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foxesandmagic · 4 years

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OCs This Month (May)

Just a list of all the OCs that I’ve seen and have captured my interest this month through other’s aesthetics, questions and the likes. Under the ‘Read More’ because it seemed really long this month (which I love!).

@moirei: Harry Potter OC Rue; The Mandalorian OC Eyrie.

@kcnobls: Original Story OC Jasmine; Teen Wolf OC Sydney; OC Dylan; OCs Shelley and David.

@chlobenet: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them OC Maggie; Jurassic World OC Ellis; Teen Wolf OC Elsa.

@nostarielstuff: Original Story OC Scarlett.

@emiliachrstine: Star Wars OC Naya; Marvel OCs John, Jackie, Madison and Alice.

@the-october-reviewer: Multiple DC OCs; Gilmore Girls OC Regina; The Librarians OC Narissa.

@randomestfandoms-ocs: Riverdale OC Amethyst; Marvel OC Tesla; Gilmore Girls OC Sophie; Glee OC Aurora; Descendants OC Finley; Descendants OC Elise; Descendants OC Violet; IT OC Jessica; Legacies OC Elena; Riverdale OC Riley; Stranger Things OC Angie; Teen Wolf OC Eden; Glee OC Aurora.

@heirsoflilith: Original Story OCs Aiden, Simon, Aislin, Tommy, Kasey and Ezora.

@sgtbuckyybarnes: Marvel OC Harper; Teen Wolf OC Perrie; 911 OC Drew; Marvel OC Elodie.

@catharticallysarcastic: Original Story OCs Leda, Raiden, Victoria, Isabelle, Zizi, Annie, Mike, Caiden and Niko; Original OCs Jameson and Josephine; Original OCs Evangelina and Caden.

@papergirlverse: Legends of Tomorrow OC Alex; Star Wars OCs Bryn, Kirah, Jaina and Jacen; Marvel OC Nikolaj; Constantine OC Nina; Harry Potter: Marauders Era OC Eliza; The Vampire Diaries OC Nell; The Flash OC Jasmine; Harry Potter OC Carina; Legends of Tomorrow Echo; Teen Wolf OC Ali; Harry Potter OC Gwen; Marvel OC Margot; Marvel OC Kostia; Downton Abbey OC Louise.

@thecaillic: Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery OC Piper.

@audreycarterrogers: Marvel OC Audrey; Marvel OC Juliette; Marvel OC Olivia.

@raging-violets: OCs Jackson Family; The Chronicles of Narnia OC Issi; The Flash OCs Cadence, Brady, Courtney, Leah and Alicia.

@kenobi-jinn: Star Wars OC Beck; The Mandalorian OC Merrill.

@a-song-of-quill-and-feather: Harry Potter OC Dahlia; Harry Potter OC Cassiopeia; Harry Potter OC Tristram.

@darknightfrombeyond: Arrow OC Amy.

@missecharlotte: Riverdale OC Lauren.

@notxjustxstories: The Mentalist OC Cassandra; The Umbrella Academy OC Cordelia; Legacies OC Qiaolian; Legacies OC Di; Multiple Power Rangers OCs.

@ocfairygodmother: Marvel OC Libby; Pirates of the Caribbean OC Georgiana; IT OC Mandy; Peaky Blinders OC Esther.

@fiercefray: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. OC Anna; Constantine OCs Cami and Eden.

@farrradays: Original Story OCs Kate, Edgar and many others; Original OCs Rose and Gideon; Original Story OCs Arthur and Albert; Original Story OC Murphy.

@curious-kittens-ocs: Law and Order: SVU OC Abbigail; Law and Order: SVU OC Erika; OC Juliet.

@moustache-bonnet: The Secret Commonwealth OC Kat.

@noble-crescent: Doctor Who OC Renata; Doctor Who OC Minerva.

@princessofdarkness12: Heroes OC Nico; Harry Potter OCs Adora and Joey.

@isaaclahys: Teen Wolf OC Tessa; 911 OC Harmony.

@ceruleanmusings: Arrow OC Sage; Teen Wolf OC Mel; Avatar OC Michi.

@darlinglittlesammywinchester: The Kate Daniels Series OC Clarissa.

@daisyjohvson: Gilmore Girls OC Everliegh; Supernatural OC Evie.

@lizziesxltzmxn: Twilight OC Othello; Teen Wolf OCs Amira, Ludomir and Esme; Daybreak OC Mason.

@nefariousbella9: Twilight OC Ruth.

@codenamekryptonite: Original OCs Noah, Wynter, Patriklos, Mikael and Ester; Marvel OC Stephanie.

@perfectlystiles: Power Rangers OCs Aaron, Remy, Carson, Sierra and Dylan; Multiple DC OCs; Legends of Tomorrow OC Amara; Doctor Who OC Theo; Star Wars OC Vera; Teen Wolf OC Hazel.

@freakingbradleys: Star Wars OC Kal.

@wowihavetoomanyocs: Game of Thrones OC Beatrix.

@atomicgracy: Criminal Minds OC Bea; The Umbrella Academy OC Violet.

cassercole: Multiple Marvel OCs; Marvel OCs Q and Dawson.

@hogwarts-is-my-wonderland: Star Wars OC Mirye; The Flash OC Karen; Harry Potter OC Anya.

@dreamerwithapen1: Star Wars OC Furi; IT OC Wendy; Avatar the Last Airbender OC Renetta; Avatar the Last Airbender OC Kagome.

@seize-the-droid: Power Rangers OC Maya; Power Rangers OC Hayden; Power Rangers OC Kiera; The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers OC Sam.

@thegalanerd: Teen Wolf OC Emsy.

@alivrse: Legacies OC Stefanie; Teen Wolf OC Esme; The Vampire Diaries OC Nevaeh.

@anotherunreadblog: Spiderman OC Rosabella.

@isaaclahys: The Amazing Spiderman OC Freya.

@bitchyesimadeahpblog: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them OC Eloise; Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them OC Cadmus; Harry Potter OC Annie.

@lahnistersden: The 100 OC Dakota.

@peacheydelanhoes: Shadowhunters OC Dawn.

@ahoy-scoops-troop: Stranger Things OC Kat.

@erzascarlettitania: Teen Wolf OC Tia; Harry Potter OC Meg; Legacies OC Faith; Avatar The Last Airbender OC Ai.

@avengiers: Teen Wolf OC Robyn.

@starcrossedjedis: Star Wars OC Cassia; Star Wars OCs Nyka’a and Jaren.

@megdonnellys: F.R.I.E.N.D.S. OC Sydney.

@malice1329: Multiple Sailor Moon OCs.

@alloftheimaginesblog: Stranger Things OC Jenny.

@iron-parkr: Marvel OC Maggie.

@mimikoflamemaker: The Witcher OC Neve.

@billy--hargroves: Stranger Things OC Kimberly; Outlander OC Ellie; Stranger Things OC Charlotte; Stranger Things OC Carrie; Stranger Things OC Edith.

@tangleddiaries: Marvel OC Anastasia.

@authorbarbie: Stranger Things OC Jennifer.

@ocfanhub: Descendants OC Honey.

@thetenthdoctorscompanion: National Treasure OC Gertrude.

@hazels-afro: Teen Wolf OC Marisol.

@spectrumofsculs: The Flash OC Julius.

@theseowleyes: Stranger Thngs OC Cady.

@lenonizi-fics: MacGyver OC Luke; DC OC Kyle.

@richitozier: The Flash OC Josephine.

@abbysarcane: The Amazing Spiderman OC Frida; Jessica Jones OC Joel; Marvel OC Maya.

@spectrumofsculs: Original OC Damien.

@mamseries: Harry Potter OC Wilhelmina.

@alias-b: Stranger Things OC Evie.

@mystic-scripture: Criminal Minds OC Wendy.

@fleetwoodmcs: Marvel OC Annie; The Hobbit OC Eponine.

@tandybowcns: OC Hailey.

@darling-stories: Peaky Blinders OC Mona.

@hvproductions: The Originals OC Genoveva.

@mountain-ash-and-rusted-iron: Harry Potter OC Thea; Riverdale OC Jen.

@jarvis-is-my-copilot: Marvel OC Elisa.

@newthomally: Star Wars OC Nova; Multiple Original OCs.

@fraysquake: Marvel OC Sofia.

@wild-stdreams: The Delerium Series characters (original fiction).

@ad-merloria: IT OC Lauralynn.

@jewelswrites-ish: Supernatural OC.

@barbychan4ever: OC Vada.

@darlinglittlesammywinchester: Wynonna Earp OC Wynter.

@sivahnalyrarose: Spiderman OC Lennox.

@prophecy-grrl: Once Upon a Time OC Alice; Titans OC Annabel.

@ofbadcharacters: The Originals OC Carmen.

@ahsokatonas: Star Wars OC Nara.

@catgrant: Teen Wolf OC Liv.

@nkskywalker: Star Wars OC Natasha.

@stranger-things-ocs: Stranger Things OC Benjamin.

@afluffykiwi: Multiple Original OCs.

By the way, if you have tag lists and I’ve not asked yet, can I please be added to your tag list for everything, pelase?

#Other People's OCs #OCs This Month #May #Multiple Fandoms

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fletchingbrilliant · 4 months

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Crossroads

•• A story of choices by Fletch ••

(with special contributions from @zaebeecee)

Read on AO3

CW: Historically accurate reference to racially charged violence and cruelty (as pertains to the USA in the early 1900s, particularly in the Deep South), Graphic Violence, Reference to SA

•••

This is a headcanon minific I've referenced before with this piece.

Zae and I concocted a backstory for Alastor that we thought was pretty rad and I wrote it out (with Zae handling Alastor's New Friend). Is it perfectly in line with everything confirmed in canon? Probably not but we did our best and we like how it reads anyway.

If you like the vibe injected in aspects of Alastor's inception, check out The Dunwich Horror. It's in the public domain. And if you've read it, I hope you enjoy the references I sneaked in there! :D

•••

It was always said that the boy was born wrong.

On a sweltering hot night in early August, deep in the swamplands of Louisiana, Ezora Castrie was in her little shack at the edge of the village screaming with the pains of labor. Well over two hours had passed before her help came in the form of Miss Eugénie and two other ladies who were to assist her. They made frequent stops to check on Ezora in her condition over the course of her condition, but this kindness lessened as the days grew hotter and thicker, even though her belly was growing bigger and bigger. As the resident medicine woman, it was usually Ezora who handled the responsibilities of the midwife, and she had intended for it always to be that way. This was never meant to happen. But happen it did, and everyone had to find a way to make do.

It was a difficult pregnancy, and everyone agreed that it was because of the ill nature of its conception. Even Ezora conceded the ugly truth, and though she would not give many words to the matter, she knew it was wrong beyond the transgression of that white vagabond. Whatever signs and portents she had gleaned through her conjuring, she was keeping them all to herself. Her secrecy would have caused the village to lose much of their trust in Ezora, but they never trusted the woman to begin with. She was known to be skilled, and a hoodoo woman was a valuable asset and usually much loved in her community. But Ezora was not like others who worked hoodoo. She had strange ways about her, and she was not friendly. Most folks believed that she had dabbled with things that turned her into a madwoman. They could not have guessed how mad she would become after she brought those things into the world.

Miss Eugénie and her helpers attended Ezora as she wailed, bleeding on the floor. Beads of sweat were as pearls along her brow, glistening in firelight. Orange, brown, and black waves were cast over the walls, fading in and out over an ocean of red. The midwives thought for sure that the child had been lost, but Ezora screamed that it was still squirming inside of her. When they pulled him out he was silent, and they had to unplug his mouth of primordial slime before he would breathe. He wouldn't cry. They smacked the child's backside. Still he did not cry. But the baby's unsettling demeanor was quickly overshadowed by the bloating of Ezora’s stomach, and her cries that it was not over. Miss Eugénie had to face a terrifying realization.

There was a twin.

It took two of them to ease its passage while the third held the first infant, and Eugénie wondered if maybe there were two more of them and their flesh was fused up together. She'd heard of that sort of horrific thing occurring with some folks. It was abnormal, but so was that man that they never did find. The white man who forced his seed into their medicine woman, then vanished with no trace save for the results of his foul crime.

The strength left the mother, and she hollered with one final cry, “That's not my child! I have one child, one child!!” Then her head rolled back and she slept, her skin stretched and tore, and the thing fell out of her and into the arms of the terrified midwives. When the horrid lumps of pink and yellow flesh squirmed in some attempt to live, the real baby finally made a sound. And the midwives all said that his sound was like the most horrible, beautiful music they had ever heard.

Ever since that night, Miss Eugénie and the others swore that what Ezora brought into the world that night was not of this or any other place they knew. Both the boy and the thing were foul and strange, and they said that only bad things could come of them being around. Not that they ever did anything about these beliefs, content merely to gossip and wonder and spread even stranger stories as the years went by. Most of the village didn't believe them about the thing. Eugénie said that they threw it away into the creek behind the house and hoped it would just drown. If it was alive – and they swore it was alive – it had to have a mouth. And it had no proper limbs to save itself, so it was surely the best thing to do. It must have died in the creek, they said. To the baby, they could do no such thing. It was a baby after all, by all appearances, and Ezora came back around too quickly for them to trespass further than mere contemplation. She agreed that the thing was better left for dead, but was furious when they told her they left it so close by. All the same, by sun up the thing was gone. And no one but the four women who were there that night ever saw it, or even truly believed that it existed at all. And only Ezora believed that the thing was still out there somewhere. Ezora called the boy Alastor, and even though his skin was lighter than hers and would remain a constant reminder of the monster he came from, she determined that she loved him and that she always would. What became of the thing that was his twin – because of course it didn't really die – Ezora never lived long enough to see.

•

The horror made its way through the village some fifteen years later, emerging from the bayou much larger than it had been, but unseen by any eye that attempted to observe it. Houses were destroyed, families vanished, and then it seemed to leave. It was only when a white family was wiped from existence and their house caved in like a broken eggshell that things got so much worse. They had heard of no horror, they refused to believe that unknowable things could and did exist in the world and in the space between worlds, and chose to blame the entire village instead. One excuse to fuel their cruel actions was as good as any other. And they came with weapons and with fire and with hatred in their hearts. Alastor saw it all happen. He saw the horror when no one else could. He saw his people – distrusting though they were – being rounded up and beaten. And his mother… he heard the shouts that Ezora was chased into the swamp. He had been outside of the village when it all began, gathering materials for his mother’s work.

He was too late to save her.

And he was too late to catch the ones who did it.

But the horror, the thing that was Alastor's twin, did not survive. It brought death and destruction to the village, it skulked about the marshlands in an incomplete agony, and when Alastor caught up to it eager to take out his rage on the thing, he heard it cry out a name that shook him and crawled into his blood. He didn't know to whom the name belonged, only that it would live in his blood forever. The thing then died, and Alastor was left alone.

The strange boy called Alastor held onto every wicked thing he ever saw, and each wicked thing he gathered was stored in a different place within his mind. Some wickedness brought fulfillment, whether through vindication or the pursuit of knowledge. Some wickedness was pointless; cruelty for its own sake was not always satisfying. Those who could not defend themselves were never to be targeted (save for very particular circumstances), and often it felt good to defend them. As for who qualified as a defenseless victim… Alastor observed that those parameters were often subject to change. His aim, however, never changed. His mother had spent his childhood teaching him everything she knew, from the ways of root conjure to cooking proper creole meals. The people of the village called him a monster, and his mother did too. But even though he was a monster, his mother still loved him. And he knew that if anything he had ever felt was love, it was what he felt for his mother.

With the thing that was like love and the wickedness he calculated, Alastor developed a plan. It could be said that there was nothing left in this world to keep the boy tethered to it save for the music of his voice, which he kept alive ever since the song he sang on the day he was born. So he went to the crossroads, carrying his journal which possessed all the notes he scribed from the books he'd gotten his hands on, candles and charcoal and matches and water in a flask. Other things too were in his pack, all for putting together his strange ritual.

There were many ideas as to how to summon a spirit at the crossroads, and many ideas as to what the spirit might do. Some things were constants. A crossroad was a place in between places, that much was agreed upon. And as an in between place, it was one where spirits walked more easily, especially those that still meddled with life on this earth. Then there was a book Alastor had acquired. It talked of different spirits – demons, they were called – who granted different boons to those who called on them. He found the one who could grant him what he desired, the first in its number, and he drew its sigil in the ground. It even looked a little like a crossroad, or perhaps like the cosmogram. He lit the appropriate candles, burned the appropriate herbs, then rose and sliced his arm open over the seal, his blood glittering under a full moon. And he called out for the demon with the words he had read. For some reason Alastor himself could not discern, the words came out in a haunting melody he had never heard. But he let it flow out of him, singing into a bright night with his desires flowing freely from his heart.

The night air, so warm and balmy, suddenly grew chill as it swept past where Alastor stood, teasing his hair and rustling his clothes. Underneath that chill was a smell, something odd and unnatural; it was so faint as to be difficult to discern, but it was distinctly unpleasant in the moments before it seemed to vanish, never staying long enough to identify.

A voice whispered something to him, but they weren’t words he knew. It may have simply been the wind.

Yog ot ah'ehyeagl ng ph'nglui n'ghftog.

With a flutter of wings, a black bird lit onto the old wooden signpost that stood in the grass just off the crossroads. It was the size of a largish crow, somehow strange, its upper beak broken into a jagged point and its plumage ratty around its neck and tail. It stared at Alastor with an eye that seemed to glint a brilliant green—a green so bright that he could only say he had seen it from a distance in the finest dyed silks—in the moonlight overhead. It opened its mouth and released a sound that Alastor had never heard before; it was the sound of a bird, surely, but no bird that the boy could identify. The sound echoed in the still air like many voices, and to Alastor’s ears, it sounded like a question.

Excitement took hold more than fear or uncertainty, though it would have been a lie to discount any one of the three. He steeled himself and addressed the bird.

“I call upon Bael, head of the infernal powers. He who possesses knowledge, love, compelling voice, who moves unseen and understands ambition and growth. I demand he speak with me in the space between spaces.”

The bird let out another cry, and this one seemed to double over itself, and then again, growing and doubling and growing, until the sound echoed all around him. As the noise bled into itself and began to lose meaning, it changed: laughter, somehow both subdued in nature and rich in tone, from an unseen man. It was joined by more laughter, other voices turning to a chorus of sound that cut off with an abrupt snap so visceral Alastor nearly lost his balance.

“And what might a mortal child, not yet possessed of his own manhood, desire from the embryonic birthplace of spirit? What demands might a boy presume to make of the immured voices?”

The voice did not come from the bird, for the bird was no longer there. The voice didn’t seem to come from anywhere. But Alastor could feel something stalking around him, unheard and unseen but so very cold and so very present.

He kept his hands firmly at his sides but could not stop himself from shivering and shuddering, his jaw clenched against the unpleasant feeling. Even beholding the horror had not gripped his heart so. But no matter what, he could not falter. No matter what, he had to remain true to his goal. “I c-call on you to demand your gifts, the… the gifts you bestow on those who show the will to take them.”

A voice exhaled somewhere near his ear, a noise somewhere between a soft “ah” of understanding and the sound of a draft that pushed its way under the crack of a wooden door in an old house.

“You desire my gifts… Alastor,” the voice said, again near and far, everywhere and nowhere. “And you believe your hands to be capable of wielding such a tool? What a fascinating child it is that has called me from the senary bridewell. Tell me, Ahnah Eyhe, what would you give for such a gift?”

“I would give…” Don't let your eagerness be known. Don't give what you can't afford to lose. “...I would not give my mind. Not my heart, either.”

“Oh, I have no use for either,” the voice chuckled. “Your mind is much more useful in your head, child, and your heart is a tar pit whence nothing living shall ever emerge. What I want… is something you are sure not to miss.”

Alastor felt something touch the center of his chest. It felt like a hand, but bigger than an adult’s. He couldn’t pull himself away.

“I want your soul, Alastor.”

The soul is not the mind. It is not the heart. Alastor had always reasoned this. Of all he knew, all he had learned, the soul truly was not something he would miss. If this creature could give him what he wanted, and he did not need his soul for that power… it didn't matter. His goal was more important.

“And in return,” the boy said, shuddering, wishing he could keep away from that horrible pressure. It felt as though he'd lose all his breath, that his voice might leave him. Why was it so weak when he could not even see the thing?? “You will give me the ability to reach my true potential.”

“True potential…” the voice purred, like a contented cat. “It’s a deal.”

The hand left his chest, and though Alastor still could not see the demon, he knew there was a hand in front of him, offered like a handshake.

Don't do nothing stupid, my boy

This wasn't stupid. This was the first step in becoming what he was meant to be. He would butcher the men who murdered his mother. He would slaughter their families in front of them. Then he would take that blood on his hands and use it to create the painting of his life.

Knowledge

Feeling

Experience

Suffering

It would all be his.

He extended his hand into the empty night air. It would be such an odd sight for any passerby. A tall and gangly black boy standing in the middle of a crossroad, surrounded by flickering candles and clutching an arcane text, holding his hand out to no one. Alastor's hand was shaking, his breath withheld, his elbow straightening… and it made contact with cold flesh.

The instant it did the moon disappeared from the sky. Though there were no clouds, the stars vanished too. Only the candles could have provided any illumination to the scene, yet Alastor could make out the dark figure as though it were as bright as midday. The spirit appeared as a tall man, much taller than Alastor was himself. He was black, but not the way Alastor was, not even the way his mother had been. His skin was like a brick of charcoal, but it was as smooth as satin. He was gaunt and narrow, bony to the point of emaciation. Hair thick and black like tar hung like tentacles about his face and trailed in ropes down his back. His eyes were sunken, only visible by the way they glittered wetly beside such dry skin. His lips were curved yet thin and hid long razor teeth, his nose long and straight as a rod. He was dressed not in a suit or slacks of any kind, but in a long robe or dress, black as well. It was bound in straps of black leather forming geometric patterns, all of it gilded and lined in decorations of gold and purple. And when rich green light began to emanate from their joined hands, it seemed to Alastor like a sick sort of Mardi Gras celebration.

In spite of his fear, or perhaps because of it, his face cracked into a smile. And when the pain began, he began to laugh.

The demon smiled when Alastor laughed, a grin wide and unnatural and sick. Those wickedly sharp teeth were unnaturally white. “Oh, Ahnah Eyhe, you are precisely what I seek,” Bael said, his words somehow so clear even through Alastor’s growing hysteria. “I see now why it was you who could call into that place and find me. You are touched by Madness, child, and now all I ask is that you end the lives of any you deem unworthy of living, in any way you feel… appropriate. It is through this that you will thrive.”

While his laughing subsided, Alastor's grin would not fade from his face. Both monsters stood illuminated in green light. At the edge of his vision, he almost thought he could see pitch black chains, glowing green, floating and undulating like the tendrils of a squid. But he could not look away from Bael’s face. And their hands were still joined.

“They say that my birth was a cursed one. But what are those words you call me? Ahnah Eyhe.”

Bael’s grin sharpened. “Little One,” he almost purred. “And Ahnah Eyhe you shall remain, until your growth shows otherwise. You are but a fledgling, child, but the human soul has infinite potential. If you wish to see the limits of infinity, I am happy to show them to you.”

Infinite potential. Then I shall never be done growing stronger.

Never

“And all you received in return was my soul?” the arrogant boy said. “It appears I got the better end of the deal, devil.”

Bael laughed, a raucous noise that, were anyone else able to hear him, surely would have echoed all the way back to the village. “Perhaps you did, child. But know that this contract is permanent,” he said. It didn’t sound like a warning, or like advice, because it was far too late for that. Just a statement. “So young, and already condemned to Hell… by your own hand, no less. I would advise you make the most of your life before your fall.”

The laugh made him dizzy with fear, and he might have fallen if it had not been for the demon’s own hand holding him up. “What should I fear from Hell? I am already a monster!”

“So long as you heed my advice? Nothing,” Bael said. “Even Lucifer himself would one day pose no threat to you. You need not fear humans, nor demons, nor angels, nor Heaven, nor Hell, nor even death itself. The only thing you should fear, Ahnah Eyhe…” He leaned in quite suddenly, and his eyes flared that same blinding green, like they were sucking Alastor into an endless pit of poison, “is me.”

He wanted to tell him he wasn't afraid of him. He wanted to laugh in his face, to reject any power the demon might hold over him. If he could just pull away, close his eyes, anything to keep this thing from confirming the awful truth.

That Alastor was weak. That he was afraid. And this creature was the first thing to ever make him feel small.

Alastor's throat grew so tight that he could not speak.

The next moment, Alastor’s hand was empty. Bael was stalking around him, so close that Alastor could feel the cold through his clothing, Bael’s fingers trailing across the line of his shoulders. “You wished for my gifts, did you not?” Bael asked, his voice rumbling low, as though it traveled up through Alastor’s feet to his gut, then through his lungs and heart, before finally touching his ears. “And, as you know, the Goetia are keepers of many kinds of knowledge. And what you wish to know… …is how to extract suffering, is it not…?”

His own shuddering body shocked his mouth open and he gasped out a pained, “Yes.”

Bael chuckled, and the hand vanished from Alastor’s shoulders. “The only way to know how to extract suffering, my dear boy…”

Cold metal snapped around Alastor’s throat, yanking him forward a single step. Bael was a few feet away, a black chain that radiated a strange green light wrapped around his hands and leading to what seemed to be the thing around Alastor’s neck.

“…is to experience suffering yourself.”

Alastor had only enough time to yelp in shock before he felt a blinding pain around his neck. His knee hit the ground, his hands went to his throat. He pulled and recognition struck him like a bolt of lightning. There were hooks digging into his flesh. Hooks so long and deeply curved that when his fingers curled around the metal collar and he started to tug, skin and sinew only stretched and tore, warm liquid pouring over his palms.

“Devastation of the flesh is the most sublime form of suffering,” Bael said, his voice cutting through the panic in Alastor’s mind like it took precedence over all of his senses. “To injure the heart and to injure the mind are both sweet, to be certain, but a wound to the flesh can scar the body as well as the mind and the heart. It is a tool to harm, to humiliate, to humble. You can kill, of course, but more than that… you can cripple. You can mutilate. You can disfigure.”

Bael was behind Alastor, and he only had a moment to think before he felt the demon’s heel slam down into his Achilles tendon. His chest hit the hard ground, his chin following. Dully he thought his teeth were cracking, but it was pointless to wonder in the face of the agony this creature was putting him through.

These words are a lie. He's not going to train me.

He's going to kill me.

“But you cannot give pain if you do not know pain.”

Something impossibly sharp stabbed into Alastor’s back, followed by a second something, and then a third, and then a fourth. Fingers twisted into Alastor’s hair from behind and began to drag him upwards, forcing his body to slide further onto whatever it was stabbed through his torso and into the ground. For some unfathomable reason, in spite of the crippling pain, Alastor’s mind was clear. Even as blood pooled at the back of his throat and began to flood his mouth, even as it stained the front of his shirt, his consciousness did not even begin to falter. It was for that reason, and that reason only, that he could see the things stabbing through his body and into the ground: they were black, like obsidian, and they looked like they were… moving.

His cracked and gritted teeth pulled into a grimace that Alastor mentally commanded to become a grin. Even as his eyes widened and his mind cracked, those things moving inside of him, those things not of this world… they were not of any world he might have fathomed.

“Wh–” he managed to gurgle out, the sound pairing with a thick glob of blood that oozed out of his mouth like sludge. “What… are… y-you…”

The question, malformed, had no clear meaning, but if he could speak properly, he would probably still have no idea what he was really asking.

Bael was in front of him again, and he leaned down enough to look up into Alastor’s eyes. He held one hand up between them. “Opening your mind to infinite possibility.” The creature flexed his hand, and sharp, black claws jutted out of his fingertips. He then seized Alastor’s shoulders and dragged his hands down the boy’s arms.

Finally he screamed. For some moments it didn't seem to come from anywhere near him, let alone from his own lungs. And then, from the copse of trees several yards from the edge of the road, he heard it echo back and then grow. It grew into the sound of a great gathering of whippoorwills singing, turning into a frenzied cacophony. It drowned out his own screams, yet somehow Alastor could still hear the splattering of his own blood hitting the ground, waterfalls cascading from the deep lines Bael drew upon his arms.

“Ahaha… the song of the whippoorwills,” Bael said, his laughter echoing with the cries of the birds. “Ygnaiih… ygnaiih… thflthkh’ngha…” he murmured, a sharp reminder of the recent horror that had rampaged through Alastor’s village.

He didn’t have the breath to ask.

“Kill those who wronged you, Ahnah Eyhe. Make them bleed. Make them suffer. If you believe a living soul deserves death, then serve it to them, for that is how you will reach your true potential.”

Those claws touched Alastor’s abdomen just below his navel. He only had a moment to contemplate the meaning of that touch before they carved into him, slicing him open all the way up to his sternum.

With a sharp snap, the black things holding him up coiled and slipped from his flesh, dropping him hard onto the cold, bloody ground.

“Do not disappoint me, child, or you will regret the day your own reflection makes you scream.”

Alastor remained face down in the chillingly cold dirt, fingertips braced, hyper aware of the individual grains slipping beneath his nails. They shifted against each other like two particles preparing a reaction of a size far outclassing their insignificant nature. He didn’t dare look up, his senses overwhelmed already by the nightmares that were forced into him, so he didn’t see the way the demon departed. He only knew that it had. And even so, he found he could not bring himself to move for a long time afterward.

•

The boy had been born wrong. Everyone said it was so.

And now the boy, the monster who was loved by his mother and feared by all others, had taken hold of what was wrong, and was turning it into power.

In the hours after Bael disappeared, Alastor finally found the strength to move. Still the pain of his torment ached through each of his cells, into his core. But when he felt his body, it was intact. His guts were held inside his skin, even his arm was no longer bleeding. But he did carry a scar. Long and mottled, it was where he cut his arm to perform his grim summoning. It was raised and inflamed, and appeared infected. But it remained closed thanks to rough black cording that had been used to suture it. He found the skein the cord had come from, paired with a long sharp needle, at the site of the ritual, and he took them home with him.

For the rest of Alastor's living days he felt Bael’s presence. He was with him when he slaughtered the families of the men who butchered his mother. Bael was with him when he finally ended their lives as well and he laughed at their agony. It was so for every life Alastor stole. And for every life Alastor stole, another scar appeared on his own body, reflecting the brutality he suffered at the hands of the one who now owned his soul. The demon was there in all of the moments in between, distant yet present, tearing away little by little at what sense of sanity Alastor possessed. Merely by looking upon him, Bael knew what he was. And so did everyone else. They looked at his face and they seemed to know everything. A glance at a single one of his cursed scars, and they truly knew.

There was nowhere to hide.

There would never again be any place he could hide his true face.

Not from everyone. Not from Bael.

Not from himself.

In the dingy old mirror, his eyes looked back at him. They looked through him. It became true to Alastor as he watched and was watched that he had given up a piece of himself that left him forever changed. An emptiness ate away at him now, and he was certain he would never feel whole again without it. He could see what he was, the monster he had been born as, and the monster he had become. And it was a horror unlike any he had seen before.

The cord was rough in his hands, and pulling it made his fingers bleed. It was in this way that Alastor stuck the needle into his own face, piercing and pulling, dragging twine through flesh, black glowing green. Over his lips, from cheek to cheek, pulling over his own screams. Because he was screaming.

On the day his own reflection made him scream, Alastor crafted his perfect mask, one he would never remove, even after his death.

You will regret the day your own reflection makes you scream

Even as his chains grew tighter, and the reality of his decision became clear, Alastor never stopped reaching for greater power…

…and he never stopped smiling.

#my writing #hazbin hotel fanfic #hazbin hotel headcanon #hazbin hotel fanfiction #hazbin hotel alastor #alastor's mom #alastor's contract #tw gore #tw blood #tw violence #tw sa mention #tw racism

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