#mind magic

[friendlylocalwhumper]

How annoying it is to be a prisoner himself. Like a spider trapped in its own web, the Hunter glares at the chains wound tightly enough around his biceps to press his skin into a lighter, blood-suffocated white. He doesn’t belong in chains. Worse than the ache of metal tethering him to the wall is the fog in his mind from some worthless piece of shit using mind magic on him… and the creature crouched in the far corner of the room, staring him down.

The Shade moves closer, curious.

The Hunter tilts his head, stormy eyes slowly dragging over the dark creature’s angled form. “What… are you, you odd thing?”

Like a child unsure what kind of bug has landed in its palm, the Shade stares in a way that would feel rude if it… had facial features, or enough of a distinct form to convey body language.

It reaches out to touch the captive with a claw-like finger.

The Hunter jerks back and smacks his head into the wall. The small sharp pain draws a hiss from his throat and weaves tension into his broad shoulders. It’s just such an unusual sight, this creature, and rare for an unknown being to so casually present itself. He’s studied every being that he could find material on or hunt down, torn open every one that he figured couldn’t kill him or curse him. But the Hunter has never seen one like this.

“I’d rather you didn’t touch me,” Comes his forcefully casual warning.

It taps at the captive's hand playfully.

The Hunter’s brows draw inward and he curls his fingers slowly, watching the Shade inspecting the muscles that work under calloused skin.

It taps at the captive again, expecting further reactions. Moves closer, curious, but stops just a few centimetres away from the captive. Clearly the creature has no concept of personal space.

Salt-and-pepper hair flattens against the wall with how hard the Hunter presses back into it. Rubber squeaks as he presses his boots more firmly into the ground.

An electric jolt runs through the shade, controlled from afar, as if to punish the creature getting too close. It reaches out again, desperate to touch the captive. The jolt rolls through once more, sharper, more painful. Some power is trying to get the Shade to writhe and retreat with a cry.

It recoils immediately with a metal-on-metal cry, backing away from the Hunter as it touches its head with a clawed hand. In a lightning-pause-thunder sort of pattern it reaches forward then recoils again, crying out in pain and fear, and then skitters into the room's corner to curl up and cower until the pain passes.

The Shade's screech hurts the Hunter’s ears. He grimaces and watches as the dark creature retreats in apparent fear.

"Ah… poor thing. That hurts, doesn’t it?” For some reason. “Try holding still.”

Mournfully, fearfully, it stays curled up in the corner. It's shaking, crying quietly, unable to move. Or if not crying, then twitching and making woeful sounds like a weed might make once poison sprays finally took hold and its strong stem started to collapse in on itself.

"Poor thing, poor thing." Too intrigued and drawn by the suffering to keep to his side of the room, the Hunter presses his palms to the floor and sidles closer, until his chains cinch too tight and he’s used all possible slack. As soon as he's within arm's reach of the shade, he pets down the shadows where he thinks the creature's shoudler and arm might be. "You’re alright.”

The shade looks up at the captive, blinking its eyes. Or letting the glowing pinpricks of light near the top of its form dim and then brighten again. It hesitates but reaches out a single finger to touch his hand.

Wary but increasingly fond gray eyes gaze down at the Shade. It's an odd creature, but it's clearly afraid right now, in a small animal sort of way. "Are you trapped here like me, little shadow?"

It nods solemnly.

Lips almost curving into a smile, the Hunter adjusts to nearly be sitting beside the Shade. His shoulder presses to the wall for balance. "I won't hurt you. I don't think I can. You're made up of... air? Or something similar."

The Shade shakes its head, reaching with one trembling hand to touch the human’s cheek. It's more comfortable with him now.

"No?" the Hunter shrugs. Not made up of air, then. His expression hardens with wariness as the Shade reaches up to touch his cheek. "You're... curious...?"

It nods again, touching the Hunter’s face with several clawed fingers at once.

Blinking furiously, the killer backs away, swiping at the shade's hand. He felt a misty claw by his eyelid, one on his lip, one at his earlobe. "Stop."

Hesitates, then continues to explore the Hunter’s features, touching his forehead, cheek, and chin.

“Stop now, little shadow, or-” The killer lets out an undignified grunt of surprise when he feels icy tendrils of - smoke? Magic? A soul? - slip into his face, under his skin, through muscle and bone. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel soul-sickeningly wrong like mind magic. But he can’t stop it no matter what angle he tries to pry the misty clawed fingers out from.

The Shade leans in, peering down at its fellow captive with non-eyes that seem to grow brighter and brighter. Its whole hand dips into the Hunter’s skull, slides through his mouth and down his throat, and then the being’s whole arm is submerged into the man’s body. The human writhes, bucks, hisses warnings and questions, but the Shade only digs deeper with its feeble form that doesn’t affect anything it touches other than to bring an odd chill.

[greatandquestionablecontent]

If Home Is Where the Heart Is Then We're All Just Fucked

Summary: Jade gets a jarring mind-magic flashback into the backstory of creepy energy-vampire knife-lesbian (Maren). It’s uncomfortable for a number of reasons, not least that it makes Jade think about her own life choices. Title from lyrics of 27 by Fall Out Boy Context: Jade’s partner, Delta, has been missing for a long time and she’s getting antsy, especially as one of the only regular humans surrounded by evil immortal magicians. Set before Delta comes back… different. Content warnings (non-exhaustive. CWs are hard and Maren is nothing if not #problematic):  blood, sibling death, childhood illness, themes of religious trauma, manipulation and implied abuse. Brief mentions of torture/noncon, murder, ablism, racism (”wow she’s so pretty and exotic”), underage sex (as told by an adult in a flashback).

Although she’d gotten much less terrifying with exposure, Maren was still… unsettling to be alone with. Rather like Constance in that regard.

Maren and Ashrie's tent looked a lot like the one Jade and Delta shared, with fewer pine needles tracked across the floor. She didn’t know what she’d expected. Dismembered body parts hanging from the walls? Save for the dark stains on the floor, it was similarly mildly cluttered, with the second bed used mainly to pile assorted junk on, unlike Constance’s perfection of minimalist interior design.

Jade told herself the dark stains on the floor were just more mud, and then told herself that was stupid and cowardly.

“Don’t look like that,” Maren said. “We always mop up the blood after. Usually,” she corrected, flashing a yellow-toothed grin. “Ashrie likes it clean.”

Jade forced a little laugh. “I’m not squeamish.”

“Good.”

What did one even do when “hanging out” with Maren? Jade hovered awkwardly, certain Maren was enjoying her discomfort.

“We could go for a walk,” Maren suggested.

Jade leapt on the idea.

“You’re not scared to wander off into the woods with me?”

“No,” Jade answered, honestly.

If Maren was going to murder her, there was no reason to lead her out of the camp to do it. Either way, Jade wouldn’t stand a fucking chance. Either way, Constance and Delta would find out (if Delta ever came back, if Constance cared…)

Jade followed Maren out of the camp, trudging through the mud with heavy legs and feeling very human about it. Maren moved with simple un-hindrance, not belabored by fatigue or gravity or sludge, not bouncy or hyperactive, but with an odd energy to her step that made her seem superhuman in the most mundane of ways. Lagging behind, Jade eyed Maren’s bare bony legs, the color of parchment. She’d never seen a healthy young person so skinny; it was a body type she had felt was reserved for dying old ladies, sans a few wrinkles.

How old even was Maren? Based on her face, Jade might have guessed about forty. She had no idea how accurate that was.

The ground firmed up the farther they got from the camp, with rocks and roots and fallen leaves breaking up the mud. Jade lagged on the hill, and rushed to catch up as soon as she could without looking like a fool. “Where are we going?”

Maren made a vague, dismissive sound. “Where are you from, Jade?”

“Uh, Cardea.”

“So’m I. What part?”

“Central. Farms and ranches, you know.” Jade found herself reluctant to share the name of the towns she’d once lived in. That felt too personal and yet too distant, like sharing someone else’s secrets.

Maren did not offer any place names either, but she said it was the same for her as well. As they picked their ways through the thickening patches of rock and root, scraggly trees blocking out more of the already dreary sky, Maren began her story, and part of Jade’s mind went along with her all too easily, to the golden fields and sheep and little girls with long red hair and simple dresses, running after ducks or hanging up the wash on a sunny afternoon. Her dark auburn hair was, in fact, the same color as Jade’s older sister's had been. Jade didn’t like that.

It had been the same for generations; the people of that area prided themselves on it, a pure community set apart from the whims of modern society. Maren could have been Jade’s exact age, or her mother’s, or her grandmother’s. They’d both spent their childhoods free from the corrupting influence of magic, raised to be chaste and gentle, eating bland porridge and living in the shadow of a sibling, with no factory-made contraptions to ease their chores.

Maren made it sound… idyllic. She spoke with an innocence and nostalgia that unsettled Jade even more than the bloodstains on the plywood floor.

“Why’d you leave, then?” Jade asked. She could guess.

“Why did you leave?” Maren quipped back.

For the first time in a long, long time, Jade found herself wondering what her sister was doing now. Probably in the same damn town with their aunt, unless she’d gone back to the other old damn town to be with their mother again. Perhaps she was married by now.

“I didn’t fit in,” Jade summarized carefully. “I’m better off now. I wouldn’t wanna spend the rest of my life like that. Now I can eat spicy food and have short hair and do whatever I want.”

“And never see your family again. Is it worth it?”

“Yes,” Jade said firmly, almost before Maren was done asking.

Maren stopped walking, as if just at that moment they’d happened upon the place they’d been walking to all along. “Sit with me.”

Trepidation nagged at Jade as they found a bare patch of sparsely grassy ground, not too muddy, not too rocky, and they settled criss-cross in front of each other. She knew where this was going even before Maren took her hands and gently said, “I want to show you something.”

Jade had done this so many times before. She’d always thought it was just something Delta did — he’d told her at the very beginning that he needed her to sit when they did magic, so that she didn’t risk passing out and injuring her head. It had been touching. Of course, just as often she was lying down, at no risk of falling, and he was on top of her… But there had been something uniquely, non-sexually intimate about sitting cross-legged in a field, holding hands, his eyes locked on hers.

It had never occurred to her that this was something other N’Vitri did as well. Was it tradition for all of them? Had Constance done the same thing with Delta during his training?

She went to pull her hands away from Maren, but Maren’s grip on her tightened. She could have fought. She could have put her whole body into ripping her hands free and rolling away or standing up. It wouldn’t have done any good.

Instead she focused on fighting back with her mind, visualizing a tall fortress with an impenetrable stone wall stretching high above her head, Maren a tiny feeble figure on the other side.

“You’ve got strong barriers,” Maren remarked.

Jade was focusing too hard to reply.

“For a mortal with no magic,” she added.

Her presence pushing against Jade’s wall felt far from tiny and feeble. It seemed that she was testing it, circling around the wall, running her hands along it and feeling for weaknesses. The fortress was simply a child’s castle of misshapen wooden blocks, teetering.

“I just wanna show you something.”

Jade added spikes to her wall, she wrapped it in thorns, she thought viciously of every time she’d fought Delta like this — but even then, she mostly “won” because he accepted how much she didn’t want the intrusion, and he backed off, taking no for an answer. It was not as empowering of a vision as it should have been. She thought of the time she’d seen Delta fight Maren, blood and mud, flying fists and invisible forces she couldn’t see, Maren clambering to her feet like a wounded spider, her jaw hanging loose as Delta backed away.

I just wanna show you something, Maren said, and her voice was inside Jade’s head, and the fight was over.

Careening nausea, a hammering stampede of a headache, an incomprehensible zoetrope spinning spinning spinning… And then…

Much of it Jade didn’t process until minutes, hours, or even days after it was over. She plunged into it, and it drowned her. She had no thoughts, no judgment, no opinions or unspoken questions of her own. She was just Maren, and Maren was a child, and the childhood was a storm that swirled through fragmented dioramas and half-remembered moments, as sensible and linear as a fever dream.

A shabby little cottage, alone in a broad field. Overgrown grasses choked out vegetables close to the house and intermingled with stalks of corn and rye, stretching all the way out to the dusty little horse-trodden path into the village. The field got smaller as they got older, but it used to be vast and endless.

A little boy, a rush of love and familiarity and a stab of grief. Round chipmunk cheeks and jutting front teeth, little loving green eyes, red hair peaking out from a hat that was supposed to hide the odd bulk of his skull, but never really did.

Nels. Playing in the field with Nels, walking him to temple; cool dewy mornings when he was chatty; long exhausting afternoons where the field stretched on forever and they both longed to collapse in the grass that they ought to have weeded, that their parents complained endlessly about, but no matter how much the four of them worked themselves to exhaustion, there was always more grass, and it always came back. But when they’d been very young, they hadn’t cared, the grass was almost as tall as they were; it was their playmate.

They didn’t play with the other kids. Or maybe they had, now and then, but mostly Maren remembered the other kids being far away, distant and inaccessible. They ran too fast for Nels, and even when he sat out, Maren tired of them quickly.

They had both been so tired. The kind of tiredness Maren almost forgot now, because now she never felt like that, hadn’t felt that in years, never even got close. The kind of tiredness where every time they stopped at the front porch so Nels could catch his breath, Maren took the excuse to sit down too, and every time he didn’t need to, she wished he would but dragged her feet after him and wondered how other children had the energy to run.

They had always been tired, but it had always been worth it.

Maren was plain, forgettable. The other girls at temple took little interest in her, and she had no interest in the boys, so she sulked all through lessons, until Nels got sick and she was the only one who could help and then it didn’t matter that she was a girl and two years older, soon she got to stay with him through his lessons.

One day their mother found them on the floor, holding hands. So many times she’d seen them laying in the same bed, Nels snuggled up to her, but as they got older, that became less acceptable. And this was different. The day they got caught, they did the same thing they always did — Maren made him better, except their mother saw. Maren didn’t remember what happened next, only that they were careful not to get caught again.

At some point, years before they got caught, Maren had taken to answering people when they asked what was wrong with him, because they inevitably did, or they wondered so hard and avoided the topic so hard that Maren told them just to clear away that tension. She must have been seven or eight, maybe six or nine, and mainly she remembered hearing about it from her mother. “His bones are sick, and they make his blood bad,” she’d said. A nonsense explanation, her parents were sure. They hushed her, sent her out of the room to make Nels more tea. She learned to simply say he was born with sickness, to assure everyone he was a good kid, that he hadn’t done anything to earn it, that he was as pure as they came.

She didn’t remember the first time she healed him on purpose, but by that time, she’d been doing it for years, without even noticing.

He was just a toddler when he first got sick, and no one knew why. He was normal until then, their mother insisted, but their father said he never had been, that he’d always been small and pale and funny-looking. Maren, old enough to know what all of those words meant, old enough that she’d tried her best to help Nels learn to use the potty and climb the stairs, old enough that she was sure it was her fault when he broke his first bone. Young enough that she wasn’t sure how she fixed it, but she did.

When had the other baby happened? After Nels got sick, after he’d been sick for a while. Maren remembered gawking at its bizarre little body, its huge distended stomach, like the infant itself had been pregnant. It horrified her, reminded her of a memory even further forgotten, that Maren could only remember remembering but not summon any images of: the miscarriage years prior. They kept that secret — a series of miscarriages and strange deformed children would have made their neighbors talk about what was wrong with their mother.

A sick little family that tried so hard to insist Nels was the only sick one.

But that wasn’t what she’d meant to show Jade.

It was not always idyllic, in the moment. They hadn’t always been happy. But they’d always had each other, and it had always been worth it.

The barn, hiding out there with the animals and playing their make believe games; Nels had always had such fondness for the sheep, and milking them was his favorite chore, even though it should have been Maren’s.

As a teenager, Maren snuck one of the girls into that barn, and up in the loft they played a new make believe game, practicing for marriage. The girl bled on her fingers and cried quietly, and Maren knew she’d done something horribly wrong, and it felt awfully satisfying, and she had to do it again.

Nels had friends of his own, by that age. Maren didn’t, really. Always an outsider, now a sexual pervert to boot, she went from passively unpopular to actively disliked. A cluster of girls in the marketplace, speaking in hushed voices and falling silent as soon as Maren approached. Dirty looks in temple when she came to sit with her family. Simmering resentment that bubbled into hatred for all of them.

The memories struggled to wander off track, Maren wrangling them in the correct direction, and they reared and cantered about, leaping over years.

Trinity. Maren had never met someone with such dark skin before, secluded as she had been in her little pale-skinned village in what would later be called Central Cardea. It was so silly looking back, but at the time, that had just added to Maren’s impression of Trinity as an otherworldly being: divine and unique, mesmerizingly beautiful, tall enough to tower over Maren like any goddess would, especially in her sandals that stood her up even taller. Maren had never even seen shoes like that before.

Every one of Maren’s thoughts about Trinity was corrupted, if not downright sinful.

She generously took Maren under her wing. A wise, older, powerful and influential woman was exactly what Maren needed.

(And what a wreck Maren had been, after Nels. A stupid little ranch girl, alone for the first time ever, wrought with grief and guilt and fear. Headaches all the time from crying every day.)

Someone who knew magic, could guide this pathetic sheltered lost soul towards a truth she’d been hiding from her whole life. Not just one truth — several truths.

(With all her life force to herself for the first time ever, Maren should have felt more alive, but she didn’t. Without bleeding a steady stream of magic into Nels, she should have been stronger. She wasn’t.)

“You have a gift,” Trinity had told her. “You’re special, Maren. You’re not different because you’re wrong, you’re different because you’re better than them.”

The first person in the world ever to assure her every step of the way that it wasn’t wrong to heal with magic, and it wasn’t wrong to desire women. And oh how good it felt to hear Trinity tell her she was important and superior. Oh how she would have done anything anything to stay in such good standing. So different from now.

Warm scented baths, long nails scrubbing shampoo from her scalp, delicate hands massaging lotion into her shoulders, naked skin gliding against cool silk sheets. Pleasure like Maren had never known or imagined; she was an avid learner in giving and taking, in discovering everything a woman’s mouth could do.

Naked in Trinity’s arms, those sharp nails leaving swirling lines across her chest. She told Trinity about the barn, the girl in the river, the priest in the temple, and Nels. And as always, Trinity made it better, assured Maren it made her special and beautiful.

“I remember,” Maren would say to Ashrie, many years later, “she talked like it was an artistic vision. The way painters can see the world. Something about how we can see the beauty in pain and cruelty and death. She said a lot of bullshit, she was always pouring bullshit into my ears, but that… Maybe she wasn’t so wrong about that, even if she just made it up to rope me in.”

Trinity took Maren from simple, shattered, untethered, purposeless. She molded Maren into a work of art. She taught Maren the beauty of pain, she listened and pried for Maren’s every question and longing, and as each fantasy took form, she brought them true. She made her a beautiful carving of blood, because Maren had asked for it.

“This is what you wanted,” she murmured in Maren’s ear, and left her to bleed out in the bathtub. And Maren’s only complaint was that Trinity had left her alone.

Rage. Rage she hadn’t had at the time, but which nonetheless throttled those memories now.

How dare she? She’d taken Maren’s mind and heart and body and done whatever she pleased with them and made Maren like it, and never once did Maren question it — until the spell broke, until Trinity had no more need to play kind, and then it was too late.

Maren would have been better off without her. Stumbling through life in a haze of grief — no, before that. Clutching Nels’ limp body, sobbing so hard she couldn’t breathe, praying that she would follow soon. She should have slit her own throat the day her magic failed him.

Reality tumbled back to Jade with that sensation of falling not unlike falling asleep. She woke up in Maren’s arms, and it took her a moment to piece together that they’d been sitting and she must have fallen forward into Maren’s lap. Maren’s cool fingers stroked Jade’s hair from her sweat-sticky forehead, and Jade realized there were tears blurring her vision and dribbling down her cheeks.

She sat up and scrubbed the tears away with her palm with a sudden pang of self-consciousness.

We were both tired but we were both alive. It was worth it.

“It could never be like that with anyone else,” Maren said. “It has never been. I never wanted to heal anyone but him, and it was years before I did.”

Jade took measured breaths, relieved to find that despite her tears, she was not a sobbing wreck. Disoriented, she toyed with the rocks and dirt, hoping it might ground her. “Delta’s done a lot of weird shit to me,” she said with a forced laugh. “Never did that.”

“I never do it either,” Maren said.

“Ever?”

“I had to at first,” she dismissed. “To learn. But not like that. I haven’t shown anyone all of that since…”

“Since Trinity,” Jade finished for her.

“Even Ashrie never saw Nels. Everything I showed you…” Marens voice took on an intensity and she tapped her own chest. “It’s old.”

“Why’d you show me, then?”

Maren took a moment to consider this, absently adjusting Jade’s skirt on her knee. “You remind me of me.”

For the first time, Jade felt like she actually understood what that meant, beyond the superficial similarities. She didn’t remind her of this Maren, the blood stained N’Vitri with a body count beyond counting.

Sitting across from the adult Maren now felt almost like an out of body experience. She’d spent too much time in her head, had almost forgotten that looking into Maren’s face wouldn’t be like looking in a mirror.

Maren was beautiful, in a way that Jade had never bothered to see before; her long straight nose, her deep-set eyes and their shadows, the crookedly cut bangs that fluttered over her dark brows. Her unkempt state was as much a statement and presentation as Trinity’s sharp makeup or Constance’s heavy leathers. Jade understood that now.

The intimacy of the moment was as alarming as it was alluring. It would have been less intimate if they’d kissed, or bathed each other naked.

“Go home, Jade,” Maren said gently. “You don’t have to be here, and you still have a chance to get out. You don’t belong here. You have a family, your sister is still alive, you’ve never done magic or killed anyone. Why are you here?”

Delta. The answer was so apparent that Jade didn’t need to say it. Except Delta had been gone for almost two months now, and Jade had been left asking herself that exact question.

“What do you want here?” Maren pressed. “Are you really happy to spend the rest of your life being Delta’s plaything? Is that your plan? Be like Denna?”

“I’m not — I don’t know. I don’t have a plan.”

“What about when he gets bored of you?”

“He won’t. I’ll leave before then,” she added.

“Leave now,” Maren told her. “No one knows when he’s coming back, or if somehow he’s found a way not to come back at all. He’s tried before. Before the war, he’d go missing for years at a time.”

“I know,” Jade muttered. “He wouldn’t just leave me here though.”

“I’ve known him since he was an apprentice. He’d do exactly that, if it meant having his own freedom. You’re nothing. You’re a cloudy day in the desert.” She didn’t say it cruelly, but there was an earnestness to her tone. “Do you understand what it means to live forever? Really, really think about it.”

Jade shifted uncomfortably, avoiding Maren’s eyes. “He’s obsessed with me. You don’t get it. He doesn’t like to let it show in front of the others but he does love me. He thinks I’m… the greatest thing in the world.” It sounded so trite even to her own ears.

“Yeah, sure,” Maren said. “You keep believing that. Maybe it’s true. Maybe he’ll be happy to keep you around ‘til you’re old and wrinkled and your bones start breaking when you fall.”

“I… I should head back into camp,” Jade muttered.

“Are you hoping some day he’ll make you one of us?”

“No. He’s always said he never wanted to have an apprentice.” He hates all of you. He wants the N’Vitri to die out. “I don’t think I’d make a good N’Vitri,” she added, vaguely trying for a joke. “I’m good at getting tortured, not doing the torturing.”

“Have you ever tried?”

Jade shook her head, and Maren shook hers as well, dismissing the question. “Smart of you, not wanting to become one of us. But the longer you stick around, the more it’ll seem like the best option. The only option. And it’s not. You don’t belong here,” she insisted. “Go home, Jade. While you still can.”

Every aspect of their interaction haunted Jade for days. At first, her eye was focused inward, building up arguments for why Maren was wrong. Central Cardea is a bullshit place full of bullshit people and even you can’t make it sound worth going back to. I’d never be anything like you. Delta will come back for me. I won’t be here forever.

There was something else, too. A nagging sense of having forgotten something, and in the following days, mostly when she was alone at night failing to sleep, she convinced herself that there were other memories lost in the deluge Maren had submersed her in. She picked through her recollections, trying to find a missing piece, but it slipped through her fingers, and though she could come up with dozens of guesses, each was simply made up.

During the day, she battled with the urge to go straight back to Maren’s tent and shout at her.

 No matter how sad you were about your brother’s death, no matter how nice Trinity seemed at first, no matter what awful things she did to you, none of that gives you the right to go murdering and raping innocent people now.

Fuck you for forcing this into my head. Fuck you for telling me to go back to my sister. Fuck you for making this all about you. I can never go back home, even if I wanted to, and I don’t want to, and I never will. I’m glad I left, and I’m not convinced by your miserable farm girl memories. I’ll never see my sister again, and I don’t care.

I might care a little.

And fuck you for reminding me of that.

[skylandman-takemebythehand]

Felt the sudden urge to dump random Skylanders biology headcanons so here you go

Sky-Fauns have innate magic that allows them to walk on clouds, hence their name. Itt's a very trace amount though, so most can't cast spells. Buckshot is the exception due to the whole maze thing

There's different types of sphinxes that vary in temperament, element, and appearance depending on where they live. The two most known species are Harvest Sphinxes and Great or Enchanted Sphinxes. This is because sphinxes are so attuned to the elements their bodies will drastically change depending on the elemental energies of the place they were born (i.e a sphinx born in a Magic zone will always be an Enchanted Sphinx, even if they weren't born in the Enchanted Desert)

This does mean sphinxes can't be elementless, nor can they survive without magic.

Ambush is a one-man species. His species doesn't really reproduce as much as it does rebirth: a single specimen lives for 1000 years, and close to the end of the current Tree Knight's lifespan, a special seed appears in the Mystical Bamboo Forest. When the old Knight dies, a new one emerges from this seed, matures for a little bit, then takes up guarding the forest for another 1000 years

Tidepool is a humanoid mollusk I will die on this hill

King Pen has weird knees akin to actual penguins. The Senseis have collectively agreed to never mention this, lest they all remember this fact and experience immense discomfort

[betweenthetimeandsound]

--prompt from @flashfictionfridayofficial

Limping, Hilda almost collided into Adele, who tried to maintain the queen's balance through her slender hands. The scent of fresh grass tickled Adele's nostrils, while at the same time brought upon a sudden bite of nostalgia, one which hit her with a force she tried to repress.

"Have you ventured far from the south?" Hilda gruffed, stabbing her cane onto the dirt.

"Not until I married Benoit, no," she replied, staring at her own fragile hands. "I always dreamed of being a wanderer of sorts, to traverse across the mountains and see what the world has to offer."

Hilda snickered. The woman has been by her side for several months, talking and sharing her secrets. At the same time, that wayward look in her honeyed eyes never ventured; instead, they glimmered when they contacted anything new, like a moth towards a flame. And yet, she still hesitated when talking about Evelene--a place with as much harshness in their teeth as the sweetness in their words.

"Anyways, we're here," she muttered, before knocking on the door.

"What will you show me?" Adele asked, expecting the queen to show her darkest secrets or a corpse of the previous dynasty. She wrapped herself in the dress, shrinking from the wide door, decorated with tiny flowers against dark blue metal.

A few seconds later, it opened, though Adele heard a hinny before she spotted the horse. Despite its majesty, it shook its head as Hilda approached it, nuzzling its jaw on her withered hand.

"Is it yours?" Widening her eyes, Adele approached forward to spot the horse's eyes, only for Hilda to raise her other hand. Nevertheless, the woman's toes jostled with a nervous energy, a potential wish fulfilled at this very moment.

"This is Hjordis, my beloved mare," Hilda replied, shuffling through the barn before handing her a handful of grain. Hesitating, the horse nibbled on a little bit before biting off the food, shaking itself off after every bit. Adele giggled after every bite, then tiled her head to one side in a curious slight.

"She looks very beautiful. Do you ride her often?"

"I wish, but my illness and the war doesn't allow me to." A tingling hit Hilda's hand; before she could reflect on her loss, she crumbled against the hay pile. Panicking, Adele threw herself down and laid the woman down, staring down at her panicked countenance and her widening eyes.

"What did Hjordis make you think about? What?" Adele screamed, before clenching onto Hilda's hands. If she can stop the queen from hurting anybody, then she could bring this demon onto bay.

"Ah...Ah..." Unable to speak, Hilda only shrieked in an abnormally low tone. Panicked, Adele pondered on she could cure her.

She started singing, and faced Hjordis' elegant gaze, facing the world in front of her.

And then, Adele thought of Enes.

[writingonesdreams]

Storms and thorns

For @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt

A short story in a hero AU universe. A hero trying to save a hunted mind mage. Injury, mind magic, mind sharing, sharing pain

"Take the pain away."

He was breathing hard, his body weighting him down. His broken ribs were giving him hot flashes of pain, but the stab in his side was paralyzing to move with. He wanted to wringle in a ball on the floor everytime he made a move.

He was no stranger to pain. Pain was good, it was fine, a constant in his life to keep him alert and active. But this was not the kind of pain he could win a fight with.

The little mind mage shook her head, her hands trembling above his side wound.

"Do it. I have seen you do it!"

"Yes! When someone was being healed or waited for help, after a battle, not during one!" She run her hands through her hair, smearing blood in her trail. "Don't you understand, I'm not a healer? I can't take the injury away, just your awareness of it. Pain helps you recognize your limits, back out, not move something that shouldn't be moved. You can get a mortal injury that way and not notice!"

He gritted his teeth and turned away. "I can win this fight. I almost got him. Just one more minute."

"Your body has had enough. It's your own fault for fighting so recklessly. Getting injured on purpose, impaled, just to get a good hit? That's insane."

"It has been working so far."

She looked at him in horror. Not helping his case, he guessed.

"No. We need supplies, cover, shelter and a way to take care of those injuries in a proper way."

He huffed. "Now of all times, you decide to stand up for yourself."

She smiled then.

The shy small frail little thing. The girl everyone was after for a power that couldn't even be seen. A mind power. Whatever fights she won, he could never witness, no consequences, no proofs. Just people blacked out or screaming on the ground.

"Fine. There is a hideout nearby we can use." Just a few more jumps with his explosive power. He could take her there at least.

"Worst case scenario, you can always hide or run. They want me, not you."

"Out of the question."

"You don't even know me!"

"So what? I'm not doing it for you. I have never lost a battle before and I. Don't. Run."

She raised her eyebrows. "Pride is a stupid thing to die over."

"Pche. Dying when you don't have to is too."

She had no argument to that. Her arms were shaking. Scared out of her mind, yet here she was offering to stay behind. Trying to save him, as if he could ever accept such a thing.

---

They spend the night at the hideout, sowing up his wounds and arguing what to do next. He wanted to fight either way, no matter his chances, but after some insistence from him, she admitted there was a way to have his mind shielded without having to carry her around for physical contact. Contacless telepathic connection was possible, if she went through his mind, his deepest memories and became intimately close to him.

It was for a mission. For a fight with a villian he needed to win. He couldn't fight at his full power to not endanger the village nearby, and he couldn't manoeuvre, having to carry her around as a mental shield.

He agreed.

---

The connection was working.

He could feel her inside his mind, a presence, a web of thoughts and feelings not his own.

The fight worked. His injuries weren't healed, but they weren't open or leaking blood and he had a few hours of sleep, recovering his fire power.

She was safe inside the hideout, not only shielding his mind from enemy attacks, but also sharing her own view of the battle, giving him extra angles and insights about it.

It worked great. It cost him a lot.

---

She went through his memories and it was like seeing his life from beginning and end. At such speed and intensity he felt like he was dying and these were his last moments.

She saw the hero that inspired him to choose his career. She saw his best friends he later bullied, for he wasn't good enough for him. She saw him fight with said friend, after they got to the same school, after they have been rivals for long enough, that they couldn't be friends anymore.

She saw deep inside him, where the self-doubt creaked and sneaked like a thief, the silent traitor.

She saw the tears he spilled, the worries he held, the insecurity at the core of his bravado and loud insufferable attitude.

Shamefully, he stood up abruptly, hot and sweaty, his heart beating. For a moment he couldn't bear to see more, couldn't bear someone, even a girl he didn't know, see it too.

She looked at him with bleeding apologetic eyes and waited. He took 10 long slow breaths. Then he sat back again and held out his hands, ready to continue, although his heart was hammering and every cell in his body screamed at him to run.

The memories he saw next weren't his own. Without prompting or a deal, she showed him her own memories.

"Is that necessary for the ehm...link to work?" He asked as he scrolled through her childhood. The illusions, the imaginary friends. The insults and accusation of insanity. The lonely afternoons on dirty streets.

"It's not. But I thought it might help you feel better."

It felt like a breach, like stepping over an invisible line he avoided with everyone, but he watched. He watched the strange silent girl with hateful eyes dodge a criminal future by a hair by being accepted to a good school. He watched the hate, the arrogance, the disgust at others, for their slow minds, lack of imagination, no way to keep up.

And then he saw the self-hatred, the desire to be liked, the wish to be better. So she locked that girl inside, constructing a new identity, a shy different her.

Small. Sweet. Defenceless. It was all an armor, just like his own.

He had never felt so close to someone before.

---

The fight was over. Yet here they stood, two people who had seen under each other's veils and there was no going back.

How could he ever leave her now, having seen what he saw, having been seen?

Before the awkward silence could take over, the ground exploded at his feet.

---

He was running again, mind mage in his arms. Another villian was after them, one with no injuries and restless night to slow him down. And with power too alike his own.

He didn't know how to take another round. But he would do it. He would stand and face this challenge anyway. Die or get stronger.

The girl put a hand on his bare shoulder. He forgot she was still in his mind. How could he have forgotten that?

I will take your pain this time.

He blinked. Really?

Yes. I will take it on myself. So whatever injury you sustain, I will feel it.

What?! No way!

He couldn't allow that. Recklessness was his strategy in fighting. Pain was a friend, a companion, as natural as breathing. He was always in pain and that was fine, because that meant he wasn't standing still. He was alive, kicking and screaming, getting stronger.

His fighting style reflected that. Heck, his lifestyle reflected that. Enemies didn't expect him to get injured on purpose, to do such risky moves.

But he would never inflict that on someone else.

Is that your plan? To force me to fight carefully?

She smiled. He wanted to scream. But there was no other way.

---

He felt every sigh, every groan, every wince and every scream like a hit. He had never moved with such caution, he had never calculated so carefully. He had never tried so hard and never kept such distance.

With the pain and tiredness gone, the fight was easy. It brought him no joy though.

He got down to her, curled up by a tree, sweaty face, expression drawn, teeth gritted together. Took her in his arms and cradled her in his lap.

"Give it back."

She smiled again, and he could feel the echoes of her pain, of his pain in their connection.

"You like being strong. You even like the pain, carry it around like a medal. But you don't want to collapse, you don't want to admit to it, you don't want to wringle in pain like me. Do you really want it back?"

"Couldn't you have erased it, without taking it on yourself?" He asked, running his hands through her hair now, gently caressing her face.

"Yes. But then you wouldn't have been careful."

He touched his forehead to hers. A tear rolled down his cheek.

"And I wanted to contribute to this. You were risking too much, fighting for me," she said.

It was totally different not fighting just for himself. For his own win, for his reputation, for the raising number of completed missions.

She put a hand on his cheek. "I will not give it back, until your wounds are treated. You wouldn't handle this well. You don't want me to see you like this."

It was true and he hated it. Fine then, he would take himself to the hospital. As quickly as he could. No hiding, no pretending.

He would make her let go of his pain.

But he would never let go of her after.

[whump-ventures]

Do You Remember This?

Storyline: Zinjiq. Part 1- The Ten-Year War Main OCs: Rahim and Sajia

~~~

He doesn’t remember this…

His eyes cast about wildly in the fog-filled landscape, treading cautiously over the ground. There’s something… off about this place. It certainly feels like a memory instead of something he is actually living. But if this is one of his own memories shouldn’t he remember it?

Another cautious step forward, head slowly turning side to side. This is all wrong. He doesn’t know why he’s here, or how he got here, or even where here is. It’s deathly silent, only serving to further his discomfort. There’s a strange sensation, like a fly crawling on his face or a loose strand of hair that is in just the right spot to be an irritant. But when he reaches up to sweep it away, his hand simply brushes across his skin. He starts to reach for his swords, but for some reason he’s unarmed.

“Hello?” His words even sound far away, muffled and distant even though they’re coming from his own mouth. “Is there anyone out there? Where the hell am I?”

For a moment, that same silence settles heavy over the foreign land. And then it’s broken by a piercing scream.

Sajia.

“SAJIA!” He’s sprinting towards the sound before he can even process what is happening. She’s in trouble, she’s hurt, she’s-

“Rahim, help!”

No.

“I’m coming!” He’s weaving through tall city walls, panting in his desperation to get to her. He doesn’t know how he ended up in a city, but he doesn’t care. She needs him, his beloved, he would sacrifice the world to save her. His eyes are burning as he fights back tears, terrified that he’ll be too late.

He bursts out from behind a tall wall, back into the fog-covered landscape that was empty a few moments prior. Something tries to tell him that this is wrong, but then he sees her. Kneeling on the ground in front of a soldier. Her blue eyes meet his. They’re wide and scared, filled with pain. There’s blood on the ground around her.

“Rahim, please! Help-”

Her plea is cut off as the soldier plunges a dagger into her heart.

“NO!”

Time seems to stop as he staggers forward, moving far too slow. Or maybe he was just that far away. It takes too long to get to her side, and by then it’s too late.

“Sajia-” His voice is scarcely more than a whisper. He gently cradles her body towards him, running his hand along her face. “Beloved, please-” He’s seen enough death to know that there is no longer life left in her body. And something inside of him shatters.

Rahim can feel his entire world crashing down around him. She can’t just be gone- not like this. Not so brutally, not so quickly. She’s too kind, she’s too wonderful… He pulls her closer, rocking her slowly in his arms. His eyes close and he buries his face in her hair, letting the tears flow freely. It’s not supposed to be her, she isn’t supposed to die from this war. A sob escapes, his shoulders shaking-

And laughter rings in his ears.

Laughter at his pain. At his grief.

His head snaps up, raw anger mixing with his grief, and suddenly he’s not there.

The walls are cold, black stone around him. The foreign landscape is gone in the blink of an eye, and so is the still-warm body he was clutching tightly in his arms. There’s a biting cold around his wrists and a flicker of torchlight in the corner of the room- No, the cell. The guards are laughing. The soldiers are laughing.

It wasn’t real.

The tears are still flowing down his face, even as he slowly raises his head to look into the eyes of the man that forced this memory on him- the one torturing him. His eyes narrow in defiance as he tries to forget about the not-memory, even though the desperate cries for help and that pain-filled scream will haunt his dreams. Fingertips are still pressed against his temples, ready to plunge him back into another horror story at any moment.

The Teyshirian soldier studies him. “I didn’t know it was going to be quite that… effective.” His lips quirk up into a smile. “Wanna try again?”

“Stop it.” Rahim snaps instantly, in the same tone as a command that one in Khurzan would be a fool to ignore. He tries to pull away, but his arms are restrained tightly and he barely has any room to move. That stupid smile turns into a smirk, and Rahim yanks on the chains, wishing he could lunge and rip out the man’s throat. His anger is fueled by how easily they managed to hurt him by a simple image… A false memory. 

But even then, there’s a stab of terror that maybe the memory is real to the person sharing it… What if she’s been killed during his time as a prisoner?

“Will you fuckin stop it.” He repeats, voice practically a snarl. “Just stop, you sick son of a-”

“I don’t think so.”

Before he can say another word in protest, he’s back in the land of nightmares.

It’s not long before a scream rips through the silence.

[elminx]

Hiya!

I know you've mentioned the topic before, but what is your stance/ where do you intersect the concept of manifestation/ law of attraction and magic or spirit work? The new age spiritual movement (esp in the social media sphere) is quite contentious, but it's always interesting to see similar language used in witchcraft/magickal spaces, astrology, and new-age spiritual circles despite the communities being distinct (at least for longterm/ more extensive practitioners or hobbyists, I only ever see astrology and witchcraft communities overlap, but generally centred around moon cycles). Do you find witchcraft to be the same as manifesting but with physical elements, or completely distinct from loa/manifesting, perhaps somewhere in between? Does spirit work affect your view on LOA/ new age concepts of individualism and how everything is "within" us/our mind? I find it all interesting because all of these practices are largely internal, however LOA is very individualistic, almost like a capitalist take on different parts of magic, spirit work, and even denial in happenstance.

Sorry if these weren't the type of questions you were looking for or it was worded in a confusing way ! I have plenty more lol.

Hey!

I actually think that this is a really interesting ask. But it's a lot and I may not cover everything in this so feel free to send in another and reask if I don't.

Note: My expertise is definitely in the Witchcraft/Astrology sphere, not New Age so I don't know all of the ins and outs of LOA and "Manifestation" though obviously these spaces sometimes overlap so I've had some exposure to them.

I have two big problems with the Law of Attraction:

We call it a law and it's not. If we just called it the rule of attraction (like begets like) I don't fully disagree with it.

People say it can affect things beyond our mental states and act like purely thinking about things will change your life (spoiler alert: it won't)

Let me try to elaborate as succinctly as I can. I believe that the Rule of Attraction is an effective and fairly simple form of mind magic that can be used in conjunction with any type of magic/witchcraft/astrology etc.

So much of how we perceive the world is affected by the state of our brains. There is so much more stimulus than we can ever perceive and process that our brains make decisions about what to focus on. This is done automatically based on our past experiences - our lives with all of our traumas and triumphs have trained our brains to perceive the world in a particular way.

This is why optimists tend to notice the good things that happen to them more and pessimists tend to notice the bad things that happen to them more. And I don't think that this is, for most people, a conscious choice that they have made. I suspect that for the average (generally unaware) person, the reason that they are a pessimist or an optimist is based upon the things that have happened to them throughout their life. If their life has been easy, the brain has been trained through this ease to see and recognize good things. But if their life has been hard, they may have had to focus on bad things to keep themselves safe.

The good thing about this is that through the neuroplasticity of our brains, we can change this. We can literally train our brains to focus more on the good or more on the bad.

We saw this happen through the last three years as many of the people who had up until the pandemic had relatively easy lives crumbled under the weight of realizing how dangerous the world can be. (That's not a judgment - just the reality as I see it) Trauma changes the brain, ignites our parasympathetic nervous system, and trains our brains to see a threat behind every corner.

When you are looking for a threat, you will find one. This is the like-begets-like part of the Rule of Attraction. When you expect your day to go badly, you will focus on and remember the bad parts of your day and ignore the good parts.

But, as I said, you can retrain your brain. When I am capable of giving the LOA gurus the benefit of the doubt, I think that is what they are trying to teach people to do. By focusing your attention on the positive things in your life, you are literally training your brain on how to look for the positives in your life. With practice, you can become more optimistic and learn to see the world differently.

I know because I have done this. And let me tell you, it is the hardest thing that I have ever done but also the most rewarding thing that I have ever done. It has calmed down the majority of my PTSD triggers. It has helped me to overcome bouts of depression faster. It has helped me to get over things that I thought were the base parts of my personality.

And I want to be clear: sometimes people interpret the Rule of Attraction to mean that you can't ever look at the bad things because that will mean that you draw in bad things. I choose to believe that's a deep misunderstanding. You can be a positive person (or simply be trying to look for the positives in life) and still encounter negative things - the trick is to not doomsday yourself the minute that a bad thing happens. To choose not to assume that one bad thing happening will ruin your day. To shake off the small stuff even if you can't shake off the big stuff. To remember that this afternoon is another chance to have a better day, or tomorrow is if this afternoon is shot.

What I don't believe is that you can think your chronic illnesses away, make money without working, or make other drastic changes to your outside life just with "positive thinking".

But being more positive thinking can help you to notice when you're having a good chronic illness day (rather than ruminating over how bad the next bad day will be), recognize that good opportunity to make money, or make you more likely to take the chance that WILL change your life rather than assuming that it won't work out.

I get that the Rule of Attraction isn't for everybody and that many people can't use it due to mental illness or trauma getting in their way. You aren't a bad person if you can't utilize this type of brain work and there's nothing "wrong" with you - it's just not for you. But I also don't think that makes it wrong or bad in the way that some people vilify it to be. (Yeah, that was me trying to be succinct. I am not sure if I answered your question at all. But thanks for the chance to get on my soapbox, I guess)

[unofskylanderspages]

Did you know? Spyro mentions that the Ancients created the power of Mind Magic as well as Skylands. However, Ring of Heroes has dimensions with Mind Magic unrelated to Skylands, possibly implying that the Ancients discovered it or created it elsewhere first.

[growingrobin]

Something's in the Air...

[checkoutmybookshelf]

The Trilogy That Surprised the Hell Out of Me

Tell me if this sounds familiar: You were raised on female protagonists in books who were extraordinarily competent. Whether they had to work for it (think Tamora Pierce's heroines or Patricia C. Wrede's Cimorene) or whether it came naturally (examples abound, don't make me list them), your typical SFF heroine could generally take care of business. So I was surprised as all hell when Neryn, one of Juliet Marillier's heroines, spent the trilogy fragile--for lack of a better word--and still managed to be immensely compelling and pull out some really surprising solutions to conflicts that were not variations on "beat the ever-loving snot out of the bad guys." This trilogy focused on community building and interpersonal support, and in a way that I honestly was not expecting. Let's talk the Shadowfell Trilogy.

The first book in the trilogy, Shadowfell, opens with a classic "dead parent in chapter 1," and just kind of keeps going downhill for Neryn. She is stuck trying to find the rebel training ground all by herself after her father's death (and frankly, that might be a good thing because he was about to sell Neryn off to pay his gambling debts), and despite help from the fair folk and the immensely sketch but seemingly on-her-side Flint, Neryn gets really, really sick.

I have to say, I appreciate that in a world with magic and fair folk, being malnourished, exposed to the elements, and quite frankly just delicate still leads to people getting sick. I also love that Neryn getting sick also connects so well to the wider world and overarching plot, because Neryn is a caller. In this case, a caller is essentially someone who can speak to the fair folk and at some level compel them. So naturally both our rebels and Keldec, our evil king, want to get their hands on this rumored caller. Fair folk intervention would change the balance of power in Alban, but so would Neryn dying of her illness.

Enter Flint. He is very clearly set up as a double agent, but what precisely his deal is in this book is not explained in detail, which lets us as readers judge him purely by his actions rather than his particular set of skills--and those will absolutely be an issue going forward. And in this book, he measures up well.

This book sets up Neryn's physical delicacy, which is going to be a motif throughout the rest of the trilogy, and her ability to still make a difference using the skills and knowledge she does have. Ultimately, Neryn does make her way to Shadowfell by the end of this book.

The second book, Raven Flight, introduces the rebels in more detail, but specifically Tali, who is basically glued to Neryn as a bodyguard because despite better food and care and some training, Neryn will simply not ever be a warrior. I literally cannot express how much I was loving having a physically fragile protagonist at this point, because this particular plot setup almost always requires a battle-capable protagonist who can step into either a hero or leadership role. Neryn is fascinating because she is not and will never be either of those things, but without her behind-the-scenes mission to the guardians, then the physical battles would ultimately not matter at all.

To just briefly take a break from the Neryn love, Tali's grouchy, no-nonsense, "love-is-an-unnecessary-vulnerability" attitude manages to be endearing rather than grating, and watching Tali learn to appreciate Neryn for herself is such fun to watch. Tali's arc, of going from muscle to someone who can lead, is not the main storyline, but makes for a really compelling B plot.

Shadowfell and Raven Flight are a little on the slow burn side (both for plot and romance), but The Caller move a bit faster. It has to, because Neryn, Tali, and Flint are literally in the lion's den when they have to infiltrate Keldac's court to ascertain the truth of rumors of a second caller.

Overall, and without spoilers, I was less of a fan of this trilogy than I was of other Juliet Marillier trilogies, but Iove that all of Marillier's heroines bring something different to the party, so reading her books never ever feels repetetive in the way that other authors with multiple series can. This trilogy is absolutely worth a read.

[may12324]

She remade her, she held her bones in her hands and put each piece back together. Only to have to carry on without her.

Everything she did, she did for Falin

~

Inspired by The Locked Tomb and Howls Moving Castle, and also how hot these two look in these outfits/forms. This will be a future print for cons this year.

[friendlylocalwhumper]

continuation of this piece.

The car crashed into the house. Quinn figured out it was going to just a little too late.

It’s not as dark as they expected it to be, once they crack their eyes open. Light streams through gaps between chunks of wall. They aren’t pinned, exactly, but stuck in a space just big enough to breathe in.

They don’t know where Major is.

He was standing right before it happened, farther in the house than they were by ten feet. He could be dead. Their eyes widen and breaths catch as they picture Major dead, sprawled and crushed somewhere in here. Or worse, he might not be dead, but unfixable.

They passed out for a while, they think. But no one has found them. Outside it sounds quieter than before, like the riot is over, but no one has checked on the house renovated by a car driving into it, so it must be just as gory out there. Maybe no one will come at all.

It hurts. Everything. A general throbbing ache, and exhaustion that makes it difficult to care much about moving. It feels safer to just stay still and hope that this will somehow get better. Their neck could be broken and they might not know it. Their skull. Something could be wrong with their spine. Quinn can think of a hundred reasons to just lie still and keep breathing. When they dare to look hard at the cramped space around them, they can see all the instability. All the spots where a shift of debris could mean that it would all shift and suddenly Quinn would not be alive anymore.

Eventually, waiting doesn’t feel like the best option anymore. The air isn’t getting any easier to breathe, dust floating around lazily. It coats their throat and the ache of fighting down coughs is getting harder to ignore. Quinn bends bony limbs to test their joints and run crooked hands across their own body in search of blood. Oh, there, at their back - they whine when they first find the sore spot, then the sound erupts into a scream as they twist further to find that glass is sticking out of their back.

Then comes a miracle. A voice, his voice, muffled but close. “Shut up. Shut up I’m focusing.”

They need help. The glass, they don’t know how deep it goes, and they’re trapped and he’s a healer. Major sounds fine, he sounds more annoyed than anything. Quinn tries to get a grip on the shard of window in their back, but their fingers are slippery with blood and all they manage is to make themself whimper in pain.

It’s hard to find a decent angle for it, but they wedge their shoulder up against a bar of wood and shove upward. Push, push, push - the wood gives way, but then dust rains down and Quinn finds themself sprawling facedown, pinned worse. When they cry out this time, their voice is weaker, more airy, as their nails dig into the floor.

“I’m over here,” They whisper, breath stolen by how hopeless this is. Moving anything could mean the building collapses worse. Major has to come to them. Their back burns from the incision and they’re praying that the glass didn’t go any farther in.

“...Okay?” Major grumbles. “I’m not focusing on getting to you, bitch.”

He’s not… even trying to get to them? A soft upset sound escapes their throat before they can stop it. “Wha-at? Why?”

“I’m fucking close. Shut up. Shut up.” It sounds like he’s trying to move, but not managing to make it far at all. And then he starts choking, coughing, and Quinn holds very still as if distracting him would be enough to kill him. “Ha! Got it! There’s one more chip in there. It’s gonna be so fucking good.”

Something’s wrong. He’s a dumbass, but not that bad. He might think he’s trying to get at his bag of chips but Quinn doubts that that is still anywhere near him. And it definitely isn’t a priority right now. Does he even know what happened, that he’s trapped? He might not be as fine as he sounds.

“Are you, Major, are you… trying to find your chips?”

He doesn’t answer. There is a sound like a mouse sneaking through a cupboard. He’s actually reaching, trying to get at that bag. A new urgency settles over Quinn’s mind and they start delicately, slowly pushing against the debris pinning them, crawling forward at every possible opportunity. Sometimes the crevice they force their way into is too small, but they just keep pushing. Something is wrong with Major, they need to see.

“Major, are you looking for the bag of chips?” They repeat, closer to him now. They see his shoe. It’s not on him. He must’ve flown right out of them when he was knocked back.

“Yeah. Trying.” His voice is so close. Quinn twists to try to protect the glass in their back and dips around a beam, strands of hair hanging in their eyes.

“Can you stop?” They try, analyzing the wall of shattered brick between them and him. Scraped fingers begin peeling away at the stone until they get a hole big enough to climb precariously through.

Major growls, and Quinn frowns in worry, finally close enough to see his shoulder.  “I - fuck, I fucking can now, you made me lose it,” He complains, utterly distracted. The space that they carved out for themself changes shape just slightly, a wooden beam sinking. It’s about where Major’s face ought to be, and - yes, they can see his face now, if they squint just right against the headlight glaring at them. “The fuck?” Major croaks, and Quinn snaps a hand up to try to catch the wood, if it’s hurting him. “Fuck, FUCK!”

Both hands on the beam, then, they decide, their knees taking the weight painfully as they struggle to balance on the brick they’re kneeling on. The beam is heavy but they have to lift it, it’s pressing down on Major’s cheek. His skull could be crushed in an instant.

“Don’t move,” They instruct, certain that he already knows they’re here. His eyes are open, and their own face is just inches away, after all. But he flinches hard, and twists to claw at the wood on his face like he just figured out that it’s there. They have to wedge their bloody fingers between the beam and his cheek and pull up, their whole body trembling with the effort.

“Stop moving.” Quinn really needs him to just settle down and let them work the limited leverage they have. But he kicks and their eyes shoot to look at his leg, paranoid that he’ll knock out some kind of delicately balanced pile of debris. It takes a moment of squinting in that direction to recognize the blood spreading under bricks where his leg is supposed to be, where that kick just happened.

The broken windowsill in their fingers is trying to slip. Frustrated, they push up harder and ignore the leg thing for now. Finally they get the sill up off Major’s face and push their knee against him to try to make him tip his head away.

“I was just gonna get the chip,” He complains, and Quinn shakes their head, incredulous. He’s still talking about the chips. “And then fuckin’ find you. Weren’t you, aren’t you hurt?”

Finally, they can drop the sill. Frustration flashes across his face when they do, and as they pant and stare at him, they see how out of it he is. His face is swollen purple on the right, and he won’t look right at them. His left arm is at his side, crooked. His right arm is pinned to his chest under stone, so they’re pretty sure he never really did reach for the chip bag, he just imagined it. Or worse, he didn’t feel his broken arm as he tried to move it and reach. If his legs are still legs, Quinn can’t see them, and he isn’t twisting in pain so they think maybe he doesn’t feel anything at all. It reeks of blood in here, and Quinn is hurt, but not that hurt.

Dizzy with the sight of him, they bend forward and rest their arms on him a moment, head hanging. “Not as bad as you are,” They answer grimly.

Major laughs. They keep asking questions, and he does sound fine still, but he so obviously isn’t. He can’t see, he can’t feel things. Quinn tries to get him to heal himself and he just won’t - maybe his magic is hurt, maybe something in his head is so that there’s a disconnect. Either way, his condition won’t improve before they get out of here.

And then he starts crying. He doesn’t even know he is, flinching and complaining as they wipe the big tears from his eyes and cheeks. Quinn’s jaw wobbles, their determination wavering, as his chest hitches with little sobs that he isn’t aware of.

“It’s okay,” They promise gently, and he just says things like, “I fucking know,” and “Just start moving shit so I can get up.” He doesn’t know it’s still collapsing. And that he might not even be able to sit up. Quinn just keeps soothing him, even if he hates it, while he cries cluelessly.

When he finally asks, “Am I fucked up?” Quinn nearly giggles hysterically. They fold down instantly to press their cheek to his, holding him in a very cautious hug. He’s whimpering low in his throat, and they keep checking on the worst injuries, but he doesn’t make any awful sounds then Quinn touches them.

“Give me a few minutes to catch my breath and I’ll… start digging us out,” They promise. He seems bewildered as if they just invited him to a tea party. Hesitantly they run a hand down his face, and he flinches again, closing his eyes finally. They think the headlights are hurting his eyes, making him tear up more. Or maybe they just need him to look like he isn’t seeing by choice right now.

A few hours later, they finally have him most of the way out. It must be very bad for his injuries to have been dragged like he was, but there was no other choice. Their tremors are constant now, their strength pushed to its limits. Quinn plants their heels in the ground and heaves again, arms wrapped under his armpits and around his chest, his head tipped back at their shoulder.

He started screaming at some point, then abruptly stopped. He’s been quiet since. Quinn pulls harder, eyes shut so they don’t have to see his legs. It doesn’t matter how mangled he might be. Doesn’t even matter if he’s dead right this second. He has to get pulled out, and then they can see what’s what.

He’s free with one final lurch, and Quinn flops back, arms out at their sides, Major on top of them. It’s hard to breathe. They have no idea if the glass in their back fell out or went all the way in. They need a rest. They have to hold still and try to breathe.

Major jerks, and their eyes fly open. Is he awake? Is he alive, or was that his final twitch? He jerks again, and it’s a relief for one second before terror dawns. They can’t handle an awake Major right now.

He sucks in a big breath. They feel his ribcage expanding. And then he howls, twisting off of them to roll onto the sidewalk, hands flexing and grabbing onto the curb as he snaps his head down to bang it into the concrete.

“No,” Quinn croaks, flipping onto their side to stretch and throw their hand there before he can bang his head again. His face smashes into their palm and Quinn chokes back a cry of pain.

He is wailing, clawing, trying in stops and starts to crawl away and then to hold perfectly still. It seems the delirious, odd calm from earlier is over. Maybe now that he isn’t pinned anymore, now that the blood is flowing, he lost the miraculous numbness.

“It’s okay,” Quinn forces out uselessly, crawling closer and rolling him onto his back. Major’s face is striped with tears and his teeth are bared. He’d like to kill them, they think, but he can’t. He’s struggling just to keep sucking down breaths. “It’s okay, Major. You can heal it. Just heal it.” They snatch up his hand and show it to him, as if that’ll make him understand, before they grab at one of his legs, bend it up closer to his chest, and press his hand to it. They won’t look down, but it’s hot and sticky. “Heal it, Major. Your hand’s there.”

His mouth is wide, his eyes squeezed shut, his head thrown back. They can tell how loud each sob is going to be by how hard his chest rises for the breath he sucked in. Quinn squeezes his wrist harder. “Heal it. Major, your magic. Make it work.”

He feels like he’s dying. He probably is. The pain must be unbearable. As their eyes find every injury on him and all the signs that he cannot listen, the world grows colder. The color desaturates. This is easy, Quinn thinks, focusing hard. He has to use his magic. He has to listen.

Quinn lowers themself so that their forehead tips to his. He’s screaming right in their face but they don’t listen, don’t flinch from his roars. Mind magic spills out of them, invisible but strong coming from so close. All at once, Major’s screaming stops. The tears keep flowing, his lost eyes open now.

Magic pours from his hand almost immediately. His leg cracks, shifts, changes shape. Quinn ignores the movement and stares into his unseeing eyes. “You just have to listen,” They whisper, guiding him by twisting his emotions into the right shape and reminding him with words what he should be doing. “Keep healing. Cry to vent the pain and keep healing.”

His magic starts to run out right around when his legs look like legs again, and it’s hard to let him stop. Quinn wants him all better, all in one piece, seeing and able to walk and in no pain at all. But there is fresh bright blood under his nose, and his breathing is getting worse, not better. He would obey and use his magic to death if they forced him to, they think, so Quinn allows him to stop. They pull back, brushing his hair out of his face, and stop the mind magic.

He’s still in too much pain to tell what happened. Major’s teeth clench and he starts whining in agony again, clutching at their torn shirt.

“It’s okay,” They remind, pulling him up so carefully and tucking his head against their shoulder. “It’s okay. Take a break. We got out and it’s gonna be okay.”

[ruporas]

dragon meat, you, and me

[skylandman-takemebythehand]

Aroace Mysticat is a powerful thought because he has equal-opposite manwhore energies.

[viveksmagic]

Magic

[lunaferal]