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denaliwrites · 10 months

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Say You'll Remember Me (Denali's Version)

Alec Hardy x Bad Girl!Reader

Summary: If "whirlwind romance" were in the dictionary, next to its definition would be an image of you and Alec.

Soundtrack: Wildest Dreams by Taylor Swift

Requests: Open!

Warnings: Criminal Activity.

1995

It wasn't like Alec, going and falling in love with one of the people he was sworn to put away.

Yet as you were escorted into the station, all crimson smiles, all confidence, all sauntering hips and deep black leather, he couldn't help the way his heart skipped a beat.

(Little did he know how dangerous that would be for him if this had happened, oh, eighteen years into the future.)

And when your eyes danced across the room just to finally land on him -- tiny, scrawny little Alec Hardy -- oh, he knew he was done for. Not that he minded much... or at all.

Doing your intake was the highest honor that had, in his twenty-six years of life, been bestowed upon him.

"What'd they get a lass like you for?" he asked as he took your fingerprints, his hands surprisingly gentle with your own.

"Defacement," you replied simply with a smirk.

"Of?"

"Churchill's grave."

"Oh," he said, too stunned to move or speak for a moment. It passed quickly, and he resumed his work as if nothing had happened. "One of those counter-culture types, then."

You laughed at that, and it was the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard. He could listen to it forever.

"Something like that," you said once your laughs died down. "I'm not big on the punk scene, though."

"Really?" he asked, looking up at you before quickly looking back down. "You look like you'd fit right in with that lot."

"What can I say? They've got a good look."

He hummed in response, then the two of you fell into silence as he continued processing you.

Once he was done, he escorted you to a cell and guided you in by the waist. You said nothing, but the look you sent him and the smile on those bloodstained lips let him know that you knew -- and you liked it.

The gesture was so small, so insignificant, and yet he couldn't believe he'd done it.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered about the power dynamics, and if he was abusing what little power he had in this situation. Then he decided that any power he had -- you granted him, and could easily take away if you wanted.

This suspicion was only confirmed upon your release. He was the one to open the cell -- he made sure of it -- and as you passed you winked at him and slipped him a piece of paper. Where you'd gotten it, or a pen, he had no idea, but when he looked at it at the privacy of his desk there definitely was a phone number written on it, as well as a kiss mark from your lipstick.

Oh, how devilish of you.

He called the number that night, and honestly half expected anyone else to answer. Maybe even no one.

Instead, your heavenly voice drifted down the line. "Took you long enough," you said lightly into his ear, and it took every ounce of control he had over his body to keep breathing.

"I had work," he protested, just as lightly.

"A poor excuse. Do you normally keep girls waiting like this?"

"Only the naughty ones."

Wow, he couldn't believe he'd just said that.

"So it's a punishment?" you said with a laugh.

The note of danger in that angelic sound sent a thrill down his spine. "If it is?"

"I'd like to see you try," you said, still laughing.

He wouldn't. He couldn't imagine it, frankly. Though he could imagine you punishing him, and he, much to his surprise, rather liked the idea.

The hell were you doing to him?

"Do you have a place to stay?" he asked.

"I have a phone number, don't I?"

Oh. Right. That you did.

"Would you like to stay at mine anyway?"

You hummed thoughtfully. "Stay with a random cop I only just met yesterday?" you asked teasingly. "What could possibly go wrong?"

"I promise I won't kill ye," he said quickly, fearfully.

"I know," you said. "You couldn't even if you wanted to."

He gave you his address, anyway, and then the conversation lulled and, rather suddenly, you hung up.

"That was rather rude," he mused.

You arrived just as he set his plate down on the table.

Answering the insistent knocking upon his door, he didn't expect to see you, yet there you stood. You were gorgeous as ever, with wild hair tumbling over your shoulders, no doubt whipped to a frenzy by a car's open windows, and lips as red as they were the moment he'd first laid eyes on you.

"Oh," he said, blinking. "You... came?"

"Well, you did invite me," you said, grinning.

"That I did," he said, and stepped aside so that you could enter. He closed the door behind you and followed you as you took a few exploratory steps deeper into the flat. "Have you eaten?" he asked as he passed you to return to the kitchen.

"No," you replied simply, looking around his kitchen curiously, as if you couldn't believe he actually lived here.

"Well, help yourself." He motioned to the pot on the stove as he sat down.

You must've noticed he wasn't eating -- he noticed the look of realization, the way you hurried to fill a plate and sit down beside him.

Your eyes met, and he smiled at the hint of a blush on your cheeks.

"I hope you don't expect me to say grace," you said to break the silence that had built around the two of you.

"Oh, goodness no," he replied.

"So you're waiting for me."

"Of course." You were the one in charge here, after all. Well, to him you were, at least.

You took a bite and he followed suit, and the two of you ate in amicable silence.

The rest of the night Alec spent discovering all the ways he could make you tick.

1996

Alec had never had a roommate before, let alone one who found themselves in jail as frequently as you did.

He had had girlfriends before, but you were the first one he hesitated to introduce to his parents -- it wasn't that he didn't love you, it was that he wasn't sure his poor mum would survive meeting you. She was a bit traditional, and you were anything but.

Unfortunately, the universe didn't agree with him.

You were home alone, recovering from a hangover when his mother dropped in unannounced -- and about had a heart attack at the sight of you, with all your leather and spikes, and what a "traditional" woman might say was a scandalous amount of makeup.

"Who are you, then?" Mrs. Hardy asked, because you couldn't possibly be Alec's girlfriend.

You were sensible not to immediately correct that assumption, instead simply offering your name before wandering to the kitchen and popping some painkillers.

"And what are you doing here?" she pressed.

"Oh, I live here."

"Does my boy need help with the rent?" she asked, mostly herself -- at least, you were pretty sure she wasn't asking you. "Enough that he'd seek help from..."

"Hmm?" you prompted in amusement, leaning your hip against the counter.

"Well, someone of your profession. Of course."

"What profession would that be?"

"You know," she said conspiratorily.

"Ma'am," you said with a biting laugh, "I work at the pub down the street."

She looked like she wanted to say, no, that's not right, you couldn't possibly be anything but a prostitute. She must've thought better of it, though.

Alec, blessedly, chose that moment to walk in the door.

You could see on his face, the moment he saw his mother, that he almost considered walking right back out.

Instead, he said "Mum!" and pulled the woman into an embrace. "I see ye've met my girlfriend."

You watched as several decidedly not great emotions passed over her features, before she settled on disbelief. "But... darlin', she's..."

You and Alec both stared at her as she struggled to find a delicate way to say it.

"Isn't she a little... bold, for you?" she asked. You had to admit, that was better than you expected.

"That's why I like her," Alec answered, pulling you into a side hug and kissing your cheek. You giggled and instinctively pulled him into a proper kiss, which he happily returned.

"Well... if ye say so..."

1997

The goal had never been to tame you or cage you, and the longer your relationship lasted the more he saw how ill-fitted to domesticity you were.

He didn't want to admit it, of course. He would've been happy to spend the rest of his life with you.

But he loved you, and he could see just how miserable you were living in the same little flat, going to the same boring job every day, talking to the same boring people and having the same boring sex with the same boring partner, day after day, for years.

You'd always been a troublemaker, it was one of the things he'd first learned about you, and it was one of the first things he'd fallen in love with.

For a while, at the start of the relationship, you'd put in effort not to get into trouble. For him, mostly, but he suspected you also had a genuine desire to turn a new leaf.

But you got bored. And when you were bored, you lashed out.

It was at a point now where Alec thought you probably spent more time in a cell than in his bed.

It broke his heart, that you couldn't be happy with him. But it broke his heart more that he'd unwittingly tried to break you, when he should've released you back into the wild. Hell, he never should've captured you at all.

"I want you out," he said one night.

"... out?" you asked, stunned. Confused. Lost. Hurt.

"I can't do this anymore," he said with a sigh. "The constant stints in jail, the drugs, the drinkin'. It's too much. So you need to leave."

"But..."

"No. You need to leave. That's the end of it. You have a week to sort out another place to stay, but then ye've gotta go. Even if it means ye gotta live on the streets."

It killed him inside that he could see a tiny glimmer of relief in your eyes.

And when he got home from work the next day, you were gone.

2004

Honestly, Alec hadn't expected to run into you again. Ever.

Yet as he walked Daisy through the park, there you were, circling the playground like a lion stalking its prey. There was only one child playing there, screaming gleefully as he sped down the slide. You hovered for a moment, watching vigilantly, before continuing your path around the jungle gym.

You looked... stressed. But happy.

Daisy tore her hand out of his and ran for the boy, no doubt eager to make a friend.

He watched as you realized there was an incoming missile in the form of a little girl, your eyes on his daughter as she neared. You eased the moment you realized it was just a kid coming at your... son? Yet you kept an eye on her, easily adopting the role of guardian for her even though she was a strange child who had, by all accounts, appeared out of nowhere.

He slowly made his way over, his eyes never leaving you. He saw, in rapid succession, your expression change from casual, to realization, to deer in the headlights, to flighty panic.

Yet you were stuck -- whoever this child was, you couldn't leave without him, and he was playing with Daisy in a section it'd be near impossible for you to reach before Alec reached you.

And reach you he did.

He said your name, the first time in years, and you closed your eyes at the sound of it. No doubt willing him to vanish.

"Hey."

It was the best he could've hoped for, honestly.

"You look well," he said, before his attention shifted to the kids. "Is he...?"

"God, no," you said with a nervous laugh. "Please. Me, with a kid? That'd be a disaster. No, he's, er... my friend's kid. I'm babysitting for the day while she's visiting her mum."

"Never really took ye to be a kid person."

"There's a lot about me you never really got the chance to learn."

"That's fair," he replied, watching the kids run around the swingset in a game of tag.

"Why did you do it?" you asked after a few moments of silence. "The real why, not the one you gave me that day."

He didn't want to answer that.

"The reason I gave you that day was the real reason."

"Don't -- don't you fucking dare," you hissed, turning to him. "Why lie?"

Because he knew if he'd told you the truth, you never would've gone. Never would've saved yourself.

"I didn't. I'm not. I was so tired of it all."

"And now?"

"And now I'm married with a kid."

He saw a brief flash of hurt in your eyes -- it was a life you never could've given him. Not for any lack of ability, but you both knew that if you'd somehow miraculously allowed yourself to carry to term, you probably would've walked out eventually. The domestic life just wasn't for you. It would've driven you crazy.

He could see that, just in the brief time he'd been watching you with your friend's kid. You were watchful -- perfectly diligent, perfectly protective... but he could see you itching to do just about anything else instead.

"How have you been?" he asked, pulling himself as well as you out of the thoughts circling in your heads.

"Good," you replied simply, at first. After a moment of thought, you added, "I took up a job in a school. Pays better than the pub."

"His age?"

"Yeah. I see him, sometimes."

"D'ye ken Daisy?"

"Your daughter?"

He nodded.

"I think she's familiar, but I'm sure if she actually were a student at my school I would've run into you sooner."

"Nah, my wife does all the school stuff. Tess, her name is."

"It rings a bell, actually."

"Eh? Small world."

The conversation drifted a bit from there, hitting on a few topics before you plucked up your now exhausted six-year-old charge and carried him home for naptime.

2008

Whoever you thought you might run into at an underground rave, Alec Hardy absolutely did not make the list.

Yet, he was unmistakable.

"Hey babe," you shouted into his ear with a grin, your body moving closer to him in time with the pounding beat of the music playing overhead. "I was wondering where you'd gone!"

"What are you on about? I don't know ye--"

Realization dawned in his eyes, and your grin widened. The last thing he saw before you pulled him into a kiss was a flash of danger in your eyes.

"What the hell?" he all but shouted into your lips.

"Play along, dumbass," you said instead of answering.

He seemed to get the hint, though. He was stiff at first as his hands circled your hips, but the two of you quickly fell back into whatever chemistry you'd had thirteen years ago and he loosened up.

You continued to dance, body grinding against his.

He was still, simply holding you, and when you looked up you saw nothing but adoration in his eyes.

"What?" you asked with a confused smile.

"I wish I'd gotten to see this side of you," he said. "This is how you should've been."

"Coked out?"

"Free."

Several emotions flitted over your face, eventually landing on heartfelt appreciation. "So that's why you broke up with me."

"Yes," was all he said. It was all you needed.

"Why didn't you just say that?"

"Ye would've given up yer freedom 'cause you would've thought that's what I wanted ye to do."

He was right.

"Thank you, Alec," you said quietly, and if not for the tender kiss he placed on your forehead, you would've thought your words lost to the blaring music.

You had to admit, he played the role of "boyfriend" well.

Too well.

It was rather funny, you thought, that he was confused for a patron and arrested along with you.

"I'm never gonna live this down," he moaned into his knees.

"Shut up," you told him with a laugh. "You'll be fine. Officer!" you called, waving your non-cuffed hand to get one of the arresting officers' attention. "Officer, can I get leave from these cuffs to run to the restroom?"

"Can't you hold it?" a gruff voice asked.

"Well, I could try, but then you'll be responsible for all the blood I leave behind."

You had to bite back laughter at the disgusted face the cop made. "Fine, but he stays with you," he said, motioning to Alec.

Alec, to his benefit, didn't protest.

You happily bounced up from the floor, dragging Alec along with you, and made your way to the restroom.

Inside was empty and quiet.

"Oh, this is gonna be a problem," you said thoughtfully.

"If there's anything I can do to help, I'll do it," Alec said, and you were struck by how genuine he was. After all this time, he still loved you -- enough to help you change your tampon, even.

"Oh, that was a lie," you reassured him. "I'm not on my period."

"Then... what are we doing in here?" he asked, looking around like the answer might be written somewhere.

"Busting out, duh."

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me -- I can't get arrested twice!"

"Yeah, that's why we won't be caught."

He dropped his face into his free hand, and you laughed. Quietly.

"C'mon, Hardy. Help me. You said you would."

"Yeah, when I thought ye needed help takin' care of yer period. I did not agree to help ye evade arrest!"

"Isn't it your career on the line, here?" you asked casually, as you eyed the bathroom window.

You heard a grunt behind you. "Ye always were tricky, weren't ye?"

"Like a fox, babe," you agreed.

He moved to stand beside you, looking at the window thoughtfully. "It should have a hatch release," he said, even though neither of you had found one.

"Could it be... subtle?" you asked. "Like a... tiny button?"

"To open a window?"

"I was hoping we wouldn't need to smash it."

"Sorry, but no such luck."

"Fuck. Okay."

You pulled him close to you, hands working quickly to undo the buttons of his shirt.

"I hardly think now's the time for sex," he gasped. "They'll come lookin' for us any moment."

"Yeah, it also won't help us break the window. You know what will, though? A fist, wrapped up in your shirt."

He really was such a dumbass, sometimes.

Once you got to the sleeve of his cuffed arm, together the two of you made quick work of making the necessary tears to get the shirt off completely.

Alec started wrapping the remains of his shirt around his balled fist, but your hands on his stilled him.

"Let me," you said.

"Now's not the time to be a hero," he replied.

"Please."

"Why?"

"If I get injured, I'm the one who broke the glass. I'm the one who gets in trouble. Your career won't be on the line."

"I'll still have let ye do it."

"Please, there's no 'letting' me do anything."

With that, he let you unravel the shirt from his hand and helped you wind it around yours. Then he double-checked it, and triple-checked it.

"When you're ready," he said after his last inspection.

Without hesitation, you punched a hole in the glass, then started knocking the remains out of the sill.

"Have ye done this before?" he asked, impressed and concerned all at once.

"I will let you believe what you want to believe. Now, c'mon!"

The two of you crawled out of the freshly broken window and ran off into the night, laughing and hand-in-hand.

You were lucky that the shop clerk didn't ask questions or call the police as you and Alec, still cuffed together, stepped up to the counter with a small haul.

Alec, ever the responsible one between you two, held a bottle of water, some painkillers, a sports drink, a protein bar, and your favorite candy.

You, ever the partier, held a bottle of beer and an energy drink.

You paid with the banknotes stashed in your bra and carried your haul out into the night.

The two of you walked a ways before finding a park. You dragged Alec over to the swings with a giggle and happily sat in one. He sighed and rolled his eyes, but sat in the swing next to you anyway.

"You're a right menace, y'ken that?" he groaned.

"It's one of my most charming features," you argued, smirking as you popped your beer open and took a sip.

"Why'd ye kiss me?" he asked, staring out over the park.

You shrugged. "The only way you'd ever end up at a rave is if you were undercover or it was some kind of sting operation -- which meant there were dangerous criminals around, and -- I'm sorry, but you do not blend in."

"So you gave me a cover."

"It was that or get stabbed. I'd like to think kissing me isn't as bad as the alternative."

"It was rather unexpected," he said, but you could see him fighting back a smile.

"Speaking of unexpected, when were you gonna tell me you have a key to these cuffs?"

"Oh, never," he said with a laugh.

"Alec Hardy," you said with a dramatic gasp. "Are you arresting me?"

"I could do," he teased, yanking his arm, with enough strength to send you reeling. Instead, though, you were able to catch yourself and swung to face him instead.

When your swing came close enough to his, his legs caught yours and kept you in place while his lips crashed into your own in a bit of a rough -- but sweet -- kiss.

"Alec Hardy," you said again, breathlessly.

He whispered your name into your lips, and you realized it had never sounded as lovely as it did coming from him.

"I love you," you whispered back, and he pulled away to stare longingly, lovingly into your eyes.

"It's not just the coke or booze talkin'?"

"Does it matter if it is? Even if I were completely sober... what could we do? Date again? Get married? You know I'd rather die than settle down."

He did. It was the whole reason he'd let you go.

"What we can do," he started, pulling you into a gentle kiss, "is get ye somewhere safe and comfortable to sober up."

"Your place?" you questioned with a grin.

"Exactly," he responded, and you felt his own smile against your lips. "And then, once yer sober, we can... talk."

With that, the two of you (reluctantly) parted, and Alec led you away into the glimmering city.

No real talking was had for the week you spent at Alec's flat. Sure, words were exchanged, like "What should we have for dinner?" or "What time should I expect you home?" But for the most part, the two of you didn't talk so much as... moan each other's names in a near-constant state of ecstasy.

And boy, did you get great use out of those cuffs.

2013

Of course you'd heard about the Sandbrook case -- even when you and Alec weren't talking, the two of you still kept tabs on each other.

He'd sent you an email when your aunt died. You'd sent him a text when his mum was diagnosed with cancer (luckily, she was fine now, and you'd sent him a text when she'd gone into remission, too).

All that to say that you knew. About the case, sure, but more importantly, about how devastated he was over it. A text wouldn't do. Hell, even a call wouldn't do.

Last you'd heard, he'd relocated to some coastal town called Broadchurch.

So you followed him there.

You hadn't been expecting a murder investigation when you pulled into town, but it was the only thing anyone was talking about, nor were you expecting to organically run into Alec mere minutes after arriving, yet in he walked as you were grabbing a coffee.

"What're you doin' 'ere?" he asked, completely baffled.

The woman beside him looked... well, equally confused. Maybe more? You and Alec just had a habit of running into each other. For her, this was new.

"I heard about Sandbrook," you said simply.

He sighed dramatically, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I don't have time for ye right now."

Ouch.

"Just -- go get set up in the hotel. I'm stayin' there, I'll... I'll see ye." With that, he waved you away. Dismissed you like a dog.

Hmph.

You did get yourself set up in the hotel, of course, but you took your sweet time getting there. There was plenty to do in the town, though the constant mistrustful stares set you a bit on edge.

It was about six when you finally went and got yourself a room, and about ten when you heard a gentle rapping at your door.

"I'm sorry about earlier," was the first thing Alec said as you swung the door open.

You looked him over, now that you had the chance -- he looked haunted, haggard. Sleepless...

"Oh, Alec," you sighed, drawing him into an embrace. He melted into you, holding you tight. "I'm sorry. I should've been there."

"Nothin' ye could've done."

You knew that, of course, and you knew your presence alone wouldn't have chased away that haunted look in his eyes, just as it wasn't doing now, but... you wished it could. You wished it were that easy.

He parted from you with a shaky breath, his eyes rimmed with unshed tears.

And then he yanked you into a desperate kiss.

You didn't protest, and in fact returned it. Neither of you parted as he pushed you back into the room and toed your door shut, nor as the back of your knees hit the bed and you nearly collapsed.

He caught you, held you impossibly close, fingered the hem of your shirt in a silent bid for consent.

You nodded, eagerly, and he made quick work of your clothes -- and you.

You weren't surprised how often Alec came to see you during the Latimer case (okay, maybe you were, a little).

You knew he was just using you for stress relief, but you didn't mind (much). You figured it was penance for being unable to help him during the Sandbrook case. You figured things would go back to normal once this new case was over.

Then the fucker went and had a heart attack or something.

So things returned to normal a bit quicker than you expected.

At least he apologized.

Things were a bit awkward at first once sex was taken off the table. Like the two of you didn't know how to do anything but fuck like rabbits. Eventually, though, you found a groove that worked.

Every night that he came "home," you had dinner, watched a movie, and talked about the bits of your lives you'd missed.

You told him where you'd gone after the breakup. He told you about meeting Tess and having Daisy. You told him about your trip to Tanzania. He told you about becoming Detective Inspector.

"Your life has been much more exciting than mine," he said one night as the two of you lay curled up together in bed.

"Maybe," you said with a shrug. "But you actually did something with yours."

"Naaaah," he growled, making you giggle. "Everyone's different... this is the path I was always gonna be on, and that's the path ye were always gonna be on."

"I guess we're lucky our paths keep crossing from time to time."

"I hope they do far into the future," Alec said with a yawn.

You giggled again. "Go to sleep, dumbass. You have a murder to solve."

"God, don't remind me."

2014

You could feel that Alec was at peace, for once.

Sure, Joe Miller had walked. But Alec knew he'd gotten the right man. And he'd solved the Sandbrook case -- finally gave that family justice and closure. Finally erased that blemish from his conscience.

The two of you celebrated in the only way you really knew how, by making love.

Leaving Broadchurch had always been the plan, for you. You'd stayed, because Alec had needed you to, but you never intended to stay anywhere permanently.

So why did it hurt so much when Alec told you he was leaving?

And why did it hurt so much when you watched his train rattle away?

2017

Alec kept the house in Broadchurch -- mostly for you. He knew you weren't a creature of habit, of settling down and growing roots, but he offered it as a sort of base of operations, with no strings attached. You'd taken the offer, simply because it felt like if you didn't, you'd never hear from him again.

Not that he contacted you anyway.

Until one day, when he'd called you to tell you he was moving back to Broadchurch and would need his house back. You were welcome to stay, he assured you, but he also made it seem like maybe you shouldn't. He was bringing his daughter with him, and she seemed to be in a difficult period of her life.

You wondered if Alec remembered how the two of you had met. Apparently not, given he thought his daughter being a troublemaker would bother you.

So you'd stayed, and they'd moved back in.

Things were tense at first, especially given his first big case upon his return, but eventually it all evened out. You even got on surprisingly well with Daisy, all things considered.

2018

You hadn't meant to stay. It had just sort of... happened. And you hadn't meant to fall back into a relationship with Alec. That had just sort of happened, too.

Yet... you were happy.

For the first time in your life, staying... wasn't so bad. You even thought you could rather do more of it. Maybe not a lot. But... some.

2019

You admired the glittering ring on your finger as reflected lights danced on the ceiling and walls of your tiny little home in Broadchurch.

Alec held you in his arms, and you had your legs draped over his lap. Some old black and white film played on the TV. It was dark and rainy. The night couldn't have been more perfect, even if he hadn't proposed to you on top of it all.

Eventually the two of you moved to your bed, and Alec held you impossibly close, his arms tight but tender around you.

"All I ask," he sighed sleepily, "is that if ye leave, ye always come home to me."

And come home to him you did.

#alec hardy x reader #alec hardy x you #alec hardy fanfic #alec hardy #david tennant #broadchurch #broadchurch fanfic

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goblins-riddles-or-frocks · 3 months

Note

What is your view of Aemond and Daemon?

Aemond is really fun. I love that he’s like such an over-the-top kind of anime character aesthetically but also all of the overlooked second son tropes.

It’s fun how strongly him having been picked on and ignored in childhood informs the false glass jaw ego he’s developed for himself in adulthood. And how he’s become overly cruel as a result. He always wants to get his own, he wants to prove himself. He’s so quick to try to crush anyone else underfoot if given any sort of advantage because he has such a tremendous chip on his shoulder and he needs to feel powerful to make up for his youth/how much no one cares for him now because he’s so annoying lol.

The entire scene where he stole a dragon— because he kept being picked on for not having one– and then immediately attacked the other kids because he finally had the upper hand and then lost an eye and went crying to his mom really exemplifies all of this! He really doesn’t know how to be normal. And in the present he’s still trying to constantly prove himself and to command respect while just being… kind of a fuck up.

I’ve said this before, but I did love him trying to just be kind of an asshole and scare Luke in the season one finale, talking up such a big game and demanding that Luke cut out his own eye. Then Luke leaves (normal reaction!) and then Aemond tries to scare him… upon dragon back and then shdhfhfd accidentally kills him and is like “oh fuck I accidentally started a war fuck fuck fuck.” Like that is such good character writing!

I was worried that season two was going to squander it tbh with the pilot just not doing anything with his feelings about that. But now that we have episode two, I nominally enjoy him pretending that he totes did it on purpose and was just out for blood. And then in episode two he’s crying in the lap of a prostitute in a brothel, while drinking milk, and telling her that he didn’t actually mean to do it 🥺🥺 but at least B&C means that Daemon considers him a threat and wants him dead. Like yayyy he was noticed 🥺🥺

Idk he’s just so embarrassing! It’s great!

As for Daemon, I started re-watching season one recently and it’s really interesting how little anyone respects him! He and Aemond are def similar while being kind of the inverse of each other in terms of what makes them tick. Daemon is similarly a volatile fuck up, but he seems to be more genuine of a wildcard whereas Aemond is consciously trying to look cool all the time. Daemon just kind of… does stuff, hoping to get some attention from his loved ones, and is bewildered when it’s perceived as some sort of big political move. He also just seems more genuinely loyal while always being perceived as a serpent. Like imo Aemond just is happy to overtly betray people. But Daemon is more untrustworthy because he’s fucking insane, rather than deliberate malice.

There is a consistent line in the show of people just fucking up or allowing things to happen and then that being perceived in a more dramatic way they never anticipated. A lot of people have complained about how a lot of the choices in the show are accidental, and I can agree that sometimes it does go a touch too far, but with a lot of these characters I think that’s a compelling choice— like Aemond! I think it works particularly well for Daemon too. On rewatch, it really stood out to me that after Aemma and her newborn die, there’s that point where Daemon’s out drinking and the crowd, somewhat pushed by Mysaria, start cheering that Daemon’s going to be the heir now that the kid’s dead, and he’s going to be the future king etc. Essentially celebrating the deaths.

And Daemon’s just drinking, barely listening and is half heartedly like “yeah, sure. fuck it” because the crowd is cheering. He doesn’t even seem particularly ambitious in that moment. So when Viserys is completely outraged and confronts him he seems kind of surprised that it’s something that comes up at all. I get the sense that he really wasn’t thinking about it!

Frankly, I think the late season one writing, in general, flags a little bit. Once we start getting time skips, there’s a little less continuity in terms of what these characters are doing and where they’re coming from. It’s just harder to follow their day to day priorities. I find Daemon particularly the most interesting early on, because he especially just drops off the map for a bit.

But in general, I think it’s really interesting how Daemon seems mostly motivated by just wanting attention and recognition. He wants the crown as a status symbol, but he doesn’t want to rule necessarily, like I doubt he has any strong policy opinions or any desire for administrative duties lol. But he wants to be treated like he’s someone of consequence, like it wouldn’t be a joke for him to rule.

I’m not really a Daemyra shipper. Shockingly, I guess, they’re just a bit too creepy for me. But the early Daemyra dynamic was the most interesting imo. I see people frequently say that he’s only ever been interested in her for the throne and I think that’s distinctly untrue!

Before they get married, his desire for her is framed as directly at odds with him wanting the crown actually. This is encapsulated by that moment where she shows up at Dragonstone and she’s literally like “I’m the thing that standing between you and the throne” and she’s right! He could literally just punt her off the bridge where they’re having that standoff, and Viserys would no longer have an heir. Would it be smart? No, it would be catastrophic! But he was obviously ready to throw down with Otto, who is literally there representing Viserys. It clearly wasn’t good sense holding him back.

He’s a character without much strategy, he’s just ready to do what the fuck ever, at any given moment, just to get people mad at him. He wants attention. I think it says something about Daemon, that he is so emotionally unregulated, and so immature, that he does have this continued bond with his 15-year-old niece. He’s grooming her for sure, but there’s this element of like shdgd that’s his buddy, you know? He emotionally relates to a 15-year-old, and then suddenly Rhaenyra’s grown up, but he’s the same. I think the last episode highlighted that very well when Rhaenyra says that she used to view him as a challenge as a child, but now she has too many challenges of her own. (If they lean more into their relationship fracturing and her disillusionment with him I might actually give a damn about them lol)

In season two, it’s so shocking he’s somewhat briefly the voice of reason. Frankly, he’s correct to point out that Rhaenyra should not be just randomly looking for her dead son alone and in enemy territory. And, sorry, he’s right, but she is shirking her duties while they’re in a civil war. I’m not really arguing about whether or not he’s like correct about everything now (Blood and Cheese was… a terrible fucking choice) but like it’s interesting that in his old fucking age he’s trying to rise to the occasion and strategize where he can. I honestly think that suggests that, while he has his own entitled feelings about power, and what he views more as his brother’s crown etc, he does love Rhaenyra and is trying to do right by her. But he’s just… such a perverse mess.

I also remember it was extremely controversial that he choked her at the end of season one, but I mean it’s in keeping with him as a person. He’s volatile, he’s awful. He killed his first wife with a rock, he barely mourned his second wife at all, like he was fucking Rhaenyra at the funeral. He’s just a terrible, terrible mess but that’s what makes him compelling.

#house of the dragon #hotd #hotd season 2 #hotd spoilers #fire & blood #daemon targaryen #aemond targaryen #daemyra #(kind of)#asoiaf #i ramble sometimes #all the bendy punctuations #a mysterious stranger has appeared

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gabessquishytum · 1 year

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The black widow/sugar daddy ask has me obsessed, but I can’t help but make it a little silly (and of course lean into the Addams Family Gomez/Morticia vibes dreamling definitely has 😁)

So, Dream is a black widow, and his latest target is Hob Gadling, who was ridiculously easy to wrap around his finger. He practically worships the ground Dream walks on from minute one, without Dream having to do much at all. The meet to marry time is a new record for Dream, and he’s kind of enjoying himself. But alas, the wedding is done, the will rewritten in his favor, and all good things must come to an end.

Except Hob just…keeps not dying. He’s not noticing the traps and avoiding them, he blindly walks into them, but somehow they never manage to kill him or even incapacitate him.

He eats or drinks something poisoned and just compliments the interesting flavors. Tripping or pushing him down the stairs or out a window has him laughing at his own clumsiness as he stands and brushes himself off, nothing broken or bleeding or even bruised. Dropping something heavy on him has Hob gently teasing Dream for his clumsiness, with not even a concussion to show for it. Ropes and knives somehow get Hob excited and thinking that Dream is introducing some new games to the bedroom. At one point out of desperation Dream sits on Hob’s face in the hopes of suffocating him to death, and ends up passing out from too many orgasms instead (in hindsight not his brightest idea, trying to beat the king of oral sex at his own game).

Nothing works. Hob Gadling just refuses to die. And through it all he never stops lavishing Dream with gifts and attention, spoiling him rotten and treating him to the best sex he’s ever had, always with the mindset that Dream deserves it all.

Dream is enraged. Dream is fascinated. Dream is seriously considering for the first time in his career just staying in this marriage (apart from the whole not-dying thing, which offends his professional pride, he really has no complaints about his life with Hob, which he doesn’t know how to feel about)

-🪽anon

Oh this is rather wonderful!! I've been really enjoying thinking about this concept and it's really interesting to explore more of Dream’s deadly assassin side!!

I'm chuckling over the idea of Hob’s inability to die. It's hilarious. The ways that Dream tries to kill his husband become increasingly deranged. Crossbow (Hob apologises for getting in the way of the shot and pulls the bolt out of his own thigh). Drowning (Hob fucking FLOATS). Setting starving dogs on him (Hob ends up in a pile of cuddly, drooling doggos, grinning and thanking Dream for a wonderful surprise!). Its getting ridiculous. Dream’s reputation is on the line and his stupid, gorgeous, beloved husband won't die!!

And yes, of course Dream has managed to fall in love with Hob. It makes the whole thing even harder.

Finally Dream breaks down and admits the whole thing to Hob who... laughs a little. And admits that he knew. He isn't quite sure how he's managed not to die? Good luck maybe? Or maybe it's that Dream isn't really trying that hard?

Dream bristles and How Dare You's him, but Hob dips him, kisses him, and shuts him up. Hob’s leg slides between Dream’s and rubs against him and he whispers that it's ok. He's actually really really into the whole thing. He'd be honoured if Dream would continue "trying" to kill him. In the meantime he'll keep being a devoted husband and giving Dream the best sex he'll ever have.

Maybe eventually Dream will finally finish him off by sucking his life out through his cock. Now seems a pretty good time to try, anyway, and Dream is only too happy to slide to his knees. Hob really is exactly what he deserves.

#🪽anon #the sandman #dreamling #nsft

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kyojurosprettygirl · 1 year

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If you're willing to write for demons, can you do a short Akaza x fem slayer story?? One where the reader keeps chasing him because he refuses to fight her on account of her being a woman? It could be a cute enemies to rivals to lovers, maybe even be a little angsty. I would imagine the y/n's bewilderment that the gosh darn uppermoon 3 wouldn't kill her, or that she's insulted that he refuses to fight.

a/n: OH EM GEE. NONNIE THIS IS PURE GOLD. i feel you've read my mind , and it's a little scary . i've had smth similar in my head for MONTHS and you don't know how excited i am to write this now that i have a baseline!!! XD this has given me much more inspiration for it and surprisingly more leeway . it's kind of hard to keep my stories short... ;;; I HOPE YOU ENJOY REGARDLESS X)))) I WONT LIE, this was super hard to write.

the sun will always rise.

Akaza x Demon Slayer! Fem! reader

for each and every kill a slayer makes, it counts as a single but notable step toward the designated finish line. the finish line where humans will be safe from harm; where a corps dedicated to killing demons wouldn't have the need to exist. it should be a simple thing, you realize. in hindsight, people think you just train, kill, and repeat, until finally your flame dies out and your just another warrior who's sacrificed their life without a name left behind, depending on how much you killed that is.

In reality, though, the corps is much more complex. There are ranks, hidden villages, hidden faces, and most notably demons who were once human too. who were once filled with their own ideologies, their own minds and voices, they were once a full glass rather than an empty shell of what once was. Some, too far gone, others, just unfortunate people who fell into the deep end. It is when you fight with a demon when the complexity really set's in, you hear them, feel them even, and although some are easy to ignore, other's are much harder. and for you, it was always harder, your empathetic nature toying with your mind and heart. it was something you connect well with the young slayer you've come to know as Tanjiro, but you differ in one thing, you find killing the demons much easier than he does. choosing to ignore their pasts to reduce the risk of dying, using the most painful form you know on them. It's how you got into this mess to begin with.

your feet ache, burn even, trying their hardest to keep up with your mind who seems to not have any limits. your fingers are numb, your cheeks burn, and your neck itches from the cloth constantly rubbing on it because of the frantic movement. for the second time tonight, another strong demon made it's way into your line of vision. though its more unfortunate for them than it is for you, you're still human and your body begs to succumb to the comfortable earth below you. the fight was drawn out, too much for your liking, making your patience to run extremely thin. dodging it's attacks left and right, you spoke out to the demon, surprisingly finally hitting a nerve. when the demon had stopped to tell you it's sorrows, how it feels, you called a form and decapitated it without second thought, it having given you an opening. you dropped your blade and keeled to where it's head laid and you gently picked it up, facing it toward you.

"I wish you a comfortable trip to hell." you rasp out. gently placing it's head on the ground as the sun rises, it's body ashing out into nothing. you sigh and look at the unlit part of the forest, noticing piercing eyes in the shadows. in curiosity, you appear infront of the demon in a split second, him barley dodging your blade. his eyes go wide in surprise and he groans in frustration, disappearing into what's left of the dark. he was gone just as fast as you appeared and you decided to ignore it, convincing yourself it was simply your lack of sleep.

but it happened again. and again. and you began to grow frustrated. you began to seek the demon out, and every time you got close, he'd dodge and refuse to fight you. At first, it was one-sided, where you seeked him out, he tried to avoid you, just wanting to complete muzans orders, but the closer you got to tracking him down, you began to interfere greatly with his orders. orders of which when failed to complete, he'd have his blood wrung dry, but still keeping his morale of not intentionally hurting you. you were a woman, it would be wrong. and, it was your job. could he really blame you?

"what the hell." he thinks, as he dodges another one of your hits, you're much faster than what he's used to, so you must be a high ranked slayer. He splays his arm out in an attempt to grab your blade from you when he heals the blade into his skin , but it's futile when you catch onto it and twist, creating another wound where you have enough time it grab it back. as the sun began to creep up, he knew he had to get out of the fight quickly, but he knew you well enough to the point where you wouldn't drop it that easy. you huffed, a slight smile gracing your features, and for a moment he's enamored, your strength is admirable and your beauty shines through the roughness of your hits, but he doesn't stare too long. Instead, he runs from under you when you jump, and runs deep into the dark forest. He hears your scream of frustration as you begin to chase after him, except going the opposite direction. he exhales, you were going to be a problem, he could already feel it. so he opted from then on to hide away from you, knowing you were constantly chasing to kill him.

sooner or later though, for every slayer he was ordered to kill, you'd come in and save double. For every place he managed to hide himself in, you'd cover them head to toe in wisteria poison residue. For every item he'd need to retrieve, you'd try to combat with him, leaving him no choice but to leave and go back empty handed. you can only imagine how angered he was becoming. where he'd usually draw fights out, get to know the powerful slayers, and even give them more chances to kill him, he found himself just wanting to kill them immediately as a means to save himself from your wrath. you were everywhere, wherever he was, you somewhere were always there. he figured it was your crow. It was getting to the point where he was thinking of letting go of his morals, maybe you would be the only exception to his rule. he hated your existence, and was hoping another demon would do the job for him. he realized you were specifically targeting him, and it's what angered him even more. he decided he'd start to put his hand's on you, and use a few words, maybe then you'll get off his ass.

you panted as you finally managed to get him on the ground. he had no way out of this, unless he hurt you, and oh was he tempted. you make a move to cut his head off, a gleam of relief running in your eyes, one he caught onto. he then grabbed your hips and rolled into a position where you laid under him, getting off as fast as he could and attempting to take his leave. you grunt, chasing him and he grabs your wrist before your blade could make contact with him. 'why won't he just fight back.' you think, your eyes widening at how gentle his grasp was. you furrow your brow, jerking your hand off and kicking him, creating a wave of dirt dusting over your vision. "why do you run from me! just get up and fight me!" frustration was evident in your voice, and he laughed at it. god, you sounded like inosuke, you realize. "you just don't give up." he grunts, he looks you in the eyes and you realize he's an uppermoon. "because you are a woman." and at that your face is one of bewilderment. 'this entire time!' you think. you make a move to throw him deeper into the forest but he dodges and runs into the forest. again. you groan and notice the sun was beginning to peak from the horizon. "it's now or never, demon!" you scream, and chase after him. it was a fruitless chase.

he thought it would have led to you giving up, but it instead became a game of cat and mouse. whenever you did encoutner him, you'd push for answers, for him to just hit you back, deem you worhty of his time, but he just rushed out of the match. leaving you at the same time the moon did.

his comment made you assume you thought he was weak, and knowing he was uppermoon three fed into those assumptions. he only ever fought the highest rank slayers, you noted, and he was almost always victorious in them, except for those who made it til sunrise, two to be exact, and they would talk about how he just never gave up, how he seemed eager to elongate their fight. although, that was years ago, and you weren't even sure if he was considered the third uppermoon then. this continued on for months, and fueled your ambition even more. yet as the days passed, you began to falter more and more, your spark dimming by the seconds. you felt weak, and knowing you weren't was different than feeling you weren't, you felt unworthy, and a demon's word's shouldn't hit as deep as Akazas did. he fought Rengoku, a hashira you grew to know well, and from what he had told you, you just grew insecure. you felt guilty, he survived by a single thread, and instead of wanting to avenge him, you just wanted to be recognized by the demon. you selfishly wanted him to ask you to be a demon, to ask for your name and say that you were gifted. you had soon given up on the chase, guilt eating at you faster than the fire you had in you did. but the fire of wanting to kill him remained in you regardless, laying dormant and behind your old wounds.

as you walk mindlessly, you only notice the moon when you walk into a small running river, the coldness easing the ache in your feet. it was a long day, and you'd just completed a mission the master had given you. you sit on a rock and let the water dance around your ankles, giggling when small pebbles tickled you. you sigh and close your eyes and enjoy the night, trying to find the person you once were before encountering the demon. he hadn't left your mind since, and knowing his name had simply made it harder. your brows furrow in subconscious annoyance. you were sick, sick of him unintentionally controlling your life. "fuck off , Akaza" you groan, opening your eyes. and as the saying goes, speak of the devil and he shall appear. you jump and squeal when he suddenly appears next to you, the height difference increasing as he isn't sitting down. "what the Fuck." you say, trying to get your blade, but stopping when he just laughs. it's soft, and you decide to just give up. he notices your lack of reaction, and sits next to you on the ground. at this point you were both at eye level, and you felt embarrassed that you needed a rock to reach his eyes while sitting. he doesn't know what to say, and neither do you, your interactions were only your attempts to kill him, and him trying to avoid your strikes. you break the silence. "why are you here." and he hears your voice differently for the first time. rasps he's gotten used to aren't there, and it lacks loudness. it's silky, and it pricks at his skin. he can admire you now, he thinks, and he savors every second. he decides to respond truthfully. "i want to know your name." you gasp, its almost ghostly sounding, but he catches on. you feel regret fill your mouth the same way saliva does before you vomit, but instead it's for being happy about a demon asking for your name, and the acidity soon to come is you giving it to him. you contemplate it, and you face him, his breath hitches at finally seeing your relaxed face. your crazy wild eyes are now sharp and gleam the same way gold would, your mouth isn't in a tight frown but instead a slight smile, he assumes it's how it naturally falls. you open your mouth to speak, before your brows furrow, an expression he's gotten used to. "you don't need it." you state. your tone is firm and a familiar coldness returns to it. he hums, "but i wan't it" you tilt your neck back, and sigh, 'oh what the hell'. "y/n." your gaze turns to him and he feels his blood rush, he hates how you easily put him in a trance. "i wan't to kill you." you say boldly, and he lets out a laugh before he realizes your serious. "do you even hear yourself?" and he laughs again. you grab your blade and stab it into his heart, a hit that would have killed anybody normal. "loud and clear, uppermoon three." and he gets goosebumps from your voice. Akaza decides to humor you, and grabs your blade to throw it at you, knowing you would easily avoid it. he sees excitement in your face and smiles at it, it wouldn't hurt to humor you, he just needed to be very careful. Although your skeptical you decide if you die fighting him, people would see it as an honorable death, and it would ease you in your final moments.

Akaza felt guilty. he was there for one reason only. to kill you. it was an order from muzan, and as much as he wanted to remain loyal to the man, he couldn't. "you aren't serving me as efficiently as before, I believe it's the Kinoe." he was right. and it was then when he stated he was to kill her, or he'd kill them both himself. He wasn't going to kill you himself, he was going to have a smaller demon do the work for him, but he wanted to know you, wanted to do what he couldn't do before. He was gravitating toward you, and he wasn't given any room to pull way. He thought it'd be okay to let you spend our last moments doing what you wanted. To fight him.

But the fight turned a different way than he thought.

each sentence you spoke, each sassy remark, you'd made him more intrigued. he found himself wanting to know everything about you, and as the night went on, after you cleanly sliced the lower demons dead and continued to speak as if nothing happened, he felt he was ready to give up his loyalties. he was afraid, you spoke for the entire night and he had to decide to kill you and execute his duties as muzans right hand, or, if he'd die with you. as the sun rose, reminding him the same way an hourglass would, he decides to run. again. but this time, with a promise to see you again. you land one more hit and he trips you, catching your arm before you hurt yourself on a jagged rock. he positions you as you catch your balance, and he holds your blade in his hand, his palm bleeding as he digs it deeper. "you could use more work on your form." he chuckles, and you simply snicker. "i haven't done this fighting style for hundreds of years y'know." he hums, and walks into the forest, he needed an excuse, and a way to hide the night he went through from muzan.

deep shit, you think.

this continues again, and again, until eventually, you know more of Akaza than you do your own family. night after night, saying goodbye when the sun rose. he was able to make it seem like you'd been killed, ofcourse not with his own hands, muzan wouldn't believe it, and you never got in the way of his missions.

it felt wrong, but the way he ignited you pushed you to continue the growing relationship. but you knew deep down, eventually it would slip, and muzan would find out, if not him, then your comrades. but to both you, you stopped minding it.

you were killed, in a torturous way infront of akaza, muzan had found out, and it was one of the moments that made it easier for him to not grow his head back when decapitated. he figured if it was you who he was meeting again, then maybe death was the answer.

funfact! he refused to let you walk with him to hell. he made sure you both wen't separate ways, but once he made it far enough, you ran back to him and you both fell to the depths together.

'you don't belong here.'

'i do. if i was a saint, i would have never met you.'

#demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer x reader #kny #kny x reader #kimetsu no yaiba x reader #demon slayer fic #demon slayer headcannons #demon slayer kimetsu no yaiba #akaza #kny akaza #akaza x reader #demon slayer akaza #akaza kimetsu no yaiba #rengoku kyojuro #upper moons #upper moon three #akaza x y/n #akaza x you

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kittlesandbugs · 7 months

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BG3: The start of something Characters: Dark Urge (Nox) & Enver Gortash Warnings: Canon typical hints of Durge violence Word Count: 1212 Summary: After being badgered for almost two months, the Chosen of Bhaal agrees to meet with Gortash and find out just what he's about.

"Well. I'm not sure what I expected, but I won't say I'm not pleasantly surprised."

Your eyebrow creeps up as you glance over your tankard at the tall foppish man. His fine leathers declare he'd be more at home with patriars in the upper ring, but the ease of his stance suggests he's just as at home in a dive like this. You give him a wry smile as you rise to greet him, more than a little gratified to find you're half a head taller. When he takes your hand, he doesn't flinch from your dark gaze, and his grip is firm and strong. But there's something about him that makes your hindbrain itch with Father's displeasure.

Despite the misgivings, you wave the serving girl over to bring him a pint of the same piss you're drinking. She's quick to dart over, flushing at your thanks and coin. You'll have to remember her for later.

"What did you expect?" you drawl as you retake your seat. "A man?"

"Oh, nothing so droll," he says with a negligent wave of his hand as he slides into the booth across from you. "You know, terrifying horned helmet, spiked plate mail, something to strike fear into the hearts of all who stand before them." Then his voice lowers below the din of the tavern for your ears only. "Someone like Sarevok Anchev."

You chuckle and take another swig of your rotgut ale, giving him a toothy grin in response. Mareth was right. He does know who you are, even if he didn't know what you looked like until now. "Grandfather is not well-known for his subtlety."

His eyebrows raise in surprise and no small amount of awe. "He's your grandfather? Truly?"

"Not exactly, but..." A shrug as you shake your head. You suppose technically he'd be something more akin to a half-brother? Uncle? Centuries and impurities muddle your relations. Father's lines aren't exactly known for their clarity or linearity. You respect the specter of the past enough to use his chosen title for you and your dear "little sister." But that's nothing this stranger needs to know.

He huffs little breath of a laugh, dark bottle green eyes crinkling with mirth that ends as soon as he drinks. He winces at the acrid cheap ale. "Gods, next time we meet, I'm choosing the venue."

"What makes you think there's going to be a next time?" you ask, amused by his assumption that this is anything more than a satisfaction of curiosity for you. He's been attempting to get your attention for the better part of two moons, leaving messages with your people. More recently on their corpses, which is what finally prompted you to respond. Killing the congregation is your job. "I don't even know who you are. Or what you want with me, given that you seem to know which master I serve."

His face scrunches up like a fresh worg pup's, offended by the call out of his presumptuous familiarity. His brows knit in consternation, and then he sighs and nods. "Of course, that was quite rude of me." He clears his throat and straightens his shoulders, offering his hand again. "Enver Gortash. Artificer, entrepreneur," his voice drops again to the level of conspiracy, "and Chosen of the Black Hand."

Bane. That explains the strange feeling that's been crawling under your divine flesh. Your lips curl instinctively in distaste matching Father's, your fist curling around the dagger at your hip as the image of his blooded corpse at your feet fills your mind. He'd make such a pretty one, too.

Rather than be offended by your reaction, Gortash give a nervous laugh and raises his hands, entreating and placating. "Please, before you cast your full judgment on me, I did not seek you out to rehash a centuries old feud." He's quieter, serious in his claim to neutrality.

"Then what have you sought me out for?" you growl low, a panther poised to strike.

"Partnership," he says simply, not balking from your baleful gaze. "My master is almost as reviled as yours, staving off any kind of cooperative endeavors with most other sects. I believe that together we can achieve more than either of us could alone."

Your hand stays and you force yourself to relax. To sit. To breathe. To let him finish his proposition.

"As a show of good faith, I have some information you may find most interesting, regarding some relics of your bloody sect." The smugness in his voice has returned, now that you've sat back. He fishes a sheaf of parchment from his pocket and unfolds it before sliding it across the table.

An advertisement for a new exhibit in the House of Wonders. Not a place you generally think about, much less visit, lurking in the under reaches of the as you often do. Your eyes dart across the page, taking in the information. The dark side of Baldur’s Gate. An anniversary of the Bhaalspawn crisis two centuries prior. And on display… torture racks retrieved from a Bhaalist coven led by a human Bhaalspawn, Eler Had. And the bones of a Bhaalspawn kobold, Toop. You’ve heard tell of both of them, from Sarevok and your butler.

“How dare they?” you hiss, your fist clenching around the parchment, hard as the set of your jaw. “We are not some spectacle to be gawked at by cattle.”

“I agree wholeheartedly,” he says with a sympathetic tone, nodding his understanding. “And I would like to assist you in retrieving these artifacts of your sect.”

"And you're just telling me about this? Just offering to help me recover them because…? I have trouble believing this is just about making friends.” Your eyes narrow as you meet his gaze, trying to peel your way through the onion of his confident facade. "What do you hope to gain from this alliance?"

"Well…" He gives you a conspiratorial grin as he leans in close enough for you to smell his sandalwood cologne over the unwashed stink of the tavern. "Let's just say I have some rather lofty political aspirations that would be greatly assisted by the judicious removal of several individuals. And who better to assist me in this endeavor than one so very versed in the art?"

There's a low thrum of approval deep in your bones. Political upheaval is nothing but beneficial to the Lord of Murder. You feel your lips curl in sync with your toes as you imagine the blood sure to follow. The ruling class of this city is as insular and inbred as your own cult, much as the patriars pretend otherwise. They will not take kindly to this usurper wheeling and dealing his way in. You give him a decisive nod, extending your hand to seal the alliance. If the heist you’ll be planning at the House of Wonders ends up being a disaster, you can exact your retribution later.

He grins as he returns your grasp wholeheartedly with both hands. "Now that we're friendly, what may I call you?"

"Nox. Just Nox."

"Quite poetic for a Bhaalist," he says, staring into the abyss of your gaze as his grin widens. "I can tell already. This is going to be the start of something truly great."

#kitbug writes things #bg3 #the dark urge #enver gortash #nox #when two assholes start bonding #so they can do even more terrible things together #anyway i just had thoughts about how they'd meet lol

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eridanidreams · 6 months

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Fiction Friday

This past week has been kind of crazy for me, but I do have something I can post. This one's a quiet moment in a future arc for Adam and Sloane...

Sloane came out of the bathroom, vigorously toweling her hair, as Adam came through the door. His eyes widened a little at the sight of her in her sports bra. “Hey,” she said, managing a reasonably normal tone, determined to ignore any potential awkwardness. “Give me just a minute.” Her hair was dry enough, so she pivoted to toss the towel back into the bathroom.

Behind her, Adam inhaled sharply and growled, “Who did that to you?”

“What?” She looked back at him, confused.

“Your back. Who did that?” He sounded angrier with every word, and Sloane finally realized what he was talking about. There was that one particular scar—

“Easy,” she said calmly, and turned to face him; he was flexing his hands, like he wanted to punch someone. “It’s not what you think.”

“Oh, really? Because I think someone put out about half a dozen cigarettes on you,” he retorted.

“Nope,” she said, trying to stay calm. “Honest. Nothing like that—though now that I think about it, it is my first ‘no shit, there I was’ story.” She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

“Sloane—” His voice was full of exasperation, although his eyes were sad. Had he only now realized what the various scars on her skin meant? Was he re-thinking what he’d said last night? She should have been relieved at the thought; instead, she was disappointed.

“They’re just scars, Adam,” she said, matter-of-factly, pulling her t-shirt over her head. “They didn’t kill me. Obviously.” He’d been staring at the line that ran from the point of her right hip to just under her left breast, the one that was still faintly pink; he jerked his eyes up to hers as she tugged the shirt down. “Chechnya,” she answered his unspoken question. “I’d rather not talk about that one. If you have coffee, though, I’ll tell you about the burn scar.”

He did not, in fact, have coffee in his room, but it was a short walk to a café that did. She wondered if it was a mistake to reveal herself to him; this was a story she’d told to a very select group, all of them fellow medics. She wasn’t sure how Adam would take it, but she’d promised.

Sloane turned the coffee cup around in her hands. As a drink, it was decidedly inferior; as something to do with her hands, it served perfectly. “I was halfway through medic training when the Vilama caldera blew in ’14.” Adam’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “The Army was part of the disaster relief mobilization. They stripped everyone that had a medical MOS and wasn’t on critical duty elsewhere—Walter Reed, BAMC, even us trainees at Bragg—and sent us down there.”

“All I know is what I saw on the news,” he said. “It looked terrible.”

“It was.” The experience was branded into her memory. “The stink—you wouldn’t believe the stink. Sulfur, mostly. Charred pork, from all the burns—it was a year before I could even think about eating bacon again. And rot—burns went septic like you wouldn’t believe. There was a lot of gangrene. We couldn’t keep sterile conditions—the ash got everywhere. If you tried to shower it off, it turned into this gritty slime. We had to change out dust masks three times a day. The color was leached out of everything; even our clothes turned grey. And quiet. Everything for a hundred square miles was dead. No birds. No insects. No trees or plants. It may not have been hell, but you could damn sure see it from there.” She sipped at her coffee; it hadn’t improved. “A few days in, the volcanologists said the magma had diverted unexpectedly and was going to vent in one of the clear zones, so they sent four of us—me, my squadmate, and a couple from Médecins Sans Frontières that knew the area—to evac the nearby village.

“Either the science guys were wrong or we were too slow, ‘cause one minute we were getting the last few stragglers, the next...” She shook her head. “The temperature jumped thirty degrees in just a few seconds. The wind kicked up hard; my skin got all dry and tight—like right before a sunburn. And the ground… you never know how much you expect the ground to be stable and reliable until it isn’t.” She put her cup down with a clink. “So there I was, a month shy of my nineteenth birthday, green as grass, in the middle of a fucking volcanic eruption.”

Adam’s hand wrapped around her wrist and gave it a brief, gently supportive squeeze. Oddly—she didn’t usually invite physical contact—it helped. “What did you do?”

“We ran.” Sloane said simply. “All the smoke and ash pouring into the air, was like the sun went out. We could barely see, barely breathe, even through the masks. And if that had been all, we’d have made it out easy. But these things started landing around us. Lava bombs. Same color as the sky; you couldn’t see them until they hit, and then it was nothing but red.” She took a deep breath. “My squadmate was helping one of the MSF doctors, she was having trouble. Lava bomb caught them both right in the head. Splashed all over her husband—arms, chest, face. I got lucky; just caught a little backsplash.” She shrugged the shoulder in question.

Adam sounded horrified. “That’s from lava?”

“About a thousand degrees Celsius,” she confirmed. “Would have burned to the bone if I hadn’t ripped my shirt off fast.” She rubbed her hand down her face. “Not much more to tell. The doc was still breathing, and we were dead if we stayed, so I grabbed him and hauled ass to where we’d left the jeep. It lasted long enough to get us out of the red zone, and I called for a medevac.” She finished off the coffee just for the welcome hit of caffeine. “He got sent off to one of the big hospitals in Buenos Aires, and I got a hydrogel patch and some spray-on sealant and went back to doing field amputations and burn treatments.” She looked up at Adam. “Lot of firsts there.”

“Like what?” He looked genuinely curious.

Sloane started listing them on her fingers. “First time I thought I was going to die. Hell, first time I really, truly understood that I could die. I’d never been that scared.” It was strange—she usually remembered only the grim determination to escape, to live—but telling Adam the story today, the remembered fear was vivid in her mind. “First decoration for valor; not that I think I deserved it, but someone did.” She sighed. “First time I had to make the choice to save myself or take the risk and save someone else.”

“If the guy’s injuries were that bad,” Adam said in a thoughtful tone, “no one would have blamed you for just getting yourself out.” She could see the warmth of a not-quite-smile in his eyes. “Probably why someone thought you deserved the medal.”

“I would have blamed me,” she said with a sigh. “I couldn’t blame myself for getting the others out, but I knew I could get the doc out as long as we didn’t get hit again.” She spread both hands open. “And that’s it. I don’t tell that story often.” She smiled, a little wryly. “Most ‘no shit there I was’ stories end in ‘and that’s how my badassery saved the day’. This is more ‘there but for the grace of God go I’.”

“So why tell me?” He tilted his head in inquiry.

“You asked.”

#adam jensen #fanfic #deus ex mankind divided #deus ex #eridani writes #sloane delacourt #odysseus gambit #fiction friday #the coemancer crew

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darkpoisonouslove · 29 days

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Fallen Love Chapter 3

Chapter summary: Griffin wakes up alone. She sets out to bring Valtor back. A new chapter? Already? I'm as surprised as you! Today on the menu we have: panic attacks, disappearing acts, a scavenger hunt and a game of chicken, the occasional pet name and shooting to kill (...a man)*. Complete with LOTS of dialogue - to compensate for last chapter (and the first half of this one). Oh, and Griffin gets to blow something up - as a treat. Valtor will get treats when he learns to shut up. :) *metaphorically speaking Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 Read on AO3 | FFN

The lightness behind her eyelids only seemed to replicate that in her entire body. She was floating, weightless, the sheets and mattress barely palpable against her skin.

She rolled over in search of Valtor. To bring their chests together so that his breathing would move her, too. To bridge the space between them and find herself in his reach, the weight of his arm on top of her centering her into her body again. She didn't mind the reminder that she wasn't omnipresent but instead confined to her physical form that his presence against her would be.

The cold lying in bed with her instantly seared her nerves.

---

Familiar warmth enveloped her like gentle morning sunlight caressing her eyelids.

Sleep had been elusive, her mind always alert, mistrustful of her surroundings, of the pulse of heat in every surface she touched. It drove tears from her eyes like hands around her neck choking her until she failed to recognize its telltale wrongness.

She must have finally succumbed to exhaustion after countless nights of staring at the ceiling. The grief beating in her chest was still a fresh, bleeding wound. The ooze from it stuck to her fingers whenever she reached for her magic or hair.

Words lodged painfully in her throat when she pushed to swallow them back down for the sake of another peaceful moment she could spend basking in the joy bursting in her chest. Her fingers greedily soaked up the warm touch interlaced with them.

Never one to be sated, she opened her eyes in search of glacial blue ones.

The intensity of Faragonda's storm-like gaze was cutting.

The garbled noise that slipped from her lips kept ringing in her ears; it was impossible to convince herself that it didn't resemble a legitimate word when, between her teeth, it tasted just like the name burning on her lips.

"I didn't mean to startle you," Faragonda's voice was a rope plunging to the depths of the panic drowning her.

All she had to do was reach for it and the fairy would pull her out.

Griffin had to stifle the hysterical laughter carving through her chest. It was already petrifying, bloodcurdling, just as it was, echoing on the inside.

The smile on Faragonda's face was only marginally more bearable – as if she were welcoming the sun after a century-long winter when Griffin's touch could set her life aflame.

"How do you feel?" Faragonda settled for rubbing the back of Griffin's hand with her own rather than pressing a palm to her forehead, placated by Griffin's complacency. "Did you get some rest? Would you like a touch of magic to help revitalize you?"

Griffin cringed at the thought that Faragonda might have noticed her avoidance of using her own magic, or that she might have misinterpreted it.

She hurried to cover it up, "I was just thinking about looking all fresh and rested in my little solitary cell. Or even better – to be paraded out in front of your allies"–the venom she imbued in the word didn't faze Faragonda in the slightest–"for yet another very public and humiliating execution of whatever dignity I have left."

That finally landed a punch.

Faragonda had the decency to let go of her hand and look uncomfortable. "This is a tense situation for everyone but with time they'll get used to it."

They could get in line for feeling out of place. At least they were in their own home. Both of Griffin's were a smoking pile of ashes – by her own hand.

"I wouldn't care what they think of me if that didn't dictate how they treat me. They can think me a vile monster or a senseless whore."

Faragonda flinched.

Griffin pretended not to see, pretended it hadn't been her aim to jolt the fairy. "It makes no difference to me so long as they listen to what I have to say."

She was wasted on countless arguments with Marion and Oritel that only ever went one way. She was losing her mind pacing the same trail through the palace only to be met with their disregard again. She was their greatest asset. They had to put her on the battlefield, at the very least give her access to it on paper and listen to all her intimate knowledge of the enemy they had no hope of defeating. It was unthinkable that anyone could forget how closely she knew Valtor, that they could doubt it still after they had seen her perfectly match his movements in battle without even looking in his direction.

"I've asked them to-"

"You shouldn't have to!" Griffin's teeth clattered together when she redirected in the last moment to avoid biting off Faragonda's head. "You'd think their perception of me would only lend credibility to my inside information but they're ready to tear my throat out because they don't like what they hear."

Faragonda's fingers fidgeted in the sheets, "You're not exactly... encouraging a change in their attitude."

Griffin shot up.

"This wasn't a social call, Faragonda! I'm not here to make friends." The mere word tasted vile on her tongue, like poison.

She wanted them afraid of her, wanted them to see only the woman that she had been – powerful and cunning enough to be Valtor's partner. Not the wreck, who could barely get out of bed unless she was feeding on spite, on her own refusal to die, rather than on the hearty meals magically delivered to her room. She'd lived too long like that to go back to it.

She couldn't go back.

Faragonda's eyes glimmered with unshed tears, her voice just as wet with them, "This was the only safe place for you."

"We both know that's not true." The words were tight in her throat, in her chest. "Your mother would have been happy to take me in, would have secured my protection, readily used all my information."

And she could have contacted her if she'd wanted both Valtor and the Company destroyed. It was Faragonda's own fault if she couldn't reason that far.

"You dragged me here to keep an eye on me."

"I didn't-"

Griffin slapped away the hand reaching for her. "You were thinking about what you wanted. Look at you! You're sitting here like a kicked puppy that the owner abandoned at the curb."

Faragonda looked away at that, vacated the chair at Griffin's bedside but only walked further into the room, trapping herself in there, trapping them.

"I'm not the same person from your past!" If she'd learned anything from Valtor, it was how to pick the sharpest words, twist the knife in to spill the most blood and cut deep into the marrow. "How could I be after what you did? Or more accurately, what you didn't do."

Faragonda stiffened. Even with her back turned, her aura was like a concrete wall.

Griffin's skin crawled. Her tongue itched with prayers that her mother would forgive her for weaponizing her death against Faragonda of all people – as if she weren't grieving just as much, as if she hadn't lost someone just as integral to her life.

It was the only way.

It was for Faragonda's own good.

"You're right," her friend's small voice made her doubt herself, who she'd become.

If Faragonda was still the girl for whose sake she'd burn the world, how could she do anything other than let her magic spark and start the fire? How could she look through the flames for someone else's face? How could she feel anything but relief at not finding him anywhere when his very proximity would turn her own fire on her, on Faragonda, and make her the culprit of her own loss again?

"We're both different," Faragonda turned to look at her, tried to meet her halfway as always. "I just don't know how to get used to it."

"I'm sure Hagen won't mind helping you figure that out," Griffin scoffed.

She bit her tongue as soon as the words left her mouth. The bitterness would only be like honey to Faragonda, would draw her in with the implication that she was jealous, that she'd missed her.

Instead, something raw flickered over Faragonda's face. The nature of her restraint shifted–like it wasn't for Griffin's sake anymore–to make the chasm between them painful. As if Griffin had already rolled down to the bottom, scraping and cutting herself on every sharp edge and breaking her bones on the hard stone.

"Of course," Faragonda's voice was quiet to make her lean in just to hear – a trick she'd learned from her mother for delivering a fatal blow. "Anyone but you."

She paused.

Waited for a beat.

Then another one.

When the silence remained unbroken, Faragonda's magic swallowed her to leave Griffin sticking out like a sore thumb amidst the room.

She'd love to blame the way the air grew much colder against her skin on the two majesties torturing her but they wouldn't have that much backbone.

She was starting to think that wasn't such a bad thing.

---

Griffin bolted up.

The sheets fell away from her body, revealing it to the stifling morning air. Sun rays magnified by layers upon layers of glass, every speck of dust sticking to her, even the touch of her own fingers to her body, to each other – they were all like needles in her skin. The plush white carpet tickling her soles was a live wire hooked directly to her nerves.

A sharp pang of hunger sliced through all of that, a weakness in her knees, as if she'd collapse on the floor. With her bones in a heap, knees poking through her ribcage and spine – through her skull, maybe the rising nausea would subside, wouldn't have to splash acid all over her insides just to chase away the emptiness nestled there.

Her magic fired through her body like an instant poison breaking down her cells to hurl them through space in every direction. Upon collision Valtor's presence would pull them back together. The shock wave would pulverize their surroundings as if her need had taken physical form in a bid to match the heat of his being, in a bid to leave nothing that could steal his gaze away from her.

The self-satisfaction that'd waft off him with her clutching his arm like a lifeline was already cloaking her, choking her. He could very well be waiting for her behind the first corner, just far enough for her desperation to slam her into him.

She motioned her magic to map out her surroundings instead and ground her amidst them.

Valtor had deflected her question about their location more out of vanity, to revel in the mindlessness to which he'd driven her. He'd brought her here for a purpose. He wanted her to know – sooner or later. Sooner, apparently, or he would have stayed to continue unraveling her grip on reality.

The room around her was a stunning mosaic of black and green granite – a forest canopy filling the dark void of space, breathing life into the vacuum. Only the windows and cornices, shaped like strings of icicles, were made of dyamond. The reinforced with magic and harder than diamond glass made up the rest of the building almost exclusively but the last floor relied on enchanted stone both for privacy and protection.

The windows were also layered with spells capturing every ray of sunlight and keeping all the warmth inside even when they were open. From her vantage point Griffin could see light dancing over the thin crust of ice covering the famed Diaphanous Lake outside, making it impossible to see anything under the surface. The ridges of the surrounding mountains were streaked with white already to explain all the furs and wool blankets draped over the walls and floor, the chairs and armrests furnished with thick covers. Dyamond was the only planet that had a forewarning of the early winter advancing through the whole solar system, the curses unleashed too powerful to be stopped by mere light-years of space.

Flames started in the fireplace as if by her thought, confirming the nagging realization in the pit of her stomach.

Valtor was toying with her, had been all along – with all of them. He was probably watching her right now, never one to miss reaping the fruits of his labor.

Griffin didn't bother opening the closet doors inlaid with stained glass in intricate patterns. He'd never been in the habit of leaving her clothes to replace the ones he tore off her form until they were nothing more than useless scraps of fabric. Sometimes not even that much survived of her outfits.

Her magic spilled over her body conjuring a fabric that was so dark it could easily be mistaken for black. The blue only revealed itself when light hit the brocade woven in it as if it'd been dipped in stardust. The laces of her cleavage were looped around the buttons she'd stripped off Valtor's shirt the previous night. The lacing in the back was almost too rigid to allow motion – giving her no choice but to remain upright. String-like, the ends of the silver hem of her gloves threaded through slits in her sleeves like starlight spilling from the insides of her wrists.

She liked to remove every tangle from her hair herself, spending up to an hour in a nearly meditative state as the brush would quietly move through her tresses. That was when her hands weren't clammy and shaking, lacking any semblance of dexterity. Now magic was her only viable option for securing her hair into her typical braid to keep it out of her way.

She'd bet on practicality for years but combat boots simply didn't make sense without the threat of war hanging over her head. They would only take her back to the battlefield. Returning to heels was the only natural course of action. In a few days they would no longer make her head spin from just the couple inches they added to her height.

A quick spell confirmed the absence of movements or sounds outside the door.

She slipped into the empty hallway, her steps and breaths absorbed by the thick carpeting and ostentatious tapestries and curtains by the windows. She didn't have the time or inclination to spare them more than a glance as she made her way down the stairs.

She wasn't economical with her magic, using more than strictly necessary to create diversions for the few guards she sensed in her way. The air around her rippled wildly with every burst of power from her, charged as if with electricity, prickling against her skin and heating up as if it'd catch fire. Every spell she cast was a beacon giving away her position. It would be no trouble at all for Valtor to find her.

He'd located her the previous day when the atmosphere around them had been thick and loaded with deadly curses. If he'd not intercepted her yet, then he was either making a fool of her in front of the queen again or he was off-planet, using the chaos that was partially his fault to reshape the dimension to his liking.

It was no matter. He'd run along soon enough.

Griffin made a turn to find herself staring at a vaguely familiar portrait of Dyamond's previous queen hanging on the glass wall. There weren't any guards in sight to differ from last time when a pair had been posted at every three steps ensuring no one strayed from the procession. The transparent doors of the ballroom had closed behind her like a trap springing.

Being able to see everything occurring in the hallways outside, looking at a column or wall and having someone stare at her from the other side of it had been more unnerving than the threat of Lysslis poking around in her head. Dozens if not hundreds of wolves had sunk their teeth into her every word, every part of her to see if anything would tear, ready to call her a liar just because she bled the same as them. And that had been only the beginning of the evening program.

Griffin closed her eyes and forced an exhale from her lungs to kick the past out of there before it could take over her body, start breathing with the life force it was sucking out of her. All she had to do was feel for a magical essence.

In this palace not every surface was imbued with the ancient power that had created the whole universe. It made locating a magical device infinitely easier.

A potent pull compelled her towards massive glass doors overlooking hundreds–thousands–of books appearing to be floating on their dyamond shelves. With Valtor's help the queen's restoration program had been more than successful. Under the guise of retrieving Dyamond's cultural and magical heritage, she'd easily expanded her collection of tomes further than any of her predecessors could have dreamed.

Griffin pressed her palm against the door, the call of the knowledge that was at her fingertips too great to resist. Any self-respecting thief would be tempted by the unlimited arsenal of spells and incantations, potion recipes and coded secrets until they forgot themselves and any other objective they might have had.

She swore she'd be back first chance she got and hurried away.

A different magical current swirled around her once she put some distance between her and the library.

More in the style of the royal apartments, massive doors of white and purple granite guarded the ceremonial chamber. Recently renovated for the naming ceremony of Crown Princess Icy, the masonry depicted a dark purple sky raining sapphires that bloomed into a sea of flowers as soon as they touched the snow-swaddled ground. In the middle of it, two white swans, one on every gate, faced each other, bearing crowns of aquamarine drops. Silver streaked their plumage and their wings ended in sharpened white zircon.

All the gemstones decorating the doors focused the constant energy stream from the supposed centerpiece of the room. Purposely kept a nebulous concept in the eyes of the dimension, the Ice Spring remained shrouded in power and mystery, and thus the object of all manner of wild rumors and speculation.

For Griffin there was nothing of interest behind those doors. If the spring were a weapon or a defense measure, the royal family wouldn't have flaunted its existence for generations.

It was more bait. Just like the library and the vault shuddering with ancient and forbidden power.

Still, Griffin had to concede to the strategy's effectiveness. Standing in front of the vault gates made even her heart pound in her ears with awe and excitement. She, who had seen the native magic of every world, had used the rarest spells that had ever been created by the most knowledgeable and powerful beings, couldn't help herself at the buzz echoing through her bones and moving her limbs.

These gates were forged from a sturdy metal alloy, all of its components tailored to the protective spells guarding the entrance. Even that would have failed if the doors hadn't been inlaid with pieces of bone–human and animal alike from the looks of it–to contain the most destructive of the magic's effects.

Griffin had to remind herself the kind of prize she was after before she could give into curiosity and explore. The artifacts in that vault would have to impress even her if their presence was loud and palpable behind all the enchantments keeping them safe.

Flexing her fingers, she tried to draw the thrill of adrenaline deeper into her body, to her core where she could save it and come back to it when she needed the boost.

She headed into the opposite direction, listening for a whisper of magic that was out of tune with the booming cacophony she'd left behind.

The hallway she'd chosen ended abruptly in front of another dyamond door. Here, like in the other corners of the palace that weren't meant for prying eyes, the walls were composed differently. The glass was thicker and refracted the light hitting it as if it were the precious stone it was named after. It was impossible to see what was behind it but no ordinary lock was a match for her abilities.

Used as a storage room, the space was bursting with old paintings and furniture that was out of style but was too high-grade to throw out. Easily amounting to a fortune or two, none of the objects in here could be the source of the trail she'd followed. She was missing something.

Upon closer inspection, the room's proportions didn't make sense. The paintings in the back end were squished together as if the wall was pushing against them and the ceiling above had a slight curvature to it, the wooden frames braced against open air while the ones against the other walls went all the way up to the ceiling line. The pressure of a spell that was bursting at the seams threatened to pop the room like a cheap balloon.

Griffin conjured a knife. The incantation to animate it was tediously lengthy but allowed her to keep a safe distance while cutting through the glamor. Avoiding the spots where the spell was already distorting was crucial to keep from triggering an explosion.

She had to admit the security measures surpassed her expectations. Suspecting this alliance between Valtor and the queen wasn't a fragile, newly-established one of convenience didn't make it any easier to swallow the confirmation. He had laid out a trap for her and the worst thing wasn't that she'd fallen in it but rather that she hadn't been alone in her failure, that along with herself she'd dragged down-

The paintings crashed back into the wall despite the residue of the spell that whipped her in the face like a particularly violent gust of wind. Frames cracked, pieces of wood breaking off and raining on the floor, canvases folding over or straight up tearing – all to reveal another door.

The air sizzled, all the vulnerable wood and fabrics around slowly blackening and starting to shrivel as if licked by flames. Sweat beaded Griffin's forehead, ran down her back like a shiver. Her own skin turned uncomfortable, clammy and parched at the same time, burning and stretched taut but still wriggling with every tiny gasp as if it were an entity of its own. Her lips cracked despite the sleeve pressed against them and her nose. She had to turn away just to protect her watering eyes.

The growl that escaped her didn't sound like her own voice. Frustration burst through her body, unfocused and white-hot, overwhelming even the grievous heat from outside.

She marched out of the room, the two closest dyamond doors tearing off their hinges with her momentum. She turned them sideways and barricaded the hallway. They wouldn't hold but she only needed them to buy her a second to throw up her own shield.

It took her longer than she would've liked to build a sufficient charge in her palm. The battle with her mother's murderers had taken its toll on her just as much as the emotional roller coaster that had preceded it.

Her jaw clenched painfully at the thought. Her outrage simmered harder than the heat that had already begun devouring the hallway as well. She poured all of it in her own spell before launching it directly at the enchanted door.

She dropped to the floor and curled in a ball. The smaller her shield was, the stronger she could make it without wasting power. Mistakes were not an option against Valtor's spellwork.

Everything quaked. Crystal chandeliers rattled in shrill disharmony like knives in her brain. Her ears were ringing from the shock wave. The racket of furniture hitting the floor was like fists pounding at her skull.

Her heart loosened in her chest, drumming painfully against her ribcage. Her senses sharpened as the ground shook underneath her like it were about to break up into pieces and open the gateway to a pit of volcanic lava. Everything came into focus as if time was stretching around her to accommodate her, to welcome her as she sifted through every detail coming her way, dived eagerly into that flood.

She could see the cinders swirling in the air, carried by a cold breeze, could hear glass shards hitting the floor. A curtain rod crashed down. The purple drapery withered in the heat along with the carpet. Only the patch covered by her shield didn't burn.

Dyamond chunks and the occasional metal shim or mangled spring bombarded her mercilessly. Her barrier hissed every time they drummed against it and flung them back, sometimes repeatedly when some of them ricocheted off the walls.

She forced herself to wait a full minute once things appeared to settle before letting up on her shield. A quick look at her handiwork sated the bloodthirstiness churning in her belly, for now.

Digging her nails into the satisfaction rushing through her veins, Griffin took to the air. Laughter bubbled in her at the sight of the rubble lying harmlessly beneath her on the soot-covered floor.

Amidst raining ashes and smoke the grotesque crater she'd blown in the back wall of the storage room was another flux of strength through her body. A wave of her hand cleared the black, toxic plumes to let her see her prize.

The blast had pulverized the hidden alcove, only jagged edges protruding from the floor left of the dyamond. Behind that the outer wall of the palace was also damaged, hollowed out nearly all the way, daylight streaming in through the gaps and cracks in the stone. Yet, in the midst of the destruction, on an untouched pedestal lay-

Griffin lurched back as if she'd cut herself on the crystals.

Swerving abruptly mid-air, she stirred up a small vortex of ashes. Her velocity swept more of them in the air, spraying them to her sides as she rushed back into the hallway.

She forced herself to land, conserve her magic.

She'd underestimated Valtor's involvement with the security system, and his pettiness if no one had shown up to stop her yet.

Then again, she hadn't accomplished anything necessitating an urgent response. The smoking hole in the palace wall could be fixed at any time and her strategy of following the magical trails of the building had proven futile.

She needed a fresh perspective.

In the centuries since The Point of Salvation had been devised, various conjectures had been made about its location but not one based on any tangible even if flimsy evidence. If her discoveries were anything to go by, Griffin could rule out the last floor of the palace. It was closest to the royal apartments but also the first place any invaders would look for an escaped monarch and their failsafe. No, it would be at the last possible place one could expect, just like the crystal amplifier.

To think that had been a few hallways away from the ballroom the whole time. She would grind her teeth to fine dust if she didn't watch herself.

She had assumed it'd be kept near the war room on the second floor or the armory – for easy defense. While it wasn't The Point of Salvation, its creation had been not just a key moment in Dyamond's history, but also the start of another era of magic. Treating it like a shameful failure to be buried in the back of your closet–or storage room in this case–had certainly deceived others too, not just her.

To have any use for The Point of Salvation, Raina and her children would need to secure themselves safe passage to it first. Relying on the regular hallways that would be swarming with enemies during a vicious raid on the palace wasn't just stupid but suicidal. A secret emergency route was the logical conclusion.

Testing the walls for hidden passageways was useless. She'd have to start all the way back at the royal apartments and follow the whole system of corridors to her target. It'd be a waste, especially since the passageways were most probably cloaked and impossible to detect either via magic or technology. With the crystal amplifier bombarding her with the charge it was sapping away from the wake of the explosion, she wouldn't be able to sense the Dragon Fire itself if Valtor stood right beside her anyway.

If her theory was correct, then the royals could move around the palace freely, get to any part of it undisturbed. The last place anyone would expect them to try to escape to would be the most remote point of the building – the basement. It was perfect for their last line of defense.

Griffin headed to the stairway she'd passed on her way here.

Judging by the pitch-black darkness that accosted her as soon as she rounded the first corner down, the basement was empty. She had to conjure her phone from her pocket dimension to light her way.

The first trace of magic in the air raised her skin into goosebumps like the cold draft carrying from every stone hadn't managed. A device that generations of royalty had fretted over to such extremes was bound to emit a constant charge even when not in use but this was too obvious.

The magic curling around her was invasive. The air hummed with it and it burrowed into her skin as if to reach its clawed fingers underneath and hollow her out. It tugged on her own energy to pry it lose and start siphoning it away. No one could ignore such a threat to their own integrity even if they wanted to.

She turned right at the bottom of the stairs, towards the source.

Struck as if by a lightning bolt, she stopped dead in her tracks.

She couldn't take another step. Her arm shook violently, making the flashlight rove the walls, cast shadows that writhed over them like demons welcoming her. They reached for her to drag her into one of the cells where the enchantments would suffocate the rest of her powers.

Griffin stumbled back, dropped her phone. The returning darkness choked her to strangle the remaining air out of her as memories kicked her in the ribs.

Her magic hadn't been locked away, instead flooding in her hands, rushing in harrowing waves. When she'd refused to release it, it'd gathered in her fingertips, stinging hot and electrifying. Pushing on the underside of her nails, it'd twinged, burned, like someone trying to pluck them off.

Tears had streamed down her face but she hadn't reached to wipe them away. Any movement could have been catastrophic, the agonizing tickle in her nerves already unbearable.

Stopping her leg from bouncing had required inhuman strength. Her teeth had been frantically picking apart the tender inside of her cheek that'd already been a pulpy, chewed mess. Her mouth had reeked of copper; the trickle of blood over her tongue and down her throat had choked her, forced her to hold in coughing fits that'd wracked her whole body.

The guards outside her dyamond prison had stared at her without blinking as if they could have burned holes into her with their eyes alone.

She'd stared back at them. At them and not the automated laser gun pointed at her, poised to strike at the first wisp of magic she summoned.

Raina–of all people–would have executed her and faced no repercussio...

Yes, she would have.

Griffin dug her teeth and nails in the thought, clung to it like it was driftwood holding her head above water.

In hindsight, the trap had been obvious. Catching wind of one of the Coven's operations wasn't unheard of in and of itself but the alleged target should have given her pause. Valtor and the Ancestral Witches would have never had use for the crystal amplifier, their power already exceeding most everyone else's. The descendants had only ever been pawns to be used and discarded as it served their masters. And if that hadn't made the bait obvious, the personal invitation from Raina to her younger daughter's birthday celebration should have given her pause.

The lack of activity from the Coven in the preceding weeks had kept her on her toes, a gnawing dread in the pit of her stomach. The calm before the storm had been loaded with tension so palpable and heavy that it'd slowed down her magic, her mind, made them sluggish and unreliable. Standing against Valtor and looking him in the eyes would have been a trigger pulled, all uncertainty draining from her stiff limbs and leaving only the comforting familiarity between them.

He hadn't granted her that much. Instead of claiming his victory, he'd left her in her transparent cell, singled out for others to gawk at her more if they hadn't had their fill already. With her magic going haywire, every look cast her way like daggers cutting into her, she'd lost sight of the truth.

She'd been untouchable.

Valtor would have decimated the whole palace in the fraction of a second it would have taken that laser gun to fire. He would have only preserved Raina's life and her daughters' just so that he could kill them–the girls first–for the crime of daring to wish harm upon her, let alone making her fear for her life.

If she feared someone, it had to be him. Only him.

The paralysis released its hold on her. Her chest expanded; her shoulders sagged with relief.

Perhaps she was foolish for it but she'd never feared him.

She called the phone back into her hand. Turning away from the dungeon, she left all the loathsome memories it'd unearthed to rot in there.

Her hand wobbled without her permission upon casting light on the rest of the corridor.

Her confidence quickly seeped away as an even dozen of doors greeted her. And those were just the ones she could see. It was a given that there were several times as many down the six additional hallways that branched out from the one she was in. She could easily be standing in a maze of rooms that would take far too long to check one by one.

She would have avoided all this trouble if she'd just threatened the queen from the beginning. It would have forced Valtor to return from whatever little excursion he could have gone on. The guard would hardly be able to contain her without any assistance from him and she assumed he'd want to keep his access to the Dyamond palace if nothing else.

Raina herself was useless to him, even in her quality of being queen. She didn't add anything to his arsenal – neither political prowess and connections, nor particular intellect. Following her uncle's abdication in favor of her mother, her startling, unprecedented lack of magical ability had been a cultural shock to her people, threatening to upend the belief upon which their entire monarchy was founded – that they could make a proper ruler out of anyone. All eyes were on the young crown princess now, waiting hungrily for any sign that she wouldn't turn out just like her mother.

Another reason why Griffin had overlooked the trap that'd been set for her – she'd deemed it wasteful even for Valtor to enter such an unfavorable alliance just to spite her. The easiest way to gain all the influence and access to magic he'd want would have been to put his own heir on any throne he wished, inserted himself in any court across the dimension.

She didn't need to raise the topic to know the deep aversion with which he'd meet it. Such a permanent, personal connection to any royal bloodline would be nothing but a liability, leverage to be used against him whether by enemies or even the child's own relatives and court. It was too messy for him and his preference to keep his options open even if he rarely had cause to turn on his allies, his sharp mind letting him spin any situation to his benefit.

If it were someone else's weakness, however, he wouldn't hesitate to exploit it.

Sapphire's father and his wife had been standing next to Raina for the entirety of the celebration, proudly holding the baby. The leaders of certain planets had found the circumstances of the princess' birth scandalous but the people of Dyamond had been overjoyed – just as much as the couple of nobles. Being part of Raina's own court, they wouldn't be any use to Valtor – if he'd noticed them at all.

Things could look very differently where Icy's father was concerned. Raina had refused to divulge his identity even to her own advisors per his wish to remain anonymous. It was possible that she weren't the point of the alliance at all. It didn't make her disposable, however, if she were a means to an end.

Were she wrong and Valtor was still in the palace, tracking down Raina would likely end up leading her directly to him. The last thing she needed was for him to overpower her in front of the queen. She hated to admit it but it would be embarrassingly easy for him to do it after she'd thrown most of her magic on a wild goose chase.

No, she had to make him come to her this time.

Griffin's eyes widened; the breath got stuck in her throat. She spun around on her heel to look at the dungeon again.

She had assumed Raina had held her imprisoned in a see-through cage to let others witness her humiliation. She hadn't had the presence of mind to stop and ask herself why she wasn't the only one that had been caught in the act but had never seen the inside of the cells in the dungeon.

Every time an intruder was captured roaming through the palace, they were hauled away with the excuse that it was safer that way. The truth to it had kept her from asking another logical question – why did the palace have a functioning dungeon if it was never in use? The space could be converted into a more secure vault or at least be used for storage purposes but instead, the Dyamond monarchs had kept wasting the building's energy on enchantments canceling out magic.

Griffin marched down the path between the cells. Her own powers grew fainter, dissipating like mist on her skin but a steady stream was still running in her core like an underground river. Concentrating enough energy in a powerful charge would still allow her to cast spells. It was the confirmation she was looking for.

Running her hand over the bars of several cells proved they were all calibrated to stunt magic but not sever it completely. That served just as well for masking the active power source of the device as it did as a back door in case the royals ever ended up thrown in their own dungeon. There was no way to tell which cell their captors would choose for them so all had to be connected to the secret passageways.

Griffin flung the closest door open, another rush of energy making her dizzy. Or maybe that was just the speed at which she was moving.

The side walls would lead to the neighboring cells so Griffin made her way straight to the one across from her. Any hidden passageway would be locked behind it.

The door didn't slam shut after her as soon as she was through. If Raina wasn't alarmed yet, she had to take another look at the crater in her palace walls. It was unlikely she would have disclosed any information about her failsafe to Valtor either, at least not of her own volition. She was confident in her own security measures and Griffin couldn't wait to make her regret it.

Blood magic was her best guess. A lock defended with it couldn't be forced open with stolen blood or via a coerced hostage. It had to be done out of one's own volition or through a complex, time- and energy-consuming system of spells that corroded the integrity of any magic they came in contact with.

While she wasn't closely familiar with The Point of Salvation, she could deduce it would require maintenance, or at least a periodic check to confirm it was operational. With how paranoid the queen had been about another attempt on her kingdom's sovereign status, she had certainly inspected her insurance policy for her and her daughters' survival before inviting the enemy to her celebration. Probably even more recently before the massive destruction that was about to occur on her neighboring planet.

A person well-versed in magic would know how to remove their blood traces from a once opened lock but Raina was not a magic user. Indeed, when Griffin brought her hand next to the wall, careful to keep a distance between them, and scanned it, Raina's essence was still in there like a fingerprint left on a doorknob. All she had to do was use it like a glove to hide her own essence and deceive the spell.

Quiet fizzling filled the cell as the stones in front of her vanished to leave her staring at a dark niche hidden behind it. Stepping inside triggered another mechanism that restored the wall to its previous state before the niche opened into a claustrophobic antechamber.

Another lock requiring blood didn't slow her down much.

The vanishing granite revealed a relatively larger circular chamber. The soft glow that lit the room had no visible source. It appeared to stream through the stone itself and finally allowed her to return her phone back to her pocket dimension.

The device located in the middle of the otherwise empty chamber was nothing like she'd expected it to be. It would be comical if not for how baffling the design was.

It appeared as nothing more than a dyamond tube with a... She had to stifle a hysterical laughter at the sight of the sliding door. Having been hosted by nobility and royalty all across the dimension, she'd seen infinitely more elaborate shower stalls.

The magical current that the whole charade with the dungeon was supposed to mask was undeniably stronger in here. Palpitations moved the floor under her feet like she was standing on the back of a living, breathing beast. It was probably the source of the light as well.

A more thorough look at the composition of the device revealed the reason for its simplicity. Its power source was dug into the ground along with all the rest of its vital components. A last, desperate and rather useless effort at protecting its integrity. If any enemy made it this far, The Point of Salvation's destruction was ensured.

Still, Griffin carefully examined it for any more security measures only to come up empty-handed. It was possible the thought of a panicked, hasty child reaching their ticket to freedom and being hindered by the very system set in place to protect them had overpowered even the paranoia of the earliest generations of Dyamond royalty.

The inside of the tube was just as simplistic as the outside. Apart from the amethyst crystals lining the parts of it that didn't move, there were no controls. It powered up as soon as Griffin stepped inside and was meant for completely intuitive use, designed for the worst case scenario – having to be operable by the youngest of children.

It would be absurd then to think that Griffin wouldn't figure out how to use it.

If Valtor hadn't shown up yet, there was no point stalling. It had become tiresomely typical of him not to take her seriously and force her hand into something they'd both rather avoid.

She closed the door behind her, the airtight space instantly setting off her nerves. She could try to force a rhythm to her breathing, focus her mind on her goal, but it'd be no use. Another million years wouldn't make this next part easier.

Anticipation coiled inside and around her, familiar and dreaded. It'd been her companion for years, a constant presence in the back of her mind that squeezed around her at the very possibility of Valtor's face appearing to her. She'd been waiting for the moment when she'd fail and crawl back to him just to avoid the feeling anymore, to replace it with the wild rush of having him so near she could always reach her hand out and touch him. Then the fear that everyone else that'd grown dear to her would look at her with hatred wouldn't have mattered.

She'd been such a fool. There was nothing she wouldn't give to see them hate her, nothing she wouldn't give to see them alive.

She closed her eyes and let the image of Sylvia form in her mind. She couldn't be sure where to look for her. Her mansion would be the most logical place but she had no guarantee someone as active on the political scene as Valtor was would be home. She had to focus on the woman herself and let the amethyst crystals boost the psychic waves that were supposed to guide the rest of the process.

The walls disappeared around her, the air moving freely, spinning around her body and yet still stale on her skin. There was nothing solid under her feet; she was floating in the air despite the power surges of the device still rippling under her soles.

Her nails tried to dig into her palms through her gloves. The grayish void she found was surrounding her when she opened her eyes didn't help.

Something had gone wrong.

Her palm slapped against the sliding door of the tube despite all the empty space surrounding her. The glass slid open and the gray in front of her eyes was replaced with the familiar inside of the device and the stone chamber around it.

In all of Raina's paranoia, she couldn't have missed to make sure her last line of defense worked properly. She would have tested it, maintained it, done everything necessary to keep it operational at all times. The mistake must have been hers.

Griffin closed the door again and visualized Sylvia's face carefully behind her eyelids, imagined her voice – never loud but perfectly authoritative. She hated to admit it but Sylvia had intimidated her well into her teenage years. She'd been the epitome of everything Griffin had wanted to be – powerful, respected, feared even, and perfectly unmoved by the greatest powers of the dimension; she was one of them and more often the one that everyone else had to accommodate. Yet, she'd still hated her – not because of Sylvia's treatment of her, but because of her treatment of-

The light behind her eyelids shifted dramatically. Sunbeams hit her in the face, making her raise a hand to protect her eyes.

Her heart leaped in her throat when she opened them to find Sylvia leaning against an ornate, polished desk in a spacious room she didn't recognize. She looked disturbingly smaller than usual, her curly hair loose down her back and unbrushed. It was when she turned around that Griffin jumped back and hit the wall behind her.

Sylvia's hard, sculpted features appeared frozen in place as always. Griffin couldn't identify a single wrinkle that had appeared since she'd known the woman but her eyes were now so wet and red-rimmed. Rather than the arctic blue she was used to seeing, they looked completely ashen and gray, devoid of color. Her lower lip quivered with something unspoken but it was her hunched shoulders that would poke Griffin's eyes out. They made her look like she was trying to curl herself around a piece of her that was no longer there.

Griffin opened her mouth but instantly closed it. It only made her breathing more frantic; the irregular gasps barely kept her conscious as her vision swam, to her relief. It made it impossible to look Sylvia in the eye.

"Griffin," her voice was nothing like she remembered, soft and fragile, a distant echo of the woman she knew. "You're alive. What happened on Domino?"

She didn't sound surprised. If anyone would have reasoned Griffin had gone with Valtor, it was her. Still, Griffin couldn't decide if that was the reason for her disgust or the mention of her other enemy, the one that'd fallen, the one that should have meant nothing to her anymore.

Griffin grappled for her own voice; she wasn't sure what would be worse – for Sylvia to speak again or for her to do it.

"We... I couldn't... I-I... She's dead." She was repeating Valtor's words, had to focus on the memory of his voice, the cold, steel certainty of it carving into her chest, just to be able to utter them.

"The Ancestral Witches?"

She had to bite herself to keep from laughing. She had to bite herself to keep from screaming.

"They're gone too, but Fara-"

She swallowed, then again. If anything came out of her throat, her sanity would escape with it; she wouldn't be able to keep it down.

She couldn't sit still.

If she made one step, she'd leave the device and risk being stuck with Sylvia. She couldn't take the chance of losing her way back to Dyamond and being left only with her own magic that had crawled in the darkest, dirtiest corner of her mind and curled into a small, useless ball.

Her hands found her braid, fingers picking at her hair, pushing to force their way between the tightly held strands and pull them loose. That pain was welcome, grounded her in her body, the sting of it far more tangible than the words she forced herself to fire out while she was distracted.

"You have to find her, bury her. She deserves- Not this. So much better than this... We're certainly not the ones that will give it to her."

How had it come to this? The two of them being the ones left to remember Faragonda – the ones that had failed over and over again to see her for who she truly was, to accept her, to be there for her. This had to be a cruel joke.

"Where exactly should I look for her?"

The question echoed in Griffin's mind like a slap against tiled walls. "I-"

She'd never asked. Had never asked whether there was anything left to be buried at all. No, she would have crawled inside Valtor's ribcage if possible where the only thing that mattered was his heart – beating – for her.

He never found someone to take her place. It roused a grim satisfaction inside her to know she haunted his thoughts, too, that he could not look at another and see anything but her. He'd never taken another partner, another confidante, and any lover after her would have been subjected to brutal, merciless comparison, all of them bound to disappoint. No one would have moaned like her, uttering his name through trembling lips and clutching him closer, her magic spilling for him to kiss over it. She had ruined everyone else for him, had ruined the taste of life unless he was drinking up from her lips.

It was only fair.

"How did my daughter die, Griffin?" Sylvia's voice pierced through her skull like an icicle. "Watching you fuck her– your–mortal enemy? I'm surprised you took a break to call me and arrange her burial. How do you intend to come to her funeral? Hand in hand with her murderer?"

Griffin's fingers clawed at her throat – to open it for more oxygen or to let the blood spill out, it was impossible to tell. Maybe it was to let her soul escape, away from the razor-sharp teeth in it, tearing it apart for sick entertainment. That gleam in Sylvia's eyes...

It wasn't natural.

It wasn't her.

She was talking to an impostor.

Her spell-charged fist hit the dyamond tube around her. All it accomplished was a painful reminder of where she was.

She threw the door open and jumped out, the image of the impostor in front of her popping out of existence like it was nothing more than an ephemeral soap bubble.

She couldn't wrap her mind around any of it.

Sylvia would never be so crude about it. The subtlety of her words always made them that much more brutal. She would have circled around her, Valtor's name hanging heavy in the air like a guillotine that only nicked her flesh, each cut skin-deep. It would have been the itch that would have made Griffin herself reach to tear them open, swallowing her own tears and begging for mercy.

Sylvia would have known that sticking her fingers in Griffin's wounds would only make her retreat to lick them closed – directly into Valtor's arms. He was the only one she could bear to hold her, the only one she hadn't betrayed, at least not worse than he'd betrayed her.

There was only one person who'd know how to hijack the signal of The Point of Salvation, to manipulate it.

She'd been talking to none other than the queen of Dyamond herself, had once again fallen into the trap Raina had set out for her. She could have easily made her way to the device after the explosion that had shaken the whole palace while Griffin had been wracking her brain trying to find it.

It wasn't right. She had no magic...

Valtor did. Had an excess of it to give away.

A volatile charge made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, as if the air had filled with static electricity.

She whipped around and nearly slammed into his chest, their faces mere inches apart. His quick spell steadied her just in time.

It was a miracle his proximity didn't singe the hair right off her body. Only his intent rendered the sizzling aura around him harmless to her.

She refused to move. He'd been the one to decide the current distance between them didn't work. He'd have to bridge or broaden it.

This close to him, she could only take in separate, little fragments of his appearance – the ruffles of his shirt, completely identical to the one she'd destroyed, his unmoving throat clearly implying he found nothing to correct in their current position, his blond locks falling about his face as if he'd just stepped off the set of a hair product commercial.

His power had settled into his skin again to leave the stage all to his flawless composure. His posture was always that of someone who owned the whole world as if his height alone weren't imposing. Now it was too stiff, his shoulders pinned back to mask the restlessness that shadowed his every movement, looking for an opening to possess his muscles and ruin his carefully crafted image. It was why his gaze was trained on one single spot, perfectly poised to meet hers once she looked him in the eyes.

He had been on the hunt. The only thing that had his blood boiling beyond his control was an unfinished business, especially when he was chasing someone. Someone that wasn't her.

An ugly thing rose in her chest, hissed like a snake that'd been crushed under someone's boot, maimed but still surviving. She had to restrain herself from attacking him, latching to his mouth until he was too busy mapping out her body with his hands and kisses to remember anyone else existed.

Because she was staring so intently at his lips, she saw the sigh leaving them in a grand performance.

"I was hoping this all could be avoided. Yet, I come back to find that you've already provoked our hostess," he pressed his fingers into his temple, the image of a tortured diplomat. "I reasoned that you'd at least behave yourself long enough for me to return, if you noticed my absence at all."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Griffin seethed despite her best efforts.

"I suppose not. After all, you exhausted all this magic for absolutely no reason at all. But you can take comfort in the assurance that all my efforts were invested in a posthaste return to you, starlight," he abandoned his theatrics to take her hand, his fingers twisting the silver strings of her glove around them to tie her to him.

Oh, he was enjoying this.

Whatever power her scowl might have had was demolished by the tremble of her lips at the sound of the endearment. Heat was rising in her sides–apparently so if she were to judge by his smirk–as if he were a sun nestled inside her chest. His response to her ironic "sunshine" never failed to disarm her. Of course, he wouldn't hesitate to use it now.

She could play his game.

"Why, I find the discovery I made to be more than worth it, wouldn't you agree?" Griffin looked over her shoulder at The Point of Salvation. "You can reach any part of the dimension, find anyone you're looking for."

It was better that she didn't draw his attention back to whom specifically she'd been trying to contact but she could always remind him there were still people out there that she could go to and leave him to stew in the implications as he liked to do to her so often.

Valtor's lips tickled the shell of her ear insistently, demanding that she spare no thought to anything but him, "Were you going to hunt me down, dearest? Come join me in my affairs?"

The moment she raised her hand to slap him, he'd snatch her wrist and pull her glove off, bring her fingers to his lips. All her rage, her indignation and her resolve would slip right between them and she'd fall into his bed again, without a single thought spared on how she'd be setting herself up for a repeat of events.

"I must admit that your devotion to bringing me back here is immensely flattering," he cupped her cheek and turned her face towards him again.

Griffin had to bite back a grin at how quickly his patience unraveled the moment his ego took over. It would cut that much deeper when he realized he'd set himself up for the crushing blow.

"Oh," her eyes widened to accompany the exaggerated way her lips shaped the sound, "I rather thought that since you were out there taking care of your affairs, I should do the same. You see, when I found you gone-"

His lips curled around a vicious snarl, baring his teeth – involuntarily. It settled as soon as she faltered, giving the impression of capitulation.

She could already taste his magic souring, prickling into her mouth with every breath. It'd turn to knives in her flesh if she relayed to him her conversation with Raina but she'd have wrested it from his control, would have turned it on him as much as on herself.

He'd had to fight for her undivided attention for years and settle for failure when she walked away again, hand in hand with the fairy she'd returned to, the fairy that'd had everything he wanted. Just hearing her name would set him off like a bomb that would take out the entire palace, blow a crater straight through to the core of Dyamond.

Her heart shuddered in dark, delighted vindictiveness but her jaw trembled before Faragonda's name could start forming in her mouth. Her vision flickered, losing him for a moment only to find nothing else in the gray emptiness he left behind.

"We all have to make sacrifices in our line of work, regrettably," the yearning in his voice was so potent it guided her like a lighthouse in the dark.

His warmth against her skin grounded her; his face came into focus again. The back of his fingers stroked her cheek and there it was – the ice of his gaze melted for her.

"That blue looks stunning on you," his arm slid around her waist and pulled her closer, too close for him to be able to see anything other than her face.

The light around them burned brighter than it had before, making her dress shine against her skin rather than let her be lost, engulfed, in the dark fabric and the matching insides of her mind.

Valtor's lips sealed hers like fire scorching the ground, cleansing it for new sprouts to take root – a whole garden in the making.

She leaned into him, burying her hands under his coat, under his vest to clutch at his shirt. It was bathed in the heat that had long evaporated from the sheets when she'd stirred awake, sent little thrills shooting through her as if she were holding real flames in her hands and they only licked at her skin without burning her.

It wasn't enough.

She'd have to wrap herself in it to chase away the bitter taste of smoke and lies on her tongue, to be able to stomach his words again. He should have awakened her himself, lips and hands on her skin and a hunger in him that could only be sated when matched with her own. He should have trembled with sheer offense at the very possibility of her mind straying from him for a single moment, of her body–her whole being– not trembling for him.

A single kiss was just a cruel reminder that he'd failed to prioritize her.

Valtor was quick to dive in for another one as soon as she'd drawn the one gasping breath he was willing to allow her.

Her palm against his chest only earned her a second to deter him from distracting her again. "Are you sure you won't accuse me again of provoking our hostess?"

Valtor let go of her and stepped back, allowing cold to consume her when he was the warmest thing in the room, the warmest thing in existence. His gaze abandoned her as well, moved over her shoulder to The Point of Salvation behind her.

Her heart twisted. She had to clench her fists to subdue her magic, bite her lip to tame the hexes on it that would explode the dyamond tube behind her into silica dust raining over them like snow.

"As long as I remove you from her precious device, she'd be content. Though," the corner of his mouth twitched up, "I'm sure her appreciation will grow exponentially if I deign to employ a silencing spell this time."

He looked at her, an eyebrow arched delicately as if seeking her input when the moment he decided he'd had enough of this silliness, his name would be the only word left on her lips – for the whole world to hear.

Griffin suffocated the desire to get ahead of him, "Too bad for her."

"Indeed," Valtor purred, satisfied with her acquiescence. "You can see how dangerous you are to her, Griffin. You could ruin her."

He circled her casually, knowing she'd turn after him as if magnetized, his words just as much a pull on her as his presence.

"All you have to do," he motioned for the dyamond tube in front of him, "is contact the Council, warn them of her alliance with me."

Valtor turned towards her again as if he couldn't bear to leave her out of his sight, every moment his eyes weren't on her excruciating.

Delight flared in her chest rather than the appropriate fury. The craving for violence that possessed her was only directed at his clothes and the space between them.

With his hands clasped behind his back and a solemn, subservient expression on his face, he seemed to place himself at her feet. If not for the gleam in his eyes, even she could believe he was doing that rather than taunting her.

She was only useful to the Council dead. They'd always considered her Valtor's spy; a single trace of her survival would instantly renew the interplanetary hunt for her head. No information was worth more than dispensing justice and crippling any plan of his that relied on her involvement. In their eyes she was only a tool in his arsenal, the only type of weapon he wielded on the regular and with pleasure.

"They are desperate beyond reason, scrambling to find a scapegoat to take the fall for their own incompetence." Valtor moved closer, his gait that of a predator cornering his wounded dinner. "Dyamond is just the perfect candidate that they've overlooked... until someone sheds light on my patronage of the queen."

Griffin couldn't fight off the shiver quaking her. If he could do this to her with just words, he wouldn't even need his mark to ensure Raina's compliance with his every whim. It took two to keep a secret, yet she alone would suffer the consequences if hers was revealed.

She'd made her antagonism towards Domino public every day of her reign, the fallout between her and Marion an obscene spectacle for the whole dimension to witness. Pinning the blame on her would pacify the other monarchs and all concerns they'd have for the safety of their own kingdoms. A personal grudge only succeeding with the help of a now-extinct faction was much less troubling than a conquest of a universal scope that was not entirely fruitless.

"Fear drives people to excessive, extreme measures," Valtor's voice startled her like the cracking of a whip. "I gave her the means to protect herself, provided her with security to minimize the potential for rash decisions but, apparently, she still finds you intimidating. Can you really blame her?"

Griffin pursed her lips. He couldn't expect her to fall for such a sloppy attempt to get a rise out of her, could he? She weren't Raina. She deserved more effort.

"You have always been formidable, especially to someone who has only just discovered the possibilities of magic. She's but a child playing with her new toy while you with your impeccable mastery of your craft and your reputation alone, not to mention my respect for you were bound to be imposing and draw her caution. She's not foolish enough to think herself a match for you just because I looked at her twice."

When she didn't immediately crumble at his feet or lift herself on tiptoes to bestow the kiss she'd denied him before, he added, "You did also aid those who'd colonized her planet once already in a plot against her kingdom."

The effect was instant.

The words ripped through her throat like a dagger slicing it open, "The plot was against you!"

Her ragged, heavy breathing filled the room, stuffed her chest with a clawing panic.

There wasn't space inside her for the onslaught of memories, of voices screeching in her head, fighting to take over.

They will have multiple times the firepower that they do now.

No one can know what we're doing there.

What was the nature of your relationship with Valtor?

There are intruders in the palace.

Members of your court were caught in the act, or do you deny it?

I'm sorry, Griffin.

I'm sorry. I'msorryimsorryimsorry

She was choking. Her mind was unraveling not thread by thread but all at once. Her body followed, shaking-

Valtor's hand seizing her wrist pulled her to safety, into his soothing presence. His breath was a warm breeze over her face that chased away the water from her eyes. She could focus on his.

They bored into her like she was a butterfly pinned in his gaze, paralyzed and exposed, wings fluttering helplessly. "She doesn't like being collateral damage anymore than she does like being betrayed."

The one drawback of him seeing her betrayal in everything was that it was the one thing he saw when he looked at her too.

She couldn't take it back.

She'd known that when she'd left.

She'd never been prepared for it. Especially not now that she was by his side again, in his arms and the triumphant relief of their reunion was so fragile under their feet, wailing at every step and threatening to send them crashing into the rage bubbling underneath like an active volcano.

"I'm sure she'd warm up to you if you put a little effort into showing remorse," Valtor tucked an invisible lock of hair behind her ear, the gesture more a warning than an olive branch.

Something burst inside her. Not so much a dam as it was a fuse, overloaded from years and years' worth of his veiled threats and her own regrets, anticipation and the horrible, crippling anxiety of having him so near only to lose him for good.

" Fuck her!"

Valtor's eyes flashed ominously. His jaw worked – to grind to dust the words erupting from him and replace them with other, measured ones.

"Now how would that make you feel, dearest? I'd never be so careless with your feelings." He had to love the taste of her blood to always twist the knife as viciously as possible. "We wouldn't want you to blow up the rest of the palace, now would we?"

It had to bother her more. But as long as she was in his mouth, he would never learn to live without her.

It helped her keep the petulance out of her voice, "Raina was quick to run to you with all of her problems."

"Thanks to your handiwork," Valtor gave her fingers a squeeze, "a thick smoke curtain has claimed the first floor. All the ash you've trailed down the stairs hardly compares with that but was rather useful. How do you think I found you?"

Of course. She hadn't been using any of her own magic.

Judging from his words, Raina hadn't told him where to find her, had hoped he would drag her away from her hidden failsafe with his mere return. And he would have if she hadn't left him such a convenient trail to follow. So much for Raina's secret.

"I trust you can refrain from causing further destruction to our new home," Valtor continued as if she hadn't just provided him with a–grossly unneeded–advantage.

"Where are you going?" the words tumbled out before she could catch herself, her fingers flexing, forcing him to release her.

To his credit, Valtor had the decency to look annoyed rather than smirk at her. "You have created work for me, dearest. Someone has to fix all the property damage you've left in your wake."

Instead of her jaws clenching together, her mouth fell open. The hiss on its way to leave her morphed into a rush of air that sounded suspiciously like a sigh of relief when Valtor pressed his lips to her forehead in an unexpectedly tender kiss.

"The library is yours to explore at your discretion and so is the rest of the palace," his thumb stroked her cheek to completely offset her balance alongside the wistful look her gave her.

She had to grasp at his wrist with both hands to remain upright. She didn't miss the wave of smugness rolling off him, his eyes already dissecting every twitch of her fingers in his sleeve and the fluttering of her lashes.

She had to take him down a peg.

The look she gave him was made all the more cocky by her poorly feigned demure act, her fingers toying with the hem of his sleeve, "You're leaving me to gallivant around unsupervised?"

"You are a guest here, after all. The guest of honor," Valtor fired out in contrast with how stiff his fingers had grown on her cheek. "Do try a more amicable approach when it comes to weathering the queen's moods, won't you?"

Griffin made a show of intertwining their fingers and turning to kiss his palm despite his glove.

Then, in the most level, innocent voice she could manage, she asked, "That would mean, of course, that I could roam further than the palace grounds?"

Valtor frowned, nearly pouted at the mere mention.

"Within reason." Always one to recover quickly, he leaned in like his next words were only for her ears – a love confession to tug on her heartstrings and bind her in his orbit. "Your face is not as anonymous as it used to be. You'd be putting yourself and the queen in danger if you're noticed in the heart of her home."

Griffin pulled back to meet his eyes, "There's a simple solution to eliminate the risk to Her Majesty."

The moment she dropped his hand, his magic spiked as if she'd thrown a stone in a lake and awoken the creatures in the deep. Turning her back on him was the equivalent of pouring oil in the fire.

It burst in the room, dropped the pressure and made the air crackle with static as if they were in the middle of a storm. It clawed at her form, compelling, demanding that she turn around to look at him or it would slither inside her and make her.

It shivered in delight when small charges trickled in her fingertips. Wisps of his power gathered around her hands to urge more of hers out, coaxing, cajoling her to join him, give him everything she had.

She forced herself to ignore them and focused on picking a destination. The Point of Salvation wouldn't take her anywhere but she weren't Raina. She could do it herself.

She could swear the tiniest gasp of alarm broke through the chaos in her thoughts only for him to cover it up just as quickly.

"Where are you headed to, starlight?"

His voice was an arrow through her chest. It pierced in and out to pin her heart to the wall across from her. An excessive, underhanded attempt to keep her from leaving.

She turned to look at him, to return the favor.

"Oh, I don't know. Probably Solaria. I could use the sunshine if we are to have a... shortage of it in the next few months." She feigned contemplation, "On the other hand, no one would expect me on Magix and I haven't been on a decent book hunt in ages. I can easily think of fifteen bookshops I could tour just off the top of my head."

Valtor's expression slowly changed – from furrowed eyebrows and a storming gaze to a fond, saccharine smile, "If you do end up shopping, I trust you to surprise me with an appropriate gift, for all my assistance in your relations with the queen."

A moment of silence settled between them before her heart threatened to detonate in her chest. He could certainly hear its pounding against her ribs, trigger it with a simple gesture, a single look even. Her magic dripped too slowly into her palms to provide a real outlet. He must have taken her depleted reserves to mean hesitation.

Fine. Her absence would strike him that much harder when she disappeared – this time right in front of his eyes.

Denying him her company was her last bargaining chip. She wasn't really denying him, more like delaying him, spiting him. The power she had was so little, practically nothing, but she couldn't let go of it. He'd already robbed her of so much, even now that she was defeated, completely at his mercy.

Valtor didn't budge despite her building spell.

He could find her on the other end of the universe.

She had to count on it.

Her magic ran the length of her body like little shock waves, resounding echoes of a disaster that had already happened. She hardly heard Valtor's voice over it.

"Stay out of trouble."

His gaze easily cut through the haze taking over her, drove the air out of her lungs.

She was stuck on the cold of it – frozen in place.

The shiver running through her kicked her spell into motion.

Valtor disappeared.

Her body crumbled into the depths of her magic. The pieces of her launched through space and her mind followed in a smooth jump with none of the impact of rattling around in her physical form.

White-hot agony tore through her to split her in half – one continuing to hurtle forward and the other flung back and spat out in the stone chamber again.

She was yanked backwards, each of her atoms crushing the rest, melding them into one again. The force of it rang through her bones like she'd hit a wall.

Valtor's grip on her wrist was brutal, searing through both their gloves. There was no magic to it, only his devastating fury.

Her own power was silenced; everything around them had fallen still. The air between them was charged with unbearable tension. One hair moved by her inhale was all the friction needed for a spark, for an explosion that would char them to ash.

She didn't dare breathe. Her lungs strained, burned, but she only looked at him, waited.

He could lean in and kiss her, or he'd finally go for it and choke her.

Valtor grabbed her chin instead of her neck – as if she weren't fully gripped by him already.

The quiver of her lips drained the blood thirst from his gaze and touch, made the pressure around them crumble in shards. Her shoulders sagged along with it but her eyes never left his.

"You've never been wasteful with magic," Valtor's voice unfurled through her body, from her head to the pit of her stomach, dropping heavy in there like a sinking stone. "Don't start now."

Griffin had to catch herself when his grip disappeared. It couldn't have taken her more than a second to steady herself on her feet but he was already halfway across the chamber, standing next to the exit.

He turned to her and offered his hand, "Where would you even go?"

Anywhere.

It wouldn't make a difference. Without him by her side or at least pursuing her savagely it wouldn't matter one bit if she were walking the lush forests of Linphea teeming with plant life extinct elsewhere or infiltrating the vaults bursting with all the secrets of the black arts underneath the ruins of Spheria. It would only ever feel one way – deafening, oppressive stillness that with time only mellowed out to a dull emptiness when she was alone with her thoughts.

"I didn't want to leave. I never would have if..."

The first months after had been excruciating. The smallest of charges in her fingertips had echoed back at her tenfold, tearing at her own flesh when there'd been no answer. Uttering the simplest of spells had been a death wish, a suicide. Instead of a cautious step inching forward, it had been a fall off a half-standing bridge. Yet, you couldn't see where the stone ended until you'd dropped off.

Only when she'd met him in battle, she had started recovering with the slowness of rehabilitating a broken spine, and just because Faragonda hadn't let her do it alone.

"If what?" Valtor's voice whipped against the stone walls as if he'd seen the name written all over her in the way Faragonda had nursed her back to functionality.

He bridged the distance between them again when she didn't answer, attempted to pull it out of her with his mere presence, with the mirage of it.

Like a hound to blood, Griffin latched onto that one weakness she had forced on him.

He stalked over to her before she could take her second step back. He took her chin in his hand. The firmness of his touch echoed in her body when the hard wall met her back.

He'd teleported them just to have her cornered. A clear message to pick her words carefully but not make him wait any longer, lest he decided to take them straight from her head.

It was the perfect payback – his own strategy turned on him in retribution for his silence about her friends' demise. He had to be dying to brag about his cunning and skill in outsmarting them, taking their lives in his hands and crushing them into nothingness. But he wanted her to ask, wanted her to be complicit in the pain he got to cause her. Now she had the power to make him wonder in turn, ache for the truth, for a reason she could give him to put his mind at ease, stop it from tearing apart every little memory of her for hints and clues just to have something definitive, something tangible to explain the worst part of his life.

It didn't feel like a victory, or even like an advantage of any kind. Just another fall deeper into the pit of misery they were burying themselves in. It was a miracle they were both still breathing.

Griffin raised her hand to cup his face, her glove melting away, but Valtor swatted it away like her caress was an annoying pest.

His eyes were throwing sparks, the words shredding through his teeth, "I found no trace of you where you were supposed to greet me. I found you on enemy territory – not as a captive, but worse – as a traitor, an informant, their ally."

She couldn't help but shrink away, his vulnerability always the sharpest weapon he could aim at her throat, but his fingers under her chin held her in place for the onslaught.

"How many times have I watched you choose to walk away from me and whimper after them like a stray animal half out of its mind with starvation? Was that my fault? Did I cast you aside, shove you into their arms? Was I the one to push you away?"

The cold amidst which she'd woken flared inside her chest, spread through her body to make her frigid like a stone. If she tried to beat him over the head with his own mistakes, he'd spin it around, put the blame on her again.

The realization that she didn't care settled in her bones like a chill she couldn't shake off. As long as she could spit venom in his face in turn, it was worth getting burned by him.

Valtor forced her jaws closed, trapping her tongue between her teeth. "You were wanting for nothing. You had my respect and my trust to execute plans as you deemed fit. I offered support to any agenda you had, ensured your access to magic no other witch had been allowed to witness, let alone use for herself. Did I ever meet you with judgment for your heart's desires or any act you've committed in my name or your own? I have only ever granted you the freedom to be yourself, to speak your mind without having to bow down to people who hate your guts."

Not just her mind but her heart, her feelings for him that had been denounced as more abominable than the corpses she had created with her own ha-

Griffin bit her tongue until she tasted blood, the sharp tang of it severing her thought.

His palms were feather-light on her skin when he cupped her cheeks – as if she would set him ablaze with the mere contact between them.

His voice came out guttural, growling, like he was digging deep into his core just to get it out, "I have proven time and time again that I would give you everything, that I would stop at nothing for you, even after what you did."

His shoulders shuddered just barely, his eyes stabbing through her. His breaths were too fast and shallow, like he couldn't draw in a deeper one without flinching... like he was in pain.

Griffin swallowed her blood, the taste of it soaking her insides like there was a monster there thirsting for it, making her feral – to match him.

Calculation had played no part in his disappearing act, only self-preservation. Keeping her an arm's length away had been the only solution he'd come up with to the gnawing hunger that had ravaged them both for years. Yet his fingers pressed into her skin, hard, to erase the possibility of her existing on her own, without being marked by him. His control was slipping through the fissures running across his mask from the gut-punch that was her proximity.

A sharp inhale rattled her whole body when Valtor leaned in, lips just shy of covering hers.

"I told you, Griffin," the way he rasped her name made her weak in the knees. "I am not careless with your feelings."

She blinked and he was gone, a respectable distance away from her and perfectly composed once more, smirking at her obvious need to brace herself against the wall now that the support of his body had disappeared. She'd lost count of how many times he'd subjected her to that kind of bait-and-switch just today.

"No, I could never call you careless," she crossed her arms, leaning fully against the wall, determined not to be the first one to budge. "You invested two years in this charade of an alliance just to... irritate me."

The words were small on her tongue, tasteless.

She wouldn't give him more.

The glint in his eyes was... troubling. She'd seen it enough times not to begrudge herself for the buckling of her knees, for her nails digging into her arms in a desperate bid to hold her together.

"Oh, Griffin," Valtor crooned like he meant to soothe a scared prey animal. He was leading her like a lamb to the slaughter. "You of all people should be aware I never play on a single front. Raina has been much more useful to me than you could imagine."

The dagger landed perfectly, a sharp point straight through her chest. A confirmation that he was lying would only force it deeper, would make it hollow out her sternum as well, not just slice her flesh open.

It would be much preferable to hearing about all the alleged uses he'd had for Raina of all people.

All the time they'd spent fighting each other he'd claimed his anger had been on her behalf – partly at least. Yet, instead of gunning for the heads of those he'd insisted were beneath her, he'd sunk even lower – for the sake of rubbing her face in it.

"I am well aware," the words shook off her lips and shattered at her feet but he couldn't ignore them if he wanted to close in on her. "No one in this entire universe knows you better than I do so don't even try to play your games with me."

Valtor's lips parted like he was eating up her performance, like he only delighted in her adorable attitude.

"You wouldn't have looked at her twice if you couldn't use her to spite me," Griffin spat out to keep the words from sanding her tongue down to a pulpy mess. "If she knew even half of what I did for you, she would have fled into another fucking dimension!"

The mirth drained from his expression, replaced by a grim seriousness that would frighten away a thunderstorm. "If I wanted you jealous, I would have given you thousands to be jealous of."

Valtor slipped to the other end of the room upon the sight of her bared teeth. His pace was unhurried as he circled from afar, leaving the device between them, to separate them and hide him from her gaze, only his disembodied words flocking to her side to haunt her.

"Everyone you ever met you would hate. In your mind I would have replaced you with every – one – of them."

The force in her clenched fists would be enough to pluck every ounce of magic straight out of Raina with her bare hands. Let's see how useful she'd be when stripped down only to her own strength and abilities.

"Not every one."

Three steps and she was facing the outline of her own body in the diamond tube. Another fraction of a second was all it took for a devastating spell to pool into her fist, make her fingers shake with the power of it.

Valtor snatched her wrist before it could connect with the dyamond surface, her strength failing to eat away at his... just according to plan.

She grabbed the ruffles of his shirt to pull his face down to hers. Now he was the one that had nowhere to go.

"You like to think you do everything with class, including spiting me. You wouldn't consider most people worth it even as the face of your retribution."

Valtor tilted his head like she was finally making sense, like she was finally worth listening to.

Twisting her arm only had his grip tighten like a vise around it. Her heart unclenched and she could dismiss her spell at last.

She had to bite back her grin. "You know what I think?"

Valtor raised an eyebrow at the shift in her tone, the up-and-down stroke of her palm against his chest.

"If you'd replaced me with anyone else, you would have bragged, would have listed all the reasons why they grabbed your attention – how masterful they are with their magic, how sharp a tongue theirs is, how you had to have them because everything you want, you get."

Griffin yanked her arm again – to prove her point.

His reaction was instant; he tugged her closer, threw her off balance.

Their chests collided, her breath tickling his earlobe. Her smirk had to graze his skin a certain way to cause the shiver he couldn't disguise.

She sighed theatrically, her free hand playing with the buttons on his shirt, "And if nothing else, you would have held back for the sake of appearances."

His initial anger had shifted, melded into something different by their third-fourth meeting on the battlefield. His threats had remained just as abhorrent but he'd no longer been the catalyst bringing them into fruition. He'd burdened her with that role, had never missed a chance to remind her and her friends that she would be the Company's undoing, and her own, that one day she would wake up as if from a dream and would want to take back the problem between the two of them that she'd imagined into existence. Then she'd sacrifice anything and anyone on the alter of their love.

He wouldn't have turned around and destroyed all his work just to make her eat her heart out when he touched someone else, pretended he had forgotten the taste of her name.

"You didn't replace me with anyone," Griffin stepped back, eyes on his face but she still sensed the twitch of his free hand to snake around her and cage her to him. "You just wanted to use my imagination against me."

"And here you are!" Valtor fired out, his voice swallowing hers.

Her lungs stuttered when he let go of her instead and clasped his hands behind his back, the image of restraint. A mockery, once again.

"You've blown up a part of Raina's palace and you're in her dungeons, desperately doing everything you can to lure me back here. Jealous," he spat out as if the mere idea was poison twisting up his insides, "of a woman that you yourself said I only ever allied with to get to you."

The fury in his eyes was overflowing, so much so that they looked wet with tears.

His shoulders tensed; he was clearly fighting the impulse to grab at her, shake her, clutch her to his chest and never let go. "What could she possibly have that you don't, that I haven't given you already or shown my willingness to provide for you?"

Yes! Yes, she was getting to him. Let's see him leave her behind now.

Her satisfaction had to have shown for Valtor homed in on it with laser precision. His palm cupped the side of her neck where her telltale pulse gave him an unfair advantage.

"Any magic I have given her pales in comparison with the impressive abilities you had already developed when I first met you. I have spent years," the weight he put in that one word was a sharp contrast with the centuries he'd shouldered with but a shrug, " fighting to return you to your rightful place at my side. I had you weak with bliss in my bed and disturbing her whole palace with your screams."

"And you were gone before I woke up," Griffin fired out to stop him from kissing her, " gone to scheme with her again."

She had her finger on his trigger. All she had to do was keep pushing until he let something slip, anything that would give her a clue of his plans, of who he was after. If not that, at least spur him to continue declaring his devotion for her.

Valtor's thumb pressed into her windpipe.

The real alarm was the look in his eyes – a bottomless coldness that had her teeth chatter, froze the breath right into her lungs. It was unnatural on him, completely antithetical to his being.

"A momentary taste of your own medicine is too much, isn't it?"

Griffin shoved him back, his presence crowding her, calling back to the beginning of this farce. She was so tired, a bone-deep exhaustion draining all her willpower and any bite there might have been to her point.

"After you preferred to sit back and watch as she poked and prodded me for most intimate details about us? I have to admit that it's becoming a lot, yes," she turned away.

She was sick of talking about Raina. The mere mention of her tasted like rot in her mouth, like she was eating the corpse of him – the old Valtor she'd left behind. The man that had taken his place was more alert, more driven, eager to cross any line just to rid himself of the very memory of pain now that he'd come to know loss. He hadn't stepped in when Raina had demanded that she spill her soul in front of her entire court, had allowed it just to watch her flay herself alive and drown in her own blood.

"You were the one who chose to proceed with it, to attend the celebration at all," Valtor's comeback was quick. Too quick, too clipped.

Instead of smothering her arguments before they could form in her mind, it let her imagine he had regrets about that night as well.

A cruel irony. An ouroboros eating its tail, then failing to retch with the rest of its own body still in its mouth, they were.

"Yes, and you allowed it, planned for it even!" her voice burned in her throat, every sound inflamed and agonizing, forcing her to force it out. "You gave precedence to Raina's agenda over me, over us."

He could kill every person that'd been in that ballroom and it wouldn't even begin to make up for what he'd subjected her to.

She didn't react to his steps but his hands on her shoulders jolted her. The only magic in the touch was the one his whole being was made of and still, she couldn't shut her breath in, behind her teeth. It was drawn to him like the rest of her body leaning backwards, seeking to bridge the distance between them, to soak up the flux of power flowing from him into her.

"No, Griffin," his lips moved in her hair, tingles running from her scalp to the tips of her fingers, to her toes. "If you're jealous of the queen," he squeezed her upper arms, cutting her outburst out at the root, "then it is your own doing."

One of his palms slipped to the nape of her neck, the other tracing over her collarbones as he circled her. The hard line his mouth was set in, the penetrating look in his eyes demanded her attention the same way a complex incantation did – one misstep would be fatal.

"I have killed for you," his fingers settled in the hollow of her throat, the pressure of them delicate, subtle but making her aware of every breath, every beat of her heart. "Do I have to kill her? Is that what you want?" Valtor purred, eyes already half-lidded in lazy enjoyment.

There was no way for her to hide or mask the wild spikes in her pulse, the teeth worrying her lip to carve out some space, a moment of quiet for her to figure out his offer.

He weren't above sacrificing her dignity for the sake of his plans but he was also painfully familiar with her tendency to double down in an argument, had over three and a half years of proof. He had to know that aside from the occasional quip, making her second-guess herself wasn't a viable strategy for him, would only run the risk of exacerbating the situation.

It would have cost him nothing to sacrifice the whole world to her. Raina didn't matter more than any of his underlings had, had been just as much a means to an end, just as much bait as the notion that he would put weeks of planning towards aiding anyone but himself. Eliminating anyone–whether ally or enemy–that could steal her time and attention away from him was a foolproof way to have her all to himself. In his hands those who'd dared lay a finger on her mother wouldn't have died for their sins, but for the sake of his possessiveness. He wouldn't have hesitated if he'd found them before she had.

If she asked of him to kill a pawn he couldn't be bothered to care about, she'd prove she was just the same as him, worse even. He'd be justified in having murdered the people with whom she'd shared a roof, the people with whom she'd shared her life when she herself wanted one of countless footnotes to his schemes to be removed, erased. He could twist it all to make the gruesome fate of her friends his tribute to her, an expression of his devotion.

Griffin pulled his hand away lest it hooked a gasp from her he could interpret as a confirmation, "Maybe."

A shadow passed over his face, the barest twitch moving the corner of his mouth but he banished any disappointment away, instead giving her a knowing look and a squeeze to her fingers. "Tell me when you've decided. She's just an ally – nothing more, nothing less."

He leaned in just a tiny bit and... Oh, that was rich!

Valtor, Heir of the Ancient Coven, cast his eyes downwards and played at being a shy, insecure lover.

"Valtor..." Incredulity got the best of her and the rest of her thoughts remained stuck in her throat, tied in a knot she couldn't pick with her hand still in his.

"No one has claimed the honor of being my partner."

Her heart skipped a beat.

She licked her lips.

A scream was building in her mouth but she managed to wrestle it into coherent words, "Is that... a proposal?"

She held her breath, half expected him to laugh at her.

He wasn't quite as generous.

"Do you have the stomach for it?" His grin bared pearly-white teeth but that wasn't right. They had just been in her flesh, again and again, tearing chunks out and swallowing them just to have her crawling back to him to put her together again.

All the force she would have put in strangling him barely managed to move her lips to shape something akin to a smile.

It had been a plot, after all. Maybe not from the start. Not when he'd woken next to her and stumbled out of bed, his heart pounding in his chest not with a panic but with acute need for her that had only grown along with the distance he'd put between them.

But once he'd been out of the palace, the razor-sharp awareness that her body in his bed was a chain pulling him back, digging in his tender belly, in his throat, he had figured he could keep it at bay if he had control of it. If he chose when to yank her closer and when to strand her away, when to drag her to him on her knees, begging for the respite only his company could provide.

She couldn't win that tug of war but she could make his victory bitter, incomplete. He'd grown used to ignoring her absence but in the process, he'd forgotten how her closeness even felt – the touch of her hand, the ghost of her lips on his skin, her voice calling his name. The moment he included her in his plans, he would fail to shut her out of his mind. She would always be there even when he wasn't with her. He would not be able to escape her or vice versa – she would be his.

Griffin swallowed. "I do."

Triumph set his eyes ablaze, drew his features into something manic, something unhinged.

He had forgotten – he'd returned to hunt her down, had pulled her back as if she would have taken his heart from his chest along with her, had proclaimed his undying devotion to her – all on her cue. She had made him give in.

Why should she stop now?

"I've simply outgrown the position," she pulled her hand out of his. Chin raised, she only answered his warning glare with a challenge of her own.

The tendons in his neck bulged under the collar of his shirt from how hard he was clenching his jaw, his eyes boring holes into her face, the only sound coming out of him his heavy breathing.

For the first time since she'd known him, Valtor couldn't come into a single word.

#winx club #winx griffin #winx valtor #griffin x valtor #covenshipping #winx faragonda #fanfiction #my fanfiction #my writing #fallen love #chapter 3 #fallen love chapters

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simonlynch · 8 months

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janAUary - roleswap au

ship: bedbugs [ rolseswap au, antares/lawrence ] word count: 1380 summary: lawrence makes a deal with a demon.

He sighs, looks down at the empty white on his screen.

He cracks his neck, leans back in his chair. Closes his eyes. The fading memory of his dreams swirl into the expanses of his mind.

He thinks of that…Thing.

He shudders, and taps his fingers against his keyboard. He types a few vague sentences from the clouded nightmares he can barely remember.

One word sticks out to him, emerges from the fuzzy ghost of an idea; It fronts at the center of his thoughts. Like a bright neon light, it shines through the turmoil of his consciousness. Something at the back of his mind pokes at him, urges him to indulge this form.

His fingers pad the keys again. He presses them hesitantly, gently.

A memory flashes before him. A dream, distant but vivid.

Come on, Lawrence. I can help you.

His heart pounds against his ribs. One of the many nightmares that's plagued him for months, since he's stepped foot in this house.

No wonder the asking price was so low.

He deletes it. A chill runs down his spine.

He types it again.

The cursor blinks at him.

He mutters the name, heavy on his tongue. It feels wrong.

Maybe, if he typed it again, got used to the feeling…

Something urges him, prodding him. The script needed a title, anyways. He scrolls up, and types it a final time.

Antares.

He startles at the shock he feels burn his hand, drawing them back with a yelp. Had his laptop short circuited?

No, it was still running.

And his document was filling itself with that name, repeated down each line without his help -- without anyone's help. Maybe it was broken.

It's not broken, Lawrence.

His eyes widen, he jumps up, stumbles backwards from his chair, knocking it over in the process.

“How --”

It catches his eye then, in the corner, engulfed by shadow. A single finger flicks towards the laptop, which shuts itself.

“I find screens so distracting, don't you?”

“Who -- Who are you?” he trips over his own feet, landing hard against the wall. He struggles to pick up one of the many books that are piled besides him, and holds it out in defense. It laughs.

“Don't look so surprised, babes. You called me.”

He gasps as it steps closer. He knows this creature.

The one from his dreams.

“But you're not –”

“I am very real, Lawrence. Hello,” it waves a hand in his face.

He doesn't greet it, rather he turns with a half-hearted scream and makes for the door.

Which closes. And locks.

“What an awful host you are.”

He finds himself turning back, not of his own volition, and walking towards it again. His heart thunders in his chest, which constricts making it very hard to breathe in the presence of the creature.

“Oh, please. Relax. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help.”

“You're not going to…To…?”

“Kill you? Jesus, Lawrence, if I wanted to do that I would have a long time ago. I’m your pal. Your friend. We're a team, you and me. Or…We can be. Just say the word.”

It's not much of a comfort, but it's something. He calms down, just a little, and nods. The supernatural force holding him releases its grip, and he wrings his wrists. He takes time to let his mind clear of the many burning questions that fester.

“Go ahead, ask.”

He doesn't like that it can read his mind.

“Okay. What are you?”

“I’m a dream demon. A dreamon, if you will.”

“Like a succubus?”

“Like a -- What goes on in those dreams of yours that I’m not in?” it pauses, uncrossing its arms, and when Lawrence sees just how sharp its talons are as it approaches him slowly, he suddenly feels very, very small beneath its shadow.

“No, not like a succubus. A mare, in human folklore, I believe is what they decided on.”

“Night mare?”

“Keen observation, Lawrence!” it flashes fangs, now behind him, fingers curled around his shoulders; A chill runs the length of his spine and he can't tell if it's from the cold touch of its long-dead hands, or the idea that this thing was truly straight out of his night-terrors.

He moves, afraid of allowing himself to turn his back to it – but as he does he realizes it's gone already. He hears a rustling behind him. He turns back, and finds that it’s stood near the far wall.

As he cautiously approaches, he sees that it's intensely scanning his bookshelf, a majority of which bear his own name.

“Say,” it glances towards him, grin wicked, “Betelgeuse? Been there once. The men there are such drags. And I mean that in the best way possible,” it tosses a copy of Thing from Saturn towards him, and he barely catches it, startled.

“Named after a star, huh? Hey, so am I! We're not so different after all!”

“We are very --”

“Listen, pal, I think you and I are just meant to be! I mean, what are the chances?”

He blinks, still confused. He felt…Strange, with this thing, here that knew so much about him already. And he felt so small, so helpless knowing so little about it.

“So…What do you,” he hesitates, unsure of his wording, but finding no other way to ask it rolls bluntly off his tongue, “Do?”

It smiles, turning its head just as agonizingly slow.

“I do many things, Lawrence. Inspiration, mostly. They call me the Muse.”

“They do?”

“No. I don't think I can say what they call me, or else this might not get published.”

“...What?”

“Anyways, half the shit you've ever read, ever heard, ever seen. All me, baby.”

“You're not serious.”

“Ever listen to Kiss? God of Thunder?” it's voice mocks the famous musician’s grumble, “I was raised by the demon?” and just as quick springs back to the jaunty, raspy undertone, “Think Gene was lying? C’mon now, Larry, put some respect on the name.”

“Don't call me that.”

“Hey, but enough about you, let's talk about me. I can help you, buddy. You won't find anyone better.”

“I don't need your help,” he averts his gaze, but bright eyes appear in his peripheral anyways, its voice echoes in the back of his mind.

“I've been watching you for a while, pal. You need my help more than anyone.”

“That's…” Probably true.

Lawrence sputters, “Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“That…In my head thing.”

“Can't help it, sweets. It's my domain, for now.”

“So, if I accept your help…What do you want, in return?”

“Presumptuous, I see.”

“Well, that's how these things go. You do something for me, and I owe you.”

Cautious. Smart. I like you, Larry.

“Well, not much. More of a favor really, if anything.”

“A favor.”

It hums, and for once, it's not an unpleasant sound.

“What kind of favor?”

It groans, “Quite the curious thing, aren't you? I should start charging per question. I’d be rich. Listen, Larry, it's nothing bad. Nothing too out of the way, no inconvenience to you, I swear. Quid pro quo is the name of the game, and I play fair, I promise. Cross my heart, and hope to die, and all that shit. You and I, we would make such a great team. I don't say that often, but I can see, you really do got somethin’ special about you, kid. All you need is a little --” he nearly trips at the force, inching closer to its extended paw, “Push.”

“...I still get full creative control and copyright ownership, right?”

“I don't do this for the fame, babe. You can have whatever you want.”

There's a moment of silence. His breathing steadies. He exhales. Takes its hand. Its nails dig into his skin. No turning back now.

“Deal.”

A wicked grin unfurls across its expression. A forked tongue licks at sharp canines. Its horns swirl bright red.

“Great choice, you won't regret it. You want fortune and fame?”

He nods. Shakes his head.

“Just…recognition.”

“Then you'll get it. And so much more. You just made the best decision of the rest of your life, Larry.”

Something in him tells him he hasn't, and that maybe this was a mistake.

What had he just gotten himself into?

#.bedbugs #.writing #janauary2024

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rinwellisathing · 3 months

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Paint The Lines, Cut The Flesh: Part 14

Sentry looked around, frowning as the party found themselves standing outside of the mausoleum entrance. “Hey, where's Shadowheart?” concern crossed his face as he turned to look behind. A flicker of violet light shimmered briefly and she stood beside him yet again, her expression bewildered and her body shaking slightly. “I....I saw Lady Shar, she held me within her realm and tortured me for what felt like hours, I felt like every inch of my body was burning and as if my eyes would burst from my skull...” Sentry paused, he could see she was badly shaken up and he simply took a breath and gave her a look of sympathy. “You did the right thing, Shadowheart...If she would do that to you for simply making a choice on your own, she'd never have stopped there...” He rested a hand gently on her shoulder. “Catch your breath and we'll go back to Moonrise. It seems this Nightsong owes you some answers.” Shadowheart nodded. “I hope you're right, Sentry...but at least it was my choice...” They traveled in silence, although hearing eachother speak over the sounds of battle coming from the tower would have been quite a feat. As they arrived at the entrance, Wyll and the others caught up. Shadowheart exchanged an odd look with Lae'zel, something resembling camaraderie, the last thing Sentry would have expected from those two.

Bodies of both Harpers and Cultists lay strewn across the battlefield. Jaheira and her companions had fought their way to the door. She regarded Sentry and his companions with a surprised smile and nodded to them. “We have the upper hand, boy. How shall we proceed?” She asked, looking to Sentry. He blinked in surprise, head darting back and forth, then looked to Wyll who simply nodded in his direction. “Press the attack. We can't give them time to recuperate and plan. Right now we still sort of have the element of surprise...” He looked to Lae'zel and pointed towards the first team in turn. “Shadowheart, Lae'zel, Karlach, and Halsin will back up your harpers.” He then nodded towards Kroger and pointed out his team. “Gale, Octavia, and Kroger will stick with you,” Finally he looked to Wyll and nodded his head back. “Wyll, Astarion, and I will go find our missing friend and we'll meet up to confront Ketheric.” “A sound strategy.” Jaheira nodded. “Harpers! To arms!” The doors opened and Z'rell stood at the front of the Cultist forces, smirking coldly. “Well, well....It's The Dread Executioner....I must admit, I always admired your artwork, hells, even your body...But I am hardly surprised you'd turn on us...I'm only shocked you would throw your lot in with these would-be heroes.” She gestured to the rest of the party as well as The Harpers. “Me?” Sentry blinked. “Why'd you just call me that name...?”

“Ha! It seems Balthazar's apprentice really did a number on you...” She smirked, gesturing her forces forward. “Kill the others, but keep him intact...Kressa is likely missing her toy.” --- Jaina looked up from the book she was currently reading through, and gasped as the door to Isobel's room burst open, Wyll rushing in followed by Sentry and Astarion. She smiled brightly and leapt up, rushing to him and throwing her arms around him. “Wyll! By The Bitch Queen herself, what took you so long?” She laughed. “And here I thought you were an expert monster slayer.” She teased playfully as he held her close, smiling with relief as he looked into her eyes. “Well, you know, I'd gotten rather used to having a little extra fire power by my side. I was quite beside myself to be missing my sorceress.” He kissed her forehead gently. “Oh? Well, I suppose I might have been able to break out if I'd had the Blade of Frontiers at my side, so I suppose we're even on that.” She cuddled close. “As charming as your reunion is, there's an allegedly immortal necromancer that needs killing, shall we get a move on?” Astarion interjected, his tone sarcastic as he gestured dramatically towards the door. “Oh...yes...” Jaina giggled awkwardly.

“Right.” Wyll nodded, taking another moment to let go and step away. The party hurried towards the steps to the balcony, rejoining The Harpers and the rest of their party as they made their way upward, spilling out onto the parapet where Jaina and Ketheric had last spoken. The wine glasses had not yet been cleared away, nor had the empty bottle. The Dread General himself stood tall at the highest part of the balcony, Squire at his side. He looked down as the party approached and his eyes fell to Sentry. His eyes glinted with recognition as he watched the young paladin. “Ah, The Executioner graces us with his presence....I had thought we'd seen the end of you....Well, mad dogs are often difficult to put down...” He took a step forward. “I've had enough of this, kneel.” he commanded, clenching his fist tightly. But the party stood firm, the strange artifact rising from within Sentry's pouch and setting itself between Ketheric and the party. The general's eyes widened and he regarded them with surprise. “You had it all along...” “Why does everyone keep calling me 'Executioner'?” Sentry shouted. “Did...did you know me?” “It hardly matters, now you're another thrall like the rest of your companions...” Ketheric waved a hand dismissively. Jaina took a step forward. “General Thorm, please...think about what we discussed, you can still make things right with Isobel!” She insisted reaching out. “This isn't what Melodia would want for you, it isn't too late...”

Jaina was not entirely correct, however as a rush of air battered the parapet and a voice, pure and loud as church bells chiming midnight pierced the dark sky as surely as the shimmering light of the voice's owner. “KETHERIC THORM! YOUR RECKONING HAS COME.” Aylin touched down like a comet battering the stone in front of him, her sword at the ready. “Fuck, she's impressive.” Karlach whispered. “She's kind of great, right?” Sentry grinned his approval, sharing a knowing glance with Karlach. The battle was a blur, Aylin seemed to be everywhere at once as she soared through the air, calling down moonlight and slashing at Ketheric with her blade. Sentry and Karlach joined her, refusing to give Ketheric an inch. Jaina and Octavia picked off the resurrected casters with volleys of spells and Wyll engaged the apprentice necromancer controlling the creatures. Ketheric seemed exhausted, doubled over and bleeding, the combatants moving in for the kill, until the parapet began to shake and rumble. Suddenly, stones flew from one of the minarets at the side and a large tendril grabbed the Aasimaar and pulled her down into the depths of the tower, Ketheric following after. Sentry and his companions ran to the edge of the hole, gazing down in surprise. The sound of boots on the stone clacked towards them as Jaheira stood at their side. “Ketheric will call this a strategic retreat, but you have him on the run.” She mused. “If I am needed, I will be glad to follow you to finish the job.”

Sentry shook his head. “I think it's better that you stay here. You and your harpers secure the perimeter.” He looked to his own party. “Halsin, Karlach, Shadowheart, Lae'zel, Kroger, you stay here and help Jaheira secure the tower. Everyone else, let's go.” Sentry didn't wait for a response as he leapt swiftly down the fleshy tunnel with a cry like an excited child going down a slide. Jaina wrinkled her nose, but reasoned that this couldn't be THAT different from an ordinary octopus tendril, and she LIKED octopodes. She followed behind Sentry, Wyll hot on her heels. “Oh this promises to be fascinating!” Octavia squealed with excitement as she hurried to take a running leap into the hole. “Ugh...must we?” Astarion growned, taking an anxious step back. “Oh come now, where's your sense of adventure, my friend?” Gale grinned, making as though to amiably slap Astarion's back, but instead giving him just the slightest shove forward and following him down. --- The inside of the Illithid colony beneath the tower pulsed and thrummed with life as the party got to their feet and began to regain their bearings, looking around. There didn't seem to be any way out of the room as they began to search around, until Sentry approached a fleshy door and gave it a poke.

“Hey, this kind of reminds me of a...” He trailed off as he gazed down the narrow halls and felt a strong, nauseating sense of deja vu. “Sentry, are you alright?” Jaina asked, gently shaking him. Sentry shook his head and took a deep breath. “Fuck...yes...I'm fine...Let's press on...” The party continued on, opening a second door and finding themselves watching a dazed looking bugbear absently chopping at flesh laid out on a table. Jaina gazed in horror at the poor creature's demeanor and at the scars all around his head. Sentry, however, caught sight of something familiar. “Us?” He gasped, hurrying over to a small cage and kneeling in front of it. “Friend! You have returned! Free us! Please free us again! And we will help!” The Intellect Devourer leapt excitedly as its mind connected to Sentry's, recognizing him in this way. Sentry nodded, fumbling with the lock and cursing softly. “Astarion! I need help over here!” Astarion wrinkled his nose and scoffed at the sight of the creature. “Really? REALLY?!” Sentry stuck out his bottom lip and gazed wide eyed and helpless at Astarion, nodding his head repeatedly towards his trapped companion until finally, the vampire rolled his eyes and sighed, clapping a hand to his forehead and muttering under his breath before kneeling down and beginning to fiddle with the cage.

Meanwhile, Jaina was on her own mission to free a prisoner. “You poor guy...Why don't you just watch the colors up ahead, the flickering lights. Aren't they lovely?” She asked, furtively moving her hands to cast a spell, setting a colorful light show before the bugbear's eyes. “Huh...pretty....” The creature slurred, eyes focused solely on the lights, the colors reflecting in his eyes until they went dim as Jaina pressed her hand to his back. He coughed and sputtered, slowly sinking to the ground, gurgling and thrashing. Jaina's eyes widened in horror. “Drowning is supposed to be peaceful! Everyone says so...It's actually a major tenet of several of our farewell ceremonies!” She stammered, stepping back. “Yes, when you're drowning IN water, presumably.” Astarion remarked. “At any rate, he's gone now, you did him a favor. Let's keep moving.” Sentry smiled contentedly as Us rested peacefully atop his head, Gale and Wyll gazing up at the creature in abject horror. “Are you sure that's wise, Sentry?” Gale blinked, pointing to the creature. “Oh definitely.” Sentry nodded. “It's alright, we're friends.”

--- The next room appeared to be some sort of laboratory, they faced a rough battle to enter the area, though the undead had more numbers than actual power or skill on their side. The party split up to explore the room, Octavia, Gale, and Jaina searching around for artifacts of magical texts. Astarion, Wyll, and Sentry began to comb the rest of the area for treasure, instead stumbling across a strange experiment set up in a lone corner. A pale, ghastly looking head, completely shaved and with empty eyes sat on a strange aparatus. Beside it on one side were jars of brains, and on the other side was a recepticle. Sentry's eyes focused in awe on the entire set up, his fingers brushing across the face's skin. It could have been better cared for, there were preserving agents that might have done it a world of good, but otherwise it was well intact. The brains were lined up neat and orderly and Sentry picked up one, placing it in the recepticle.

The head stirred and the eyes gazed blankly up at him, the expressionless eyes widening. “Sentry?” Sentry staggered backwards. “D...Do you know me?” He gasped. “Sentry, thank the Dark Dancer! I hope I'm not too late...The man you're seeing is bad news.” The head spoke swiftly, its odd, almost artificial voice straining to express some level of concern. “Um...excuse me?” Astarion stared indignantly at the head. “You're excused, who the hells are you?” The head replied. “Don't take that snide tone with me, I'M the man he's seeing.” Astarion replied, pointing to himself. “Not you. Enver Gortash.” The head practically spat the name. “Wait....” Sentry froze at the sound of the name. “What did you say?” His eyes widened. That name, it was so familiar. It called to mind the pictures he could not stop drawing, the face that appeared even in his dreams.

“Enver Gortash. He's trouble, he....” “Alright, okay, but who are you? How did you know me?” Sentry asked, leaning in close to the head. “Wysp Silksong.” The head replied, almost sadly. “I was your friend....I loved you...” And then the head went still. “Please don't go...please...I have so many more questions!” Sentry cried out, but the head did not speak another word. Sentry removed the brain jar with shaking hands and placed it into his back gently, almost reverently. He tried to remember Wysp, he closed his eyes tightly as he felt tears begin to prick at the corners until a small tendril slipped beneath Sentry's eye and wiped away the tear. “No sadness, friend! We must escape!” Us echoed. Sentry gave a small smile at the creature's action, although he could guess it didn't really understand what he was feeling, the gesture still meant something to him. He shakily picked up a second jar and placed it in the slot, stepping back and waiting. “I wasn't good enough.....I wasn't good enough....I couldn't be him...” The head murmured, fear was apparent in the voice. “Couldn't be who?” Sentry asked softly, looking the head over. “Sentry Ojeda....His lover.” The head replied. “Enver Gortash's lover?” Sentry asked, beginning to suspect this one was also connected to him. The head wept softly, a soft waver to its speech. “Yes...he wanted me to be him...” “Why? Where was his lover?” Sentry asked curiously, leaning in eagerly. “Dead...” The head replied. Sentry's eyes widened. “Sentry Ojeda is...is dead?” He looked to Wyll and Astarion in confusion and then to the head. “H...How did he die?”

“I don't know....Gortash would only say that he died...and that he loved him...and that I could not measure up to him...” The head slipped back into its inert state. Sentry had gone pale and bit his lip nervously as the three made their way toward the others. He tried to force himself to gather his wits and breathe deeply. “Is everything alright? You're showing signs of trauma.” Octavia pointed out, looking Sentry over with a discerning eye. Sentry rolled his eyes and groaned. “Thank you, Octavia. I'm fine.” He managed to speak through his teeth, exhaling through his nose and trying to calm himself.

---

As they passed into the next room, Jaina's eyebrows raised in amusement as she noticed a lone pod in the corner and approached it leisurely, her grin making her all the more reminiscent of a shark. “Well, well, well! How the mighty have fallen!” She beamed, approaching the pod and examining it. “Why, Mizora, I'm surprised at you! All that ego and you've still ended up here...” The cambion glared and turned her head away from Jaina towards the rest of the group. “Wyll, reign in your little pet and come get me out of here!” She spat, red eyes narrowing. Wyll stepped up beside Jaina, giving the tiefling a knowing smile. She nodded her head to him. “Mizora, the way I see it, you're at a disadvantage trapped in there with a tadpole in your brain just like the rest of us...Before I get your out of there, I have one condition...”

The women rolled her eyes, glaring bitterly at Wyll. “Oh? And what is that?” “End my contract.” Wyll replied, folding his arms sternly across his chest. “End my contract or we leave you here.” “Imagine what a good thrall you would make, Mizora! Wouldn't it be fun to see the shoe on the other foot for once?” Jaina chimed in, clapping her hands together in mock excitement. “A little vacation, see how the common folk live and all that?” Mizora's face contorted in fury, but her red eyes darted from side to side and she realized she had no choice in the matter, inhaling deeply before responding. “Fine. Now get me out of here!” Jaina approached the controls and expertly opened the pod, allowing Mizora to step out, shaking the goo and fluid from her body, extending her wings to fling the rest of it from her. “Ah...much better....It certainly took you long enough.” She wrinkled her nose. “Though I suppose you've been caught up playing pirates with the little school marm here.” She gave Jaina a look of disdain. “Mm...Well, you'd be surprised how much more you can accomplish when you play well with others. School yard bullies don't have many friends.” Jaina replied with a shrug. “Just a little friendly advice.” Mizora bristled, but calmed herself and smirked at Jaina. “And penniless school teachers don't live out fairy tales. My own little nugget of free advice for you, Jaina.”

“Alright, so now we never have to see this bitch again, right? Since Wyll's contract is done?” Sentry piped up. “Ah, yes, thank you for reminding me, Mr. Ojeda....Ahem...” Mizora ruffled her wings and postured. “Clause Z, Section 13: 'If the soul binder consents to separation, she will release the soul-bearer from all obligation within six months.'” She gave a self-satisfied smirk. “Does no one read the find print before they sign anything? Gods...” Astarion scoffed under his breath. “Honestly, this is probably the only way she can keep anyone around.” Sentry murmured back. “Six months?! Damn you...” Wyll's voice trembled a bit. “Oh, and as I mentioned before, the horns and those delightful little ridges STILL won't go away even when you're no longer bound to me, so...Enjoy that...” The cambion smirked nastily. “Well if we're stuck with you for another six months, I feel like Wyll at least deserves SOMETHING for freeing you.” Jaina glared up at Mizora. Sentry noticed the way Jaina's tail was low to ground, swishing shakily back and forth. She was getting angry. Mizora smirked and tapped a finger to her lips. “Well, alright, I suppose he does deserve a little treat...” She snapped her fingers and flames encircled Wyll, the shape of a powerful, ornate blade beginning to form in his hands. “Now, if we're all finished here...”

“Oh we're not finished by a long shot, but for now I suppose we are.” Jaina folded her arms across her chest, standing protectively in front of Wyll. “Mmm...I'm sure that's very intimidating to the toddlers you teach, little girl.” Mizora sneered as she disappeared in a flash of fire. “Well, that went about as well as can be expected.” Sentry forced a smile. “Shall we press on?” Jaina walked by Wyll's side, pressing a hand gently to his arm. “Six months...Wyll...I'm so sorry...I didn't realize it would be so long...” Wyll sighed and shook his head. “The way I see it, at least this means I keep my abilities for the rest of our quest to deal with The Absolute...I suppose without them, I'd be pretty useless.” Jaina shook her head. “Not at all! A swordsman is plenty capable, I've seen deck hands with enough swashbuckling skills take down fully trained casters with a quick enough hand.” She assured him, smiling gently up at him. “And, if you really want to have access to magic, bards and wizards learn from nothing and you DO happen to know a beginner magic teacher.” She beamed. “Well, I would much prefer one on one lessons with this teacher.” Wyll gave a dashing smile. “Lest I embarrass myself by getting bested by a three year old in class.” Jaina nodded her head. “They can be pretty vicious, I understand your concern.” She clapped his arm playfully. “Private lessons it is!”

----

The next room held several pods similar to the one they had found Mizora in. Inside them, prone figures lay entombed, some already transformed, one very familiar. Sentry's eyes widened and he rushed to the pod.

Inside, Zevlor seemed to sleep fitfully, his body twitching with every labored breath. The voice at the back of Sentry's head was gnawing at him, but he couldn't make out what it was saying over the memories of the night at the tiefling party. He could not leave Zevlor like this. Pressing a hand to the front of the pod briefly, he stepped away, looking for a control mechanism. “Small warning, Mr. Ojeda.” Octavia piped up as she examined the control panel Sentry was seeking. “There isn't exactly a way to open only certain pods, you would have to open them all...This would, it goes without saying, also release the ghaik.” “I don't care, we can defeat them. I can't leave him like this.” Sentry shook his head. Octavia nodded her understanding and took a step back, but not before showing Sentry the proper control to open the pods. As the pods hissed open, a half-orc woman in scout's garb staggered from one, shaking a haze of dizziness from herself. A human woman stumbled from another, trembling slightly, Zevlor limped from his as Sentry moved to catch him if needed, but as the pods which contained illithids hissed open, Sentry realized the older paladin didn't much need his help as Zevlor immediately took a fighting stance, heating his sword for a smite and fully cleaving one of the mind-flayers in two with a single blow. Sentry drew his axe and joined the battled, sending the head of a second mindflayer rolling across the floor while Us leapt from Sentry's shoulders and began tearing into its fellow Intellect Devourers with vigor. The fight was over almost before it began with the furious, adrenaline filled captives eager to gain their freedom and Sentry's own party still holding up well even after their encounter in the lab. When the enemy lay defeated and Us had clamored back onto his shoulder, Sentry approached Zevlor, gently pressing a hand to his shoulder and looking into his eyes.

“Zev....What happened?” Sentry asked, voice brimming with concern. Zevlor shook his head. “You should have no pity for me, boy...” He looked away, expression riddled with guilt. “I know I have no right to ask you this, but the others...did they survive?” Sentry bit his lip and looked at the ground. “Some...Actually a lot really...Rolan, Cal, and Lia protected them...he's very good actually, for all the bluster, my pal's a pretty amazing wizard.” He managed a little laugh. “The kids...Alfira and Lakrissa, Bex and Danis...Dammon...I think a few others....But so many were dead on the path...Zevlor, please, what the hells happened?” Zevlor inhaled deeply. “Thank you for telling me, Sentry...The others have likely told you I froze up, that I panicked...That is far kinder than the truth...” He began, shaking his head. “The Absolute gave me a vision...one where I would be a paladin again, with all the powers of the gods and I would save my people, be able to protect them...” His expression darkened and he looked away in shame. “I imagined myself their savior as they fought and died around me...” Sentry frowned. “Zevlor, you ARE a paladin. Whether or not Helm or whoever grants you his power. FUCK Helm. You wanted to do right by your people, you were a good man and a good leader...” He continued, shaking his head. “You didn't need The Absolute....You didn't need a god...Your oath was to them....THEY gave you your power.... and now...” He sighed, shrugging his shoulders. “Now you need to find something to believe in...hells, Zevlor...you're worth so much more than this, old man...” Zevlor breathed deeply. “I'm sorry, Sentry...No apology will ever be enough for the people I've failed, but you're right...for now, allow me to free any other captives that remain down here while you continue downward...If I survive, you'll have my aid in the fight to come.”

Sentry grabbed Zevlor's wrist. “You have to survive. You owe it to the ones who didn't.” His dual colored eyes flared intensely. Zevlor nodded. “I suppose you're right...I'll make it through...” --- Sentry's mind was reeling as they entered the next room. Zevlor had seemed the ideal of a tiefling paladin when they had met, Sentry had imagined everything Zevlor was was everything that he SHOULD be when he shrugged off whatever this curse was, but now, now he wasn't sure. He barely noticed as he wandered ahead of the party through what appeared to be a dormitory. When he realized where he was and what he was doing, he found himself face to face with a strange woman. She was heavily tattooed with dark ink and her colorless, cruel eyes were frighteningly familiar to him. Red crossed his vision as he saw those eyes staring down at him, a wicked smile on those inked lips as agony ripped through his body. He blinked back the visions and stared a moment. “Another of Balthazar's walking corpses is out from under his control again...” The woman sighed, but she paused a moment as she looked Sentry over. “Wait....I remember you...” Her lips curled into a horrifying mockery of a fond smile. “I thought I'd never see you again...” Sentry stared dumbfounded, his companions catching up at this point. Jaina looked from Sentry to the woman and then back, confusion apparent on her face. Wyll kept a hand near the hilt of his new rapier, his eyes never leaving the woman. Octavia peered curiously from the back of the group, looking to Gale for possible answers, but the other wizard seemed equally puzzled. Astarion moved closer to Sentry.

“Oh, I'd wanted to keep you for myself, but they took you away...” She reached out, fingertips dancing all too close to Sentry's face. Astarion bristled at that, but Sentry simply stood frozen, hanging on every word. “W...What do you mean 'keep me'?” Sentry finally managed, his voice barely above a choked whisper as he took a step back from her reach. Her eyes widened in shock. “You talk! And you're aware! How is that possible?” She looked him over intently, even as he took a staggering step back. “Oh what an arresting voice you have, my special one...” Her fingertips finally brushed his cheek, making Sentry shudder convulsively. “You're not supposed to be here, but I don't want to damage you...After all, you were my very first...yes, everything I learned about the parasite, I learned from you...” “You....you....” Sentry stared in wide eyed terror. “Yes, I found you close to death, beaten black and blue on the floor of the sanctum...” She continued. Sentry remembered sketching...He remembered sitting and sketching, oblivious to anything around him. “It must have been hours since the tadpole was placed in your skull...” Sketching...He was sketching...he was sketching and then...he was sketching and then...red...and then pain... “I stitched you up just enough to keep you alive...” She cooed. “And then I placed you in your crib...” Her palm pressed to Sentry's face. “I kept you as mine.” Sentry's mind flashed back to the dark little padded cage in the lower city hovel, being thrown into the room and shut behind the bars, a mockery of a children's crib almost, the implication of safety hiding the danger he'd been in. How vulnerable he had felt. His face twitched.

“Don't touch him!”Astarion snapped abruptly. The woman only gave him a withering look and then returned her gaze to Sentry. “We had such a close bond, you and I...” She continued. “I opened you up endlessly with my scalpel, and got lost in your insides....” The red pain, the pressure inside of him, his own screams and moans of pain filling the air as he was barely conscious. He had been sketching, he had been sketching... “This is where someone infected me?” Sentry managed, his head still reeling from all of this, so much that had been lost to him being thrust on him so painfully, so abruptly. “I was not responsible, I don't know...but whoever did it, I'm glad they left you here for me...” She cupped Sentry's chin with a smirk. He was sketching and then pain....and then...who? Who did he see? That face! The one he kept sketching, but it was wrong, it was all wrong. The eyes, the eyes that should have been green.... “That's enough!” Wyll snapped finally, glaring at the woman, who took a step back at the outburst.

She simply shook her head and sighed. “I'm not surprised you found your way back here, I always knew you were clever...” She smirked. Then she sighed and shook her head. “It has never been the same with another, all the other victims who come here meekly obey...But you thrashed, you fought...” Her lips curled into a cruel parody of a loving smile. “You were indomitable...but...as special as you are, I can't have you prancing about acting as though you have free will...” She gave a wicked smile at Sentry. “We're going to kill you, sweet one, but I promise, I will stay with you afterwards...” Sentry's eyes had gone empty and hollow, staring straight forward and his mouth was set in a snarl, foam and saliva painting his lips and his sharp teeth. His face contorted into a snarl of rage and his party at once stepped back from him as he raised his axe high above his head and before this mad doctor could draw her weapon or utter a spell, Sentry's axe was coming down on her body again and again in rapid succession, horrible howls and cries escaping Sentry's lips as he hacked her to pieces, his posture bestial and feral. Jaina's eyes darted to the side and she realized the necromancer hadn't been the only threat, a quick shock of electricity flew from her hands, sending a bug bear twitching and spasming across the floor. Wyll practically danced to her side, locking his blade with a sickly looking human, feinting to the right before returning to run him through. Gale aimed a well timed fireball to the other side, stopping a gnome in his tracks and sending him flailing away from the group, his entire body engulfed.

Sentry was on his knees now, panting heavily, his body a mess of blood and viscera as he tried to catch his breath, the slightest hint of frustrated, angry tears still in the corners of his eyes. “She treated me like a plaything....I was left for dead....and I was just a toy....and I still don't know who left me here...” He murmured softly. “Only that this woman felt entitled to me...to my body...just like everyone else...” A pale hand rested on his shoulder. “I know the feeling, Sentry....But she's gone now. You're safe.” Astarion's voice was softer than usual, reassuring. “Same as you promised me, no one will put you through that ever again. Alright?” He stepped around to stand in front of Sentry, even ignoring the enticing aroma of blood as he held out a hand to help Sentry to his feet. “Thanks...” The tiefling accepted his hand and allowed himself to be pulled back to his feet. He turned his head to look towards Gale and Octavia. “Hey, I bet she has research notes or something...You can keep any you find that aren't about me...necromancy would probably be an interesting addition to your book.” Octavia smiled back at him. “You're right! So few people write about it, although I suspect that has something to do with Vlaakith wanting to keep her secrets...what a find!” The Githyanki beamed as she made her way to the nearest room, beginning to shuffle through books and parchment. Gale gazed appreciatively at a few scrolls and heavy, leatherbound books, squirreling them away in his bag and helping himself to a reagent pouch as well. “It wouldn't do to run low so close to the end, now, would it?”

Jaina frowned slightly as her eyes fell on a book bound in strange leather laying half hidden under one of the beds. She crossed the room slowly and knelt down, slowly pulling it from its spot and opening it across her lap. Inside were countless drawings. Anatomical charts, perhaps? Several bodies in various stages of evisceration and being carved apart with notes in the margins. Sketches of strange, nightmarish creatures she was unfamiliar with took up entire pages, or some were just filled with unblinking eyes or gaping fanged maws. There were pictures of that same man Sentry always drew, illustrated in the same hand, and finally, on the last page, an unfinished sketch of what seemed to be the walls of this very colony. She closed the book and held it to her chest, slowly rising to her feet and returning to the party. Wordlessly, she held the book out to Sentry, who took it in his trembling hands. The final, unfinished sketch was splattered with blood and saliva, smearing some of the charcoal and staining the paper. His hands shook more violently as he gazed at the page. 'I died here....' He realized, wide eyed with horror, shakily closing the book and placing it in his pack with his current sketch book. “I wanted to draw the illithid colony....I liked how the walls moved and undulated like pulsing organs...and veins...” He breathed. “I can't remember anything else about that day...but that's what I was doing...” ---- Sentry was quiet as the party made their way down into the bowels of the illithid colony, he seemed at least comforted by Us resting on his head and running its tendrils absently over his neck. It was an unsettling sight, to say the least, but if it made him feel better after what he had been through, no one was about to question it. As the party approached a particularly large doorway and made their way through, they noticed Ketheric was not alone.

Ducking quickly behind some stalagmite-like structures rising from the floor, they watched the scene unfold. Sentry found himself dumbstruck, eyes wide with recognition as the face he'd drawn over and over for as long as he could remember smirked at Ketheric in a look of smug superiority. His heart quickened at the sight of the man, perhaps his theory had been right all the time, after all, hadn't the brains in those jars confirmed it? He had loved this man. A part of him demanded to rush up to him and fling his arms around him, to sink his nails and claws into the man's flesh and never let go, but he couldn't give away their position, they had come too far. More unsettling, the young woman leaning on the back of a kneeling man looked familiar as well. A cold mix of fear and pity filled Sentry's chest as he took in the look of her. So pale with a marbling of blood red to her skin, her eyes white and glinting cruelly in the dim light. Her long pale golden hair was adorned with blades and jewels and her lips were painted a deep black shade. “Father!” Wyll gasped softly at the sight of the man the woman was currently leaning her body against. “By The Wave Mother, he looks unwell...” Jaina frowned. He was far different from the proud, strong man who had overseen her brother and his fellow cadets graduating into the ranks of The Flaming Fist just a few years earlier, she would never have recognized him if Wyll hadn't pointed him out.

“That woman is a changeling...how fascinating!” Octavia whispered. “I have never seen one in their natural form before...She's surprisingly lovely.” The young woman mused, jotting down some notes in the leatherbound book she carried with her. Sentry was only dimly aware of the others words as he focused on the scene playing out ahead of him. He watched as the man he'd apparently been in love with gave Ketheric a disdainful glare. “You said it was under control...” There was impatience in his voice, an authority that Sentry couldn't help but feel like toying with, resisting to see how far it would get him. “It isn't you I answer to, Gortash.” Ketheric replied bluntly, returning the man's glare. The man, Gortash, chuckled and smirked again. “Oh, the general voice.” He mocked, performing an exaggerated bow. “Is this where we salute?” Sentry got the distinct feeling this would have been highly amusing to him if only he knew where he fit into all this, if only his mind weren't so focused on trying desperately to backtrack through his foggy past. “Salute, yes” The woman grinned. “With cleavers through his blood-starved flesh. How it crawls with failure like flies on lick-wet carrion.” Their conversation continued on as Sentry's eyes never left Gortash. He saw flashes of a past he was part of. Sentry stood over a bloodied corpse, raising a scalpel high, Gortash's hand with those elegant clawed rings around his wrist, guiding his hand down to make another incision, whispering to him just where to slice for the cleanest cut without damaging the parts he needed, his hot breath against Sentry's ear, his tongue running along the shell of it.

He rested his head lazily against his chest as the two lay in a warm bath together, the water pink with a mixture of soap and blood. Sentry's laughter filled a small, hidden workshop as Gortash hoisted him up by his hips and sat him on a workbench, slowly spreading Sentry's powerful legs. “Sentry!” Wyll hissed, nodding towards the platform where the three Chosen were now standing at the edge. Sentry shook off the fog of his memories and watched. “The Edict of Bane.” Gortash raised a clenched fist, a purple stone glowing at his gauntlet. “The Lash of Bhaal!” The pale woman raised a dagger into the air, which sent a cold chill down Sentry's spine. “The Testament of Myrkul!” Ketheric spread his arms and puffed out his chest. As the three stones glowed, a massive being began to rise up from the murky waters that ran through the colony. The entire party stared wide eyed as the creature breached the surface of the water, cruel eyes shining at the underside of what appeared to be a massive brain. “An Elderbrain...” Octavia whispered, equal parts fear and fascination painting her face. “It's now or never...” Gale bit his lip, slowly rising to his feet, taking a deep breath as he gazed at the creature. Octavia fully dropped her notebook and pen to the ground, grabbing Gale's arm. “No! You can't do this! We can fight it!”

“I have no choice....Mystra...” Gale began. “FUCK Mystra.” Sentry spat. “When has Mystra ever cared about what's best for anyone but her? When have most gods?” “Gale, you don't have to do this...Shadowheart defied Shar and Lae'zel and Kroger turned their backs on Vlaakith. There's life beyond Mystra...and I'm not just saying that as a sorcerer.” Jaina added gently. “If nothing else, Gale, consider that you would also be taking Octavia with you, you'd never want her hurt, right?” Wyll placed a hand softly on Gale's shoulder. “Or the rest of us, let's not forget the rest of us.” Astarion rolled his eyes. Gale looked to Octavia, his expression gentle, thoughtful. Her bright eyes stared back up at him hopefully, her fingers digging into his arm now, just a little. He nodded his head. “Right, well...I guess no one's exploding today then...” Octavia beamed, throwing her arms tightly around him and holding close. Gale gently slipped his arms around her, but his eyes couldn't help but wander back to those stones, and to the strange apparatus atop the elder brain. An idea was forming in his mind, one Mystra had clearly not considered.

“Well, glad that oh so dramatic little show is over.” Astarion brushed himself off. “But with that said, what are we going to do about the giant abomination these Chosen are controlling?” “Nothing right now, it looks like they're leaving.” Sentry pointed out as the brain disappeared down the winding flooded corridor. “But, we can still do something about him at least.” He pointed to Ketheric, who now stood alone on the raised platform.

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