#but ever since then it truly is like being cursed with knowledge a mortal like you should never have come to possess | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

volotheism · 8 months

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𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧; Conplecte Abyssum. ☽

Name: Volo Age: 27 (as of the end of PLA) Height: 6'3" Date of Birth: Unknown, within the Year of the Garchomp (Dragon) Hometown: Remote village in the borderlands of Johto and Kanto. Current Location: Anywhere, everywhere, whenever, however.

Pokémon (Team): Spiritomb, Roserade, Lucario, Garchomp, Hisuian Arcanine, Celestican Togekiss(Dragon/Fairy). Additional Pokémon: Multiple Togepi, Giratina (when properly channeled)

TRAITS

Positive: Persuasive, action-oriented, resourceful, strong people skills, curious, ambitious, observative. Negative: Impulsive, impatient, self-serving to a fault, manipulative, prone to hubris, penchant for lying.

MBTI: ESTP (The Entrepreneur) Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Sexuality: He has no clue.

BACKGROUND

❛ You see, ever since I was young, whenever I met with something painful or heartbreaking... I couldn't help but wonder why life was so unfair. Why I was cursed to live through such things. Of course, I imagine we all go through something like that. Eventually, I chose to direct all my energy into my own natural curiosity and ambition. And what tickled my curiosity more strongly than anything were the mysteries to be found in legends, in history, in ruins... You see, I fancied that by unraveling these mysteries, I could find out how the world itself came to be–and with that knowledge, maybe even forge a new, better world. ❜

' Before we were gifted names, Before we were men, We were 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬. Before men crowned themselves as the authority of the land, We saw the eyes of the gods posed above the same teeth that were bared by fellow beasts.

To be a 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 was to be closer to 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫. '

The story of the world nearly collapsing atop Spear Pillar, begins not in Hisui-- but across the sea, in the land of monsters. Villages crumbled as earthquakes rocked the west. Monarchs were humbled at the capital east of the mountains. Hubris against supernatural forces larger than mortal men was deemed a death sentence. Clans and individuals residing in Kanto's plains and Johto's mountains were beginning to flee and seek refuge elsewhere from the great surge of rampaging beasts, and the natural disasters that resulted from their power.

Volo was only a child when he learned that the old ones still held absolute power over their domain, though it took a willingness to understand their tongue in order to hear their messages.

The reverence of spirits both minor and major was common practice in the time that Volo lived. Every living thing had a soul, and all souls were connected in one way or another. He supposed that was why the collective attitude of his village drew more and more grim as the community struggled with a wave of disease that they simply could not shake off after a particularly dry summer, leading into a bitter winter. He recalled being told by an older villager that the land itself was sick because it was full of anger-- that it was rippling into the monsters and people that called it home. And Volo truly believed this man-- a hardened elder who had lost his arm while defending himself from an aggressive, territorial Tyranitar in belly of Mt. Silver.

Pokémon were, quite frankly, mysterious and dangerous creatures in the eyes of many people. There was very little that the average person understood about these monsters, and those who were brave and skilled enough to tame one, were held in high regard. People paired with Pokémon partners were given the task of protecting the village from larger threats-- be it other Pokémon, other people, or even natural disasters.

This village, cradled in a valley just between Johto and Kanto, was what Volo had called home since he was born. He'd always been there, living an unassuming, but calm life. Both of his parents were appreciated by the village for their agricultural knowledge and skill, growing produce for consumption, and other wonderous fruits such as the apricorn-- the apricorns, highly valued by the traveling Ginkgo Guild, were a favorite of the merchants, who often bought as much of the family's stock as possible whenever it was time for a harvest. This reliable stream of income was appreciated, especially as the village's population seemed to fluctuate.

"Lots of the young ones leave once they reach a certain age. Not a bad thing at all, there's a whole world to explore. Oh, but it does get dangerous-- nobody knows everything that Pokémon are capable of," mentions a calligrapher, sitting up from where he was hunched over his paper, wincing and cracking his back.

"Those Ginkgo Guild folks, they sure do paint traveling around in a positive way."

"Tch, says you, why do you think they're always recruiting? Because they go west, or up north, and slip off of a cliff, or get killed by a vicious beast. If I was losing workers left and right to disasters, I'd be recruiting all day too!" Scoffs a carpenter, wiping the sweat from his brow as the summer sun beats down on him. A Wartortle sways her tail, and cools off her irritated companion.

Volo was only a child when he learned the power of 'want.' The value of working for your wants was instilled in him by his parents, and by the village residents. 'Anything you want can be yours if you work hard enough for it,' was something that he was told very frequently.

"-- I think I'll go out there!" Pipes up Volo, once he turns 11. "I want to see what types of Pokémon and people are outside of this place."

Pensively, his parents agree to it, and wave off their only son as he departs on his first trade route with the guild.

Volo took to the lifestyle very well. He had the opportunity to travel across the lands, searching far and wide with the guild for supplies and goods to sell in villages, and budding settlements. The distribution of a brand new technology, the Poké Ball, was one of the Ginkgo Guild's newest claim to fame, and Volo was able to practice with this tool a great deal on his travels.

Goods and services was not Volo's passion, however. No. He had always been a naturally curious boy, fascinated with the monsters that inhabited this world, and the legends behind them. He dreamt of chance encounters with mythical beasts, and of treasure hunts that ended in fateful meetings with powerful monsters. Since his youngest years, Volo had devoured every last bit of mythos and knowledge that he could get his hands on, whether through storytelling from his mother, grandmother, or travelers in the village-- or from the books that were in his father's possession.

From the western territories of Johto, to the eastern shores of Kanto-- across the channel to Hoenn, the Ginkgo Guild had a large foot print. It was only natural that their trade routes would eventually expand into wilderness of Hisui to the north, where more and more people were choosing to settle for a quieter life. This, naturally, piqued Volo's interest greatly.

"I've never been to the land of Hisui. My grandfather was born there, but, his father took him and the rest of his family away from the region when he was just a boy. I want to go there."

Perhaps-- this would be an opportunity for one of those chance encounters that he had been dreaming of.

Volo was 14 by the time the Ginkgo Guild had finally established a strong enough repertoire with the people living in Jubilife Village, and 15 once he was capable enough to make the long journey to Hisui himself. Though he had been with the guild for some time, staying on a multi-regional trade route was physically and mentally exhausting-- entire seasons would pass without Volo returning to his home, and it was not unusual for the guild to only appear in certain places when seasonally appropriate. Summer was harsh in Kanto, and winter was unforgiving in Hisui. They needed to be certain to always return to Johto for the apricorn harvest as well.

But, there did come the day that Volo had the opportunity to wander Hisui himself-- of course, when he was not tending to his duties.

He was quickly warned of the dangers that were present in this region: Pokémon that were far more powerful than anything he had ever encountered occupied every last corner of Hisui. The land itself was rugged too, and difficult to navigate solo. He was informed of the survey work performed by the Galaxy Team and the respected Professor Laventon, along with the established authority of the Diamond and Pearl Clans.

But, what drew him in the most, was the whispers of a witch of sorts, who lived in a secluded space in the northeast.

"I want to meet her. She should be able to tell me anything I could possibly want to know about this land!"

It took some convincing (and, perhaps, a lot of wares sold at a tremendous discount), but Volo would eventually be told where to find the witch called Cogita at the Ancient Retreat. This journey would had to be made alone though, for nobody wished to bother the powerful woman themselves; Cogita prefer to keep to herself, toiling away at her work, and minding her own.

After an incredibly arduous journey, Volo would be overjoyed to find the fabled retreat--

And Cogita would be shocked to see the face of what she could only describe as a ghost from the past.

Once a painfully shocking and awkward exchange is had between the two of them-- Volo, who was far too enthusiastic for his own good, and Cogita, who was prepared to knock this intruder out cold-- a proper conversation begins.

Cogita remembered when the last of her remaining family had made the decision to leave the retreat, and the entirety of Hisui. It came to no surprise for her: as the years passed, the younger generations wished to know what was outside of this seclusive land-- there was more to this world than Hisui, her wilderness, and her crumbling ruins. But Cogita had to remain, for reasons that she had kept close to her chest for many, many years.

Cogita's son had been the one to make the decision to leave with his wife, his sister, and her only grandchild. This boy, Volo, who appeared nearly a century after that had happened, wore the same face as Cogita's late husband.

Naturally, when she explains this to her guest, he is struck with disbelief.

"But my grandfather left Hisui when he was still a child. Your story doesn't make any sense, that would make you easily, that would make you-- HUNDREDS of years old."

Cogita could only narrow her eyes and frown. The boy really knew nothing of where he came from, what he came from, nor who he and his family were.

"Time is a manipulatable construct," is all Cogita would say to that. There wasn't a need to go into great depths about her apparently lack of aging.

"Did you only come here to bother me? Or did you have actual questions to ask? Tell me what it is you want."

And with that wondrous expression, Volo says:

"I want to know everything."

There is a pause as the old witch stares upon the boy, and then smiles with crinkles in the corners of her eyes.

"Very well."

The Celestica people once inhabited this land of Hisui. Considered to be blessed and veiled by The Great Unknowable and all of Creation, their people flourished on this land, communing with the gods, and connecting with the Pokémon that lived on the land as well. A wildly curious society, they studied anything and everything: sciences, art, transportation, language, and many concepts that would be considered arcane and esoteric by the modern man. The Celesticans had a rich, vibrant culture, owed to their deep connection with Pokémon, and the spirits that they allied alongside with. Their civilization fell, though-- and it is uncertain what exactly brought the Celestica to their knees. The full story has been lost to time, but several preserved verses from their written history suggest multiple tragedies that led to their disappearance: some allude to war thanks to the greed of a ruthless emperor, others, to plague. One tells of the sun being swallowed, the light no longer gracing the land. A darkness fell upon Celestica, fear filled the hearts of every man, woman and child. Some fled. Many more died. And then, one day-- the Celestica were no more, and this was a land only occupied by Pokémon.

"That still doesn't explain why you've lived this long," Volo would furrow his brows in confusion.

And Cogita sighs, chin resting in her palm, spoon stirring a cup of tea sat in front of her.

"I've been Chosen, you see, to assist someone on a mission delivered from above. Who knows how long I will be kept alive by the old ones? Another 1000 years, or however long it takes for this fabled person to arrive on their mission. Who that someone is. . ."

Another pause.

"I am not certain yet."

Could he be that someone--?

It would not take much further persuasion for Volo to get Cogita to take him as an apprentice in arcane practices, knowledge of the Celestican roots, and the art of wielding Pokémon. For the next decade, he would choose to remain in Hisui, calling it his home.

During the day, he would fulfill his duties to the Ginkgo Guild, assisting them creating a permanent establishment in Hisui and a great relationship with the settlers of Jubilife Village. Even the Diamond and Pearl clans would begin to conduce business with the trading guild.

At night, and while he was not saddled with responsibilities, Volo dedicated his time and energy to absorbing everything he could about the legends and teachings that Cogita offered him. He was diving into fantastical work, and into a world where the might held by Pokémon was not far removed from humans as well. He participated in rituals that had long been forgotten by most, and communed with entities that he came to know as the old kamuy. With every hidden secret that Volo learned, he grew more and more capable, and Cogita truly thought that this was the young individual that she had divined as the one with "the mission from The Almighty Unknowable."

Volo would still find time to occasional return to Kanjoh to visit his parents and extended family, though he chose not to share with them what he knew about Cogita, and the remarkable journey that he had embarked on. After all, had it not been his past lineage that chose to leave their connection to Hisui behind? Why should he reveal the secrets that HE had worked hard to obtain-- to those so far separated from it? It simply did not concern them, in Volo's eyes, and he truly believed that sharing this information would be more than either of them could handle. They were content in their life, and there was no reason to disturb that.

Over some time though, Volo's hunger for knowledge was drawing him towards darker, more deranged information. He became completely obsessed with the mythos of The Mighty Unknowable, and The Void: Arceus and Giratina. After everything that he had come to understand, the countless secrets, the fantastic knowledge, Volo would not be satisfied until he learned everything, and SAW everything.

Cogita cautioned Volo against attempting to dive into the depths of Giratina's knowledge, and strictly forbade him from make any effort to contact the vast abyssal deity.

"There is nothing that The Great Old One has to share with us, it's best not to antagonize it. Your best option is to continue your work with searching for the old plates of Sinnoh."

. . .

"But I want to know it and Arceus."

Driven by an obsessive need to meet these eldritch forces, Volo began to neglect his duties with the Ginkgo Guild. Without realizing the passage of time, he also failed to return home to see his family for many, many years. Every thought he had, every breath he took, was a part of his deranged focus of communing with these Old Ones.

And he WOULD eventually commune with the old king of distortion, deep in the depths of Turnback Cave-- from there, Volo found himself on a path that he no longer had full control of. By creating a pact with Giratina and being chosen as its herald, Volo surrendered his human life, and was removed from the mortal coil entirely; existing in an in-between state beyond time and space, he accepted a pseudo-immortal reality, where he was simply not effected by the passage of time and space. In exchange for the eldritch truth, Volo agreed to be a vessel of the void, to be used when need be.

Yet, he was not satisfied. Truthfully, if he could create a strong enough bond with the mighty Giratina, the one who had been sealed away by its creator, then perhaps he AND the king of distortion could draw Arceus out of hiding, and finally, Volo could have the satisfaction of seeing and understand EVERYTHING at his fingertips.

At least-- that was his motivation initially. All he wanted to do was see. And understand. And know. It wasn't until Volo's consistent exposure to Giratina's madness, and the eldritch truth that was instilled into him, that Volo saw visions of calamity in the future and harrowing omens from the past. He began to see himself as something greater than the average man, experiencing a delusion of divinity, that HE ALONE could alter time and space itself, and that HE ALONE could not only commune with Giratina as its liege, but also convince Arceus, The Mighty Unknowable, to heed his word.

"I saw something, I was plagued with the most disturbing vision, a world where all life has been wiped out, no people, Pokémon or monsters could set foot in this world without being wiped away completely. I saw the gaping mouth of extinction, its hands stretched out to smother. It cannot be stopped. And it will not stop in just THIS world, it will do the same elsewhere. There is no solution to preventing this reality-- the only choice is to disobey the creator, and erase this universe destined for destruction. A new one can be born from this divine obliteration. A world where the demiurge does not allow that evil miasma to destroy us, and the next universe, and the next, and the next."

Volo's meddling with the fabric of reality, as if it were nothing but a clothe for him to cut and mend at will, resulting in the space-time distortions across Hisui, and the massive rift tearing the sky over Mt. Coronet open. With the help of power granted to him by Giratina, he hoped that the disturbance would bring Arceus down from his heavenly pedestal, going so far as to bring people from other points in time to Hisui, and stirring up the Noble Pokémon into frenzied states.

Yet, there was no sign of the Creator.

The story would go on as a strange child would be the next to fall from the rift in the sky, with only one statement left in their mind before they woke up in the Hisuian Wilderness: Seek out all Pokémon.

The tale of the young hero who would quell the frenzied Nobles, compile the first complete index of Pokémon, prevent certain destruction of Hisui by creating the Red Chain and meeting the legendary "Sinnoh," and eventually reaching the summit of Mt. Coronet, is remembered by many. Though most do not know of Volo's continued mental decline as he feverishly realized that he was not the 'one with the mission' that Cogita had thought he had been-- it was this mere child. His purpose began to collapse, his identity falling apart all around him. But his divine delusion remained true. HE had to be the one to commune with Arceus, HE was the one who connected with Giratina and became his herald, HE was the one burdened with the eldritch truth and the visions of the past and future. There was no way that this outsider could take the helm of this job!

What he could do, was continue to mask as a simple helper on this hero's journey, and manipulate them into collecting artifacts and objects that he needed in a last ditch attempt to draw down the creator. Sabotaging his connection with Cogita, who was already highly suspicious and critical about her descendant's behavior, Volo spiraled.

"My desire to meet Arceus cannot be contained any longer! I need to know what it is! I MUST know what it is! If I can meet Arceus myself, then I may also be able to subjugate its power. . . And using that, I will attempt to create a new, better world! Of course, if I create a brand-new world, then the Hisui region that we currently exist in will be undone and returned to nothing. You, everyone you know, and all the Pokémon living here will vanish in an instant, as if you'd never been."

How harshly Volo would be humbled, as he was struck down atop Mt. Coronet, when Giratina itself turned its back on its herald's deranged mission. Ripped from the sky and cast aside, there were no other options that Volo could use to claim victory. His false mission was over. He was not Arceus' chosen-- the man that had become obsessed with the sun, was destined for the void.

And while he accepted that this was the end of his mad journey, Volo still had ambitions to meet Arceus.

' Someday, I'll solve every riddle in the legends of Hisui's Pokémon. And on that day, I'll stand before Arceus at last—No, I will CONQUER it! No matter how many years, how many decades, how many centuries it takes me! '

. . .

What has become of Volo since his loss atop Mt. Coronet? The man still wanders the earth, coming and going from varying points in time. Some believe that he manipulates events in history out of pure curiosity. As the continued herald of Giratina, Volo comes and goes from the Distortion Realm. When he occasionally allows Giratina to use his body as an avatar, Volo falls into statis afterwards, and slumbers in the Great Old One's plane until his body recovers, sometimes for years at a time. Therefor, Volo has disappeared from history, only to emerge at the most bizarre times.

And while it took a great deal of time, Volo has come to terms that his role as the Herald of Giratina is enough of a crown for him to wear, despite it not being the destiny that satisfied him initially. Giratina's pact had elevated him to what some would even consider to be a demi-god. Though, Volo still acts very much the same way he did as a simple human.

There is still a deeply seeded ambition to prevent the calamity that he saw in his vision all of those centuries ago. And it is his belief that if he were to take up an apprentice in his lineage in the same way that Cogita had done to him in the time of Hisui, that his successor could be victorious.

It should come to no surprise then, that one of the most fearsome and respected trainers in modern history is a woman with a fascination for mythos and legendary Pokémon-- and is the current seated champion of the Sinnoh league. Her resemblance to her ancestor is quite uncanny, it is as if the two have already known each other.

Perhaps they have.

But one thing is for certain: Volo's influence is still alive, and until Giratina itself is no more, there is no ridding the world of the man who had once loved the sun. The eldritch truth must be bestowed upon another so that Volo's vision was not gifted to him for nothing.

#𓇻 ˚ « 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐕𝐨𝐢𝐝 » Headcanon #{ IT IS FINISHED. }#{ Some details are kept vague because they will be explored in roleplay interactions and in other headcanon posts. }

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tunaafishyy · 1 year

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Deshret, through the Goddess of Flower’s sacrifice of herself and the oasis, is able to learn the secrets of the elixir of life... the key to breaking the shackles of the material world.

The Goddess of Flowers, in her role as the goddess of dreams, was able to act as a bridge between the mortal (material) and the divine.

Dream images (phantasms) are created by the perception of the material world, and allow for transition/connection to the divine through phantasia. The process is doable due to her “divine sacrifice creating the bridge to salvation” (higher knowledge).

However, creating the bridge is not the only thing required, since it’s creation is useless if someone does not become saved (learn the truth of ascension, which luckily Deshret is able to do through pure willpower.

Deshret returns to the mortal realm. Using the dreams of the sacrificed, the dissolved material of the sky, the divine nail, and the gold stones deep within the earth he creates his mirror of the divine, his illusory paradise. The only difference between his illusion and that of the material realm os that he is the ultimate authority in his bubble… the determiner of fate. The laws are his to define.

[The Unified Civilization, but Deshret]

Now that the formula for the elixir of immortality is known, the only thing left to do is churn it through the dreams of mortals. In truth, the mortals are giants. Nephilim. The long-lived half-god off-spring spawned from the Watchers (most likely Deshret).

One of his divine envoys, Liloupar, finds the person she believes is capable of being Deshret’s proxy, Ormazd. With the help of Liloupar and the Jinn, he rebuilds the Eternal Oasis, and swears to protect it.

And that is where things begin to go wrong. Ormazd, consumed by power and ambition, cares not for the people coming under his rule. He becomes a tyrant like those before him.

[The Anger of the Divine Envoys]

Liloupar, disgusted by her mortal lover’s transgressions decides to punish him for 3 generations. Their daughter Shirin is a curse in waiting, as is her future husband who is unknowningly also her half-brother, Kisra.

Strange… the divine envoys of the primordial one were also angered by human arrogance…

Kisra appears at first as a boon to Ormazd’s campaign to unite the 99 brass and mortar cities across the desert. Invincible. Hero. The Spirit of Victory. Ormazd adopts him and offers his daughter Shirin’s hand and marriage… a meer orphan risen to the pinnacle of royalty.

But what are the chances of Kisra and Shirin ever ruling when there are 300 other children of Ormazd?

Pretty high when Liloupar plots them all to be murdered.

Through an accidental delivery by Shirin of the poisoned honeyed… the nectar of the gods and truth corrupted through her mother’s insidious plot… Ormazd and all 300 of his children are slain.

And thus does Kisra rule.

Kisra’s corruption was almost immediate, if not long in the making. Like a seed waiting for the right moment to sprout.

Liloupar teaches him the forbidden knowledge of the skies. Of the machines and their power. How to infuse the Jinn into them.

In the darkness of dreams, she teaches him of a machine to eat dreams to create an infinite deluge of objects. A machine he is more than happy to create, and is more than willing to further break the mind of Shirin for to get her distorted jinn creations to use as fodder.

Oh, Sophia…

[Arrival of the Apocalypse]

The abyss has truly taken root in Deshret’s illusory realm, but it isn’t until the battle escalates beyond control that the corruption gains Deshret’s attention. Kisra has turned into a dark monster, likely from the assassination by his son, Shiruyeh. The city is drowning in blood and slaughter until it’s swallowed by the abyss, and Liloupar basks in her success.

[Elemental Balancing]

Deshret, furious at her actions, splits her soul into 7 parts, spread out across 7 points to align with the elements. An attempt to combat the destructive power of the abyss by spreading out the karmic seeds across elemental points.

Which almost works. (Kind of like the archon war maybe almost worked).

Except forbidden knowledge has already permeated the dreams of the realm. The samsara begins, and the sins repeat like the reflections of a shattered mirror. The details change, but their fates are the same, their sins unchangeable. They are a permanent reflection of corrupted human ambition, jinn vengeance, and abyssal poison.

The elixir of immortality could not be created through Deshret’s realm. The Amrita formed through the ocean of dreams, the key to breaking the shackles of the world, forever out of reach.

But he can’t let the poison spawned from his actions, the poison he “accidentally consumed”, spread outside of his illusion.

With the help of Rukkhadevata, he sacrifices himself. Destroying the spread of forbidden knowledge, and sinking his dream beneath the sand forever.

… or so we’re told…

The End… for now

This is a very rough draft hc on Deshret’s realm mimicking the failures of the primordial one (unified -> divine envoy -> destruction -> 7 cities -> destruction -> the primordial one is gone), so don’t take it too seriously . Also I’ll edit it multiple times so yeah.

Based on combo-ing ideas for:

“Alistor, or The Spirit of Solitude” poem ; amrita ; eternal recurrence ; Plato’s theory of forms ; philosophical view of phantasms ; Gnostic concepts ; vibro-crystal harmonics ; and uh… probably other stuff I don’t feel like linking anymore I’m lazy

#genshin #genshin impact #genshin lore notes #genshin impact lore #genshin lore #genshin tinfoil hat theory #genshin rabbit holes for later #genshin theory #genshin impact theory #genshin deshret #genshin sumeru

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gojoho · 4 years

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PATIENCE

• pairing; au!ryomen sukuna x reader

• premise; you were different than the rest, and with a simple touch the devil makes peace with his boredom for the taste of your skin.

• words; 2,798

• note & warning; every time i proofread what my demon chose to write at three in the morning i cry. why am i like this? honestly, i had so much trouble with sukuna it's amazing that i found a ground to make this on. anyway...unprotected sex ( wrap it up or pack it up ), dirty language, ownership, creampie-breeding kink? i never know which one it is, these mfs just never pullout. enjoy i suppose?

Sukuna was accustomed to the cults that proudly proclaimed him as their leader, or better yet, The Chosen. False disciples to his name, many of which tried to justify their treacherous lives in comparison to his glory. A pathetic bunch he wasted little time over, not one of them much of a rivalry towards that of a king. Though your blood was far too innocent, even for a ruthlessly being as himself, he would not take on such a burdened responsibility. Having been blamed for far less, he wouldn’t live this one down. Feasibly the only reason death escaped you.

Obsession, fascination, none of which seemed that far from one another with him, nor did it matter. At any capacity mortals were tedious, their petty materialistic need; gold this, that, and whatnot. Maybe he was just bored, but then he wouldn’t be giving you much credit, would he? He was quite patient for his tetchy personality, letting you grow accustomed to his territory, where you’d spend the rest of your days. A cub seeing the pride lands for the first time.

“Follow the rules, and you’ll do just fine little cub.” You never shied from his touch, letting him indulge your soft skin, squeezing, nipping, kissing every and anywhere he pleased. But your worth was still up for question thus far, what did you bring that the others couldn’t.

“Open.” You would sit between his legs, knees bent to his divinity abiding every command. Allowing his salty fingers against your tongue, their cleanliness unbeknownst to everyone except him, but it only made you suck on them more. “So eager for me to ruin you.”

That made two of you, but he wouldn’t, not just yet.

He kept you, his precious new pet, close. Allowing your scent to fill his bed, swarm his clothes, and plague him with a hunger driven by an appetite that was you. It wasn’t as if he didn’t trust you, he didn’t trust anyone, but he did trust your behavior. The way you managed to curl up against him at night, your soft snores fanning his back, no matter how much space there was in his bed. How you followed behind him everywhere he went, involuntarily making things less...irritating. Yet your consistency didn’t extend towards the others. Vicious and vengeful, they’d see to it that he’d fall by any means necessary. Even if it meant going through you or letting it be by your own hand.

“Cub,” he’d call you over, legs wide and waiting. You’d mount him facing forward, shamelessly letting your body unwind against his touch.

Fingers working the robes from your frame with ease, instant access to the skin beneath. All while his lips worked around your neck, touching up his handiwork of pink and purple blotches around it. The product of every session. Before he’d break you off, truly make you his, preparation was in order. It’s started with your chest, his hold over your bosom, the small mouthes in each hand working their peaks. Swirling sucking nibbling away at their tenderness until you’d grind against his bulge. Drenching him with your arousal. Clothes only got in his way, he’d have you roam around naked if he pleased but that was sight met only for his eyes, and his alone. Your robes, makeshift Sukuna hand-me-downs, was a barrier between the world and what was his.

After all, it was his touch that made you a mess. ”You're already so wet for me, little cub. Maybe I'll fuck you tonight. Maybe.”

He moved a hand to your heat, parted your folds with two slender fingers while the other hand still devoured your nipple. Sukuna was greedy, common knowledge to anyone who came across the curse, but with a hunger driven by your flesh, he was more insatiable than ever. It wouldn't be long until you were writhing in his lap, every bit of noise coming from your lips. Crying out as he worked your orgasm with his fingers plunged deep in your depths and the tongue on his palm lapping at your clit feverishly.

”Kuna,” you'd mewl, with arms stretched up to his face. The only person still alive to say it let alone give him a nickname.

The rules were simple;

Speak when spoken too

Eye contact

No kissing

A cruel rule that reminded you what the relationship was. He wasn't your lover or anything to you. You belonged to him and he'd use you however he saw fit. If that meant raw dogging you, believe he'd fuck you silly.

Simple, but still difficult nonetheless. He watched your face upturn in admiration, eyes flickering between his and his lips with each whimper. You wanted to kiss him, have his tongue so far down your throat until you choked. Sukuna knew all too well the look you gave him and smirked pressing his fingers deeper, taking your wanton ones to hold his cheek into his mouth. The closet you've gotten to a kiss, but soon your eyes would wander to mess that was your body, watching him unravel your seams, the first orgasm shuddered throughout you.

The first time he had his way, you'd barely made it past one orgasm from his fingers. Now it was six, with at most his fingers and three mouths. He wondered if you’d handle his cock if thrown into the mix. With that thought alone his mind wandered, you handled his hands well but the mystery behind your lips made him twitch just thinking about it. A pretty face with such a content expression, so grateful he granted you a full mouth. Could you handle all of him? If you could, he would've taken what was already his, turned you inside out, and left your body useless to any other being but him.

He deprived himself of a release, letting it build along his thighs and boil at the deepest parts of his body. You were going to take it all from him, feed his hunger while he quenched yours. Truly teaching you what it meant to belong to Ryomen Sukuna, The Great King of Curses.

Each session left you craving more, made your hips sink further against his moving in pure need. Sukuna let you wallow in your tension, desire unkempt and rowdy beneath his nose. You were conflicted between the logic prancing your mind and the hunger of your heat. Where the thought of him feeding you more than just a few fingers made it throb for a release, to be relieved from the fear that kept it empty and unfulfilled.

You'd missed the comfort his presence brought to the bed when pressing matters stole his attention, without it sleep was surreal. Eluding your conscience till he would come back late into the morning, exhaustion settling through the afternoon if he allowed you to. Until one afternoon where he’d prepare to set off again, another village another reign of terror, Sukuna almost missed the tiny grasp at his robes. The few steps he took towards to the exit fell short by his other end.

”Please,” you'd whisper out pleading for him to stay with a mere word.

For a minute, with his sudden stride and grip over your jaw, you think it's enough. That the way he searched your eyes with his bright red pair, you thought you’d convince him. ”If you expect me to abandon my duties for that cunt of yours, you’re going to have to try harder than that little cub.”

His lips ghosted yours, taunting that separate ache from the rest of your body. Practically testing you to see if you’d break one of his rules; screaming to go ahead, kiss him.

”Well then?” he cooed, lips nearly there but your silence only irritated him. Did he spoil you too much, indeed give you too much credit and mistaken you for something you weren't—

”Please Kuna, I need you.”

”Cute…” He smirked, thumb slipping between the two of you teasing your bottom lip. ”No.”

It was a lie if he said he wouldn't turn you around right there and give in to the temptation. Fill your womb with what felt like decades' worth of his cum. Staining his sheets and your insides. Sukuna already knew you needed him, it was because of that need, that the light in your eyes settled to a palpable glow. Later completely gone by the time of his return.

Sukuna never thought to imagine you upset, not with the way you clung to him. Never did he think it would upset him as much as it did. You slept far from his end of the bed, shielding your body from his touch with the linen. The nerve of you, but he knew it was only a matter of time until he’d have you in his lap again.

Wrong.

Too much time had passed since he denied you of your request, too much time since he’s touched you, too much time since you’ve touched him.

“Cub” he called, but for the first time, he was met with hesitance.

You sat on his lap, back to his chest as per usual, but without your usual excitement. Nothing he couldn’t fix, and like always he started with your chest, getting you to flood over his crotch. By then Sukuna would’ve gotten at least a whimper but you remain uncharacteristically quiet to his touch, jabbing at his ego. Come to find out you’d bitten your lip, holding off from letting him hear just how good he was making you feel.

“Brat,” he hissed with the teeth in his hand nibbling at nothing but your clit but even then the most he got was a huff. “Fine, if that’s how you want to play this game.”

It didn’t take much to lift you up from his chair, face planting you straight into the bed. You yelp at the sudden grip over your waist as it hauls your bottom half into to air. This was far from what he planned, but he’d be a fool to let you carry on with your childish ways.

There was no protest with the way he positioned himself to his knees behind you, shedding himself of his robes, setting his cock free into the late-night air. You would never shy away from looking at him naked, curious of every black line, where they connected and didn’t connect. Still, only catching brief glimpses of him, but now that it was there before you—just one taste, that was enough right? It would make any man happy to hide his cock in a pretty mouth like yours, burying it far beneath your throat, hell it made Sukuna weigh his options but he was beyond horny and irritated.

He gifts himself a few strokes, over your cunt, introducing it to its owner. Coating himself in the mix of his salvia and your arousal before pushing the tip past the slick gates of his personal Eden. He sunk into your bowels just past the tip before meeting the resistance of your walls. There was no distinction as to whether you’d been too tight or that he was too big, just that it made him want more. A snug fit, one in which he yearned to destroy, leaving you walls irreversibly stretched.

Your arms flailed around, desperate to find anything to grip onto but Sukuna didn’t give you much of a chance before introducing the rest of his inches to your heat.

“Fuck,” you whined. A squeak of unbearable amazement that all of him was inside you. “Wait.”

He was going to bury himself down to the hilt, each time, fuck you till you were a simpleton. It was always his intention to do so, but your impatience got the best of him.

”Quiet, ” he growled spreading your ass to see himself encased by your insides. Surprisingly you swallowed him whole, but he was sure if you kept squirming away it’d be even more painful. ”This is what you wanted, wasn't it? My cock in this slutty hole of yours.”

”Kuna please.”

”Please Kuna, I need you—is that not what you said?”

”Yes…but fuck—”

”Well now you got me, so keep fucking still and take it.” He shooed your pleading palm from his view and adjusted himself. The movement drove him deeper and you mewled beneath him like a feral feline.

A draft followed behind his pelvis as he pulled out only about halfway, your pussy gripping him as he did. He didn’t trust you wouldn’t squirm again and anchored your hips to his grip. Snapping into you once more, stretching more than his previous thrust.

Sukuna took pride in the size of his cock, in the way it left room for only one, only him. You were going to split in two, or at least it felt like it; he was so big, out of place, but just big. Though that was merely the calm before the storm, with no confirmation let alone sign to warn you, he moved again. Starting off with a strong rhythm that rocked the entire bed. He didn’t do slow, his adjective was to punish, ruin, destroy exactly why you were to be prepared.

With a guttural groan, you felt his cock work, biting against the linens as it drilled in and out of your slickness, squelching all around it.

“Listen to that,” he cooed. “Telling me to wait when your pussy sounds like this. I’m going to fill you up so well. Is that what you want kitten?”

Kitten…

An upgrade from little cub you suppose. The harder he goes, the louder both ends of your body get. Wanted was putting it loosely, it was something, if not the only thing, you needed. Yet it’s still not enough, and so Sukuna stops, leaving you lost to the pleasure he provided. Still full with his cock you moan, pleading for him to continue, eyes barely open and lips pierced by your top teeth. “You know the rules. Speak.”

Bucking against him, desperate for any friction, you whined. “Kuna.”

“Whining gets you nowhere,” He said teasing you with slow strokes in time with your desperate hips. “Answer. The. Question.”

“Yes, ” You were begging for it, the high fading from the mind a little too quickly. ”I need it, all of it.”

Now that you stroked his pride, it was only fair he’d returned the favor. Fleeing from their post against your chest, Sukuna’s hands reach up to your throat. Pulling you up to your own knees, squeeze gently. Pumping into your dripping cunt faster, harder, deeper. Strumming at the chords of your orgasm with each lewd noise he pulled with his cock. Saliva dribbling from your chin.

“Look at you,” he grunted, his own pleasure catching up to him. “Drooling from both ends.”

“Sukuna.”

He leaned into your hands, giving permission for them to tug at his roots, while he nuzzled his nose over your cheek, taking in every crude scent. “Hmm, fucking perfect.”

A compliment if he’d ever given you one, his irritation fleeing from his body and the only thing he can think about is just how good it felt to finally be inside you. The ache of his cock finally being milked. His hand traveled down your body, caressed every curve, every nipple until they settled on your hips.

”Get down, and open up for me.” he ordered quietly, letting his pace falter before getting an obedient ’hmm’

Anything for Sukuna, anything that brought on your orgasm. You arched forward and parted your knees wider, sighing from his hand over your ass again. Kneading and pulling each cheek apart. Picking up the pace again, he wanted to see his cock twitch inside you. See how your body would react. Sukuna wanted to see the mess he made of your hole.

You let a series of colorful curses fly, it was hard to say anything with the explosion inside you, the heat itching just beneath your skin as the adrenaline spiked and rocked you into oblivion.

“Sukuna,” you managed to say but he already knew, feeling the coiling contraction refusing to let him go. A deadly grip that sucked his orgasm through.

The visible veins around his cock, throbbing beneath the thin layer of skin. Slightly moving as the rest of his length spasmed violently against the confines of your flutters. ”Fuck, look at you go, milking me dry.”

His cum wasn't as fluid as it was thick, weeks of pent up lust oozing from your folds. But it meant nothing more but for Sukuna to click his tongue and thrust forward gently a few more times. Fucking it all back into you. Your body twitched ”Oi, shape up, I've only just begun. Besides, I want to try that pretty little mouth of yours.”

You were going to ruin him, as he was you.

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk #ryomen sukuna #sukuna #ryomen sukuna x reader #sukuna x reader #sukuna ryomen #sukuna ryomen x reader #gojoho

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theotheroccassionalfanficwriter · 3 years

Note

I read your writings and... WHEW! THEY'RE REALLY GOOD! 💦💦💦💦 A✨M✨A✨Z✨I✨N✨G

Anyway, may I request NSFW/Explicit Zhongli x reader where y/n is a mage who requires constant archon energy to keep her life? Like, if she doesn't get archon's "energy", she'll die? Yknow, the usual hentai manga plot. 😏

Thank you for this first fuck and die request anon your mind is 👌✨👏👌🤯🤯🤯

In Pursuit of Knowledge

Summary: As one of his beloved citizen, it was only right for Zhongli to ensure your continued survival. He was after all quite fond of you.

If the people of Liyue spared a thought on the type of woman that the esteemed Wangsheng funeral parlor consultant would bed, you would not be on the list of their consideration. The stark contrast of Mr. Zhongli’s measured and composed manner, love for tradition and order completely clashed with your untamed and heretical thoughts that threw away tradition and order.

Though Liyue respected and moved towards the winds of change, it did so without forgetting its tradition unlike you who took tradition apart and reformed it into something completely unrecognizable. Your innovation borders the heresy of Khaenri’ah. Your acts of genius toeing the line between blasphemy and reverence for the holy.

Thus, no one would ever think that the esteemed Mr. Zhongli would take you to his bed, every night. Spreading your legs wide as his large cock slipped in and out of your pussy, firmly gripping your legs as he plowed you.

Each thrust calculated to bring you the most pleasure as he fed you his Geo energy, circulating it through the veins of your body as you sobbed with pleasure. Despite his calculated movements, Zhongli was a mess. His hair was flowing freely and some strands were sticking to his face and chest.

His neck and arms were littered with bites and scratches from the earlier round. Zhongli had wasted no time in removing your clothes from the moment you had entered his bedroom, weakly, at the end of the day. Your curse doing its duty of robbing you of life without an Archon’s energy. It was the price you paid for one of your pursuits of knowledge. And Zhongli, who had grown fond of you and your insane acts of genius, lent his help.

“Zhongli-” You moaned as he thrusted into you, “I-no more…” You cried as you came once more. Heedless of the fact that Zhongli had spilled his seed inside you countless of times.

“You’ll be exploring a ruin tomorrow,” He reminded you, voice gentle even as his thrusts were rough and his bite marks hard “And I can’t accompany you to provide you “energy” that you need.”

You blushed at the reminder that Zhongli would often accompany you on such trips and would shamelessly remove your clothes to provide you enough energy to sustain your life. Trial and error had led you both to the conclusion that other than his blood, his cum was the second best carrier of the energy you needed to keep on living.

Your vehement disgust at drinking his blood had led to this activity. Every night, as soon as the sun sets in the horizon, you would make your way into Zhongli’s home. Letting him shed his mortal form and spreading your legs to receive Rex Lapis’ archon energy.

It had been a long time since the first night and yet Zhongli never failed to make you feel shy.

Your continued silence coupled with your embarrassed face led Zhongli to a different conclusion, “Or perhaps, you would prefer to receive my energy while on your exploration?”

He leaned close to you, eyes shining like cor lapis and closer to a dragon than that of a human. Zhongli had removed his hand from your legs and instead placed it on your large and soft tits that bore the mark of his sharp teeth.

“That’s not-” You sucked in a breath as Zhongli pinched your nipple.

He hummed softly, before he moved away and then turned you over to lay on your stomach. Your ass and cum filled pussy presented before him. And he began your 10th round of sex, your pussy had easily accepted his large and fat cock, mouth opening to let loose sounds of pleasure as the sound of slapping echoud loudly in Zhongli’s room.

He held your waist tightly as he moved to and fro, sliding his cock back and forth inside your wet and cum filled pussy. His previous cum slipped out with each thrust and acted as a lube. The headrest of the bed banged on the wall in perfect rhythm as Zhongli fucked you hard in the bed.

You moaned and cried out, begging him for mercy as your overly stimulated pussy came once more, and again as you felt the pulse of Geo energy flowing through your body. Your lewd cries, however, where covered by the sudden formation of a jade dildo.

And Zhongli’s hand gripped your cheeks, forcing your mouth open as your body rocked with pleasure from Zhongli’s thrusts, the jade dildo entered your mouth and muffled your cries and moans. He was worthy of being the Geo Archon with his mastery of forging.

Your hands were now being held by chains of jade that appeared to be attached to the ceiling, pulsating with the geo energy you had come to recognize as uniquely Zhongli’s. You moaned once more as his thrust and the pulsating pleasure of the Geo Energy from the geo mark on the chains synced with each other.

Your body felt hot as Zhongli’s hand traveled down your hips and to your pussy, circling your clit and forcing another orgasm out of you. The jade dildo on your mouth pulsated with Geo energy, your drool fell onto Zhongli’s soft silk covers.

Even so it didn’t stop him from fucking you raw, cock slipping in and out of you with ease as he hit your g-spot again and again, driving you mad with pleasure as your cunt twitch and Zhongli came inside you again with a hard grunt just as you were shocked with the sudden thrust of the Jade dildo down your throat and the warm liquid geo energy that came down your throat and settled into the pit of your stomach.

Zhongli panted, “I’m sorry, my dear” He apologized without any sincerity, “I want to make sure you would be safe tomorrow.”

Drunk on the over abundance of his energy, you could only dumbly look at him in a haze of post coital orgasm. Your cunt twitching as Zhongli scooped up the excess cum and shoving it back into your pussy, your soft moans did nothing to lessen his desire for you. If anything it had only made him want to fuck you more, to spill his essence inside of you beyond what you required.

‘Everything must be taken into moderation’ Zhongli thought as he formed another Jade dildo, to plug your cunt and ensure that you would have enough energy to spare for tomorrow’s activities.

A casual observer would have long noticed that Zhongli’s particular attentiveness to prolonging your mortal lifespan had already exceeded that of a normal friend’s or an admirer of innovation. However, as most of Liyue and your acquaintances, both shared and not, spared no thought at the consequences of your inherent curiosity born of being a genius, and Zhongli’s fondness for your shenanigans.

And thus, with a gentleness only spared for lovers, Zhongli began to clean you up, paying no mind to his still erect cock. There was still tomorrow morning to release the rest of his seed inside you after all.

Come morning, you found yourself bended over the dining table, your shorts were dropped on the floor, as Zhongli’s cock slid in and out of your still sensitive pussy.

“Fontaine’s invention of this easy-access underwear truly helps us out,” Zhongli praised as his hand rested on the spread out cheeks of your ass, exposing your asshole and cum filled pussy to the cold morning air. Of course, the lacy black underwear with gold trim on the slit wonderfully showcased your dripping cunt, the edges of the golden trim stained with your pussy juice and Zhongli’s cum.

“Mnnn-why?” You moaned as Zhongli’s cock brushed over your g-spot, you angled your ass to ensure that his next thrust would hit it and give you the orgasm you were longing for, but a slap on your asscheeks signaled Zhongli’s want for your obedience.

“I reckon, you wouldn’t be pleased if I ruined one more pair of your underwear” He teased as he gave you hard thrust that had the table shaking and your cunt clenching, “a pity we don’t have enough time to make you drink straight from the source.”

You felt your heart spike at the thought and knew from the amused chuckle behind you that Zhongli clearly saw through your thoughts.

“Perhaps, I’ll visit you at lunch.”

Underneath his teasing tone, you clearly heard his intent to show up at the ruins. The mere thought of Zhongli fucking you relentlessly in the exposed ruins of Dunyu was enough to make you cum and as his hands tightly gripped your ass, you felt another splash of heat inside you. Zhongli didn’t move his cock outside of you, instead remaining for a few moments before he slowly slipped his cock out.

You made a move to stand but the firm hand on your back stopped you and you felt the familiar pulse of his dildo slip in. The cold jade contrasted to the warm heat of your cum filled pussy.

“Zhongli?”

“The Dunyu ruins are filled with Fatui members, this is just a precaution in case you need to fight...using your magic” He explained before grabbing your shorts and gently dressed you up.

His hand ghosted over your crotch, groping it and pushing the dildo further in, he whispered, “Just making sure it stays put.”

You blushed, not believing a single word as you shakily pushed him away and made your way to the front door. Each step you took made you keenly aware of the cum swishing inside your pussy, the dildo moving up and down with every step.

‘Today’s going to be a long day’ You thought with mild annoyance as you prayed that no one would figure out the reason for your flushed cheeks.

Zhongli smiled at your back, wondering how long it would take for you to realize that your hands were still stained with his cum after he had made you help him fill 5 glass bottles with his essence. The aforementioned bottles clinking noisily and audibly inside your satchel. The feel of your hand and mouth as it stroked and licked his cock was still fresh in his mind.

“Have a good day at work,” He smiled at your soft ‘yeah’ and found himself anticipating today’s lunch. He would afterall, have you for his main course.

#zhongli x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact zhongli x reader

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genshin-impact-fics · 3 years

Text

Finding out You're in the Fatui

Characters: Jean, Childe, Keqing, Albedo, Diluc, Xiao

Diluc:

Whatever way he finds out he’s very upset; he trusted you, he fell in love with you yet now he finds out you’re with the enemy? He’s fearing that everything that’s happened between the two of you was a lie, that you just used him until you got what you needed. His brain is just in a storm of thoughts

He wants to believe that you’re good at heart, that all of this was because you didn’t have much of a choice. He’s going to ask questions, but more importantly he will offer you a way out: abandon the Fatui and just live with him he will vow to protect you and even find a safe area to work if employment was a concern of yours

If you accept his offer he’s glad that he didn’t have to lose you, he loves you too much and it’d be just too sad for him to have to cut ties with you especially since you’re the first one he’s felt such strong feelings for

But if you refused and you made it clear that you willingly joined the Fatui, he’s absolutely heartbroken. He’d probably start crying out of how painful the reality of the situation was and try to beg you to leave and stay with him. He does not have the heart to even consider having to fight you, he didn’t want to harm you yet here you were showing a completely different side to you that not even he caught onto

Xiao:

He is enraged at the new information when he finds out. He curses himself for being so blind and having trusted you as much as he did. How could he be calm about this; you played a hand in the fall of the archon he served under, the archon that saved him from his horrible past and gave him a new purpose in life. How could he ever forgive you for such a betrayal

Though he refuses to bloody his hands with those of mortal blood, he will lash out and attack you. His heart hurts as how could he let this happen, he loved you yet was this the world’s way of punishing him for his past he could only wonder

If you plea to him to listen to your explanation he’s conflicted; you were either telling the truth or you were lying to just buy yourself some time… But he stopped and kept a safe distance from you as though you hurt his trust in his heart he still very much loves you so if there was a glimmer of hope that you can be saved he would be willing to listen to judge for himself. His expression softens when learning that you essentially got forced and trapped into working in the Fatui and at that point he is willing to keep you with him which mainly consisted of you living at the Wangshu Inn with him

However if you confirm that you’re in the Fatui of your own choosing he’s hurt, but he’s already withdrawing his own emotions so it didn’t get in the way of his duties. You’re no longer the mortal he fell in love with, you were just another mortal trying to use him for your personal gain. He’ll warn you to never to return and that you are no longer permitted to call out his name because from that moment on you were enemies

Albedo:

Deep down he didn’t want to accept the possible fact you were potentially bad. There were small things you did or said that made him slightly skeptical of you yet he overlooked them because he was in love with you, there was something that always made him so curious and so fascinated with you. You never judged him, you were patient with him, as you even put yourself at risk with plenty of his experiments

Of course this conversation was in the privacy of his lab in Dragonspine, surely there was no need to have a big scene be made especially when he wanted to simply hear what you had to say for yourself. He’s very composed and calm for someone who’s feeling this pain in his chest at the fact that you’ve kept this from him for so long

If you were truly innocent it saddens him to hear how you were stuck paying off a debt that wasn’t even your own and that was the only reason why you were stuck in the predicament that you’re in. Surely there had to be some way to hide you from the Fatui right? Maybe not up there in Dragonspine since there were already so many of the agents scouting the mountains, but maybe he could ask Jean if you could stay with him; however, that then led to another possible problem. If he tried to explain the details the fact that you were associated with the Fatui, Jean might just want to arrest you for interrogation which he might have to simply keep that knowledge to himself for the sake of your safety

But at any time you're telling your story he will call you out on something if he feels you weren’t being truthful. Hearing that you were a third generation agent he came to understand that it was initially a family legacy to uphold; rather unfortunate but oddly enough he still didn’t look down on you for that. Of course he’s unsure of what to do as things are surely to be complicated now, but how could he come to really see you as the enemy when he loves you

Regardless of the case, he will continue to stay with you; however, he’ll take a few precautions to insure his own safety. He won’t be sharing details of things he’s working on, no more asking to help with experiments (unless they’re just something mundane and nothing too serious), but other than that he just can only hope that you will continue to be truthful from there forth

Childe:

You are his favorite and it’s very obvious to everyone in the Fatui. You are just about the only exception out of all the agents that he will go a little bit easy on when it comes to missions not going accordingly. He love you to bits and surely made sure that you knew he was serious about your twos relationship

You are not allowed to go on missions with the other Harbingers, Childe is very keen on having you accompany him and only him on missions. He also personally sees to your training because he sees the potential in you and it just seemed like the other agents who are in charge of training don’t seem to up to the level that best benefited you

You get spoiled a lot, he also makes sure to always praise you after any mission or task you do: you had a minor task to go collect a debt? Childe will tell you a job beautifully done. You were away on a big mission that had to do with looking for evidence of the whereabouts of another archon? He’ll tell you how proud he is and how much he loves you. He will make a request the Tsaritsa to bestow a delusion onto you; cuz surely if one of her Harbingers is speaking so highly of someone truly they are worthy of her gift

There was already so much to love about you already but ever since he found out how good you were with his siblings he knew that you were the one for him. He can trust you to look after his siblings to keep them safe since they already know that you are his significant other (but of course have no clue either of you work in the fatui). You two are in Liyue and Teucer suddenly appears out of nowhere: you’re already prepared to take care of and look after the younger brother. Childe just loves how good you are with him and it shows how much Teucer likes you too. Childe only wish that he could marry you the next day (something he says often to you)

Jean:

Needless to say she was distraught when she stumbled upon you speaking in a hushed tone with La Signora in the dead of night in an alleyway during her patrol. She didn’t know what to think but of course she wanted to confront you yet she’d stay hidden and wait till you were alone which didn’t help her spiraling thoughts wondering if you had been with the enemy this whole time and what the two of you had was just pretend to you

The moment the coast is clear Jean will come out of hiding and stand tall with her arms over her chest though the expression on her face does not match the rest of her body language. She knows she should keep this professional without getting her emotions involved, but how could she not when it was you; you were her lover so naturally she can’t help it

You knew you were in trouble as you could have hightailed it the other way, but you knew it would only make matters worse though also even if you had run now you’d have to face her eventually so what was the point. You answered whatever question she asked you; Though Jean did have a slightly difficult time being able to tell when certain replies you gave were possibly a lie. It pains her to have to consider breaking up because she did love you yet how could she love someone that could pose a great threat to her home that she’s sworn to protect; would probably have you put into custody for a while just to fully ensure that you weren’t just a spy or scheming behind the knights of favonius’ back

You of all people did Jean not expect to have such a high standing in the Fatui; you weren’t just some agent to be stationed there, you were a younger sibling of one of the harbingers overseeing everything the agents did. It made everything all the more painful for Jean as she thought she finally found someone who understood her and loved her despite her business along with her flaws, but she started to doubt your relationship. She’d have to take you in for further questioning to see what information you’ve leaked out, but when you made a run for it Jean knew she should chase after you yet… She let you escape, she didn’t want you getting hurt as for this one time will she let you do so; however, if you two crossed paths again unfortunately you’d give her no other choice but to warrant your arrest

Keqing:

She’s surprised at the fact that you’re associated with the Fatui, but of course she’s going to act as if it doesn’t bother her or hurt her in the slightest (though we all know just how badly she’s hurting on the inside). She knew it was too good to be true that you so happened to share the same ideologies and that you got along so beautifully.

She has put so much trust in you that she’s brought you up to the Jade Chamber with her to have peaceful tea time dates a couple of times before its destruction. Yet you made her look like a fool, as even if you never intended to hurt her or betray her, Keqing takes it very personally even if her love for you runs deep

Regardless whether or not you were good of heart that was trapped serving the Fatui or truly was lying about everything and using her that whole time she will coldly cut you off. She’s putting on her tough act saying how she simply cannot love a traitor that has put liyue in harm's way

It’s not until she’s alone or possibly just with Ganyu that Keqing breaks down into tears sobbing over her heartbreak. Nothing hurt more than letting you go, how she wanted to give you that second chance, but she couldn’t let love cloud her judgement, as maybe one day in the future you two could be together, but for now she’d need time to heal though she probably never really gets over you

#genshin impact fanfic #genshin impact #childe x reader #genshin diluc #genshin jean #genshin keqing #genshin xiao #genshin albedo #genshin childe #tartagila #diluc x y/n #albedo x y/n #jean x y/n #keqing x y/n #childe x y/n #xiao x y/n

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depressed-sock · 2 years

Text

Dragon age drabble

...

The job was supposed to be simple. In and out. No one the wiser of the small creature up in the rafters. But of course when has anything ever gone to plan since the sky ripped open and poured down demons?

All it took was someone to look up and spot the orange fur of the creature that sat above them. Of course, that wouldn’t have been enough to really set off their suspicions. It was the sickly yellow eyes that glowed in the dim light that did that.

“Is that?” One of the humans stands on her toes as if that would give her a better look at it. It doesn’t stick around to see if that truly does help her eyesight.

“Fuck I think that’s a mage!”

“Get it!”

It runs, footsteps never missing a beat. “Not a mage,” the creature mutters in annoyance. A wave of old anger wells up inside it as it doges rafter to rafter avoiding arrows and hastily thrown swords.

Mage. That’s what they water down an entire being too. Human, Elf, Qunari, Dwarf. It could count the number of sapient species on a single hand and it was infuriating how little any of it really means. Because it does not belong here amongst creatures reduced to a singular existence.

Where are those with brightly colored skin who could call upon oceans of knowledge? Those whose eyes number the thousands and could light fires an entire city away? Where are those who bear the same markings and stripes as it does, who shift and change as easily as breathing? Where are they? Where are they?

Not here. Not forced to exist in a world that turns its kind into something monstrously comprehensive to the simple-minded. To a single word, to a singular existence that cannot be stretched or expanded in ways only it can see.

The creature shifts as it jumps to the ground. Reaching out and testing its constraints in a world with limits. The brightly colored orange cat expands in a way the mortal beings' minds cannot keep up with. Limbs stretching into fingers and hands and feet and legs. Tall and lanky, pointed ears and markings on its face that at first glance have some of the fools muttering curses about the Dalish.

Of course, they would not recognize the tiger stripes it has painted itself in. They would never think of such a creature let alone have trampled through the dreams of those who have.

Sometimes it wonders how any of these beings could ever communicate and then it sadly remembers that it’s through words and writing. Something it must now suffer itself. The poor things living in this world of murky colors and zero understanding.

It silently mourns that it is now among their number.

“Listen here Knife-ears,” a hand grabs its shirt and oh… it got distracted again. Now it’s sad about that. The man holding the creature pulls it close, his breath a stench of alcohol and other worldly things that makes its nose scrunch in displeasure. “You’re going to tell us who sent you or-“

“The Inquisition.” It answers immediately. It was never told to lie if it was caught. “Well, the spymaster of the Inquisition. She wanted to know what you were up to and I’ve found out so now here we are.”

“You,” the man furrows his brows mouth opening and closing unsure what to say. He probably was expecting to at the very least get a chance to threaten it before he tried to skewer it.

It doesn’t really like those kinds of games. Too boring. Too predictable. “Honestly, your plans aren’t very impressive so I don't understand why she was even worried enough to send me.’

The man's shock morphs into anger, taking a dagger from his belt and pressing it against its throat. Very unoriginal it’s going to add a negative ten points to its report about this incident.

They were only at 25 points out of 150 so far. They’ve done very poorly and are not winning the game only it knows the rules too. “That won’t work.” The knife that is. It has been slashed and stabbed and bashed in the head. It’s still standing, it will not die in this horribly terrible world that doesn’t even make its skin an opalescence that shines and shifts in colors when it wants to. It heaves a heavy sigh, it misses being different colors and different things.

Changing doesn’t work right in this world. The feeling of changing such a prominent solid feeling instead of just the right of its existence.

A prickle of pain brings its attention back to the situation, a drop of blood running down its neck. The man is growling out words and so are his companions and honestly, it has already spent too much effort in understanding in a words kind of way. Why does no one try to understand its way of communicating?

Another sigh leaves it. The only choice left is a different kind of way of speaking. It brings a hand up and grips the man's hand that holds the knife. Claws digging into flesh as the man screams. It feels its teeth sharpen into points as it lets out an unearthly shriek.

Beings of this world always listen better through violence anyway.

…

“So you killed them?” Leliana frowns down at the report that her agent drops on her desk. They shrug, bony shoulders nearly meeting their ears in exaggeration. They lean back in their chair, their focus hazy as they glance towards the ceiling. “That’s not why I sent you.”

“They found me so I defended myself,” their voice is barely a whisper of sound. Sickly yellowed eyes focus for a single moment on her, sending a shiver down her spine, before their attention pulls away back towards the ceiling.

She pinches the bridge of her nose. This isn’t the first time this has happened with this particular agent but she knows she can’t afford not to have them out in the field. Their Intel has always been invaluable. “I have your next assignment.”

They tilt their head, an unnaturally long smile spreading across their face and making their tattoos sharper in a way her mind can not understand.

A demon is better an ally than an enemy.

That's what she tells herself as she watches them leave Skyhold from the safety of her tower.

#dragon age #My writing #dragon age inquisition #dragon age oc #writing drabble #idk just something fun :)

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kichous · 3 years

Text

✧･ﾟ:* our proper distance

summary. if sukuna notices the life growing within you, separated only by your flesh as he lays his head in your lap, he says nothing. series. history lesson. bonus scene ! pairing. ryomen sukuna x f!reader. warnings. mentions of miscarriages. childbirth. word count. 2922.

You spend every day waiting for the other shoe to drop. You had already asked much of him in keeping this liaison secret. That he was willing to compromise for you was a miracle in and of itself. You do not mistake his generosity for kindness. You are well aware that your safety and well-being relies on his good will.

You have been Ryomen Sukuna’s mistress for four years. You have been his lover for roughly half of your sons’ lifetimes, and you have shouldered this secret alone for four years out of fear for their safety. And although the King of Curses, whose power has only grown since he bested your father in combat, is known to sorcerers as cruel and greedy, he cares in some way for the lives of your children. He would not hold his tongue otherwise.

Twins are a bad omen because of Sukuna, after all.

For someone whose followers regularly burn your families’ crests, Sukuna goes to greater lengths than he needs to in order to protect you. You’re still amazed that he even wants to defend you at all. He is not exactly wanting for bedmates — and you have to admit that despite the inhumanity of his form, he is still just as handsome as he was when he bore the name Shun. You do not dare to believe that you are someone special to him. You do not dare to hope.

He comes to you under the cover of night, and you learn to recognize his silhouette in front of the screen door when the moon is at its highest. You light a lantern by your door when your husband is with his other wives, though Sukuna still comes even when it isn’t there. Some nights he is content to lounge with you. His predisposition to getting his hair stroked is exceedingly feline.

That isn’t to say that he doesn’t lay with you. Such intimacy was how your relationship started, after all. From your first time in the fields beyond your father’s walls, to when he presses you into the futon in your husband’s home, Sukuna is no stranger to any inch, any measure of your body. You have come to know his as well, tracking every change with every moon. You are certain you are more familiar with him than he is with you, however, as you have never seen fit to tell them about the children.

Or, rather, the children that never came to be.

Over the years, there have been ten. Each one, you have hidden from the King of Curses. Your husband is not subject to such deceit. If anything, your infertility works in your favor. He does not come to see you as often anymore, unhappy as he is with the fact that you’ve yet to bear him any heirs besides Michimaru and Takechiyo. It gives you more time to spend with your sons — and more time with Sukuna, who does not seem particularly bothered that you have not granted him children either, despite the many times you have been together.

You wonder if you mistake his satisfaction for indifference. Perhaps he does not want the hindrance of children in his grand ambitions. He is not the most fatherly of men — although, thinking about it, you suppose you do not know any good fathers in the first place.

Sukuna’s warmongering is the last thing you would wish to subject a child to, and your sons are already afraid enough of him as it is. Your family does a good job at spreading fear and panic where Sukuna is concerned. You haven’t yet told the boys that they had already met him when he was just a man.

Regardless of his intentions, there was never anything to truly fear, as none of his seed ever took — that is, until this last moon.

You were so certain that it was impossible, that perhaps someone had cursed you. You had proved fertile enough not long after your marriage. It was strange to think that you would bear twins and nothing more. Spending the better part of your life valued only for your womb, your failure to produce more children was met with plenty of speculation, both by yourself and your immediate family. Sukuna, conversely, asked nothing of you but your company. You took solace in that fact, pitiable as it may seem.

And so, when he comes to you on a new moon, his eyes sparkling with mirth as he steps into your quarters, you are at a loss. He notices it too, as he remarks that you look like a trembling doe. It’s not the most flattering creature to be compared to, but you smile indulgently at him nonetheless. When you gesture for him to sit with you, he lays his head in your lap as always.

It is routine — you start by combing his hair away from his face, your hand tracing the familiar curve of his skull as you rub soothing circles into his scalp with the pads of your fingers. Sukuna’s eyes flutter shut at your motion, and your other hand wraps around his face to stroke his jaw. You could almost swear that he starts to purr, though you’re certain he would put you to death for ever suggesting it. At this angle, he is worryingly close to your unborn child. He says nothing to indicate that he knows of its presence.

“You look tired,” you murmur. “I could have Kinu bring us some tea, if you like.”

Sukuna lifts a hand. “Don’t bother. Just keep doing what you’re doing.” He exhales as you massage his temples. “Yes, just like that.”

“I insist.” He’s horrible to deal with when he’s cranky and you’re not in the mood. When you do not let him bruise your wrists, your hips, or your thighs, he turns to cutting words instead. He hasn’t shown any signs of displeasure yet, but you know that he is nothing if not unpredictable. It never hurts to be proactive. “Whatever you want.”

“Fine,” hums Sukuna, one of his lower eyes cracking open. “Fennel.”

Thoughtlessly, your smile drops. He notices, as the other three eyes are suddenly peering at you with suspicion.

Your servants don’t know of Sukuna — at least, that is what you are content to believe. If they have any idea that you have a lover, they say nothing to your husband and they say nothing to you. You do not want to know of their suspicions, of the knowledge that they may hold over you. You cannot spend every day looking over your shoulder from those you spend nearly every waking moment with.

But of your current predicament, they know every detail. Everything to do with your monthly blood, with the miscarriages, to the morning sickness, they’ve cleaned it all. And in doing so, you like to believe that they feel some loyalty to you. It helps you sleep at night. And because they know of the happenings of your body, they know that asking for fennel tea is asking for more blood to clean from your sheets. Infinitely more difficult than vomit, you suspect.

“Do you take issue with my choice?”

You blink, remembering yourself. Shaking your head, you try to move back, only to be pinned by the weight of Sukuna’s torso. You could shove him off, but that wouldn’t end well for anyone. “It’s fine, I just… remembered that we have run out of fennel tea, that is all.” You smile at him, and you notice through your mirror that it is too wan to seem genuine. Your heart sinks as the skepticism remains in his gaze.

“You are distressed,” Sukuna says plainly. “What have you done?”

You furrow your brows. What have you done to me? you wish to ask. You do not. “Nothing,” you hiss instead. Your scandalized tone amuses him; you can tell by the curve of his lips. He’s going to push you more. You place a hand over his mouth before he can, then yelp as he swipes his tongue across your palm. You wipe it on his kimono. “You’re disgusting. Who knows what I’ve touched?”

“It better not have been anything foul or I’ll sever these pretty hands myself.” Sukuna says the words so sweetly, they leave his lips like a song.

You run your fingers through his hair again in reply, and he chuckles.

“All right, I suppose I’ll spare you for now.” He tilts his chin up to meet you halfway when you lean down and kiss him, nibbling on your lower lip. He chases after you when you part, and he wraps a hand around the back of your head to pull you in again. “I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”

“I think I should be the one saying that about you.”

Sukuna relaxes in your lap once again, contentment flitting across his face. “That was a valiant effort at sidestepping my question, and for that, I shall reward you with leniency.”

There’s always some sense of serenity around him, even in the midst of carnage and peace alike. Like he belongs in this world, a curse that will never, ever, leave. He is tranquil in the midst of the chaos he sows — a figure of balance. That is how the commoners who champion him refer to the Two-Faced Spectre. You envy his level of self-satisfaction. Were that all the world felt as confident and assured as Sukuna, there would be a great deal less bloodshed, you think.

Rather — knowing mortals as they are, there would be infinitely more. But Sukuna would like that, you suppose.

He interrupts your contemplation by taking your hand and sliding it over his hair again. “Did I say that you could stop?”

No. He most certainly did not. With a weary chuckle, you appease him, and he takes your other hand to press a kiss into your palm. The two of you settle in silence until the candles wind down, and when they no longer provide adequate light, you lean over to blow them out and invite Sukuna to lay with you. He reads in your expression that your only intention is to sleep, and without protest, he climbs into the futon alongside you. He takes up most of it, though you are used to that.

Sukuna lies on one side. Given the excessive amount of limbs, you doubt that the position is very comfortable. He was steps and a couple of drinks away from conjuring himself a tail, though, so you suppose that most of the reason that Sukuna doesn’t sleep is because of the discomfort. Nevertheless, he likes to hold you when you sleep, his arms like a cage. As you settle into his embrace, you find that it is tighter than usual. You fold your hands over your stomach, pressing your back into his chest.

One of his hands rests on your shoulder, while his other arm on the same side winds around your waist. He lays that hand on top of yours. Though he isn’t pressing very hard, you feel every point of his nails like the tip of a blade against your belly. You roll over so that the pin-pricks are against the flesh of your back. As you tilt your head up to meet his gaze, you’re marveled by how… familial the embrace is.

Mother and father on either side, and the child sleeping soundly in the middle. It is a fool’s dream to ever think it could become a reality. But the thought still lingers in your mind — what if?

Would he run away with you? Abandon everything he’s ever worked for to raise your child (children, possibly) in obscurity. A fisherman like his father, who abandoned him as a child to be taken in by your family, ostensibly to give him a better life. You’d be a… gods, what could you do? Weave, perhaps? Something useful, at least. To show that you were not the spoiled little girl he always made you out to be.

And would your child be a sorcerer? Would they be a simpleton, like you, or would they be as powerful and fearsome as their father? Would ambition consume them, just as it had the man you loved?

Alas, you are a fool to even dream it. The four-armed could-be fisherman traces a finger along your neck, a brow arched.

“Is my face truly so mesmerizing?” he whispers, eyes sparkling. The mirth dissipates when you don’t react, and he instead leans away from you and props himself up on his lower elbow. He watches you not as one would a lover, but the way a hunter stalks its prey — like he’s waiting for any misstep he could leap upon. “All right, come out with it.”

“What?” The word doesn’t sound convincing, even to yourself. Your failure at duplicity causes both disappointment and disdain to war upon Sukuna’s face. Quickly, you lift your hands to appease him. “I’ve just been feeling a little tired these days is all. I’ve already sent for a healer, surely they can figure out what’s wrong with me.”

“Is there any better healer in the province than yourself?” he scoffs. You are not sure whether to be flattered by the praise, spoken with venom, or not. “If there were anyone with a greater grasp on reverse cursed technique they may very well be a god.”

You stroke his jaw tenderly with the backs of your fingers, rubbing a thumb across his cheek. “Not every malady can be healed by my power,” you remind him. To be fair, you did actually call for a second opinion. You could simply be suffering through some foodborne illness — but you know your body best, and you know now that there is something dwelling within it. You have called for a midwife, just to make sure. “I will be fine.”

“I don’t like seeing you upset.” Sukuna’s lips form a scowl. “Tell me what to do to make it stop.”

His words give you pause, an incredulous laugh nearly bubbling out of you. You subdue yourself, but the wonder is still there. You tuck yourself into him to hide your mirth.

Is this the closest you’ll ever get to genuine romance from him? You know that you can never tell him anything. And while you’d think yourself a monster if he was anyone else, you know the child will be safer if they had never known of Sukuna at all.

How on earth would you tell the child their father was a beast? You could lie to them, pretend that your husband was the one that sired them. You could never tell them at all, and leave it until their adulthood before they found the truth. Then you would be no better than the family you tried to escape.

You had always thought yourself a decent mother, fair and loving. But a child of Sukuna could never know a world of peace, and with how irrevocably you have become intertwined with him, you could not give the child the peaceful, happy life it deserved.

Your brother’s wife has a sister in Mino. Perhaps she will raise your baby as her own.

“There’s nothing you can do,” you murmur into the side of his neck. You can feel a rumbling in his throat, a low growl in reply. When you stroke his back, he stills. There is virtually no space between you, and you can feel the mouth on his stomach shift against your midsection. Instinctively, you slide a hand over yourself as a barrier.

He doesn’t seem to notice the defensive gesture, and for that, you are thankful. Sukuna never sleeps when he is with you, only laying in a facsimile of it in his stillness and steadiness while you actively slumber. He is always gone in the morning when you wake, but if you are (un)lucky, you can still catch his scent on you. As you lean back to rub noses with him, you find him staring at you intently. Eyes like piercing daggers, you have no doubt he has watched you like this many nights before.

“Nothing at all.” It is not a question. It is said with malice, with suspicion.

Your little fantasy of a life with him seems ever further away. A fool’s delusion.

This man does not love you — he loves how much he can control you. He loves that you sit prettily in the palm of his hand, that you give him everything without protest. He loves that he always leaves you wanting for more. He loves that you lie for him, that you live a double life only for him. He loves the feeling of turning you against his greatest enemies, even if that was never true.

He loves that he is one of the only reasons you are ever happy. He loves that you are afraid of his moods, and that you do all that you can to please him. He loves that do as he asks in all respects but one. He loves that you are so small against him, so frail. He loves you most when you are at your weakest. He loves only as a monster loves.

You cannot — you will not ever allow him to sink his claws into this child.

You press a gentle kiss to Sukuna’s lips, a false promise. “Nothing at all.”

#ryomen sukuna x reader #sukuna x reader #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #history lesson bonus.#history lesson tag.#jjk fic.#i think my writing says something about how much i fucking love sleeping and napping #considering how often the couples end up in bed

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yolkyeomie · 3 years

Text

Humanity of the Inhuman | Kim Sunwoo

summary — legends are meant for the wild fantasies of the dream world, but when one myth suddenly comes true, you find yourself tangled within its webs of reality.

word count — 5.9k words

pairing — sunwoo x female!reader (ft x juyeon)

genre —college au, gumiho au

disclaimer —!! light mentions of death, blood, and injury !! lol happy birthday to my favorite writing muse in the world, sunwoo :)

part I | part II | part III | part IV?

You close the door behind you, a deep sigh falling out your mouth as you try to recount the events from today. Though you didn’t get very much time to yourself before you were rudely interrupted by banging coming from you bathroom door and an irritated voice shouting at you. “Hey! I know you’re here, I heard the door open and close! Are you going to let me out now or what?”

You glanced down the hall that led to the bathroom and saw the yellow paper talisman stuck on the door, completely untouched since you had placed it there to keep the gumiho in one place. “Wow, it actually works.” You mumble to yourself, slowly approaching the door knowing that the boy inside was struggling to escape.

You didn’t know how effective the talisman would be since nine tails were said to be rather powerful beings but it was truly working wonders to keep him in one place. Maybe he wasn’t very strong in reality? “Hey fox boy! I’ve got some questions, if you answer at least one of them I’ll let you out.”

You could hear the boy scoff from the inside, probably in disbelief that he was being held hostage by a human with no power to their name. “Doesn’t that sound fair?” You continued, “your freedom for information that I want, good deal right?”

“I don’t think I’m understanding correctly,” the boy began, slamming his fist against the bathroom door one last time to try and break free. You jumped back on instinct, the gumiho’s strength shaking the door on its hinges. Yet the paper talisman stood strong and refused to budge, making it hard for you to not break a smile a few moments later at the gumiho’s struggle. “What information could you, a human, possibly need from a gumiho, huh? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“I’m curious,” you admit, sitting down in front of the door and watching the boy’s shadow underneath the small gap in the door. “I'm taking mythology as a fun little elective class and we were just beginning to learn the lore behind nine tailed foxes, I just wanna see which type of myths are true and fake.”

“And you had to lock me,” the door handle jiggled for a moment to show the gumiho’s distress, “in your bathroom to do this?”

“You tried to kill me! What else was I supposed to do?” You complained, frustrated with the boy despite not even being face to face with him. “I was lucky enough to have a talisman sitting in my house that my parents had gotten me weeks ago! If I didn’t push you in there and put the talisman on the door, you probably would have eaten my liver or something.”

“I wouldn’t have eaten your liver,” the boy argued, a loud thump hitting the door as he spoke. It didn’t sound like a punch, more like he had put his back on the door and leaned ups against it. “Even if I wanted to, you made the dumb decision of saving me so now I’m in debt to you.”

“What? I’m sorry, can you run that back for a second?” You questioned, scooting up toward the door eagerly at this new piece of information. “What do you mean you're in debt to me?”

“The other day, when you told me you had saved me after I was attacked? You’ve binded me to you for doing me that favor, leaving me in debt to you. I cannot harm you while I’m debt to you unless I repay you for it.”

The silence between the two of you let a cold shiver run down your spine, though you were too busy processing the information he had given you. “It’s kinda like… an honor code but for gumihos. It was put in place by higher spirits in hopes of lessening the attacks caused by us. It never really worked though, no one dares to approach a fox in fear of being eaten.”

“I’m guessing that’s how it was centuries ago or something…,” you snorted, crossing your arms as you reminisced upon you accidentally stumbling across his injured body.

“Because no one tried, the message never got passed down to the next generations,” he explained, “so it’s become a lost piece of our mythos. Honestly I would have liked to keep it that way as well, but here you are bringing this rule back to fruition. Either way, I’m not going to kill you until I repay you, so there’s no need to keep me in here anymore.”

“You promise you’re not going to jump out and eat my liver the moment I open the door?” You questioned him, getting off the ground as you spoke.

The other side of the door was quiet for a moment before the boy finally answered, “you have my word.”

Cautiously, you put one hand on the door handle and took the talisman within the other. With silent prayer to any otherworldly being that might be watching you and the gumiho from above, you snatched the talisman off of the door and braced yourself for the unforgiving claws of the nine tailed fox you had trapped in your bathroom.

Though all you were greeted by was the grateful smile of the boy you had rescued, a hint of mischief sparkling in his ever changing amber eyes before settling to a deep dark brown to blend in with the mortals of your world. “That wasn’t that hard was it? Now if you excuse me—“

Before you even had the chance to retaliate, the boy darted between you and the door like a quick breeze in the air. He was much faster than you had anticipated, though it should have been expected from a creature such as a nine tailed fox. “Wait, where are you going? I had questions to ask!”

The boy stopped in his tracks, struggling to comprehend where the exit to your home was. He may have been in your house, but the most he had seen was your living room and bathroom. He cursed under his breath for finding himself trapped in an unfamiliar surroundings once again. You watched as the gumiho let out a deep sigh of frustration, turning around to face you with an annoyed yet sweet smile on his face. “Of course… the questions. How could I forget! Tell me, what is it that a human wants to know about gumihos?”

You held up the talisman as a warning sign, not knowing if it still had any useful power to it but it was definitely enough to get the nine tailed fox on his best behavior. “First off, who are you? Or more like… what’s your name? And why were you bleeding to death in rain when I found you?”

“Asking for a lot already, aren’t you?” He mumbled, snorting to himself as he threw himself onto your small couch. “My name is Sunwoo and as you know I am a nine tailed fox. As to why I was bleeding in that alleyway… I was attacked, like I told you before.”

“Okay, Sunwoo, I get that you were attacked but why?” You continued to pester, your curiosity of the gumiho’s situation overtaking your thoughts. The more he tried to hide what was going on, the more curious you became. Though you shouldn’t get close thanks to Juyeon, who knew what he’d do to you if you got closer. “A small argument doesn’t just lead into nearly murdering a person! Or well… fox.”

“My apologies…” he trailed off, looking to you for information.

“Y/N,” you answered him, “it’s Y/N.”

“My apologies, Y/N, but that sort of information is classified,” Sunwoo shrugged, flinching slightly as you threatened him with the talisman, “I just don’t think you’d want to involve yourself in gumiho business. It’s not something a human should be sticking their nose into either way.”

You roll your eyes at his excuse, pointing to yourself as you exclaimed, “have you already forgotten? I am your savior and you’re in debt to me! I should at least know why the victim was keeping attacked in the first place don’t you think? Just think of it as… you repaying your debt to me now.”

“That’s not how that works.” The boy explained, slightly cringing at your actions as he watched you place yourself upon a pedestal to ring information out of him. “I’m in debt to you, yeah, but it means I quite literally owe my life to you. You saved my life, now under whatever circumstances that might occur, I will save yours.”

“Tell me why happened, Sunwoo,” you urged, a little more aggressively this time.

“I stole a fox bead from another gumiho.” He admitted, crossing his arms as he leaned back into the couch. You could almost feel Sunwoo’s hair on his skin rise as he recalled the events prior, trying to decide what he wanted to say and what he’d keep from you. “They had found me and attacked in an attempt to get it back and as a result, left me there to die when they thought they had retrieved it. Luckily for me, they took a fake instead.”

“Fox bead?” You questioned, trying to wrack your head around in an attempt to remember if you had heard of such a thing before. Though you’re not sure if your mythology class had gotten far enough into your gumiho lesson to cover it. “What is that, fox beads?”

“It’s a bead for foxes, everyone has one,” Sunwoo teased, though quickly adding the actual explanation before you could threaten him again, “it’s a bead that provides most of the power and future knowledge that a gumiho could ever ask for, making them one of the most popular beings alive. The only way to obtain this amount, though, is by absorbing the energy of a human.”

“By kissing them?” You questioned, and Sunwoo nodded his head in reply. “My god, I can’t believe he was actually right…” you realized, recalling the information that Juyeon had given you. Nine tailed foxes feed off of a human’s existence, but who would have known they gain more power as a result of taking an innocent human’s life.

Instinctively, you cover your mouth as defense against Sunwoo, not completely trusting the gumiho as he laughed at you. “Have you already forgotten, Y/N? You’re my savior, I owe my life to you. I can’t harm you until that debt has been paid off.”

“Why would you steal a fox bead if every gumiho has one? Just go fill up your own bead you… sicko…” you glare, the vivid image of the gumiho in front of you snatching the life out of humans prevalent in your mind.

“I stole it because the gumiho who had this specific one had almost filled it all.” Sunwoo explained, he held his hand out for you to see as a flash of light sparked in his palms, an object beginning to form within his grasp as his eyes turned the same amber yellow as before. You watched as a glowing bead appeared in his hands, the same color as his foxish eyes and making a light jingle sound every time it moved.

“This is…,” you mumbled, mesmerized by such a beautiful crystal being presented to you.

“The fox bead, the nearly completed fox bead.” Sunwoo nodded. “There hasn’t been a fox bead of this variety in many, many millennia. If the gumiho I stole this from gets his hands on this again and gives it the last bit of human energy it needs? All hell will break loose. That’s what I stole it, or was instructed to steal it. A fox bead of this strength cannot be destroyed by just any gumiho, but by a—”

“Shut up for a second,” you interrupted him, putting the talisman down as inching closer to the fox bead. As the object moved around in Sunwoo hands, the jingling continued to get louder and louder in your head. It got to the point where it finally clicked in your head as to why you were drawn to fox bead in the first place. “I’ve heard this before, the ringing… jingling sound it makes.”

“The fox bead?” Sunwoo questioned, his eyes shooting up to yours at an alarming speed. When you nodded your head his amber yellow eyes snapped back to the natural dark browns and the fox bead disappeared from his hands. “What do you mean you heard the fox bead?”

“Before I found you, I heard jingling. Like… bells or wind chimes or something like that. I followed it because I was curious and it led me straight to you.” You explained yourself, recalling the events rather easily. “And it happened again earlier today when I was on the phone with my friend. It led me outside of my room which brought me straight to where you were. I guess what I was hearing all along was the fox bead.”

“Y/N…” he mumbled, struggling to father his thoughts as he spoke. “Y/N, the fox bead doesn’t make any noise. Or at least, humans cannot hear the jingling of a fox bead unless they are the gumiho’s next target. And we already know it couldn’t have been me because I’m in debt to you.”

You thought to yourself for a moment before replying, “are you saying that the gumiho you stole from… he was planning on using my energy to complete his fox bead?”

II.

“Okay, I understand this is a serious situation, but is all of this really necessary?” You turned your wary gaze toward Sunwoo, fidgeting with the sleeves of your jacket as you watched the boy wander not too far behind you.

Despite your cautious tone, the gumiho was a lot more relaxed than you were. Dressed brand new clothes you had bought specifically for him the day before, Sunwoo took in his surroundings with his keen dark eyes in search of the gumiho that was targeting you. “Of course it’s necessary. If I leave you to your own devices, the gumiho targeting you may try to strike and you will be gone before anyone finds out what happened… if they find out what happened that is.”

You shouldn’t be feeling this anxious about everything. After all you are on your turf, the college campus, and you have a mythical nine tailed fox following your move. You're more safe here than you could be anywhere else. Maybe it’s the fact that you can’t believe any of this is actually happening, it feels like you're in some sort of twisted fairytale than reality if you had to be honest.

Seriously, nine tailed foxes? Fox beads? Being the final victim for the beast? None of that is believable if you were simply hearing it but here you are experiencing it all.

“Well, at least don’t stick around so close,” you scold him, shooing him as far away as you could. “What if I come into contact with the nine tailed fox, and he sees you? He thinks you’re dead after all!”

“Actually...” Sunwoo trailed off, trying to word his next sentence as gently as possible. “Not exactly…? I mean… maybe like a day or two ago he would have believed I’m dead but—”

You stop in your tracks immediately, spinning on your heel to face the gumiho with a furious glint in your eyes, “—What do you mean ‘but’, Sunwoo?”

“It doesn’t take long for a gumiho to realize when they have a fox bead that’s not theirs,” he explained leaning up against the wall and fiddling with his hair as he spoke. “It’s an innate ability we all have, the one that the gumiho took was mine and that thing is completely empty. It was enough to give me time to get out of the city but then…”

“I found you and we figured out that the nine tailed fox was coming for me.” You finished off, wanting to curse yourself for ever stopping for the boy in the first place. You almost wish you didn’t get yourself involved with the nine tailed foxes, almost. “What's the point in doing all of this then?”

“It’s so I can find out where exactly the gumiho is hiding and keep him from you,” Sunwoo grinned, “and then stall him just enough so that I take his fox bead and destroy it.”

You stared at him for a few moments more before letting out an intensely deep sigh. For some reason, the plan that Sunwoo had created didn’t seem very fool proof. But what could you do? After all, you were the human and he was the gumiho. He knew a lot more about nine tailed foxes then you could ever imagine. He, unfortunately, held your life in the palm of his hands.

“Well you can’t stay beside me all of time,” you hissed, finally approaching the room that held your mythology class. “I don’t think I really want to explain to my class how I found and saved a nine tailed fox right after we started the course for your mythos.”

“You can let me in, it’s fine!” He grinned, trying to weasel his way past you and into the class before you could catch him. “I want to know what humans learn about gumihos! You know, give them a few pointers and let them know what’s true and what’s not true.”

“Sunwoo, no!” You snapped, your hands wrapping around his shirt collar and pulling him back as hard as you could. He lurched backward and nearly tumbled to the ground, shocked by your sudden burst of strength. “Are you really trying to keep me safe or are you in cahoots with the other nine tailed fox, him?”

The boy frowned at your accusations, forcing himself back into his feet as he opened his mouth, “Y/N—“

“Y/N!” You turned your head with neck breaking speed to see Juyeon approaching you from down the hall, his gleeful and generous smile beaming down on you once he got your attention. In a panic you turned back to Sunwoo, wanting to give your last attempt at shooing him away before realizing he had disappeared within an instant. The last hint of the gumiho’s mere existence was the faint jingle of the fox bead he had stolen echoing in your ears, so at least you knew he was still around.

You spun on your heels to face Juyeon as relaxed as possible, anxiously fumbling with your hands as he stopped in front of you. “You’re rather early aren’t you? Who were you talking to?”

“I was on the phone,” you quickly responded, your mind running miles as you tried your best to give him an excuse, “with Kevin! He was just checking up on me after the whole… spirits in my house fiasco.”

“Oh, I remember you coming to me about that,” he nodded, nervously adjusting the bag slung over his shoulder. “Are you okay actually? You never gave me an update on the sounds you were hearing and it… worried me, I guess.”

You slowly begin to smile at Juyeon’s kindness, jokingly punching him in the shoulder as you said, “aw, how sweet! Checking up on your good ol’ school friend, huh?”

“School friend…,” he trailed off, hesitating for a moment before smiling at you with the tips of his ears burning a slight shade of red. “Of course I’m worried about my school buddy! Mythology isn't fun without you there with me after all.”

You pat his back in reassurance, “don’t worry, everything is fine for the most part. Though…,” you stopped, wondering how you could discreetly mention Sunwoo’s existence and his warning of you being hunted by a nine tailed fox to the boy. Did you need to tell him actually? None of that was actually of Juyeon’s concern. But… he did say he was worried about you.

“If I needed to go somewhere… somewhere away from my home…,” the jingling from the past few days echoed in your ears as you spoke to him. The fox bead, Sunwoo, was nearby again. You should finish this conversation as quickly as you could. “Would you open your dorm to me? Just for like a day or so! I wouldn’t overstay—“

“Of course!” He blurted, his eyes wide with glee but quickly glistening over with embarrassment. Juyeon cleared his throat as he tried to continue the conversation as normal as he possibly could. “I mean— uh— I’d be happy to, don’t worry. I’d have to clean up a lot and move Hyunjae out so he won’t bother you so just… make sure to give me a heads up, okay?”

You blinked once, then twice, then once more just in case you were seeing what you were seeing. After a few moments of awkward silence after the boy’s rambling, you grinned at him. “Why didn't you question me for not asking Kevin first?”

“I…,” Juyeon struggled to reply, his face flushing as he realized what he had done. “You’re my school friend, Y/N! I’m going to help you when I can, of course. What type of friend would I be if I didn’t?”

You couldn’t tell if the awkward silence between the two of you was because of Juyeon’s terrible lie or the fact that both of you were still astonished by what came out of his mouth. Though you didn’t have time to ponder on it any longer when the fox bead jingled in your ears again and the boy finally piped up, “I’m gonna go ahead and head inside now. See you, Y/N, in like… three minutes or something, I don’t know—“

“—I’m gonna make a call back to Kevin first,” you added on, finally gaining control over your body again as you pulled out your phone and gestured to it. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

He nodded a few more times than needed before skipping into the mythology class, not even daring to look back at you as he disappeared within the class. You couldn’t tell whether Juyeon’s genuinely just being his normal kind self to you or if his actions were motivated by something deeper, you honestly didn’t want to find out at the moment. Not when there was a gumiho out for your head at the moment.

“Alright, Sunwoo, you can come out now—“ your breath hitched as you felt a hand tug aggressively at your wrist, practically snatching you away from the doors to your mythology classroom and into a more secluded hallway.

When you looked up Sunwoo loomed over you, his dark eyes turning into its mystic amber yellow and his nails digging into your skin as his grip grew tighter and tighter. “Are you crazy?” He questioned, though the jingle of the fox bead he had stolen nearly drowned out his voice. “Why were you talking to him?”

“Juyeon?” You question, yanking your arm away from him and taking a giant step away from him. “He’s… he’s my friend, why would I not talk to him? I’ve been taking this class with him since the semester started. He’s a good guy, don’t worry about him.”

“He’s not some good guy, Y/N,” Sunwoo warned, holding out his fist for you to see. Curiously you watched as the fox bead began to form in the palm of his hand, gleaming a much brighter light and practically pulsing with the energy of humans trapped within it. For something so morbid, you sure found it beautiful. “Juyeon is a gumiho, why are you trusting him?”

“Huh?” You respond, unsure of whether or not you had actually heard him correctly. “I’m sorry, repeat that one more time for me.”

“Lee Juyeon,” Sunwoo answered, reciting his full name without you even needing to tell him, “is a gumiho, the very gumiho I stole this fox bead from. Juyeon is targeting you.”

III.

“Y/N!” Sunwoo yelled, banging his fist against the bathroom door like he had been doing for the past couple of days. He was in time out for telling such a ridiculous lie and assuming you’d believe him right off of the bat just because he was a mythical creature. “Y/N, why are you being like this? Can you at least talk to me again.”

You didn’t respond as you laid face first on your couch, struggling to block out the gumiho’s voice from your head. Did he really think you’d believe that Juyeon, the boy you’ve known for nearly the entire semester, was a gumiho? Nine tailed foxes may be master manipulators, but there were some lies that were outrageous enough for even the most simpleminded folk to see past.

“Y/N, you can’t keep me in here forever! Juyeon will come after you when least expect it and—“

“Shut up!” You finally snapped, grabbing a hold of one of the cheap decorative pillows laid across your couch and throwing it as hard as you physically could at the bathroom door. Though the pillow only made it halfway across the room before crashing to the ground without a sound, leaving your sigh of frustration to fill the gap left by the silence.

“I just… I don’t understand. You humans make no sense at all! Why is it so hard to accept the fact that Juyeon is a gumiho?” Sunwoo complained, forcing you to get off the couch and march your way toward the bathroom door. “You wanted to figure out why you heard the fox bead make noise and now you have your answer, Juyeon has been targeting you this entire time! Why are you defending him so hard—“

You snatched the talisman off the door and swung the door open with the ferocity of a tiger, taking the nine tailed fox off guard and watching him stare up at you with a wide eyed and frazzled expression. “Maybe I’m defending him so hard because I’ve been him much longer than I’ve known you! Juyeon has been nothing but… but sweet and kind to me all semester, he’s been looking out for me for who knows how long, and you just want me to believe that he’s out to take my life?”

Sunwoo blinked at your words before vigorously nodding his head, “yes, of course!”

An angry growl of frustration escaped your mouth, getting ready to slap the talisman back on the door and lock the nine tailed fox back inside. “Aren’t gumihos literally trickster spirits? I can’t believe I’ve believed everything that’s come out of your mouth so far. Who knows how many times you’ve already lied to me? Next thing I know you’re going to try and eat my livers when I least expect it!”

However the boy was much more sly and quicker than you could have ever been, so he easily slipped out of the way before you could do so, “I thought I already explained I’m not going to kill you? I physically cannot do so. I have an honor code to follow, genius!”

“How do I know that’s not a lie too, hm?” You questioned, crossing your arms like a child as you walked away from him. “You have no proof of this… this nine tailed fox honor code. How should I trust the words that come out your mouth, hm?”

Sunwoo frowned, the corners of his mouth going as low as they possibly could. “Do you like him or something? Suddenly all the trust we’ve built up has crumbled into nothingness, it’s really getting on my nerves.”

“I do not like Juyeon, he’s just a really good friend!” You shouted, retaliating sharply to the nine tailed fox. The boy nodded his head slowly, clearly not believing your words and rolling his eyes not long after. “But the stuff you’re saying? Unbelievable, this entire situation is unbelievable as is!”

“How do I make you believe what I say, without you accusing me of being a ‘master manipulator’?” Sunwoo mocked, though genuinely trying to find a solution to your disagreement. “I could tell you that I can’t lie to save my life, but you’d think that’s me trying to manipulate you or something again. You know, not all gumihos are good at lying! Some of us are—“

“Prove it,” you demanded, gesturing around your living room as you waited for him to respond. “Prove that you’re not going to harm me and prove that Juyeon is actually a nine tailed fox. I need cold hard facts and visual evidence before I can go on and trust you with my life again.”

“Y/N,” Sunwoo whined, trying to get you to let him off the hook just this one time. Yet you shook your head, sat down on the couch, and simply waited for him to somehow prove he wasn’t just being the stereotypical nine tailed fox she had been learning.

“Go on,” you urged him, “I’m waiting.”

The gumiho looked around in a frenzy, unsure of what exactly he could do to win your trust. You sat and watched him struggle, trying to wrack your own brain around why you had trusted Sunwoo so easily. Was it because you found him while he was injured and dying? But you should never trust strangers in the street anyway, whether they were at death’s door or not!

Maybe it was that cursed fox bead, it’s soft ring echoing in your ears and clouding your judgement each time you needed to make a decision. Were you even sure that the fox bead wasn’t actually his? He could have been lying about that whole situation too…

“I got it!” Sunwoo exclaimed, catching you off guard and shaking you from your thoughts. You look up to see the boy holding his hands out in front of him, his eyes beginning to shift into that familiar amber yellow and an object forming in his hands.

“Hey! No gumiho powers can be used!” You yelled, leaping up from your seat to stop him. Though the gumiho only stepped out of the way, raising his hands straight up so that you couldn’t reach him. “How do I know that it doesn’t amplify your ability to manipulate or not?”

“This can’t be done without the power of a gumiho in the first place,” he hissed, lowering his hands once the stolen fox bead finally materialized in his hands. “Do you want me to prove that I can’t harm you or what?”

You hesitate for a moment and a large smile begins to grow across Sunwoo’s face. “Then this is the only way I can prove it to you. I’ve told you once before that the fox bead is used to absorb human energy, so I’m going to use it on you to show that I genuinely cannot hurt you.”

“Use the fox bead on me…?” You repeat, letting his words slowly process before Juyeon’s words begin to blare through your head. “Wait… doesn’t that require like… kissing me? No, absolutely not! What if this is just a plow to kill me or something?”

“Y/N,” Sunwoo held the fox bead in his hands, it’s glow shining through the crevices of his hands as he spoke, “do you trust me?”

“No!” You quickly replied, “no, I do not!”

“Perfect, that’s the whole point of us doing this then!” He grinned, opening his mouth and dropping the fox bead in like a piece of candy. “It’ll be like two seconds, don’t worry! Well, it’ll feel like two seconds depending on whether or not the fox bead actually absorbs your energy...”

“Sunwoo!” You snap, finding yourself trapped behind the couch and the nine tailed fox in front of you. He took two enthusiastic steps forward before you put your hands in front of you, pushing him to arms length as you quickly spilled, “are you sure this is the way we have to do this? Can you figure out any other way?”

“No I can’t,” Sunwoo hissed between clenched teeth, urging you to put your hands down. “Can we please get this over with so that we can move on to other things? This will take like two seconds.”

“Ugh, fine!” You finally comply, tapping your lips and growling out, “let’s just… get this over with, if you end up actually killing me with this I will haunt you in the afterlife!”

The gumiho leaned in close, his hands hovering over your shoulders and his breath fanning across your face while the sparkle of the fox bead glistening in the corner of your eye. It gleamed in between the roof of his mouth and tongue before you no longer could catch sight of its glow, Sunwoo’s lips pressed fully onto yours without warning of his sudden roughness.

You yelp at his actions but it was entirely eaten up by the gumiho pressing his hands into you, engulfing the fleeting moment as quickly as he could. Somehow you found the strength to separate yourself from him, taking a moment to inhale just once and let out a “Sunwoo—“ before the boy dove right back in again.

He moved from your shoulders to cup your face in his hands while his weight pushed the both of you onto the couch below. You were practically drowning in the gumiho’s desires, too engrossed in Sunwoo’s kiss to notice the fox bead rolling out of his mouth into yours. Though the boy pulled back suddenly, breaking kiss and leaving the two of you breathless and in silence. If you didn’t have the willpower to hold yourself back, you probably would have pulled him back in again… how embarrassing.

His amber yellow eyes twinkled for a moment before shifting back into its illusion of a dark brown and he finally spoke to break the stillness of your home, “look to the sky, look to the land, and then look the people,” Sunwoo explained, having deep breaths after each sentence, “then swallow the fox bead.”

You didn’t get a chance to reply before the gumiho kissed you again, filling you up with the same adrenaline from not even a few seconds ago then retaking the fox bead from your mouth. You blinked a few times to bring yourself back to reality, wanting to ground yourself before speaking another word out your mouth, “why?”

“That’s how you defend yourself against a gumiho and destroy the fox bead all together.” Sunwoo responded, rising off of the couch and taking a few steps away from you. “The only reason you didn’t feel your energy being drained was because that wasn’t my fox bead and I am obligated to protect you, not harm you. You just need to know in case Juyeon takes his back and comes for you.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me instead of—,” you cut yourself off, covering your mouth with your hands and hoping desperately that Sunwoo didn’t catch the intense burning of your ears or beating of your heart, “instead of… showing... me...”

Sunwoo grinned, a grin so eerily similar to a real fox that you almost scoffed. “Because you thought I was manipulating you and wanted me to prove my innocence. Oh and don’t worry about me proving Juyeon is a gumiho, I’ve got something planned that will help.”

He stopped talking for a moment, licking his lips as you finally found the strength to sit upright on the couch and turned his piercing dark eyes toward you. “Of all the things, I didn’t expect you to taste like strawberries? How… interesting.”

112 notes · View notes

rurpleplayssims · 2 years

Text

📝Round Summary - Morgan/Ashford Round 1

Campbell Quay - Round 3 - Morgan/Ashford If you want to go through the posts of this round, click here.

We now move onto the other new household this round, which is the Morgan/Ashford household.

Sylvie Morgan was a character submitted by @andrisims.

Briony Ashford was a character submitted by @coriel-muroz

As we start the round, there is a aura of mystery surrounding the lady who has lived in this remote cottage on the outskirts of town for...a very long time.

Sylvie is mentally exhausted of her exile and dreams of returning home to her true home, her true family and true loves in life. She speaks of other realms, and how she shouldn’t belong here, amongst humans. She speaks of hiding her true self, in fear of attack and prejudice, and feels the sting of injustice from being exiled from “the Seelie Court”, whatever that might be.

Briony is her new lodger, an unexpected joy and annoyance at times for the elder lady. Briony is a very determined and proactive journalist, and doesn’t take no for an answer.

Knowing that her roommate was occupied on her laptop in the guest bedroom, Sylvie takes the opportunity to head upstairs to her attic, an area restricted to just herself, despite Briony’s open curiosity.

Sylvie is revealed to be very curious herself and as a Knowledge person, she thrives on discovery of new facts and theories. Whilst she is limited in her interests and plays to her strengths, there is one such interest that she hides in her attic.

Meet Felix, her only companion until Briony moved in, who is a cowplant. However, he is highly intelligent, fed by Sylvie’s own nature prowess.

He might not be able to speak to a human, but he could understand what they said, and Sylvie was able to understand him through telepathic means. She was his only friend in the whole world, and it’s closer to a mother/son relationship.

These two beings who were shunned by humankind, bonded in a way no mortal would every truly understand.

Sylvie then moves onto a more pressing issue; trying to figure out who had cursed her youngest nephew, Noah.

Sylvie is 100% certain that if Jasper had jinxed him, it would’ve never been intentional and something she could see he felt responsible for, and couldn’t bring himself to reveal to either of his brothers.

It therefore didn’t make any sense that he’d would jinx him on purpose.

But Sylvie had her suspicions, and she didn’t like how likely that could be...

A sudden noise makes her jump, but her sharp command silences the occupant of the cupboard in the corner of the room.

Felix senses his mother’s sour mood and tries to lighten her mood. She is able to smile when he barks in joy at the display of her magic.

Sylvie heads back downstairs to practise her chess whilst Briony is researching on her laptop again.

She is determined to document and write several volumes describing the start-up of the small town she is proud to be part of.

Briony gets on well with her landlady, despite the slightly stern paternal vibe that Sylvie acts with sometimes.

Briony’s car broke down not far from Sylvie’s home, and ever since, Sylvie invited her to reside with her until her house (which was delayed in finishing) was ready for her.

Briony and Sylvie get on quite well. Sylvie is being eased out of her depressive-lonely state, and Briony is learning to respect other people’s boundaries more.

The phone rings downstairs, and Briony goes to answer it. It’s Ellen who needs to speak to Sylvie.

Briony starts getting dinner ready, trying to not eavesdrop.

Sylvie answers the phone and the two women discuss Ellen’s relationship with Jasper and Sylvie bluntly tells Ellen that bond or not, their relationship is finalised.

Briony sits down for dinner and tells Sylvie how impatient she is with Althea not proof-reading her CQ Volumes quick enough, but Sylvie gently reminds her that Althea is a very busy woman.

Briony mentions the local gossip in town (which was Tyler and Zoey’s fallout and public rows) but Sylvie sharply tells her not to disclose that type of information, because Althea wouldn’t want to promote that.

After dinner Sylvie considers inviting Noah over to discuss the curse’s effects in detail. She’s determined to help reverse it.

Briony is enjoying some reading, which is her first novel ‘My Life with a Cheat’.

Briony was married in the city, but her ex-husband cheated on her, with her best friend! Briony understandably had very strong feelings to not ever speak to those two ever again.

Sylvie comes back into the living area and bluntly asks what’s bothering Briony. Briony confesses that she’s still fuming over her cheating ex-husband and ex-best friend.

Sylvie understands her anger and senses that Briony misses the companionship. But Briony asks “ How do I know if I won’t be taken advantage of again?”

Sylvie decides that they need to sit down for Briony to truly unload her worries, taking on a maternal role.

Briony asks how you know when you’re ready to have a child, especially as she is a working female.

The best way for Briony to process their heavy talk, is to get back into her work with renewed effort.

Althea has completed reading the first volume of Briony’s story and sends her approval with it, with only light editing.

Briony’s story is a hit with the publishers and she earns a massive §12,926 advance!

Sylvie heads outside to survey the surrounding land of the hillside she owns and had occupied for decades. It’s times like this when she zones out and her past life comes to the forefront of her mind, sometimes making her happy, sometimes depressing her.

Briony meanwhile is churning out her second volume to be sent to Althea for approval.

It starts to snow outside and Briony joins Sylvie is making a snowman. Sylvie lightly scolds Briony for working so hard and long without taking breaks. Briony confesses that she finds it hard to switch off.

Sylvie heads back outside that evening, intent on some stargazing.

Having sent off the second volume, Briony is just starting the third volume - this girl is no slacker when it comes to writing!

The next morning Sylvie invites both Jasper and Ellen around. Jasper is busy so its just Ellen who heads over.

Sylvie spent the morning speaking to Ellen, answering her concerns about the bond that has sealed Ellen and Jasper together, but Sylvie assures her that the bond would only seal when both parties consent to it, love and are attracted to one another, which eases Ellen’s fears.

Briony is forced to stop working when her laptop breaks. She curses it before reluctantly heading to bed.

Jasper fixes Briony’s laptop very quickly as she soon starts badgering with him questions again.

Noah heads over to meet with his aunt and they start a game of chess upstairs. They discuss Phillip’s upcoming wedding and Noah says he thinks he was cursed.

Briony gets a call from her publisher on the sales of her second CQ volume, and receives §12,558 for it.

As a result she maxes her Film and Literature enthusiasm.

Sylvie is stunned but not upset to see she lost the chess match with Noah. When he gets up, he spots the pictures on her shelf, and wonders aloud why she has one of his father.

Noah is confused as to why he thinks it’s off for her to have a picture of just their father. Sylvie shrugs and explains that his father had been one of the only confidants she’d had, in a home dominated by Noah’s tyrannical mother.

Noah is not convinced, which offends Sylvie. What exactly was her adoptive nephew suggesting? That she slept with his father? The idea was ludicrous to her.

Sylvie gives Noah a piece of her mind, and tells him things that as an adult she can tell him now - that his mother was bullying his father and herself, not just her three sons.

Noah goes to apologise but Sylvie senses the lack of sincerity and bats it away.

Thankfully, Briony comes out of her room to end their disagreement, yet not knowing what she’d interrupted.

Briony heads back downstairs, feeling a bit burnt out from writing. She prepares dinner for the three of them, and silently wonders what row she’d interrupted earlier. She is able to keep people’s secrets, despite being a journalist.

When they are seated for dinner, Briony starts to inquire about whatever Sylvie is hiding in her attic, resenting her ban.

Noah interrupts and bluntly asks her “Do you believe in magic?”

Briony shrugs, arguing that she is sat next to a zombie. He shakes his head and seriously tells her that magic is dangerous, always was and always will be. He’d fallen foul of magic and it was something he deeply regretted.

He adds that his mother had been prepared for magic, but it routed inside her and has made her into a dangerously uncontrollable woman who you’d never want to get on the bad side of.

Briony does listen to him, and takes his words to heart, realising that this would be a battle she would never win.

Yvette, one of Thomas’s delivery staff, arrives to give Briony the first hardback copies of her first two volumes on Campbell Quay.

Briony sits down and speaks with Noah as Sylvie makes the fire and potters around. The two of them are like two naughty school kids who mutter teasingly about Sylvie, even though she reminds them that she can hear every word.

She heads back upstairs and discovers a few new stars for her record.

Briony and Noah discuss the town’s development, and Briony admits that she’s taken note of Jed Norman, the head of security in CQ.

It brings to Noah’s attention that as a result of her research, Briony might be one of the best informed people in town about everyone. He wonders if she realises how much his family is magical.

Noah heads home and as he’s walking away, his mind drifts to the brews Jasper has been making to cure his aliment’s pains. He wonders if the actions speak for someone trying to apologise, but dismisses the thought.

Sylvie finds a book on her bookshelf that she doesn’t recognise. Curiously, she picks it up and sees the title. It’s the book Briony wrote in the aftermath of her divorce, dictating all her hurt and anger. Sylvie feels sorry for Briony, as she has formed a bit of maternal bond with her.

Briony completes her final draft for the third and (for now) final volume for CQ. After hearing back from Althea, she submits it to her editor.

Her publisher calls the next day and it’s outsold the previous two books! Briony gets §12,998 for her hard work!

Sylvie congratulates Briony on her hard work which Briony feels is deserved, being the confident person she is.

Althea rings, and offers Briony the chance to start an official journalism apprenticeship in Mayhaven-upon-Carnen. They will train her how to set up a newspaper in CQ when she’s completed her training.

There’s a lot of paperwork to fill out and by the time she’s finished, the sun has set and its quite dark outside. Impatient to start her work, Sylvie offers to walk to Althea’s to hand over Briony’s paperwork, seeing how important it is to her.

As she’s leaving, Sylvie spots a night-time visitor, who she agrees to guide home.

She magically teleports back home, knowing Briony is upstairs to not see her arrive in that fashion.

The following day Briony gets a phone call from Jed, who she doesn’t want to admit she’s been fantasying about.

To her delight (not that she’d tell him that) he asks her out (kinda) and they make plans to speak again after Briony returns home from work.

When Briony leaves for work, Sylvie is reminded of the aching loneliness she had felt for years. Since Briony moved in, she felt a lot lighter, like things would be easier with a friend to speak to without telepathic means.

Briony returns home later than she’d have liked but she’s scored a promotion on her first day (of course she did).

Briony calls Jed and they discuss each other’s day, determined to get to know each other first, and to not make the same mistake Tyler and Zoey had.

Due to her labours all day, Sylvie is awarded with a Gold Garden Badge.

We end this round with Briony getting another promotion.

We now move onto the fourth round, and we start with the Campbell household!

#Round Summary Round 3 #Round Summary #Morgan/Ashford Round 1 #Campbell Quay BaCC #Campbell Quay #Sylvie Morgan #Briony Ashford

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intangibly-here · 3 years

Text

just you wait and see (my love)

zhongli x gn!reader

⁃ scenario; 932 words ⁃ reaper!reader ⁃ self-deprecation ⁃ hurt/comfort ⁃ snuggling ⁃ slight introspection

————————————————————

you lean against the handle of your scythe planted into the ground.

it is all too easy to long for the comfort of another.

(one that you will not receive.)

title from ado - gira gira.

————————————————————

You aren't normal.

As similar as you seem to the people you pass by (the little ones following the rivers of the ground with their padded feet, the older folk pacing about with their arms full of valuable ore and fresh produce, the elderly souls standing serenely at their own small stalls), you know better than to think you can fit in.

Born of the planets and keeper of the stars, you are but a physical vessel waiting for night to smooth her dark cloak over the skies so you may perform your duty.

You know this.

And because you know this (you wish you didn't; you wish you could stay unknowing, unseeing), as the sun sets and the curve of the moon rises from the earth, you set off.

alone.

as always.

as it should be.

(as it always will be.)

He knows you are different.

How could he not? He is not a mortal himself either. The golden veins that run underneath his skin remind him of it every passing moment, pulsing with each unnecessary breath he takes.

It is because of this knowledge that he finds himself opening his doors to you every night you wander out and about, sweeping past smooth rooftops, far away from the lights of the city. He knows it by heart now, the sound of your footsteps ghosting his front door, and so when you arrive at his steps (always with a new type of tea and a melancholic downturn to the corner of your lips), he allows you in and starts the pot.

Eyes are the window to the soul, and yours are but an entanglement of many, many stories to tell.

(Zhongli breathes a sigh, the long hair trailing down his back following it. He is content to remain your harbor.)

The whistling of your (time-worn, soul-stained, unyielding, unstopping-) scythe is piercing in the quiet of the night, and with it, the spirit of today’s eve is secured once more. Breathing a sigh of exertion, you slump where you stand. It is tiring, solely bearing the weight of every extinguished soul before they can be led through the ambivalent gates.

(it is your chaining obligation.)

Your head throbs.

The sky is pitch black but for the glow of distant stars. Faint cosmos paint the skies faint purple and blue, like a master artist themself dragged their brush across it.

Another pulse.

It is all so much more grandiose than you have ever been (ever will be, even with the cursed blessing of an immortal shell).

That is your final thought before exhaustion overtakes you.

You want to belong.

(is it so wrong to want to?)

It has all you've wanted since your existence began.

(when did it even begin? were you ever something more than an empty husk of an entity? a casket for lost souls?)

The ebbing of time has done nothing but carve your soul into fragments, scarred fingers left only to pick up the shattered pieces.

(and now there is nothing left.)

(it hurts.)

(it's tiring.)

(it's lonely.)

(..help me please.)

It's cold. Your limbs ache, twinging when you try to move even the tips of your fingers. It's dark - darker than you've ever remembered existing in under the cover of the night. You're tired (of thinking you are more than your duty. tired of wanting what you don't deserve. tired of-). Abruptly, you hear the quiet rustle of cloth beside your head, a large palm coming to rest over your closed eyes.

(it's warm. so, so warm.)

You lean into the touch; you know who it is.

(how you've dreamt of this for so long. it doesn't matter if it's but a fleeting solace; you can remember it, cherish it as something to seek on your most draining days-)

(it stays.)

(..he stays.)

A hand cards through your hair, pressing softly (gently, soothingly) onto your head as he murmurs reassurances. "Shh... it's okay. I'm here. You're safe."

(..you’re safe.)

And so you nestle closer towards that warmth (that safety, that generosity, that, that-)

(..love-)

(you love him so dearly it aches.)

and drift back into slumber.

(..you dream of red-smudged eyes and tender hands.)

The room drifts fuzzily around you.

For a moment when you startle awake, you almost believe it were all a dream. You would wake up cold, alone on the grass where you had fallen.

(you would remain alone, as you always should’ve been.)

(you would cry.)

Then, the steadying prescence you hadn't noticed behind you stirs, your line of sight turning to meet sleep-tousled brown hair and the contours of a face that look like it'd been shaped by a god.

(it had been.)

Delicate eyes flutter open slowly (you could count the individual lashes if you truly wished), a soft smile making it's way onto his face as recognition wavers in the amber pools of his eyes.

"Good morning.”

(you still cry anyways.)

(but it's okay, because he sinks into the spaces around you, cushioning the crevices that prick into your own conscious. it’s okay because you’re only crying in his arms, cradled in the safety of his being, knowing he will always be there.)

(knowing you love him.)

(knowing he loves you.)

And as he runs his hand down the nape of your neck, holds the small of your back, lets you sob silently into the crook of his neck, (presses soft kisses into your skin; the palm of your hands, the inside of your wrist, the tips of your fingers,) it’s enough.

You are home.

#zhongli x gn!reader #genshin impact #hurt/comfort #angst #zhongli #scenario #cecilia

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akampana · 3 years

Note

Oh, oh, how about a Gil vampire lord and arty famous vampire hunter in a eternal rivalry for no.1, kinda Hellsing and dracula rivalry but with a twist

“I couldn’t live with myself, if I didn’t tell you.” Gilgamesh x Arturia Vampire x Hunter. Enjoy!

_______

Three bullets.

Two knives.

One vampire.

Arturia Pendragon clicked the cylinders back into place and brought her weapons up to her chin, the warmth of her breath misting the polished barrel. She was the only thing in this accursed mansion that had any sense of heat, as everything inside was either unlit, inanimate, or dead.

The small hunter cursed the winter. There wasn’t a poorer season for killing vampires than one that was as dark and cold as the night creatures’ hearts. However, she could wait no longer. For generations, her family had pursued the blood-sucking fiends, hoping to one day cease the plague that had haunted their lands. At last, it could come to an end. There would be no need for her little brother to learn to handle a gun as well.

All she had to do was put Gilgamesh to rest.

A sudden movement from the right had her fingers on the triggers, but it was an effort wasted. There was nothing but the creak of wood and a curtain dancing in the cold breeze. However, she was not too quick to drop her guard. The vampire she hunted tonight was older than time and just as wise. Tricks like this were not beyond him. It made his hunts more interesting, she bet.

"There you are, my love."

...

Too slow!

The Pendragon ducked to the floor just in time to hear his palm smash through the stone brick behind her. Aiming her revolvers, she sprang up like a gymnast, twisting midair to face the hellspawn.

Silver shot out of her gun, but she already knew it would miss. Vampires were quite the agile creatures, having shed their human limits in exchange for their souls. Even if Gilgamesh looked mortal like herself, the way he sidestepped fire at such a short distance clearly suggested otherwise.

The soles of her boots screeched against the floor as she secured her landing by chucking the revolver at her opponent. Empty guns were useless in fights that required all her attention, but thankfully, this one had extra utility against creatures of the night.

When a high pitched squeak more suited to a frightened pig passed her old rival's lips, she knew she'd made a successful play.

"A silver-barrelled gun? Ha! And here I believed you had exhausted all your options," the older one smirked, the skin of his hands hissing from the contact. "That must have cost your family the entire treasury, my dearest Arturia. Who did this once belong to, hm? Was it your father's? Grandfather's? Great-grandfather's?"

Arturia grimaced as she snatched one of her knives from her heel.

"Killing your kind brings quite the fortune,” she answered, as per their usual simultaneous verbal bouts. “I can buy a hundred more with the price on your head, Gilgamesh."

She spun the blade round her fingers to provoke him, stopping in a backhand grip.

"More of your distractions, girl?" he sneered, just a hint of irritation breaking through his haughty mask. "It will take more than parlor tricks to fell the likes of me!"

Arturia lunged like a fencer, weaving through his usual jabs till she nicked his skin, lamenting how terribly shallow the cut was. As her breaths began to labor, her eyes flickered to the hallway, debating whether or not she could make a break for it. There was no outmatching a vampire in a direct dance to death, but she’d already made that play. Gilgamesh was not going to let her go a second time-

A sharp hiss was the woman’s only warning before his hands seized her throat.

No!

Desperately, she fired the gun at his knee, but all it did was have him bruise her skull on the floor instead of the wall, flinging her around like she weighed nothing.

The woman kicked and thrashed, but for all her effort, all she managed was a slash to his face before he rid her of her knife. Black spots began to cloud her vision, but Arturia took aim even as her lungs began to burn.

She had one bullet. One final attempt to make sure no Pendragon would ever have to take up the craft again. She had to spare poor Arthur. Only six and already being taught how to wield a knife. Igraine was already planning to take him out to hunt foxes. Arthur loved foxes. God. She had to make this one shot. Just this last one. For his sake. Please.

It didn’t take Gilgamesh any effort to bat her gun away.

Arturia’s emerald eyes locked with those of her assailant’s. Her whole life, she’d trained for this day, only to still come up short. It didn’t matter, the thousands that had fallen to her technique. She was still no match for him, not even after all this time.

Her nails clawed into the skin of his knuckles as Gilgamesh dipped down toward her shoulder, no doubt preparing to sink his teeth into her jugular.

Was this how she was going to meet her end? So close to finally ridding the continent of every vampire there was? So close to liberating her brother, her entire clan, from cruel deaths at the hands of the immortals? Why, after all she’d sacrificed, after giving up her life to become a hunter, did she have to fail at her mission’s most crucial moment?

Tears fell from her eyes as she shut them tight, refusing her last glimpse of life to be the eerily perfect face of the undead.

His teeth scraped against her skin. A final torture before he drained the life out of her.

Arturia braced herself for the bite, her head screaming apologies to every person she was letting down. Igraine, her late father, her cousins, Arthur.

But it never came.

“You have done well, my queen,” whispered the old creature, his cold lips brushing against her neck. Arturia gasped for air, hacking and coughing beneath him, a million questions running through her mind. He quieted them all with his thumb on her bottom lip, freezing Arturia where she lay.

“I have endured several of your lifetimes. Each, more passionless than the last. I thought myself fortunate at first, able to experience every pleasure the world had to offer, but a thousand years can make even the sweetest fruit seem vile.”

A flicker of irritation crossed his sharp, eternal features, but it was quickly replaced by something Arturia had never seen before. The emotion swelled within his vibrant ruby irises, which glowed even through a night as dark as this one.

“Eventually, I saw this ‘gift’ for what it truly was: a curse, bestowed upon me by that loathsome snake an eternity ago,” he voiced cryptically, knowing this beautiful little girl would likely never grasp just how long he’d walked this earth.

The Pendragon stared up at him with those fiery irises he’d been fond of since the first time he beheld them.

It was exactly twenty years since the day she first came here. Fifteen years old, a mere child, yet one that possessed the gall to challenge him to a duel. He spared her that day, and she went on to challenge every single creature in the continent that had been turned, coming back every now and then for another shot at his head.

Arturia wasn’t anything like those that shared her last name. Her clan was stiff. Traditional. She took their knowledge, but did not stop there, taking various forms of study to hone her craft. She'd been to Ireland to study their methods. To France to understand alchemy. Three years ago, she nearly killed him with near-invisible wire she acquired from the east. Before that, it was a sword of fire. Today, apparently, she’d gotten dexterous enough dual wielding either guns or knives, when she hadn’t that skill prior.

Ever since they met, his days were full of excitement, anticipation for the day she’d return. Suddenly, he was always on his toes, rising at the first sign of night to prepare for her next arrival. His hunts were no longer mechanical, for he knew now that he and she were bound to cross paths. Where would she see him next? On a hike into the mountains? In summer, when the days were long? Maybe even at the local ball? There were so many possibilities!

About a decade into their arrangement, Gilgamesh realized he was feeling something he hadn’t felt in eons.

He felt alive.

But like most living things, he knew Arturia had a limit. And before she reached it, before his fun could be taken away once more, he knew he had to do this. What better time than now, when he had the opportunity to caress her cheek for the first time?

“However, despite how I’ve loathed my own longevity, I never want our duels to end,” he admitted, memorizing her face, counting her freckles, brushing his thumb against lips he didn’t dare kiss for fear of imparting his curse.

“You, wicked woman, have made this soulless being crave a soul, if only to meet you once more beyond the grave.”

Minutes passed in silence as Arturia registered his confession. The night did not conceal her expressions from him. Not the fear, the anger, the confusion. He witnessed the exact moment of her realization, felt her heartbeat quicken, saw the heat rise to her cheeks. At last, she understood why she lay under him and had not yet fallen victim to his fangs.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked calmly, her voice strained, but clear. “Why now?”

“I have desired to do so for half a decade, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you...and I cannot die without you knowing that you are treasured beyond belief.”

Slowly, he reached for her ankle, where he knew she’d hidden her last knife. It burned his flesh as he grasped the hilt, rejecting the impurity of his being, but he persisted anyway, rejoicing in the sensation. This would be one of the final times he’d experience it.

“Wh...what are you doing?” she asked as he pulled her up to face him, placing the dagger in her grip and clasping his hands around hers. Even presented with the opportunity, it was no longer killing intent that resided within her eyes, only conflict.

“Without an end to one’s existence, love, the delights of what you call ‘life’ have no meaning,” he explained, moving her arms so that the blade’s tip rested just above his heart. “Therefore, Arturia Pendragon, I ask that your worthy hands grant me mine.”

He’d expected his death to be immediate, to happen as soon as he loosened his hold. Gilgamesh knew better than anybody what Arturia had at stake and who she was protecting. Hell, he was excited just contemplating what kind of life she’d lead, now that she’d been liberated of her family’s burden.

But now, when her goal was right in front of her, she hesitated.

For what seemed like a better eternity, Gilgamesh watched her stare into his exhausted red eyes, like she was engraving their intimidating splendor into her memory.

“Thank you.”

His death couldn’t have been sweeter.

#thank you for the ask #i hope you liked it!#gilart #gilturia #gilgamesh #archer #caster #arturia #arturia pendragon #artoria pendragon #artoria #saber #fate fanfiction

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chaseatinydream · 4 years

Text

pirate king (39) || atz

You aren’t sure whether you heard her wrongly.

“No?” The word bounces around in your head several times, as if mocking you over and over again. You’re stunned into disbelief. You’ve traveled the ocean, battled a furious storm, got chomped through the arm by a crazy siren, all to be told that the sea witch before you does know everything about who you were before, but is unwilling to tell you?

Your captain scowls, fingers tightening on the hilt of his cutlass as he glares at the sea witch in the eye. “You said that you’d answer her questions.”

She doesn’t flinch in the least, even when he draws the weapon on her. Instead, her eyes merely darken like a stormy sky, and suddenly, the winds around her starts to pick up as if in response to her anger, rising to a whistling howl that whips your hair into your eyes and stings your skin. “Correction. I said that I would answer the questions to the best of my ability. Fortune shines upon you, mortal, that my lady’s blessing protects you. Do not test me. It is only by her grace that you can even step foot on this beach.”

Hongjoong doesn’t back down, cutlass still raised.

“Wait, wait, wait-” You’ve been completely ignoring their little face off for the last few minutes, trying to fully understand what on earth is happening. You want to rip out your hair and scream, but now’s not the time for that. “Why… Why?”

Eldoris’ expression remains completely neutral, as if her features have been carved from stone. Her pokerface could give San’s a run for its money any day.

“I agreed to answer all the questions you had for me within my power. This one is one I cannot answer.”

Your face goes flat as you battle to keep from swearing in front of this supposedly powerful sea witch, you’re tempted to smack her in the face and shake her back and forth, screaming in her face. The words tumble out of your words before you can stop them.

“So you know about me before I got into this body,” you gesture to yourself frantically, “and you know how I came to be in it, you also know why I lost my memories, but you just don’t feel like telling me?”

The last words are spat out with fury and for a moment, you swear you can see the sea witch flinch a little, guilt flitting across her face. But she breathes in deeply and answers your question with an even voice.

“I wish to help you in any way I can, but I cannot tell you the answer to this.”

She’s as unhelpful at answering your questions as San when it comes to steering the ship and you literally on the verge of throwing a hysterical fit when something finally strikes as odd at the way she has replied to you so far.

“You won’t tell me…” You ask hesitantly, studying her face for a change of each expression. “Or you can’t tell me?”

At that, her shoulders relax slightly, as if relieved that you’ve finally gotten it. She nods, neutral expression closest to earnest you’ve ever seen.

“I cannot.”

You feel like you’ve been smacked across the face with a dead fish.

“Then can you tell me why you cannot?”

Those words seem to lift a weight of her shoulders, even though the light in her eyes remain grim as ever when she nods once more. The next words that leave her mouth have you even more shocked than you were before.

“I am bound by an unbreakable oath to my mistress with my very soul as collateral.” She says softly, each word serious as grave. Your eyes widen in stunned disbelief. “To not reveal or impart knowledge of who you were before you came to be in this body to you, or anyone else, no matter how desperately they beg for it, in case you ever regain your memories.”

What? Her soul as collateral?

“Wait… this mistress you’re talking about…” You force out, trying desperately not to hyperventilate. This is honestly getting too crazy for your brain to handle. “Who is she?”

At those words, a proud gleam comes into her eye and she straightens her back, meeting your gaze with a look you don’t quite understand.

“What the mortals call the sea goddess.”

At that, you do choke. You’ve been hearing these terms being thrown around so casually, sea witch, fortune teller, ancient magic, but hearing Eldoris say the words with so much confidence and surety seals everything for you. Magic is real. Then the meaning of what she’s just said hits you like a tidal wave.

“What would the sea goddess want with me? Why does she not want me to regain my memories?” You sputter out, burying your hands in your hair as you try to make sense of it all. Have you offended the sea goddess herself in the past? Is she playing some sort of sadistic joke on you?

But Eldoris merely shakes her head once, her eyes pleading for you to understand.

“It’s for your own good, Chin Hae-” She begins, but you’ve finally had enough. Everything in you snaps like a caving dam and anger floods through you, the wind howling in your ears furiously as the waves break against the reef barrier to swirl around your feet.

“Why? How can losing my memories possibly be for my own good? Curse the sea goddess, I’m going to freaking murder her, I-”

Eldoris’ next words are as clear as the sky.

“If you recover your memories, you’ll die.”

Every part of your body seems to turn to ice simultaneously, blood freezing in your veins as you stare at her, unmoving. Your mind is completely silent except for that one sentence, resounding again and again in your head.

If you recover your memories, you’ll die.

You can barely register Hongjoong’s arms pulling you to him as he tries to reassure you, but his words simply drift past your ears like the whistling of the wind.

You’ll die you’ll die you’ll die-

“What do you mean?” You hear your captain demand, and you desperately try to pull the shreds of your focus together so you can hear her explanation.

Eldoris stares at you gravely.

“Regaining her memories means her death.” The sea witch says gently, a pitying look in her eye as she shakes her head in response to Hongjoong’s question. “A degradation of the physical body that now contains her essence, to be more exact. They are trapped within the body she resides in. If you free them, her body dies too.”

The fortune teller’s words come back to you hauntingly.

You will never find what you so desperately seek as long as you live.

You stare at your own hands in horror. This cursed shell, this body of clay, it’s the thing that’s keeping you apart from your memories? For the first time ever since you discovered you’re a golem, you feel truly hollow, a gaping, empty hole in your chest where your heart lies, where your memories are held.

A muffled scream breaks free from your throat and your knees feel weak, your legs crumple and you hunch over the ground with your hands tearing at your hair. You feel like you want to physically rip your brain from your skull and demand for it to spit out your memories now, because you’d rather regain your memories right this second and die, in comparison to the agony of living the rest of your life without knowing who you are.

Your breath catches as you stare at the cutlass hanging at your side.

Maybe… maybe if you just…

You’re so tempted to, gods, your memories are just within your reach. It’s all you’ve ever wanted the second you woke up, and now you can finally have them. It’s in your grasp. It’s all in your hand.

All you have to do is take it.

Your fingers inch for your cutlass.

“Chin Hae, no!” Hongjoong catches your wrist before you can clench your fingers around the hilt and you’re jerked out of your trance to stare at him, still dazed. His bright green eye is terrified, swallowed by concern and fear, and then a painful, heart wrenching sensation twists in your chest.

Hongjoong’s cries when he endured the whipping for you, the sound of skin tearing with every lash and the metallic scent of blood in the air.

San’s bright smile as he held your hands in his, healing the scrapes on your palms, softly guiding you through each step of the process.

Yeosang’s shudder as three bullets hit him in the back, ripping through his flesh, blood gushing from his wounds.

Mingi’s gaze as he sat with you on that pink, sandy beach, telling you about his captain and crew with a fond smile on his face.

Seonghwa’s laughter as you burnt yet another steak and he ate it anyway with a smile on his face, praising you for your improvement under his tutelage.

Yunho’s sigh when he stood in that crow’s nest with you, the story about him and his brother falling from his lips as the sun rose before you.

Jongho’s chuckle as he swiped a cream bun straight from your hands before popping it into his mouth, laughing at the pout on your face before dropping his cake into your lap.

Wooyoung’s earnest smile as he hands you the silver hairpin with hesitant eyes, your fingers brushing as you stare at it in awe.

Through your tears you laugh in despair, burying your face in your hands. On one hand, ever so enticing, lie your memories, your history, your identity. You so badly want to take it, more than anything else, but on the other hand…

“I name you Choi Chin Hae, family of the ATEEZ crew.”

Your heart splits in two from the sheer pain of the choice you have to make. For a moment, when you close your eyes, you see someone staring back at you in your mind.

It’s the green eyed man.

You’re back on that beach once more, sky dotted with stars. There are tears running down your cheeks as you feel the breath of the wind in your lungs, the steady beating of your heart in your chest for the first time. He smiles at you so fondly as you reach out and hold him close, his hand running through your hair.

“I believe it, I know it, I can see it. I trust that you can make your path the right one. You will find a name deserving of you, given to you by those who love you. Take this and go to the town of Raguza. Your journey begins there.” He whispers into your ear and you nod, sniffling and moving back as he presses a kiss to your temple. Around your shoulders he puts a coat of land cloth, something that has not touched you in millenia. A red rose is embroidered on the back. “Your fate intertwines with a mortal once more.”

You turn towards the sea, one foot touching the waves, and you hesitate. It’s as if your eyes are drawn to him, you glance over your shoulder to meet his gaze one last time. But you cannot linger for long, already you can feel your new body beginning to crumble ever so slowly into clay once more.

He hasn’t moved from the beach, although his smile turns sad.

“You don’t have much time. Go, and don’t look back.”

His name swirls around in your mind like a final memory, before it spirals into the air and vanishes with the wind.

Don’t look back.

Like a breath of air, the vision fades and you’re staring into your captain’s eye once more, his arms tight around you as he begs you desperately again and again not to leave them.

He’s trembling against you, his fingers digging into your wrists as if he’s trying to physically prevent you from doing anything rash. Incoherent mumbles fall from his mouth, all beseeching you to stay, not to do anything foolish, and that’s when you have your answer.

It hurts you so much to give up on your memories like this. But you know, deep within you, that giving up on them would be a fate worse than death.

So, closing your eyes one last time, you imagine the you from before in your mind.

She appears, standing upon the ocean waves as she looks at you in the eye. Both of you are eerily identical, though her skin seems to be luminous and crystal-like as a figment of your imagination, her eyes shifting colours like the mermaid you had seen on the stone wall outside. She smiles at you, a quirk to her mouth that seems both happy and wistful at the same time, her hair flying with the sea breeze as you make your choice. You raise your hand in farewell, reluctance tearing at every fibre of your being.

“Goodbye.”

With those words, she closes her eyes and simply melts away into seafoam, swirling with the waves and disappearing from sight.

“Chin Hae? Chin Hae?” Your captain is shaking you now, and you stare at him for a moment, trying to remember who you are and what you’re doing. Then you see wetness starting to gather at the corners of his eyes and it suddenly hits you.

“I’m not-” The words get caught in your throat, so you pause to swallow and before you try to speak once more. “I’m not… I’m not going to leave all of you behind.”

At that, your captain visibly sags in relief, slumping against you, but it’s nothing compared to the weight that falls from your shoulders. The moment you declared that, it became the truth. You would stay with the crew no matter what. You understand how Seonghwa could leave Nassau behind and stay on the Treasure instead now, because the crew were his family.

Eldoris’ eyes pierce yours like a blade, although something in her seems relieved.

“So, what will you do now?”

You shrug as Hongjoong picks himself off the ground, reaching out a hand to help you up. You take it.

“I’ll go wherever the Treasure goes.” You say, and the words are light, as if you’ve been freed from invisible chains that had been holding you down. Your memories are well and truly out of your grasp, you have no more goal to chase after. Hongjoong takes your hand and squeezes tight, fingers locking with yours.

Eldoris nods, although a little hesitant this time. Her deep blue eyes meet yours.

“I’m glad that you found what you had been searching for this whole time, Choi Chin Hae.” She tells you, but her words are solemn, and something tells you she’s not talking about your memories. You frown, but you’re honestly not in the mood to play anymore mind games with the sea witch.

But you do have one final question you want answered before you leave this island behind you forever.

“The name of the green eyed man… do you know it?”

You at least want to know the name of the mysterious man who has been in your dreams for so long. Eldoris shakes her head, and you feel your heart sink in disappointment.

“He has no name.”

At that, you’re a little startled. He doesn’t have a name? How can anything on this earth not have a name? But the sea witch continues speaking.

“For divine beings such as he, he is omnipresent, the closest thing to all powerful any conscious can reach.” She says the words with such reverence you almost feel like you should bow before her. You flinch at the word divine, brows furrowed in confusion. “But they have no souls as the mortals do, they are merely consciousnesses formed of great power. In the end, when this world dies, they will fade away and cease to exist, even when the souls of humans dwell on forever. Thus they have no names, for they have no imprint upon this world.”

Your heart sinks in your chest as you think of the green eyed man, his gentle smile lingering in your mind. The thought of him simply becoming… nothing… it scares you, even though you barely know him.

“But they do call each other by the words that the Creator called them into existence with.” You startle a little in surprise when the sea witch’s voice takes on an almost melancholy tone. “I cannot speak the words myself with this human tongue, for only creatures created at the beginning of time can, such as the Kraken. I so dearly wish I could do the same and address my mistress with spoken word, but...”

Now you’re just confused.

The sea witch trails off and shakes her head, bringing herself back to the present. “Either way, they have no souls as the humans do, thus they cannot be named. Mortals have attempted to name them many times, but their simple, spoken words can only capture the physical aspect of them. No mortal can ever name a divine being.”

You have absolutely no idea what she’s saying at this point, so you merely nod in an impression of understanding.

“Thank you, Eldoris, for the body you have given me.”

The sea witch pauses and looks at you straight in the eye. Something about the way she’s does so makes you shiver uncomfortably.

“I wish you all the best.” Her eyes burn into yours with the intensity of a million suns. Swallowing uncomfortably, you let Hongjoong take you by the arm and the two of you walk back to the cave, hand in hand.

He squeezes your fingers and you look at him, his eyes gentle on yours.

“What are you going to do now?” He asks again, as if he needs to hear it from your lips once more. You smile at your captain, taking a deep breath as you imagine the faces of all of your crew who are waiting for you back on the ship.

“Let’s go home.”

And the two of you leave the beach behind, never looking back.

#ateez #ateez fanfic #ateez fanfiction #hongjoong #seonghwa #yunho #yeosang #mingi #san #wooyoung #jongho #ateez pirate king #w; ot8 #w; pirate king #w; fanfiction

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kettlequills · 3 years

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C3: a wife to remember

god i love this fic so much. a03

A hag had many resources at her disposal, not at the least, her fellow sisters of feather, and Moira had a problem. She did not know the Dragonborn, and Moira did not much like not knowing things, especially when it pertained to the fruits of her bargains. The Dragonborn had not seemed adverse to Moira on the basis of being a hag alone, but accepting talons and feathers was quite different from permitting her to actively work her magics. There was too much that Moira did not know.

Moira planned to speak to someone who did.

Moira hauled her smoking cauldron into the garden patch, hissing at the weight and thinking longingly of the corded muscle that had braided the Dragonborn’s tanned brown arms, how easy it would be for them to move a cauldron almost as large as Moira was. She idly plucked a few of her own feathers and added them to the steaming brew until the liquid was thick and purple.

Her arms screamed when she took up the stirrer and laboriously fought it through the viscous liquid. Prickles of sweat broke out on her brow, and she leant her full bird-boned weight into the motion, adding an extra push with feather-fluttering hops. This cursed potion would save her days of pointless travel, but it exacted its price here, she thought irritably. Still, Moira had made it enough times before, if not for many years, that it did not take longer than a few hours before she was dipping salvaged bottles with peeling wine-labels into the mixture.

The bottles appeared largely spontaneously, washing up in the banks of the river not far from Moira’s house from Blood-Made-Pleasure’s daedric revels upstream, within the soft fold of Oblivion. Moira hunted along the banks come the morning for mortals, hollow-souled and blown from the Myriad Realms like scrunched daisies, and the trash from endless parties – human viscera, empty wine-bottles that stung the nose with haunting fragrant scents, fake cocks of shattered glass, snapped dremora horns. Sometimes, the blood-sports of the Prince of Plots bleeding over from the nexus of their shrine not far from the snow-city of Nord kings made their way to Moira’s stream, too. The river ran red for days to her mage-eye, and Moira would be weeding femurs and teeth out of her garden patch for even longer. But since Moira’s pact with Sanguine, his realm was closer, and Moira had more empty bottles than she could ever use.

Greatest power wrapped around your finger, for a single night of revelry.

She uncorked one such with her teeth and swigged from the potion as she labelled the others in spidery daedric letters that would make little sense to one foreign to haglore. When her gums began to prickle with chill, Moira kicked over her cauldron and let the dregs of the potion water her deathbell flowers. She left it there, staring hollowly out at the damp trees, and went to her roost. The potion took hold of the daedra inside her heart and dragged, and Moira’s spirit pierced the skin of Oblivion and rose on flapping raven-wings.

Witchmist Grove shimmered with ghostlike mists when she flew above it, the magic of Oblivion searing the trees tall and gloomy with the prescient tendrils of Moira’s magic soaked into the ground. The roost of a hag, visible as a thorny spot nestled like a canker around the soil. The dragon-cairn over the ridge glowed dully with trapped soul energy.

Not for the first time, Moira overflew her home and cawed at her cleverness. The necromantic energy of the dragon’s old servants and its own aedric glow nearly eclipsed Witchmist Grove, and the lines of power that hazed the ground was broken into the rippling hot pools, confusing the scrying-eye. Her own wards against magical predation still held strong, but she had been wise enough to choose a good spot to make it harder. The Grove would shelter its witch well while her mind attended to her business.

It was the work of a moment to envisage the heart of the plainsland, and a second later Moira was soaring through the cloudless blue skies of Whiterun – crisscrossed though they were by the fading trail of a dragon. Still, that was not too unusual in this season of change, and Moira made for the human city where the answers to her questions resided. It pulsed whitely in her mage-eye, the vast wings of the Skyforge spread over the city like a gargoyle. The eagle shrieked as Moira swept lower, and for a moment, its beady eye fixed on her. Her wings faltered in surprise. After a second that felt like an eternity, the eagle tucked its head back against its chest, satisfied, it seemed, that she posed little threat.

Moira’s talons clenched uneasily. The Skyforge was impersonal as the wind. Last time she had come here in this way, its wings had barely twitched when she’d landed on its head. That it was so riled up did not bode well.

Her disquiet mounted as she flew lower to the city – or what was left of it. Radiating outwards from the pulverised remains of the gates was a blast radius of crumbled stone that had reduced the surrounding timber houses to splinters. A wooden palisade had been erected, manned by guards whose spirits flickered dimly with fear to Moira’s mage-sight. Grief hung over Whiterun like a pall, and, pressing against the wall that separated Oblivion from the living, ghosts wandered dully through the streets, torn too abruptly from their living bodies to look for the way to Aetherius just yet. The living tree within the heart of the city was bowed double under the strength of their sorrow, its roots choked by a strange power crawling down from the heart of the prison of dragons. Familiar, daedric darkness, soft as poetry and suggestive as a whisper. The Webspinner, moving openly to claim the city, and, from the look of it, mostly unopposed. Even Hircine’s Underforge was muted. Well, good for the Webspinner. Moira had never liked Whiterun much.

Still, Moira noticed with some relief the burning-bright soul of the one Whiterun resident that she had come to see. Olava the Feeble was waiting for her, playing cards with a small child that shivered at Moira’s approach.

“Go along now,” Olava told the child, who wriggled in her chair. She had untidy brown hair and looked thin, but there were fresh crumbs on her ragged dress, and smears of jam on an empty plate on Olava’s table.

“But we weren’t done playing,” said the girl, and Olava smiled mysteriously.

“Yes, we were,” she said, and tapped the table between them. Moira saw the magic inside Olava flare, and the child gaped down at the cards in her hands. There was dirt caked under her nails.

“How did you do that?” she gasped. Moira sensed a curious flicker in the girl’s own fledgling spirit, as if she was trying to see as a witch did.

Food for a starving waif, and a light-show of no substance? A more obvious hook had never been planted. Moira cared not for Olava’s interest in a ragged child, but surely it would be easier to simply tell the girl whatever it was Olava wanted from her, and claim she was mad or dispose of her if she broke Olava’s cover?

“Charlatanry,” Moira commented dryly, amused at Olava’s transparent recruitment effort, “You didn’t need to touch the table at all for such a simple trick.”

“An old woman never shares all her secrets,” Olava said to them both, and then shooed the girl off. Once she had gone, perhaps a little faster than she would have if it had not been for the invisible presence of a hagraven glaring at the back of her neck, Moira fluttered down to perch on the back of the chair she had vacated. Her talons gripped the wood, but left no mark on it. She was not, after all, truly there.

“Sister,” said Olava plainly, “What can an old woman do for you?”

“Do you not need to maintain your quaint cover?” Moira asked, electing to preen herself. She tugged an errant feather back into alignment while Olava chuckled.

“Not at all.” Olava’s eyes were crinkled up at the edges and her smile was kindly, as if she really were simply nothing more than an old grandmother. Convincing, were it not for the aura of twisted power that radiated her from her like a dark sun and the way that her eyes were holes to the Void in her skull. “My neighbours think nothing of an old woman talking to herself.”

“As you wish.” Moira spread her wings and eyed them critically, as if it were more important than the task that had brought her here. “I propose a bargain of knowledge. I need to learn hand language.”

What better way to learn the ways of her new … spouse… than to prise them from the Dragonborn herself?

Olava hummed, pleased. “You have come to the right place, then. Which sign language is it you need to know?”

Moira ruffled her feathers. “How should I know?”

“Ai,” sighed Olava, “There is more than one. It would help if I knew who you need it to speak with.”

Flaring her wings, Moira shrieked her harsh raven’s cry. It echoed jealously, ear-splittingly loud. Under the eclipsing shadow of her wings, her true shape flickered and burned like coals. She would not share this knowledge. The Dragonborn was vulnerable, for now, ripe for the uncovering, and Moira would permit no other witch’s claws to steal in on her prize. Bad enough that she shared with Sanguine’s hook, that her own hold was as tenuous as the Dragonborn’s word.

Olava leant back in her seat to watch and rose a thin white eyebrow. Her face, for all it was wrought and wrecked by the passage of time, hid a mind no less canny.

“I can get you the knowledge of all major forms of hand-sign from here to Black Marsh, but it’ll cost you,” Olava relented. “I’ll have to call in a few favours.”

Moira accepted this irritably, and Olava eyed her, as if curious to see how far she would take this whim.

“I want you to … deliver something, for me.”

“Knowledge for knowledge is traditional,” Moira cawed, “I’m not your errand girl.”

“No,” said Olava, calmly, but Moira could see the tension wound in the leylines of her magic, her future-seeing eyes that glowed with the deepness of the Void, “But good luck finding another sister to help you. Did you say it was urgent?”

She hadn’t, but Moira was not patient, and Olava knew it. Besides, Olava’s demeanour was – reluctantly – intriguing. A witch’s errand was no small thing, particularly if she wanted a hag’s help to achieve it.

“Not that urgent,” Moira snapped regardless, because she did not want Olava to think that she did not see what she was doing by pricking Moira’s curiosity. “Out with it, then.”

“I need you to take an item to a particular person,” Olava said, “and ensure that it does not… leave her possession.”

Moira cawed a laugh. “A curse object, sister? Why, I’d almost do it for free. But why not see to it yourself?”

Olava’s hands smoothed deliberately over the table. She began to gather the cards and answered Moira’s question to their dog-eared and scribbled faces. “It cannot be me directly. The target knows me too well, and the spell must work.”

Moira paused. Olava’s carefully level voice roused her suspicion, and as she watched Olava stack the cards and slide them precisely into a bag woven of river-reeds, she grasped that Olava was not dissembling. She was worried. Moira did not lack confidence in her magical strength, but nor was she a fool. She had no desire to get mixed up in something that was going to require too much of her time.

“You have seen something that you hope to avoid,” Moira prompted.

“Yes,” Olava admitted, freely. “Nothing that concerns you, sister. A few fraying strings will soon be cut, and I have a … vested interest.”

Moira stared hard at Olava, who returned her gaze steadily. She was being sincere, Moira could tell that immediately from the glow and pulse of her magicka, and even more, Olava was letting her see without a single attempt to hide herself from Moira’s mage-sight. Whatever it was, it was important to her, perhaps important enough to ask a hag to do a courier’s job, if only to be sure it was done.

“Where is this target?”

“Falkreath,” said Olava and Moira squawked indignantly.

“It is far from my roost,” she complained, but Olava only shrugged.

“You’re the one who asked for something,” she said, and Moira conceded with a whistling hiss through her beak.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll see your token delivered.”

“Thank you,” said Olava. She smiled, a genuine one, smaller and slyer than her elderly façade. “I will send you a … friend, on the night of the new moon. He will have what you need.”

Three days. Moira shifted her claws on the chair, then took off without ceremony. She beat her wings quickly to rise over Whiterun, and took the precaution to soar some ways away from the wandering eyes of the powers that wrestled beneath the city. It was only once Moira wheeled freely over the stripped bones of a dead dragon, soul-claimed, that she tucked her wings and followed the thread tethering her to her body, and home.

---

Of course, it was not three days. It was two, and Olava’s friend came yowling with his ear in the firm grip of the Dragonborn.

“You’re early,” Moira said sourly, and the Dragonborn’s mouth tensed.

They wore no helmet today, and their greying brown hair had been roughly knotted at the nape of their neck. It was greasy, already damp from the moist air of the Grove. The rude knot exposed the gruesome fullness of their facial scarring, which twisted as they scowled at the terrified Khajiit whose tunic they held. Still broad, still strong, but there was a bandage wrapped around their bicep, several days old if Moira was any judge, and somewhat dirty and stained. The Khajiit in their grasp was a young ginger tom, his yellow eyes slitted with fear.

“Let him go,” Moira chided the Dragonborn, “Have you no manners?”

Moira did not recognise the boy, but she guessed that he had been sent when he offered her with trembling paws a bag marked with the crest of the Nords of Whiterun, a curling ram’s head.

“For you,” the Khajiit whispered. The Dragonborn’s lips thinned unsubtly, and they stalked off to lean against a tree, their back to the Khajiit but their head cocked, as if they were listening.

The boy’s tail lashed. “This one was not trying to sneak, he swears! He was told to bring a message, to the old woman in the grove by the dragon burial, that is all!”

“I am old, and within the grove,” Moira said, flatly, annoyed that she had not seen him coming, and had time to muster her illusions of being a harmless – if unnerving – old woman who lived alone. She had not sensed the Khajiit at all around the brilliance of the Dragonborn’s signature when they entered Witchmist Grove. “Give it to me.”

The Khajiit hesitated, but when Moira flashed her claws he tripped over himself in his rush to thrust the sack at her. It fell at her feet with a muted rattle. The Khajiit withered under Moira’s poisonous glare.

“Well?” she demanded, and the poor boy’s ears twitched. He bolted, and Moira rolled her eyes. “Let him go,” she told the Dragonborn, whose hunter’s eyes had tracked his flight, “and come in.”

But Moira did not move from her position on the top step as the Dragonborn pushed off the tree and approached her with slow, steady steps, their armour – wrapped for silence, again, in the shredded remains of what appeared to be Nordic burial shrouds – reflecting back the whiteness of the magelight Moira had tethered in the mouths of her staked goat heads. They removed their gauntlet carefully, and, without breaking eye contact, they stooped to pick up the sack and hand it to her.

Feeling as if she were moving thrice as slowly as normal, Moira took it, and her feathers fluttered involuntarily when their fingertips – rough and callused, but hot as fire – brushed her skin. Before the Dragonborn could pull away Moira tightened her grip until the tips of her sharp claws pressed into the back of the Dragonborn’s hand. Scarred, even here, with the nicks and cuts of a lifelong soldier.

The Dragonborn watched her. Those dark dragon eyes were steady as granite, and when Moira stared into them she had the odd sense of falling inwards. It was as if she peered into the implacable gaze of a creature so impossibly huge and dense that it warped the world towards it, as inexorable as a bird struck from the sky must meet the stony ground. She wondered how the Dragonborn would look beneath her potion-enhanced mage sight. She wondered how the Dragonborn saw her.

Moira had the height advantage on them from the top step, but the weight of their gaze was so immense that she felt small, like a darting bird before the maw of a dragon. She remembered challenging the Dragonborn to consummate their engagement the second time they had come to Witchmist Grove. Almost involuntarily, she pictured being pinned beneath that suffocating presence, those dark eyes, that searing heat – the enormity of them like a serpent big enough to touch nose to tail around the entirety of Tamriel coiling itself into one short human body that had to tilt their head up to look Moira in the eyes.

Moira was a hagraven, no fragile thing, her body knitted with ancient magics and raven-feathers, and she had birthed horrors on her altar for little reason other than curiosity. But she was also a bird-hearted once-woman, and the strange, arrhythmic pounding in her chest that could not decide what it felt at the warmth of the Dragonborn’s skin on hers disconcerted her.

With an impatient snort, Moira released the Dragonborn, but not before one last, pointed flex of her claws. The Dragonborn did not flinch at the tiny teardrops of blood that welled up from the scratches, just as they had not reacted to the poison tea, and when Moira turned and stormed into her house, she felt the shaking of the steps as the Dragonborn followed her.

As before, Moira filled the kettle and set it to boil, after checking the sack and tucking it away for later in a cabinet. She was curious to see if the Dragonborn would make the same mistake twice. They did not choose to sit down this time, but leant uncertainly against the wall, arms folded uncomfortably across their chest. Moira was expecting the airlessness of the shack this time and took a moment over the smoke of the fire to soothe herself.

A clinking distracted her, and she whipped her head around in time to catch the Dragonborn leaning back like a child caught going for the cookie jar, hand froze in the act of placing something shiny on the table.

“What’s that?” Moira demanded, and the Dragonborn’s grim mouth moved oddly, as if they were trying to smile.

They gestured sweepingly at Moira, and Moira eyed them suspiciously as she seized this latest offering. It was a bottle, a large one, filled to the brim with glittering dust that shifted and shimmered when she tipped it to and fro, like it was trying to escape the directness of her gaze. The aura that seeped off it reeked of death even with the cap sealed with what looked like leather and home-made twine.

“Blood-drinker dust,” Moira identified. Useful in potions, very useful. Her claws clacked when she tapped the bottle, not wanting to admit that she had nearly run out of her own supply. And she had never had so much as this. It was a handsome gift, and practical, as well. A hag had little use for frippery, after all, even if the Dragonborn’s last gift was currently hidden safely under Moira’s bed and warded with her strongest spells. “You hunted all of these yourself?”

The Dragonborn’s scarred face split, and all of their teeth gleamed. They nodded.

“Is that how you hurt your arm?” Moira asked before she registered what she was going to say, and hissed at herself.

It did not help that the Dragonborn seemed equally surprised at her question, and by the way their eyes flickered to the wound on their arm and back, she imagined they were wondering why she was bothered – or perhaps, had forgotten the wound was there at all. After a brief hesitation, the Dragonborn shook their head.

Moira cursed herself to the Void and back. “How then?” she snapped, aware of the brittle anger in her voice. She wanted to know now. Her curiosity had been piqued, and more than that, there was a strange, restless annoyance Moira ascribed to a healer’s knowledge, impatient with the mysterious wound under its dirty bandage.

The Dragonborn’s shoulders rounded, and their movements as they fumbled for their journal seemed if anything oddly shy. They scribbled for a moment, and then avoided her eye when they presented the page.

“Wolf pack surprised me,” they had written.

“You slay dragons, and hunt vampires, but not wolves,” Moira said. “Did you at least clean it?”

The Dragonborn nodded, and then cleared their throat. They were still looking away, and after a moment, Moira recognised that the fire’s warmth on their cheek was not solely responsible for the redness that had bloomed there.

“Well,” Moira heard herself say irascibly, “Wash your bandages, then.”

Scrubbing the back of their neck with their hand, the Dragonborn nodded. The motion reminded her of their skin touching hers, and Moira busied herself with the kettle, indiscreetly bolstering the fire with magic. The heat enveloped the hut, steaming away the perpetual dampness, and Moira heard the Dragonborn sigh with pleasure behind her. It was nearly noiseless, but not quite, and Moira was hard-pressed to tell whether the shiver that went through her was from some miniature earthquake or the base of her spine, which had elected to, for some reason only daedra knew, play host to half a dozen guttering candles.

“So,” Moira said eventually, “What do they call you?”

Silence, not the scratch of charcoal, and Moira glanced over her shoulder to see the Dragonborn’s confused expression.

“Your name?”

With a metallic creak, the Dragonborn’s arms around their chest tightened, and a muscle in their cheek jumped. They shrugged flatly, and then with a weariness that Moira could almost sense bent their head to write.

“I don’t know the name I was born with,” they showed her, “The dragons call me – “

More of the claw-mark letters of the dragon language, and Moira pursed her lips.

“You know I can’t read this,” she said. The Dragonborn’s mouth crooked helplessly, but Moira’s eye was drawn to the smudges of charcoal on their fingers, exposed, because they hadn’t put their gauntlet back on.

“It comes from inside,” they scribbled, and then illustratively clasped their bare hand over their breastplate. A smear of charcoal darkened the fraying edge of one of the ripped up shrouds.

They shifted, and the shadow of their warhammer blotted the firelight over the page. Moira’s claws flexed, and she wondered, briefly, precisely when the fool bird in her brain had forgotten to watch the Dragonborn’s weapon hovering ominously over their shoulder.

“I could tell you my name, but you’ll have to come outside to hear it,” they wrote. Wariness in them then, and wasn’t that an interesting response to their own offer.

Moira weighed her options. Outside would give the Dragonborn more room to swing, but it also gave Moira better manoeuvrability to escape. It was a gamble, but Moira knew herself. She was a fast shifter, and a faster flier.

“Fine,” she said, and the Dragonborn jerked their chin and led the way outside.

They were not content with Moira’s garden, but crunched their way up the garden path and out the gate without a backwards glance. Their stride was aggressive and quick, a beat short of a march, and Moira got three steps after them on her talons and then gave up and took to her wings instead. The Dragonborn glanced up and with narrowed eyes searched among the flapping cloud of black-winged birds that rose like a fanfare at their intrusion into their domain. Moira circled above them, making no move to announce herself, and with an uneasy twitch the Dragonborn continued.

They had a hunter’s instinct, and as they walked a strange, circuitous route out of Witchmist Grove, Moira realised that they were following and walking on top of the Khajiit’s tracks. She wondered at it as she swept along overhead, doubling back every so often to flit down among the trees and feel the heavy leaves weep their burden of rain onto her glossy feathers.

Did the Dragonborn hope to find the boy, or simply to obliterate his tracks with their heavy boots? To stop Moira from following him, or to ensure he did manage to find his way out of the labyrinthine corridors of twining pine and hanging ivy, the nightshade groves and lurking brambles? The enchanted mist worked well to entrap and ensnare visitors, bringing them to the heart of the Grove into Moira’s clutches. Most had some trouble finding their way out without her blessing. Perhaps the Dragonborn had an abundance of caution, to walk only where it was demonstrably safe to step, in a hag’s home.

Moira appreciated it. Some of the moss she cultivated was rather difficult to grow, and she kept it away from the illusory paths for a reason.

The Dragonborn stopped only when they had reached the boundary of Witchmist Grove, where the copse of trees broke into the steaming hot-pools. The sandy-seared ground rose in jagged humps towards Bonestrewn Crest, where the sleeping dragonbones waited like a scar on the horizon. Squat rocks clumped around the meandering dirt path, and heat shimmered lazily, like Sanguine’s ruby red eye. Tensely, they waited for Moira.

Her damp feathers billowed steam in cross-currents and curls as she backwinged towards the ground, already changing. The Dragonborn did not look away, but Moira saw them blink rapidly as the illusions fell away and it seemed as if there had never been a bird there at all, only a hag, feathered and clawed, perched atop a rock that still, technically, was within the boundary of her grove.

The Dragonborn inclined their head, then purposefully, they planted their feet and turned their back on her. Facing out over the steamy barrenness of Eastmarch, their fist clenched nervously, as if they were second-guessing their decision.

Before Moira could demand an explanation, or taunt them to fulfilling their offer, the Dragonborn spoke.

At first, it was noise. Just noise, like the sound of lightning so deep it rumbled in the bones. A flash of awareness like seeing that stark-white fork in the black sky, and then understanding that what she was experiencing was noise, horribly loud noise, like every drum in the world beating at once, every rock falling, every heart stopping. And then it was power – power like every spell in the world backfiring at once immense and throbbing, power like Moira’s first flight, like the buffeting of the wind under her feathers.

In the ringing aftermath, Moira opened stinging eyes – when had she closed them? – and took in a world unutterably changed. She thought that the Grove had reacted to her presence by thickening the mist, and realised with a strange feeling like falling into the Dragonborn’s eyes that no, the grey smoke in the air was neither smoke nor mist, but dust. Dust, all that was left of all the rocks in the Dragonborn’s path, the furrowed brow of the hill that led up to Bonestrewn Crest. Instead, there was a perfectly carved bowl, wide and smooth as any stone-carved arena. It was perfectly done, steady as if the Dragonborn had simply scooped a section of the world away with a giant spoon. Except for the claw-like, shimmering markings that were chiselled in the wall, markings that matched the Dragonborn’s name in their journal.

It was only then that Moira’s ears made sense of the sounds, and the Dragonborn’s name clicked into her mind like a fact she had always known, but had not realised she had forgotten.

“Laataazin,” Moira gasped, and the Dragonborn – Laataazin – nodded slowly.

Greatest power wrapped around your finger. Oh. Oh. Oh. And to think – all this time, Moira had been angry for his trickery, when this was the prize!

Moira’s feathers quivered, then her shoulders, and then all at once she was laughing. It was a rusty, inelegant sound, more raven-shriek than human, and when the Dragonborn heard it they startled. After a moment, as Moira continued to laugh at the immensity of the gift that Sanguine had given her, slowly, tentatively, Laataazin started to smile back.

It was small, and sweet, and looked like they were unused to it as it was to their face. But it brightened their eyes and took years from their face, and Moira recognised for the first time the winsome, laughing-loud but shy creature that had come calling to her gate in a night of revelry, and offered a ring paid in blood for a hagraven’s hand in marriage.

#moira #laataazin #inkwrites #my fic a wife to remember #tes #skyrim #elder scrolls

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havenoffandoms · 4 years

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Hello and congrats on 800 followers!!! Could I ask for an Eskel x female cat Witcher!reader with prompts 3 or 5? Thanks 😊

Hi anon! Thanks so much and thanks for this really fun combination of prompt. Here’s my little silly take on cat!witcher!reader x Eskel. Hope you like it.

Send your prompt requests here.

Cat!Witcher!reader x Eskel: “it’s really not that complicated” (prompt 3) and “we could get arrested for this” (prompt 5)

“Would you hurry up, wolf?” you urge your travel companion as he struggles to pick a simple lock, “it’s really not that complicated, for the love of the gods.”

“You try and pick a lock in a tight space with little to no natural light,” you hear the witcher known as Eskel snide back. A guttural groan pushes past his lips as he tugs on the lock in his frustration. “Fucking thing!”

“Oh, get out of my damn way,” you snap at him as you squeeze yourself into said tight space, elbowing Eskel in the ribs as you wriggle up to where the lock is resisting the wolf witcher, “here, watch an expert at work.”

“Why am I not surprised that you Cat witchers know how to pick locks?” Eskel punctuates his words with a pointed eyeroll.

“At least Guxart taught us some street smarts. What do you bring to the table, your theoretical knowledge of monsters? Your working knowledge of poetry? How’s that gonna help, you gonna bore the guards to death by reciting a couple of verses?”

“Fuck you.”

“Make me,” you hiss in response, but your mood quickly brightens when you hear the familiar ‘click’ sound as the lock yields under your nimble fingers. You pull on it harshly and manage to open the trap door, your only escape out of these dungeons. “Hah! Where does that take us?”

“Sewers, judging by the stench,” Eskel remarks, his nose scrunching up in distaste. You can’t help but agree with your companion on this one. “Beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.”

“Let’s go, then.”

With the agility worthy of your namesake, you jump down yet another hole tight and land on your feet and hands. You keep this position long enough to assess your surroundings, your yellow-green eyes picking up every movement without needing to use a Cat potion. Unlike Eskel, who is probably downing one as you wait for him to follow you into the sewers. Once you are satisfied that there is no immediate danger, you rise to your full height and silently slip along the humid walls. You hear rats squeaking in the distance and scattering as the sound of Eskel landing next to you spook them.

“Any idea which direction we should be taking, street-smarts?”

“Well, the exit was north-west of our cell, so I’m gonna take a wild guess and say we should be heading that way,” you point in the direction you were referring to, “you got your swords?”

“Duh,” is all Eskel offered in response, “do you think so little of me?”

“Do you want an honest answer to that question? C’mon, we’ve wasted enough time waiting for you to drink that stupid Cat potion.”

You ignore Eskel’s grumbled response and take off without another word. You and Eskel have known each other for years. You first met on the path after he saved you from a particularly aggressive female wyvern. The beast was in heat and very territorial, and she did not appreciate anyone interrupting her mating rituals. There had been no contract on her head, you just happened to have the worst of luck. After Eskel saved you, he could hardly believe that he was not only standing face to face with a witcher from the School of the Cat, notoriously responsible for the creation of a famously vicious breed of emotionally-volatile assassins, but face to face with a female witcher no less. Your school often trained women, but very few of those were put through the trials and even fewer survived. You managed to beat the odds. You’re exceptionally good at what you do, which is why you and Eskel got along so well.

After months of travelling together, and after a boozy night following a successful contract, you and Eskel became lovers. At first, it was purely physical, but as the months bled into years you realised that it was nice to have someone to go back to after an exceedingy shitty year on the Path. You started to miss Eskel after prolonged periods of not seeing each other and that’s when you admitted to yourself that it had stopped being purely physical a long time ago. You couldn’t let Eskel know, though. It would only get to his head. That’s why you settled for the tough love approach instead. It worked fine. Eskel had yet to run away.

Your train of thought is interrupted when you hear the familiar hiss of drowners in the darkness. You and Eskel simultaneously unsheathe your swords and brace yourself for an attack. One drowner sneaks up on Eskel from behind, but you notice it first out of the corner of your eyes and blast Igni in its face. In the meantime, Eskel hacks off the arm of another beast before running his silver sword through its abdomen, killing it with one powerful thrust. In the distance, you hear the echoes of more drowners heading your way.

“Shit. We need to fucking hurry.”

You run blindly through the labyrinth of underground tunnels. The truth is that neither of you knows where the exit is, or if there even is an exit. There has to be, you reason, the sewers always lead somewhere. Traditionally to a river, at least. There had to be an exit, or else the underground tunnels would be flooded and you would be swimming in shitwater by now. The fact that you aren’t is a fucking sign right? Right?

“There? You feel that?” Eskel suddenly speaks and instantly every hair on your body bristles in anticipation.

“Feel what?”

“A draught.” Yes. You do feel it now that Eskel mentioned it. “Follow me. Turn to the left.”

You follow Eskel through the sewers, and to the relief of you both, you’re running away from the nest of drowners rather than towards it. Under any other circumstance neither of you would’ve shied from a group of drowners, but you were trying to escape and not draw more attention to yourself. Some other witcher, one that was preferably not wanted in Temeria, could take care of that one.

“We’re getting closer,” you say when your nose picks up the smell of fish and seawater, “we’ve almost made it.”

You and Eskel reach an opening several frantic minutes later, at once out of breath but also relieved that you managed to find your way out of those dungeons. It’s dark outside, which will help you and Eskel escape without raising too much attention, or so you hope. You both manage to exit the sewers soundlessly. Even Eskel with his impressive size manages to stealth his way past guards and civilians alike. Not as flawlessly as yourself, mind you, but you weren’t one to brag.

Well, maybe a little bit, but there would be time for boasting later.

“Hey look, there’s some horses there,” you tell him, your voice too quiet for any mortal ear to pick up but you knew Eskel could hear you loud and clear.

“No. I need to get back to Scorpion.”

“Oh good gods - really? Eskel, we don’t have time for this. Scorpion is stabled near the city gates… at the other side of fucking town.”

“I’m not leaving Scorpion.”

With that, Eskel takes off in the opposite direction, leaving you to ponder whether you should follow him or go your own way and hope that your paths will cross again eventually. Fuck it, who are you kidding, you wouldn’t let that idiot risk his life for a stupid horse on his own. Well, if he gets caught you might just let him ride it out for a while… you know, just to teach him a lesson.

You follow Eskel’s trail, making sure to remain unseen. Your hand reaches up and touches your witcher medallion, shaped in the form of a cat’s head, something you’ve done since the trials to ground you, to calm your nerves. After what felt like the longest fucking chase ever, you see Eskel pressed against the wall of the stables that you recognise as the place you two had left your horses in two days ago when you first arrived. Eskel peeks around the corner, checking for guards, and when he’s satisfied that he hasn’t been spotted he climbs up the side of the building at a surprising speed. You curse under your breath, but follow him up onto the roof of the building.

“You know we could get arrested for this?” you tell him once you reach the top. Eskel raises an eyebrow, a mocking grin tugging at the scarless corner of his lips. Anticipating his smartass remark, you hiss: “I’ve just sneaked out of a dungeon, I don’t fancy another trip through those sewers.”

“Don’t worry, this won’t take you long.”

“Me? Whatever do you mean, me?” Your eyes land on the chimney and its opening, too narrow for Eskel to fit through, but not too narrow to fit… you. Oh, the bastard was going to pay for this. When you turn to glare at your companion, all you can see is the protruding lower lip and the pleading eyes.

“No…”

“Please? Scorpion means the world to me.”

“What about me?” you snap, forcing yourself to look away or risk falling for Eskel’s pretty face all over again, “don’t I mean the world to you?”

“Of course,” he says, his tone growing softer, “and I’m sure if the situations were reversed, Scorpion would do the same for you.”

“Urgh, fine!” you eventually relent despite the absurdity of Eskel’s last comment, “but you owe me for this.”

To this day you don’t know how you and Eskel didn’t get caught sneaking a massive war stallion out of the stables, nor how you two managed to escape the guards at the city gates. It certainly made for an interesting story that winter when you and Eskel travelled back to Kaer Morhen.

Lambert relentlessly teases you for ‘growing too soft’ and ‘being wrapped around Eskel’s little finger’, but when you see the open adoration written plainly on Eskel’s face as soon as he and you retreat back to his room, well, you simply don’t find it in yourself to truly mind all that much.

#eskel x reader #eskel x you #eskel x y/n #cat witcher reader #havenwrites #prompt list #send requests #requests open #eskel #the witcher #reader insert

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