#just a little skeleton rotting away.

[gunkbaby]

I know im femme presenting and all but it makes me hate myself so much when people refer to me as a she/her or a lady or woman. makes me so uncomfortable and i cant even do anything about it

[pandoraslxna]

hi luna, i found ur fics on ao3 and ran my ass to tumblr bc i just needed more of ur writing. you're so talented!!

i was wondering if you could write a lo'ak x reader story similar to the step bro!teyam fic where he makes contact with the sex pollen. it could be step bro!lo'ak or just reader's bsf idm bc i've been thinking abt that fic for agessss and i'd die for a lo'ak version even where reader is the one that touches the pollen instead 😭🫶 pretty pls and thanks in advance （╹◡╹）♡

Forbidden desires

adult Stepbro!Lo‘ak x female omatikaya reader

Words: 3.8k

Summary: Nine times out of ten, when you were sent to one of those old, abandoned RDA outpost facilities, it went just fine. But there's always that tenth time.

Warnings: explicit smut, stepcest (they’re not blood related), sex pollen, cowgirl position, creampie, teasing, praise

Nine times out of ten, when you were sent to one of those old, abandoned RDA outpost facilities, it went just fine. But there's always that tenth time. And of course it’s when your accompanied by your older stepbrother, who somehow seemed to magically attract any kind of danger ever since he was a kid.

Scavenging abandoned laboratories for essential supplies that the clan could use was usually safer than it sounded, but this place, it was far off your usual research zone and Jake- dad, he said you could call him dad. Well dad said, it would be better to not go alone this time, just in case.

The once bustling scientific havens now stands as a relict of the past, slowly succumbing to the relentless embrace of nature. The laboratory emerges from the foliage, structure weathered and worn by time. Moss and ivy clings to the cracked walls, intertwining with rusted metal equipment. Vines creep through broken windows and shattered glass, casting intricate patterns of sunlight onto the decaying floors.

This place smells sharp, metallic, so much like tawtutes [humans] and the rotting smell of death and burnt earth they leave behind. Not exactly a pleasant scent.

Inside, a sense of eerie tranquility fills the air. Dust particles dance in the faint beams of light that manage to pierce through the overgrown canopy. Dilapidated shelves line the walls, remnants of long-forgotten experiments, holding faded vials and forgotten notes.

Lab benches, once polished and pristine, now bear the scars of abandonment papers lay strewn across the floor, their text faded and illegible. The hum of electricity has long been silenced, replaced by the gentle rustling of leaves and the fluttering wings of Riti [Stingbats] that were abruptly woken by the two na‘vi entering the long forgotten building.

Amongst the ruins, you search meticulously, your eyes scanning for useful remnants. You carefully examine cabinets, hoping to uncover unused medicine, bandages, exo packs that are still intact or any other useful tools.

Your stepbrother however, seemed to have other plans in mind.

"You shouldn’t touch that", you said, snatching his wrist mid way of him prodding at what you hoped was a fake skeleton. Lo‘ak let out a chuckle as he gazed down at you, both of his brows raised in amusement as he wriggled his hand free of your hold.

"Relax, tsmuke [sister]. Are you always this uptight when going on your little adventures?"

"I‘m not uptight, Lo‘ak. I‘m being careful", you said, shaking your head. "Jak– Dad taught me to be. You never know what the vrrteps [demons] could possibly be hiding here. And this isn’t an adventure, we‘re here to get supplies!"

"Right, of course. We‘re on a very important mission here", Lo’ak scoffs sarcastically, then proceeds to yank at the skeletons arm and point it in your direction, poking your hip with the boney finger when you roll your eyes at him. "You think they have traps set here to capture cute na‘vi girls? Ohh, isn’t that scary?"

"You’re an idiot", you giggle, swatting the hand away and playfully slapping your stepbrothers arm.

You both then take the steps up to the second floor of the building, and when you round a corner, you stop dead in your tracks. There was a "DO NOT ENTER" sign taped to the door that was slowly starting to peel off.

Experiments on animals or even na‘vi weren’t really uncommon, and you knew the horrors that the RDA was capable of, had heard and seen it yourself, especially in those research laboratories. Which is why you weren’t sure if whatever awaited behind this door was worth the few extra exo packs and bandages.

"We shouldn’t–"

"Oh, yes we should", Lo‘ak is quick to cut you off, all too eager to push the heavy metal door open. A rush of stale air fills your nostrils and you grimace at the smell.

"I should’ve just asked Neteyam to come with me", you mumble under your breath, closely following Lo‘ak into the room, who had a wide, excited grin on his face.

"And miss out on all the real fun?" He chuckles, shaking his head. "Yeah, you two would clearly make the better duo."

Rolling your eyes, you couldn’t help the feeling of unease that grew inside you, your eyes darting around the room, while your stepbrother's curiosity only intensified. Ignoring your trepidation, Lo‘ak stepped forward, drawn to a large, dusty table at the center of the room.

Among the scattered papers and broken equipment laid a few conical flasks, some of them still filled with droplets of a strange liquid.

Turning on your heals you took a quick 360°-spin. The room was small enough to get an overall view in less than a few seconds. There was nothing but this table and broken laboratory equipment. Nothing that seemed to be of worth for the clan, so you glanced back over your shoulder, already heading back to the door as you pleaded, "Lo‘ak, come on. There’s nothing in here, let’s just go back."

Lo’ak however, couldn't resist the temptation to tease you, playfully waving one of the glasses around. "Killjoy", he mutters under his breath, before shouting, "Here, catch", and throwing the conical flask in your direction. You shriek as you jump around to try and catch the glass in time, but it slips right past your fingers.

You both watch it fall like it’s happening in slow motion, until it bursts on the floor and the glass shatters in thousand little pieces.

As soon as the liquid inside makes contact with the tiled floor, it morphs into a small cloud of steam that smells awfully sweet and you end up coughing a few times before sending a glare in Lo‘aks direction. Sucking in a sharp breath, he makes an apologetic face and rushes to your side, careful not to step in any of the glass shards. "Shit, sorry! I‘m so sorry, are you hurt?"

"No, skxawng [moron]. I‘m fine", you clear your throat, "Great mother, you’re acting like such a child sometimes…"

"Yeah, I hear that a lot", he grins and you can’t help but smile at the coy flick of his tail. "C‘mere, can’t let you get hurt or dad will skin me", he murmurs, pointing at the glass, before scooping you into his arms and carrying you out of the room.

A heavy sigh leaves your lips and tickles Lo‘aks neck as you rest your chin on his shoulder. Your heart was still pounding from the scare, harder than you would like to admit. Nuzzling closer to his neck, you allowed your eyes to rest for a moment, just breathing in the natural, soothing scent of his skin, while he carried you downstairs. He smells so much like cedarwood, leather and freshly cut grass, you notice. And something else that you can’t quite put a name on, but it tingles your nostrils and makes goosebumps raise on the nape of your neck.

"You smell good", you mumble the words before you can throughly think them through, while pressing your nose against his throat. Your lips graze his skin and you can feel his upper body stiffen at that. "Was that a weird thing to say?" You ask calmly, almost a little too calm.

There’s a moment of silence before Lo‘ak shakes his head and murmurs a quick, "no."

Back at the main entrance, he gives a light squeeze to your hips, signaling you that he would let you down to your feet now, but your arms wrap around his neck tightly. He just smells so good, you want to stay here for a while longer. Lo‘ak is strong, you know he could effortlessly carry you all day.

"Can you hold me for a while longer?" Your own voice seems so far gone, so far away, you don’t even hear yourself properly, don’t even realize you’re speaking at all. Your skin tingles where Lo‘ak has his arms wrapped around you, and you can’t help but giggle and squirm, pressing yourself closer against him.

"Tanhì [little star], are you… are you okay?"

"Hmh", you hum, crossing your ankles behind his back like a Syaksyuk [prolemuris] clinging to it‘s mother.

"Are you sure?" There’s genuine concern in his voice, one of his hands running up your back, feeling your temperature at the nape of your neck. "You’re kind of burning up a little."

Your response almost sounds like a drunken mumble, "hmm strange. My heart‘s beating pretty fast too." It’s followed by a little giggle, and Lo‘ak frowns.

He‘s not panicking, not yet, but he knows something is wrong. This was really, really not normal behavior for you. He feels your face entirely too close to his pulse point, can feel your nose nuzzling against him, your lips brushing his throat. It’s not a kiss, he tries to make himself believe.

You’re not kissing up and down his throat. You’re not, because that would be wrong. Why would you— and then he feels it. Your tongue. His whole body shivers at the wet glide of your tongue on his throat, and Lo‘ak swallows thickly, before coming back to his senses.

"O-Okay, listen, uhm, I’m gonna put you down now", he scrambles, untangling you from his body to set you down to your feet. Your knees seem a little weak and Lo‘ak can’t help but reach out to hold you steady, ignoring the way it makes you blush and lean in on him again.

It doesn’t take a genius to come to the conclusion that whatever was in that glass container must’ve been some sort of drug or whatever. As soon as the coin drops, Lo‘aks heart fills with guilt. His expression shifts to that of worry and uncertainty as he ponders if calling his father would be a good idea. He knows he has to make sure you’ll be okay, has to get you to the tsahìk, but he knows just as well that dad will most definitely skin him alive if he finds his precious adoptive daughter in this condition.

"I feel weird, Lo'", you snap him out of his train of thoughts. Lo’aks hands are on your upper arms, holding you steady while simultaneously keeping some distance between you and him. His eyes scan you up down, and he almost chokes on his spit as he catches the way you clench your thighs together, squirming, and fiddling with the fabric of your loincloth. "Feels really weird… here", you tell him in a hushed whisper, one of your hands bullying it’s way between your clenched thighs. Your eyes are half lidded and glassy as you stare up at him through your lashes, your cheeks flushed in a dark red.

Now he’s panicking.

"S-Shit", he sputters. His eyes are wide as he adverts his gaze to somewhere, anywhere else but you, trying not to look at his stepsister touching and rubbing herself over her clothes. That’s bad, that’s really, really bad. "Let’s just get you home, yeah? I‘m– I‘m sure there’s a cure to whatever it is that you have."

One quick glance down to see if you had even heard what he just said, and he finds you still clumsily rubbing your hands between your thighs, seeking some sort of relief. "But you", he swallows thickly, "you really need to stop doing that, okay?" Lo’ak knows he doesn’t even sound half convincing, and it takes him more than just a bit of effort to not stare at you right now.

You look back at him under your lashes, bite your bottom lip and shake your head and he knows you’re doing that on purpose— working him up with those helpless little noises, sweet sounds of need and pleasure, thighs clenching and unclenching around your own hand.

"C-Can’t you just help me? Please, I- I need you."

One of your hands then closes around his wrist and before he realizes to where you’re guiding him, his palm cups your still covered cunt. He feels your slick drench the woven coverings under his fingertips and his eyes widen. "Need you here", you plead. "It hurts so bad, Lo‘ak. I‘m so empty."

"I– I can’t, we shouldn’t—" Lo’ak shakes his head, seemingly torn, but suddenly your lips press against his and he just can’t find it in himself to pull away.

Your lips are so soft, softer than he imagined (not that he imagined what kissing you would be like, ever) and the moment Lo‘ak finds himself kissing back you surge forward, the grip around his wrist tightens, urging him to stay right there, teeth nipping at his bottom lip until his lips part and he can taste you, your tongue slipping inside his mouth, your salvia mixing with his.

Your kiss is forceful and he’s so much more into it than he thought he’d ever be. And when you pull back your lips are red and wet, and he knows his mouth is probably a perfect mirror to yours.

"Fuck, tanhì, baby", he whispers, "Gonna get me in trouble…" And in an instant he’s on you again. His tongue tingles as it curls around yours, with drool running down his chin as he backs you up against a tree. You cling to him, desperate and wanting, not letting go of his wrist until he makes you understand that he’s only pulling away to get that damn loincloth out of the way. It nearly rips with the effort of getting it off, but when he finally succeeds you both clumsily pull each other to the ground.

This is wrong, he thinks as he spreads your legs opens. This is so wrong, he thinks as he runs his hands up and down your body, your chest, pushing your top out of the way.

You look so beautiful like this, chest heaving and covered in a thin layer of sweat. Hair messy and eyes dark with lust, pupils so blown it should make him worry, but he can’t bring himself to care when his gaze falls to the space between your thighs where slick oozes out of you in a concerning amount.

"Please- Please put it in, I need you", you slur, spreading your thighs further apart. "Need you inside."

Your pussy looks red and puffy, so sensitive as he runs two digits through your folds and then gently pushes them in. You gasp, but open up perfectly for him. It’s not enough, Lo‘ak can feel it. He curls his fingers, pumps them in and out a few times to hear those sweet moans tumble from your parted lips.

"You have to promise you won’t hate me after this", he says under his breath. His thumb glides over your clit, gently pushing its little hood up to bring the little nub into view and he can almost feel it throb under his touch. "I‘m just helping you out because you asked for it, alright?" Lo‘ak says it as if he’s talking to himself, reassuring that you want this, it’s okay, and maybe it actually is. Peeling his eyes away from the mouthwatering sight between your thighs he finally looks back up at you, swallowing the salvia that has been pooling in his mouth. "Promise you won’t hate me. Please." The restrain is clear in his voice, but he’s nowhere near as needy as you are. "C’mon, baby, say it. Tell me with your words."

"I won’t hate you, Lo‘ak just please–" Suddenly you shove him by the shoulders, rolling over until you’re the one straddling him, pinning him down to the ground. Your hand impatiently reaches between your thighs and feels for his cock, before repositioning it to prod his tip at your entrance. He bucks up into your hand as you give his cock a few pumps, pre-cum dribbling through your fingers.

The sight of him beneath you sends a throb straight to your cunt.

Lo‘ak sucks in a breath just as he’s about to tell you to wait, slow down, but then you‘re already slamming yourself down onto him without remorse. Fuck, it's so easy. Fits right in like a glove; overwhelmingly wet and warm, a terrible combination that scares him.

A punched out moan breaks from his throat as he feels the tightness of your velvety-like walls envelope his length. He’s so deep inside you, he can feel your cervix kissing his tip and it sends a shudder up his spine.

It's almost an out-of-body experience as you get on your haunches and lift yourself up, the head of his cock still nudged against your entrance, and he watches your gleaming lips part before you sink all the way back down again, taking him into the softest, most delicate parts of yourself.

Lo‘ak feels it and knows that he can’t change anything about the way he’s completely surrendering to your control- and he absolutely fucking loves it.

It’s so wrong, but that’s what brings a tingle to his fingertips. So dirty, but that’s what makes heat raise under his skin like a fire burning down a forest.

Lo’ak watches the way your belly contracts visibly, in time with the hitch in your breath at the first few thrusts. Your thighs tense and your fingers finds his braids to anchor yourself, and his hands find your hips and push you down harder on his length and he’s startled to realise how soft you are now, yielding to him in ways he’d never have imagined once. You’re putty in his hands, ridden by nothing but pleasure. A carnal need.

It’s luck that the adventures in Lo’aks life gave or showed him at least a bit of reservoirs of self-control that his karyus [teachers] never thought he had, because after those first few thrusts, you ride him vigorously.

Lo’ak doesn’t know how you’re this in sync, but he knows you want him to fuck you hard and fast. With his hands still gripping your hips tightly, he drives deep and eagerly into your weeping cunt, welcomed by that glorious softness again and again, and you wrap your arms around his neck and meet his thrusts as best as you can.

"Lo‘ak", you draw out his name in a long, pathetic moan, "more, need more!"

"Great mother, you’re greedy, baby," he huffs out in a laugh, grips your hips and holds you down on his cock for a second longer than necessary, just to feel your little cunt pulsate around him. You struggle briefly, before picking up the pace again, bouncing harder than before, but also more uncoordinated.

"S‘just so good," you slur, sounding almost drunk. "You feel so good inside me. Fuck me harder!"

Your tongue lolls out and he catches you mid way, tongues meeting in a hungry, filthy kiss. You taste awfully sweet as you moan into it, and Lo‘ak can’t help but think you would want spurs right now, to urge him on all the more. As if he needs that when you kiss him like this, when you hold him so close he feels your tits, soft and warm and perfect, press against his chest.

His cock throbs and you’re starting to quiver now, distinct from the more deliberate movements you both make. It shows in your breasts, makes your thighs tremble against his sides and makes tremors in your stomach muscles.

For a moment it switches from bouncing to grinding, and Lo‘ak knows what you’re trying to do. You grind and rub your needy little clit against his pubic bone, let out desperate noises of pleasure while you hump him.

Lo‘ak makes a hungry humming noise in return which he feels through his lips, once you break away from the kiss, then a breathy groan when he captures a nipple between his teeth. His tongue swirls around the little nub before he tugs and he enjoys the way you clench around him at this.

One of his hands comes up to palm the other, kneading your soft flesh and twirling a nipple between his digits.

"Come for me", he then says, flat tongue gliding over your breast before goosebumps raise underneath. "Come for me, tsmuke. Do it."

The scream you let out is borderline pornographic. It brings tears to your eyes and nearly tips you off balance if it weren’t for Lo‘ak holding you, fucking you through it with short but deep thrusts that send you gasping for air. "Hmh, there it is. Good girl," he groans, "keep coming for me, baby, just like that. Let it all out for your big bro, yeah? Let me feel how bad you wanted this. Look at me."

You force your eyes to stay on him, watch him as you fall apart, rocking your hips for that little bit of extra friction, and Lo’ak feels all of it. The wetness where you are slipping together, the tightness, the little tremors of your body, the pulse of your clit as it rubs against him.

Lo‘ak doesn’t even realize he’s coming himself because he’s entirely too focused on you. He’s bluntly staring at you, eyes half open, mouth agape. It’s like he is trying to burn the image of your pleasure ridden face and your picture perfect body on top of him into his brain forever. He wants to keep it stored away just for himself, to come back to after this is over because he knows he can’t have you again. Because this can’t happen again.

The wet plap, plap, plap of his thrusts continues until your thighs begin to shake and he’s sure he has emptied even the last drop of his cum into your core. It’s back to just grinding then, wet bodies pressing together, closer and closer until neither of you can’t move anymore.

You’re panting, exhausted and spent, your chest heaving to inhale big gulps of air into your burning lungs. Blinking a few times, Lo‘ak notes that your eyes are halfway back to normal, pupils not as big as they were, your skin feeling less feverish but all the more sticky than before.

Good, that’s good, right?

"You," a pause, he swallows, "you okay?"

Nodding and a little out of breath you confirm it with a quick, breathy, "yeah."

There’s a long, long moment of silence, with just the two of you looking at each other, sweat still pearling at your forehead and messy hair framing your beautiful face. Lo‘ak looks at you like he’s afraid breaking the eye contact would break the spell and you would shove him away and call him disgusting, but you don’t.

"I'm not sorry, you know" he says finally, when he can’t stand it anymore. "I would do it again. For you. I will do it again, in a heartbeat, if I...."

"If you have to," you finish for him.

Lo’ak considers pushing it, considers holding your face and speak more firmly so he could be sure he had your full attention while he tried to make you get it. "Yeah," he says gently instead, risking a half hearted grin that would surely give him away. "If I have to."

[scribble-dribble-writes]

The boy with the freckles

Pairing: Alex Walter x female reader

Context: Alex is in college but his past still haunts him and then he meets you

>>>

———

Being fifteen felt like yesterday, but it was years ago.

Alex woke up with a groan, the new day didn’t bring anything new. It reminded him of his past more than he would have liked. In his last year at college, he felt the scars of his teens come alive to haunt him.

It was tumultuous and panic filled, nightmares of that moment he came to know Jackie had left without a word. His ability to place his trust in people had faded because if his own brother could betray him time and time again, why wouldn’t a stranger?

He squinted his eyes at the sunlight that crept through into his dark room. He dragged his cover over his head. It was hard work, getting to silence the thoughts in his head. He was a work in progress, he was aware of all the areas he had to be mindful of.

He had to remind himself he was his own person. He had to become secure, to know that he was enough as he is. That the love he gave away for free was actually priceless. That Kylie breaking off their friendship was so she could heal and he had no control over it. He had to come to terms with it, that life changed and so should he.

This dorm room felt huge or maybe it only felt like that since he was alone. He didn’t have Nathan sharing his room or Isaac yelling down the hallway. He could just rot beneath these sheets and no one would know.

But as he slumped in his bed, contemplating if he should skip calculus, there was a knock on the door.

He let it pass. Most cases it would be other students coming by to drop invitations to parties. But there was another knock and he pulled away his blanket to see the faint slit of shadow underneath the door.

“Who is it?”, he yelled out to see the shadow feet shuffle before answering.

“Sorry to bother you but I was told to meet you if I wanted to join the gaming club.”, he heard a voice.

He got out of bed in an instant. He would recognise that tone anywhere. He searched for a shirt as he pulled it over his head to then run past the mirror to make sure his face was alright.

It wasn’t, his hair was a mess, the sunlight had made his freckles stand out. On days like these he wished he looked more like Cole. The only ‘effect’ he had with people was off putting.

“I’ll probably come by another time.”, he heard the dejection in your voice as you began to move away and it threw him into overdrive.

He couldn’t care less about his appearance.

He reached for the door knob and yanked it open, his muddy green eyes catching yours. His throat ran dry, he froze.

He felt like he was fifteen again, not twenty three.

He watched you like he was trying to memorise the brush strokes on a painting he could never get up close. The dark curls of your hair, the deep tan in your skin, the flush of colour in your cheeks and your magnetic eyes.

There he stood, as though life had thought him nothing.

He didn’t know what to say.

He noticed you look away and the skeletons in his closet broke loose.

He was unravelling, his mind convincing him that you could see right through him.

He had to act fast, to work through this, so he stuck out his hand.

“Hi, I’m Alex Walter.”, he winced as he said it. He could see himself from your gaze. He sounded stupid.

But to his surprise, you took his hand.

“I know.”, you replied as your fingers wrapped around his palm.

“You’re the boy with the freckles.”, he heard you say and it made his cheeks flush.

“Ah yes, my only defining quality.”, he sighed as his smile faded.

He knew where this was going. It reminded him of who he wasn’t like. That this was his effect.

He let go of your hand as he folded his arms, he couldn’t help it, the way his body became defensive, ready to hide away.

He had done this before, give away his best in the hopes of a little attention so now he fought against it.

“Makes me stick out like a sore thumb.”, he shrugged his shoulders as he caught the change in your expression.

“Oh no, I didn’t mean to be rude.”, you panicked. He was taller than you with his toned arms crossed across his chest. You could tell the glimmer in his eye had vanished, now he looked at you as though he was seeing a ghost.

“I..”, you had lost your words. Where had all your confidence gone?

Your gaze shifted to catch a glimpse of him. His bed head hair mussed like he was a crazy scientist, his eyes reminding you of the meadows back home and his freckles that haunted your dreams, tempting you to reach up and touch his cheek.

“I just think it makes you look beautiful.”, you said, not realising the step you had taken towards him or that his eyes softened with that glow again.

His gaze dipped to your lips just as you looked up to see him.

He was incorrigible, just like his brother. Cause here he was feeling that blissful sense of warmth fill his heart as much as he had tried to run from it.

“Do you?”, he whispered before he could catch himself

“I…”, you were about to respond to his question when he shifted his weight and the moment broke.

“Do you want to come by to a club event today?”, he changed the question.

You thought it was for the best. Alex Walter deserved someone who wasn’t a wreck like you.

He was a coward. All those moments of convincing himself to build up his courage to take on a new adventure had all boiled down to nothing, cause truth be told he was scared.

He was scared of all the love he held for you.

[thegnomelord]

CH 3: Hold Your Demons Close Maybe Then You'll Feel Something

CW:NSFW blood, gore, mutilation, killing, cannon typical violence, child abuse (it's minor but still there), drugging, military inaccuracies, Mage reader, Monster cod AU, poly141, eventual poly141 X reader, reader isn't a good person, a few masc terms used but overall gn.

Ao3; Word count: 19.1k (It's a heckin chonker) Big thanks for @rodolfoparras and @princeguri66 for betaing for me, love you guys!

Masterlist; Chapter 2 <-Chapter 3 (You are here) -> Chapter 4

Aisha remembers the day she thought she would die.

As a gift for the 10th birthday her mother had taken her to the market in the big city. It had been chaotic compared to their little village, so many people donkey carts, and mopeds moving around like crazy ants in a freshly exposed nest. Aisha had gotten lost, swept away by the time of movement, and ended up at the entrance of a shady alley where she'd stumbled on an old beggar woman.

Long as she lives she will never forget the sight of the woman. Strip her of flesh and blood and the memory will still be etched into her bones — of ghostly blue lines forming impregnable chains across sunken sunburned skin. Of dirty rags loosely hanging off skeleton thin shoulders. Of blood crusted bandages wrapped tightly around her shaved head to not scare the children running about, the cloth dipping into the eyeless sockets of her skull. Of her asking passerby for alms with the handless stumps of her arms.

The sight alone had frightened Aisha, but then the beggar had turned her head to Aisha as if she could hear the frantic beating of her heart. A sad saccharine croon left the mage woman's chapped lips as she looked right at her. "Hello, fellow daughter of Magnus."

Her mother found her then, pulling Aisha back while shouting at the woman at the top of her lungs. Aisha's mind had been too full of thoughts to notice her mother drop their shopping in favor of scurrying out of the market with Aisha in hand. She had only snapped back to reality when her mother had thrown Aisha into her father’s rusted little car, barely able to sit up straight before they were driving home to their village as fast as the car’s geriatric engine could go.

Aisha had been locked in the room she shared with her sisters, but the door did little to mute the way her parents argued all day long, accusations of infidelity and cursed bloodlines thrown around like bird feed. Most of it flew over her head, but Aisha had understood one thing: Her parents were afraid.

The strange men came to her house just as the sun had set, drawn out by the dying light like coyotes hunting for a stray lamb. The strong stench of rot heralding their arrival made her sputter to hold back the bile burning her throat. She remembers the sparks of yellow and red and blue and all the other stolen colors of the rainbow swirling in their cold eyes.

They chatted while inspecting her like a cow in the market, their language just as rough and hard as their hands. But they lost interest quickly, unable to find what they wanted to see. They turned to throw lecherous looks at her mother and older sisters before her father had stepped between them and her, protecting his daughter now that he knew Aisha wasn't a freak. He'd tensely asked them to leave after paying for their time, standing in the doorway and only going back inside when the strange men were well and truly out of sight.

Her parents let them in without complaint; Her father held her down, his steely gaze watching the men crowd her. Her mother whispered trembling words into her ear to just be a good girl as the men tore her shirt off. Aisha's questions and pleas and panic fell on deaf ears, her mother pressing a worn hand over her mouth to silence her cries as the men inspected her chest and arms. They pinched and pulled on her skin with hands scarred like gnarled tree bark, the roughness of their palms chafing her soft flesh.

Aisha remembers the days she thought she would die.

Waking up each day to wash under her mother's stalwart gaze so she could ensure Magnus hadn't sown seeds into Aisha's body while she slept. Going each week to the village elders to drink the special brew of Morgana's tears, spending agonizing hours curled up and sobbing on the floor with a stabbing pain in her chest, her heart beating like the wings of a snared bird as the poison made its way through her system. She'd lost count how many times her heart would stutter after every bout of joy or childish argument on the rare moments the children of the village would interact with her — any lick of emotion would force her to run home to check the pads of her fingers in fear that this time magic had cracked through her skin.

She had been so happy on her 15th birthday — the danger had passed. She wasn’t a mage. She could finally live a normal life, meet a boy, get married, have a family.

She’s 16 now. All those years of worry and fear feel like childhood bliss.

Aisha knows she will die.

It happened so suddenly; When her friend had jokingly rubbed a feather duster in her face, Aisha would have never expected a stupid sneeze to force liquid frost through her fingers. Pain had raced through her chest at the speed of lightning, an unknown force pulling her arms up, and the next thing she knew she had frozen over her neighbor's entire crop field. Aisha had barely heard her friend scream over the pounding in her ears, her legs moving on their own long before her brain could understand the pain in her hands or what she had done.

Her mind might still have been reeling, but her body understood she needed to run, needed to hide, before the sun fell and the coyotes came for her.

The house she's found to hide in is one of the many corpses the Russians left behind, stripped bare to rotting wood bones and crumbling bricks, moldy wall paper peeling in long thick strips and rickety boards creaking under the slightest pressure. Gravel crunches beneath heavy tires outside the decrepit house and a rumbling engine cuts through the silence. Aisha scrambles up the stairs to the second floor, hiding in a dingy closet with it's walls closing in around her like the sides of a cramped coffin. Termite made holes in the closet door act as peepholes, letting her see into the bedroom and watch the long shadows created by the car's lights stretch across the floor.

She bites her lip as the slightest twitch of her pinky finger makes pain bloom across her entire hand, though she's barely able to move her fingers with how stiff they are. Her tan skin bellow the wrists is corpse pale and cold, blood crusting the creases of her knuckles. The creaking of floorboards has Aisha hastily pressing her ice cold hands against her lips, the taste of her blood — copper and iron with a hint of something sweet like antifreeze — failing to churn her stomach when even the hint of slowly encroaching rot has her heart clogging her throat so not even a whimper can make it past her lips.

She’s sure her lungs stop working when a man crosses the threshold into the room, and immediately she’s hit with such a strong smell of decay, like death had crawled up her nose and died there. Her throat and chest spasm with the need to cough, tears freely running down her cheeks from how much effort it takes to keep quiet, but past her blurry vision she can see the man slowly walk into the room.

He’s tall and gangly like a newborn foal, bulky clothes widening his frame that’s mostly skin and bones, thinning blond hair badly swept over a sizable bald spot. He wouldn’t be so scary if his eyes didn’t glow an unnatural mixture of toxic green and burning red— the sight alone has goosebumps spreading across his skin, followed by a deep seated discomfort as if leeches are crawling inside her bones.

“Come out little girl,” Even his voice feels wrong, like glass ground on sandpaper, but he speaks with so much sweetness it’s disgusting. “We only want to talk to you, don’t worry you’re not in trouble.” She can tell he’s not from Urzikstan by the rough accent that muddles the Arabic words he speaks.

The floorboards creak softly as she shifts. His head swivels to look around the room and the man quickly walks over to the bed, dropping to his knees to look under it. “Fuck!” His facade falls as he snarls when he sees she’s not there, stumbling to his feet like a drunk. “I mean uh- don’t worry I’m not mad kid,” He chuckles lightly, trying to put on an act of a worried Samaritan, though the attempt falls short when his predatory eyes fall on the closet she’s hiding in.

“Hey, did you find her yet?” Another voice rings from the entrance of the room, this one feminine and with a slight drawl to her words as she speaks in english. It makes Aisha jump, though the squeaking boards beneath her go unnoticed when the new voice continues. “Boss is starting to get antsy and if we don’t find her soon he’ll be sticking your ass with the pigs.”

She can’t see well, but she’s certain the man shows a middle finger to the unseen person. “Fuck off,” He spits out the response like it’s a mouthful of poison, “We both know you’re the dead weight.” He says, taking a few steps around the bed, but luckily for Aisha he stops in the middle of the room. Aisha can hear how deeply he breathes in, before something catches in his throat and he coughs. “I can smell the magic, the wench is still in the house.”

“Bullshit.” The woman scoffs, “You say that every hunt and we end up wasting our time.” A moment passes before the unseen woman chuckles and adds. “You couldn’t smell shit if you shoved your head up your ass!”

The man openly seethes, quick and heavy footsteps carrying him right up to the woman and out of Aisha’s field of view. “You take that back you fucking bitch!” The snarl is more animal than man. Aisha can only assume he punches the woman from the way the floorboards groan loudly in the otherwise silent night, shoes scuffing on the floor, grunts and swears filling the air as the noises of fighting steadily recede to another room.

She’s light headed by the time she manages to pull her hands away from her mouth enough to draw in a breath of stale air, her lungs burning from how long she had gone without breathing. Her heart drums loudly in her skull, her ears pricked to listen to the two strangers exchange angry words in a language she doesn't understand, each passing second of the continuing scuffle making confidence slowly form in her mind.

This is her chance!

. . . to do what?

She doubts she could take them on, she's pretty sure she saw a gun hanging off the man's waist, and she definitely knows she won't be able to outrun them. She's stuck. Cornered.

“Whatever, you just fin-” The sound of footsteps once again nearing the room she's in forces her body to act without her input.

Fishhooks tug on her fingers and force them to splay out flat in the air despite the pain. Her mind scrambles to think of something, anything, before unseen hands pull her mouth open. A shaky breath escapes her lungs and before she knows it words are falling from her lips, so smooth and fluent like her mind is reading a script carved into her bones. “Oh harsh creatures of brutal winter, please, I need your help-” Something cold and sharp stabs behind her chest, more of her skin turning pale as magic slowly crawls down her arms.

It hurts —

Spiderweb cracks of broken glass spread across her knuckles and a fat drop of blood rolls down her chin from how tightly she bites her lip. Her blood beads through the cracks in her skin, the dark crimson turned a light pink by the freshly exposed white light that pulses beneath her skin like a living thing.  Aisha sucks in a sharp breath before continuing, “- I beg you, give me a crumb of your power, a ball of silent snow to hide my life-” The more she speaks, the more the white light cracks through her skin until it cracks through the pads of her fingers and escapes as shoddily formed snowflakes.

They dance through the air like drunken fireflies before finding the right position and floating in the air. More of them spawn from each finger with every word spoken, taking their own place in an unknown pattern.

Slowly the overlapping snowflakes take on the shape of a scratchy circle, trembling lines forming a complex web of shapes inside it. The pain grows with it; it turns her fingers pale and numb as if she had stuck her hands in freezing water, the icy bite of frost spreading up her wrists. Her frozen skin cracks from even the slightest tremor in her hands, white speckles dancing in her crimson blood as it leaks down her palms. Each second taken to breathe and bite back a whimper disrupts the fragile collection of snowflakes, causing parts of the circle to break off and drop to the ground in big watery drops.

Her chest feels like it’s tightly packed with soaked wool, a type of pressure building behind her sternum, her shoulders stiff as her body is getting ready for. . . something good—

The closet door swings open with enough force to break it off its hinges. White light of the circle refracts off the gun aimed at her.

Bang!

A bullet tears through the magic circle and shatters it into pieces, all the pressure that had been building in her body rushing through the crumbling remains of the circle right back at her.

She screams and shakes, fat tears freely running down her cheek like the blood flowing from her palms. There’s not a single word in any language able to describe the pain rushing through her veins, the liquid agony infesting every cell — sharp and blunt and deep and gnawing, like her body is trying to eat itself, like she’s infested with maggots; the bullet that tears through her side feels like a soft mercy.

“Fucking moron!” She barely hears the woman snarl over the rush of blood in her ears. The gun aimed at her is roughly pushed down. “Are you trying to get the boss to take our heads?” The stench of rot only worsens it, disorientating her further and she’s barely able to make her fingers twitch. She’s got no defense from the rough hand that roughly grabs her by the hair and pulls her out of the closet.

“I’d rather not die from a first time mage!” The man yells, grabbing her by the shoulder. Aisha’s legs can’t support her weight no matter how much she tries, but the man is far stronger than she had expected and has no problem holding her up. Her lungs manage a pained sound before her arms are grabbed and painfully wrenched behind her back, handcuffs softly clicking as they’re tightened until the steel digs into her aching wrists.

“Oh so when I’m the one on the end of the damn spells it’s fine then?” The woman’s anger shows in the way her cracked nails dig into Aisha’s scalp and pull her head back like she's trying to take it off entirely. Aisha struggles to breathe, gasping and wriggling to the best of her ability but it’s useless and a second later a thick metal collar is tightened around her neck, rusted needles on the inside of it pricking her skin enough to draw blood.

It burns. The collar rapidly heats up like she's got a string of hot coals around her neck, the heat traveling down her skin to grip her heart in a vice. The collar is so tight she can’t even gasp, fresh adrenaline pouring through her veins as she tries to scramble out of the handcuffs, tries to shake out of their hold, tries to just get away. . . but she’s about as strong as a kitten.

“You’re expendable. The girl could make a better spell than you.” The man holding her shoulder laughs and pulls her away as soon as the woman lets go of her hair, all too happy to drag her like a sack of potatoes behind him. Each step down the stairs has the base of her spine awkwardly hitting the step, accosting her frazzled brain with even more pain.

“We got the girl, boss!” The man says triumphantly, pulling her up so she’s facing another man. Even with the tears blurring her vision, Aisha can tell the ‘boss’ isn’t from Urzikstan; He’s a pudgy little man with a wide flat nose and other features that don’t quite fit his face, but his eyes — they glow the same rainbow hue as the other two, with the same malice.

“Finally.” The boss huffs, not wasting a single second and pulling a knife from his pocket. A rough hand holds Aisha’s head so she can’t squirm away from the knife as it cuts across her cheek. Just that small cut feels like a gaping wound and a small whimper falls from her lips as the boss pulls the knife back, specks of white floating in the dark blood coating the metal. A black tongue slips from his lips to lick up the bloodied edge, the sight making her stomach curl with disgust.

Another hand grabs her cheek, cracked fingers like claws digging into the cut until blood flows over the man's fingers. The man holding her pulls his bloodied fingers into his mouth, humming. A second passes before he curses and spits at his feet. “There’s barely anything there,” He says, the hold he has on her tightening. “Barely worth the bullet.”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem.” The boss waves him off, sharp rainbow eyes looking her up and down. “Couple of grams from ol’ daddy Magnus and we’ll have ourselves a proper sow.” He reaches out to pat the top of her head, condescending — like she's just a dumb animal. “Alright, put it in the truck.” The boss orders and the man holding her complies, starting to drag her to the truck parked in front of the house.

Somehow, behind the the loud beating of her heart, she hears rumbling. Somehow, though her mind is like tangled yarn and she can barely grasp a thought, she feels something — an emotion that doesn't belong to her: Anger

Violent anger. Burning hot in the cold night, so all consuming it leaves the world around her trembling.

"Hold on-" The boss says suddenly, quickly raising his head to sniff the air. "Do you smell that?"

Tires screech against the rocky road, orange flames sparking from thin air as a motorcycle appears out of nowhere. Aisha only manages to get a glimpse of glowing orange eyes before she's blinded by bright light. She closes her eyes, heat washing over her body before she hears the head of the man holding her explode.

Shards of bone and brain matter rain down on her, sticking to her dark curly hair. The body stands for a second, unaware it no longer has a head as the charred stump of the neck steams. The body falls to the ground and takes Aisha with it, falling on top of her.

The elbow digs into her bleeding side, her eyes flying open as she struggles to get out from under the man, managing to push him off. Her gaze flies to the steaming charred stump where the head used to be. Panic rising she breathes in and oh god the smell — it’s an automatic response; Her stomach convulses and she pukes, bile burning her throat, retching and crying as the scent of her bile only makes it worse.

She feels heat rush over her and she doesn’t need to see to know your magic makes the other man and woman’s heads pop like grapes. Their bodies drop to the ground somewhere behind her, but what makes adrenaline rush through her is the soft sound of the motorcycle stand clicking against the ground.

Her head flies up to look, heart beating like a bird in the cage of her ribs; Dirt crunches beneath your boots but to her it sounds like breaking bones, steam rises off your body, the bright glow of your arms and the intense glare of your eyes behind the tinted lenses of your mask. . . it all gives the image of a demon — of something she needs to flee from.

If the people had been coyotes, then this person— no. . . the thing that had found her was a starved lion.

She tries to scramble back but it's useless when the smallest twitch of a muscle has her whimpering, blistering cold gnawing on every inch of her nerves.

You reach her in seconds, leaning down to grab her by the front of her clothes to pick her up like she weighs nothing. Your scent floods her nose, rot and just a small hint of sweetness, like honey poured on the floors of a burning charnel house. She tries to kick you but can barely move her toes, her legs just swaying uselessly beneath her. Your fingers, warm but not burning hot, hook under the steel wrapped around her neck.

Your jaw tenses, trying to remember how to speak. "Hold still." You order.

Your voice is soft. Not the velvet softness of her mothers', more akin to the smoothness of a tar pit right before it pulls a hapless creature into its inky depths. But you don't hurt her.

Metal screeches as the rusted steel bends like clay under your fingers. It only takes a few seconds before the collar clatters to the ground. The sudden release of pressure has Aisha gasping for breath so quickly she starts coughing and almost pukes but luckily her stomach is empty.

She doesn't feel you free her hands, the world spinning a thousand miles a minute before her eyes. She's forced to close her eyes shut in an attempt to fight back the nausea, rainbow spots crackling in the darkness of her vision.

Casually stepping over the corpse of the Devourer you sit her down on the hood of the truck, keeping a hand on her shoulder to make sure she doesn't fall face first to the ground. She shivers under your touch, trembling hands slowly raising to grip your wrist. You don't need magical sight to know an aborted spell is ravaging her insides; her fingertips turning black in front of your eyes and the specks of white dancing in her pupil is enough.

Judging by the way you can barely pick up the scent of mage standard rot on her, you can only assume she's a late bloomer. With a small huff you place your other hand on the middle of her chest, casting a simple circle at your palm.

Aisha gasps, fingers scrambling to try and pull your hand off, too numb with cold to register how the cooling lava making up your skin warms up. But it's like trying to move a mountain. You don't budge an inch. She can feel something inside her move, burning frost shepherded by blistering heat slinking down her fingers back into her heart, increasing speed with every inch it travels. She barely notices the aching in her side subsiding, or the sensation returning to her fingers.

You let go of the girl when you’re satisfied she won’t die from either blood loss or mana shock, leaving her to sit on the hood of the car as she looks dumbly at you.

The bullet loudly clatters on the steel hood. She turns her head and her eyes nearly pop out of her skull at the sight of her blood literally bleaching out of her clothes like it's being drawn back into her body. Letting go of your wrist she lifts her shirt, and there's not even a mark on her tan skin.

She’s no threat to you.

No sooner that you take a step away from her does Beelzebub's cold presence rush out of your heart with enough force to make you stumble back. People say it’s madness for a spell, a tool, to have personality. But the way black candlelight flames spark at your fingers and immediately rush out like a swarm of locusts to devour the three bodies is. . . it's angry. Vengeful As it should be. You can't fool yourself into thinking the way Beelzebub's magical fires eat away the Devourers hands before spreading over the rest of the body, crackling and buzzing like thousands of flies as they devour skin, then muscle, then bone until not even dust remains, is anything but vindictive.

Like erasing mistakes, it brings you a sense of satisfaction.

Your fingers twitch but you stop yourself from reaching up to trace the faint blue magic gluing your throat together. Instead, you focus on converting the mangled chunks of mana Beelzebub deposits in your chest into something you can use. Devours are a pain in the ass, so much different mana all twisted and held together with gum and staples, all of it now bashing against your ribs like wailing ghosts. With a huff you focus, the rock chunks on your arms getting wider and bigger as you store the stolen mana for later use, steam lazily rolling off your shoulders.

Aisha watches you, eyes wide, but. . . not scared. She doesn’t notice when she opens her mouth, her voice far too loud in the silent night. “Are you a jinn?” She asks, and cringes at her words. Of all the things she could have said, she chose that?

You don't know how you manage to open your mouth enough to answer. “No.” Beelzebub, satisfied as a hog in shit, burns on the ground for a few seconds in the shape of the bodies before seeping back into the earth, settling back to slumber in your heart.

You roll your shoulders. The slight bite of pain and the spasm of your muscles reminds you of the glass sticking out of your back. A grunt forces past your lips, more from annoyance than actual pain. A simple thought is enough to activate the magic you had cast on yourself, vestigial sparks flickering across your shoulders and boring a hole into your jacket. The edges glow brightly before they birth flames that eat away the bulletproof vest and the rest of your clothing until a sizable chunk of your back is exposed.

Aisha catches the edge of a small circle scribed atop your spine in the middle of your back, but her eyes are soon drawn to the mess of glass shards sticking out of your skin. There’s not a speck of blood in sight, but somehow that makes the sight more disturbing. Her gasp falls deaf on your ears, your mind more focused in trying to remove them.

Forcing your opposite hand to cool down enough so the heat doesn’t shatter the glass, you reach back as far as you can, trying to feel as best you can with your numb fingers. But your hands are stiff and unfeeling, making you fumble about like a bull in a china shop as you try to get one shard and miss. The only time you manage to grasp the sharp edge, you break it when you attempt to pull it out. A curse slips past your lips and you crush the broken piece between your fingers.

Aisha doesn’t know what possesses her, nothing good probably, but she speaks up. “Can I-” Your head turns to her so fast she startles, mouth snapping shut with an audible clack of her teeth. She can only stare at those burning eyes for a second before her animal brain forces her to look away, focusing on the gas mask portion of your mask because looking at your eyes feels wrong. But she powers through it, forcing herself to speak. “Can I help you?”

That was not what you expected.

“No.” You say, your head swiveling to glance at the road and then back up to the sky, a pulse of formless magic slipping past your fingers on instinct to ensure you’re covering all your bases as far as relative safety goes. You don’t see nor sense any form of life besides the girl, nor any mage magic save for the tracker in your pocket.

You hate to admit it, but the wraith was good. And so was the mage that made the tracker, it took you a good while until you had sensed the small piece of enchanted rock hidden in your pocket. You’re still unsure what you want to do with it, maybe you could somehow game the situation or send the monsters after you on a wild goose chase, so for now you’ve only isolated it with your magic instead of destroying it.

Aisha persists. “Please,” She grits her teeth, resisting the urge to shrink back when your eyes once again settle on her. “I- you helped me, I don’t want to hold debts.” There is a kind of determination in her eyes you know too well, the same kind Frosty had right before you and him—

If anyone asks or puts a gun to your head, you will blame this moment on many things — the fatigue, the side effects of using too much magic, the spiraling descent into lichdom, finally losing what dredges of sense you have in your no good skull;  “Fine.”

You take careful steps towards her until your knees press against the bumper before turning your back to her, forcing her to spread her legs to accompany your body. You keep your body turned in a way that still keeps her in your periphery. Not that it matters. Even if she had a knife hidden on her person nothing short of 30/06 ammo could leave any damage you couldn’t immediately heal off.

Aisha hates the part of her that regrets her decision now that she's presented with the large array of glass sticking out of your skin. She reaches out like she would try to pet a wild dog, cold fingers gripping the sides of one piece, bracing her other hand on your back. She tries to wiggle it out, and though you keep yourself from hissing, your muscles still spasm around the sharp glass. “Sorry, sorry-”

“You’re fine rookie,” You grunt automatically. “Just yank it out.”

She sucks in a sharp breath and prepares herself like she’s the one with half a ton of glass using her as a pin cushion. But she does as you say before she can shy away from it. The glass slides out easily enough, glowing orange blood staining it. Her eyes go wide when the blood suddenly drips off the shard in one continuous stream until she’s holding a perfectly clean piece of glass. The blood lands on your back and slithers up your skin into the wound, repairing muscle and flesh until there’s not even a mark to indicate where the glass had pierced your skin.

“Are you like me?” She asks tentatively, mentally hitting herself for such a stupid question; of course you’re a mage, what is she even thinking? Hoping to escape the embarrassment she pulls another shard out of your back.

“You and I are mages.” You say simply, occasionally glancing to the road and sky before turning your attention back on the girl. It feels… strange. You don't remember the last time you've spoken with someone who didn't want anything from you. Someone who didn't want to use you. Kill you.

“Ye- yeah, I figured.” Aisha bites her lip, squinting her eyes. “Why… why did you save me?” She finally asks the question that had been plaguing her.

“I just did.” You shrug your shoulder, a small breath slipping past your clenched teeth as the motion makes the glass dig deeper into your shoulder.

Aisha’s shoulders fall, a frown tugging on her lips. She doesn’t know what she had expected. “Thank you.”

Her words make your head turn to look at her fully, “Why?”

“Why not?” Another chunk of glass falls to the ground, “You saved me from. . . them. You killed to save me.” She says, nodding her head at the three body shaped scorch marks on the ground. She doesn’t know why talking about the death of them suddenly feels so. . . normal, like she’s walking through a dream and none of this is real. More like a nightmare.

“Killing bad men doesn't make me a good one.” You grunt, choosing not to voice how your motives for killing them had been far more selfish than she could imagine. Vengeance and anger are poor motives, but motives nonetheless.

Aisha clicks her tongue and scowls. “And saving me would make you bad? One good deed has to amount for something, right?”

A pregnant pause rings through the silent night.

“You are strange.” Is the only thing your mind can turn into words.

“So are you!” She shoots back quickly, lowering her head when her words register in her brain. Chewing on her bottom lip she pulls out the last glass shard from your skin, letting it fall from her fingers where it joins the small pile on the ground. She awkwardly pats your shoulder. “Who were they?” She finds her voice again.

“Devourers.” You fail to hide the hate in your tone. Stepping away from her you activate the spell you’ve cast on yourself. The magic burning at the edges of the hole in your clothing flares up, fire washing over your naked skin to reconstruct the fabric you had destroyed. “Humans who want magic, and will bleed you dry to get it.” The jacket feels bigger on you than it should, you don’t even doubt that you’ve lost a few pounds just in the past few hours as you’re forced to tighten your belt to keep your pants from sagging. "Kill them if you can, avoid them if you can't."

“Why did they want me?” Aisha asks, bracing herself on the car’s hood and slowly sliding down until her feet touch the ground. She feels lightheaded and sways on her feet, gripping the hood to keep upright. You glance at her but she just shakes her head — you two are even now, she hopes, she doesn’t want to have to ask for help for something as simple as standing.

“You’re a mage, they want magic.” You shrug, fixing the cuffs on your jacket so not an inch of your mage marked skin shows. “They want your blood, by drinking it they can use what they lack.”

Unwanted thoughts laugh at the back of your mind. Phantom pain blooms across your throat as you swallow, your lungs stuttering to draw breath. Memories you'd rather not revisit nibble at the back of your mind, just begging to gain your attention. Your hand reaches out to hold the tags—

Nothing.

You come up empty.

Your heart finally stops.

You hold your fist against your chest for a few seconds, the need to break something, even your own sternum, crooning soft melodies in your ears. Finally your fingers slowly uncurl so your palm rests flat over your heart. Your body is warm, but a blizzard rages inside your ribcage. You lost them, again. . . and you don’t feel fury, or sadness, or any other way. You don’t feel shit.

A low pathetic sound escapes you. Titanium wires stitch your jaw closed, pulled so taut you'd chip a tooth without your magic. For a split second you think of dispelling the magic around the tracker and letting them come to you. . . but you don’t; at least Taurus’s training remains effective. You’re sure your brain will let you feel anger as soon as you’ll be in a position to survive the consequences of anger birthed stupidity.

Aisha leans to her side just enough to see your front, confusion written on her face as to why you had suddenly gone quiet. Though your eyes still burn with an inferno, they feel empty to her. She remembers her father’s eyes had been the same when he had returned from fighting. “Did you lose someone?” She asks, voice soft.

“Yes.” You grunt, and fuck, it feels insulting to them how lost you sound. You’re one of the best mages on the planet for fuck’s sake, you’re not supposed to feel this way. “Lost a lot of people.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be.” You finally pry your hand off your chest, both hands now hanging by your sides, fingers curled into fists. “You had nothing to do with it.” You wish you could say the same to yourself.

You shake your head; feelings can come after the job is done. You know the general lay of the land enough to know there is a small city not far from where you are, one that isn’t too harsh on mages. It would take her a couple of hours on foot to reach, but it’s better than nothing. You tell as such, starting to walk towards your motorcycle. “Get to the city, don’t linger around here.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Aisha follows after you, struggling to keep up. “What am I supposed to do when I get there?” Her mind swirls with all sorts of questions, where will she go? What of her parents? What if—

“Do what you want.” You shrug and get on the motorcycle, the engine roaring to life. “Join the military or the circus or whatever else, just don’t stay here.” And with that you drive off.

. . .

"Well, would you look at that." A man sighs as he pulls the binoculars down to rest in his lap, a deep frown on his face. It only lasts for a scant few seconds before he smirks, crows feet forming around his eyes. "Our firebug's manners haven't changed one bit." The man chuckles and turns his head to regard his companion, eyes glowing the color of crystal clear quartz.

"Oh, I wonder who taught him that." The woman sitting next to him snarks, the blue chains marring her arms disappearing like a mirage when she dispels the illusion spell. The human skin melts away to coarse sand and weathered whalebone, red bone eating worms squirming and boring holes into the whalebone, small anglerfish lures softly waving through the air as if she's deep beneath the sea.

The man purses his lip, "I've no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm sure, mister 'I dropped a mountain on an oil rig with my second in command still in it'." Water flows between the seams of whalebone, extending past the stumps of her wrists to form hands of seafoam and salt.

She uses her newly remade hands to tug on the man’s ear like he’s a disobedient child.

The man scoffs and bats her hand away. "Hey now, you did say you wanted to go diving." He shrugs, "Oh, and looks like I won our bet." He smirks, catching the golden coin the woman throws him. Charles's face smiles on one side of it, but the man pays it no mind and puts the coin in his pocket; they’re both far too old to care about money and the dead kings on them.

“Yes, but not like that!” She snaps, not even the bandages around her head able to hide the glare she throws at him. But instead of following up on her anger she sighs and looks down at her hands. Glowing blue plankton swim in the crystal clear waters, but it feels like yesterday her hands were dyed a burning orange.

She hates what they had to do. What they continue to do. “Ifrit is still too reckless. Your plan failed.”

“No it didn’t.” He shoots back. “We just overestimated the kid again. It wouldn’t have been a problem if you hadn’t coddled them all so much.”

The man fully expects the slap on the shoulder he receives, cool water splashing on his greying blond hair. He doesn’t comment on it, simply runs his hand over the patch of wet hair. Small green shrubs bloom on the cracked earth texture of his palm, moss crawling up the crystalline outcrops along his elbow bone, little flowers sprouting in his hair and beard.

They sit in silence for a moment before the woman sighs and hangs her head. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.” Lifting her head she angles it to look at the man. “I just… I wish we didn’t have to do this.” She confesses. “It breaks my heart to see Ifrit so lost.” As much as her still heart can be broken.

“I know, I know.” He reaches out to gently take her hands into his. Though she can’t see his face, even her magic can only go so far, she knows he’s sporting a gentle smile. “Ifrit will be fine. He has no choice.”

Two jet planes fly overhead, engines screaming, blind to their existence as they rush after their prodigal soldier like bats out of hell.

The woman grimaces, water easily sliding past his fingers as she pulls her hands away. “I know,” She tilts her head towards the abandoned house, and the girl slowly walking away from it. “I suppose I’ll find something to occupy myself with.” The woman gets up, glancing at the man once again. “I hope you know what you’re doing Taurus.”

"I always do Sierra."

. . .

The atmosphere is so thick a vampire could bite into it. They all know first hand how missions can go wrong in a moment’s notice, but none of them had expected it to go this pear shaped; some of the mages they had been given are dead, the rest are all in some kind of coma, and it’s a miracle that Captain Roberts had survived long enough to get medical evac with how burned up she was. Gaz had almost lost his lunch when he’d gone to pick up the mage captain and her arm had fallen off in brittle pieces of blackened bone, fabric and skin melted together all over her torso.

"Are you boys alive?" Is the first question out of Laswell's lips when the contact her. The shoddy connection makes her face grainy and pixelated, but her voice is clear enough, tinged with exhaustion and the light of the screen darkens the bags under her eyes.

“Yeah,” Kyle says, “Besides nearly getting turned into KFC we’re fine.” He moves his wings for emphasis, holding back a grimace at how the residual soot and ash irritates the soft skin beneath his feathers. He’ll be lucky if it’ll wash out after a week, though the grime is only secondary to the stench of death and heat clinging to him.

Soap grunts, not bothering or simply forgetting to pull the frozen piece of rubber from his mouth before speaking. “O-cgh ohnlhy ah fheph burhnrs.” Spit leaks down his swollen lip as he gurgles. It hadn't been noticeable at first, but when the adrenaline wore off the pain in his gums hit him like a truck. The medic had given him the rubber to soothe the burns all over his mouth, and he would have been pissed about how much it looked like a doggy chew toy if the relief it brought wasn’t worth it. Doesn’t mean he’s any less agitated about looking like a teething puppy.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Kyle chides, singed wingtips flicking against the back of Soap’s skull.

Johnny pulls the rubber out of his mouth enough to growl back and simultaneously tries to swallow the saliva. He chokes, hitting his chest a few times and coughing, “Yae try ta talk with a burned mouth! Feel like ah’ve been gargling devil pish.”

“Boys.” Price snaps, voice as cold and hard as his reptilian eyes. “Enough.” There’s a hardness in his gaze neither men have seen in a while or even think of challenging. It’s easy to see that something is bothering the dragon, even if he doesn’t say it, and whatever it is, it’s got Price angry.

Not the usual ‘shouting and arguing’ angry Price gets when he’s given dog shit orders, no. This is the cold and silent anger that precedes the destruction of cities.

Soap looks away, biting down on the frozen rubber. Gaz mumbles an apology.

“John,” Kate begins, sensing the storm in his head. “What did you find out?”

“Ifrit knows Ruin magic.” Price says, bits of steam rising from the corners of his lips as his anger shows. He had gone centuries believing that despicable magic had finally died out and rotted away like every mage that used it. He was wrong. Very wrong.

“Shit.” Laswell rubs the bridge of her nose, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Price’s wing flares out a bit, tail flicking side to side in a subconscious show of agitation. “I felt it.”

“Anyone care to share with the class.” Simon asks, arms crossed over his chest and claws digging into his biceps. The light pricks of pain keep him grounded enough to ensure his arms don’t turn into puffs of dark smoke; he’s had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach ever since the fight, something about you — how you moved, how confidently you used magic — he hadn’t seen it in a while.

And it didn’t bode well. It was better when a mage was scared of their own shadow and put on a cheap mask of confidence. But with you? There wasn’t even a single second of hesitation in anything you did.

Price looks at him, then at the two sergeants, finally looking at Laswell as the two exchange nods. “It’s nothing good.” A sigh leaves him. “Ruin magic is old and dangerous,” Price starts, eyes hard like stone. “The last time it was used a plague swept across Europe.”

“What?” Kyle’s eyebrows furrow. “Do you seriously mean the black death was caused by magic?”

"Yes," Kate says, "But we can have a history lesson later. Ifrit knowing ruin magic changes things, they're now our top priority."

"Ah dhogh geh-" Soap remembers they can't understand him and pulls the rubber out of his mouth. "Ah don't get it, what's so special about ruin magic? Ain't all that magical shite the same?"

"No." Price grunts, "A ruin mage needs the body of another person to learn a spell. They see anything or anyone living as chunks of meat to be used in their spells." His eyes darken, claws digging into his palms.

He shakes his head. “Did you manage to get any information about Ifrit from the tags?” Price asks. He had sent photo copies of each dog tag to Laswell as soon as Johnny had given them to him.

Soap pulls the rubber from his mouth, swallowing the excess spit before reaching out to grab the tags laying on the table. He doesn’t know why, but something about holding them feels sacrilegious to him; like he’s holding the pelt of another werewolf instead of pieces of metal.

“No, Ifrit’s tags aren’t ones made by the military.” Laswell says, and that piques Kyle's interest. He leans over to look at the tags as Johnny inspects them. The metal chain hangs loosely off his fingers, weighed down by more than a dozen tags dangling from it. They vary in damage, some are bent, some have black heat marks on them in the shape of fingertips, and some are so blackened he needs to use his fingers to feel the text. Silicon silencers prevent the tags from making noise when he lays them down in a pile on his palm, a couple of them spilling over to hang at the sides of his hand. The first thing he notices is the stench, nothing specific like the smell mages have, but it’s not pleasant either.

Soap takes a random tag and reads off the fine text —

‘JACHAL

VENENUM, ACIDUM, L9

MAJOR

O NEG

JEWISH’

“Yer telling me.” Soap huffs, taking out his own tags from beneath his shirt to compare the two, just to make sure he’s not insane and the tags don’t make sense.

“What kind of shite even is this?” Johnny’s tags sport his full government name and security name without mentioning his rank. The tags he has in his hand look more like the ones civies would get personalized than anything else. He grimaces and hands the tags over to Gaz, “Are they even real?” He asks.

“Why would someone just carry around a bunch of fake tags?” Gaz asks, inspecting them as well.

“Could be part of a wannabe militia. Wouldn’t be the first time some punks with guns tried to play army.” Ghost shrugs. “Could also be to throw us off.” Ghost suggests, tilting his head enough to see Kyle appraise the small hunks of metal. “Or it’s all for shits n’ giggles.”

Kyle’s sharp eyes spot the tag he had been looking for; the tag is the only one without a silencer, the metal caked in soot and ash that the letters are hard to see and Kyle needs to trace the metal with the pad of his thumb to understand what they say:

‘IFRIT

IGNIS, CINIS, RUINA L10

CAPTAIN–

“Whoa,” Gaz’s eyebrows raise. “Ifrit’s a bloody captain.”

“What’s someone like that doing as a terrorist’s dog?” Soap asks.

“Ifrit’s motives remain unclear, but I did find something.” Kate shuffles some papers off screen, pulling up two thin looking file folders. “Two of the tags you sent me have actual people on them.” She says, taking a paper from each folder. Even through the camera they can see how the once crisp white paper has been yellowed with age. “Lance Corporals Hutch and Lambert, both presumed KIA nearly 11 years ago along with their entire squad. Apparently they were led by Corporal Yerrow to conduct a reconnaissance mission in Iraq to investigate a human smuggling ring, but a shoot-out caused a forest fire and no bodies were ever recovered.”

Johnny sniffs the air, crossing his arms over his chest, tail tip slowly wagging. “Anyone smell bull shite?”

“You’re not the only one.” Kate turns the files so the text side is aimed at the camera. More than half of the documents are redacted to the point it looks like a rorschach test. “I haven’t been able to access the original files, if they even exist, but the agent that oversaw the mission was a predecessor of mine, I’ll see if I can get in contact with him. ” It wouldn’t be the first time the CIA covered something up, but what could have happened back then that even Kate couldn’t get to the files?

“Great, what other shite can we pile on our plates?” Soap growls, ears twitching.

“Don’t jinx it.” Kyle says, gently setting the tags on the table. 

“There’s another thing.” Kate adds, putting the files away.

“Nice going puppy.” Ghost grunts, ignoring the look Soap gives him.

“Whatever it is, it’ll need to wait.” Price says, speaking up finally. “Ifrit’s a ruin mage. We need to put it down before it melts half the country to slag.”

“That’s the problem.” Kate’s voice makes Price’s eyes sharpen, slitted pupils turning into thin black lines. “We’ve managed to identify the gas used in the terror attack. It was Sarin gas, remnants of Barkov. The same ones Makarov stole.”

“Told you they’re a damn magnet fer wankers.” Soap mutters under his breath. Price's eyes shift to him, giving him a hard look and making it very clear it’s not the time for his comments. Soap’s ears twitch and his tail curls around his leg.

“How did Al-Qatala get their hands on the gas? There’s no way Makarov would just hand over his toys.” Ghost asks.

“We don’t know yet. And we might not ever know if you don’t hurry.” Kate stresses. “The top brass figured out Khaled’s location, they think Ifrit’s going after Khaled so they’re sending troops to take them both out in one place as we speak.”

Price catches on quickly. “Kate, you’re not telling me we need Ifrit alive?” Price stresses, body stiff.

“I’m not,” Kate rebuts, just as tense. “This is an order.” Price flashes his teeth at her, but finally looks away, black smog escaping past the corner of his lips.

“If you can’t get to Khaled, Ifrit will be our only chance to get Makarov.” She ads.

“So go capture the human bomb without dying.” Gaz summarizes, claw tips nervously scratching at the fresh pin feathers growing from his forearms. “Sounds easy.”

“Walk in tae park.” Johnny snarks.

"Only the parks on fire." Ghost adds, tone dry as old bone.

Price stays still and silent for a few moments. Thunder rumbles in his chest and his tail tip lashes against the floor as indications of his anger. His claws scrape against his palms with the need to tear into the festered flesh of the ruin mage, to rip out the heart and destroy it so he can make sure that blasted magic is gone for good.

But he relents, only so he can have unrestrained access to you once they get the information they need. “Pack up. On the double.” Price growls. “We’ve got a mage to hunt.”

. . .

Why did you do it?

It had been a split second decision to divert course when you'd sensed the Devourers, and even then, the mana they gave you through Beelzebub was miniscule compared to what you were used to handling. Hell, you probably wasted more mana using the temporary invisibility spell to get close to the Devourers than what you made from them.

With Khaled's betrayal and an unknown military likely after your head, ignoring the Devourers would have been the smart move. Your ‘heroic’ act won’t earn you any brownie points with whatever made the mistake of putting you on the planet — that’s for fucking sure.

But. . . she reminded you of, well, you. The you violent flames had cremated when they first sparked across your fingers. The you you’d left behind when you took your friend’s hand and ran as fast as your legs could carry. The you you’d been forced to stuff beneath the floorboards and ignore as you lied to the recruiter. The you you sometimes wish you hadn’t forsaken for the sake of survival.

. . . eh, what does it matter? Frosty’s as dead as the rest of them and no amount of grief and tears (assuming you could even force yourself to weep) will bring him back. Maybe it’s a good thing you never found his tags, the universe’s way of keeping him from suffering the humiliation you’ve inflicted on the others.

The engine roars beneath you like a caged beast, each little rock and hole in the uneven terrain causing the motorcycle to buck, the back of the seat knocking up into your tailbone. It’s a necessary evil, driving far away from the main road with the lights off helps you evade detection slightly better, and you’ll take anything you can get. Your commander’s words are etched into your bones: “Only let your enemies know you’re coming when your knife is hilt deep in their throat.”.

The sizzle in your bones and little deep pinpricks of pain in your lower back are barely noticeable with how numb you feel. Both in body and in what’s left of your humanity. You’ve gotten good at that — turning off your emotions and doing what needs to be done; you’re sure if you got shot dead that your body would finish the mission before it figured out there was a bullet in your skull.

Sometimes you even wonder what a witch would see if she ever tried to scry into your heart. Would it still be the hellish landscape Taurus showed you all those years ago? Or would it be like Pompei? Or some other landscape of impeccably preserved tragedy?

Your fingers twitch around the handlebars in an attempt to stop yourself from reaching out for something that’s not there anymore. Some vestigial and selfish part of you whimpers and yearns for the brief respite the tags brought. Their absence feels more suffocating than all the times you’ve been hanged; more painful than when your throat had been used as an artistic butcher’s canvas.

Your magical senses pick up the life signs long before your enhanced ears hear the screech of jet engines. You nearly snap your neck with how quickly you look up, able to catch two jet planes flying overhead by the glow of their engines, trying to track both of their flight paths.

You tighten the grip on the handlebars and increase the speed. You don’t stop to see if they saw you, you know they did from the way the planes twirl in the air. . . and from the way they shoot rockets at you.

Letting go of one handle you let mana rush to your fingers, cinders burning away your sleeve and glove. Just as the rockets get close enough for you to hear their screeching you swing your arm up, a burning arch of flames following after your palm. The motion is enough to tell your brain what you want, a thick screen of roaring flames spreading out from the arc in front of you.

The missiles hit the wall of flames instead of you. You swear you nearly go deaf from the loud explosion the missiles make when they connect with your defense magic, everything around you shaking from the sudden force but the spell holds, not even a scratch in sight. The resulting smoke flares around the sides in a suffocating cloud, the thick wall of fire obscuring your vision and forcing you to blindly swerve side to side.

Your magic may protect you, but it can’t stop the rocket from hitting the ground right in front of the wheel. The whistle and screech of the missile is the only warning you get before the ground beneath you explodes and sends you flying. You hit the ground and roll, jagged rocks slamming into your bones, scraps of metal pelting your back. Magic washes over you to heal the bones you break.

It leaves you feeling every bit of pain when the motorcycle falls on top of you, pushing the breath out of your lungs. The sudden force has your jaw slamming onto the ground, your tongue caught between your teeth. Blood floods your mouth. It tastes like battery acid and burns your throat on its way down to your stomach, but it forces adrenaline to rush through your system and let you push the motorcycle off you.

Your spine cracks multiple times in the short seconds it takes for your magic to fix the bones, giving you back the sensation in your limbs so you can roll to your side and avoid another missile. You summon a few smaller flame shields to protect your head and vitals from the blast, but not from the sharp rocks that hit your back like grenade pieces.

Your vision swimming and ears ringing you scramble to your knees. You’re given no choice but to use your own blood. Even with the distraction of another missile hitting your shield, it’s easy for you to focus your mana. It flows from your heart to your fingers but you don’t let it escape like it wants. Forcing it to pool in your palms until the heat burns away your remaining glove and turns the stone of your hands into lava.

It only takes a few seconds for fat drops of brightly melted rock to drip onto the ground, and only then can you feel your blood, both the one in your veins and the rivulets of bright orange freely flowing down your back. Burning hot and brimming with so much mana it’s no problem for you to take hold of the blood you've bled. Bright crimson crawls across your back to draw a magic circle from memory alone.

Quickly hunching your back generates enough force to make your blood bust through your vessels, two arcs of blood tearing through skin and muscle like a knife. The bright glow of your blood lights up the dark, stray droplets hovering in the air like oil in water as more of it flows from your body and branches out until it resembles skeletonized wings. Fire sparks at your skin and follows the blood, forcing it to crystallize in place as ash takes up the space between the bones and cascades down in long shrouds. Obsidian sharp crystal blood digs into your skin with every little move of your new wings as they twitch erratically. Lighting races up your spine, your mind forced to create new nerves and deal with sensations it wasn’t designed for.

You summon a circle beneath your feet, ash bursting up to send you high into the air in a long continuous column like it’s the tower of Babel just as another missile hits the place you had been moments ago. The spark from the rocket ignites the ash, giving you an extra few feet in the air before you start to fall.

The leftover smoke swallows you whole, gravity forcibly tipping you back until you’re falling head first. The wind screeches in your ears and the grounds gets closer and closer with every second, the grim reaper laughing over your shoulder; you remember yelling and screaming, even passing out, many times during this type of training. Now, you are calm.

Your mind finally creates the right nerves to move your limbs. Your wings spread out with the same violence they burst out of your back, sharply pulling on your chest muscles as they swing out and down. The flap of your wings breaks off a bit of the ash covering your crystallized blood, flames burning at the tips of your wings making the ash erupt in an explosion and creating enough force for you to soar high into the air.

Flying is hard regardless of how often you’ve done this, your back muscles cramping as you struggle to use your new wings. Not that it actually is flying in the same sense the harpies or other winged creatures would call it. More like gliding with extra steps. Either way, it serves its purpose in making you airborne and mobile.

You shoot high up into the sky like a bullet, trails of ash following after you and wrapping around you like a shroud. The quick movement of your wings and sharp turns let you avoid a set of missiles shot at you, but even at your fastest speed you’ve got no chance of hitting the quick jets flying around you like flies. So instead you use simple spells and hope your aim hasn’t gotten rusty. The muscles in your core and arms tense, a circle forming flush with your palms. Mana rushes to your arms and you use the brief stability in the air between the flaps of your wings to set off your spell.

A solid beam of concentrated flame shoots out, thin as a pencil but it tears through the clouds and metal plane like butter. You manage to cleave off a wing, the wound left behind in the metal glows brightly, before a simple thought activates the latent magic and the entire jet explodes a second later.

Rockets and bullets fly at your back like plague carrying insects, only to be burned away by your magic. Your neck hurts from how sharply you jerk your head to look behind you, mana flowing to your eyes to enhance your sight until the jet is clearly visible. At least you have comfort in the fact your hand eye coordination is still as sharp as ever, another beam of fire cleaving the jet in two.

And just like that, you’re alone in the sky.

You don’t realize how rapidly your heart is beating until you take a moment to breathe, wings spreading out to let you glide through the sky. You reach into your pocket to pull out the tracker, a small piece of rich green rock. Your magic swirls across the surface of it, cinders worming through the stone; You don’t know how they found you when your magic is still active on the tracker, there are no ‘happy accidents’ in your line of work.

Gritting your teeth you dispel your magic around the tracker and toss it as far as you can in the opposite direction, wings pressing closer to your body to increase the speed of your glide.

With your motorcycle more than likely fucked, you have no choice but to rely on your bloodmade wings longer than you’d like. Using the mana you’d stuck on Khaled as a compass you let yourself fall and gain speed before spreading out your wings. The deep muscles in your back and chest scream for a second with each flap of your wings before your magic silences them, the discomfort of using temporary limbs easy to shove into the back of your mind. Your flying speed is much faster than that of the motorcycle, the ground moving rapidly beneath you.

You’re only mildly surprised to feel Khaled’s presence in his base. It’s an old oil refinery that was abandoned when the Russians restricted the production of oil in the country. Khaled found it and turned it into a bastion, hiding up high in the mountains like he’s some kind of king.

Any old dragon can attest a kingdom of steel and concrete like that won’t survive scorching flame.

Your only problem is that it’s got magic sensing tech, which just means there’s some extremely sensitive electronics that end up sparking like shoddily made light bulbs when more than just the smallest amount of modern magic is used. Sometimes you hate how thorough you are.

Luckily for you, it’s not the first time you’ve had to sneak past such tech.

You land near the base of the mountain, just at the edge where you know the range of those sensors ends. You’d like to say you land gracefully and with barely a sound, but you’re pretty sure a tank would have an easier time than you. The exhaustion and the added weight on your back doesn’t help you in any way to keep balance, making you stumble forward and almost trip on a root. Your arms spread out to grip the trees for support, but you underestimate your strength and the wood splinters under your right hand, making you fall face first.

The few seconds you spend flat on the ground is probably the longest you’ve spent laying down in the past month.

With a sharp breath you get to your feet, carefully leaning your shoulder against a tree. Your makeshift wings press against your back and pull on your muscles, but the thought of ‘what if you’ll need them?’ keeps you from dispelling them. Embers burn away the clothing shielding your front, giving yourself just enough sight of your skin to be able to cast the spells you need.

It’s one thing to push your mana to your hands and out as magic, it’s another to force the burning heat through every little capillary in your skin and pull on it in certain spots until magical circles etch themselves into your skin. It’s not that far off from using blood magic, only it requires a little less mana and focus. You’ve done this so much you could do it with your eyes closed, filling the insides of the circles with little diamonds and magical sigils only your mind can grasp.

The body enhancing spell has an immediate effect. The pain in your back disappears suddenly like it was never there, the vestiges of weakness from mana use getting pushed back to the back of your mind. It even dispels the base painful thrum in your skull you hadn’t realized you had.

With a clearer mind you go about casting more similar spells that carve themselves into your skin; one to temporarily strengthen your body beyond what you already have, another to force your mana generator to increase in productivity, yet a third one to increase the potency of your spells; Buffs that push your body past the edge of what it can take, to the point you barely feel human.

This is the closest man will ever come to godhood. ”Don’t let it get to your little head firebug.”

Your last spell to prepare is different. A dirty trick.

“Valefar.” You huff, speaking another name for a spell that deserves respect. Nothing happens at first, but then you feel it. Like a living thing deep beneath the earth, Valefar hums a soft lullaby to the tune of crackling flames. The dirt beneath you expands and black flames break through the earth, creating a spider web of dark old magic that fills up the empty root system spanning the entire mountain. The flames don’t dare touch you yet. They’re waiting. . . hungry.

Before the problematic thing in your skull can give you grief, you let the waiting beast in and welcome it like a brother. Valefar’s black flames shudder and slowly, carefully, crawl up your legs, scampering along your abdomen and kissing the sharp transition between skin and mage marks. They paint the yellow glow of your mage marks a pitch black, the magma of your arms and your crystalized blood turning black as obsidian. Even the flames tipping the ends of your wings turn black as pitch.

For a second you’re accosted with the sensation of every bit of magic you had pushed into the earth over the months, every drop of mana obediently waiting its time in the rotten root system. But Valefar soothes your mind, dampening the glow of your eyes and shrouding your brain in water cool flames. Valefar lacks the crushing weight or the freezing cold of most ruin spells, simply almost thrilled to be used.

Ruin magic is too old to be tracked by modern means, and you take the first step into the range of the sensors without fear. You knew Khaled would betray you, you’ve almost started growing old in an industry that killed its soldiers young, you knew to listen to your stomach. Khaled had been one of those people you wouldn’t trust as far as you could throw them, though you never expected him to be so brazen about it. It’s no different than the day hellfire rained down on your hea-

You stop yourself mid thought the second you register your anger trying to boil over, the burning heat inside your chest making steam rise off your shoulders. Asmodeus, the one spell you won’t ever use, sparks beneath your skin; angry, vengeful. You stifle it before it can gain an upper hand, sparks of black flame flying past your lips as you breathe out and escaping through the filters of your mask.

Taurus always blamed your hotheadedness on your magic. What is a mage if not the fire Prometheus stole for you? The suffocating hate Vesuvius spewed? The blackened rotten blood giving birth to spells like Beelzebub and Valefar?

Loud gunfire breaks through your thoughts; Khaled would never practice shooting drills in the middle of the night.

You increase your pace, turning your jog into a run. As you near the old refinery something immediately stands out to you – there’s way too many life signatures than there should be. Even without a good line of sight you can sense them, all those beating hearts and flickers of life fluttering together like moths until you find yourself with a massive pain in your skull.

Breathing out a small breath you duck behind the tall trees just at the edge of the compound. To say you’re surprised to find Urzikstan soldiers engaged in combat with Khaled’s men would be an understatement. And the army didn’t hold anything back. There’s a fuck ton of soldiers, most of them hiding behind tanks that block the only exit from the compound and sponge up the machine gun fire Khaled’s men are unloading into them. Bullets rain down on both sides, there’s even fucking helicopters flying in the air — this is a full on assault.

You can still sense Khaled is in the refinery somewhere, you would be able to narrow down on his exact location if there weren’t so many living bodies buzzing around like ants. Your mind whirls with ideas; you could use the distraction and sneak past, or you could just destroy both sides in one quick and clean attack, you doubt anyone would be able to notice you using magic when they’re more focused about the hail of bullets.

A tree branch snaps beneath you, followed by the clicking of a gun and three rounds going off. “Mage in sight! I repeat I got mage in sight!”

Nevermind.

The bullets tear through your vest but just bounce off your magic enhanced skin. You turn on your heel, holding your arm out. “Beelzebub.” Burning cold swells in your heart and crawls through your veins, black flames shooting out from your palm at the soldier. He barely has the chance to scream before the black fire eats away his vocal cords, his gun clattering to the floor. In only a few seconds the only thing left of him is the uniform and the black flames burning in the shape of a man.

Despite how stupid it might be, you let go of the fine control you have over Beelzebub. It doesn’t waste a second, thousands of little wisps of obsidian fire breaking off from the main mass and shooting out at the nearest source of organic matter. Be they tree or human, Beelzebub will devour them all the same.

Fresh mana fills your chest and you’re quick to turn it into something useful. This time it takes significantly less time to spread your wings, summoning ash beneath your feet and launching yourself up into the air.

Tree branches whack you over the head before you make it into the open air. . . and accidentally smash your head into the belly of a helicopter. A dull 'thump' sounds and you're not sure if it's your head that's empty or the helicopter.

Your vision blurs for a second, and you shake your head to get rid of the temporary headache. The helicopter swerves to the side, the tail swinging right at you, the soldiers inside yelling. Tucking your wings close to your body you fall just in time to avoid the tail, twisting your body as you careen through the air until you’ve got a clear line of sight. One magic circle is all it takes to blast a sizable hole through the center of the flying machine, taking out the engine and the blades all at once.

Quickly flapping your wings you dart up through the hole you created, ash flooding the inside of the heli as you pass and erupting in an explosion a second later. The heli plumets down to the ground but you stay in the air, spreading your wings out to soar. This high up you’ve got a clear view of everything — the entire compound, made up of two big buildings connected with a catwalk and oil storage towers; The machine gun men shooting at tanks with no regard for how many bullets they use; Beelzebub’s black flames spreading across the terrain like a forest fire, consuming everything in sight until the only thing left is scorched earth and dust.

First things first, the machine guns. Though not as dangerous to you as the tanks, you’ve had enough of them to sate you for a lifetime, and you’d rather not be on the receiving end again. With sitting ducks for targets it’s laughably easy to cast simple homing spells to kill the gunner and melt the machine guns mounted on the rails.

A bullet hits your chest, tearing through the bullet proof vest. It bounces off your skin but the force nearly knocks you out of the sky. You go with the force, tucking your wings and flipping backwards in the air until you can spread them out to glide down. You notice the snipers, two on the roof of each building, one on the middle one of the tall oil towers just behind the buildings. You go for the straggler first, diving down with the speed of a bullet.

The sniper tries to shoot you again but you barrel roll out of the way. You shoot a ball of flames at the sniper when you're close enough, completely disintegrating him on contact. Turning to your side you soar through the gap between two oil towers, making a sharp left turn around the tower with a quick flap of your wings so you can quickly soar up.

The building to your right is closer and your next target. Gliding down close to the roof you you summon your spell, incinerating the closer of the two snipers. The other one drops his rifle to shoot at you with a pistol, but you just tuck your wings close and barrel roll to evade the bullets.

Your wings suddenly spread out with the force of a tightly coiled spring, the crystalline edge slicing straight through the sniper's neck like a guillotine. You're given no time to focus on the remaining snipers when a massive artillery shell flies at you. With a swing of your arm your flames race out to collide with the shell, an explosion going off right in front of your face. Ash and soot cake on top of your lenses but that's a small price to pay when you can safely dart through the smoke cloud; looks like the tanks have noticed you.

Pulling your wings close to your wings close to your body you divebomb to take out the final two snipers. You crash into one of them, your boots making contact with his chest and the force you’ve generated from your flight means you completely smash through his ribs the second his back hits the roof. The concrete cracks beneath your boot, but that doesn't stop you as you race across it, pulling your arm back to swing a fist at the remaining sniper. The skull cracks the second your fist connects, breaking completely under your knuckles, blood and brains splattering on the lenses of your gasmask.

The roof you're on has a helicopter on it, and you think of destroying it, but the tanks present a bigger problem. Leaping off the edge of the building you launch yourself back into the air, turning your attention to the tanks. There’s four of them, all spread out in a vague arc across the empty field of land between the buildings and the road leading out. Not a problem for you.

Slowing down to a smooth glide you stretch your arms out in front of you. Your flames rush out to hit the artillery shells shot at you, but it also forces the mana Beelzebub keeps stuffing into your chest to move to your palms. Summoning four evenly sized circles in front of you is easy for a mage of your caliber. With mana burning in your palms you squeeze your hands, forcing all that magic to shoot out through the centers of the circles as concentrated beams of flame. As if struck down by some god's smite, The tanks blow up the moment your magic hits them, leaving smoldering half melted skeletons of steel behind.

You land near one of the tanks with enough force to crack the charred ground beneath you, stumbling a few steps forward. You turn your head, using the tattered remains of your jacket near your shoulders to wipe away the lenses. It makes you see the clear destruction Beelzebub has wrought, the once lush forest surrounding the compound turned baren. Yet the spell hungers still, given the chance it would easily devour the entire world, and you can feel it gnaw on the edges of your passive control in it's attempt to stray away from you. Biting the hand that feeds. Arrogant. Just like Lambert.

You're forced to snuff it out, dispelling Beelzebub before it tries to sweep through the country like all ten plagues.

A shuddering breath leaves you for the first time in a while, your lungs stuttering as you breathe in for the first time in a while. Despite how stuffed to the gills with mana your chest is, how you can barely breathe with the pressure against your ribs, you can feel the familiar sting of your bones — the cost of mana use burrowing into your marrow. The missions, the ambush, this, it’s all starting to pile on. It’s the cost, you suppose, no mortal will ever become god, this is simply a consequence for your choices.

Shots ring out above the crackle of flames, bullets bouncing off your body and only making you aware of the soldiers. Thy are too much of a problem to be kept alive, but killing them with magic would be a waste of mana considering you’re slowly reaching the breaking point of how much even your augmented body can handle.

Fortunately, you’ve got a cheap trick up your sleeve. Quickly sensing the exact location of the Urzikstan soldiers you cast another spell, circles forming beneath their feet before chains of living flame ensnare them like rabbits. "Belial." You say, your gaze fixed on the Urzikstan soldiers. 

Belial is softer on your arteries than Beelzebub, but it still passes from your heart and into your fingers like a kidney stone. Big globs of tar black lava drip from your arms, sizzling and steaming when splatter on the ground. But they don’t stay inert for long. You’ve seen the sight a thousand times; Roaches made of pure black lava crawl out of the puddles by the dozens, quickly skittering towards the hapless humans. They crawl up the bound soldiers, fiery mandibles eating away the flesh and boring holes through muscle, squirming into every orifice, infesting every inch of their insides.

The soldiers try to scream but their vocal cords are soon devoured as the roaches eat everything they deem useless. They gorge themselves on the fat, groups of them peeling off the skin in long strips until the bowels and other organs fall out to the ground with a wet 'splat' to be eaten by yet more roaches. The bodies twitch and convulse, falling to the ground when you dispel the chains. Blood and mucus froths at their mouths but the roaches drink up even that like it's the finest wine.

When they're done feasting they crawl into the body that's nothing more but muscle, ligament, and bone. A single hand motion is enough to command the bodies to rise. They do so slowly, limbs twitching and bodies shaking as the magical roaches squirm in the homes they've made between muscle fibers. The bodies stumble to their feet, eyeless slack jawed heads full of roaches staring at you.

Your control over them isn’t as fine as Jackal had over his puppets, but it’s still better than what most militaries see. Your well hidden anger bleeds into your magic, you don’t even need to speak for the charred puppets to stumble past you, seeking out to devour the stragglers you missed.

With that done you turn your attention to the large two story building where you can still sense Khaled’s presence.

. . .

"Ah still think this is bollocks." Soap growls when his head bumps against the roof of the Humvee because Price drove over yet another pot hole in the road. "Go capture tae mage that can turn yeh into a kebab, wonderful idea, no wee problem there."

"Noted sergeant." Price grunts, knuckles almost white as he grips the steering wheel. "Anything else you want to add?" He asks but receives a few grumbles in return. They've heard that one part of the army had come to lay siege on the refinery, and from the preliminary reports Laswell gave them, it didn't end well for the poor bastards.

"Do we even have a game plan sir?" Gaz asks, glancing between Ghost and Soap sitting in the backseat. "One that isn't 'let the mage shoot at us until they tucker out'?"

"Got a better idea?" Ghost asks with a small huff. "Let me n' Price do the heavy lifting." He grunts, "You two stay back and provide support."

Even with irritation nibbling on his nerves, Soap can't help himself. "Oh, you like it hot Lt?"

Gaz gives a surprised snort. Ghost side eyes Soap. "Mhm, scorching."

"We're getting close." Price warns, switching gears as the road starts going up the hill. His sharp senses already pick up the lingering hints of smoke and ash along with the tang of burnt flesh. Beneath all of that is something older: the rancid festering flesh of crumbling empires and wild animalistic grief.

Price grits his teeth. "Remember, we need Ifrit alive."

"Laswell never said we had to keep 'em in one piece." Ghost ads.

"Thank fock for that." Johnny says and bumps his shoulder against Ghost's. "Yae reckon she won't mind if ah take a few fingers off?" He asks, a mean grin pulling his lips back to bare his teeth.

"Play nice and I'll throw you a femur too." Ghost chuckles, ignoring the look Johnny gives him.

"Are we even sure this thing will work?" Gaz asks, looking down at the heavy piece of metal in his hands. It looks like a metal collar, runes and circles etched into the outside surface, tiny needles poking from the inside. Three vials filled with bright purple liquid are slotted into the back of the collar. The thing buzzes softly beneath his claws, like there’s a thunderstorm stuck inside the metal, making his fingers go numb.

"That's why we brought the arm restraints to be sure." Ghost says, absentmindedly tapping a clawed finger against the restraints he's holding. They look like big elbow length mittens made out of metal, similar runes scrawled over every inch.

Kyle purses his lips before his gaze turns to the roll of silver tape Price had haphazardly thrown on top of the dashboard. "What's the tape for? Planning to put a bow on Ifrit?"

"Got to wrap up the gift somehow." Ghost shrugs.

"Oh yeah, an I reckon the mage will just sit nice n pretty and let us play dress up." Soap snarks.

"Focus." Price orders, pulling their attention to the front windshield. The forest surrounding the main road abruptly disappears as if a god had photoshopped a different part of the world in it's place, verdant green replaced by scorched black ground and nothing else. The smell of burning metal and flesh is inescapable now, seeping through the cracks of the windows and making Gaz cough.

"Fucking hell." Gaz mumbles, tears stinging his eyes and forcing him to quickly put on the gas mask hanging off his neck. It doesn't help a single bit with the god awful smell.

"This shite is useless." Soap complains as he secures the gas mask to his own face. Soap had smelled his fair share of foul things in the demolition school, from Sulphur to gas and everything that could be used in making explosives, but the stench he's exposed to now makes everything else smell like daisies. "How the hell did the matchstick do this?" He can't help but ask.

"That's the work of ruin magic." Price says, tone hard and clipped.

They're forced to stop a little bit away from the compound as their path is blocked by the wreckage of a helicopter, the steel melted into the concrete road and the sides of the road too steep to drive around. They pile out of the Humvee, Soap and Gaz clutching their guns close; it's uncommon for them to use human made weapons when they're monsters, but Price isn't taking any chances with his mens safety.

They inch carefully past the remains of the helicopter, burnt cracked dirt crunching beneath their boots. With no trees in the way the compound is easy to see, and it looks just as bad as the surrounding area.

"Steaming Jesus." Johnny mutters as they walk around one of the four tanks, the metal melted and flames still flickering a top it. The land here looks like the hell his ma would describe in an attempt to put some godliness in him; The ground is cracked and charred black, hot under their boots. Ash and steam blanket the ground, making it hard to see where they step. Parts of the buildings have been melted, long strands of slag running down the sides of them. There's no light save the fires burning haphazardly across the ground, but their eyes can see fine in the dark.

"Should we check for survivors?" Kyle asks, finger tightly pressed against the safety switch, his wings spread out just enough to be able to quickly launch himself into the air if the need arises.

"Don't bother." Simon says, dark smoke slowly fizzling off his hands. The air in the compound feels heavy, feels like he's back in that fucking coffin. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end, anticipation crackling under his skin like static. "We didn't bring a dust bin. Or Henry the Hoover."

"Fuck Lt," Soap opens his mouth to speak more, but before he can make a sound, they hear a half mangled groan ring out from their side. Immediately raising his gun Soap narrows his eyes, managing to make out a dark outline stumbling towards them. At first Johnny thinks it’s a survivor, but then the steam clears enough to see it’s clearly not. What stumbles towards them is a completely skinned human, muscle and bone charred black, jaw gnashing as if it's already got their throat between its teeth.

Without thinking Johnny unloads a couple of bullets into the body, silenced gunshots echoing in the smoke. The body just soaks up the bullets, continuing to stumble after them. "Shit!" Soap hisses as he steps back, but before he can shoot at it again, Simon's shadows lash out at it.

The whips of darkness knock the corpse to the ground, managing to tear off a desecrated arm off in the process. A disgusting sound gurgles in it's throat as it tries to crawl towards them, the cracked bone of its fingers clawing at the ground. Simon moves his hand up and a spike of darkness erupts from the walking corpse's shadow, destroying the head in an instant. Soap doesn't even have time to breathe before the body starts convulsing, large black pustules rapidly swelling on its back. They explode without warning, black flames spewing out in a few feet around it like a miniature bomb, incinerating the corpse in the process.

A second of silence passes.

"What the fock was that?" Soap stresses, staring at the black flames as they burn on the ground.

"Belial." Price mumbles under his breath, blue eyes narrowing as a small breath of smoke escapes past his lips. "Magic made undead.” Price grunts. “Ruin magic lets the mage control the body like a puppet."

"Great." Soap grunts, trying not to breathe in the scent of burning flesh. "First the bomb shaped mage, now focking zombies? Firecracker's pulling out all the stops." Soap’s tail flicks to his leg and he grips his riffle tighter. "Shit, that smell too." He doesn't know how you keep managing to make things smell worse and worse, but fuck, he's sure the stench will be stuck in his pores for the rest of his life.

"Not a fan of barbeque?" Ghost asks as they step around the burning corpse. Or rather what remains of it.

"Not quite the cook out ah have in mind LT." Johnny grumbles.

"Remind me not to join you two at the next brass dinner." Gaz ads with a humorless chuckle before his harpy eyes spot more movement. "Tangos, one o'clock." He says, and doesn't need to be prompted to fly up into the sky to be their eyes.

"Stick close and aim for the head." Price orders, all of them slowly and quietly making their way into the compound. They encounter more zombies, some of them stumbling around mindlessly, some simply standing. Knowing where to hit they're easy to take out unawares, a couple of bullets through the skull enough to get the corpses on the ground.

Kyle lands behind them when they near a two story building. Another one is opposite it, a catwalk above them connecting the buildings together. A nearby door is torn off its hinges, smoke spilling through it into the surrounding air. It's the only place they can think of where you might be.

"Simon, with me." Price says, "Gaz, Soap, secure the perimeter." Price doesn't need to say it twice. Simon steps close to him, guarding his six as they enter the building. Large holding tanks are built in the center of the building, smoke filling the room up to their knees and the occasional cinder of ash gracefully fluttering through the air. Price automatically checks his right, eyes focusing on the stairs leading to a small room on the second floor, one set of stairs on both sides of the room. Bits of thick ash cascade down the stairs, and both of them can smell the rot.

He makes a small hand motion and Simon understands easily, leaving his side to duck behind the towering oil tanks, crossing the room and reaching the other set of stairs. Quietly they make their way up, making sure not to make a single sound. The door on Price’s side is torn off too, his pointy ear flicking as he hears what he assumes to be your voice, low and muffled, simply asking: "How?"

. . .

Your hand shakes from how hard you try to keep yourself from crushing Khaled's skull. You can already imagine the way bone would softly creak before finally splintering to pieces, the way blood and brains would squelch between your fingers. You grip his head hard enough to bruise instead, his skin bubbling and hair burning from the barely controlled heat of your hand.

Khaled looks exactly how other prideful men look when you come to collect your due — eyes wide, teeth clenched, legs weakly kicking you as you have him dangling in the air. You’d usually feel satisfaction, but the only thing in your heart right now is a suffocating cold.

The cold extends to your free hand, turning the lava into inert stone so not even a single thread of the patch laying in your palm is burned; A black decapitated right hand sits in a crimson backdrop. A crimson eye in the center of it cries bloody tears. ‘Mortem Opetere’ is stitched on top of it, boldly proclaiming what awaits you. Across both sides just three measly words turn your world upside down: ‘Red Right Hand’.

Your jaw feels welded shut as you try to open it, moving your tongue like your mouth's full of barbed wire before you manage to force out one word: "How?"

Khaled grunts instead of answering, coughing as the ash cascading off your wings continues to twirl in the air. Beelzebub’s flames dance at your feet, consuming the magical ash the second it touches the floor so the room feels suffocating, but it doesn’t make him pass out.

You grip him harder, claws of lava burning through the surface of his skin until you’re digging into the muscles covering his bones, his screams fall deaf on your ears. Even like this, barely able to hold yourself back from cracking his skull like an egg, your magic is controlled. You only let enough mana linger in your palm so the heat burns and stabs at his nerves, but not enough to completely destroy them. “How. Did. You. Get. This?” You ask again, each word like a sharp stab to your tongue.

Khaled bites his lip so hard it bleeds, glaring at you with utter disgust in his eyes. “Ask your- mh!- your commander lich-”

You notice the enemy presence a second too late, gunshots blasting in your ears. Having dispelled your body enhancing spells because of how taxing they were, you’re left with no  choice but to blindly throw up a shield of crackling flames to destroy the bullets.

You miss one.

The bullet hits the crystalized bone of your wing and it's all it takes to create a spark. The ash making up your wings erupts, the resulting explosion unable to damage your wing but it does knock you forward. Khaled slips through your fingers as you both are tossed to the ground from the force. Your magic surges through your hand even as you scramble to stand, magic circles forming in the air to shoot uncontrolled flames at the two exits of the room.

Ropes of dark shadows shoot out from the right doorway, forcing you to throw yourself to the side to dodge them. You get to your feet just as the shadows hit the wall at the height of your head, quickly eroding a hole into the steel; The wraith has found you, and likely the rest of the misfits too.

You're careful as you stuff the patch into your pocket, but have no regard for the muscles in your back when you spread your wings out. Fresh ash cascades down the crystalline bones just as you flap your wings to send a gust of ash towards the front of the room. Mana surges to your cold arm and melts the stone into liquid lava which you fling into the cloud of ash, the heat from those drops of lava causing another explosion. Unable to sense where the wraith is, you focus on completely blocking off the exits in your flames, bright circles forming at the doorways and white hot flames shooting up, spilling over the door frame to scorch the ceiling.

You’re too distracted to notice Khaled move "Idiot boy have I taught you nothing?" the crackle of flames and the exploding ash masking his labored footsteps. His hand grabs your shoulder and pulls you back enough to jab a cold needle of a syringe into your neck.

Your wing shoots out automatically, knocking him back with enough force to have him crash into the wall. You yank the syringe out and toss it to the ground. The glass shatters, residual drops of bright purple liquid seeping into the ground.

But it’s too late.

You can feel Morgana’s tears course through your system, burning each cell in your blood vessels like battery acid, leaving your throat feeling numb and head light and heavy at the same time. You sway on your feet before your legs go weak and you fall to your knees with a gasp as if someone had punched you in the gut, your burning fingers tearing gouges into the floor as your muscles tense and relax a million times a second. Beelzebub’s black flames shoot out from between your fingers, freezing cold solidifying around your heart and in your arteries. It's a useless attempt to stave off the serum, to give you a few seconds more to escape, but you're glad for it.

You push on the ground with all the strength you can muster and get back on your feet. The weight of your wings nearly makes you fall on your ass as you’re forced to take a few shaky steps to keep your balance. From the corner of your eye you can see Khaled stumbling away from you, to the third exit to the room which leads to a catwalk connecting this building with another.

Raising your hand you try to summon a spell to take him out, a shaky circle forming at your palm. It breaks into a million pieces when a heavy body slams into you like a train, breaking your concentration and your ribs. You’re forced back until your wings hit the wall, forcing them to spread out as some of the crystal audibly breaks and cracks, accosting your brain with pain signals your mind was never created to handle.

Your hands shoot up, “Fire-” You force out in an attempt to combat the shroud Morgana’s tears weave around your mind. A circle forms, the usually crisp lines wonky and inconsistent. A few measly sputtering sparks flicker in the center of the circle before you’re able to force a bout of unwieldy flames in the face of your opponent.

You can feel how weak your fire is, you doubt you could give a man a second degree burn, let alone scratch the fireproof skin of the dragon that comes charging through your magic. Icy blue eyes dance in the periphery of your vision seconds before the dragon punches you right in the diaphragm.

You hunch over and almost vomit up an organ as all the air is forced out of your lungs. You feel your muscles tear and ribs break, your magic too focused on healing you to numb any of the pain that comes racing to your brain. You don’t know how you’re still standing but you weakly manage to slam your elbow back into the wall, quickly cooling lava scraping the metal and causing a spark.

The ash explodes for a second time, the force of it making your wings crack further yet they still hold. It creates a hole in the wall and forces the dragon to stumble back with a cough. You tip back and fall through the hole, the whole world weighing down on your body before you crash on the hot hard ground. The sudden stop knocks the breath out of you a second time, every muscle in your back screaming at you. Your chest is steadily growing colder as Morgana’s tears bypass Beelzebub, your arms feeling stiffer with every waking second as the serum forces your mana to slumber.

Your vision swims and blurs like the lines of a water drenched painting, voices somewhere close echoing in your ears. The dragon’s cold blue eyes stare down at you for a second before he jumps through the hole. You roll out of the way with great difficulty, avoiding him just in time as the dragon’s fist lands where you had just been and shatters the earth.

Stumbling to your feet you feel your blood leak down your back, pain pulsing in your chest as your mana struggles to heal each broken bone. Your mind is scrambling for the names of the spells you haven't needed to use in a long time, your thoughts further slowed by the fact you need to dodge out of the way of the dragon's fist. “Jump.” You speak. You summon a circle beneath your feet you that launches you into the air, the whirling world almost making you vomit and you barely manage to catch yourself on an oil containment tower.

Somehow through the ringing in your ears you hear the whirring of helicopter blades, turning your head to see a helicopter quickly rise from the roof of a building and start to fly away. You don’t need magic sense to know Khaled is in it. Your hand shakes as you raise it, Morgana’s tears steadily taking more of your mana hostage to the point it's getting hard to cast a single spell. “Fire bullet.” You manage to say, shooting off a shaky ball of concentrated flames.

You miss the rotor you had been aiming for, but by a lucky chance manage to hit the tail. Your fire isn't hot enough to melt the metal fully, but it still enough to make the helicopter swerve wildly. You watch it slowly loose altitude and crash somewhere beyond the tree line.

You’re not given even a second to catch your breath before the tower shakes violently, beginning to list heavily. You catch sight of a werewolf trying to scale it and that forces you to jump off the tower. You land on the one in front of you and don't stop, leaping across the three towers. Jumping off the last one you manage to flap your wings, the pitiful explosion that goes off beneath you gives just enough lift for your slowly liquifying wings to reach the roof of the second building.

You stumble as you land on the roof, the coagulated blood forming your Daedalus wings falling to the ground with a wet 'splat'. It feels like every single inch of your veins and arteries have been turned into pin cushions, the hot lava of your arms, absent of mana, quickly cools until there’s only a thin surface of cracked rock covering your muscles and bones. Your vision swims and you can barely move your arms, trying your best to just stay upright.

Asmodeus is the only thing unaffected, burning at the back of your mind like the last star of an empty universe. It tempts you with the heat of the magic it can give, with the power you could use if you just let it in. What's a few more drops of blood when you're drowning in it?

The harpy comes out of nowhere, slamming into you with enough force to knock you off the building.

You land on your back, barely able to utter a sound from how loudly your bones crack. Your leg is numb. Lingering dredges of your magic crawl across your spine, trying to fix your wounds with the same grace as cavemen with stole tools. You whimper like a child as you try to get up, barely able to dig your fingers into the scorched dirt to get some stability.

Footsteps approach you. A boot sharply kicks your side and forces you to roll on your front. "Playtime's over." A voice rings somewhere in your ears. Your scattered brain focuses on the accent — Manchester you think — instead of the clawed hands that yank your arms behind your back. Instinctively you try to scramble out of the firm hold but it's useless and the only thing you achieve is making the enemy pull on you harder.

Your arm is forced into a sickeningly familiar constraint; The mage cuff seals around your forearm and forces your hand into a fist, the binding spells making the metal feel like your arm is coated in liquid nitrogen. Your other arm follows suit, powerful magnets activating and binding the cuffs. They lock your arms together and painfully force your chest to stick out to the point you can barely move your arm without the risk of dislocating it.

More footsteps ring behind you as you weakly struggle. "Stay fucking still." The man above you growls as he yanks the helmet off your head with enough force you’re surprised he doesn’t take your head off. You gasp as the ash and smoke filled air enters your lungs, so unused to going without your helmet. A collar is quickly snapped around your throat, so tight you can barely breathe, needles on the inside digging into your skin. The binding spell on the collar is just as vicious as the one on the cuffs, forcibly pulling your brain into the bottom of the ocean.

Your vision swims with black spots and you’re barely able to see a man squat in front of you until rough clawed fingers grip your chin hard enough to make you bleed dark purple-red blood over his fingers. The enemy tugs your head up, but you’re unable to make out more than bright blue eyes and a stupid mohawk. "Huh, ah was expecting uglier."

Spite flares in your heart. A glob of spit and red blood shoots from your mouth at his face before you can think. The slap you receive nearly knocks your head off your shoulders and bashes your brain against your skull. His claws rake across your cheek, blood pouring down your skin. "Ahgk! Fockin' disgusting-" But It's worth it to hear the man curse.

"Told you not to take it off." The enemy on top of you growls.

"Charming." A lighter voice, you think it's the harpy, ads. "He's not going to turn into. . . one of them?"

"No." A new voice joins in, hard, angry, rumbling like thunder. You think it's the dragon, but your brain struggles to stay conscious let alone try to think. "Tape."

You shake your head to be difficult just out of spite, but sharp fingers bury into your scalp and pull your head up so the tape can be sealed over your mouth.

The enemy, wraith, your mind reminds, has no problem hoisting up your cold body, manhandling you like a doll.

You’re barely conscious as you’re roughly pushed into somewhere, somewhere without a lot of space. Two unyielding bodies squeeze you in on either side, your chest is barely able to move enough to ensure your lungs get a bit of air. Panic tries to get a foothold in your mind, to make your silent heart race. The walls and ceiling feel like they’re closing in, like you’re getting squished down and at any moment your organs will rupture—

But the drugs smooth out your brain like ocean waves weather down massive cliffs, your body so exhausted you can’t manage even a small twitch of a struggle. You feel the cold muzzle of a gun press against your temple, the cool sensation making you aware of the pounding headache.

"Move," The man on your left says, voice rough like sandpaper and with a distinct accent, "An’ yer dead." His threat sounds like an order, you don’t doubt he’s just itching for you to make a single move he can justify to his brass as aggression and kill you. You know you would do the same.

The vehicle you’re in rumbles to life but you can barely feel it, body and mind too exhausted to even hold your head up. Your stomach twists and turns as if trying to find a way to crawl up through your mouth, your lungs burn from the lack of air.

“Laswell we got-”

“-bout Khaled-”

“-ead, arsonist shot do-”

“-get out, the army reinforcements are co-”

You try to pay attention to what they say, but their words bang uselessly around your hollow skull, shapes and edges blurring together into abstract art. With nothing stopping it, Morgana’s tears leisurely branch through your blood vessels like brambles, making you shiver from how cold you are. You’re stuck in maddening limbo, there’s not enough of the drug in your system to turn you temporarily catatonic — your body is too used to the drug — but at the same time it’s fucking agony.

You've done this before, you know how much small victories count. You don’t know what they want from you, but you swear to yourself not to cry from the pain, both now and when the torture starts. You’re not a fucking child, not that snot nosed private you were when you first felt the sting of Morgana’s tears, you’ve been through worse.

But the problem is, you’re not out of tricks.

Your control over Valefar slips, the exhaustion and drugs slowly wearing down the rope of control you've been maintaining for months. Since the first day you started working for Khaled. You knew he’d betray you, you had that feeling in your gut. The collar beeps as mana suddenly sparks in your chest, thawed by the ancient magic you use. Without warning the needles in the collar jab into your neck as your mana builds, pumping more of the poison into your blood.

But it’s useless, with steam starting to rise off your chest not even you are able to hold it back. A rough chuckle forces its way out of your throat. You always figured you would die by your hand or not at all.

"What’s with the giggling?" The werewolf demands, gun still trained on you. "Something funny?"

You gather your strength and slowly roll your head back, every vertebra in your spine cracking from how much damage your body has received. The trembling wall of the truck gives you the support you lack. Black spots dance in your vision, but you manage to turn your gaze to one side.

On your right is the wraith. A creature of death. Violent Death.

You feel like there’s a joke about the situation somewhere. Figures you’d be sat against the personification of violent death. You’ve been living on borrowed time for too long, the reaper doesn’t like to wait.

Shadows darkening what little you can see of his face through the skull mask, making his eyes look like you’re staring into the void.

Unnerving. 

You’ve been told your eyes are much the same.

The wraith stares at your face, into your eyes. You’re pretty sure this is the first time in ten years that someone has seen the eyes you were born with. The color is so painfully drab and human.

But it don’t last. Out of nowhere mana sparks in your eyes like a violent forest fire set off from the cinder of a forgotten cigarette. Oranges, reds, and yellows swirl around the pitch blackness of your pupil, bright and intense like staring into a black hole.

There’s no grand gesture to show the snapping of your control. Your heart skips a beat as it births Valefar, the soft cool magic nibbling on your veins as a pulse of cool mana rushes through to your fingers. You see the wraith stiffen, only barely able to sense how the world quivers.

The earth shatters.

The truck jerks forward and you almost fly out of the front windshield, kept in place by someone's rough hand gripping and pulling you back in place. The earth shakes violently as months of accumulated mana melts through rock and suddenly erupts from the ground as a beam of pitch black flames. You can feel Valefar laughing beneath the ground, inside your hollow heart. It takes joy in spreading your magic as far as it can, incinerating the arriving helicopters full of soldiers before they can even understand what's happening.

The car swerves to avoid the rocks falling from the sky, the air around you trembling as Valefar makes a crater out of the mountain. They’re lucky that your control finally evaporated when they were far enough to escape the impact zone.

You tilt your head, catching sight of the wraith. He stares at you.

Your eyelids flutter without your consent, all strength leaving you, but you manage to wink at him.

You pass out.

Tag list: @resident-cryptid @diejager @lovingtyrantkitten @lieutnt @lilpothoscuttings @krystiannng @crankyweasel @ashy-kit @fyolaizs @h0n3y-l3m0n05 @aldis-nuts @whoislucas @birdiiiiiiiiiii @thigh-o-saur @dont-look-at-me-im-shy @reaperxxxxzz @patronizingbitch @kaoyamamegami @mauvette268 @inspector-m3 @gaynesspersonified @fluffysteampunkd @fall-myriad

[gay-dorito-dust]

This can be consisted the prologue of the series, a little taste test or something…

Warning: men being men and not listening and paying the price for their stupidity.

You didn’t know how you did it.

You really didn’t, and it currently wasn’t as if you were actively trying either! You had been running for a while now after catching the unwanted gaze of some unsavoury characters before running as fast as your legs could to get out of sight, only to find yourself somewhere and staring into the large eye of a dragon.

This was no ordinary dragon because from just it’s eyes alone you could tell that this one was a lot bigger than most, possibly as large as Vaghar but the cave had been proven far too dark to get a good look of the rest of its body.

Or the reason you can’t see the rest of its body is because its head is so large it’s all you can see. That little voice in your head told you as the cold feeling of dread crept up your back, thought of standing in front of something far larger than you didn’t sit right with your feeble human mind as you swallowed thickly.

One thing that you were for certain about and that was the potent stench of rotting corpses however and blood that stung your eyes with how horrid the smell was the moment you had rushed into the massive cavern on impulse to find safety. It wasn’t until your eyes has caught a glimpse of the skeleton of a dragon, one of which that was far, far smaller than the one you in front of you, followed by a skeleton of a human did realisation hit you.

You had found Cannibal, one of the largest dragon to ever exist, the very same dragon you’ve heard plenty stories about as a kid. Stories of how many people tried to claim the behemoth, only to end up within the dragon’s stomach and even more stories of how Cannibal would even hunt and kill other dragons for sustenance.

You didn’t understand why people would still try to claim him, knowing well enough of the fate that awaits them, but still pressing on regardless in hopes that one of them would be lucky enough to make history by becoming Cannibal’s first ever rider. It was stupid to think such a thing when it had been proven time and time again that Cannibal simply didn’t wish to be ridden and left alone in peace but kept having it being disrespected by people fuelled by their own personal agendas.

Cannibals eye remained on you the entire time, watching you as though trying to read your next move. The behemoth of a dragon seemed to recognise that you knew of him and his reputation, but didn’t dare move to attack you like you thought he would. The question on your mind were between him trying to lure you into a false sense of security or was he trying to gauge whether you’d break first and run?

You respected dragons becuase they were far smarter then you’ve been lead to believe, beings that harboured endless fires within their bellies, and have lived long enough to recognise the changes within Westeros from the one they’ve arrived to a long time ago. They fascinated you all the same but something about Cannibal has fascinated you the most, however you valued yourself in knowing that it was better to admire the beast from afar rather then up close; much like you were right now.

‘I’m sorry.’ Were the first words that came out of your mouth in a flurry as you bowed lowly before the dragon, tensing when you felt Cannibal’s hot breath wash over you, it reeked badly of blood but your fought your urge to gag as the scent as though your life depended on it because it did. ‘I didn’t- I wasn’t aware that you resided here. I’ll leave.’ You told the dragon as it merely watched you back away with a peculiar look in its eye, all the while you tried to prevent yourself from stepping and tripping on old bones of both human and dragon, not once ever breaking eye contact with Cannibal for a single second.

However once you were close enough to the entrance of the cavern, you heard the voices of the very people you had ran away from in the first place and felt yourself as though trapped between a rock and a hard place; either die by dragonfire or by the hands of fellow humans?

‘Where did they go?’ A voice sounded close by the entrance of the cave, causing your breath to catch in your throat as you found yourself frozen in place.

‘They ran off into this cave, the stupid cunt.’ Another voice called, cocky and arrogant as two men appeared in your only way out, their faces were casted in shadows but you could feel their stares and their growing smirks once they saw you.

‘There you are.’ One sang, steeling forward but you immediately took a step back, feeling Cannibal’s hot breath at your back once more.

‘I wouldn’t come closer if I were you.’ You tried warning them as you could sense that Cannibal was getting annoyed, you didn’t know Joe you knew what Cannibal was feeling but you just assumed that the dragon wouldn’t like the additional company of two men who reeked of piss.

‘Oh? And why’s that?’ The other said as he too stepped into the cave, causing you to take another step back.

‘There’s a dragon in this cave.’ You said and the two men stopped their advances to look at each other for a moment before bursting out into a fit of laughter. ‘A dragon? Here? You’re having a laugh!’ They were crying tears of laughter now and you’ve never felt more helpless in that moment. ‘I’m serious! There’s a dragon in this cave and he’s going to kill you!’ You cried as you could feel Cannibal practically hovering over you now as you internally begged the beast for mercy and forgiveness for being these men into his home.

‘Oh I’m so scared!’ One of the men said, nudging his friend. ‘You hear that? We’re going to die according to this little cunt.’

His friend snorts. ‘They’re lying, let’s grab them before they attract anymore attention.’ He said before bringing his attention back towards you as he and his friend began to advance on you once more. ‘Come here you lying little-‘ before he could finish his sentence, a wave of dragonfire consumed both men in their entirety until there was nothing more then charred corpses.

You looked over your shoulder towards Cannibal who huffs at you as if to say you’re welcome.

‘Thank you.’ You told him, only for the dragon to huff again, leaning his head down to nudge you with his snout towards the entrance of the cave, urging you to take your leave before wandering back further into his cave until you couldn’t see him anymore.

This wasn’t what you at all had expected from this outcome, not one bit.

[cryptotheism]

Bloodborne Lore Theory About The Tonitrus

Bolt damage was developed into hunting weapons by a hunter researcher named Archibald, who was studying darkbeasts

What are darkbeasts? Why can they shoot lightning?

Darkbeasts are given precious little explanation, but they are described as being some of the oldest, most ancient beasts.

We know the beast blood is able to keep the body moving well past the point where it should be alive

Darkbeast Paarl is literally just bones and hair

Blood, in the human body, is produced in the bone marrow.

What happens when a beast exists for so long that it effectively rots away? Animated only by insatiable bloodlust?

THEORY: Darkbeasts are effectively undead. They are beast that have existed for so long that everything but their skeleton has rotted away. EXCEPT:

Paarl does appear to have an intact brainpan.

It's possible his brain is still in there

We know that brains are supernaturally significant in bloodborne

The ordinary functioning of the body relies on electrical impulses from the brain

THEORY: The bolts of lightning are actually the force animating Paarls skeleton, the leftover neurological impulses from a body keeping itself alive through sheer bloodlust.

Archibald developed the Tonitrus and Bolt Paper after studying Paarl

The hunters, for some reason, didn't take to the Tonitrus.

CONCLUSION: The Tonitrus has a brain inside it.

[mediumgayitalian]

“Oh, gods.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Oh, gods.”

Nico scowls, wrenching just eyes away from Will’s poorly-covered grin and shaking shoulders.

It’s not that bad. It isn’t.

Sure, the complete lack of lighting except Greek fire torches makes the cabin look like a little piece of the Underworld, right here on the surface. But that’s comforting. Honestly. Nico knows the Underworld. It’s — familiar.

And, yeah. It would, probably, be pertinent to have some furniture, or something. At least somewhere for him to store his clothes, because he has more than one set of those now, and maybe a shelf, or something. And, admittedly, the obsidian altar could take up a little less space than it currently does.

But it’s not that bad.

“Are those. Coffin shaped beds.”

The tone of Will’s voice is unlike he’s ever heard it. He turns back to face him, slowly, and finds him biting his fist, hard, every muscle of his body tense as live wire.

“I was twelve godsdamn years old,” Nico snaps. “Forgive me if interior design wasn’t my passion.”

Solace loses it.

In his defense, not that Nico is too worried about defending him, he does appear to try very hard to not lose it. When the first giggle slips out of his lips, he clamps his jaw shut tighter. When his whole body begins to shake with the force of repressing his laughter, he curls inward, as if making himself smaller might reduce the chance of a lapse in control.

But then he glances back inside and looks, really looks, at the dreary, stone walls, the lone skeletons standing guard, and the plush, teakwood black coffin bunk beds, and he collapses to the floor.

“I’m going to open a chasm beneath you,” Nico threatens. “You are going to fall and crack your spine into a million pieces on the bank of the Styx, rotting there with every other forgotten hope.”

“You are a Black Parade lyric personified,” Will wheezes.

Nico doesn’t know what that means, so he kicks him. Unfortunately, he only laughs harder.

“I mean it, Solace. It’s a long way down to the Underworld. You will spend the entire fall petrified with the knowledge that nothing can save you.”

For added effect, Nico makes the floor under the medic’s body shake, makes the tip of a skeleton hand peek out from the earth.

Ironically, this stops Will’s laughter, but not for the reason Nico was aiming for.

“Hey!” A bright blue flipflop-clad foot darts out and collides With Nico’s ankle, sending him sprawling. “I said no spooky magic for the next two months! Put that skeleton away!”

“Fuck off, Solace! It’s barely half a bone! You are so annoying!”

“That’s my specialty.” Will pushes himself upright. He waits until Nico sits up, too, so he can catch his eye before his face splits into a dazzling grin. Actual sparkles seem to flicker beside his face. “And you are ever so easy to annoy.”

Nico stares, unimpressed.

“Anyways.” Will coughs. “You can’t stay here, Neeks —”

“Don’t call me that.”

“— it’s straight-up too depressing.” He peers inside. “It’s also cold, and, like…borderline unliveable? So. As your doctor, I can’t allow it.”

“You’re a medic,” Nico says, raising an eyebrow, “first of all, not a doctor. Second of all, you can’t tell me what to do. Third of all — where am I supposed to sleep? The woods?”

“Hm. Good question.”

Will gets to his feet, brushing the dirt off his shorts and offering Nico a hand. After a second of hesitation, he takes it, allowing Will to haul him up.

“C’mon!”

Nico snatches his hand away, face burning. (Gods. Why does Will have to be so…touchy-feely? And why does it always do weird things to Nico’s stomach?) But it hardly takes a look over Will’s shoulder before Nico’s feet are following after him, without his permission.

“Where are we going?”

“Well, my dad’s kind of a hoe,” Will says matter-of-factly. Nico chokes. Will’s grin widens. “And our cabin was built with that in mind. I know we’ve got an extra bunk or two for ya. Hurry up!”

This…cannot be allowed. Nico doesn’t have a ton of Camp Half-Blood experience, or anything, but as far as he knows, Hermes is the only cabin that can really do that. He doesn’t want to incur the wrath of Apollo, or whatever, by staying in his cabin uninvited.

Well. Will’s inviting him, technically. And there’s a confidence to his offer, like maybe this isn’t the first time he’s done it.

“What if I don’t want to live in your stupid sunshine-y cabin,” Nico grumbles, trying to cover up his nerves. “Holding hands and singing about how much I love being alive isn’t really my cup of tea.”

Will snorts. “Oh, di Angelo,” he says dramatically, shaking his head, “you are in for a world of discovery. Welcome to the Cabin Apollo. Take your shoes off at the door and remember that Kayla bites.”

———

Living in the Apollo cabin is strange.

Four days in, and Nico is only just starting to get used to it. He’s not entirely unused to sharing space with people — he’s had two sisters — but the Apollo kids argue like they enjoy doing it. One minute, Will and Kayla will be screaming at each other at the top of their lungs about touching each other’s shit, then they’re teaming up to pull Gracie off Yan’s face for the exact same argument, only now they offer sage advice on respecting boundaries and compromising. It’s bizarre.

(Austin is pretty chill, actually. Nico has noticed him starting quite a few fights — it was he, in fact, who moved Will’s shit and then gracefully framed Kayla — but he has a very powerful eyebrow raise and a very powerful image as Unproblematic. He has quickly become Nico’s favourite.)

He’s only just barely beginning to understand how they work together, and the struggle comes in because everything is so chaotic. When Nico spent time with Hazel in New Rome, she was in the barracks. He never really had to worry about squabbling over counter space in the bathroom with her, because she had her own little toiletry caddie like everyone else, and bathrooms were public. With Bianca — well. There’s no one alive who knows this about her, but she was bossy. She was sweet and wonderful and self-sacrificing and brave and kind and the centre of Nico’s life, but by the gods, did she take her authority as a big sister seriously. She ordered Nico around all the time. He never had to worry much about when he would have the chance to use the bathroom they shared at the Lotus, or who got the T.V. remote, or who go to sit on the bus instead of standing, because he was not the one deciding. He could stick his tongue out and whine all he wanted, but she was boss. He knew that.

The Apollo kids are not like that.

As well as Nico can figure, it’s kind of a free-for-all. You want first shower? Either wake up the earliest — a strategy only Will every manages to employ with any success — or manage to jab an elbow in someone’s rib and sprint. You want whoever’s humming to shut the hell up so you can sleep? Make sure your threats are quick and believable, or just straight up start throwing shit until they finally stop. You want the coveted middle of the bench spot at breakfast? Well, tough shit on that one, actually. Nico has yet to make that one happen for himself.

He won’t admit it, but he has kind of learned to enjoy it. It’s annoying, and the Apollo siblings do indeed sing at all hours of the day (although the content usually skews more towards diss tracks and delighted insults, if not straight-up curses), and it is so godsdamn bright in there, seriously, is it a gimmick or what, but there’s something to be said about the fact that he’s so surrounded by people and chaos that he hasn’t even had the chance to feel lonely. Not even at night, panting to himself after a nasty nightmare, because all it takes is a particularly loud snore from Will one bunk down to remember where he is. To remember that he’s safe — by demigod standards, at least.

But, still.

He kind of misses his privacy.

“Will,” he whispers urgently, on his fifteenth day of rooming with the Apollo weirdos.

The medic hums noncommittally, attention very focused on the test tube in front of him. Nico has been fighting the urge to try and launch a piece of dust inside it for forty minutes, just to make him explode.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Sounds good, Nico.”

Nico narrows his eyes. “You’re ignoring me.”

“Uh-huh. Agreed.”

“I can say anything I want right now.”

“Sure. Maybe double check with Austin.”

“…I’m going to put a colony of ants in your pillowcase.”

“Good idea.”

“Then I’m going to douse your hair products in gasoline and set them aflame.”

“Baller.”

“After that I’m gonna read your super secret diary to the entirety of camp at singalong tonight.”

“You betcha.”

“And then I’m going to shadow travel to Russia.”

Will blinks, frowning. “Hey, no shadow-travelling. What’s this I hear about shadow-travelling?”

Nico rolls his eyes. “Nothing, stupid. You were just ignoring me.”

Will smiles guiltily. “Aw, I’m sorry, Neeks. Got focused on this. I’m finished in twenty, then I’m all yours?”

“…Don’t call me Neeks,” Nico grumbles, furious with himself for how quick he’s relented under wide blue puppy-dog eyes.

“Sorry, Neeks.”

Huffing at Will’s quiet laughter, Nico slides off the nurse’s station counter and wanders around the empty infirmary. Things have luckily finally cooled down in here, nearly three weeks after the end of the Giant War. Some of the exhaustion has faded from Will’s features now that he’s had time to sleep properly.

Not that Nico has noticed, or anything.

“Okay,” Will says a few minutes later, holding his hands up protectively in front of his geeky little setup. “I just gotta do this last step, so long as I calculated it right, it should be fine…” He squeezes a drop of something into the liquid bubbling over the burner, freezing immediately. One, two, three seconds pass and nothing happens, so Will relaxes, sighing in relief and turning to face Nico fully. “Okay, we’re good. What was it you wanted to —”

The text tube contents explode in his face, dousing him in slimey green goo.

Nico bursts out laughing.

“Great,” Will says darkly, swiping the stuff from his eyes. “The one day I don’t wear goggles. Great.”

Nico gasps, sides aching. “Oh my gods —”

“Feel free to help, di Angelo.”

“— you look like a cartoon! Your face!”

It takes Will twelve cloths and seven whole minutes to clean himself and the nurse’s station off of the goo. Nico cackles at him the whole time, and tastefully does not mention the many globs of goo that remain caked in his hair.

“Whenever you’re done.”

Will is very, very bad at being stern when he doesn’t really mean it. And he doesn’t really mean it now, because every time he tries to glare at Nico, his mouth twitches.

“I’m good,” Nico finally wheezes, forcing his face back to normal. “I’m good, I’m good.”

He very pointedly does not look at Will’s hair.

“Dick,” Will huffs, fondness bleeding into his tone. “What did you want?”

He must notice the change in tone at his asking, because he clears the bench fully, hoisting himself on top of it and patting the spot next to him. Nico hesitates for half a second, then crawls up, sitting criss cross applesauce, knees touching.

“I need to move back to my cabin,” he manages, finally.

Will’s face betrays no judgement or emotion. “Oh?”

“Yes.” He picks at a loose thread in his jeans. “I need — space.”

The thread loosens, allowing Nico to tug on it. A hole begins to unravel along the seam as he pulls and pulls and pulls. He stops himself before it gets too wide, tearing the thread off and winding it around his fingers.

“I can tell everyone to tone it down,” Will offers softly, eyebrows creased. “We’ll be more quiet, we’ll —”

Nico places a hand on his knee, cutting off his sentence. “It’s not about that, I promise. You guys have been great.”

A wounded look still pulls at Will’s strong features, as much as he visibly tries to pull his face back to something more supportive. “It’s not?”

“No, no. It’s just —” He frowns, trying to articulate the tangled mess of his thoughts. “I have my own cabin.”

“So?”

“And I can’t stay in yours forever.”

“I mean, you could.”

“Chiron’s been giving me looks, Will.”

“So what! I’ll — write you a doctor’s note, or something!”

Nico snorts. “A doctor’s note letting me sleep in your cabin?”

Will nods fervently, although he seems to acknowledge the ridiculousness of his suggestion, if the grin on his face is any indication. “Yes! For medical reasons, you know.” He mimes writing. “‘Patient’s cabin is dank and sad. To avoid bouts of misery, patient must sleep in the presence of the coolest and best and prettiest and most uplifting people in camp.’”

“Hm. Not sure Chiron’s gonna buy that last part. Not sure I buy that last part, actually.”

“Hey.”

Nico dodges Will’s shove, chuckling.

“Seriously, though, Will. This was never a long term solution, right?”

“I know. You’re cabin just — sucks so bad, man. No offense.”

“I take great offense to that, actually. My cabin is art.”

“Sure, Eddie Cullen.”

“I don’t know who that is, so that’s a horrible insult.”

“Travesty, honestly.”

Outside the open infirmary windows, Nico can hear distant, triumphant screaming, laughter, and the clang of metal. Today’s a good day. The weather’s balmier than usual, for late August, and some of the gloom that’s hung over everyone’s head for the bast few weeks seems to have lifted.

“You can’t go back to your cabin like it is,” Will says into the silence, startling Nico, “but —” he grins when Nico begins to protest, holding up his hand. “We can definitely change it up.”

He slides off the bench, botching his landing and almost sprawling on the floor. He holds a dramatic hand out to Nico when he rights himself. Nico ignores it, rolling his eyes and getting to his feet by himself.

“C’mon,” Will says, grabbing his hand anyway. Sparks shoot up Nico’s arm. “We need to go ask Chiron for the van keys and approximately five hundred dollars.”

———

Three hours is too fucking long to be in a vehicle. Especially when Will is driving, because all he does is play nonstop country music and let everybody cut in front of him.

“I’m driving us back,” Nico informs him as they (finally) get out of the stupid van, snatching the keys from his hands.

Will shrugs. “Sure.”

Nico had expected more of a fight, honestly. But he supposes neither of them are legally allowed to drive, age-wise, and besides, Nico technically has seventy years of driving experience on Will.

(…The Lotus had a racetrack.

Nico was very, very good at it.)

“What is this place, anyway?”

“This place,” Will says grandly, throwing an arm over his shoulders, “is essentially the mortal version of the Labyrinth, minus, you know, the soul-sucking terror.”

“Okay. All that’s telling me is that you have horrible ideas and we should leave immediately.”

Will rolls his eyes. “It’s a furniture store.”

“Well, then —” he punches Will’s shoulder, huffing when he only laughs. “Say that, then!”

“But then what would I do with all the drama in my heart?”

“Choke on it, hopefully!”

Ikea is weird.

Since Will did not tell him what the plan was, he didn’t draw up any plans. Luckily, Will has the dimensions of his cabin — although where he got them, Nico does not ask — so they spend an hour or so in the cafe drawing out a plan.

“You need more than two beds, Neeks.”

“Uh, no I don’t. Unless my father has something very important to announce to me, I need a bed for me, and a bed for Hazel.”

“What if I want to sleep over?”

“You can sleep on the porch.”

Mostly, they wander around the sets. Nico isn’t really sure what he wants his cabin to look like — he has to remind himself that yes, actually, he cares about the space he’ll be spending at least the next three years of his life in. It’s a startling reality, to have control over his own space. He must’ve had some say in his childhood bedroom, but he has no memory of it. He spent the most time in his and Bianca’s room at the Lotus, but that was already furnished when they got there, and besides, it only felt like they were there for less than a year. It always felt like a hotel room, never his room. Westminster was no different. His room in his father’s palace had already been designed, too. In fact he’d based his cabin on it.

What does Nico want his bedroom to look like, without someone else deciding for him?

“I’m not getting a fucking Lightning McQueen bed, Solace.”

“But it would be so sick! And look — it’s got little cubbies!”

“I’m going to ditch you, and shadow travel back to camp,” Nico threatens. “And I have the van keys, so you’ll be stuck here for real.”

“Hey, hey, hey.” Will looks at him sternly, hands on hips. “No shadow travelling for you, Death Breath. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t fade into nothing on my watch.”

“I’m joking,” Nico says, exasperated, but cannot deny the warmth that fills him up at Will’s concern.

In the end, he decides on a pretty normal bed. It’s bigger than Will’s bunk (“Or anyone else’s bed,” Will grumbles, “you lucky asshole.”), but not ridiculously designed. He picks a similar size for Hazel, only the frame is white, not black, and the bedspread that comes with it is a soft, coral pink that he knows she will like.

“Wanna see if they’ve got a Mythomagic bedspread for yours?” Will teases.

That would be the coolest thing ever in the entire world, Nico thinks, and is so embarrassed that he shoves Will, shrieking, into a giant basket of pillows for making him think it.

“Obviously I don’t want that.”

“You are such a turd! I’ll get you, di Angelo!”

He does not. Nico is way too sneaky for him, and after the fifth time Nico manages to give him the slip, he gives up, sulking in a display for a bedroom of a nine year old girl.

“Fitting,” Nico teases, gesturing to the princess wallpaper. “You drama queen.”

“Buzz off.”

Next, they look for furniture. It’s pretty easy — Nico doesn’t need much, and he’s not too concern with cut or style or anything. He quickly picks out two dressers, one to match Hazel’s bed frame, and one to match his, and then a couple bookshelves.

Four hours into their trip, Nico is exhausted. They have a three hour drive ahead of them, they’ve been out all day, and he wants to go home.

But Will stops him before they go get all the boxes for their furniture.

“This is still pretty bare bones,” he says quietly, then grins at his own accidental pun. Nico shoots him a venomous look, warning him against making it more obvious, and for once he actually listens. “You know, we’re still under budget. We’ve got around $200 left — we can get a motel, stay the night, then we don’t have to drive back right away. And tomorrow, maybe we can check out some other stores, look for smaller decorations and stuff. And if we don’t have to drive back tonight, we’ve maybe got another hour in here, if you wanted to get a couple more pieces.”

Nico opens his mouth to refuse — that’s way too much effort to spend on one person’s cabin, c’mon — then pauses, thinking about it.

Chiron hadn’t even thought about it before handing them the money. Will had barely gotten the words out before he’d started counting out the bills.

“I want you to make a home here,” the centaur had said, touching his hand. There was a pain in his kind eyes, stopping any protests. “I made a mistake, Nico, the first time you came here. In another life, you felt welcome enough to stay the whole time. Take what you need.”

What does he need? What does home look like, to him?

“There was a beanbag chair, in our room at the Lotus,” he says, pushing the words past the lump in his throat. “Me and Bianca used to fight over it.” His voice shakes. A tear gathers at the corner of his eye, and he blinks it back. “It wasn’t real fighting. When I called mercy she’d — scoop me up and throw me on it and squish in after me, and we’d sit together and play video games. Or read. She liked to read.”

Will squeezes his trembling hands. “We can get a beanbag chair.”

“And I — don’t like the blackout curtains. The dark makes me think of — the pit.”

“Okay. They sell lotsa lamps here, too. Might be nicer than the Greek fire.”

Nico nods. There’s — more, far more ideas, now, flooding his brain; Hazel crowding over him on a rug-covered floor, shrieking as he teases her about Frank; a desk tucked in the corner where Will sits, mouthing along to his textbooks as Nico sharpens his sword; Jason running his fingers along rows of books on a big, cluttered shelf; Reyna with her fist curled around her mouth, studying a chess board across from him, hair shining under the natural light from the window.

He can have that. He can have that.

Thankfully, all their stuff fits in the back of the van. Despite his insistence earlier, Nico hands Will the keys, and he drives around until he finds a shitty motel with a vacancy sign flashing out front. He pulls into the farthest corner of the parking lot, killing the engine, then waits.

“You okay?”

Nico shrugs. “I’m…not sure.”

“That’s okay,” Will assures, pressing a fleeting touch to his shoulder. Nico grabs his wrist before he moves away, tugging down his hand and linking their fingers together.

For once, it doesn’t make him feel all sparky. The warmth of Will’s hands is grounding, and so is the gentle squeeze, the smile he feels pointed in his direction.

“C’mon. Let’s check in and sleep, huh?”

Nico’s exhaustion compounds in the walk from the car to the lobby, so by the time Will is speaking quietly to the host, he’s half asleep, leaning on Will’s shoulder. He vaguely feels it when Will shifts his weight, sliding a hand around his waist to hold him better. He blinks and they’re standing in front of a door.

“Almost there, Death Boy,” he murmurs. “Hold on a sec.”

It takes him six separate tries to make the keycard work. He gets huffy when Nico snickers tiredly at him.

“Finally, yeesh.”

He guides Nico in, dropping the backpack he brought somewhere near the door. As soon as the bed is within Nico’s sights, he makes a beeline, barely remembering to shuck his shoes and jacket.

“Please do not sleep in your jeans.”

“Mmmfuck off,” Nico groans, already sliding under the covers. He’ll regret it in the morning, but whatever.

“Goober.” Callused hands brush through his hair, resting lightly on his forehead. “Goodnight, Nico.”

Nico’s out before he can even think to respond.

———

He wakes up, in the middle of the night, scream caught in his throat and heart pounding in his ears. The air smells like smoke and fear. The rushing of the Phlegethon is so loud it’s overpowering.

A loud snore knocks him back to reality.

Crawling desperately towards the source of the sound, he hangs over the bed, eyes adjusting rapidly to the dark to see a curled lump on the floor, head resting on his own hands. A quick glance behind him confirms the other half of the bed has been left untouched.

“Stupid,” he mumbles, tiny smile chasing away the last of his fear.

He tugs the blankets off the mattress, pulls off the two pillows, and joins his dumbass, selfless friend on the floor.

———

“Question,” Will asks, swallowing the last of their disgustingly delicious greasefest of a breakfast. “Were you alive when Walmart was invented?”

“I was alive before your great grandmother was.”

“No, I mean — were you out and kickin’. Have you strolled the endless aisles of corporate soullessness, basking in the wonder of American overconsumerism?”

“…You’re such a weird, particular person.”

Will looks delighted. “You’re a Walmart newbie!”

He pulls into the dead, cracked parking lot way too happily for this hour in the morning. Nico would even say he takes the nearest exit to get to the store gleefully. He is embarrassed for him.

Walmart is…underwhelming.

As stupid as it is, Will had hyped it up so much that Nico was almost a little excited. It just looked like any other basic superstore. Will, for whatever reason, seemed delighted by that fact.

“I do not like this store,” he explained when Nico asked, expression not matching his words, “it just means so very much to me that you are joining me in the misery of having experienced it.”

They spend more time than they mean to just dicking around. At one point they nearly get thrown out by management, because Will finds a pair of NERF guns that some child dug out of its packaging and no words need to be spoken. They gear up and scamper off, hunting each other through fluorescent-lights hell.

“Please just get your shit and leave,” says the very tired looking manager, and they have the good gall to at least appear embarrassed as they mumble, “Yes, ma’am.”

It doesn’t take long when they have their head on straight. They get some fairy lights, a couple cool posters, dorky little trinkets that Nico probably doesn’t need, per se, but what was he supposed to do, leave the little plastic crow skeleton behind?

Unlikely.

With his own money, Will buys several cans of paint and a CD. He explains neither of these purchases. The look on his face gets steadily more infuriating as they make their way through the line, and Nico really, truly considers leaving him behind.

The purchase of the CD becomes very obvious very quickly. Even though Nico is driving, and therefore Nico should get music control, Will pouts and pleads until Nico gives in and lets him play his stupid country album. He justifies his decision in his own brain by noticing the radiance of Will’s smile as he belts out the words, badly, at the top of his lungs. He then spends the rest of the drive back to camp convincing himself not to be embarrassed for having said thoughts.

They get back to camp about lunch time, and Will destroys any attempt for a subtle reentry by whistling the second they cross the property line.

“Austin! Kayla!” he hollers, making Nico jump. “Come help us unload!”

“We coulda done it ourselves,” Nico grumbles.

Will pats his head condescendingly. “It has been twenty-four long, long hours since I’ve bosses my siblings around, Neeks. I need this.”

It does go by quite a bit quicker with Austin and Kayla’s help. Lou Ellen, Cecil, Yan, and Gracie come to help, too, but Gracie’s too little to carry much more than a small desk lamp. Instead, they lay down the biggest box — Nico’s bed frame — and let her climb on top of it, carrying her like she’s a queen atop a throne back to Nico’s cabin. She has the time of her life, giggling to herself like a madwoman.

By the time everything’s unloaded, a couple hours have passed, and the Hades cabin looks like a clusterfuck.

“Maybe you stay in Apollo a couple more nights,” Will suggests.

“Might have to,” Nico agrees. Will looks inordinately pleased with himself.

All in all, it takes about two days to disassemble the old furniture, get rid of it, and start putting together the new stuff. Will helps for most of it, but he has a few shifts in the infirmary, so Nico ends up trying to do a fair bit on his own.

“May the wrath of Zeus come down upon this fucking piece of shit, no good, poorly designed garbage-looking idiotic mother fuc —”

“Maybe time for a break from furniture assembling?” suggests a voice, accompanied by a quick knock in the open door. Will leans on the doorframe, grinning, box propped up on his hip.

“Will, thank the gods,” Nico sighs, relieved. He angrily shakes a tool in his direction. “Allen wrenches are fucking useless. I’m three seconds away from throwing this through the window.”

“Definitely time for a switch, then.”

Will’s smile is wide and crinkles his eyes. He’s got dimples, too, Nico is now noticing, and then very rapidly un-noticing then because gods above that is a dangerous path.

“Did you and Rachel get into another prank war?” he asks, praying the flush on his cheeks goes away.

Will glances down at his paint-spattered clothes. “Nah, this is just my painting outfit. Why ruin more than one set of clothes, you know?” He sets down the box in the middle of the room, then heads for the half-built furniture sprawled all throughout the cabin, tugging it all towards the middle. Nico inches towards the box, curious, and finds it full of dozens of paint cans and brushes, including the ones he got at Walmart.

“I didn’t know you painted.”

He flashes another grin in Nico’s direction. This one has a little mischief to it, a little teasing. His stomach swoops.

“Gotta have at least one artistic talent or my dad would disown me. Help me tape down this tarp, will you?”

It takes them twenty minutes to prep the room, protecting the floor and the furniture. Once everything is ready, Will jogs over to the CD player he gave Nico a few days ago, flicking through the stack of CDs and choosing one at random. Soft opera music begins to float around the cabin.

“Okay,” he begins, clapping his hands, “first we need a base coat. Get the white paint and the rollers.”

It takes them the rest of the day, painting until dinner, then waiting past sunset for it to dry. Nico follows Will back to his cabin that night — he wouldn’t let him sleep around the paint fumes — and the two of them return the next morning, re-donning their paint-spattered clothes. Will braids his hair, this time, tucking the little pigtails behind a kerchief. It makes Nico smile every time he looks at him.

As much as he’s in painting clothes, Nico doesn’t really do much of the painting. He stays in the centre of the room, half assembling furniture, half watching Will bring his walls to life with more colours than he’s ever seen in one place.

Will doesn’t ask what Nico wants him to paint in his murals. Instead, Nico watches as the streets of Venice begin to unfold on one of the walls, bright and blue and exactly as he remembers, even though he knows for a fact Will has never been. The shining fruit of his stepmother’s garden is next, with a notable absence of the pomegranate tree, and then the hills of New Rome, the sunflower field in rural New York Nico used to visit, the Chinese mountainscape from the first big shadow travelling jump he ever made. Even the poplar forests of the Underworld, looking much kinder and livelier in Will’s rendition than in real life, with Mrs. O’Leary and Cerberus chasing each other through the flickering leaves. Beautiful, colourful, breathtaking scenes; Nico’s favourite places, Nico’s many homes.

“I get a lot of dreams,” Will admits, dragging a smear of rich purple near the ceiling. “You’re in a lot of them. These are the places you’re smiling, the most.”

“They’re beautiful, Will.” Nico’s throat is drier than any desert he’s ever been to. “Gods, they’re more beautiful here than they are in real life.”

“Liar,” Will teases, although his smile is shy.

Nico has never seen him smile like that. He’s seen a lot more of Will in these past few days, actually; his softness, his kindness, his love.

He has only knows Will for a little over a month, he thinks. But Will loves him. That much is obvious.

“Hey.”

“Hm?”

His eyes are still trained on his work. He is on his tiptoes on a step stool, one leg extended precariously, tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth. The curve of his brush is careful, meticulous. Only the best for his friends, for Nico. That’s Will.

“Hey,” Nico says again, more urgently. He steps forward, wrapping his fingers around his wrist.

“Just a sec, Neeks, as soon as I’m done we can —”

Nico pulls until he loses his balance, falling into Nico’s arms. He stares into wide, blue blue eyes, for one second, two, then presses their lips together. Will’s squeak of surprise is swallowed by his mouth, hands sliding up his arms to cup his face, tilting his head to the side.

“Oh,” he sighs, eyelashes ticking Nico’s cheeks as they flutter close. “Oh.”

He melts into Nico’s hold. There’s a thunk and a crinkle as his paintbrush falls from his loose fingers, splattering onto the tarp, and paint-wet hands tangle into his hair. Nico finds he doesn’t mind.

“You love me,” he murmurs in between breaths, lips brushing Will’s with every word.

“Yes,” Will breathes. He kisses Nico again, and again. “A lot.”

“Good.” He’s not sure if it’s the paint fumes making him lightheaded, or the odd, slightly uncomfortable position, or the intoxicating, delirious feel of Will’s warm skin. He’s not sure if he cares. “Good.”

It’s not quite an I-love-you-too. The words won’t form on his tongue, so instead he tightens his hold, sending them that way, and presses closer, closer, closer.

Will smiles into the kiss.

He understands just fine.

[babygorewhore]

Divine Ruler. Kai Anderson smut.

Kai has been so mean lately. But you couldn’t resist him…could you? WARNINGS! Corruption. Use of the word daddy. Slapping. Fingering. Oral! Fem receiving. PnV! Cream pie. Overstimulation. Choking. Mean! Kai.

Okay. Okay. I know! I KNOW I SAID IM TAKING A BREAK! AFTER THIS IS POSTED I SWEAR I AM. BUT I WORKED ON THIS SINCE LAST NIGHT. ENJOY MY LITTLE LAMBS.

You heard the front door slam. Shuffling downstairs, waking you up from deep sleep. Then you heard yelling. You exited the room, hearing the commotion in the basement. As you walked, you overheard Kai screaming at Samuels. “Motherfucker. Don’t you know that you could have ruined this whole thing?” He yelled, raising his hand to slap the man.

“I’m sorry, divine ruler. I was thinking with my dick. Not my brain.” Kai lowered his hand. Changing his mind.

“Get him out of my sight. I’ll deal with him later.”

That wasn’t the last of it.

You were making coffee in the kitchen but you accidentally dropped a cup. It didn’t break but it made a loud noise. Kai slammed his hand down on the counter, right next to you.

“If you’re not more careful, I’m going to lock you in the fucking closet.” He hissed before ripping away from you. You breathed harder.

The next time, you were in the basement sitting on the couch next to winter as he was telling one of his deranged stories. You ached for him. You missed his touch and kisses. You wanted his attention but you were forbidden to speak during these moments.

“And that’s why…men lead. Women bleed.”

“Kai. That’s absolutely cruel.” You couldn’t stop yourself from speaking. Kai froze and so did you. You broke a rule.

“So, this is what you’ve decided to do in front of my faithful men. Disrespect me. Question my words.”

“No. I just think…” you continued.

“What? You think, what?” He growled.

“I just think that’s wrong. Is all.” You finished.

Kai shot up, faster than you anticipated and reached forward, locking his hand around your neck. “Beg. Beg for my forgiveness.” Your eyes widened as he grip tightened.

“I’m-im- I’m sorry.” You whimpered.

“That’s not fucking good enough.” He yelled but he did let go. You inhaled deeply as he sat back down, continuing to share his ideas.

Later, you waited in the bedroom for him. Planning on getting on your knees to apologize. Some sort of contact was better than none. But as the hours grew later, you realized he wasn’t coming to bed. You laid on your side and started crying. You missed him so much. But you didn’t know why. He was distant more than he was affectionate. He was so determined to succeed that you often went neglected.

You sat up and wiped your tears. Set on finding out what was going on with him. As you walked through the house searching, everyone was asleep. You opened the door to his parents room and you saw him sitting beside his mothers corpse. You held your nose and stood at the doorway.

“Kai?”

He didn’t look at you.

“Are you going to come to bed?” You asked him.

“My father wasn’t a good man.” Kai said aloud, as if he wasn’t talking to you. “He was the reason my mother killed herself. He deserved to die. More than her.”

You nodded, enjoying the rare vulnerability he was showing. “It gives me pleasure. To literally see him rot for what he did.” Kai said before standing, letting go of his mother’s skeleton hand.

“Why did you come to look for me?” He demanded.

“Because I miss you.” You sniffled. “I miss you and I want you back.” He looked at you unimpressed.

“As you know, I must bring progress to this movement. I can’t allow my personal feelings to get me distracted.”

“But I’m your girlfriend! Talk to me. Show me how you’re feeling!” You respond desperately.

“How am I supposed to show how pissed off I am without hurting a little girl like you?” He mused and walked closer to you, tilting your chin up. “Just a little precious, innocent girl. Too senseless to walk away from a man as dangerous as me.”

“I’m not senseless. I love you, Kai. I want you.” You leaned forward to kiss him but his hand locked around your jaw. Squeezing it too tight.

“How badly? How bad do you want me?” You swallowed, scared to reply.

“You’re still young…ten years between us. I still have so much to show you.” He whispered, getting closer to your lips.

“Please. Touch me.” You pleaded, ignoring the pain in your jaw. Kai let you go, but his brown eyes impossibly darkened. His hands wrapped in your hair and yanked you against him, his teeth bared.

“Get on the floor. And crawl. Crawl back to the bedroom. And don’t fucking get up until I tell you too.” You nodded rapidly, terrified to disobey. You got on your hands and knees, crawling back down the hall and into his bedroom.

You stopped when you felt his foot, knock you over, making you fall on your forearms. You gasped. “Did I fucking say to move?” Kai barked at you. You immediately returned to your position.

“Fuck. Look at that pretty ass. Should I fuck it? Spread my cum all over you and make you show everyone who exactly you belong too, little girl?” His hand grazed your lower back before he pulled you back by your belt loops.

“Stand up.” He ordered and you did. Like a personal puppet. Your back was pressed against his chest as he leaned down, his nose going against your pulse point. His tongue darted out, licking the warm flesh.

“You taste so good. But I wonder…how wet are you for me?” He shoved his hands in your pants, shoving aside your underwear, his pointer finger gathering your slick.

“You fucking dirty girl. Wet for me when I treat you like a doll. But you like that don’t you?” He shoved his finger in your mouth, making you taste yourself.

“Taste that? That’s mine.” He turned you around, his height over yours as he looked down at you like you were pathetic. “Open your mouth. Stick out your tongue.” He spits in your mouth before he nods towards the bed.

“Get on the bed. And spread those pretty legs.” You listened to him with your heart in your throat. You laid on the mattress, still wearing your leggings as you spread your legs, feeling your wetness drip down your legs.

Kai peered down at you, looking bored. “Take off your leggings. I wanna see that little pussy.” Your cheeks flushed as you shimmied out of your pants, exposing your bare lower half.

“Fuck. You’re dripping. Such a bad girl.” Kai kneeled down, flexing his fingers before he shoved two inside, you cried out at the sudden fullness. “Oh. Can you not take it? Are you too innocent for my fingers?” You breathed harder as he pumped inside you. You wanted to touch your clit but you hesitated.

“What do you want? You want me to make you cum?” Kai asked you, you could feel his breath. “I think you’ve been a good little princess for me. I think you deserve a reward.”

His tongue laid flat against your clit. You moaned as he spread you further with his fingers, flicking his tongue as he made out with your pussy. You felt his teeth graze against your walls as you threw your head back. “Kai-“ You shuddered as he replaced his fingers with his tongue inside and started circling your clit with his thumb.

“You know what’s not what you call me. Do you want me to stop?” You shook your head, ashamed at how desperate you were for his touch.

You searched in your head for names he liked. .

“No, daddy. Please don’t stop.” He slapped your pussy. You winced.

“That’s good. Really good. But not what I’m looking for today.”

“D-divine ruler?” You whimpered as he increased his speed. Kai smirked against your pussy.

“Atta girl. That’s right. Say it again.”

“Please don’t stop, divine ruler.” You groaned, getting close to your release.

“Do you want to cum?” He asked, softly running his tongue against your folds.

“Fuck. Please, please, please.” You begged before it hit you. Your warmth spread along his face as you rolled your hips, chasing your orgasm.

You started to settle but Kai lurched forward and wrapped his hand around your neck. “Did I fucking say you could? You always wait until I say you can. And you disobeyed me. Again.” He tapped your cheek with his hand, not hard but enough to get your attention.

“But you said-“ this time. A slap came. Harder.

“Don’t fucking interrupt me.” Kai yanked down his pants, down his thighs and his boxers followed. He pumped his shaft a few times before lining it up with your entrance. “Just for that. You don’t get to touch me.”

“Oh god. Kai wait- I need a minute.” You begged but he slammed inside you, causing you to nearly scream.

Your pussy clenched around him as he thrusted hard and deep inside you. His hand gripped your throat as his other pinned your hands above your head. Keeping you still.

“What’s a soft little girl doing? Being so wet for me.” He groaned against your neck as he pressed sloppy kisses against your throat. You could hardly breathe but you felt yourself getting ready for another orgasm.

“Divine ruler-“ you moaned. Trying to loosen his grip. But he was stronger than you.

Kai settled into a fast and rough rhythm as you both grew close. Your eyes saw stars as you felt yourself break. Kai let out one last deep moan before you felt his cum spill inside you, and you followed suit.

He slid in and out of you, still not removing yourself. You couldn’t bare the overstimulation and you tried to wiggle from him.

“Too fucked to talk?” He asked you, as sweat gathered on his forehead.

“Please…” You pleaded through gasps.

Finally, he released you. Kai shuddered before he pulled out of your slickness. He fell next to you, breathing hard as you tried to collect yourself.

You reached down, sore from him as you saw blood on your fingers. You weren’t a virgin, thanks to Kai several weeks ago. But he still took you so roughly.

“A little blood never hurt anyone.” Kai chuckled. He scooped you in his arms and you curled around his chest. Your legs tangling with his.

Kai stayed silent as you kissed his cheek, allowing you to show him affection as he ran his hand across your arm.

Taglist. @spill-the-t @evanptrss @evanpetersfansblog @randodummy @icannot3

[blondgirls-world]

57 Reasons

TW: Meanspo

01. You will be FAT if you eat today, just put it off one more day.

02. You don't NEED food.

03. Fat people can't fit everywhere.

04. Guys will be able to pick you up without struggling.

05. You'll be able to run faster without all that extra weight holding you back.

06. People will remember you as "the beautiful thin one".

07. If someone has to describe you, they'll say "oh she weighs like 90, 100 lbs".

08. Guys will want to get to know you, not laugh at you and walk away.

09. Starving is an example of excellent willpower.

10. You will be able to see your beautiful, beautiful bones.

11. Bones are clean and pure. Fat is dirty and hangs on your bones like a parasite.

12. If you eat then you'll look like those disgusting, fat, ghetto and trailer-trash hookers on Jerry Springer.

13. The models that everyone claims are beautiful, the spitting image of perfection, are any of them fat? NO!

14. Too many people in the world are obese.

15. People who eat are selfish and unrealistic.

16. Only fat people are attracted to fat people. Do you want pigs to like you because you are one of them.

17. Anyone can have "inner beauty" but few can earn real beauty, inside as well as out.

18. You'll be able to move as quietly and skillfully as a spider.

19. Only thin people are graceful.

20. If you slap a fat person you can see a shockwave ripple over their skin. That's disgusting.

21. Do you want people to say "for gods sake get off me you're crushing me!!!" or "you are sooo light" ???

22. Underweight aka perfect body.

23. Ballerina? or beanbag?

24. I want to be light enough so a helium balloon could lift me and carry me to the clouds.

25. I want to walk in the snow and leave no footprints.

26. Starve off the parts you don't need. They're ugly and they drag you down.

27. Nothing cant be fixed with hunger and weight loss.

28. Saying "no thanks" to food is saying "yes please" to THIN!!!

29. Fat people are so huge, yet people look away from them as if they don't exist.

30. The only time people do notice a fat person is when they get in the way of that beautiful thin girl walking by (ok that sounds really horrible i know.)

31. Have you ever seen a person NOT notice a walking skeleton.

32. Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.

33. Is food more important that happiness in life? I think not!

34. Eating is conforming to everyone else's expectations.

35. When you start to get dizzy and weak you're almost there.

36. Hunger is your friend and it won't betray you like food.

37. Food is mean and sneaky. It tricks you into eating it and it works on you from the inside out making you fat, bloated, ugly and unhappy.

38. Think of anorexia as your secret weapon.

39. If you can name one reason to be fat, I'll name a million and one to be thin.

40. Thin people look good in ANY kind of clothes.

41. Food rots your teeth.

42. Puffy cheeks, double chins and thick ankles-- aren't attractive.

43.��Fatty areas stretch and sag as you get older.

44. Ever seen the arms of a fat person wave hello or goodbye?

45. Eating little to nothing saves you money!

46. The average (middle class) American wastes OVER $8,000 a year on FOOD ALONE...it goes in one end and out the other. That sure is a lot of fat! No wonder so many Americans are obese and overweight!

47. Fat people make their country look bad.

48. Big people sweat more and they smell bad.

49. Fat people die earlier.

50. You'll be the envy of all the other girls.

51. All of the guys will want you.

52. You're less likely to get food poisoning.

53. You won't be exposed to all the chemicals and pesticides they put in food today.

54. You won't get sweaty on hot days.

55. The word fat will only apply to you in a sarcastic way.

56. No one wants to see a fat person dance.

57. Beauty Queen? or Dairy Queen?

-Fading Obsession: Pro Ana Mia Website plus Forum (fadingobsessions.com)

[sunderingstars]

☆━━━━━ ⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☾ ◯ ☽₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆ ━━━━━━☆

✩ ‧₊˚ ⌞ OUTFIT & DESIGN MOTIFS ⌝

sampo analysis m.list

— what the stars reveal: half-character-study, half-analysis, waxing poetic, elation!sampo

— word count: 3.1k

— overview: a look at sampo’s outfit and design, as well as how it may link to an identity closely connected with the elation.

☆━━━━━ ⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☾ ◯ ☽₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆ ━━━━━━☆

For the sake of my own sanity, I’ll be splitting this analysis into clear-cut sections:

Snake Motifs

Binding Chains

Weapon

Hair

Color Palette

Shoes & Walking

Layers

Exposed Skin

Here’s his splash art for reference, although I’ll also be including other photos of his outfit:

✩ ‧₊˚ ⌞ SNAKE MOTIFS ⌝

One of the biggest aspects of Sampo’s outfit design are the snake bones littered across his clothing. From the scaled chain behind him to the shoulder guard that has a protrusion reminiscent of venom-dipped fangs, there is a lot of snake imagery present. Not just snake, however, but dead snake. It’s important to note that none of these pieces have skin or lively color — they’re all bones, bleached and picked clean. For me, this implies Sampo to be a skeleton character, a whisper of a dead or dying thing that still carries a last bit of venom in its fangs. Whether that “thing” is a metaphorical emotional state (centering themes of disillusionment and fatigue), a literal identity (centering themes of lessening power and lowering status), or a combination of both is up for interpretation. Either way, something inside him is decaying.

The snake — the living, hunting predator — is past its prime, stripping away over the years into something that barely resembles itself, the bones of an ancient and powerful thing. Emanator!Sampo may find himself slowly drawing away from the compulsive Elation first bestowed upon him, while Aha!Sampo may find Themself rotting into Their own mortal shell, the remains of what used to be a superficial avatar sticking to Their bones and sucking them clean; alternatively, the restrictions placed upon this mortal form of Sampo may cause Aha to be whittled down, only an echo of Their full strength. In another case, the silhouette behind the masks, the bones behind the meat, may have found himself steadily falling out of orbit with his larger mind, eventually ending up as nothing but a shadow of his former power as an Aeon — a skeleton, removed from the body when it was no longer needed. Or, perhaps, he is trying to keep the venom in.

(Note: His eyes are also snake-shaped like Baizhu’s from Genshin Impact!)

✩ ‧₊˚ ⌞ BINDING CHAINS ⌝

When looking at Sampo in a 360-degree view through the camera, something became apparent to me — the snake motifs (the spine and scales especially) seem to wrap around him tightly. In the splash art, this is a little difficult to tell (as the spine is flared out behind him), but here, they are tightly wrapped around multiple parts of his body:

Here, we see a fairly small part — a cuff wrapped around his upper forearm. This sticks out to me because it seems similar to a handcuff, or some kind of article of containment. It fits snugly, pressing in on his skin. There is also a similar wrapping around his thigh, showing that this is not a one-off design decision. There are multiple tight wrappings of containment around his body, which then implies a something in containment. Additionally, there’s the bone chains on his back:

They wrap around to the front, resting in the hollow of his neck. There are also two latches fastened to his back, giving the idea of the bones almost “hugging” him. Now, we are beginning to get a dual picture: a snake, slowly choking and constricting its prey, and a binding chain of bones, something meant to keep danger contained. We can see this even more clearly once the full picture comes together from different angles:

(These wrappings are even reminiscent of the symbol for Ouroboros, an ancient Gnostic and Alchemical symbol that represents the constant cycle of life, death, and rebirth, as well as the unity of all things material and spiritual. As I’ll discuss in its own dedicated analysis, this presence of the snake as a symbol of rebirth and unity may speak to a constant cycle of different emotions or consciousnesses within him — a loop he seemingly can’t escape. He is trying to live, but death ever looms in the background. Additionally, this points towards him trying to reconcile multiple facets of his being.)

The snake does not want to leave. It is cloying, constricting, containing at every waking moment, unwilling to relinquish the meat inside it. I believe the snake and the chains are one and the same: at the same time Sampo is being hurt and constricted, he is also being contained. The snake bones may represent Aha as a separate entity, the Elation as a addiction-filled Path, self-imposed rules from a more powerful past self, or even the “restrictions” placed on higher beings by virtue of existence.

An Emanator!Sampo may be constantly choked by the chains of his status, the realization that this Path isn’t the one he wants — disillusionment is hard to hold on to when surrounded by those who move from sorrow to joy at the drop of a hat. The gaze of an Aeon may constantly weigh on his shoulders like venom-tipped fangs waiting to strike, waiting to strip everything away from him once he becomes no longer “interesting.” Or perhaps that interest is the binding itself, the consuming, compulsive need to laugh, to operate on impulse, to push all feelings of doubt out before they can even be felt; the want to so desperately escape from Elation despite it clinging to him like a specter, regardless of his wants or needs. Emanator!Sampo may also be contained in his power, the same disillusionment that drives him to stray forcing him to hold back his true power, the truth that he could ruin everything he cares for with a single mistake. He doesn’t know what to do when the Elation grows ever tighter, ever higher, the bones of a rotting thing turning him rotten as well. He wants to escape but doesn’t know how.

(Perhaps, this desperation has rotted into hate which has rotted into vengeance, a dedication to using his life to push out the last of his venom, if only to stain an Aeon with Their own blood before falling away.)

Alternatively, an Aha!Sampo may find Themself now restricted by flesh and blood, feeling Themself to be a shadow, a dead skeleton of what They once were. For whatever reason, Their mortal form is forced to have restrictions, perhaps the same ones They face in Aeonic form. But it’s small. Too small. Ten thousand sizes too small, as it always is, and now They’re trapped for a longer time, forced by a looming threat to operate in the shadows, slowly hollowing out with the distance of consciousness and time. 

Who are They, if not the masks? Who are They, if not an Aeon? Perhaps this is not even mask-related at all, but rather a silhouette who grew tired, determined to carve his own path when the stench of decay became too much. The Original, The Progenitor, far outlasted by feelings that grew too strong for his body to handle. He is not an Aeon, not a mortal, but somewhere between a bleached skull and a mouth full of venom. How can he spit out what is rightfully inside him? How can he cut the binds that tie him to an eldritch being he was never meant to be? 

He does not want Elation, but Elation has always wanted him. How can he escape something so dedicated to swallowing him whole? How can he escape something so natural to his being? There is no clear answer besides one: if he does not find a way to escape, the only thing left of him will be bone.

✩ ‧₊˚ ⌞ WEAPON ⌝

Anyway! Haha! Isn’t he so silly? Let’s look at his weapon next:

It seems to continue the snake theme, with both sides of the blades marked with the same bright purple of the “fangs” on his shoulder guard. I don’t think it’s a mistake that these are the brightest colors of the outfit, but I’ll save that for later. For now, let’s focus on the dual nature of his weapon. Besides carrying on the snake theme, these are dual blades, able to be split apart and combined at a moment’s notice. To me, this seems like an indication of two “sides” to Sampo, two different personas that can be separated, combined, or interchanged at will. This could be an Emanator form, an Aeonic form, or simply another personality or “deeper” emotion behind the con-man persona. 

I find this choice of weapon very fitting for him, as it capitalizes on the dexterity of both his personality and fighting style. It’s something that is easily able to be tossed from a distance, allowing him to damage enemies over time without getting too close to danger. There is also an inversion to its form, and while that could just be so he doesn’t scratch himself when throwing it, I also see its connection to the “inversion” of Sampo’s E6 and Aha’s splash art silhouette. There is an implication of inversion, mirroring, and duality with this weapon. Whatever power or consciousness he may be holding, there’s a good chance there are multiple dimensions to it, the kind of dimensions that exceed mortal standards.

✩ ‧₊˚ ⌞ HAIR ⌝

Something of note is the grey in his hair, a color often attributed to older and more powerful characters (Welt has a (albeit dyed) strand of grey hair and Acheron has grey strands as well). They are, however, at the bottom of his hair, like the (perhaps also dyed?) blue is trying to override it. This could speak to an attempt to find his own identity, to cast aside the bleached white of decaying bones and find some vibrance to live for. There’s also a lot of it compared to other characters. It’s not just one or two strands, it’s entire parts of his hairtips, with the implication even more may be white behind the blue. This would line up with what he says about being an “old timer,” most likely downplaying his own status to “just an old guy” when he is vastly more powerful than others realize.

Additionally, his hair obscures one of his eyes, always casting half of his face behind blue. 

I feel this speaks to the idea of “multiple” sides, since one part of him is literally hidden from view. There’s the laughing, joking con-man we see, sure, but we don’t see the “hate” festering beneath, the potential despising of one’s own power and being. We don’t see the silhouette behind the masks. It wants to be free, most likely, of the chains that bind it, wants to step into the open with the clarity of rage, but it is not allowed. And so it stays, hidden behind blue. It stays, allowing the turquoise eye of a red-tinted mask to operate beyond, leaving itself to fester and rot into itself. Would we see an eye, if we pulled back that hair? Would we see something besides a wink here, a crease there? Would we find a matching color, or would we find blood red, a space infested with angry maggots? Would we perhaps find a hole? The blank, staring Nothing of Nihility? Only time will tell.

✩ ‧₊˚ ⌞ COLOR PALETTE ⌝

An interesting thing I noted while staring at pictures of this man’s splash art for way too long is the clash between colors. When dealing with the visible light spectrum, red and blue are on opposite ends. Red and blue are also popularized opponents, despite them not being true opposites on the color wheel. They can clash very jarringly, although the muted reds and blues (bordering on purples) used in Sampo’s outfit compliment each other better than in other combinations. Still, they stick out against each other, chafe against the backdrop of muted grays and blacks of dying bone. The red, often associated with blood, is also associated with Aha’s masks in this case, since most masks have a combination of white and red or red and orange to them (especially in Aha’s splash art). Additionally, blue is often associated with water and calm, which ties back to Sampo’s name “Koski” which means water rapids in Finnish. There is a clear conflict between these colors in Sampo’s outfit, the starkness of drying blood mingling with the attempted free-flowing blue of a new identity. The blue that is so strong in his hair, his mind, is slowly beginning to peek from beyond the red of the rest of his body —  a solitary flower, perhaps, watered by the rain and allowed to cautiously, timidly, lean into the doorway of his being. Still, it is a battle. The red will not give up. The pain, the addictive nature of being consumed by the snake, has been there for so long it naturally attempts to obscure whatever new healing the blue brings. But the blue is persistent. And so, it stays.

All the while, the grey hangs in the background, shadow-like. The monochrome, the static, has been there longer than both the red and the blue, so ingrained into him that it’s easily overlooked for the war between blood and water. But it’s there. The bones of that ancient beast will never fade, stagnant as they are. That’s the thing about bones — they last. Even when the blood runs out and the water stops flowing, bones take the longest to decay. They symbolize longevity, perhaps too much of it. An immortality, perhaps, granted by Emanator or Aeon status, that refuses to disperse even as the mind begins to wither. Thus, the red and the blue arrive. They attempt to revitalize the dying bones, the winding snake, putting just enough contrast between them to create a spark, a single flicker of life — a turquoise of bright running water in the eyes, enough to see the world in better clarity.

(And then there is the glowing purple of the fangs, the looming threat, the contained power. Beyond everything else, the venom is still there. It has always been there, waiting to strike.)

✩ ‧₊˚ ⌞ SHOES & WALKING ⌝

The only thing I want to talk about here is the lack of footprints Sampo leaves behind (I just wanted a dedicated section for it). We can see clearly in the splash art that Sampo has regular soles that should make indents in the snow, yet his character never leaves footprints when walking through Belobog. To me, this indicates an otherworldly nature of being, or a lack of being there in the first place. This can fracture into several different theories, some of which being that it’s intentional on his part and he can manipulate his body and surroundings in a structural way; that it’s simply a byproduct of a higher being taking mortal form (and thus not fully “conforming” to all minutae of human bodies); and that it’s because he is a projection or puppet of some sort that was never really there to begin with. Whatever the case, this seems to be a strong indicator of higher status, whether that be Emanator, Aeonic, or something different. After all, no regular, unassuming guy would be able to so casually and effortlessly defy gravity to not leave footprints.

✩ ‧₊˚ ⌞ LAYERS ⌝

Man, this guy’s outfit is confusing. Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. I’m just still not entirely sure what’s going on in his chest region, there seems to be a lot of straps and buckles and zigzags and windows. I’d like to say this still speaks to the idea of “containment,” as many layers like that would certainly feel constricting, but I also feel like it’s meant to be a “look” as a whole. The bottom layers being black and gray, then blossoming out into blue and red almost makes me think of a decaying animal, with the blood being exposed as well as some of the bone beneath. I also feel like it ties back into his “layered” personality, in which he has different feelings and personas he chooses to either show or hide at any given moment. His neck and hands are also covered (with the red gloves dipping below the black), perhaps further speaking to concealment. The snake motifs are also present on multiple layers, giving the feeling that this is a constriction that runs deep.

✩ ‧₊˚ ⌞ EXPOSED SKIN ⌝

I will say it: this man’s outfit is sluttyyy (affectionate). Despite the heavy themes of constriction and concealment, the encroachment of the colors and layers do not affect his forearms and hips. He very much has his “V” out to show the world, and I for one am not complaining. To me, this exposed skin feels like a breath of fresh air, something beyond the rotting, constricted animal for once. This seems to really be Sampo — the flesh and blood Sampo, the mortal, the guy who likes striking poses and probably gives great hugs. Yes, it is still strategic (probably trying to ramp up flirt appeal for when he tries to scam people) but it also seems genuine. Sincere. If the rest of his outfit is a constraining, dying bloodbath, then these pockets of skin are the eye of the storm, the places that seem to be untouched by the onslaught. Here, we see a human being. Not an Emanator or an Aeon or a byproduct of compulsive Elation, but a man. Just a man. Breathing, like everyone else. It’s nice.

My main takeaways from this outfit are:

The bones of an Aeon, with mortal and “Primum Mobile” restrictions combining to constrain.

The bones of an Emanator, slowly whittled away with time and the weathering of longevity bestowed by Elation.

The general themes of rot, decay, snakes, venom, constraint, and being suffocated.

Ouroboros, constant cycles, prey caught in a trap of potentially its own making.

Any combination of these!

(I also wrote this piece before really getting into the Doll!Sampo theory, but there is definitely an interpretation to be had regarding Sampo as a creation of Aha! The decaying animal and contradictory colors could represent the fight between Sampo’s “purpose” and who he really wants to be, as well as the chains of Elation choking his freedom of self-expression and want to be his own person. The consistency of constricting and containing bones could also speak to him being a “shadow” of Aha, the echo of a greater being while still powerful himself. If he was created in Aha’s own likeness, he would probably feel the pressure of always being in the shadow of his creator.

Additionally, many other parts of this analysis can still apply to Doll!Sampo, as I see him as at least Emanator status. Longevity would take even more of a toll on him here, since he would have lived so long being disregarded by others as a “toy.” I’ll probably elaborate more on this when I do a dedicated breakdown of my Doll!Sampo theory!)

A note I couldn’t find a good place for earlier: snake bones also imply shed skin, some siphoning off of a greater part of oneself to be reborn anew. Perhaps he is the dead and dying snake, preparing to molt into something even greater. That’s all!

The End! Overall, I feel like I realized a lot of potential things about Sampo going through the parts of his outfit one-by-one. I’m definitely more on board with the idea of being simultaneously constricted and constrained now! Ties that bind, and all that. I also didn’t realize just how much of a battle his outfit feels like until I really looked at it, and now I feel bad for the poor guy. Whatever his endgame identity is, he is not having a good time. I want to give him a hug :((

Also, I want to include this bonus concept art since it shows the snake motifs were a big aspect from the beginning:

Anyways, that’s all!

☆━━━━━ ⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☾ ◯ ☽₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆ ━━━━━━☆

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ જ⁀➴ thanks for reading to the end!

(volume warning)

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© analysis by sunderingstars. do not copy, repost, translate, modify, or claim my work as your own.

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

(hi uh sorry i sent that ask very prematurely on accident could you delete the previous one? sorry i just had to rephrase it-)

i was wondering if you were interested in doing a Sozo x reader fic (GN preferably) where the reader tries to help Sozo kick his mushroom habit (as you have done before but i would really like some more in-depth mental support for ant boy) or at least help him not to lose himself even more. This next part includes spoilers for the Sins of the Flesh update so if you haven't played that feel free to wait or skip this part. I would especially like to see his Dr. Sozonius personality starting to shine through again as he gains more clarity, kinda nerding out on mushroom stuff but also extremely sorry for everything he did while under the influence of the Mushrooms

YEAH SOZO REDEMPTION ARC <3

.....

"I promise...no more shrooms...please.."

"I'm sorry, my dear. I just can't take your word for it." Sighing, you gazed hopelessly at your spouse: the belligerent ant locked up in the pillory for the third straight day now, wondering if this was the right thing to do.

This all started after you returned to Spore Grotto one evening, finding the Mushroomos there in a panic, one of them eventually leading you to the inside of Sozo's "home".

He had succumbed to the infection, as his body was laying there in such a grotesque display, covered in fungi and rotting away. Of course, the followers didn't know what to do and begged you to bring Lamb back here, as they haven't visited this place in a while.

At first you didn't want to, thinking they were the reason he was dead. You assumed he was still giving him mushrooms behind your back when you specifically told them not to do that, explaining how you're trying to get him to stop. You made him promise not to consume anymore.

It had to be Lamb's fault.

But the Mushroomos revealed something quite shocking: since he wasn't getting mushrooms, he turned to eating them all alive to satisfy his needs instead, unable to stop. The parasite that held him hostage demanded it so.

And it ended up killing him.

You grieved for a little while, before seeking out Lamb and asking if they could accompany you to Spore Grotto, explaining what happened. Yet by the time you both returned, there was hardly anything left of Sozo's body.

Nothing except his skeleton, backpack, and the smiling mushroom.

You decided to take the large fungi back to their cult, carrying it as a sort of "ironic" memento of your lover.

During the walk back, Lamb asked you if Sozo had a life before this addiction of his...and you tell them something rather surprising.

He was actually once a brilliant man: Dr. Sozonius. His research on mushrooms was known all throughout the Old Faith. He's written books, lived with family members in an ant colony, and was very wise. You two fell in love through your research and explored Anura together.

Then he brought you to his camp at Spore Grotto, the very heart and soul of Anura's fungal outbreak. He was studying the Mushroomos and their behavior patterns. They were actually very passive and social creatures, offering you two stews of menticide mushrooms.

You declined, having already ate before your journey. But Sozonius--thrilled to discover a new mushroom specimen--decided to indulge in their generosity for the sake of science.

And things haven't been the same since.

Something in that soup took root in his brain and turned him into a shadow of his former self.

He never came back to the colony, or the home you two shared, devoting himself entirely to all things mushroom-related...while that stupid smiling fungi puppeteered him around. Some days you'd visit him, and he does remember you, but as of late he's been forgetting more and more of your lives together, giggling and not taking any of your words seriously.

He tried getting you to bring him mushrooms, eat them, etc. and if you refused, his eyes turned red and he'd start yelling nonsense.

Despite all of this, you never once blamed the Mushroomos. They were only trying to be kind hosts; they didn't expect such an advanced fungi to take control of him and turn him into their "leader".

After he died, most of them dispersed throughout Anura, but some stayed behind in the hope of seeing you again.

Once you finished sharing your story, Lamb was surprised that you wanted to take the fungi back at all. They figured you'd burn it to ashes for what it did to your husband.

Yet....you didn't blame it either.

Mushrooms aren't inherently evil. It's how nature made them, and you're a strong believer in karma, deciding to instead nurture this one in hopes that it may grow into something better.

Who would've known that mentality would bring Sozo back to you a week later?

Unfortunately, as you anticipated, he was still up to his old habits and never fully understood that they killed him. He tore up the mushroom farm plots and ate any Mushroomos Lamb rescued during their crusades.

Least to say..he was being an utter nuisance in the cult. He never did any work, and none of the followers liked him.

But that's not how he really was.

You knew him better than anybody else.

Ultimately you and Lamb realized that you had to break this addiction of his for good, otherwise the cycle will just repeat..and you might lose him all over again.

Talking to him wasn't enough.

He had to go cold turkey.

Sozo got angry when you shielded a Mushroomo from his bloodlust and told them to hide in the temple, accusing you of denying him happiness and saying he'd rather be put back in the ground than look at you--and that's when Lamb locked him up in the pillory while distracted.

As much as his words hurt..you knew it was only the fungi talking, trying to trick you into thinking that's what he was feeling. But you weren't so easily fooled.

You had to starve it out.

Might it kill him, too? There's a good chance. But you had to try.

Ever since getting imprisoned, he's been shouting and begging passing followers to free him all day and all night, the fungi looking more withered as time went on. Even its smile turned upside down.

Lamb tried using the same reeducation techniques they used on dissenters. Yet they weren't quite sure how to help Sozo, as he babbled over their speeches and wanted them to go away.

You offered to take over instead, and while they hesitated..they eventually handed you a copy of one of their gospel books and said they'd pray for his healing.

If anyone could get through to him, it was you.

For a while you've kept a close eye on him, making sure he had food--all of which you cooked yourself in case anyone tried sneaking in mushrooms. He no longer screamed his head off, but he still tried bargaining with you to free him, each plea growing weaker than the last.

By the time the sun went down, most of the followers were heading to their sleeping quarters for the night--although a couple were having some concoctions at the drinkhouse. But they could usually hold their liquor and not get too befuddled, so you weren't worried about them.

Instead you just focused on Sozo..who was already looking tired. Your energy was very much spent, too, although you didn't wanna abandon him.

Alas Lamb had no moon necklaces to spare, and even if they did...they would hesitate to give it to you.

Speaking of whom, you heard their footsteps and glanced over, smiling. "Hello, Lamb."

"You can go rest, [y/n]." They nodded. "I'll watch over him for you."

"...alright." Sighing, you closed the book and looked back at your spouse, placing a hand on his cheek as you kissed the opposite one. "Sweet dreams, Sozo. For what it's worth..I'm blessed you are back on this earth with me. I promise to keep helping you."

"[Y/n]...loves Sozo that much..huh?" He huffed, sleepily opening his eyes, and you were astonished to see that they were no longer red like the eyes of dissenters.

Even so, you weren't letting your hopes get up too high. He still had a long path ahead of him.

"Of course. There's no one I love more than you. I just hope and pray...that you haven't forgotten the love you felt for me."

As you parted from his side and began walking back to the Lamb, you were confused by their dumbfounded expression. "What? Was I supposed to say-?"

"Look." They pointed behind you, and you turned back around, gawking at what you were seeing.

The fungi had completely decayed, falling off Sozo's head into a withering husk in the grass; the smaller fungi buried in his collar died off, too. It didn't cause him any pain, surprisingly enough.

Then you looked directly at his face, noticing signs of him aging rapidly judging by the wrinkles and graying furs of his collar.

But he was still alive.

And he was back to his old self.

"Wh..Where am I? Where is...my family?" His voice was quiet and raspy as he looked around, confused by the wooden contraption he was locked in.

However once he saw your face, he recognized you and smiled, feeling at total ease.

"Oh, my love. You're back."

"I-I never left.." Tears immediately blurred your vision as you rushed to unlock the pillory. "I was here the whole time. I thought you were gone forever..."

"I hope I didn't go too far." He hummed, although he felt an ache in his back from being hunched over for so long and winced. Lamb was quick to fetch him a cane so he could better support himself, but you looped your arm around one of his own to help.

"Thank you, you're very kind.." He gazed at the sheep. "My name is Dr. Sozonius. We were...studying the Mushroomos. Fascinating creatures, they are. Neither plant nor animal. They gave my partner [y/n] and I some menticide mushrooms...and.....that's the last thing I remember.." He frowned slightly.

'Ah..so he doesn't know...' You realized, but you kept your worries pushed down, too happy to care about any of that right now.

"I can't help but feel that I have you to thank for...something." He continued, smiling at Lamb. "You have my loyalty. I will remain here and serve you."

They smiled back and bowed their head respectfully. "Thank you, doctor. Welcome back."

..........

While it was such a relief to see Sozonius' sanity restored, it wasn't too long before he ended up becoming bedridden, his bones too weak to support him anymore.

You realized that the fungi somehow managed to disguise his true age, as Lamb discovered he was actually 100 years old via mindreading--making him the eldest follower in the natural sense.

Now you feared losing him again..just when you finally got him back, and wondered if Lamb could do something to help.

Sure, resurrecting him may be the easiest option, but it would be the most painful for you. They couldn't put you through that, as it would take a few days for them to be ready for the ritual.

Luckily they managed to find a quick solution:

A fountain of youth in the form of a simple egg dish.

After Sozonius ate it, the magical properties somehow reversed the clock, giving him back the energy he needed to help out with cult duties. And you didn't have to worry about losing each other again, as Lamb gifted you two golden skull necklaces as a "belated" wedding gift.

Of course, the ant was ever jubilant about his mushroom studies and continued to pursue them alongside you--in a far more controlled environment, obviously. He was allowed to tend to the plots and observe how their effects impact followers during brainwashing rituals, although he was forbidden from tasting one himself or participating in those..

At least for right now.

Even though it's been about a week since he was "cured", the few Mushroomos that lived on the cult grounds were still fretful upon seeing him, thinking he was going to eat them alive.

The one you defended couldn't believe that he was genuinely sorry and not under the fungi's influence anymore.

They were so terribly scared that Lamb mentioned that they gained a "cowardly" trait, always flinching upon you, them, or Sozonius approaching, begging to be spared from....some nonexistent threat they made up in their head. They tried to please you two how ever they could, yet were easily frightened by him simply breathing around them.

Your husband was confused until you clarified that he ruled over the Mushroomos for a long time, cannibalizing them and making threats should they fail to bring him more mushrooms--but he found it hard to fathom that he'd ever do such a thing and abandon you and his family..

Even so, he felt guilty and hoped to make things right.

.........

It was late at night when you and Sozonius were having some light brews at the drinkhouse, feeling relaxed but not entirely befuddled.

He was rambling about some of his latest discoveries in mycology, and you listened with such a loving gaze in your eyes, smiling so big your face was starting to hurt.

You were so, so grateful he came back to you..and that Lamb could save him.

But one particular Mushroomo, however, arrived in hopes of drinking their worries away...and instead found you two at the counter, disappointed.

They tried to sneak away, although Sozonius spotted them and whistled. "You, Mushroomo! Come sit with us." He offered. "We don't bite."

"Eek! I-I mean, of course Mast---I mean Sozo..I-I mean....urrgh!!" Already they were fumbling over their words, scratching at their mushroom cap and sweating. "S-Sorry, sorry! AH!" They nearly tripped over a rock on their way to the drinkhouse.

"Are you sure this is a good idea, dear?" You glanced at your husband, who just nodded reassuringly.

"It will be fine."

Even as the Mushroomo sat down and took one of the drinks left on the counter, they seemed too anxious to take a sip. Instead their gaze going to you--and Sozonius, especially. "I-I feel like I'm interrupting something.."

"No, you are not. But listen-"

"D-Do you need more 'shrooms for your studies, Sozo?? More menticide-?"

"No, no. Listen. I wanted to...apologize for what I have done to you and your fellow Mushroomos."

"Wha.....y-you do..?"

With a soft sigh, Sozonius grasped both of their hands, and although they squeaked in surprise, they didn't try running off. "I scarcely recall what I did while under the influence of the mushrooms. But...it's no excuse. I treated all of you poorly, ate your friends...and I'm sorry. I just hope you can find it in your heart to forgive this old fool."

They meekly nodded. "W-We understand..mast-"

"From this day forward," he cut in gently, "I am no longer your master. You serve the Lamb now. Not me. And that goes for all of you Mushroomos, okay?"

"....yes, doctor." The mushroom creature exhaled a shaky breath, looking utterly relieved to have official freedom from his servitude.

"Good, thank you." Sozonius let go, smiling. "I'm glad you understand. Why don't you go get some rest?"

"I think..I will." They stood up and stared down at their untouched drink, before sliding it back over to you. "You can have this. I...don't feel like I need it anymore."

You nodded, bidding them goodnight as they headed back to their shelter, before gazing at the ant. "Seems you broke their habit, too."

"Well, I am a doctor, after all." He chuckled. "I wanna help whoever I can."

All you did was smile, the two of you sitting in a comfortable silence, finishing your drinks and admiring the golden shrine at the center of the cult grounds.

Finally, everything was as it should be.

[toxicbrothel]

POV

Joel has to drive somewhere, and Carter is busy. It’s just you and Joel, and you’re taking the smaller van. As Joel gets in the driver’s seat, for the first time he tells you to buckle up. It feels silly, given everything that’s happened in this van while it was moving, but you do it anyway. The road is mostly quiet, and you never see another car. It feels weird having a seat all to yourself, but seeing Joel drive really turns you on. His massive triceps casually flex with every turn. His thick thighs shake a little on the bumpy road. Joel looks over at you and does a double take, allowing himself the hint of a smile. 

“What?” you ask. 

He shakes his head as though to brush it off, then says. “The way you were lookin’ at me.” His nose pulls downward and he bites his lip like he might actually laugh otherwise. It gives you such a burst of joy that you could cry if you dwelled on it too long. 

“How was I looking?” you smile. 

He shakes his head. His nose twitches again. 

“How?” you plead. 

“. . . Like,” he shrugs.  “Like you’re . . .watchin’ a movie, or somethin’.”

You shrink into your dress to hide your smile, embarrassed of how wide it is, and for something so simple to make you so happy. It’s wrong to feel happy when you’re driving by pits full of skeletons and rotted clothes, you think. Looking out the window, looking at anything but Joel, is a reality check, but you can’t keep your eyes away long. 

You bring your left knee up on the seat and turn toward him, resting the upper left side of your head on the headrest as you watch. “I never see you drive, you know.” 

“Guess not,” he agrees. 

“I like how you do it.”

He reaches over and pets the crown of your head, and his eyes travel down your body before he returns his hand to the wheel. “Dress looks good on ya."

“I love it,” you gush. You fiddle with the hem and look down. There's that sting and pressure behind your eyes again. It’s the fact that he picked it up for you, back when he used to leave you at the trailer. And he didn’t give it to you until now. He wasn’t sure you’d like it, he said. Then, on this unseasonably warm day, he finally took it out of the bottom of one of his drawers. Like it was always in the back of his mind--you'd like to know what else is back there.

Unshed tears begin to blur your vision, and when you blink, the tears web your lashes. Joel notices. He watches you for a second and your lip quivers. He looks at the road again. You bring your knee down from the seat and look straight ahead, and when you blink again, one rolls down. Joel draws in a slow breath through his nose and looks at you as he exhales. You wipe your eyes with your fingers, then glance at him, brow furrowed, and quickly shake your head like you don’t wanna talk about it.

He nods in agreement and goes back to watching the road. A few seconds later, he looks at you again and puts his hand on your thigh. His voice takes on a soothing tone. “I know, sweet pea.” After a minute, he opens his mouth to say something, but doesn't. 

He rubs your thigh, then squeezes it. You nod and take a deep breath.

He adjusts his head on the headrest, looking pensively at the road. He's driving with one hand. He makes everything look so easy.

Sitting side by side, with what feels like a massive gap in between, even though he can reach you. . . It suddenly feels wronger than ever. You feel strange and exposed without your bodies together. 

“I feel weird in this seat,” you admit and wish it didn’t come out whiny. 

As soon as the sentence leaves your mouth, he takes his foot off the gas and the white noise of the gravel becomes slower, more soothing as he pulls off the road. He parks on the grass, surveys the area in silence for a few seconds, then turns off the engine. He gets out and gently closes the door. You take off your seatbelt while he’s coming around to your side.

You start to open the passenger door, and he opens it the rest of the way. You scoot to the edge of the seat and he leans into the van. You wrap your arms around his neck and his hands on your back pull you even more toward the edge. “It’s okay, I got ya,” he murmurs. You wrap your legs loosely around him, and he pulls you flush. A moan slips out when you feel him against you. You lift your chin, and when your lips brush his beard, he tilts his head down. His lips quickly find yours, and he moans quietly into your mouth as his embrace tightens.

------

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Thank you so much for reading! And ty for the photo, Lum! 🌸🫛 💕

I imagine she picks the flower at some point on this trip as well.

[theladyofbloodshed]

Happy Halloween!

‘Nes, picture this. Gates open at dusk. Nobody leaves until dawn. There’s a whole section of rides. A zombie maze. And a haunted house with three floors.’

Nesta wrinkled up her nose and slapped the brochure that Cassian had thrust under her nose away. ‘Why would I want to picture it when you have jammed it so close to my face that it is the only thing I can see?’

‘So, is that a yes?’

Cassian waited for her answer, an excited smile dominating his expression. Nesta hated Halloween. Hated anything to do with it. Hated motion activated skeletons that gave a warble when she walked by, hated the lurid orange colour that plastered every aisle, and absolutely despised the smell of rotting pumpkins. He knew it.

‘Yes, you may go. I will stay here with the lights off so nobody rings my doorbell.’

Cassian let out a snore. ‘You’re no fun.’

Horror movies were fine. Nothing particularly scared her about them. The acting was generally terrible, the effects even worse, and all of them put women through hell while they wore few clothes. It was the ridiculous hype weeks before that she hated. There was absolutely no need for it.  

‘Go and play with Rhys or Azriel,’ she said, reaching around him for her book.

‘They are already coming. I have to buy the tickets and I’m going to look like an idiot if you don’t come along.’

Nesta snorted. ‘I have bad news, Cassian. You look like an idiot regardless of my presence.’

Cassian clutched his chest. ‘Ouch. Somebody hasn’t had their nap today.’

Maybe her words had been a little bit too harsh. For a few weeks now, she had been debating their relationship and the merits of continuing it. They had more bad days than good. Arguments were their common currency. The relationship was becoming stagnant. He made it difficult to visualise a future when he still had the mental age of a teenage boy and lived in Rhysand's basement. But Cassian was also kind and funny, willing to cut the heart from his chest for his family. It wasn’t fair to keep hurting his feelings when her mind swung one way. She knew they were close to breaking point, he did too.

‘Fine. Book the tickets.’

A kiss was pressed to her cheek. ‘You are the best.’

***

Halloween dawned on them. Nesta had begrudgingly agreed to wear a costume for their night time festivities. She’d have sworn that Cassian preferred Halloween over Christmas as he’d barely been able to contain his excitement in the run up to the holiday. Nesta had lost count of the amount of times she’d returned home from work to a prank that had her clenching her jaw shut or threatening to take back the key she had offered to him for her home.

‘It’s called trick or treat, Nes. You can’t just eat candy without the trick side.’

‘I pay for the candy, so I can do what I want,’ she snapped. ‘Save your pranks for April Fool’s Day. It’s named after you.’

Cassian gave a slight grimace then hurried towards the bedroom. It had been a long day at work and now she was expected to stay up all night at a ridiculous spooktacular, as they called it, which meant she’d be grumpy all weekend from a lack of sleep.

When Cassian returned, he was whistling a tune and carrying a red bucket filled with water that he tipped down the sink.

‘Was that meant to fall on my head?’

‘I’m pleading the fifth,’ he replied.

Nesta let out a low laugh. ‘Oh, I could have really decorated the place in the spirit of things if that had happened to me.’

‘If I ever turn up dead one day, you have made so many threats that you will be the prime suspect.’

They got ready at her place. She opted for Morticia Addams because it meant she only needed to purchase a crappy wig and wear a dress she rarely wore, rather than buy a plastic costume that was a fire hazard. His phone was buzzing constantly. She risked a glimpse at the screen and it was plastered with messages from Feyre, Mor, Rhys, and Azriel telling them to hurry up because they needed to go. Cassian was still in the bathroom. She’d heard him grunting and swearing in between his razor buzzing. He’d stayed quiet on his costume, telling her it would be a big secret.

When he finally did emerge, Nesta burst out laughing.

‘What the hell are you supposed to be?’

‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’

His face was bright red and caked in face paint. It was all over his hands and neck too. Cassian had even shaved off most of the scruff on his face, but left a soul patch in its stead.

‘You look like a fucking tomato!’

Trying to hold onto his dignity, Cassian added a pair of plastic red horns to his head and picked up a pitchfork.

‘I’m the devil,’ he said in a tone that sounded as if he’d like the earth to split under his feet so hell could call him home. ‘I saw a tutorial, but it seems I lack the skills with face paint and liquid latex to do it justice.’

Nesta couldn’t muster a reply. He looked hilarious. It was only when she scanned his body that she took in the tight-fitting, red Lycra outfit which wouldn’t be out of place in an eighties fitness video - and the knee high black boots over it.

‘Are you the devil from The Powerpuff Girls or what?’

He let out a long groan as his phone continued to buzz with notifications.

‘Go and wash it off. Please. I am begging you.’

‘I tried! It has stained my skin bright red so I look like I’m having an allergic reaction. It’s better if it stays on.’

‘Really?’ Nesta threw up her hands. ‘We will be late. It’s dark. Nobody will notice how bad it looks.’

They hurried down the road where the rest of their group was waiting for them by Rhys’ car. Azriel, the designated driver because he never needed sleep, honked the horn in greeting. Rhys and Feyre had matched their outfits as Harley Quinn and the Joker. Mor had dressed as some sort of sexy red riding hood in a gingham dress that skimmed her thighs matched with knee high socks and a red hood.  

Feyre let out a horrified shriek of laughter. ‘What the fuck are you, Cass?’

He turned to Nesta, eyes pleading. ‘You said they wouldn’t notice in the dark.’

‘You are glowing red,’ remarked Rhys. ‘Even the man in the moon can see you.’

In a bad mood, Cassian clambered into the back of the car. It lowered beneath his weight. Nesta had to press her lips together to stop her laughter from making the situation worse. She wasn’t able to make eye contact with Feyre or that would set her off.

‘I’ll try and talk to him,’ said Mor as they began to file into the car.

It left Nesta riding shotgun with Azriel. She scanned him for some sort of clue to his costume, but in the end, she needed to ask.

‘An axe murderer,’ he replied, pulling a plastic axe from his coat. ‘They look like everybody else.’

‘Good choice.’

The key turned in the ignition and he grumbled, ‘I hate Halloween.’

***

If one more dumbass jumped out at Nesta in the queue, she would punch them. She didn’t care if it was their job to scare guests. Anybody who got paid to shout boo needed a better job.

‘Is it too late to turn back?’

Azriel drawled out a laugh. ‘I don’t think Cass will ever forgive us if we leave.’

Her overgrown boyfriend was alight with anticipation. He didn’t need to crane his neck to look towards the start of the queue as he was gigantic, but he still lamented that they’re arrived too late. There were so many better costumes he could have gone for. The iron giant. Frankenstein’s monster. Mothman. Not a tomato with an outfit so tight that everybody could see his dick print.

 A bored, middle-aged woman sat at the ticket booth. She scanned their tickets with as much zeal as one of the undead then they were in the grounds of the Spooktacular. What a stupid name.

As if preparing for battle, Cassian drew them into a circle and held the map of park out in the centre. A finger pointed to where they currently were. ‘Everybody is flocking in here. The rides will be busy now, and most of the night, so it doesn’t matter when we go on them. There will be time, before you ask, Morrigan. The haunted house is only accessible via the maze. It’s meant to be shit-your-pants scary, but only for those brave enough to make it through the zombie maze.’

‘Cass, you know it’s not real, right?’

He held up a hand in Rhys’ face, ignoring his question. ‘We need to get to the other side of the park, tackle the maze, do the haunted house while it’s not too busy to get the full experience. There’s a cinema showing old black and white films we can check out, food stands over on this part. I think there’s a costume competition.’

‘You’ll be entering that,’ said Azriel, a smirk on his lips.

‘He’ll scare everybody with that thing,’ said Rhys, pointing to Cassian’s crotch.

Cassian shushed them. ‘Don’t interrupt. I’ll lose my train of thought. I’ve lost it. Fireworks mark the end of the celebrations. If we make it to dawn then we get a survivor’s medal.’

‘You mean we won’t get locked in? I can leave whenever I want?’ Nesta pressed her hands together in prayer.

‘We’re staying until the end.’

‘Yeah, Nesta. Don’t you want a crappy plastic medal at the end?’ Feyre teased.

Nesta was not a night person. She had never been a night person. She could wake up at five in the morning as fresh as a daisy to begin her day – but ask her to stay awake until that time? Not a chance. If she stayed with Cassian, this would be her life every Halloween.

‘Let’s go team,’ he called and led the way towards the monstrously large maze.

She lurked at the back with Azriel. Nesta gave him a soft elbow in the side. ‘Let’s go team.’

‘Don’t,’ he replied, warning in his voice.

‘I feel like we’re in an episode of Scooby-Doo.’

Azriel gave a chuckle. ‘If he says let’s split up gang, I’m going with you. We’ll go and find a beer.’

The maze was ridiculously high. And enormous. Even Cassian was not tall enough to peer over the hedges to find the way. It would take them forever to bumble their way through to the promised haunted house. There likely wasn’t even a haunted house on the other side. Hopefully it was the car park and they could go home.

A smoke machine was working its hardest to pump the hedges with mist. Spooky, she thought with disdain. The way was lit with jack-o-lanterns. Through the hedges, Nesta could make out the low groaning of zombies and the terrified shrieks of patrons as they tried to find their way along the twisting paths.

‘Cass, you should just lift me onto your shoulders,’ called Mor.

Ugh. Yes, I’m sure you’d love to have your bare thighs around his face again, Nesta thought.  

It was a few times, long ago, apparently. They were friends. It hadn’t meant anything. But they still took trips together alone and her name was still in his phone with a few heart emojis that she had apparently put there and they flirted relentlessly still. Everything was just perfect.

A zombie burst out from one of the turns they could take. His arms were outstretched, flaking fake blood on his chin. Rhys shrieked.

‘Fuck,’ he breathed.

‘Sorry man,’ the zombie replied, breaking character with his laughter, then went back down the passage he’d been lurking.

At least five times, they hit a dead end. Cassian was adamant he could find the way through without any help. They had met no end of zombies too. It was freezing cold, fake smoke was irritating her lungs, and they were nowhere closer to the damn haunted house waiting on the other side. This was on its way to being one of the worst nights of her entire life.

Their group was beginning to stretch out. Mor, after shrieking like a banshee for the eighth time, had locked onto Cassian at the front for safety. There was a gap at the front. Azriel was talking to Rhys about work as if this was a normal activity for them to engage in, while Feyre had her hand in Rhys’ as she ate a candied apple. Nesta trailed at the back, forgotten, eating candy.

It could not be more obvious to Nesta that she was not part of this group. It was an uncomfortable truth. She kept throwing it back, but like the tide, it came back to her again and again. Whilst she did not expect to be on the same page as her significant other for everything, fundamentally, Nesta and Cassian were too different for the long term. Each step through the mist felt like it was pulling a veil away rather than hiding it; they were not meant to be. In the pit of her stomach, Nesta knew when they left the spooktacular scarefest, she’d need to have that conversation with him and end it for good.

Screams sounded followed by the thump of shoes.

Nesta threw herself backwards into a hedge as a hoard of screaming teenagers came galloping down the narrow space of a crossroads. Behind them was a swarm of zombies who were thoroughly enjoying their job.

When the dust settled, Nesta froze.

‘Oh no.’

Her group had been swept up with the screaming and running. She had lost them.

After waiting a while in the hope that they might come back for her, it seemed obvious that they hadn’t even realised she was missing. She tried not to be hurt by it, but tears still prickled her eyes.

There was no cell signal in this damn place. There was also no turning back. She was too deep into the maze to retrace her fumbling steps and find the way. She had to follow the sounds of screams to try and catch up to the massive group. Perhaps it was the workers’ way of clearing out the maze before it became too congested. Nesta would find her way through and meet them by the haunted house.

At a fork, Nesta paused. It was only her and pumpkins. Neither way offered any insight to the group’s whereabouts. There were still screams, but they came in every direction, as far as the amusement park. There was a chocolate coin in her bag of candy. The foil featured a skull on one side, crossbones on the other.

‘Heads I go left.’

Nesta flipped the coin.

‘Right it is.’

It was eerie to be alone. Nesta shivered against the cold. It was surely close to midnight by now. She risked a glance upwards – a full moon. Why was that panicking her? None of this was real. A full moon meant nothing. None of this was real.  

A zombie stepped into her path. Her face was painted grey with blood splattered all over it. Before she could even begin groaning, Nesta held up a finger. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

‘Oh, come on.’

In her marching, she encountered two more zombies. One of them, she threatened to punch and was told she’d receive assault charges if she did.

‘You can address the charges to the Addams Family residence.’

This was turning into an actual nightmare. She was cold and tired and wanted to go home. Why didn’t she take up Elain’s offer of a cosy night in watching chick flicks?

Logic would guide her through this. She just needed to remember which way she had originally been facing, figure out which direction she was turning through and she would find her way. It was easy. Easy peasy.

‘You’re going in circles,’ one of the zombies said. ‘I’ve seen you three times now.’

‘You are joking.’

Sure enough, at his feet was a knobbly pumpkin that was particularly grotesque. She had seen it before.

With a noise that could earn her employment with the other zombies, Nesta pressed herself into the hedge. ‘I am going to be in this maze for the rest of my life.’

Something came over her. Perhaps it was the full moon. Perhaps it was being in a relationship with an overgrown child who had abandoned her in the damn maze that she didn’t want to be in to begin with. Nesta started ripping off leaves and throwing them at the ground as if it might solve anything. She even kicked the hedge then immediately regretted it when a scratch raised up on her ankle.

‘What did that hedge ever do to you, Morticia?’

A deep, smooth voice jerked her attention away from battering the hedge.

The man had gone all out on his costume. He wore a fine blue suit with a golden patterned brocade and a billowing white shirt. A few drops of blood stained it crimson. It didn’t look cheap at all. His red hair was drawn back against the nape of his neck. He tilted his head which revealed the sharp points of his incisors. No fake plastic fangs.

‘It trapped me inside,’ she answered. ‘Dracula?’

‘Lestat. Close enough.’  

‘Have you lost your friends too?’

‘No, I come to Halloween events alone,’ he replied, the sarcastic tone impossible to miss.

Nesta’s brow bunched. ‘I wonder if I can make one of these branches into a stake to ram through your chest.’

It made him laugh. It was a rich thing that sent goosebumps skittering along her skin.  

‘Walk together?’

Nesta should have shut down the offer immediately. Wandering around with strange men dressed as vampires at night wouldn’t lead to anything good – but as it was, she was lost in this fucking maze and it was better to have company even if he did end up draining her blood.

They debated each fork, chose each path carefully as if it was a puzzle that they might be able to crack rather than a random route a mad farmer had decided. The man, Eris, shucked off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

At a dead end sat the Grim Reaper. A black hood was pulled down over their face and a scythe was held in one hand.

‘You have come to the end of your journey, weary soul. You must answer the riddle that was foretold.’

Eris scoffed. ‘That’s a terrible rhyme. It barely even rhymes.’

‘Yeah, well, you try saying it for eight hours a night,’ the Grim Reaper retorted. ‘Are you done? Can I carry on?’

The utter shock of being spoken back to was plastered onto Eris’ expression. It clearly did not happen often. Nesta held back her laughter; Eris had been good at getting them through the maze plus he’d let her wear his expensive jacket.

‘I protect. I stand tall. My purpose is to strike fear in all. What am I?’

‘The cops,’ Nesta offered.

Eris buried his laugh with a cough. ‘I think the answer is a scarecrow.’

The Grim Reaper stood. ‘Curses, you have solved my riddle,’ he said, voice unimaginably bored. The gate behind him creaked open. ‘You have found your freedom… for now.’

A pale hand gestured for Nesta to lead the way out of the maze and she had never been so glad to leave a place before.

‘That is a man who hates his job,’ said Eris, lips close to her ear.

The haunted house loomed in front of them. More squeals and shrieks echoed from within. It was not as big as Cassian had made it out to be, but it certainly looked haunted. Spiderwebs hung from the awning so that they dripped all the way to the steps. The wrought-iron fence was rusted and crooked, running the length of the property, save for the squeaking gate. On a hidden speaker, a child’s eerie laughter sounded on a loop along with come play with me.

‘If they have hired child actors for this bit, I won’t hesitate to hit them,’ Nesta said.

‘Stick close, fair maiden, and we will find our way through.’

Nesta pouted. She searched for a worker but there were no signs of any. This was why costumes were an utterly ridiculous idea. ‘I should wait here to see if my friends appear.’

‘Some friends, abandoning you.’

‘Yours did,’ she pointed out.

Eris held up his hands. ‘Mine are brothers. Every year we try and lose at least one of us.’

‘Well, one of mine is a sister and another is a soon to be ex-boyfriend.’

Her breath fogged in the air from the cold. There didn’t seem to be any sign of them coming through the gate. By the time they did emerge, Nesta would have turned into an icicle.  

‘You go. Don’t waste your time with me.’

‘I will never abandon you. Especially not on Halloween when there’s a full moon in the sky.’

Nesta raised her brows. ‘Oh yeah? What might get me?’

Another group had made it out of the maze and were making a racket as they hurried towards the house’s gate. Eris pointed at them. His amber eyes tracked over their costumes. ‘There could be killer clowns or… hot dogs on the loose.’

Indeed, one was dressed in an inflatable hot dog costume.

‘Do you think they’re like werewolves? The full moon turns her into a hot dog?’

‘I’m more likely to do damage than she is,’ Nesta grumbled. ‘I am so hungry and so tired. You know what, I have another idea.’

Nesta pulled open the purple gate that they had come through, much to the Grim Reaper’s shock.

‘Do we have to do the haunted house? Isn’t there another route back to the main part?’

‘There are three routes out of the maze. Two of them lead back to the park. You, lucky devils, found the only path to the Horrifying Haunted Mansion. You must go through it.’

‘I believe that goes against safety regulations,’ said Eris.

‘Minimum wage. Zero hour contract. Talk to my boss.’

 ***

‘Two more rooms to go through.’

That was two rooms too many, Nesta thought. She had lost count of the amount of times she had screamed. Most of the Spooktacular had been hit-acular instead. Not this haunted house. It was not for the faint hearted. She had expected plastic masks hanging from strings or glow in the dark skeletons that swung into her from fraying ropes.

This was horrid.

After the first monster had come sprinting across the room at them under a deluge of strobe lights, Nesta had clung onto Eris like a koala. There was not point in feigning bravery when everything in this house seemed hellbent on giving her a heart attack; the actors hired for this part were deranged.  Nesta had gone from keeping close to Eris, to walking behind him, fingers digging into his billowing shirt, to burying her face practically in his armpit and relying on him to guide her through.

She wished Cassian was here.

Not for comfort, but so he could be traumatised by this fucking place instead.

Eris blew out a breath. ‘There’s blood seeping out from under the door. I’ll carry you.’

Was this guy for real?

If he dropped her, Nesta would kill him though.

Carefully, Nesta was lifted by Eris, so she tucked her face into the crook of his neck.

‘What’s in the room?’

‘Do you really want me to describe it?’

Yes. No. She wasn’t sure.

After peeping open one eye, she wished she hadn’t. People were manacled from the ceiling, heads lolling uncomfortably. Raw meat hung from hooks. As Eris had described, fake blood soaked the floor. She was fairly certain it was fake blood. It better have been fake blood. Jars filled with severed limbs, eyeballs, and organs lined the wall. It looked like something out of Saw.

‘The raw meat is bad enough but if they’ve used animal blood, it’s a health violation. I’ll have them shut down,’ Eris muttered.

Nesta screwed her eyes shut.

‘Whoever made this place was an absolute freak. And not in a good way.’

Eris’ laugh made a rumble deep in his chest. ‘What’s the good way?’

‘The kinky sexy way,’ she said, before she could stop herself.

‘Ah, like handcuffs instead of manacles?’

‘No comment.’

Although Nesta had known the man for only an hour, she already could tell that he’d be grinning at her comment. And something about that had her pressing a smile against his skin in return.

‘What would be your absolute nightmare? In the final room, what do you not want to see?’

‘Oh my god. Is this going to be a strange set up meant only for me? I hope it’s not a million dollars. I’m afraid of becoming a millionaire.’

Was it bad that her first thought went to Cassian down on one knee proposing to her with all of his friends there to witness it? That would be a nightmare. He'd trap her so she couldn't say no. She cared about him. Loved him. But she wasn’t in love with him. Wasn’t sure if she ever had been. Lust had made her get carried away and before she knew it, there was pressure from all sides to make it something more. Never again would she tangle herself with a man that her sisters already knew. It made everything more complex.

She was set down on the creaking floorboards. ‘Do I want to open my eyes?’

‘Probably not,’ he supplied.

They were faced with a narrow corridor. At the end of it was the backdoor. Freedom beckoned.

‘We’ll run for it.’

There were circular holes cut into the wall that Nesta had a sinking feeling meant hands were going to try and grab it.

‘If you grope me,’ she called, ‘I will be contacting my lawyer.’

‘Ready to run?’

‘Hold my hand,’ she begged, clinging onto Eris. If her heart wasn’t hammering so hard, she might have felt pathetic. As it was, her friends had ditched her in a zombie maze and this vampire had swooped in to save her.

With her hand locked firmly into Eris’, they sprinted towards the backdoor. Sure enough, black-gloved hands shot out as they ran, grabbing onto clothing and limbs. When they burst through the door, they tangled in sticky cobwebs that had her shrieking.

‘You survived!’

Another Grim Reaper stood before them using their scythe to point in the direction they were to go.

Nesta threw her arms around Eris, feeling the hard muscle of his body. She was reluctant to ever let him go. He seemed to be of the same attitude, because he’d set off down the dimly lit path with one arm hooking her to him.

A feeling of disappointment settled on her tongue. If Nesta had entered that house with her group, Cassian would have gravitated to Mor and supported her through it. She’d have been at the back still, squealing and panicking unless Azriel took pity on her.

Thank goodness for Eris.

‘I wouldn’t have survived that without you.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘If we’d have turned the lights on, it would have been crappy fake blood and local thespians getting too into it. The darkness makes everything a bit scarier. You did great.’

‘Eris, I’d have sat on the floor and refused to move. How were you so calm?’

Eris tipped back his head in low, false laughter. ‘Oh, compared to my father, that house was a leisurely jaunt. I am starving. I couldn’t work out if it was your stomach grumbling or a prisoner of the house. What about a late dinner?’

***

‘There has to be something. Something in the past that made you hate Halloween.’

Nesta tugged a slice of pizza from the rest, marvelling at the stringy cheese drooping from it. ‘It wasn’t even Halloween. Goosebumps.’

‘The books? I mean when you’re ten, they’re truly scary,’ Eris teased.

She chewed down a mouthful of pizza. They’d found the cluster of food stalls with tired workers who looked as if they were counting down the hours until dawn so they could go home. A large seating area was in the middle of the stands so they’d set up camp there, Nesta still in Eris’ jacket. There was a cage with a few bats in that Eris commented was a food standard violation to have them so close to people dining.

‘No, the show. There was one episode. It freaked me out.’

‘The sponge under the sink?’

‘Seriously? No.’

‘Oh! Night of the Living Dummy – with Slappy? My brother hated that. We actually bought a Slappy and put it in his bed. He cried for hours.’

‘The one at Horrorland with those green things. Then it turns out they’re on a monster game show. But the start of the episode really did a number on me.’

Eris put his arm across her back and stroked up and down. ‘You poor thing. I hated Are You Afraid of The Dark with that monster in the swimming pool. I made my little brother sleep in my bed. Told my mother he was the one afraid, not me.’

They ate the rest of their shared pizza in a hush that wasn’t unpleasant. They’d both opted for coffee to keep them awake – and keep them warm. His knee was pressed to her thigh. A hand rested on top of his leg and Nesta had the mad urge to hold onto it like she had in the haunted house. Something held her back – a loyalty to Cassian that he had never deserved.

Positioned near the heaviest traffic of the park, Nesta was scanning the crowds for signs of her group. Many people had left. Only a few idiots would remain until the dawn – her group included.

‘You can go,’ Nesta insisted. ‘Won’t your brothers drive off if you’re not with them?’

Eris rummaged into the pocket of the jacket she was wearing – because he’d refused its return – and pulled out a set of car keys. ‘We all drove separately. We don’t like each other enough to car pool.’

That was a wise idea. Nesta wished she’d have taken her own transport so she could have turned around at the gates and gone home. She supposed she’d not have met Eris if she had done that. Some things were worth enduring.

‘This soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. Is it because he left you in the maze?’

Generally, Nesta was not a person who liked to share her business with other people. It felt a lot like airing dirty laundry. She did not care for gossip – her own or otherwise. But she had few friends. The two she did have thought Cassian was wonderful because Nesta had never been able to be honest about the problems in the relationship and cast him in a bad light.

It felt different to be dressed as Morticia Addams, sharing a pizza with Lestat de Lioncourt. Eris was a stranger who she’d never see again. What did it matter if she spilt her heart to him?

‘That was the final nail in the coffin. I didn’t want to come here, but he doesn’t really take no as an option. If I didn’t come tonight, I wouldn’t hear the end of it. I’m boring. I’m no fun. None of his friend’s girlfriends kick up such a fuss. He also slept with his friend and she’s still around all the time. I can’t voice that it makes me uncomfortable because then I’m being jealous and controlling.’ She took a sip of the too-hot coffee to act as a distraction. ‘We’re not compatible. I keep trying to resurrect a dying relationship – but why? I’m not even happy with him. I’m not myself with him.’ Nesta gave a yowl of frustration. ‘I change myself for him all the time – I hate dressing up.’

Nesta focused on the blurring lights of one of the stalls to distract herself.

Carefully, Eris’ hand landed on the back of her head to slip her wig off. His fingers twined in her scrunchie at the nap of her neck to pull that loose so her hair fell freely then he handed her a napkin to wipe away the crimson lipstick staining her.

‘Thank you.’

Eris gave a tight smile in response. ‘I think you’re wonderful as you are. Kicking hedges, threatening to stake me through the heart, or taking the slices with the most cheese on.’

‘You caught that?’

‘Next time, I get the cheesiest slices. Let me drive you home.’

There could be nothing more foolish than accepting a ride from a stranger, but it was tempting. He’d proved himself to be polite and charming, never putting his hands on her more than he needed to – and sometimes Nesta had wished they did linger on her.

‘I ought to stay. Get my survivor’s medal.’

Eris cocked his head to one side. ‘Why?’

Because Cassian would be annoyed with her if she didn’t stay. They’d talk about it for weeks afterwards, how Nesta was the only one who didn’t follow through with the plan or how she ruined the evening by getting lost in the maze. Everything could be spiralled back to being her fault somehow. She didn’t want the crappy medal. The only good moment of the night had been meeting Eris.

‘I have heated seats.’

‘Sold,’ Nesta said, rising to her feet.

Eris offered her an arm to take, ever the gentleman. As the night grew colder by the moment, his warmth was welcomed. They weaved through goblins and ghouls, witches and werewolves, as they crossed the funfair. Nesta still kept a look out for Cassian or Feyre but couldn’t see them.

‘You don’t want to go on the big wheel? The ghost train?’

‘I have had enough of Halloween. I want to go home, go to bed, and tomorrow I’m staying on the couch eating candy all day.’

Eris made a low groan that was almost erotic. ‘I am envious of your life.’

‘What is your plan?’

‘Try not to get too excited but I am a health and safety executive.’

‘Ooh, safety standards and worker rights. Tell me more.’

He gave her a soft nudge in the ribs. ‘I studied law because I like arguing. It turns out I like ruining fun too. I’m coming back here tomorrow when it’s light to shut down half the park. The maze was too narrow, it breeched safety standards. If there had been an evacuation, it fell short of requirements. And as for the murder house, well, that will be feeling the full wrath of health and safety laws.’

Nesta tipped her head back and made a moan to rival Eris’ one. ‘Oh, I love it when you talk OSHA.’

‘It’s not the most exciting job, I’ll admit. It pays well. There is travel involved. I’m high up the ladder already.’

‘Did you actually come here with brothers?’

‘Nesta,’ he sighed, amber eyes snagging on her. ‘Do you think my hobby is walking around dressed as a vampire picking up abandoned women in mazes?’

‘We all have our hobbies, Eris.’

‘My brothers and I always check one out as civilians. They’re into it. It gives me a chance to see the on-the-ground running before I swoop in and they have time to hide their atrocities’

The car park was far emptier than it had been when they’d pulled up that evening. At her request, they’d gone to check if Rhysand’s car was still there. Her heart sank at the empty space. They had gone. At some point, the group had just left, left without her.

Eris must have read something in her face because he stopped walking and pulled her into a tight embrace. She burrowed against his chest, so fed up of being an afterthought.

‘I know what it will be. It will be my fault because I got lost. Not theirs for running off. I will have ruined their whole evening.’ Her voice came out muffled against his shirt.

His arms encased her. She fit naturally to his body as two pieces of a puzzle. Lips pressed to her forehead. ‘You deserve far better than this. You’re wasted on people like that.’

For a while, they remained cuddling in the car park, neither one quite ready to stop it. It was only when a man dressed as Jack Skellington wolf-whistled at them did they reluctantly peel apart. Eris brushed away her gratitude for the comfort, but he kept his arm around her as they walked.

When they reached his car, it was worth more than she had in her bank account. He held the door open for her, those manners gleaming. ‘My lady.’

‘If you call me that again, I may let you drink my blood.’

He pushed away her hair so his fingers could trail the vein of her neck. It was tantalisingly slow then he drew back and closed the car door, a slight smirk playing on his lips.

Nesta had to stop herself from squealing and kicking her legs as he walked around to the driver’s side. If she met a man like Eris each time she was abandoned in a maze, she’d go to Spooktaculars more often.

On the drive home, her phone finally started to ping with messages as she received signal. They gradually became more frantic then angry as if she was deliberately avoiding them. Rather than message Cassian, who would undoubtedly blow up her phone if he found out she was riding home with a stranger, she messaged Feyre. It was a simple thing.

You left me behind in the maze. No signal. Thanks for waiting. Found my own way home.

‘I should probably say it now before we get to my door. I don’t sleep with men on the first date so don’t try and come into my house.’

Eris gestured to himself as he drove. ‘I need an invitation to enter a home.’

True to his word, at the door, Eris did not try to convince her to let him in. The house was dark which meant Cassian wasn’t up waiting for her.

‘Thank you for looking after me.’

He swept into a bow. ‘It was my honour. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight,’ she replied.

Coldness slipped over her body – and not from the weather. Eris smiled and gave a wave as he walked down the garden path. He waited by his car for her to unlock the house, to see her safely inside, but Nesta felt was numb. Eris had done what she had asked. He hadn’t pushed his luck or tried for a kiss or more. He’d been a shining example of a gentleman all night. So why was she annoyed he hadn’t tried to get her into bed?

***

The soft vibrations of her phone dragged her out of sleep at eleven.

‘I’ve been so stressed,’ Cassian said as a greeting.

Not worried enough to search the park for her, not worried enough to wait at the gates, not worried enough to come to her house.

‘I had to stay at Mor’s. You had the key. I’m still bright red.’

‘Don’t call me for the rest of the day,’ replied Nesta and she hung up the phone.

It had never felt so good. She wished she still had a flip phone so she could slam the two halves together; it gleaned more satisfaction that way. A couple more times, Cassian tried to call then Mor’s phone number flashed up on her screen – a crappy attempt to get into contact.

Nesta ignored it.

She was tired and in a rotten mood as she knew she would be the morning after a crap Halloween Spooktacular. Although, it hadn’t all been bad.  

After shuffling to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, Nesta spotted the note pushed through the post box that was sat on the door mat. It was a sloping, elegant script that was almost too small for her to read easily.

Trick or treat. Check behind the plant pot.

Reluctantly, Nesta opened the front door a few inches in her pyjamas, half-expecting an egg to be thrown at her. Behind the large, ceramic plant pot on the stoop was a paper bag filled with candy and chocolate. There was an envelope tucked inside. Her name was on the front in the same looping handwriting.

Nesta,

I realised in my excitement to share OSHA guidelines with you that I never asked you what you did for a living. That must be rectified. I understand that you are in the midst of emotional upheaval and I completely understand if you are not ready to date – presuming the soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend has been bestowed his new title.

Please call me. I promise I won’t force you through any mazes or haunted houses. Enjoy your day – here’s more candy to get you through.

Yours eternally,

Eris.

At the bottom of his letter was his number so Nesta needed to restrain herself from calling him then and there with bird nest hair and pyjamas.

No, the Spooktacular had not been all bad.

[pixelmensupremacy]

Can I request Connor and Nines both having a crush on their colleague detective f reader who is bad ass for a human. Bonus ( reader helps Marcus who also fancies reader?)

𝐴/𝑁: 𝑁𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑦, 𝐼 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑧𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑡𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑚𝑒 𝑠𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑔𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑚𝑒 𝑎 100𝑘-𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝑠𝑙𝑜𝑤-𝑏𝑢𝑟𝑛 𝑓𝑖𝑥 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑎. 𝐸𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑎𝑦, 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑙𝑜𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑓𝑢𝑛 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑡 𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠. 𝐼 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑒𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑦 𝑖𝑡.

𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡: 1.8𝘬

𝘚𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘺: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵.

𝑊𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠: 𝘙𝘰𝘮 𝘤𝘰𝘮-𝘪𝘴𝘩, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥, 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘪𝘤 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘰𝘳𝘦, 𝑓𝑒𝑚!𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟

There was nothing in this world quite like the combination of strong coffee and murder case files in the early morning.

Scrolling through the sizable file, (Y/N) pressed at her nose bridge not so as in disgust, but rather disbelief at the cruelty some humans were capable of. As much as she loved her job for its quirks it tended to be overwhelming, especially when she didn’t have caffein to get her through the gruesome details of a yet another awful crime. She let out a deep sigh, instinctively reaching for her mug only to notice it was empty. Great.

“I’ll go get some coffee” Stretching in her seat, (Y/N) got up from her chair; her voice immediately caught the attention of her android colleagues, causing them to involuntarily look at her in synch. “Do you boys want something from the break room?”

“I could go get you coffee, Detective.” Connor offered, abandoning his task at hand in a heartbeat.

“So could I, though I will prove to be more sufficient, for I’ve memorized the correct ratio of ingredients to achieve the best result.” Nines was quick to add, now standing up next to Connor, his slender figure towered over the one of his predecessor.

“I could do it myself, thank you.”

“But, Detective I insist-“

“There’s no need, Nines. I am a grown woman; I can pour myself a cup of coffee.” The two androids stood frozen in place; their LEDs flickered in a faint lemon color.

Entering the break room, (Y/N) was greeted by none other than her favorite colleague- lieutenant Anderson.

“You have the two most advanced androids in the world wrapped around your finger.” The man half joked, having seen the little interaction she had with said androids.

A genuine laugh erupted from her chest.

“We just get along well.” She poured herself the much-anticipated cup of coffee, facing away from the lieutenant.

“You keep telling yourself that bullshit. I may be old, but I’m not blind.” He added in a serious, yet friendly tone as if he was implying something.

Silently, (Y/N) watched as Hank closed the transparent door behind him, soon disappearing into the crowd of fellow busy officers.

Odd. She thought to herself as she mindlessly sipped at the warm bitter drink. What was this all about? She rolled her eyes- it was too early for her to put up with Hank’s moodiness.

Arriving at yet another reported, (Y/N) wasn’t surprised to see a collapsing skeleton of what must’ve been somebody’s home. Inside, she was met with the unmistakable smell of rotting flesh. Judging by the intensity of the smell, she knew she was in for sight she wouldn’t be able to wipe off her consciousness. Though instead of dead body, the detective stumbled upon a mysterious figure; it was a man, covered in blood.

“Freeze!” She pointed her gun at the suspect, holding him at gun point. Alerted by the commotion, Connor and Nines rushed to the room the detective was in, only to notice her tackling down a man with seemingly no effort whatsoever.

“Detective, are you alright?” Connor rushed to her, whilst Nines handcuffed the suspect.

“You shouldn’t put your life at risk, Detective.” Nines glared at her.

“As you may have noticed, I could take care of myself.” She responded, dusting her clothes from the filthy ground she was on just a mere moments ago. Nines watched in silence as the detective went further into the house.

Just as she expected, the sight was as disgusting as the smell. Splashes of blood trailed to where the awful smell was coming from- the living room. There was the poor victim- dismembered into a bloody mess of limbs and intestines on what once used to be a snow-white carpet. Maggots thrived on the bruised face of the victim, making them almost unrecognizable.

“The victim was murdered five weeks ago and was found just yesterday.” Connor remarked.

“I could tell.” (Y/N) coughed at the unbearable smell. “I wonder why it took the neighbors so long to find the poor guy.”

“That information isn’t of importance right now, Detective.” (Y/N) flinched at the sudden reminder of Nines' presence. The analytical -almost cold- tone of his voice matched the expression of his face. Shortly, he glanced at her; the icy blue of his irises sparkled and for a moment she swore she saw a glimmer of warmth behind the made-up façade. His hand brushed against her arm, gently putting her behind him as he got closer to the body. Her breath hitched at closeness of his taller frame near pressing against hers.

With upmost attention, she observed his every action. Kneeling before the victim, Nines took his time studying the victim’s wounds. Slightly, he tilted his head as he took a closer look at the blood, oozing from the multiple wounds. In such moments, (Y/N) saw the connection between him and his predecessor- one most of the other officers at the DPD couldn’t. The child-like curiosity of the RK models was beyond astounding to her, adorable even. It was also why she found Nines to be just as endearing as was Connor. The more time she spent delving into the depth of Nines’ character the more she found herself invested into peeling away all of his layers until she was left with just the core of his identity. Maybe it was just a wild dream of hers, one she probably wouldn���t live to see coming true, though that was exactly what kept pulling her towards him- the utter fascination with his complex nature.

Lost in the world of her thoughts, (Y/N) hadn’t noticed Connor, standing right behind her. Silently, he watched and monitored her vitals- a habit of his he developed since deviancy. He noticed the acceleration of her heartbeat- was she anxious? He was inclined to assume so, but he was aware detective (L/N) had worked enough time in such conditions for her to be so easily distressed by a crime scene. Though that left more questions than it did answers.

Unable to dismiss his growing curiosity, he glanced at what she was looking at- Nines. He was currently taking samples, scooping some of the bodily fluids with his fingers before placing them in his mouth for analysis. That action of his appeared to have an immense effect on (Y/N). Her body temperature increased and her heartrate got even higher.

“Is everything alight, Detective?” (Y/N) swore her soul was about to leave her body as she was forcefully brought out of her daydreaming state by Connor’s hand gently shaking her shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m just a bit tired is all. I couldn’t really sleep that well last night.” She shot back a lie, she just made up. Though Connor read right through it.

“I hope you get enough rest tonight. The lack of sleep is affecting your performance at work.”

“You mean to say I’m incompetent?” She gasped dramatically with her hand atop her chest, acting offended.

“No, not at all. I’m just advising you to take better care of your health. I didn’t mean to offend you.” The words rushed out of his mouth; guilt was evident in his features.

“I know smart cookie, but now let’s get back to work.” She winked at him; gently she patted his head before she headed in Nines’ direction. Barely, she caught a glimpse of Connor’s flustered face with the corner of her eye. How adorable.

“I suggest we get a taxi, Detective. According to the weather forecast, heavy showers are expected in the following 30 minutes.” Connor said, standing right next to (Y/N).

“Sounds good, it’s not like I could stand walking in these shoes for much longer.” Her gaze fell directly at the fancy heels she had. She wasn’t even sure why she had chosen such unsuitable footwear, though now her shoes were the least of her problems. The cold breeze pinched her cheeks, causing her to shiver.

“Are you cold, Detective?” Nines’ voice anchored her attention. “The temperature has dropped vastly since our arrival here and I’m afraid your clothing of choice is far from suitable for such weather.” He began explaining, whilst he took off his jacket and placed it around her shoulders. “Please take my jacket while I call for a taxi-“

“There’s no need to. One is already expected to arrive here in approximately 3 minutes.” Connor interrupted, his voice was an octave deeper and bitter; his eyes bore into his successor. Between them, (Y/N) glanced at Connor; was he getting jealous?

“Boys calm down. There’s no need for harsh feelings.” The two androids fell silent. With his arms crossed, Connor looked away from both her and Nines as if he couldn’t stand being in their presence; his typically soft brown eyes- she’s gotten so used to getting sucked into- were now cool and distant. Even the warmth of his features seemed to have faded away, only to be replaced with a bitter expression that appeared to be caused by thoughts, plaguing his entire being.

(Y/N) sighed in defeat; she couldn’t wrap her mind around it, why did they act like that?

“What’s wrong?” Markus’ eyes fell upon her; a mixture of worry and curiosity flashed in the fusion of colors that were his eyes. “You know you could tell me anything.” (Y/N) nodded, briefly reminding herself of the events that brought her and Markus together.

“It’s about Connor and Nines. They tend to act very strange, it’s as if they are constantly competing for my attention.” Markus chuckled. “It’s just as ridiculous as it sounds.”

“I guess they can’t bear sharing you.” He joked.

“It appears so.” She said, then Hank’s words resurfaced in her mind. Could that mean…?

“They have a crush on you.”

(Y/N) fell silent. How come she hadn’t noticed?If anything, she wasn’t oblivious to the special treatment she received from both androids. Maybe she enjoyed it, feeling special in a way of being showered with attention. In fact, maybe she enjoyed it a tad bit too much to the point, where she hadn’t noticed how much she had gotten attached to the androids as so did they.

“And by the looks of it, it seems you too are interested. But it’s up to you to decide what the outcome will be.”

To say she hadn’t had her eye on Connor the first she met him would be a lie. Captivated by his charm, she always found herself smiling in his presence. His warm demeanor provided her with comfort, she had grown familiar with in both her ups and downs, whilst his cute face was her one weakness. On the other hand, she was smitten with Nines and the mystic aura, surrounding him- one that inevitably lured her in akin to a moth to a flame.

“Look” Markus took her hand. “I sympathize with the dilemma you’re faced with. After all I had to make a decision myself not so long ago, but you were there for me.” (Y/N)’s eyes bore into his as she remembered the fateful night she met Markus, the night of Carl Manfred’s passing- the night Markus escaped with her help. “And I’ll be there for you.”

“But how could I choose?"

“Follow your heart.”

[blue-rose-soul]

lucifer and alistair interactions in the kid alistair au?

"What in the unholy hell is that!?" Lucifer demanded, turning to the sinners for explanation.

Warped, darkened wood and animal skeletons stood in stark contrast to the elegant reds and golds that made up the rest of the hotel, the scent of rot and decay lingering around the bar. The unholy abomination looked like it had been sliced out of some backwoods horror show and plopped right in the middle of his building.

The voice that answered was not the voice he expected.

"Just some of the renovations we had done!"

Lucifer spun on his heel, thinking for a moment the voice had come from thin air before his eyes dropped to the lanky, scarlet-clad child standing in the middle of the lobby. The boy grinned up at him, hands tucked behind his back with a microphone-topped cane in his grasp.

For a moment, Lucifer felt a twinge of pity. It was a fact of life that, sometimes, children died. The clothes were polished but a bit dated; a red button up with black shorts held up by suspenders, socks that reached his knees and shiny black penny loafers, and a cute little black bow tie. The kid must have died quite a while ago. What had done him in, Lucifer wondered? Illness maybe? Abusive or neglectful parents? Perhaps a tragic accident? It didn't matter. He was in Hell. He was a sinner, no different than any other.

Sadly, even children weren't free of malice and cruelty.

"Wha- What is this? Who is this?" Lucifer asked, gesturing to the boy with his cane. "You an errand boy or something?"

"Goodness, no!" the child laughed, puffing his chest out proudly and tugging at his bow tie. "I just happen to be the host of this hotel!"

Lucifer turned to Charlie.

"This is a joke, right? Seriously, what's this kid doing here?"

He didn't miss the way the kid's eyebrow twitched, though that creepy smile never faltered.

"Uh, no, it's not a joke, Dad," Charlie said, stepping in and placing a hand on the kid's shoulder. "Alastor's been a huge help to us at the hotel."

There was a slight pause as the kid's eyes flit between Charlie and Lucifer and then... The boy's smile softened, his eyes became less severe. His cane vanished as he wrapped his arms around Charlie's, beaming.

"I saw Charlie's idea for the hotel on the picture show and I just knew I had to help! Being with Charlie is the most fun I've had in a long, long time!"

The expression on Charlie's face melted, her eyes swimming with emotion as she turned away from her father towards the brat.

"Oh, Alastor, that's so sweet!" With her free hand she patted him on the head, right between his little pronged horns.

Lucifer swore the kid shot him an impish smirk.

"Alastor's been a such huge help with the hotel," Charlie continued, gently extracting her arm from Alastor's grip so she could lead Lucifer over towards the parlor. "Without him, we'd never have been able to pretty it up this much, and we wouldn't have such a nice place to share stories and secrets and intimate feelings!"

Irritation bubbled in Lucifer's gut as Charlie gushed over the brat. He knew he was being a bit silly; it was just a kid after all. It was just... He hadn't seen Charlie in such a long time, and he couldn't help but be a bit greedy for her attention. He soaked in her affection as she wrapped him in a hug, forcing himself to relax a bit and then-

"Happy to be of service!"

Lucifer jumped as the kid appeared between him and Charlie in a plume of black fog. He stumbled, landing on his ass with an undignified yelp as the kid snickered.

"Charlie's ideas are strange, but that's what makes them wonderful!" the brat chirped, latching onto Charlie's newly freed arm. "Anyone would be lucky to be a part of her project from the very beginning like I was!"

Okay, that was definitely on purpose, and Lucifer definitely caught that snotty little smirk the brat shot him that time! With a growl, he pulled himself to his feet, openly glaring at the rotten little creep.

"Didn't your parents teach you any manners, you little brat!?" Lucifer snarled, jabbing a finger at the kid. The kid's eyes narrowed, lips curling into something resembling a snarl.

"Dad, relax!" Charlie cut in, and the kid's expression relaxed instantly. "He's just playing around. C'mon, why don't I introduce you to everyone else?"

As she turned towards the rest of her little gaggle of condemned souls, the little red-haired brat shot Lucifer a sharp glare over his shoulder.

Then the little shit stuck out his tongue.

Lucifer seethed.

Oh, it was on!

[mlmxreader]

Wood Carvings | Kili x gn!reader

『••✎••』

↳ ❝ Kili

15 "As long as I'm with you, I'm happy"

18 "You don't have to say anything" ❞

: ̗̀➛ You and Kili get to have some one on one time for once.

: ̗̀➛ N/A

↳ @arthurmorgansballsack

•───────────────★•♛•★──────────────•

The fires burned low, creating a soft crackle that was more akin to a hum than anything else, hardly disturbing the vast woodland surrounding you; it was dark, with the skies an obsidian colour and the stars glittering with silver and steel, the lonely moon sat upon its throne with a slight frown.

The trees were tall and thick, bursting with such great life despite their leaves rotting on the ground below and creating homes for beetles and ants and spiders and woodlice; amongst the proud and steady branches, birds slept soundly as they nestled in their nests and snuggled in for the night.

The trees stood guard and watched proudly, just like the tales of old that had said that, once, there had been huge giants that looked like trees who protected forests and each of its species; those that protected tall and slender trees were tall and slender themselves, and those that protected towering and fat trees with thick roots were towering and fat with thick feet.

But those were just tales from an older time; there were no guardians of the forests and the woodlands anymore. The bushes were thick with life, as well, though; with their spiky arms, they were tipped with berries of black, red, blue and green.

Sweet berries that were protected by brave little spiders who were brown and black with stripes on their backs; the spiders seemed aware of who was friend, who was foe, and who was food as they scuttled away from the berries or closer to them depending on who reached for them.

Trolls didn't dare to go near there, and neither did orcs, for fear that the old stories from an older time were true; dwarves would be on edge, fearing that those giant trees would rise up again.

But in a far off land, there was home. It was so close, yet so far.

Almost able to be sniffed out like the smell of those sweet breads with the dried currents inside them that were always baked on a Sunday by the master of the house; she would grin as she put them down, humming songs of old as she went about baking those sweet breads.

They were a staple of the culture.

Just like the wooden spoons that hung up on the wall of the kitchen; they were carved with dragons and dogs and hearts and words in an old language. An ancient language.

Just like the horse's head skeleton that sat in the attic ready for the new year along with its brilliant white sheet and its plant decorations.

Just like the old songs in the old language that the children would sing when they took part of choir until they were older; most of them would continue singing well into their old age, just like the master of the house.

Home.

The smell of soup made with leeks and herbs dense in the air on cold nights, and the hustle and bustle of the mines throughout the day. It was difficult not to miss home when amongst the woodlands, but when you looked beside you at Kili, it didn't feel so bad.

You could still remember when Gandalf had sought out your employment. An miner by trade, you were more than used to long days in the darkness; a pickaxe in your hand, you could withstand any kind of weather and you had the strength needed for what he required.

He had a burglar, that much was true, but he also needed someone who would be able to help the brothers if they needed it. Somehow, Gandalf had learned about you; from your grandmother - the master of the house - he had learned that you had spent the best part of your life down the mines.

Covered in soot and coal, used to the roar of fires and the harsh weather that came with such a job; it was an important role back home, he knew that, and it had forged part of the identity of the people. But through the owner of the mines, Gandalf had also learned of your other skills; you spoke the old language just as well as you did the language of men.

That old language was said to soothe dragons to sleep, and to cool their tempers; he had heard stories about it. The old and ancient language that was as old as dragons themselves; spoken for thousands of years, it was soft on the tongue and quick in the throat.

Gandalf had heard that it was able to work on dragons of any kinds - from fire drakes to the one that he knew rested within your home. It slept in the mountains, a great red beast with thick armoured scales, much bigger than any other dragon, and much more agile and tough, too.

Along its back, it was covered in thick armoured spikes, with a spear-shaped tip on its tail and its tongue. Its claws could tear apart a mountain with ease, and its great red teeth could easily rip through any building in Middle Earth; with its four legs on the ground, it could extend its massive wings and cause devastating hurricanes and awful winds.

But it stayed asleep in the mountains, waiting.

Waiting for the call of its people to sing for its aid; only then would it stir.

The armour that had been worn by those within your lineage was made of that dragon's scales; it would shed them once every hundred years, and when mixed and forged with steal, the armour was unbreakable. Bright crimson in colour, with a large dragon engraved upon the breastplate.

The sword that your forefathers had passed down was made of the dragon's teeth; it would shed them along with its claws once every ten years, and the people would use them to make weapons. Arrows, bows, axes, maces, pickaxes, swords, daggers.

They were the sharpest in all of Middle Earth, and scarce to come by. Families were protective of their armour and their weapons, as they knew how valuable such a thing would be.

Gandalf hired you, knowing all of that, and although you weren't sure about leaving home at first, when you looked at Kili beside you, you knew that it was worth it.

He was leaning on your helmet as he laid on his side with his arm propped up on the dense scaled armour; he smiled when he looked at you.

His raven hair looked beautiful in the moonlight; dark spiced rum in a glass on a winter's evening, but twice as warm. His eyes seemed to sparkle with the silver steel of the stars, and his smile ripped all the homesickness away from you.

You smiled back, swallowing thickly as you hummed.

"What are you thinking about?"

You shrugged, daring to turn your gaze back to the woodland around you. "Home."

"Do you miss it?" He asked quietly.

You nodded slowly, daring to laugh softly. "I miss it, sure, but... when I'm next to you, it don't feel so bad."

"I should hope not," Kili laughed quietly. "We've spent enough time together."

You rolled your eyes, playfully shoving him onto his back. "Shut up. You know what I mean."

It took everything in him not to laugh loudly as he stared up at you. "Tell me about it - your home."

"We're a proud people, like you lot," you started, "we've had our culture and traditions for thousands of years, maybe more. Our language is older than yours, and we're... we're an alright bunch, really. It's hard not to miss the coal mines and the sweet breads, though..."

Kili hummed. "You said about spoons not too long ago."

"Oh, the spoons," you grinned, nodding for a moment. "We carve our wooden spoons for those we love. Family, friends, lovers. Anyone we love more than life itself - we carve spoons for them."

"And me?" He asked, raising a brow. "Would you carve a spoon for me?"

"I'd carve you a thousand spoons," you whispered softly. "I love you beyond the point of creation."

He smiled, nearly grinning; a familiar warmth in his chest, one that always went with him whenever you smiled his way or laughed at his jokes. His hands shook slightly as he struggled to bite back his glee. "You would?"

"I would," you agreed. "I would carve you spoons with your name in my language, ones with bows and arrows. I'd carve ones with Dwarvish runes. Ones that have the same pattern as your braids. I'd carve you spoons with anything, if only I had the wood..."

"Give me a moment," he murmured, getting up and humming to himself.

You watched him wander away, assuming that he just wanted some of the ripe berries from the nearby bushes; you cringed when he almost kicked Thorin's foot, and again when he nearly kicked Bilbo in the head. You didn't think anything of it, staring out at the woodland as you waited.

Kili grinned to himself as he searched the trees for branches that had fallen off; gathering them in his arms as he beamed and wondered if you would ever teach him how to carve them, too, if he managed to get enough wood.

He picked the ones that were fit for the part - branches that weren't too long but not too short, ones that were fatter than they were thin - and cradled them in his arms as he gleefully gathered up whatever he could carry.

More than happy with himself as he brought them back to you eagerly and set them beside you where he had been laid.

"I got some wood," Kili told you with a beaming smile. "Do you think you could teach me how to carve them?"

"Do you have a knife?" You asked, and when he produced one that he had stolen from his brother earlier, you did you best not to laugh. "Alright, grab a branch. You know what a spoon looks like, don't you?"

"I do," he nodded, his hands shaking as he tried to control his excitement. "I'm going to carve yours with a tree... is that possible?"

"Anything is," you told him, guiding his hand slightly. "Go more gentle at the tip, you don't want the handle to be too thin. Remember, most of the carving is on the handle."

Kili nodded, meeting your eyes as he hummed. "I love you - you don't have to stay anything back, I know you do, too."

"I love you, too," you murmured. "You're... you're part of my home, and as long as I'm with you, I'm happy."

"I'm glad the wizard hired you."

"Me, too," you smiled, shaking your head. "Don't be afraid to carve the end of the spoon too thin - it's not meant to be used for eating."