down on them? 

Didn’t any of them notice he was already dead?

And how many times did he wish to die?

It’s still hard to believe it is all over. 

He tugs the curtain just a bit to see the outside but not be burnt. They stay in the upper town, which was relatively untouched by the debris, but the place is too familiar for Astarion.

He can see the Cazador’s mansion.

It’s still there. Dark and empty. Even though many people lost their homes, no one dared to stay there, maybe, believing the lord and his invisible servants were still somewhere.

It looks like a menace, like a warning that nothing is over. Nothing will ever be over…

Nothing…

“Hello, love,” Tiriel mutters, elbowing up.

Astarion flinches and realizes it’s almost sunset outside. How long did he stay like that?

“You should have woken me up. Though I think I want to sleep for days,” she smiles. Her face is puffy, her hair is messy; she is the most beautiful person Astarion has met. “Can I kiss you?”

Astarion suspects he smiles like an idiot. 

“You know you don't have to ask?” he murmurs.

“But I like to.” 

Tiriel puts her palms on his cheeks and kisses him. For a brief moment, there is nothing but her warmth, her heartbeat, and her scent.

She breaks the embrace and Astarion adores her face. Freckles, deep wrinkles on her forehead when she smiles, her lips, her eyes (one blue, the other is green), half-elven ears – he still hesitates to tug them when she is in his arms, and, gods, her fire read hair that looks like a flame in the sunshine.

Pity he will never see her like that again.

Tiriel pulls away and looks out the window. Then, she frowns.

“Something on your mind, my love?” He touches her cheeks. She nods.

“Astarion, I need to go and do something. Will you be able to find me at sunset? You know… by…”

“Now that my vampiric abilities are back I can catch your scent even in that wretched crowd of a city. Don’t worry. I can always find you.”

“Great, because honestly, I am afraid to get lost.”

Tiriel pulls away, but Astarion grasps her arm. The very idea of staying in that room alone scares him.

He doesn’t want it.

“But can’t we do that together when it’s dark?” He pouts.

“Please, it’s almost sunset. You won’t regret it.”

Astarion feels torn apart. He is afraid Tiriel is going to leave him. What if she is scared of him? And wants to run away? What if there is a ship that will take her far away from him and she just has enough time to board it?

But if he keeps pushing…What if it makes her realize he is a lost cause? What if he is breaking something between them right now?

What if…

“Astarion look at me,” Tiriel asks and he realizes he’s been staring at the floor. “I am not going to leave you. I don’t want to break up. I’ve been telling you that every day since you returned to the shadows. I made a choice and I am not regretting it, at least, for now. I just want to do something – just find me at sunset, all right?”

“Good,” Astarion sits on the floor and takes a book. “I will try to occupy myself.”

Tiriel quickly puts on her clothes and leaves. Astarion feels her scent fading as she goes further away.

He must get used to it. He won’t be able to keep her all by himself the whole day long and she will have to go away from time to time. But it doesn’t mean he feels less lonely.

When it’s dark, he jumps on his feet and rushes outside. 

Strange.

Her scent is still very close, though he thought she would be waiting for him in the Lower Town.

He covers his head with a hood and follows the path. Then he realizes …

… that he follows a way too familiar path…

It's the road to Cazador’s mansion.

The same narrow streets he used to walk returning back with yet another victim. Or without anything, knowing he would be flayed and beaten.

He stops hoping he’s mistaken, but Tiriel's scent leads him directly to the mansion.

But why? Why?!

He is getting angrier with every step he has to make. How dare she force him to come back? How dare she?!

Then he feels tears pricking his eyes. He has only recently started grieving his past and everything that was taken from him.

He finds Tiriel at the wooden tower. Its enchanted guardians left the place when Cazador died and now it is as empty as everything else.

Tiriel sits at the table and there is a sack at her legs.

“Hi!” She waves at him. “I’ve been missing you!”

“Why did you bring me here?” He demands. His voice betrays his emotion, he knows he sounds like he is about to cry.

“Well, first, I found some good prospects for us – so we can leave the city tomorrow and never come back. And second – you can cast ignis, can’t you”

Astarion raises his hand feeling how magic fire prickles his fingers. Yes, this spell was always his. It was something natural for him, a fey magic, but Cazador forbade him from using it. Because otherwise, Astarion would be able to warm himself. And now he can use it freely.

Tiriel smiles again and raises her hand. She inherited the same skill from her elven ancestors. 

Create small balls of fire and throw them into enemies. The problem with Tiriel is the fact that when she is in her berserker state, she can’t concentrate on magic. So it’s more like a game to her rather than a weapon.

“So, I suggest,” she opens the sack showing a few dozen glass bottles. “We burn this place down! And if someone wants to punish us for arson, we are going to be far far away.”

“And what is that?”

“A gift from gnomes. Looks like water but burns like a spirit. This place will be set on fire with all its fancy stuff, beds, chambers, ugly paintings, dust, and whatever is left here.”

Tiriel laughs as if she is going to have the biggest fun in her life.

“I never noticed you were a pyromaniac!”

“Astarion, there are many things we need to learn about each other. And a new fact about me – I love burning things. I love setting places on fire. And I so much enjoy hearing you casting ignis. Makes me want you even more than I usually do. But”  She closes the sack. “If you don’t want to, just tell me, and I will sell the potions at the market.”

Astarion lets out a laugh. Gods. He has been dreaming of burning this place down for centuries. Cazador couldn’t prohibit his thinking and Astarion liked imagining this place on fire. He often would imagine himself burning too, because vampires can burn.

But he has never said it to Tiriel.

But she knew he would love it.

Astarion takes the heavy sack. 

“Yes. Let’s burn this fucking place down!”

Tiriel grabs his hand and makes him follow her into the dark halls.

One bottle for the room of the favorite spawns.

Two bottles for the chamber where Astarion had to sleep with his victims.

Three for the torture dungeon.

One by one they throw bottles in rooms and closets. Astarion rips the rugs and curtains, and Tiriel breaks the paintings and furniture. 

A bottle for the tower of Cazador’s niece.

A bottle in Cazador’s wardrobe.

Astarion curses. And laughs. He dominates his own past and Tiriel encourages him to keep going.

“Oh look! The bastard had so much whiskey and wine! What for?” She says opening the wine cellar.

“For parties,” Astarion finds the most expensive ones and throws them on the floor. “And sometimes he would try to drink himself to numbness.”

“Watch out!” Tiriel grabs yet another bottle but Astarion jumps to her and snatches it from her hands. “What?”

“It’s Berduskan Dark. The most expensive wine on the Swords Coast.”

“And?”

“It costs 1500 gold at least!”

“You wanna sell it?”

“I don’t,” Astarion opens the cork. “It is dark, like blood, and sweet.”

“Like blood?”

“Yes,” he chuckles. “It has a very high alcohol content. Can knock out an ork. I wonder where he took it from.”

Tiriel shrugs. “You know I don’t like wine.”

“You just never tasted a proper one,” Astarion smiles. “Open your mouth.”

Tiriel obeys and sticks her tongue a bit. Astarion gently takes her head and pours wine into her mouth. The Berduskan Dark streams down Tiriel’s throat and along her chin, staining the shirt.

“Oh fuck,” she mutters gulping the wine. “It burns my tongue!”

“Yes, like it's supposed to. Keep drinking..”

Tiriel takes the bottle and takes a few more gulps. Astarion thinks maybe he should have offered her a goblet, but it’s too late.

She finished almost the whole bottle off.

“Fuck!” She slurs and almost falls off the table. “I don’t remember ever getting wasted so fast.”

“Good.”

“Oh…That was your plan! You wanted to taste Berduskan Dark!” Tiriel puts the cork back. But I do it only for you because I don't really like it!”

Astarion tugs Tiriel and kisses her wine-stained lips.

Then, he imagines himself in the same room mere months ago. 

What would he think if he knew it was possible? To destroy that cellar, to kiss a person he wants, to get drunk together?

“What was the bastard's favorite place?” Tiriel asks.

“Come on,” Astarion takes her hand and leads her through the dark halls to the throne room. The black armchair made of dark wood looks ridiculous and pompous. “The bastard thought of himself as royalty!”

“But he was a moron. Neither the bhaalists considered him a target nor Gortash invited him to his coronation,” Tiriel falters. Now she is completely drunk.

Astarion pulls her to the throne and makes her sit on the soft pillows. Cazador’s pillows were made of some expensive fabrics – the ones that were supposed to always be clean.

“Can I bite you?” He asks.

“Of course.”

Astarion grazes her throat. He doesn’t care about the mess he is making. He wants to create a mess. 

Tiriel’s blood spills over the throne and pillows and Astarion tastes alcohol. Then he suddenly feels happy. Darkness fades away, replaced by intoxication and satiation. 

As for Tiriel's clothes, he will wash them. Or will get her new ones. Doesn’t really matter.

“Now we are both drunk,” she pouts.

Astarion almost falls when he takes the last bottle from the sack. Tiriel hugs him and starts murmuring drunkenly.

“You are so cute, you know that? And your ears stick so funny from your hair! You look like a dandelion!” She laughs as if it was the funniest joke she’s ever heard.

Asatrion smashes the last bottle and the fire and liquid mixes with blood. 

Tiriel raises her hand, trying to cast a fireball.

“No!” He shuts her mouth. “Are you stupid? The whole place is soaked in wine and this gnome shit!”

Tiriel bites his palm. And then starts laughing and snorting.

Astarion grabs her waist and lifts her on his shoulder. She keeps laughing and insulting Cazador, calling him a miserable dork with no imagination.

“Like, he was immortal and powerful… But he didn’t bother to go hunting himself! What was wrong with him? I mean, was he afraid of people? Astarion, you fed him dirty drunk homeless idiots who haven’t washed in decades! And he was all right with it? I mean, I know there are idiots! But this is some new level for me!”

Astarion approaches the main door. Turns back. Sees the mansion for the last time.

“Burn in hell,” he says. “Burn!”

Then he opens the door with his leg and gets outside.  They walk a few yards then he places Tiriel on the ground (she barely can walk by herself) and she immediately opens the cork of the wine bottle.

“You said you didn’t like it.”

“But you did.”

Astarion raises his hand and feels the fey fire prickling his fingers.

“IGNIS!”

A fire ball is thrown through the open door into the hall.

And the vampire mansion is set on fire. 

Astarion watches the fire consuming his past, destroying his misery.

And he cries.

He cries out loud like a lost child, clinging to Tiriel as his source of comfort and warmth. And Tiriel drunkenly starts singing him a lullaby.

“Tsk. It’s all right, my love,” she whispers. “It’s all right. We are starting anew tomorrow. We will see so many places together that you will forget that mansion. And I will touch you so many times it will make all the dirt you’ve been through fade away.”

Astarion keeps crying as they walk back to the inn. And Tiriel, drunk and dizzy, falls asleep in his arms in their bed.

**

The touches don’t burn his skin and he doesn't feel disgusting. It's something new. Astarion turns back to see naked Tiriel napping on the grass. She sleeps shamelessly, her legs half open and the fresh bite mark barely healed,

Astarion knows it’s a reverie. A weird memory he doesn’t know how to feel about. It's the first time Tiriel was his. He kissed her, he hugged her, he had sex with her. It was all a game for him but something else for her. 

The memories slowly set him free and he realizes Tiriel is still in his arms. She doesn’t sleep, that’s for sure, but she also doesn’t move, allowing him to relax in her embrace.

He reaches out for her ear and tugs it, forcing her to squirm.

“Half-elves do have sensitive ears!” he laughs. 

“That was weird,” she mutters. “Do it again.”

“You don’t need to ask twice,” he repeats the same motion. “Are we leaving today?”

“Yes,” she puts her arms on his back. “And we aren’t coming back, love.”

--

@tugoslovenka  

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@astarion-imagine-archive  

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@wilteddreamsofbaldursgate

[nattblacklupin]

Fierce protector

Pairing: Lord Devlon x fem!reader

Warnings: mentions of alcohol, illyrian soilders inappropriately touching reader (nothing too intense), fighting? (Not really, but still), kinda suggestive at the end but no smut

Summary: Lord Devlon protects his mate no matter what

Masterlist

Everyone in Windhaven was scared of Lord Devlon, one wrong move or word, and he will destroy you the next training. He was especially fierce about training the women in the camp, his mate helped him realise they could be good and useful fighters too. Now it takes one bad word about any woman in the camp, and you got it. Training or, in worst case, punishment that will surely teach everyone their place.

Today was one of these days, and Devlon wasn't letting them go easy today. They spoke too openly about his mate. They should be glad he didn't kill them. Just the thought of yesterday events was making him see red.

He was waiting for his mate to finish her shift in the pub. He told her uncountable times she didn't have to work and that he will take care of her, but she refused every time. Devlon wasn't happy about it, but if his mate wishes to work, he will have it and respect it. His mate matters to him the most and if he has to stay in her pub whole shift just to scare of drunk horny warriors then let it be like that, anything just too see her smile at the end of the day.

Today started as a normal night for both of them. Y/N made sure everyone got their drinks while he was making sure she is alright. The men can get quite handsy, which he totally won't tolerate, not with any woman and totally not with his mate.

"Hello pretty, could you please give us three shots?" One of the soilders yelled at you. He immediately turned to them. It's not something new that men compliment you. He himself does that nearly every day. But he was keeping eye on them. Young warriors often didn't know when to keep their mouth shut. Their table was close to Devlon, so no word that left they shameful mouth didn't miss him. He was still left with a cold mind. Let them fantasise. You would never even get close to them in that way.

You were used to drunk men, their words just pointless part in your night. Their order was quickly done, and you started walking to their table. On your way, you shot Devlon quick smile. You missed him - like it isn't only half an hour since you last kissed him.

Everything was going smoothly, and they didn't do anything stupid till you were leaving them to take care of other orders. One of them whistled and slapped your ass. In a second, his hand was grabbed by your mate, and the soilder was on the ground.

"You wanna try that again?" Devlon growed at him. How dares he touch his mate like that? Only he can do that. The illyrian soldier was nearly peeing his pants while begging for forgiveness. Devlon didn't see through his anger, all his instincts were screaming at him to protect mate and kill any potentional threat to her.

,,Devlon, love, let him go. You can punish him on the training tomorrow. But don't let him destroy the night today. " You knew how to calm down your husband. These little angry scenes were nearly on a daily routine. Devlon could control himself, just not when it came to you, his only weakness.

,,let's go home, love. " you said and took his hand to slowly lead him away from the soilder. He luckily did let go, and his hand went around your waist. ,,talk to my mate like that one more time, and I will literally kill you." He was dead serious when he said that ,,that goes for all of you."

You quickly nodded at your coworker so they knew you were leaving. Everyone was probably happy that you decided to leave sooner, and they didn't have to deal with their angry commander.

The moment you left the pub, you kissed him. The kiss was fast and heated. Nothing sweet about it, but at the moment, you knew that Devlon needed to calm himself somehow, with what you will gladly help him further at home. Your lips left his, and you looked up to smile at him.

,,my fierce protector."

[bonefall]

Can I hear more about Villain Thornclaw? The way you described him is a really cool take on his character.

He exudes a sense of detached ruthlessness, something happened and he just never got over it, most of the time he is a model warrior, but sometimes he says something or gives a cold look, and that hints just how much he is willing to do for his beliefs

The first warrior that Firestar named becomes his most insidious enemy.

He was too young to clearly remember Clawface snatching him and his little sister, but he does remember the way it became an early fixation. His favorite games were always reenactments and play fights, and his father Lionheart and kidnapper Clawface would be characters in them. He often would go too far and play rough, actually biting or scratching his playmate.

We, in the real world, may recognize this as a way kids often process trauma. But they don't have cat therapy here.

And quickly these fixations became unsettling. Brightkit didn't like these games, and their older siblings were disturbed. Frostfur reacted strongly and tried to intervene, but it didn't help the way they wanted.

He got good at hiding it, and he got better at finding other ways to express his fixation. He never knew Lionheart, but he DID know Grandma Speckletail, and she would tell him all about the ways he could be like his dad. When you don't know a person, they can be anything you want them to be.

Turns out if you dress up "I'm obsessively xenophobic of foreign cats and want to rip them to shreds" as "I will ferociously avenge my father and uphold his legacy," suddenly you're golden! It's that simple!

(it's almost like clan culture didnt actually value peace or kindness and just encourages you to channel ur violence towards specific ends)

Thornkit went from Grandma Speckletail to Mentor Mousefur, and she continued to cultivate this. There's a time and a place for aggression. Be good to your clanmates. Use words in camp, not claws. She made a good soldier out of him.

When ThunderClan had a reckoning with Tigerclaw and his ideology in TPB, during his coup, the line of thought that went through Thornpaw and the cats like him was that Tigerclaw was the problem. Who could have known! A shock! Sickening!

...for a while they were "better," devastated by his betrayal, more openminded. But minds don't always trend towards progress.

Eventually, Thornclaw backslid. Let's not throw out the kitten with the tonguewash, here. Yes yes, Tigerclaw was a damn traitor and a hypocrite, but there's worse cats to look up to, you can't deny his nobility, that some of his ideas were great for ThunderClan, that there were lofty ideals he merely took from our grand and glorious history and we can return to those days...

What is so terrible about being a thistle? To lash back when you are attacked? To defend the meadow for you and yours?

We can have Tigerclaw's good aspects without the bad, surely?

And Firestar...

You must understand it's nothing personal. Firestar's a fine cat, for a kittypet. There is no hate for him. But we can't have a leader who stops ThunderClan from engaging in honorable combat. The Clan has become too mixed, and he punished him simply for expressing his concerns. What other choice is there? To do nothing as the clans are destroyed from the inside out?

Bluestar brought wildfire to the forest, to burn it to the ground. Firestar is Thornclaw's natural enemy-- and so is every cat like him.

[bluesky-kitty]

Kai Anderson x fem reader || angst, fluff||

“Then it’s got you.”

tw-self-harm, abuse, toxic relationship

"Divine Ruler I have something for you." a female annoying voice said. Kai's eyes were on Meadow's now.

"We have a cult meeting in 30 minutes can it wait" He spoke without expecting an answer.

“This is important, and I need you now.”

Kai closed his laptop and looked at the blonde.

"So..what's the problem?"

"y/n."

The shedding of blood in Kai's body stopped for a moment.

Kai and you have been dating for 6 years, but no one knows except Winter.

You saw many versions of him during that time, but you never left him.

Kai didn't want anyone to know. You were his weak spot and anyone who would go against him would use you.

You two were careful, you didn't even sleep in the same rooms, you looked at each other with cold eyes in front of others just because of the cult.

Whenever someone talked bad about Kai behind his back, you would tell him. That was your code of keeping.

"She's in the kitchen."

She said hurriedly as they passed through the hall. He couldn't even imagine what it was about.

Maybe some stupid fight? You didn’t like Meadow, she didn’t like you either.

Your eyes were on the door as Meadow and Kai stood there. You could see the confusion on Kai's face as he walked unsteadily into the room.

“Can you move away from the sink?” spoke Meadow.

“Okay.” you said calmly as you moved away.

“Take off your clothes.” this sentence left you shocked.

“What? I’m not doing that.”

“Come on, just shirt” you knew what she was talking about but you thought she didn’t see them.

“Can somebody tell me what the shit is going on?”

Kai’s loud voice interrupted conversation.

“She’s so weak and broken! She hurts herself!

“No i don’t hurt myself.”

hurts herself?

Something in Kai was taking his air. Your beloved looked at you with empathy and anger in his eyes. You quickly rolled up your sleeves and showed your wrists. “See?!” Kai sighed silently, but not for long.

You were aware of what you were doing and successfully had smooth and clean wrists.

“What about stomach?” Shit! This woman is God’s punishment for world. You just wanted to disappear.

Kai came up to you with disappointment on his face. “Shirt. Off.”

”She doesn’t deserve to be in a cult if she’s a mental case. What if one day she kills herself and blames someone else for that?”

“Don’t do this to me. Why do you believe her?” You asked with teary eyes. His face with same cold.

“Come on show him your scars already!“

“Meadow! Get out, this is enough.”

“I just think-“

“Get the fuck out!”

His screams made you flinch. Meadow was gone and you two were alone. You'd be lying if you said you weren't afraid of him.

He immediately grabbed your shirt and twisted it. You grabbed his hand in an attempt to stop him. “No” funny of you thinking that small word was going to stop him.“

“I have to see it. I want to.“

When your shirt fell to the floor, your ego fell with it.

Bloody, fresh scars and indentations from nails driven into the skin covered your shoulders and chest.

“I’m so sorry Kai I just-I have to” you said between sobs.

His eyes watered as he bit his tongue.

“What a selfish stupid bitch you are..I gave you everything on this world that you wanted“

The pangs of conscience pierced you deep into the heart.

“My dearest ever…my baby, why would you do this to yourself? Huh?”

His face softened as he pushed hair out of your face.

“Every..every time you were angry at me or I would do something wrong or whenever you slap me..”

He listened every word carefully.

“I would pull a line.”

His head fell into his hands with a groan.

“FUCK”

“Kai you don’t have to-”

“I need more.“

“I need more to see how much I hurt you”

He grabbed you by the back of your pants and pulled them off.

“Please don’t..” tears stream down your face.

Your thighs were no different from your stomach. In pain, scratched and destroyed.

“You know I kill people because of you, just don't tell me I killed you too“ He was crying. He didn’t cry for three years. This made you feel bad. He knelt down and gently kissed every place where you hurt yourself. His big warm hands caressed your shivering skin. “Please let me stay in the cult” You said with a shaky voice. “You will. You will stay.”

“C’mere baby” He said as he added your clothes. "Get dressed" You were grateful to God that you would cover your sins with clothes. "You know..she saw me when I was leaving the bathroom" Kai raised his head to look at you while he buttoned your pants. "I was in a towel and the scars were visible. My stupidity."

There was silence, until he picked you up. “What are you doing?” You wrapped your legs around his waist and your arms around his neck. "We will watch a movie and cuddle, sounds good?" You nodded as he led you out of the kitchen.

His hand on your ass, the other reaching across your back towards your neck. As he carried you into the bedroom you heard Ally's voice. "Divine Ruler?" You buried your face in Kai’s neck in shame. "Tell them I'll be late." Ally nodded and went down to the basement without any questions. The smell of brion losion and mint entered your nostrils. It calmed you down.

You looked at him with lust in your eyes as you undressed in bed. When he turned on the movie he lay down next to you and pulled you close. Kai was pulling the blanket off your body as you shook your head. “Let them breathe sweetie.” When you realized how much you had destroyed your body, your eyes filled with tears. „It's alright bug.“ The nickname made you smile. He hugged you and made circles on your back. You let out a sob. “Shh..it's over.”

"They don't bother you? You still love me?”

"Of course they don't bother me." He said sweetly as he pulled you into a long kiss. “Come on I'll give you a bear cuddle” He said with his arms outstretched. You wiped your damp eyes and threw yourself at him.

______

“And now what?” Harrison asked in annoyance.

“He said he'd be late. y/n wasn't well, probably because of that.”

“What does he have to do with her?” Meadow rolled her eyes. “To me, they looked pretty familiar to each other.”

“How much familiar?”

“It doesn’t matter. Really.”

“Ally.” The blonde warned.

“He was holding her ass”

“Oh looks like we’re getting babies” Harrison joked.

Everyone looked at him. “So they fuck.”

“And he said how important this topic is..but I don’t blame him, I also saw how much y/n tired is.” Beverly added.

“Yeah tired of wanting attention.”

“You will never get a ring from Kai, Mea, just give up already” said Ivy.

______

“She's sleeping now.” Kai spoke quietly into the phone. “I know. You're right.” She sighed softly in her sleep, which caught her boyfriend's attention. “I want you to take her, she needs therapy.”

“No I don't have a heart don't talk shit.”

“It's very bad, I expect of you to give all of yourself so you can help her.”

“Okay, bye.”

When he finished the call with his older brother, he kissed her gently on the cheek and went down to the basement.

“I'm sorry I'm late, I had some things to do.”

Cult members looked at him. “y/n is not here with us, she is sick and needs peace.” Meadow's face fell. Anger? Surprise? What could she expect?

After agreeing on the plan for the next action, everyone left the basement. Since Meadow was last, he called her. “Meadow. Stay a little so we can talk”

“What is it Divine Ruler?”

“I wanted to thank you for telling me that thing today.” Her face suddenly lit up. “There’s no need to thank me my Divine Ruler, I was just doing my job.” “Really Meadow..thank you so much” he puts his hand on her shoulder. Kai wanted to fill her with hope and then destroy her. In the name of you. She wasn’t backstabber to him, but she was to you.

“You saved me.”

“Yeah?” She asked with smile.

“Yeah. Because you saved her.” Meadow's faces could no longer be read. He approached her and whispered in her ear.

“Is it also your job to make my girlfriend cry?”

She opened her mouth to say something , but Kai was faster.

"We have been together for six years, we can also call her a wife.”

“If you do something like this again, I swear I will kill you personally.”

She stayed quiet.

“You can go now.”

As Meadow walked up the stairs in embarrassment, he called out to her, “Also good night, sleep well!”

[tea-and-secrets]

I feel horrible about this, but it's escalated to a point where this issue could destroy my life if I don't find a way to stop doing it.

So, for some reason, I get these really intense, obsessive, really disturbing fascinations with people. There's no pattern to them, no specific personality type or anything that sets it off, and I have never had more than one or maybe two per year, although they don't usually last more than a few (3-5) months. They're NOT hyperfixations. I've been hyperfixated on people before. For me, it never lasts more than 2 months (usually FAR less) and is entirely platonic, not at all violent or distressing, and doesn't make me upset in any way. I've had hyperfixations and an obsession at the same time, once I had an obsession and hyperfixated on each of his main friends within a 3 month span rapid fire style.

These obsessive feelings are like. Needing to talk to them, intrusive thoughts about hurting them, wanting to find them IRL (even if they live states away), to show up where they are, to call them at ofd hours, constantly imagining a future together, and they're always very romantic/explicit in nature. They make me feel physically ill from how gross they are. They're like nonstop intrusive thoughts of a relationship, but with this intense desire to constantly act on them and a need to be around the person all the time. And not being close to the person makes the intrusive thoughts worse.

It has never happened with someone I have actual romantic attraction to, but it happens even if I don't know them in person or we never met IRL. Usually after they fade I feel ambivalent or cold or just vaguely normal about the person. So basically after a few months of agony it sorts out and I am free usually for 8-10 months. I've never dated someone I have an obsession with. I understand them enoughto know they wouldn't mimic intrusive thoughts if they were genuinely romantic feelings. Plus, they don't last. They always fade eventually and honestly, they seriously freak me out. I don't want to have murderous intrusive thoughts when someone doesn't pick up a Skype call. That's not my idea of romantic.

Usually, I just wait for these feelings to pass, or limit contact with the person, but this time. It's so much worse.

The person is my friend, and way too young for me. He's not a minor, he's just to young for me (4 years younger, its my personal thing). He's taken, not my type, and I've always seen him as a pesky younger brother of sorts, so I never even considered this would happen. Having these feelings about him makes me feel violently ill. I've tried ignoring him and pushing him away until they stopped, but he noticed and I feel guilty punishing him for a problem that's only in my head. It isn't his fault there's something wrong with me. But I dont know what to do. If I told him about it, I'm worried he might think I like him (I don't think I do, I know how my obsessions are and it isn't love) and based on comments he's made, I'm worried he might actually try to rope me into a polycule or shoot his shot with me. Neither of those would be good places for my mental state.

I also really don't want our other friends to hear about this because I have a crush on one friend who's way older than me (we're both adults but we would NOT have gone to high school together ha ha) and I still want to hold out hope that in a few years she might see me as a viable partner (a bi can dream...) which would be jeopardized if she knew I'm basically a freak of nature.

So I need to figure out how to fix this part of me, FAST. I can't keep doing this and I'm scared things will fall apart or I'll lose it trying to fix this but I'm scared of losing everything.

I wish I could just have been born normal but I wasn't and now I have to fix it. It doesn't feel fair, and I hate it, but I want to be normal and not have to deal with this anymore. I want to just be okay, and I don't know how. I just know that normal people don't do this and this scares me. I don't want to hurt people, I don't want to be like this, and I don't know how to fix it, so I just suffered in silence for years. And now I have to fix it and don't know where to start. I just needed to tell someone about it.

.

[thegreenthepeacetheorange]

Everlark (Mockingjay, Ch. 18-19)

because of everything in the last chapter, katniss throws herself into her training with a vengeance. something driven by what they've done to peeta but also that keeps her mind off it

the same way katniss used to watch peeta from afar in 12 when they were kids, she watches him when he starts showing up in training

"my weaknesses? that's a door i don't even want to open' let me guess it starts with a p and ends in eeta

i wish we all got a world where finnick got to heal post war with katniss, peeta, annie, haymitch and johanna... broken brady brunch that i love so much. the way being victors binds them into being this family so that even though when katniss says she doesn't really know johanna, we have seen how they are essentially sisters and understand each other in a way that most people don't... the gift she gives johanna when she's in the hospital is so beautiful and so emblematic of who katniss is despite the horrors she lives in. and it's also such a peeta thing to do. because they're both so thoughtful

(an aside: prim's goodbye to katniss hurts differently knowing what i know now)

the fact that she takes the pearl with her

coin was evil but thanks for sending peeta on the mission actually. forced dating trope is old news, forced fighting together in a war against an entity that has destroyed our whole lives is in

when katniss says the whole thing about how she wouldn't be shooting peeta, just one of the capitol mutts. very annoying of her actually but she says it herself, it's her lashing out because of how she's humiliated by it all that she's felt. but poor peeta having to hear that

gale offering to straight up kill him and katniss is like "um no". the fact that gale thinks that this is something she actually wants, that she thinks like him in terms of just wanting the problem dead. oh sweetie no. katniss straight up being like "i can deal with him" aka "mind your own business"

i answered a question here about the squad giving katniss unfriendly looks after her mutt comments about peeta so i won't type it all again

i'm grateful for haymitch talking sense into her because she needed it. with the situations reversed, peeta wouldn't have treated her like how she was treating him and she needed to remember that

"you're punishing him over and over for things that are out of his control"

haymitch reminding her of the deal they made to save peeta. they're still in the games and she's forgotten her task. but here it is again. she has to save peeta but this time she's not sure how to achieve that

finnick lending peeta his rope. ugh. him being there for peeta when katniss couldn't. the way they all step in for each other when others can't.

and she finally starts to open up instead of being defensive and cold back

"i suddenly want to tell peeta everything about who he is and who i am and how we ended up here. but i don't know how to start. worthless. i'm worthless. " - katniss taking it upon herself when actually the idea of telling peeta all this in its entirety is such a huge task because their relationship is too huge to capture in words, in moments.

peeta remembering her favourite colour...

his thank you to her when she tells him his...

"you're a painter. you're a baker. you like to sleep with the windows open. you never take sugar in your tea. and you always double-knot your shoelaces" - these small intimacies. these little facts that tell us how much katniss knows about him. the small things she's held onto. these little things she remembers with so much fondness.

can you imagine peeta listening to all that and then looking down at his double-knotted shoelaces? remembering the calmer sleep that comes with the wind blowing in through the open windows at night? ugh.

this whole passage tells her that katniss knows his essence. these little details that she's never mentioned to us before.

her running away after saying all that because she wants to cry. she's so devastated and i want to hug her and peeta

cheese buns being part of real or not real, along with the colour of katniss's dresses and their maths teacher. they know each other. have known each other.

i can't state how horrific it is that darius and lavinia were tortured and killed in front of peeta. because we obviously aren't his head for the books but the horrors that peeta suffered?! it upsets me so much every time i read this passage. they hurt and killed darius and lavinia to hurt and torture peeta.

(an aside: them all just being kids/young people and messing around while filming the propos and boggs having to reprimand them while holding back his own smile again just reminds me of how young they all were. it's so depressing)

[moonspirit]

Idk if it is just me but I can totally see Annie randomly dropping lore on her life casually and everyone just lest jaws dropped.

For example they will be talking about when they got into trouble as kids and she will be like “ I remember when I made a mistake in training my dad won’t give me my dinner that night and make me eat it cold for breakfast” and she genuinely doesn’t see what the big deal is straight away.

This also goes for all the ex warriors, they would just randomly reveal something horrific that happened to them but word it like a nice nostalgic story

Hello :3

But yeah, that makes sense, actually! Comparatively speaking, the Warriors had a much harder life than the Paradisians. I think sometimes it's easy to forget that because of how through S1-S3, we become extremely attached to the Paradisians because we're exposed to their life first and that continues for a substantial portion of the show. We sympathize with their fright and struggle to make sense of things they've never known before.

But it's only when we're finally taken to Marley and stay there for some time, watching the lives of the warriors, that it becomes clear: the Paradisians had a better life within the walls.

Yes, they were walled in. Yes, the titans destroyed their hometowns, killed their families, made them orphans. Yes, they knew nothing and were a hundred years behind the rest of the world.

But before the walls broke (and for some, even after that), most of them had loving parents. Parents who were just content with their kids being happy, parents who didn't expect their children to do great things for the family. Within the walls, except for some classism (like the merchants, cult priests, royal family etc), they were all much the same. The same kind of people, treated with more or less the same kind of equality. Not knowing of their Eldian history actually made them happier.

They weren't seen as scum like the children were on Liberio. There, simply being of Eldian blood was enough to receive disgusted stares. The passes to leave the internment zone, the armbands, the mockery - all of it, dehumanizing and very much a part of daily life. Becoming a Warrior to bring honour to your family and secure a spot as a Honorary Marleyan was nothing but selling your body and soul to the Military. There was nothing honorary about it.

And their parents. Except for a few of them (like Mr. Finger, Mr. Bertholdt, etc) the rest are just trash. There was no kindness or love to be received from them. They used their kids for their own selfish desires, and being in the Military wouldn't have helped one bit. The derisive, contempt-filled stares? The mockery? The insults?

Life was HARD for the Warriors. Life for them was blood, sweat and tears, while the kids on Paradis at least got to run up grassy hills and play in busy markets before flying into the mouths of titans.

So, absolutely, there is considerable shock when Annie tells them of her father's terrible training regimens, or Pieck tells them of the military's terrible punishments, or Reiner tells them how they beat him up over and over again as a shifter for failing some test or the other.

[shrinrj]

𝓘𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓮𝓷𝓮𝓶𝔂’𝓼 𝓮𝓶𝓫𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓮 ( KING BALDWIN IV X Y/N FANFIC)

The king of Jerusalem , ruthless in his glory…never thought his heart once hardened by agony , forged from the strongest of metals in times of war and crime would soften at the sight before his eyes. A small house , he wasn’t even sure if it qualified as one…destroyed and shattered…burnt into flames…a figure suffocating inside , he could practically hear the muffled moans of pain and anguish. "Why must I care ? Isn’t this what I wanted…" he thought to himself but no…it wasn’t. He hadn’t ordered the raid to be this way. It wasn’t his doing. That daum foul , Guy de lusignan, gave extreme orders…they were villagers , they were nothing but villagers. The muffled screams haunted him.

"Daum it…" he muttered under his breath

"My lord…where are you going ?"

"Wherever you are not. Wait for me , I must do something" Baldwin unmounted his horse with a swift movement. Adrenaline overshadowing his leprosy. He stood before the cottage looking at the flames eat it with such insatiable hunger. "Hell , is within." He thought. He kicked the door open and looked at the source of the muffled sound…gladly , she was just by the door , unconscious , her body frail and weak under the hellish flames , he carried her over his shoulder…back to his horse.

"This woman needs urgent medical care , fetch for the physician , QUICK !" He ordered , his voice authoritative , commanding…yet dripping with fear. He didn’t know why he did that. Why he risked the fire but…god knows , he thought it all worth it. His men all had dumbfounded expressions on their faces as the physician rushed to the king "my lord…are you hurt ?"

"Not me. If she dies , consider yourself dead. Heal her." Baldwin expressed , his tone cold and threatening yet his gaze fearful…very fearful. Baldwin knows guilt , it lives within him like a crippling monster , a soul sucking entity…a parasite , or perhaps apart of his soul. He knew he had killed…hundreds. His hands were stained with blood but this isn’t the blood he wanted on his hands. Knight code comes before all and knights don’t harm women , children or elderly…but he did…now he did , and this will haunt him forever.

"A word." He said to Guy with a threatening gaze.

Guy approached , a smug look on his face like usual , walking with pride. "My lord." He bowed his head.

Baldwin’s blue gaze pierced Guy’s fragile , narcissistic soul. "Who died and made you king ?" Baldwin asked.

"Oh…God forbid my lord , long live the king of course."

"Really ? If so…why did I carry an innocent maiden on my shoulder from the fire of her small home. I do not recall giving such orders."

"Well , my lord" Guy chuckled nervously searching for a lie to justify his bloodshed , "those villagers…they were hostile…like all saracens are ! I ordered knights to only harm those who harm them. If she’s harmed , she is no innocent maiden."

"If your men were truly harmed by a woman small enough to be carried on the shoulder of a leper , perhaps they’re more fit for a harem than they are for a crusade."

The physician tended to the girl’s wounds and she woke up coughing , tears in her eyes , she looked at the king with a look of disdain -at the very least- her eyes filled with fury…behind them a hint of sadness…

"You woke up…"

She didn’t reply

"Are you alright ?"

She didn’t reply

Baldwin has had enough. He stood in front of her and with the end of his sword lifted up her chin to look at him. “You speak when spoken to." His tone shifted to something more affectionate , warmer…"are you alright ?"

"Take a good guess , your grace” she said , her voice quivering as anger lingered onto every letter she uttered looking at her destroyed home.

"I’ll have your home repaired. I didn’t order this. My knights acted outside of their orders and they will be punished , I swear it."

"Your gold won’t bring back mother’s dresses…or father’s books." She managed to spit out as grief , anger , melancholy consumed her soul , making speech a chore , making looking up at him a harder one. She saw nothing but a monster , an anomaly.

"Did you lose anyone in the fire ?" The king said , surprisingly cold.

"No…" she said as she looked away.

"Then you lost nothing. All can be repaired." He said , his tone cold , his gaze colder , yet his words…there was comfort within them.

She stood up bravely , in all of her reckless ferocity to fight him , to cry , to storm only to feel her head lighten…her sight blur..she collapsed , only to be caught by the king’s good hand before she fell down. He caught her swiftly and then lowered her down. For a moment , he felt a sticky warm substance from her hair. "It can’t be.." he removed his hand to see it stained with blood…the blood of the innocent…on his hands , not symbolically this time , it wasn’t a figure of speech…it was his reality. It was as real as his illness and the savagery of his knights. A scary relevation indeed…one he could not grasp. "Dieu…seigneur…BACK TO JERUSALEM !" He yelled out to his knights as he blopped her in front of him on the horse , praying to his God and hers that she wakes up.

[the-air-nomad]

Naive

The war had ended 4 years ago, but the world was far from perfect. You were one of the middle men of the Fire Nation. You felt that the war was useless, but you never stepped out of line. Although you were a strong bender, you ran away from a possible career in the army and chose to be a guard in the Royal Palace. Unfortunately for you, this was the beginning of your downfall.

Y/N pov:

I still remember the happiness I felt when Prince Lu Ten allowed me to work as a palace guard. I had always seen the young prince as a role model and I was sure that we would have a great time playing pranks around the palace. But then he left for the army and my world shattered. I was assigned as Prince Zuko's guardian and I swore that I would protect him with my life.

Although I got along well with Zuko, Princess Azula was a completely different story. Since the first day of work, Princess Ursa had tasked me with punishing her disobedient daughter. She knew that not even Ozai would try something dirty with one of Prince Lu Ten's guards. Ozai was evil, not stupid!

A/N pov:

You tried to be as nice as possible with Azula, but the little witch was doing annoying things just to get your attention. Fortunately for you, you escaped the palace once Zuko was exiled. You thought you would never see her again, but fate did not agree.

At Zuko's request, you agreed to supervise the psychotic princess. Although you knew you didn't need anyone to control the little witch, you accepted the help of 5 other capable benders. Azula was just as you remembered her, a broken person who would do anything for the slightest bit of attention. She never fooled you, no matter how hard she tried.

Y/N pov:

The prison was by far the sickest and most horrible I had seen. The prisoners were treated like worthless toys by the guards. I didn't care, the prisoners had committed more heinous crimes than I could count. But one day I exploded.

I was walking towards the princess's cell mentally preparing to force her to eat, when I started hearing screams. I rushed to the cell and almost broke the door. My blood started to boil at the scene in front of me.Two guards were trying to immobilize the terrified princess, and another was trying to tear her clothes. You gave in to your anger and destroyed two of them with a bolt of lightning. The next few minutes were a frenzy of blood, screams and flames.

When I regained control, I was in a dense forest with the princess.

Azula: are you ok Y/N? You took some brutal hits!

Y/N: why do you care? Shouldn't you kill me and run?

Azula: We both know you're the only person I wouldn't kill.

Y/N: so you can be honest? surprising!

Azula: You know very well that I never lied to you! You lied to yourself all your life! For once, be honest with yourself Y/N!

Y/N: to be honest with myself? Sure! I am an idiot! I've always been an idiot! You know why? Because I always let you destroy my life!

Azula: Maybe if you had seen from the beginning that we were made for each other, now we would rule the world together! But nooo! You had to run away with my idiot brother! And don't think I didn't find out about your little business with that bitch!

A cold shiver ran down my spine when I saw her demonic grin.Suddenly everything made sense. The way she always seemed to watch me from the shadows, the fact that Ozai had allowed me to stay in the palace even after exile, all my friends were horrified by the thought of staying in the same room with me. All this time I was being manipulated by a girl 10 years younger than me! Azula starts laughing and clapping.

Azula: Yes! I knew you were a smart boy!

Y/N: stay away from me!

Azula: oh come on Y/N! What will you do? You are a criminal now! welcome to the family!

Y/N: you are crazy! You are a monster! Iroh was right! You must fall!

Azula: No, I don't have to! What I have to do is prove to you that you cannot survive without me!

Y/N: what? Azula! Don't you dare hurt me!

Azula: don't you dare leave me ever again! You are mine, we are made for each other! And don't you dare to lie to yourself! We all know you would never kill me! no one will save you from me!

Y/N: when Zuko finds out we're missing...

Azula: Zuzu? Oh dear, you are so naive! He sent you into my clutches! My dear brother didn't want to lose me, after everything that happened he still loves me! How much were you worth to him? A promise! All I had to do was promise to take my meds, not try to kill again him and blah blah blah

Although I do not own the characters from avatar the last airbender, this work belongs to me! I sincerely hope you liked it. please rate it and leave a comment! follow me to see my next posts! Don’t forget that the request are open💖💖💨

You can buy me a coffe if you want:  buymeacoffee.com/TheAirNomad

[differentnighttale]

I wonder how it feels to have the whole town turn their backs away from you, To point at you with outstretched hands and call curses upon you from the old gods, Calling you names even a child shouldn't hear "Siren,seducer ,monster " When you're only just a child. A mere child. All because you leaned your head on a young man's shoulder. You gave him the world. Because he treated you as human.

I wonder how it feels when everyone you loves isolates you. All because you were different. Your grandparents insulted you. Your female cousin blamed you. Your family starved you. Your mom went insane. The town called you an abomination. All because of your ability. All because of something you couldn't control. Your father hated you, wished you were dead.

Your mother lost her mind. After bringing you into the world. She ignored all the complications. All because she wanted you. You were her pride and her joy. Her reason to exist.

But to everyone you were a mistake. A fault. Cursed by the gods or so they said. An eleven year old. Death followed you in it's wake. Taking the breathes and the happiness dry from the town. The place you called him. Don't worry is okay. For everyone you loved is dead. Is all your fault. You killed them all. You were bullied by the town kids, The adults sat and watch. To them it was deserved. You weren't allowed in school. They were right. You were a mistake. Your grandparents were hanged. A fire swallowed the house. It killed your dad. The man who straved you,ridiculed you and wished and dreamt that you died. During your mom's birth. You should've have existed.

I wonder how it felt the blamed and the sins and guilt that weighed you down. The vengeful sports wailed in the wake. Punishing you for your crimes. Your trumatic childhood ghost follows you ,laughing icy.

I wonder how it feel to let your heart accept love again Only for a man,your friend to use you,discard you and have his way. He was your friend. He was supposed to be your friend Someone you trusted. But the old gods had their way. Their control. For you were cursed. With the eye of Medusa. A living death omen. You were a child. A mere child. Tainted. Used. Destroyed. He called you names as he had his way,"whore,slut,piece of shit." He dreamt of being king. Lusted over a girl like you.

Now you live a life of hope and luxury of false prowess. You eat too your full, (It comes back out) You dress in beautiful clothes. (You felt undeserving) You slept in grand house (Ghosts of your family loomed around)

You were never going to happy. The Godess had plans. A mistake granted a better life.

No one knew your story. All they know is that you're royalty. You're happy, you're glowing. You're pure,you're beautiful. But. You're.The.Excat.Opposite.

But  when he walked into your life. He was a golden aura. He made you want to love again. No matter how much you wanted to wrap your hands around his neck before. Now you wanted him more than before. He gave you a reason to live,to prowl on.

But the godess had a plan. To rope you both. Don't worry darling. Everything would be okay. If only you don't  fall into the arms of danger. Happiness is fleeting.

You smiled so hard. Even though it was fake. Your laughed so hard. You put on a show. The world was jealous, green with envy. At the graceful  beau. But all you wanted was for Deaths cold,skeletal hands to take you home. To death. You tried to do it yourself. Only to saved by him. Him. He didn't let you squander your life. He'd never understand. The weight of sins of others you've killed. The weight of your curse. To be Bounded to Okiria forever. If you sliced the already dwindling knot. It would all tumble down.

[galesdevoteewife]

i mean, maybe the mystra hate is disproportional, but from tav's pov, she did ask tav's wizard to kill himself? to take himself away from tav and remove any future they could possibly have together? to discard their connection? can one stay objective about the non-humanness of gods, when the gods are asking for your soul, your home, your love? gale, experienced with mystra as he is, maybe could, but a tav?

First, thanks for the ask!! How I love questions that let me dive into fantasy and imagine how things feel <3 I will answer in both my Tav's and player's POV. It’s going to be purely personal since every person/Tav has a different background and a huge variety of personalities.

Short answer: Mystra ASKED, but she didn’t TAKE. so my Tav was fine with her.

[Act3 spoiler and datamine ahead]

Still, I can certainly see how Mystra's martyrdom request could deeply hurt Gale. He was unsure if they might still be in a relationship, and ordering him to kill himself was definitely a shocking, heartbreaking, world-shaking breakup for him...Mystra was not only his lover, also his guidance: 'teacher and muse', the exact wording.

Astarion: So, do you have loves waiting for you once this is all over? Gale: You know what - that is not the easiest of questions for me to answer. In my opinion, Gale only really made moves in romance after he was certain that his relationship with Mystra was over, which happened after meeting Elminster.

| My Tav's POV A bit of background: My canon tav is a Lolth-sworn drow spider baby, named Zilvera. Where she comes from, humanoid sacrifice happens all the time and no good reason needed. I couldn't imagine she made too much fuss about Elminster saying some words. (even came with an orb stabilizing spell, that's nice) She would, however, be furious if Elminster was sent to snatch her wizard. 1) Zilvera had fallen for the wizard much earlier. She saw it as an opportunity: "They officially broke up, and he feels cold towards her now? Great, that’s my chance! I will treat you so much better, be with me instead!" 2) She didn't plan to let Mystra take the wizard from her, she wanted to find the wiggle room in Mystra’s words —"Use the bomb to destroy the heart of the Absolute." She wouldn't mind playing Mystra's riddle game, but she wanted to win. Overconfident and arrogant as it might seem, yet that's her.

"So, she didn't specifically ask for his life. Good." "Is it possible to trigger the orb another way?" "We need to find out what the heart of the Absolute is." "Would Raphael be able to do something about it?" "Can I resurrect him afterwards?"

3) She sees Mystra as 'useful.' My Tav is the worst cleric material. Deities are nothing but a source of power and favor to her. She was impressed by the stabilization spell, and she wondered what else Mystra's favor could provide for her purpose: the well-being of her wizard. As far as she's concerned, the orb needs to be cured; it’s making her crush unwell and sad. Later on in Act 3, she even grew to like Mystra because the goddess offered an actual cure. What's even better was that what Mystra wanted already aligned with her agenda: kill the Netherbrain. It's two birds with one stone. Mystra seems to be a high-ranked goddess who takes bargain and gives practical boons. Zilvera likes her for those. | My POV, as a player

I, who obviously lost my mind for the fictional wizard, wasn't annoyed much because Mystra wasn't being pressing. Meaning:

Mystra didn't send Elminster to kidnap/mind-control my wizard from camp and use him as if he was just a piece of tool. Elminster is very powerful and likely capable for such task.

There's no threat. She didn't sneak a hidden feature into her spell, and trigger the orb without Gale's consent when he was convinced to live in the colony. She didn't say anything implying that defying her orders would result in harsh punishment. Unless Gale is up for challenging her, that would be a different story.

There's no debuff, ability, or item lost when you defy her/simply being rude. Some conversation options were really rough! xD But she seems chill.

She didn't insult my wizard. In fact, she held him in high regard, trusted the future of magic/world in his hands and wisdom. Certainly much kinder than Gale's university assessment.

In my gameplay, the in-game actions Mystra has ever taken include (1) ghosting Gale for a year, (2) sending Elminster twice, (3) chatting, and (4) providing buffs if you burned the shadow weave in the cursed land. It's not even difficult to convince her at the shrine meeting. She was like, "You don't want to die, fine. But the Netherbrain and the crown must be removed. I will help you as long as those are taken care of." — and that was when the goddess wasn't exactly in a good mood.

"...the 'orb' sleeps is because I have allowed it to feed on the true Weave..." She is the weave, aka she is feeding the orb with HERSELF, and she didn't like that. It's the piece of information hinting she didn't just wave her hand and make all the problems go away — it cost her too.

Hope I am not missing anything. Please feel free to ask me anything if I do!

I tried to approach the subject with a more general term without sidetracking too much with my own Tav's setting, but I find that really hard since everyone reacts differently to things. I mean, I could totally see a Mystra cleric being shocked, or a warlock mocking how little differences there are between a god and a devil. All narrative is valid in my opinion. So here I am, indulging myself to unleash my overly invested Tav story xD Do keep in mind I am just chipping in my iteration though <3

[farfromstrange]

Total Eclipse Of The Heart | Matt Murdock

Matt Murdock x Vampire!reader (f!reader)

Part 1 // Part 2 (currently here) // Part 3 (coming soon)

PART TWO - Humans are dying at the hands of her species and she has to do something about it, but how can she when the object of her attraction just so happens to stumble into her path over and over again, as if he's just as addicted to her as she is to him?

Warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI! Very explicit sexual language, dubious consent (inappropriate touching, dirty talk), blood, vampires, death, bad humor, plot, religious imagery (?), submissive Matt Murdock, Dom!Reader, DARK FANTASY (dead dove do not eat), really, this is absolutely filthy dark, AND not proof-read

A/n: This is so dark, holy shit… Here’s the second part! I hope you’re not mad at me that I left you waiting. 2023 already feels so weird I don’t know why, but I’ve finally finished this chapter and I’m getting to work on the third one as we speak. The smut is coming soon, I promise. Until then, I’m just going to get you all worked up :)

DARK CONTENT UNDER HERE, 18+ ONLY!

Ever since the beginning of time, humans have felt threatened by their fellow species. The goal is self-preservation rather than preserving the world around them. At the same time though, there has never been another species so hell-bent on destroying their habitat than the human race. 

She watched the seasons come and go. Where one life ended, another started. Humans were fast to reproduce, she realized, but they were also just as fast to die. Sickness and injury are the biggest threats to the human body.  You could be okay one second, then on your deathbed the next. While the female body could withstand the terrible strain of childbirth, it stands no chance against cancer. You could bleed out in seconds if the right vein is nicked, and if you fall the wrong way, a broken neck will either kill you instantly or leave you dependent on machines for the rest of your life. 

While humans are considered the most sophisticated species since the beginning of time, they are all collectively fragile. 

The last time she was actively human, she didn’t even have a quarter of the knowledge at hand that she gained later in life. Times have changed since then. The world grew into something new, something modern, and the human race evolved with it. 

They’ve never had many nice words to say about her kind, so it came naturally to be terrified of a species that was more than willing to eradicate her own.

Sure, killing and blood-sucking isn’t something that goes over well with a crowd, but she often emphasized that they weren’t all cold-blooded murderers. Not all vampires were the same, and the lore often got it wrong.

Cold, they were, but only temperature-wise. Her half of the litter, anyway. And they were murderers too, else they wouldn’t have survived this long. Drinking blood to survive was a curse she wished upon no one. It naturally made her species reborn killers; they had to take a life to sustain their own, and since death and starvation weren’t in the cards without a stake through the heart, they had to follow their most primal instincts.

She tried to refrain from murder like a good citizen, and it worked, most of the time. There are other ways to get blood that doesn’t involve murdering an innocent. In Hell’s Kitchen, she could easily roll open a map and point to a random place, and she surely would have found criminals deserving of punishment.

But there were also humans who didn’t fear her species, those who were willing to give to the cause voluntarily. They liked to call themselves blood-submissive as if it were a sexual practice on its own – the sex was a nice byproduct, and some of those people were born to be whores, but making it a new trend was something she wished would never happen.

Though she was well aware of the subculture around humans fetishizing vampires, who were all more than ready to give their blood. Humans are so susceptible to overstimulation, especially through strange forces, even the smallest taste of a vampire’s blood could get them high enough up the precipice to push them into an orgasm.

That was the one thing that enticed her the most; the human anatomy, and how responsive they were to stimuli. She knew all about it, and yet she found herself surprised again and again whenever she lay with someone new. 

That evening though, she woke up with a heavy feeling in her stomach. One that wouldn’t go away. 

She entered the kitchen of her shared home to find a stranger sitting on one of the stools at the kitchen counter. Two very obvious holes adorned the young man’s neck. He didn’t look terrified when he saw her, only overly tired and perhaps a little drained. 

She sighed heavily, moving to get herself a drink from the fridge. Not that she had one already sitting there, but he wasn’t hers to take. He had already been labeled with two very sharp fangs that could only belong to one person.

“Eli, you left your dinner in the kitchen!” her voice bounced off the high walls, doing black flips until it finally made the human twitch. “No offense,” she said. “I’m just not a fan of waking up to blood banks sitting at my kitchen counter.”

He opened his mouth, but no words would come out.

She grinned. With her mug in hand, she returned to ask the boy, “Coffee?”

He declined.

“Well, you can’t say I haven’t tried to be hospitable with you.”

Just in time, Eli came around the corner wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs. She rolled her eyes. It was one of those guests. 

She met Eli somewhere around 1800 when she spent some time in the deserts of Egypt. He was only a couple of days old then, bitten by a passing vampire with no regard for human life. Eli was lucky to have survived, but with no one to teach him, he went rogue and slaughtered his entire village in a hungry haze. When he came to, the life he once knew had been destroyed beyond repair.

She saved him. Initially, she planned to just pass through, but the word about a vampire on the loose traveled fast, even back then, and so she found herself in Eli’s village soon after, convincing him to join her. She saved his life and therefore, he felt as if he owed her. They never left each other's side again.

Though sometimes, Eli was particularly hard to live with. He was almost like an unruly child, and he left his food lying out most of the time – he tended to forget that wasn’t the only hungry one in the household. 

“Would you stop calling every human I bring home a blood bank?” he said. 

“If you stop letting them stay for breakfast,” she retorted.  

He met her bitter smile with a sour one of his own. “Not everyone feels the need to submit to you as Talon does.”

“Maybe I should make that a rule then. I mean, I am the head of this coven, after all. The least you can do is give me some respect.” She eyed the young man still sitting at the counter, completely hypnotized by the shirtless man prancing around the kitchen. “And your blood whores, too, before you start giving them a sexually transmitted human disease. Or turn them into one of us.”

He scoffed. She patted his shoulder as she passed by him, taking the chance to whisper into his ear, “Would be a shame if I had to drive a stake through one of them when all they signed up for was just a little fun.”

She couldn’t help herself. On her way out, she passed by the helpless human, pulling his head back by the hair to reveal his deliciously long neck, and she dipped her nose to take him in. The blood running through his veins smelled beyond divine. Sweet temptation. She wanted to bury her teeth in his soft skin and suck until he was empty. “Ah, delicious,” she said. “Youngblood, untainted, pure. Excellent pick. I wonder if he tastes as good as he smells.” 

The tips of her sharp fangs scratched at his neck, and she had to force herself to pull away before she could make the mistake of taking Eli’s food off his plate. 

“Get him out of here,” she told him. “Before I make you bathe in holy water for the rest of the week.” 

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

The respect issue was a problem she had to deal with. She wasn’t someone to play around, with except for the bedroom. She was nothing if not playful there, with someone writhing underneath her and begging for the mercy of pleasure, and they would always get what they wanted and deserved. She was considerate like that. But her lovers also never struggled to pay her respect. That seemed to be a family problem only. 

Perhaps she had to assert more dominance over them too, even if it was just for kicks. They would learn soon enough. It wasn’t exactly easy to be a leader, after all. That was common knowledge even amongst the undead.

The vibrations of the phone in her pocket caused her to look up. She checked the text – a piece of technology she was quite fond of, the cell phone – and if she hadn’t been pale enough already, she surely would have turned white as a sheet right about now. 

“What happened?” she asked as she entered the main room. 

Talon nodded his head. “I just got word from my source at the police station,” he told her.

“And?”

“There’s been several suspicious murders in Hell’s Kitchen in the past week.”

“If I wanted a broken record player, I would have gone into the attic. Spit your words out now, Talon, or I will cut out your tongue.”

He flinched, remaining in his position with his head bowed downward. He couldn’t look into her almost blacked-out eyes and be met with disappointment. 

“The victims have been drained of most of their blood, but the injection sites are sloppy, so a lot of the blood got wasted and spilled around the corpses,” he said.

“That’s… graphic.” She rolled her eyes. Chaos only compelled distraction. “But not at all the details I need,” she said.

“Yes, I was just getting to the important part. There’s security footage that shows a foreign party escaping from the site of the murder, and the same person is shown a couple of days later attacking the third victim in a blood-thirsty rage.”

The scenery sounded all too familiar. She tilted her head, intrigued by his report, and moved forward. “What exactly are they saying?”

“The police are blaming it on a new drug epidemic that has the users acting out to the point they would cause a blood bath. The drug supposedly triggers hallucinations that make them unaware of their surroundings and crave violence.”

“You mean blood. The drug is making them crave blood.”

“That’s what they’re thinking, but it’s not in the official report.”

“Yeah because that drug is called vampirism and that’s not exactly an epidemic that should be happening,” she said.

Talon nodded. “Police are issuing a warning,” he told her, “without knowing what they’re warning from. It’s just a couple of kids overdosing and bleeding out in the most ghastly of ways. They’re saying it’s drugs because they don’t understand.”

She grew more and more agitated with every word that slipped past his lips. The pedestal that kept her above the man made her seem much taller than she actually was. She paced the floor. It gave her a sense of superiority that she fought very hard to receive. Her status surpassed those of the people around her. She was older and wiser and perhaps slightly more sophisticated. Her moves were calculated yet often brutal because she learned that you get nothing in life if you’re not willing to spill a little blood, literally and figuratively. To have something or someone threaten her precious freedom like that was an obvious call for action

She halted her movements when he went quiet. “Do they have proof?” she questioned as if she expected him to tell her himself. 

“No,” Talon said. 

“Good. Call a meeting. I need to know who did this. And make sure no one knows beforehand. The last thing I need right now is a fucking vampire uproar.”

“What, you suspect it was one of us?” He had a doubting frown resting on his pale face. 

“While I have faith that you can keep your fangs in your jaw, I need to make sure I’m not misplacing that faith,” she stated. “If I’m wrong in my suspicions, that is good for you. If I’m right and one of you idiots is behind this, I will drive you to hell myself.”

“If you want to have my opinion…”

She smirked, “I really don’t.”

“But if I may?”

“You may not.” Stepping down from the pedestal, she eyed him. “Call the meeting,” she ordered. “In the meantime, I’m going to get myself a bottle of Scotch to drown my sorrows, and then I’m going to steal from the police.” 

Talon yelled after her, “Do you need any help, boss?”

“Yes. You can help yourself to stop crawling up my ass! That would help me a lot, actually. Don’t get me wrong,” she said, “I like my men submissive, but your behavior is just getting pathetic now. I’m your boss, not your mother. She’s dead. Deal with it.”

It wasn’t the first time she broke into the police station in Hell’s Kitchen. Crime rates exploded at night, which meant a higher police presence in the building, but at the same time, the cells overflowed with the many criminals they caught. They were always drowning in paperwork, and the crime never seemed to take an end. 

She waited until the commotion in the bullpen caused the officer at the front desk to jump from his seat and escalate the situation. She sped toward the file cabinet, retrieved what she needed, and disappeared just as fast as she had come. 

The officer looked up to find nothing but a strong breeze knocking the documents off his desk. He frowned, choosing to ignore it as the man underneath him writhed against the handcuffs.

Talon said a lot yet nothing at all. She eyed the pictures in the moonlight, the dead eyes staring straight into the security cameras, the man’s body covered in blood as he left a trail of bodies along the Hudson’s riverbed. He downplayed it. This was bad, a monster out of control, someone who shouldn’t even have existed in the first place and yet somehow came to life. There were clear rules. Those rules had been broken in more than one place, shattered on the ground, and then walked over with utmost disrespect. 

And he wasn’t the only one. Every murder was accompanied by one of the herds escaping, later appearing on the scene of another crime. To the untrained eye, it appeared as if these kids were high and just playing around. The blood around the bodies was significant, so the ordinary human might sort it as an overdose after all. An accident. Though none of the things she saw were accidental. 

They killed without a care, without remorse, and at the rate they were going, she was sure they wouldn’t stop anytime soon. 

It wasn’t the first time she had to run against the clock, but it had been a while since she was tossed into such a situation where she had to choose between peace and her most primal nature. She had to appeal to her common sense. She knew better than to let them continue this.

Humans aren’t stupid but often underestimated. At this rate, if they kept going, war seemed inevitable. 

These strangers were hunting on her turf and they turned everything upside down. She wasn’t having it. She had to do something. 

The wind came from the far east and blew through the streets. Many different smells lay in the air that night, but the most prominent hit her nose at the front step of the precinct. 

She tilted her head. She could sense him clearly now. He still smelled the same, his blood a bittersweet taste on her tongue, and she craved more. His heartbeat filled her ears, an elevated sound. She searched for him in the night until the sound of his scruffy, careful voice caught in her ears. 

He stood on the fire escape of the precinct’s second floor. The metal creaked. A door fell shut. He wasn’t alone. 

“Look, man, I’d be happy to help you, especially because we are way in over our heads with this case, but I told you,” the second voice said, “The file is gone.” 

She stared down at the brown folder in her hands. 

“What do you mean gone?” he asked, finally, and her eyes rolled back at the mere sound of him. 

He was everywhere, so goddamn overwhelming, all she wanted was to pull him off that fire escape, into the alley, and turn him into a helpless mess until he was begging her for mercy with tears in his eyes – she could only imagine the soft color behind the red glasses. Were they brown, green, or perhaps even blue? They surely would turn black with lust and then gloss over with exhaustion from the sheer overstimulation when she was done with him. Though she would only stop when the color of his eyes would disappear behind his eyelids as he slipped into a state of unconsciousness, the pleasure causing his mortal body to shut down and submit even more to the power she wielded. 

“Apparently, someone took it.”

“Since when do people steal files from a police station, Sergeant?” 

The man shrugged. “It’s not the first time,” he said. “Happens more often than you might think.”

“What now?” her nameless stranger asked. 

She could only imagine his mouth moving in sync with his gravelly voice, the movement of his Adam’s Apple in his throat as he swallowed, and the way his hands balled to fists at his sides, the beautiful veins protruding and his knuckles turning white. She wondered how those hands would feel somewhere other than a cane or a metal rod. How they would look tracing not the brim of glass but rather a different opening. Playing with wetness until his hands were coated in it the same way he played with the condensation on the glass of his drink. 

“Sergeant, if you want me to help you, I need more than a whim to go on. Do you have anything you could give me?”

“Look, I can’t help you,” the Sergeant said, “but if I did know something, I would suggest scouting out the docks. Ground zero seems to be close to the docks, but I’ve also got word that the rest of Manhattan might be involved too, so I’d be careful if I were you.” 

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, whatever. We have heightened police presence there since the first suspected overdose, consider that before you make any wrong moves.”

That stopped him. “Suspected?” he questioned.

He was a smart one. Her lip curled into a distant smirk.

“I’m not saying it’s not an overdose, I’m just saying they’re too suspicious to be instantly ruled as such. It’s my opinion, not the official statement, and everyone else here at the station and even the DA’s office agree with the drug epidemic explanation. But I’m not sure it’s right to assume that, not yet, not without evidence,” he said. “We judge people way too quickly these days.”

The stranger chuckled again, his voice darker than when she met him, but the darkness he displayed was something she thoroughly enjoyed. It was enticing, eliciting an excitement she hadn’t felt in quite a while.

“Are you talking about me?” he asked sheepishly, and she imagined him smirking. He seemed more confident in that alley, fully in his element, not at all as submissive as he had been around her. 

She wondered if there were two sides to that man whose name she still hadn’t figured out. 

The Sargeant scoffed, opening the door back into the precinct. Hot air met the cold one outside, causing the air to condensate. She could feel it even from a distance, the changes in temperature, the warmth that felt more wrong than it felt right. 

“Just be careful,” he told him. 

The fire escape squeaked and the sound of his boots disappearing into the distance had her frowning. Blind men don’t jump rooftops and they don’t do parkour. There was more to him than she first suspected. He wasn’t the innocent man he made himself out to be. He had dark secrets that went way below the surface. Her curiosity was spiked. She needed to see him again and she needed to have him now. 

She held the file in the air, watching as the edges started to crinkle and the fire spread from her fingertips, infecting the paper. The folder lit up, filling the night with yellow flames and the ashes of the several documents gone with the wind. 

When the paper fully dissolved, she closed her fist and the last remaining flame vanished. 

As the mysterious stranger made his way over the rooftops of the city, she turned in the opposite direction. Her first instinct was to follow, but there was no fun in chasing him just yet. She wanted to play some before she did that and wanted him to know more about her before she completely destroyed and corrupted him. His beautiful soul would only remain a faint memory. 

The doors into the old, abandoned church swung open. The benches were occupied with exactly five people, two of them Eli and Talon, and the rest of what she liked to call her family, but historians would have called them a coven. An assembled group of vampires qualified as such, as did more than one witch sharing the same ideologies and sharing the same living space. That’s what the two species have in common - they are both widely hated by all kinds of religions except for Satanity. 

Six vampires living in a church sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but the place had been abandoned years ago and there was no official owner, so it was run-down and, most importantly, they didn’t require an invitation to enter. So they made their home there, choosing Hell’s Kitchen as their turf and claiming it as their territory. That had been years ago and the small chapel grew significantly to feel like home since then.

“Cold-blooded murder,” she recited as she walked down the aisle, “Blood baths, two injection sites on the neck, suspicious behavior making humans thirsty for blood, and the police declared it a fucking drug epidemic!” she said. “What century are we living in, people? Is this the seventeenth or the eighteenth? Have we traveled back in time so that these words can be used in the same sentence again, right here in New York? What bad dream am I having right now, because it surely can’t be real?”

She reached the pedestal, stepping up in front of the altar. 

“Seriously, what is happening?” she asked. 

They all stared at her with wide, confused eyes. Those weren’t the faces of people who were about to cause a supernatural war of the undead. They were pretty much caught off guard by her accusations and that gave her hope, considering she knew them pretty well by now to know their tells when they were lying. 

“Please tell me that it’s not one of you currently going on a rampage in Hell’s Kitchen, turning innocent teenagers into ruthless, blood-thirsty vampires, and breaking every rule that was set for us when it comes to hunting humans. Tell me none of you is going on a fucking murder spree!”

Her voice boomed off the high stone walls, almost cracking the colorful windows that adorned the church, pictures displaying passages of the bible and glowing bright red under the moonlight while others shone in blue and green. Though that night, red was truly prominent, and it fell right on her pale face, making everything appear dangerously dark about her. 

One of the younger men raised his hand. 

“William,” she called. 

He stood up, clearing his throat, his hands tangled together in front of his body. He was the shy one, the one she had to pick up because he was starving himself due to his fear of what he had become after he was brutally turned by a woman he thought he could trust. It had been a very dark time back then, early twentieth century, and vampires in the States were still on the loose without a care in the world. There were no rules, only bloodshed, and the covens had body counts higher than the entire population. 

“None of us is going on a murder spree,” he said. 

“Are you saying that just because I want to hear you say it or do you actually mean what you just said?” 

“I, um… you know what, I’m just gonna sit back down.” 

“Wise choice.” She nodded. “So, William’s not a killer. What about the rest of you? Anyone trying to start a rebellion?”

Eli shrugged. His answer was obvious, “It’s not me.”

“I figured. You let your dinner stay for breakfast, and you know, you prefer blood whores. Gives you a sense of superiority, which of course, is not how this works. But anyway…”

The group burst out in laughter and Eli glared at her from across the room. “Very mature,” he said. 

“I’m just giving you a taste of your own medicine,” she said. “Now, anyone else wanna share?”

Another hand rose in the air. “I’m honestly just knitting,” the woman said. As a demonstration, she lifted the half-finished scarf - they didn’t even wear scarves - and threw the ball of wool in the air. “I tried my hand at a very complicated cardigan, but that project failed, so I’m just going back to my roots.”

“Thank you, Helen, but I never doubted you, not even for a second. You’re a total sweetheart.”

“It also wasn’t me,” Talon spoke up. “But you already knew that.”

“Yes, because you are too stupid to cause such mayhem,” she stated plainly. “That leaves only one…” she let her eyes roam over the pews until she found who she was looking for. 

His head hung low. Was he… sleeping?

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for fuck’s sake! Can someone please punch Adam in the face?”

Eli stabbed him with his finger. The man shot up, causing the bench to creak. “I’m awake!” he declared. 

“Thank you for gracing us with your presence,” she answered sourly. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

Adam looked around. All eyes were on him. He rubbed his very heavy eyes. “I zoned out after you said bloodbath.” At least his confession was honest. 

She sighed. She was living with a bunch of idiots. She shouldn’t have suspected them. They weren’t capable of the monstrosities that she saw in the police file. 

“Never mind,” she said in exasperation. “You’re all dismissed. Now please, fuck off. I need to be alone so I can fucking shoot myself.” 

She wondered how they even managed to make it this far without getting caught. 

“Talon.”

“Yes?” he replied.

“I need to get back out there. You’re in charge while I’m gone. Make sure that these idiots don’t kill themselves or each other.” 

“Are you sure that is such a good idea? Going out there, I mean? We don’t know what we’re dealing with,” he said. 

“No,” she stated after a slight moment of hesitation, “but I’m the only competent one in this house, so I have to step up.” 

Her version of stepping up was simple. Scout the docks, stake out if necessary, and confront anything she deemed suspicious enough to risk getting caught. She hoped to run into one of the young vampires, at least, so she could make them answer her – the young ones were never bright, always controlled by hunger and the new intensity of their emotions. The anger was the most brutal one. 

It’s like that even for humans – anger blinds, anger poisons, and anger can tear worlds apart and start new generations built on the same ideals. She witnessed anger and greed topple empires that had once been strong and flourished. There is no limit to what anger can make a person do. And vampires, like any other enhanced species, experience most emotions ten times deeper and worse than the ordinary human being. 

She felt that effect even after years of being trapped in the same body, in the same state she was left in back then, and especially as she stood on the roof of the warehouse by the docks, overseeing the Hudson and the city that laid on the other side of the shore. She learned how to control and live with her anger. She learned how to survive. Though there were moments when even the highest form of self-control failed and she was stranded with the blade of a hot knife stuck in her sternum, digging further to tear apart her cold, dead heart. 

The hunger was the worst part. It had the ability to cloud her mind completely and dictate her every behavior with the purpose to stave that hunger, which was a near-impossibility. There was no satisfying a hunger that had been there for centuries, that not even pints of blood could satisfy. In the years she lived, she learned how to live with it, but always going hungry was also no real way to live. It was awful, constant torture, and with every passing century, she grew more tired of the life she was forced to live. 

In the distance, the wood creaked. One of the boats on the harbor displayed movements in its belly. The light only faintly fell on the source of the noise. A figure emerged behind the barrels stocked on the pier, heading straight for the oblivious fisherman who seemed to have stayed around to have a celebratory beer after bringing home quite a large catch of fish. She could smell them across the docks, already tied in bags to take home, but the victor was still inhabiting his boat. Humans have always been particularly obsessed with the art of fishing; it had once been their largest source of food income and fish is still pretty high up on the list of shippable goods. Though there was nothing worse to her nose than the smell of several fish perched together in one place. The stench was astronomical. 

A young vampire was far more sensitive, though once hungry, there was nothing but blood on their minds and so none of them would run at the smallest hint of fish in the air, let alone the fear of getting caught. They didn’t have that kind of perception, not yet at least, because this particular behavior was taught. Primal nature dictated them to be monsters and without the proper training, the hunger would control them instead of them gaining control over the real monster – the insatiable thirst. Self-control is one of the hardest traits to gain, but it goes a long way, especially for creatures of the night who were born to be the opposite of compliant and self-aware. 

If you want to live amongst an emancipated species, you have to learn how to conform to their rules and compromise, if necessary. You have to be willing to change your true nature to fit in and become something more than what history made of you. All of it comes back down to self-control. Without self-control, there can be no rules and without rules, society is doomed to collapse. Rules are what make a society habitable. 

If there was one thing all young vampires had in common it was their lack of stealth. The young boy she had heard lurking behind the barrels across from the fisherman’s boat only checked the corner to his right, his eyes bright red as the moonlight fell on his blacked-out irises. 

She cocked her head to the side. Someone trying to preserve themselves would have gone about this much differently. He stopped tip-toeing when he caught her scent in the air, slowly turning in her direction, and the way he looked straight at her reminded her of a frightened deer or a child caught in the act of stealing something. He was stealing, it just wasn’t something so easily explained. What he was stealing and risking went beyond what the human mind was capable of comprehending, let alone the brain of a young vampire that had absolutely no rational thoughts left behind. 

He froze dead in his tracks and she sighed, almost like a condescending mother trying to teach her disobedient son a valuable lesson.

“I see what you’re doing,” she stated.

The boy licked his lips, revealing parts of his very sharp fangs. Another thing about the young ones – they didn’t know how to mask. One look at them and your first thought would be a vampire. Red eyes, protruding veins around the sockets, pale, clammy skin, and strength and speed they couldn’t control yet. Stealth was little to non existent, as was their sense of self-preservation and control. They were like unruly babies turning into toddlers overnight, the Devil on their shoulders whispering sweet sins into their ears and causing them to make the worst decisions. Right or wrong didn’t exist in their world. They knew what they wanted and they would try everything to get it, rules be damned. 

Even though they all started out like this, not many chose to stay that way anymore. Once you learn how to live by the rules, it’s not that hard, and she grew to love the routine. 

Without someone to teach them, young vampires could turn into everyone’s worst nightmare, and then everything she had worked so hard toward for centuries would have been for nothing. 

“Fair warning,” she said, “Don’t.” 

He bared his teeth. 

“Oh, I’m shaking in my boots. Not. What’s your name, kid?”

He looked no day over seventeen, at best. His mother was probably worried sick. Little did she know that her worst fear, her son dying, had come true but in a far worse sense than she could ever imagine. Who he was now had nothing to do with the boy he used to be. The young vampire staring back into her eyes dark and empty had nothing left inside of him but insatiable hunger. His soul was clouded by the demon inside of him and chances were that it would never fully recover from the monstrosities he committed and would still commit. 

She couldn’t stop him, she knew that. If she took him with her, whoever was responsible for the sudden spike in bloodless corpses would only create more of him, and take more teenagers from their parents until they got what they wanted. She needed to know what that was so she could stop the war that was looming on the horizon. She couldn’t have an apocalypse, not when her life was going semi-normal for a change. She quite liked New York, she wasn’t done yet. 

“Who did this to you?” she asked again. 

“Leave,” he growled. 

“You see, I can’t do that. I want to, believe me, but I can’t. You’re too young, too inexperienced, so I’m trying to tell you this as easy as possible. What you’re doing right now is breaking all sorts of rules. You’re hunting on our turf,” she said. “My turf. My coven and I live here now. If you continue causing mayhem and destruction and turning innocent people into vampires, you’re breaking a truce that is far older than you, your parents, and great-great grandparents together. There is a set of rules for a reason…”

“You need to leave,” the boy repeated.

She ignored him. “This truce,” she continued, “was put in place over a century ago to assure that vampires and humans can live together in peace. Covens are not supposed to turn innocent people into vampires, let alone leave them without someone to teach them the ropes. A vampire out of control poses a danger to all species and if you continue what you’re doing, your actions will lead to war.” Her eyes narrowed. “Or perhaps that’s what you want. Is that it? Do you want us to be at war again?” 

He smirked. 

“You weren’t there the last time. It was ugly. That’s why there are rules, right?” She motioned as if explaining the way the world worked to a toddler. “To prevent such unnecessary bloodshed from happening again. To prevent us from killing each other,” she explained. “That’s what those rules are for, okay? Prevention, not causation. You’re supposed to stick to the rules to prevent a war that would destroy more than it would fix, and world domination doesn’t happen just because you say ‘fuck it!’ And shine a dangerous light on all vampires in the process. We’re not all alike. Every coven knows that,” she said. “Whoever made you is only using you to get ahead. In other words, you’re fucked and doomed to get slaughtered in the end. Either by your own kind, a war, or maybe even one of the very ancient vampire hunters that are only waiting for a chance to get back at us.”

Talking to him was futile. He didn’t follow a word she said and even if he had, he wouldn’t have understood. Young vampires were so stupid, naïve, useless and a nuisance. To think they all started out this way grossed her out, even though she made saving the lost causes of the world her life’s work. 

Her logic was twisted and more often than not illogical, but she was wise and considered herself above average in intelligence, simply because she had been around for quite a while. She saw empires rise and fall. She stared into the darkest pits of existence and still managed to come back from the abyss. Her life had been a series of doors in her face, which led to several life lessons being taught over the course of centuries. She was no angel, but she wasn’t stupid and she had one job: make sure the truce would remain intact. And she would do just that, even if she had to eliminate that young boy in order to do so.

He didn’t say anything for quite a while. “Get out of my way,” he growled. Of course, he would settle on something as dramatically pathetic as this catchphrase. “I’m starving and I won’t hesitate to hurt you if you keep me from my meal.” 

“Ouch,” she cocked an eyebrow, “You really bruise my ego, thinking you can get through me without getting hurt yourself. I’d suggest you think about your actions,” she said, “but I know that I’m practically talking to a wall right now, so thinking isn’t an option. You’re incapable of rational thought.”

Fear was the last thing that came to her mind when he showed off his teeth again.

“Listen, I just want to know who’s behind this. Who’s leading your coven, kid?”

“Fuck you!” he spat.

“Hey now, no need to get vulgar. I asked you a normal question. Who’s behind this and is there a chance I might get to have a conversation with the one in charge? Tell me and I will gladly point you in the direction of a different hunting ground,” she said. 

The boy nodded toward the boat. “I want that one. He’s mine. Don’t even try to stop me.”

“Yeah, but you can’t have him.”

“I’m going to have him.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Stop disagreeing with everything I’m saying!”

She shrugged. “Can’t help that you’re wrong all the time. I’ve never learned how to shut up. It’s genetic; centuries of untreated trauma are at fault here, and of course, your general wrongness plays a big part in my need to disagree with your embarrassing hypotheticals.”

“Go to hell!”

“Already did. You know, of course, pride always goes before the fall. Such a human trait to have; multiply it by a thousand, where does that leave you? Certainly not more sophisticated than me, someone with hundreds of years of experience. You need to be careful, young vampires like you are at an even higher risk to be discovered and murdered before you even get the chance to learn what you were given with this transition.” 

Finally, he launched at her. She sped away, gone in a matter of a second, and appeared a few feet behind him, heaving a heavy sigh. “You kids are all the same,” she declared, looking into his very distraught eyes. He couldn’t believe she had switched that fast. “Fast but reckless and extremely easy to trick.”

A moment later, he stood in her spot and she was gone again, crossing her arms behind her back.

“You done?” she asked. His attempts to attack her only made her laugh, “Oh, so terrifying.”

She had him right where she wanted him, so agitated that he spiraled out of control, no longer aware of where he was going or what he was doing. She watched him dance for a bit. By now, he surely must have realized he wasn’t going to win. But the pride was stronger and he kept going, trying to get to her in all kinds of ways, though never succeeding. 

“I feel bad for you. What would your mother say if she saw you like this?”

He stopped. His left eye twitched. She saw the wheels on his head turning and she thought, finally, I got him. 

What did she say? Pride goes before the fall.

She caught the billy club that soared through the air in their direction only a few inches from the boy’s face. Her lips pursed and she stared at the red object, feeling the heavy metal between her fingers and the small ripples in the material. 

When she turned her attention back to the target, the boy was gone. He had sped away, using the moment of distraction to run. She couldn’t sense him anywhere; he must have escaped the docks completely, not even staying close to the Hudson. He was on his way home. The fisherman was safe and she had diverted quite the disaster, but she still deemed the interruption rude, including the attempt to impale that poor boy with the billy club. She had thought about it, but she would have never gone through with it. Whoever the weapon belonged to had to have been close by. 

Her night just kept getting better and better. That was her assessment, at least, until she heard his heartbeat again. The scent of him brushed the hairs in her nose and she took a whiff, feeling his presence so close in the air, she stopped to let the sensation wash over her. The fire inside of her belly ignited once again, the excitement tickling her cold skin and leaving nothing but lust and hunger to rummage through her veins. 

Footsteps thudded against the asphalt, stones crunching under his weight. They were slightly wet from the previous rain, causing a slight slip. 

She lowered her hand with the billy club, turning to look over her shoulder at the supposed blind man in a suit. She had seen that get-up before in the papers when he first showed his masked face in Hell’s Kitchen. She never thought much of it since he had never posed a problem before. 

The tables had officially turned.

Her lips parted to chuckle. “This is awkward,” she said. In the distance, the waves of the Hudson crashed into the riverbanks. It was colder than usual with a breeze in her hair that caused the water to go wild. 

She fiddled with the red billy club, smirking, “Does this belong to you?” 

“Who are you?” his voice sounded significantly lower than the night she first met him at that godforsaken gala. 

To think she didn’t want to go in the first place; she would have never met him if she hadn’t let Talon convince her that she was supposed to show her face. A political move, he called it, to assert her dominance, which she did, but not in the areas that mattered. 

“What are you doing in my city?”

She pouted. “So many questions.”

“Who was that boy you were just talking to? Where did he go?”

“What happened to hello, how are you? What’s your name?” She retorted. “Take a girl out for a drink first, would you? Back then men used to still be gentlemen.”

His chuckle was rather dark, a sound that made her shiver and imagine what it would sound like to reduce him to whimpers instead. The man was a brat, no doubt, not easy to force into submission, but she had cracked worse nuts. Surrendering wasn’t her forte, but she could make it everyone else’s.

“I’m not here to play games,” he told her.

“But I am,” she said. 

“What do you want?”

“As far as I can recall, I made that pretty clear when we first met.”

“When we- I don’t know you,” he lied and she realized how bad he was at it for a lawyer. 

She licked her lips, the fangs threatening to come out. She was starving. “I quite like an oblivious man. Makes things so much more exciting.”

“Listen, I don’t have time for small talk. There have been several suspicious murders around this part of New York and you’re currently my only connection, so you better talk before I make you.” 

“Just out of curiosity,” she said, “what does making me entail?” 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

He headed straight ahead, determined to grab her, and she watched with an amused crinkle in her eyes. The downward tilt of his lips was truly something to laugh over. 

She allowed him to push her against the wall behind them. His force was surprising – those arms didn’t just look scrumptious, they actually carried a lot of strength for a human. 

The stranger bared his teeth and she smirked, eyeing his focused expression. He tried to look intimidating but failed miserably. One of his hands braced against the cement beside her head and the other landed around her neck, a threatening motion to assert dominance. They were all so predictable and foolish enough to think that a woman like her couldn’t fight back.

Everywhere she went, she was underestimated. If only everyone knew her true nature, they wouldn’t be so reckless as to push her into corners over and over again. Or in this case, against cement walls on the docks in the middle of the night, right in the middle of her hunting ground with not another human soul close enough to hear him scream. And water is knowingly a great way to dispose of a dead body.

He squeezed tighter and she unclenched her jaw, wriggling out of his grasp in the process. “You’re a kinky bastard, aren’t you?” she asked. 

“Answer my question,” he bit back.

“If you answer mine first.”

“This isn’t a game. Lives are at stake here! Listen, I don’t know who you are or what you are,” he said, “but if I find out that you had anything to do with these innocent kids getting slaughtered or know something about this new drug everyone is talking about, I will find you and I will destroy you.”

“You know, if it weren’t for the way you smell, I wouldn’t have recognized you, all confident in your little devil’s costume,” she purred.

Her finger slid up the leather of his suit, brushing over his tensing abs hiding behind the protective gear and she sucked in a sharp breath at the illusion she received.

“All of this tension and I still don’t know your name.”

He caught her hand and pinned it over her head. She squealed. He was full of surprises, and it only turned her on more. She wanted to bite him, really bite him, and suck on his pulse until he was crying her name and praying for God to save him, but the pleasure would only drive him further to hell and God wouldn’t be coming. She wanted him to writhe under her touch, taste him and make him come undone over and over again and once he believed she was done with him, she would start her torture anew, right from the beginning, pushing him from the precipice just far enough so she could catch him, bring him back to the top and then do the same thing in repetition all over again.

He roamed her face aimlessly, as it seemed, but barely visible behind the mask. “How?” he growled.

“Wouldn’t you want to know?” She chuckled. “It’s unfortunate that we had to meet again like this, but…” In an instant, she had them flipped around, her arms pinning him to the wall instead of herself and her strength remained unmatched. He could struggle, it was of no use. She had the upper hand.

Her breath tickled his ear as she spoke, far too close for comfort, “You smell absolutely divine. It’d be a shame to waste all that sweet, sweet blood for a second time,” she said.

He couldn’t move. Sharp nails raked through his hair and over his scalp, tugging his head to the side until his throat was completely bare to her, naked, exposed. His aorta pulsated wildly under his skin. She could see it bulge with every beat of his heart. That strong, masculine heart, stronger than anything she had heard or felt before.

She tasted the sweat on his skin and the salt of threatening tears in the air. If he was turned on or scared, she wasn’t sure. The lines between fear, pain, and pleasure blurred. It was all the same to her, anyway. Getting close to her would most certainly draw everyone under her spell at some point, no matter the sex or gender, and all the heads would continue turning to her whenever her presence entered a room full of lively human beings. Only then her pheromones could work their wonders.

The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen struggled against her grasp but to no avail. He was powerless, just how she liked him, how she wanted and craved him.

She licked a long stripe over his pulse point. “I want to taste you so badly,” she whispered. “I want nothing more than to dig my teeth into your pretty little throat and suck you dry, and then I want to get on my knees and eat your cum so I can feel it mix with the essence of what your heart has to give, and then you’d be mine. I’d own you. You’d be completely at my mercy, you’d be bound to me and it would feel so fucking good. It would feel so fucking good for the both of us.”

Her fangs began to scratch the surface, enough to make him feel it but not nearly enough to break the skin. She tasted the salt of his sweat even clearer now, wondering how much deeper she had to go to finally reach the source of the sweetness that surrounded him.

“Don’t you want that?” Her hand joined the words slipping from her silver tongue and wrapping around him like a poisonous snake. “Don’t you want to let me corrupt you, to bite you, to eat you until all you can feel is the pure pleasure of having me all over you? My lips, my tongue, my teeth, my body on yours everywhere, all the fucking time… oh, that would be such an orgasmic sight, and the pleasure you’d be feeling, I can’t even describe it. You won’t know until you at least try and believe me, you should. Isn’t that something you want, darling? Doesn’t your body crave to be caressed and receive undivided attention from someone who knows how to make you feel good?”

He sounded small, fragile, and utterly broken when he next spoke, and she hadn’t even started yet. “What are you doing to me?” he asked. The heat of his breath mixed with the cold night air. “What are you?”

She chuckled. “The better question is, what am I not?” The tip of her tongue moved from his neck to his cheek until she reached the corner of his luscious lips. Her nose dug into his cheekbone. “Fuck,” she said. “The things I want to do to you are far from innocent.”

But so fucking good. 

Even with fear holding the reins to his body, he melted into her touch. He turned into a puddle of melted chocolate right at her feet. She could have asked anything of him, he would have done so just for the sake of pleasing her. But she wanted him to do it voluntarily not because the smell of her pheromones managed to drive any man into a state of co-dependency. 

She wanted him to want her for the sake of wanting her. Like this, she would only compel him to do things he would never choose to do out of his own free will, and while the thought of having him right there on the docks was exciting and had her cunt squeezing around thin air, already wet and wanting, the only treacherous thing about her that was entirely defenseless and could be forced into submission with just a simple flick of the tongue over plump, rosy lips. He had her on the cloud of dangerous euphoria in seconds, already stumbling on the edge and about ready to slip, lose herself, and lose control only to have him, finally, in all the ways she pleased and all the ways that would make him feel good. 

She could give him anything he had ever wanted, give him a time that not a single human could give him, and make him come undone inside and outside so many times, he would pass out from the pure pleasure. But he wouldn’t regret it. He would go out this as the winner, fucked out and blissful and perhaps a little addicted to the taste of her as well – she was sure she would be addicted to him as well. She almost already was, just from the scent of his blood and the way his body shivered at the slightest touch. He was so responsive, so human, yet stronger and more unique than anyone else could ever be. He was the one thing she wanted and she was ready to take it as soon as he wanted it, too. 

She was used to taking what she wanted however she wanted and screwing the consequences, quite literally, but not with him. With him, the need bubbling up deep inside of her belly was different. It wasn’t just a hunger for blood or a hunger for sex and pleasurable violence, he caused much more than that within her already conflicted soul, and as enticing as that was, the connection confused her. There was a reason she didn’t let anyone close, using sex as a mere pastime activity to get the edge off – she couldn’t toy with him because chances were she would reduce his survival chances to zero. 

Allowing a human like him close would only cause pain in the long run, and she’d been through enough of that for several lifetimes. And that wasn’t even an overstatement. 

Her lips brushed over his momentarily before she forced herself to pull away, widening the distance between them. 

The poor man slumped against the wall, his world rotating. He took it much better than most people, but the sweet taste of his fear in the air reminded her that he was just human, after all. A curious, enticing, and mysterious human, but a human being nonetheless.

Humans serve only one purpose for vampires like animals serve a purpose to humans – predators hunt their victims to feast, sustain themselves and survive. Humans are essentially animals and vampires used to be humans turned into hunters, predators, and dangerous perverts who craved blood to survive while at the same time using it for twisted, sexual purposes that had God locking the gates of heaven to anyone who even dared to fantasize about it. There is no ancestor ready to turn around in their grave because vampires were born from lust and hunger, and the first vampires had been carnal creatures as well, ready to go at it like animals without a single brain cell at their disposal.

Vampires weren’t like that anymore. Sex still played a huge role in their existence, but their main purpose was to fit in. They wanted a peaceful life. Taking everything they wanted was no longer possible, their chances were limited, but at least they didn’t have to fear imminent death anymore. Not ever since the truce was first established, anyway. 

If those young vampires continued killing and turning innocent children without mercy, and their coven even supported their decisions, the peace would have been short-lived. She could already see it swindling with every passing second, though fear was not something she wanted to concern herself with, not yet. Her life had more important things to offer before she rang the warning bells on all the vampires she knew, therefore causing a certain commotion that would send the gravestones rolling. Not yet, she decided, but if they kept going at this rate, certainly very soon. 

“Go,” she growled into the night. “Do yourself a favor and stay away from the Hudson until further notice. You can never know what blood-thirsty and murderous monsters might lurk in the dark around here,” she said. 

He didn’t move. 

“Did you hear what I said?”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” he said, his voice remaining steady. 

She frowned. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, you don’t scare me. Manipulate me all you want, this isn’t the first time an otherwise scary woman fails to put me under her spell. But,” he smirked, “don’t take it personally. I’m sure you look pretty scary.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she cooed, her eyes switching from their natural color to a glossy black. “You have no idea who you’re talking to, do you?”

The red nails adorning her fingers grew sharper and in size. If only he could have regained his eyesight, he surely would have changed his mind. Her skin turned even whiter, the bags under her eyes sinking deep into her skull, replaced instead by thick, purple veins that transported the venom from the core of her existence into them. She was chaos, an abomination, humanity’s biggest threat – not scary was a description she wouldn’t accept.

No matter how blind he was, he had to follow the natural order of things like everyone else. He was supposed to be afraid of her. If he couldn’t find it in himself to show her, all of her games would inevitably lose their fun factor. And her ego would suffer the most. 

Open an ancient book about demons and a picture like that might stare back at you. 

“It takes a lot more than dark magic to scare the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” he told her.

It was cute. Remarkable, really. She laughed at his attempt to make himself feel better, and partly because she was starting to grow upset with him.

“Somehow, being infuriated with you only makes you so much more attractive to me,” she said. 

“You still don’t scare me.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Five seconds. The heartbeat of the fisherman rang loudly in her ear. She was starving, her last meal far too long in the past. He wriggled in her grasp, crying, begging for her to let him go, to have mercy on him and, “Oh, God, your face- what happened to your face? Are those- are those fangs? Please, I have a family!” 

Her laugh reverberated in her chest. The man stiffened when she tore at his hair to position his head sideways, his neck in perfect reach for her mouth. She looked at the man in the suit before her, his jaw clenched, and he had his billy clubs at the ready. They weren't going to hurt her, he knew that. She would catch them with ease. He could only stand by and pretend he wasn’t scared even though he had never been more in sync with the feeling. They were a package deal when it came to her. 

“Don’t worry,” she told the poor fisherman, “You’ll see your family again, and you won’t even have to remember a thing.” 

Her mouth opened.

“Don’t,” Daredevil threatened – yes, it was a threat, not even a warning – from the other side of her, and she saw the conflict dance clearly over the revealed lower part of his face. “You don’t have to hurt him,” he said. “The man’s innocent.”

She shrugged. “I know.”

“He has a family.”

“I know. My ears are quite impeccable, can you believe that?”

“How about you think this through before you act? There’s a lot of ways you can go about spiting me, but pulling an innocent bystander into this is not fair. Come on, you said you wanted me, so take me.” 

As lucrative as that sounded, she had a different plan. 

She hummed, “No.”

“Why? Are you scared? Perhaps you’re not such a bad person after all. Is that it? You want me to be afraid of you, so you’re trying to hurt that man until I cave? Well, I won’t, but I’m offering myself to you instead of him, so don’t try so hard. Just take me. Take your shot.”

Oh, he sounded so amused – time to wipe that smirk off his beautiful face. 

“Ancient advice,” she ignored everything else he had said, “Don’t be a martyr,” she said and her lips rained down on the fisherman’s throat in a fiery passion. “History hates martyrs.”

“No, history only consists of martyrs.”

“The official version. The truth lies much deeper than your little human brain could ever explore.”

Daredevil was right about one thing; the man was innocent. No matter how she turned it, there was nothing wrong with him, so death would have been unnecessary punishment.

She wasn’t going to kill him just to spite the man she craved to actually have a taste of. She was just going to take a sip, still a quarter of her hunger and then move on, heal the man’s wounds and make him forget this ever happened. He would be disoriented, but he would be fine. 

Humans are the most susceptible to manipulation.

“Don’t be afraid,” she told the fisherman, “I’m just going to have a little taste of the forbidden fruit.”

Her teeth dug into his aorta and she sucked, tasting the blood that squirted into her mouth and all over her face in thick stripes. He tasted nothing like the feast standing right across from her, but it didn’t matter. Her mind shut off. The hunger moved to the forefront and at that moment, everything else stopped existing. It was just her and the life of this particular human in her hands, the taste of his blood exploding on her tongue and her stomach churning with the endless hunger that only got fueled with the small taste. She wanted more, needed it, but she knew better than to let the desperation overpower her. 

Passed out and short of a few pints of blood, the fisherman fell to the ground. She licked her lips. He was everywhere, even stuck on her clothes and traces of him had gotten tangled in her hair. He was a bleeder, that much was sure, and if she hadn’t licked over his neck to seal the wound, he surely would have bled out. 

Poor thing, but sentiment was useless in a case like this. He would make it. No use crying over a blood bag, she was taught. Humans lived to feed them. It was their purpose and she had no reason to feel bad for wanting to be full for a change, not go to bed hungry because she wouldn’t dare touch someone that wasn’t already in a plastic bag. She deserved this. 

And Daredevil cowered in fear at the sounds he was met with. Her night had turned from a total shit show into the sight of victory. 

She stepped forward and he flinched away, finally. “You wanted to know what I am. This is it!” she declared. “I’m the monster parents warn their children about and I’m the one thing every church fears because I happen to stand against everything religion stands for.”

“Dear God,” he breathed out.

“God can’t help me now,” she said. Her eyes moved to the sky, watching the stars disappear behind a thick cloud of smog and thousands of lights from the city center. “He stopped doing that the second I died. He’s dead to me now. He cannot be found. There is no God, there is only hunger and I’m probably the most merciful of them all, so I’d run if I were you. I’d run before another one of those demons God gave up on saving, jumps out of the dark and decides to suck the life from your pretty little body. I’d run,” she said, “because there is not a millisecond that goes by in which I do not want to tear your neck open and drink your blood while I also desperately want to suck your dick between my lips and do the same to those veins too, and the longer you stay the more my self-control starts to fade into the thin smoke that comes out of your mouth whenever you speak.”

He shivered and the color faded from his skin, blood pooling in his veins at twice the amount and the smell almost knocked her off her already hazy feet from the first course. 

More, her body screamed, but she held back. She learned how to hold back. No one had to die tonight.

“Run now or I’m cutting this short, and then Hell’s Kitchen will no longer have a Daredevil to protect them from the likes of me. They won’t even get the chance to mourn because it’d be impossible for me to drop your body in the Hudson after getting a taste of your blood.” 

He turned around, finally getting the hint to run. He jumped the wall up to the rooftop too gracefully for a blind man. She watched, her bloody lips moving into a smile. 

“Fear is healthy,” he heard her loud and clear. “Don’t let your pride cloud that healthy feeling from manifesting. And find me,” she said, “when you’re ready to talk without underestimating me.”

By the time she looked back up, Daredevil was gone with the wind, but his scent still lingered long after he had left and she would take it to bed with her where the most unholy of things would happen to the sound of a name she didn’t even know. 

She should have fucked him when she had the chance.

[blood-injections]

Thinking about Korse in the comics when he’s been gradually getting free will and making his own choices after god knows how long of being the directors lap dog and of all things he’s found love and happiness in this cold city but then it gets taken away from him. He’s actively hiding the relationship and protecting his lover because as he says in the comic, he can’t take the day off to relax becuase “I can’t do anything that would make her suspect you exist- that we exist.” Because his lover would be killed for it and he’d be severely punished. But the director figures him out and seriously, I adore Becky Cloonan but fuck her for the way she drew the fear and pain in Korse’s eyes. He’s not at home and the directors talking and you can see how fucking scared he is and he runs home to find his lover slaughtered and the bedroom covered in his blood and he cradles his body and cries. Once he was a killing machine with no thought of his own and now he’s on the other end of it all, having the only thing he loves being taken away. And the director tries to reprogram him, saying that love has made him weak and that emotions have no place in battery city, in a heartless killer like him. She says “there’s something wrong with you and we are going to fix it.” but he refuses to be fixed. Before this happens he already let Blue escape, says he’s had enough too. And then he finally, for the first time in his life, fights back. Owns that there’s nothing wrong with him, that the only thing that’s wrong is the director and bat city. He destroys the thing that was meant to reprogram him and he kills the director and says “no more killing” and as battery city is saved he flees, driving into the desert, headed who knows where, with a picture of him and his lover clipped to the sun visor and he touches it so gently, fingers lingering tenderly over a happy memory.

He’s free, but if he went to anyone they wouldn’t pity him even if they knew what he had lost, because everyone else has lost so much more at his hands. He’s done so many unforgivable things, killed the Fab Four and who knows how many other rebels. But that also wasn’t him, he was controlled by the director, the drugs, he wasn’t a person until the last couple years. But nobody accepts that, just continues to fear him even though the war is over and when all he wants is to not be lonely.

[somethingclevermahogony]

OC Intro: The Deep Sun

Hello everyone! Here is the newest OC intro. This one is gonna be a bit different than other introductions that I have done. The next poll will be up tonight!

Name: Da Dóp Fricandel "The Deep Sun"

"I have forgotten what my name was when I first ventured here from one of the spirit realms, I cannot tell you which one. That was millennia ago, when mountains were young, when the ocean water was sweet, before what you call the Age of Glass and Metal. In the tongue of those whose spawn now surround you I was called Da Dóp Fricandel, that is The Deep Sun. I rather like that name. I believe it suits me."

This continues below the cut!

Family

Children/Creation: The Kosheki

Narul looked out at the pale crowd, they looked back at him with their expressionless eyes. “What are these…things?” The Deep Sun laughed, a surprisingly soft and musical sound. “I’m shocked that you don’t know Narul. Come on, make a guess.” "Why would I know what these monsters are? I’ve never seen these things in my life." The Deep Sun sighed, shaking his head. " Oh, how times have changed. They are like you, dear boy." " These are spiritbloods?" Narul asked, revolted. " No, no! Well at least not these ones. These are humans, or at least a more perfect form of them."

Homeland/Place of Origin

One of the realms of the spirits, exactly which one is unknown. Prior to the Age of Glass and Metal the Deep Sun was simple spirit, a rather small spirit of the soil and rock, who lived on the Isle of Stān, now called the Island of the Kosheki.

The accursed island loomed ahead of them, a great rocky crag towering over a foundation of verdant green hills, jutting out of the water, lonely and cold.  “There she is,” Istek said, gazing at the island solemnly. The birds that circled the stony peak called out mournfully into the mist. The rocky beach was littered with the wrecks of ships, hundreds of them from every era, all in various states of decay. Great warships, their wooden ribs jutting into the sky like the bones of slain dragons. Royal barques, smashed by the waves, their ornate sides now choked with algae and rot. Merchants ships, their contents haphazardly strewn across the white sand, Ikopeshi raiding canoes torn asunder and scattered amongst the beach stones.The newest vessel was a Knoshic fishing boat, its sail still flapping softly in the breeze. A great hole had been made in its side, as if a great something had ripped into it.

History

"I trust that you have heard of the Great Calamity?"

" The fairytale?" Narul asked cautiously.

There was silence for a moment, and then the demon tilted his head back and laughed with such intensity that the doors of the cages rattled.

" A fairytale? Oh my boy. I like you already! Tell me what you know about the Great Calamity, what fairytales do they tell in your city?"

Narul closed his eyes, remembering the stories Bira had told him.

" A long time ago, the people of Kobani were rich and prosperous. They made great cities of glass and metal. They grew so powerful that they thought themselves better than the gods. For their hubris, they were punished, the great cities were destroyed, and only the pious remained. Everyone in Kobani now are the descendants of those pious people." He thought of the tunnel and the strange orbs. Glass and metal.

The demon chuckled and wagged a finger.

" No. No. All wrong. You savages weren't punished for your impiety. Do you truly think that is such a pressing matter to the gods? Do you think that the arbiters of the universal laws of nature care if you pray or make the proper sacrifices? They ruled over Kobani long before your kind or any of your kin were here, before any sentient life besides we spirits were here. No, your crime was far worse. Your ancestors discovered a way to harvest the het. The soul. The spirit. You found a way to rip the essence of being from its place and turn it into fuel for your machines and to light your houses."

" But that's impossible," Narul interjected, the het was an intangible thing, it was no more possible to secure it then it was to trap light in a bottle.

" Oh, it was very much possible. And when a het is destroyed, burnt up, it is gone forever. The soul will not reincarnate. It will not continue on to the next world. By harvesting het, a being is doomed to oblivion, thus interrupting a thread in the intricate web of reincarnation crafted by the gods. So the het that is destroyed in Kobani means that a baby is not born in the next world."

" I don’t believe that people would do that…it's evil, why would they?" Narul muttered softly.

" Oh, I haven't gotten to my favorite part, my naive little friend. At first, you people only harvested het from animals, which caused untold ecological catastrophe not only here on Kobani but on other worlds too. Entire ecosystems withered, species vanished. But it wasn't enough; your cities grew too big, too power-hungry, you longed for luxury. So you turned on each other; your criminals, your prisoners of war, your destitute, your diseased, your unwanted. Your ancestors turned mortals souls into commodities, your drove your own cousins the tree-tenders to extinction. The depths of your species’ depravity is truly awe inspiring. The gods made this world and gifted you the privilege of living amongst it, they filled it with beauty. Every human could live in comfort, could go to sleep with a full belly and roof over their heads. You were loved, cherished. We spirits lived to make the world one which suited you, we strived to make the world beautiful and fruitful. We loved you, myself included. We gave you the tools to make the world more beautiful than you had found it. But you squandered the gifts that you were given. In your twisted, broken, greedy little heads, you justified how one man could live with the means of thousands of his peers while others starved in the mud. You consumed and destroyed with such voracity and foolishness that you drove my kin to despair. Your gross negligence of your fellow man, your greed and hatred, that is what birthed the first demons, you twisted us, disillusioned us.”

Narul felt a knot in his stomach as he listened to the demon speak, he didn’t dare respond.

 The Deep Son continued. “In their overconsuming need for more, your ancestors consigned millions to the void. And when they started attacking spirits. Needless to say, that was just too much. The gods knew that if you were allowed to continue like this then the world would be thrown into complete chaos, and all life would crumble. To save the cycle of reincarnation, and ultimately life on all worlds from falling apart, the gods elected to wipe out your civilization."

" And that was the Great Calamity," Narul whispered softly.

" It was glorious. The world burned and froze and burned again until your kind and all of their creations were scoured from the face of Kobani. Your cities which reached towards the heavens were smashed to dust. Though, of course, some of my kin still had a soft spot for you creatures, they hoped that you could be reformed. They invited you into their homes deep in the mountains, with the condition that you leave your tools behind you, tools like that.” He waved a dismissive hand towards the strange metal suit which lay dusty and abandoned among the refuse. “Those are your ancestors, not the pious or noble. The poor. Those unfortunate sods who could not so easily prey on the world around them."

Narul looked at the metal walls and at the gaunt figures.

" Is that what this is? One of those places where the good spirits hid people?"

" Oh no. Men made this, a marvel of human engineering. You see some of your kind were not content with paying for their crimes, for reincarnating in the next world, as they would have. And so they built this place in hopes that when the gods had finished their justice on the world above, they could emerge triumphant with their machines and continue their wickedness. They lived down here in comfort, men of business and government. The fools thought they were so clever; they thought they could hide from us, from justice. But I found them, and I punished them for their arrogance. I whispered to them in the shadows. I destroyed their food, and I plunged them into darkness. I ripped apart their machines and engines. I drove them mad.” The demon chuckled. “With no food, they fed on each other. I scrapped away their pretensions and revealed the feral evil beasts that they were. All their culture and superiority was wiped away in an instant. All it took was a bit of hunger. And when they had forgotten what light was like, when they had been reduced to vermin cowering in the shadows. I revealed myself to them, their Sun. They are my Kosheki. They worship me, Narul. Look at them. All they know is hunger and love for me. I am their god, their everything.”

The Deep Sun reached out to caress the face of one of the Kosheki. “ I have molded them into a more beautiful human. Perhaps not physically, but mentally. I have taken their concept of self. There is no greed, no hatred. They do not murder, rape, or steal. They know only a childlike love, a pure love. They appreciate every meal, they dance without fearing judgment, and they look at me as their father, their warming sun. Look at them, Narul. Innocent. Gentle.” He cooed softly.

Appearance

Narul turned towards the deep rumbling voice. At the center of the room sat what he had thought was a great bonfire. He saw the face first, peering out from the tongues of flame. A man's face, though twisted, the lips stretched, the crevices of the face deep, as if they had been carved there by hammer and chisel. The figure reclined on the floor, his chin resting upon his clawed hand. His nudity was disguised by the inferno that emanated from his crimson skin. The eyes glowed, in each a single glowing ember surrounded by black coal, burning deep into Narul, terrible and yet beautiful.

She looked down into the calm waters and saw it, a face looking back up at her from just below the surface. It was human, or at least human in shape. The glowing red face was surrounded by a mane of fiery locks that danced and undulated in defiance of any current. It's eyes burned like coals. As it looked up at her its lips twisted into a smile. Two of the monster's claws took hold of the sides of the ship and began to shake the vessel to and fro.

Before his eyes the demon began to contort and change, his body roiling and stretching, extra limbs erupting from his scaly skin. Its body was long and sleek like a snake, its torso supported by six clawed arms. Its face remained the same.

Personality

The Deep Sun is cruel, vindictive, he relishes in pain and humiliation. His view on humans is shaped by the pain and fear experienced by millions of spirits, mortals, and animals that fell to Ekatsim Technology.

Gender/Pronouns

(Most spirits are not gendered, Narul typically refers to the demon with he/they pronouns)

Sexual Orientation

Asexual and Aromantic (Most spirits do not feel sexual attraction of any sort)

Relationships

The Deep Sun's relationship with his creations, the Kosheki and the spiritblood, Sadaric, is manipulative and cruel, reliant on control and possession. He does seem to feel some sort of tenderness for his “pets”, though whether that could be considered love is doubtful.

Favorite Color

Black

Favorite Food

Most spirits do not eat, though they do enjoy the aroma of cooking food. The Deep Sun enjoys the smell of the Kosheki's meals, which typically consist of the poor sailors that land on the Island's shore.

Biggest Fear

Ekatism Technology

Arkodian Bronze

Sage

No (Spirit/Demon, capable of magic dependent of sagecraft)

Literate

No

No excerpt here since most of this post is made up of excerpts haha

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