#my fic waking dreams: master of fate

[kettlequills]

wip friday

thanks @nocturance i actually have something to post this time! this is from the next chapter of my miraak fic, waking dreams: master of fate. tagging anybody who wishes.

In the din, Miraak retreated into himself, flew up and away, gave his mind wings and scoured along the rocky ceiling with its crumbling arches and slipped, snake-coiled, into the dark cold depths of the temple bowels. It was there he lingered, for a heartbeat, or maybe a hundred, floating in the water of his mind, that wretched thing called Memory.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, he thought of Dukaan. Krosulhah’s soul was still fresh within him, and times like this – laughter, dance, merriment – were always hers to claim. Her scalloped mask shimmered under the light of the flames, her clever grey eyes alight beneath, then, blasphemy, she tugged it free to bare those grooves cut in the pale cheeks from a lifetime of mask wearing that she could trace in turn, on his own face. Her hair was cropped, but the ruff that bloomed from her neck and shoulders like a mantle was thick and smooth as snow in his hands, when she placed them there, and her fuzzy ears were silken soft with fur. When, Miraak, hesitant, had demurred over removing his own mask, the buckles were on the back of his head, awkward to reach, and hidden under his hood, and of course, his hair was a mess beneath, and his skin, sallow, he was ugly, beneath it, he was sure, even if it hadn’t been blasphemous to look upon him, she had said, “Do you know, it would be my honour, yes, and to kiss you, too.”

[mischiefmanagers]

Azriel Fic Rec Library 🦇💙

In no particular order, here's an extensive list of Azriel x Reader or Azriel x OC fics that I've compiled for those who can't get enough of him. I literally maxed out the number of tags/links you can include on a post for this 😂

🌼 personal favorite 🥀 angst 💞 fluff 🔥 smut

by @acourtofmenandthirst

You Called 🥀💞

by @moonlightazriel

Before you 🔥🥀

The truth about you 🥀💞🔥

The family we choose 💞

by @thelov3lybookworm

I Didn't Ask For This 🌼🥀

Finally Safe 🌼🥀

My brother. 💞

by @writingsbychlo

SWEET LIKE SUGAR 🌼💞🥀

false confessions 🌼🥀

how we survive 🥀

by @readychilledwine

Slow Hands 🌼💞🔥

Bound by Fate 🌼🥀💞🔥

Little Bat, Big Dreams 💞

Beauty in Pain 🥀

Devotion 💞

by @leafsandstarlight

Forced Revelations

by @lalacliffthorne

the basic rules of friendship 💞🔥

motorcycle 💞

by @bubbles-for-all-of-us

Hear the lonely cry out 🥀

Can you love me most? 🥀

Baby daddy 💞

by @draemgal

master of disguise 💞

by @azsazz

Nightlight 🥀

Wrong Side of the Right Coin Azriel x Reader x Eris 🥀

Just Hold On 🥀💞

What Lies Ahead

Bleed for Me

by @xoxonyxx

What Should've Been 💞

by @illyrian-dreamer

Spin the bottle 💞🥀

Our girl Azriel x Cassian x Reader 🥀

by @acourtofwhatthefuck

Practice On Me 💞🔥

by @danikamariewrites

Sixth Sense 💞

Shell 💞

Fever Dreams 🥀💞

Please Don't Go 🥀💞

Pointless Fights 🥀

Perfect Princess 💞

by @lidiasloca

more than this 🥀

by @tadpolesonalgae

please... 🌼🥀

washing his wings 💞

Can't Bring Myself To Hate You 🌼🥀🔥

His Personal Assistant

by @mother-above

The Golden Warrior 🌼

by @aquanova99

The Shadow and the Seraphim

by @fieldofdaisiies

Oh Those Romance Novels 🔥

Love's A Burden 🥀

by @ellievickstar

Between Two worlds

by @florence-end

Worst kept secret 💞

Stitch up

by @redheadspark

Reunited 💞🥀

Hold 🥀💞

by @acourtofmarvels

Miracle 🥀

by @bookish-whore

Haunted 🥀

by @honeybeefae

7 Minutes In Heaven 🔥🔥

Shadows of Fire Azriel x Reader x Eris 🔥🔥

by @reverie-verse

Ooops Mating Bond 🌼💞

by @cassiefromhell

Unexpected Azriel x Reader x Eris 💞🥀

by @ladylokilaufeyson5

A Little Helping Hand 🌼💞

I Will Always Find You 💞🥀

by @azrielhours

Soft Spot 🌼🔥💞

I want you to rest 💞🥀

Kiss Thief 💞

Soul Song 💞

Restless Dreams 🥀

Stolen Away 💞

Waiting for You 💞🥀

by @liahaslosthermind

Swarming children and elbows to the face 💞

by @itsphoenix0724

Tickle My Strings 🔥

by @jeannineee

Apology 💞

Umbra et Ventus

Blue and Red Azriel x Cassian x Reader

Stubble 💞

Illyrian Babies Azriel x Cassian x Reader 💞

Closure 🥀🔥

by @violette-hue

Fated 🔥

by @angelshadowsinger

Supposed to Be Together 🥀🔥

Prized Possession 🥀💞

by @callmeblaire

little friends 💞

by @fairydustblossom

tied to you 🥀💞

losing control🥀💞

pre relationship fluff 💞

by @throneofsapphics

up all night Azriel x Reader x Cassian 💞

by @arrantsnowdrop

Starlight 💞

Wrongly Accused 🥀🔥💞

by @clairebear08

Hide and Seek 💞

Betrayal 🥀

by @starlightandsouls

My Angel 💞

Yours To Keep And Cherish 💞

Bookshop Brawls 💞

by @azrielscrown

the secret of seduction 💞🔥

wake me up. 💞

by @glittergelpensblog

Shadow and Song

In the Dark

by @azriels-shadowsinger

brother's best friend 💞

by @xreaderbooks

Two sides 🥀

by @vacant--body

stay with me 🥀🔥

by @whisperingmidnights

We Shall Become Monsters 🌼

by @wishfulwithwine

You Belong With Me 🥀

by @queen--of--shadows

Healing Shadows 🌼

by @ochiolism

winter's frost

[tonberry-yoda]

Dewdrops - Asra

notes - Asra brainrot bad dudes. He is so fine and I have been wanting to kiss him all week, so here's a lil fic lol. I hope you enjoy and stay hydrated!! <33 @thearcanagame yall should hire me to write arcana stories haha jkjk... unless tee hee word count - 538 ~~BUY ME A KO-FI (COMMISIONS ARE OPEN)~~

You woke up delirious, blinking rapidly to get the bright sun out of your eyes. The air felt different than usual. Humid. Cold.

You felt that you were somewhere familiar, but there was also something strange about it.

A dream. Yeah, that was the best way to describe it.

You still couldn't see, so you tried to sit up and block your eyes from the brightness above you. When you sat up, you felt something fall from you, like a weight. But it sounded like you were under water.

What was going on?

You were finally able to see a little bit better after a couple more blinks and saw that you were definitely somewhere dream like. And you looked like you were just lying in a pond.

You tilted you head and tried to stand up, but your legs were much to weak for that.

The water you were in, you noticed, changed from shades of purple to blue and even looked like there was glitter swirling at the bottom.

But what shocked you the most is when you turned next to you to find Asra fast asleep in the pond. There were dewdrops in his hair and falling from his lips.

How the heck did you two end up here?

"Asra." You tried lightly shaking him to wake him up, but nothing. "Asra! Hey, wake up!"

You watched his white eyelashes flutter open until they shut again, probably from the brightness of the sun, if that even was the sun.

You blocked it nonetheless and cupped Asra's face, wiping the water away from the corners of his eyes. "Asra."

His eyes finally opened and he smiled when he saw you. As he sat up - holding you in his lap - water dripped from his clothes and his body.

There was a dewdrop on his lip that looked rather kissable...

"Where are we?" he asked sleepily, rubbing his eye.

"No clue. I thought you would've known, almighty Master Asra."

"Ew," he giggled. "Don't call me that. Just... let me get my bearings. I should be able to tell."

You got off of his lap and tucked his wet hair behind his ear while he looked around.

You both knew where you were. A sprit realm of some kind. But how you got there was beyond you.

"A spell..." Asra slowly began to remember. "Hm. Must've hit us hard."

"You don't think it was me, do you?" you asked frantically.

"No, I don't think so. And even if it was, I guess fate was telling us we needed a nap. Either way," he stood up and stretched, reaching his hand out to yours. "We'll figure it out along the way. Let's get going, yeah?"

You nodded and took his hand, letting him help you up. Your legs were still weak, but with Asra's help, you would be fine.

"You have water on your lips." you told him cheekily.

"Oh? Than why not help get it off." he smirked.

You pressed your lips to his, licking of the water lightly. He held you by the waist and pressed his chest to yours smiling in the kiss.

He didn't have the heart to tell you that you messed up a spell.

~~~~~

the arcana masterlist | pinned post

2023 @tonberry-yoda – do not repost or claim ANY of my work as your own! likes, reblogs, and comments are not only welcome, but appreciated

~~~~~

[klanceficatalogue]

hiiii haiiiii :3 first off WELCOME BACK!!!! v happy to see the klance renaissance happen, i was in high school when i got hooked and now i’m finishing a MASTERS DEGREE wtf!!! anyway!! can i ask for some fics where the plot is basically “new planet joins coalition, party has to happen for diplomacy, chaos and romance ensues”? hope it’s not too specific + have a great day <3

hii!! some absolute CLASSIC klance tropes i see. i got some for u - k

My Soul Has Your Claim, My Soul Is In Flames by queen-of-voltronian (17/17 | 146,137 | Teen and Up)

Does anyone know Lance is in love with Keith? Of course not. And Lance would very much like to keep it that way, thank you! Keith already doesn't want anything to do with him ever since coming back from that space whale; the last thing Lance needs on top of his crumbling self-worth and shaky standing in the team is a rejection that shatters his heart in pieces, too. But now, Lance got himself in a bit of a pickle. Which is fine, because Lance has a plan to get out of it! A wonderful, brilliant, masterful, completely fool-proof plan. His team won't look at him like he's more incompetent than they already do, he won't have to spend the rest of his life trapped on some alien planet, and Keith will never find out just how head over heels he is for him. It's a win-win-win situation. Of course, with Keith, things are never quite so simple, and Lance's plan soon causes a domino effect that changes the entire course of his life. Or: Maybe Lance should have been a little more specific when he said he'd do anything to get home. Because now... "You must bestow a kiss on the one your soul most desires." ...Fuck.

//temporary character death

i hurt my friends saying things i don't mean out loud by whiry (4/4 | 37,333 | Teen and Up)

after defeating an invading army and saving a princess and her people, lance, keith, and the paladins are invited for a coronation ceremony. problem is, the princess can't seem to keep her hands off lance, and keith has had enough. or keith is jealous, lance is oblivious (but sometimes it's not his fault), and everyone is tired of their antics

(lance/ofc)

don't wake me, i'm not dreaming by jilliancares (30/30 | 80,455 | Explicit)

After an incident at a banquet, Lance and Keith are forced to convince everyone that they're dating, including their own teammates. Apparently, the fate of their newly-formed and highly volatile alliance depends on it.

//graphic violence

[akumahoshojo]

Castlevania I + II Fanfic: A Horrible Night's Dream (Chapter 1 preview)

I wrote this fic for @eboni-napalm as part of a Halloween gift exchange that started back in like... 2021 😱 After two of the roughest years for me ever (school/health/family/general RL problems all happening at once), I've actually been able to work on it!

While I'm still finishing up my final draft of the first chapter (fingers crossed I can do it before midnight!), I thought I'd post this preview of it here for tonight for any CV fans who might be interested in reading... and hopefully checking out the rest. It's the first 4 out of 8 vignettes to be contained in the completed first chapter, set in CV1 era for now.

Game: Castlevania I and II Pairing: Simon Belmont + CV2's "Mysterious Woman" (😉) Themes: Prophecies, Curses, Fighting Fate, Anachronic Order, Second Person POV, Experimental Style Content Warning: General themes of prejudice, non-graphic human sacrifice scene Thanks so much for your patience eboni-napalm-- I'm so sorry about the delay, but getting to work on this story has been rewarding and challenging in the best kind of way! 💗 Check out the story below!

i. now

To one who dreams the future, the present is the past. And thus all your remembered life has been a divided one, waking eyes on constant guard and inner eye fixed on time untold, like two-faced Janus in the body of a girl.

You've never been able to consider your nighttime visions a power, or even a gift: not when they've only come to you as you've lain helpless in the dark, bringing unwanted glimpses of a greater darkness in the world that encircles the realm of dreams.

And if some force beyond even that world can tear through the layers of time to give you a fleeting glimpse of what lies on the other side, then one lone human attempting to change the future’s design in response seems as futile a task as attempting to prevent an avalanche through the placement of a single snowflake.

But that's never stopped you from trying.

ii. then 

To the citizens of Transylvania, he may have been a savior, but to you, he was no different from the rest of them—which placed him somewhere just above scum. And so, as all of Jova turned excitedly north to welcome their conquering hero home, you chose to remain alone in the wooded outskirts of town, where they'd told you your kind would always belong.

Simon, the latest golden boy of the Belmont clan, with a mane of golden hair and bags of looted gold to match, was already the stuff of legends. He'd journeyed alone only days before to Dracula's stronghold beyond the mountains, slaying its monstrous guards and unholy master in a single night and escaping just in time to watch the demon castle crumble at dawn. Stories of his triumph had already traveled down from the hamlets at the foothills and across the river from the town of Yomi, faster than the news of the Dark Lord's resurrection on the night the Black Mass occurred. 

The night they’d shunned you for the last time.

iii. now

The future creates itself in the darkness behind your closed eyes. Your essence stares back from the depths of your mind.

Another vision, two-sided as always: fate's promise to you, and yours to yourself. You will fight it, the truest part of you swears, in the waking world where dreams can't reach, no matter what you'll see and see again.

It catches you off guard anyway.

As your mind's eye clears, the darkness that clouded it coalesces into a black sea, the crests of dozens of waves rising ominously from its surface. The light comes next—faint touches of distant moonlight and dancing candlelight, refining the indistinct sea of shadows into something all too real.

Hooded worshippers, lit by candles as black as their robes, fill the gutted remains of an old church. The church is dark, and the night outside is darker, showing through the shattered stained-glass windows like a void swallowing up the holy and the fair. Idols and relics, goat-headed demons and inverted stars and things you can't decipher, lurk just at the edges of the shadows.

But it's the thing on the altar that scares you the most.

Nearly shrouded in a tattered black cloak, it lays limp and motionless, sickly pale as any corpse—but with a countenance alert as any living man. Its face is twisted into a rictus of mad triumph, sightless eyes fixed on the crumbled ceiling above and a sky empty of stars, as if to mock, even now, whatever higher power watches from above. You're certain you've never seen it, through this eye or your outers. And yet, the longer you stare, the louder a primal alarm seems to scream from somewhere deep inside you.

Known and unknown, mighty and weak, living and dead—the thing’s very existence is a contradiction made flesh.

Clarity flashes across your mind in the errant glint of candlelight off a fang.

You know, now, what this thing is. Its—his—name is Dracula: scion of the dragon, the devil's very son.

His dark grip still chokes Transylvania as tightly in legend as it did in reality, even a century after his last death. Though the countryside has long healed from the scars of his prior reign, those like yourself, too well acquainted with the occult, feel their phantom ache to this day. It is the pain that springs up with each scornful word and every hostile stare, the chafing knowledge that anyone judged slightly less than normal will never be truly safe from a populace still cowering from even the memory of Dracula's shadow.

Your gaze focuses once more at a sudden shuffling among the faceless worshipers: a parting of the shadow sea. From the darkest corner of the church a maiden is borne, light as spindrift, through the crests. Her dress is pale, and her panicked face is paler. She seems almost to shine amongst the shadows that guide her onward, a lone spot of white nearly consumed by the blackness of the church.

A sacrifice.

As she nears the grim idol that lies in wait upon the altar, one of the encircling shadows shoves her roughly forward. She stumbles against the altar's edge, delicate hands bound tightly behind her back.

You are forced to watch, powerless as always, as present and future slip beyond salvation.

Another shift of the lurking shadows. A fleeting flash of metal. A torrent of blood from the maiden's lovely neck.

As the blood splatters on the leering corpse below, its fanged grin seems only to widen. And with a creeping chill of dread, you realize the thing on the altar isn't a corpse anymore.

The church darkens even more, beyond what seems possible, as the sky through the ceiling is choked by thunderclouds. The candlelight drowns in a shadow sea.

For a moment, you see nothing but blissful darkness, blessed oblivion—for a moment, you can nearly imagine what a normal night's sleep might be.

By the time a flash of lightning illuminates the church once more, Dracula is already gone—the monster loosed from its temporal cage.

You barely notice. You'd seen it, then, when the lightning struck, in what little you could view of the world beyond the church. The outlines of a cityscape all too familiar. The narrow curve of a waning gibbous moon.

Jova. Easter Sunday.

You still have time, you realize.

And, fate willing, so do they.

iv. then

It had been Easter then, the time of the town's yearly carnival. Those dull brick buildings had looked almost inviting, festooned with grand banners and colorful paper lanterns, as lively dances and celebrations went on in the market square. The scenes of joy and community, the swirls of music and laughter, seemed to sweep you up despite yourself, almost softening the heart their world had hardened long before. You were hopeful enough to believe the Lord's Resurrection reason enough for them to accept you, for that one day at least, to heed your warning and save their souls.

You were wrong.

No matter who you approached, no matter how you pleaded, the hatred you'd grown up with, inseparable as your shadow, blocked you at every turn. Maybe it was your clothes, or your accent, or just the fact you knew something they didn't, but whatever attempt you made, they judged it to be wrong. Your warnings, increasingly desperate, were met with insults from even the kindest faces in that celebration, insults steeled with the threat of something worse.

Liar.

Witch.

Unholy.

Unwelcome.

You'd finally turned your back on Jova when the stares began to linger a little too long, when the murmurs in the crowd began to overpower even the sounds of the festivities. You refused to add your own life to the number that would soon be lost.

And you'd tried, dammit. They couldn't say you didn't try. 

If their blood was to be shed, it would not be on your hands.

You told yourself this as you left them all behind, the music growing fainter and the colored lights dimmer with each step you took into the engulfing darkness. They'd just shown they cared nothing for you, for even themselves, so why chance your life for them? You didn't care—you truly didn't care.

But when your prophecy came true and hell came to earth, you suffered with them all the same.

[dotieeee]

The Dream That Got Away

Chapter 9

Pairing: Dark!Morpheus x You (no Y/N!)

This is a multi-chapter fic — Weekly updates (either Saturday or Sunday) because I found a rhythm of sorts lol

(The entire fic has been outlined, so I will see this to the end, you have my word)

**********************************************************

Link to the Masterlist

Overall Warnings!! Take heed:

Morpheus is DARK – in canon, he changes for the better (or at least, tries to – but we don’t do canon lol, so he goes even more batshit crazy) cue obsession, manipulation, possessiveness, powerplay

18+ ONLY – explicit scenes will be present, some explicit language

DUB-CON and NON-CON scenes

Character death (sort of)

Creator vs Creation drama

And other dark stuff that may be added in the future

This chapter’s warnings:

non-consensual kissing and touching

touch-starved Morpheus should be a warning of its own

mentions of gore

mentions of drug abuse

You have been warned!! Proceed with caution!!!

Link to the previous chapter

Chapter 9: Courtships with Deadlines

5 Days Until Deadline

You drape a thick, velvet blanket over your shoulders before you go out to the balcony and watch the night give birth to one of the most beautiful sunrises any creature could ever see in their lifetime.

But something has changed: not the beauty of the sunset, but the way you feel about it. You had for so many times looked at it with wonder in your eyes. Now, all it reminds you of is another day in the Kingdom with him: the all-powerful being who had woven your strings of fate and tied it with himself, not caring whether he suffocated you in the process. After he left the room, you never got a wink of sleep; you never even dared close your eyes, fearing he might suddenly pop into your room and force you once more into a vulnerable position. Not wanting to remember your master’s visit last night, you rub your face with your hands to force these thoughts away, suddenly wanting a cup or two of steaming hot coffee with loads of milk dumped in them.

Your mind wanders to the Sleep Doctor you had left in his dreams after a quick, impulsive kiss. Despite liking to take a lot of naps, he actually is an early riser, as you had discovered in your short time in the Waking with him. By now, he should be having the same milky cup of coffee, scrolling through the daily science bulletin on his iPad and muttering to himself as he read the articles, while his favorite cinnamon buns you had popped in the oven happily baked away.

You don’t want to admit it, but you sorely miss Ollie and his cheerful demeanor.

The sun has fully risen in the realm when Morwyn knocks on your door, bringing you a tray of breakfast consisting of your favorite pastries and coffee, prepared just the way you like it. You’re not particularly hungry, but after spotting a cinnamon roll, you contentedly dig in, wondering if Ollie had the same. You share the rest of the generous fare with her and use the opportunity to catch up with her after all these years. When the meal is over, she draws you a bath, then excuses herself, mumbling about preparing your outfit to “his liking.” You ignore the last thing she said, focusing instead on the sea of bubbles that relaxed every tense muscle in your body, savoring every time you have without the Dream Lord hounding your time and attention. Once you’ve dried yourself, you step out of the bathroom in a silken robe, thinking of donning your usual dress. To your surprise and consternation, you find Morwyn in the middle of admiring a blood-red, long-sleeved gown of the finest silk satin, decorated with tiny chunks of ruby around the waist. It’s a dress worthy of a princess.

Except you’re no princess.

“Morwyn, please tell me I’m not wearing that,” You say as you walk to the closet and yank the doors open, expecting to find the clothes you had seen the other day and hoping you get to choose the simplest garb you could find – the closet is empty.

Great. You can’t even choose your own clothes, now.

Unconsciously, you take a leaf after Ollie’s book and rub the back of your head.

“M’lady,” Morwyn calls, her voice slightly trembling, “The Dream King had instructed me to empty your closet and give you this,” she says holding the luxurious dress out. “He says he’d like to see you in it when you meet him later.”

Releasing a defeated sigh, you nod quietly at her and put it on, letting her fasten the ribbon at the back in front of the mirror. The dress feels stifling, and not just because it hugged every curve on your body.

Morwyn gives you a wide, encouraging smile, complimenting, “You look beautiful, m’lady.”

You look just as he intended, you tell yourself. You try to return the smile, hoping it didn’t come out as a constipated grimace.

“Thank you, Morwyn. Has Matthew come around, yet?” The Dream Lord’s words last night were anything but comforting, but he mentioned having his raven come to tell you when it’s time. But for what, exactly?

“Not yet, m’lady. Are you…okay? You look a little pale,” says Morwyn worriedly with her hand on her chin. “If you’d like, I can apply some rouge on your cheeks, doll you up even more?” she innocently suggests, muttering something about “a date” and “looking pretty for the King.”

You shake your head adamantly at the suggestion. No, you don’t want that spurring him on. Wanting to be alone, you say your ‘thank you’ to her and bid her farewell before proceeding to the uppermost part of the palace where your master had said he’ll meet you, hoping for at least a few moments of peace by yourself watching the view from up above.

Thankfully, the balcony is void of the Endless the moment you arrive, giving you time alone to admire the Dreaming Realm in a panoramic view you have never seen before. Your eyes can spot endless, unfamiliar territory and islands you’ve never been in from miles and miles away. Down below you could see the town square, busy as ever, with its tiny residents going about their morning tasks; everything in the Dreaming, right before your eyes – and all you could think of is Ollie.

Due to the events that followed your return, you had not had the opportunity to visit him in his dreams since you left. Your Dream Lord had just complicated things further by forbidding you to step out of his kingdom, making it even more difficult to sneak out and check Ollie's progress. How is he doing, you wonder? Is he sleeping too much due to his eagerness to find you a safe sanctuary away from your master? While you selfishly want him to continue doing so until he finds a solution, you don't want to keep him away from the Waking and living his own life - after all, he has his own dreams to fulfill, and you wouldn’t want to inconvenience him any further.

You need to help him find a way to free you so he can get his own life back, and you need to move faster.

With that in mind, you make a mental promise to visit his dreams as soon as the Dream King has gone away to attend to his duties.

A loud caw, followed by a shout of 'Lady Mera,' interrupts you from your musings. Matthew, the new raven, lands on the balcony railing, flapping his wings before tucking them in.

"I wish you'd stop calling me that," you chide him with a pout.

"I can't, you know how the boss is. He's a stickler to his rules," Matthew replies with a tilt of his head.

"Maybe you can drop the fancy title when he's not around, at least?" you suggest with an innocent smile, patting his head several times.

Leaning into your petting, he acquiesces, "Oh, alright. I never thought I'd enjoy being pet as a bird, you know. Why are you early, by the way? I was supposed to come get you as soon as he says so. Eager for the date, much?"

"This isn't a date," you're quick to correct him with a flat tone.

"Uh, it kind of is? I told him yesterday he needed to spend more time with you so he doesn't uh, intimidate you."

Might be too late for that, you note inwardly.

"You shouldn't have," you find yourself commenting with some truth behind your jesting tone, which earns a nervous chuckle from the raven.

"No, but, seriously though, aren't you and the boss, uh...a thing? You see, I've been meaning to ask, but he's mum about, you know,” he starts, obvious in his tone he’s hesitant to approach the matter. “Except he did tell me you’re his consort. Are you and him –”

“No,” you sharply reply, not liking his line of questioning. “Not yet, anyway,” you mumble.

“Ah, so that’s what the date is for, then,” he says, nodding to himself. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Yeah, sure. It wouldn’t hurt.”

“Do you… like it? Him, I mean?”

You bite your lip, not expecting Matthew’s question – for him, it was a telling gesture. “I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable. How come you don’t tell him?”

Chuckling humourlessly at his question, you answer, “We’re talking about your boss, here, Matthew. To him, any dissent warrants either an unmaking, a banishment, or a lifetime of nightmares: you take your pick.”

“Tell me about it! Did you know, he had an ex that he sent to – uh-oh .”

‘What is it?” you ask, recognizing the slight alarm in his tone.

“He’s calling for me, I think. I have to go. See you, my La – I mean, Mera!”

Before you could say your farewell, Matthew goes flying off into the horizon and dips below into one of the palace rooms and out of your line of sight. Just as he disappears, your hairs stand on end and a cold feeling washes over you like icy water being dumped over your head.

He’s here, the Voice warns.

From behind you, arms snake up and wrap around your waist, pulling you closer until your back hits a taut chest. Your entire body goes rigid and your breathing turns shallow as you feel a warm breath tickle your earlobe, followed by a whisper:

“You’re early, my dream.”

“I just wanted to admire the view –” your sentence is cut off with your breath hitching; your Dream Lord just dragged his nose down the side of your neck before planting a heated, wet kiss at the base – his lips linger, then suckles on the skin, holding you tighter to himself to keep you from struggling. From your ruby-bedazzled waist, he drags his left hand slowly upwards across your chest, grasping your throat gently and angling your head so his mouth could get better access to the base of your throat, intent on leaving small, angry welts. You close your eyes with a whimper to endure this, repeating Ollie’s name over and over in your head.

“And yet these views are no match to what you offer me in this dress. You are a sight to behold.”

The low rumble of his voice makes you close your eyes tighter, biting your lip to prevent yourself from making any more noise that could excite him further. He seems undeterred by your silence – he spins you around, and, pushing you against the balcony railing, he captures your mouth with his in a fiery lip lock. His hand nestles on the small of your back, while the other grips the back of your neck as his insistent tongue pries your lips apart and tastes your hot cavern. You had tried your best to hold it all in, but treacherous tears escape the corner of your eyes. Your master seems to feel this, for he surprisingly lightens the kiss, his lips stilling over your swollen ones. You turn your head away to will the tears away, afraid that he might see this as another sign of your defiance.

Instead, he plants a gentle kiss on your temple, before saying softly,  “I admit my past courtship of you was hurried and rough. I worry that I may have pushed you further away in my haste. I should like to court you once more. This time, I will endeavor to be more patient and earn your affections.”

He kisses your exposed cheek. Sniffling, you open your eyes, but your head remains turned away from his, refusing to meet his gaze. You feel him pull his head away in your silence.

“Will you not look me in the eyes, little dream? Do you fear me?”  he asks with a slight edge to his voice, rubbing his thumb back and forth on the skin beneath your ear in an attempt to comfort you.

Is that remorse you detect? It couldn’t be, you remark, but you couldn’t help but meet his blue eyes to try to gauge what he’s truly feeling. Not wanting to give him a reason to further punish you, you say, “My apologies, my Lord, I am just coming to terms still, with…with what you’re asking of me.”

Yet, his darkened gaze tells you that what you just said to try and placate him was a huge mistake.

“What I’m ‘asking?’”  he narrows his eyes on you, his voice laced with impatience. “ I’m afraid I’m not ‘asking’ this of you, my Mera. This is the function to which I, your King, have assigned you. This courtship is for your sake alone, that you may grow accustomed to it. We will be united. I will give you five days, after which, we will consummate our bond.”

His final sentence sparks terror in the pit of your stomach. He’s giving you a deadline. Stifling the urge to retch, you swallow thickly before you try to beg, “Sir, I –”

“Enough. I will not have my will questioned,”  he interrupts you as he tightens his grip on the back of your neck.  “You will be here, in the palace, at all times. You will await my call and come to me when I summon you. I do not mean to be harsh, my dream, but time is of the essence – I was cruelly robbed of mine with you, after all. I shall amend that once I have dealt with the damage left by the Vortex. Is that understood?”

“My Lord, please –”

“Is. That. Understood?”  he repeats his question through gritted teeth, clearly unwilling to listen to any more of your pleas.

You look into his hardened, now-silver eyes, attempting to look for any trace of empathy at the situation he’s forcing you into. There isn’t any.  Wanting to end your argument so you could be relieved from his presence, you respond with a whisper, “Yes, my Lord.”

Your creator releases a hum of satisfaction as he places a lingering kiss on your cheek, before praising,  “That’s a good dream.”

You feel immense relief the moment he lets you go and steps away. You expect him to vanish with a swirl of his sand, but he lingers, standing a few feet before you with his hands behind his back.

“I will call you for tea tomorrow afternoon.”

You could only nod quietly. He takes a small amount of sand from his pouch, presumably to leave, but a sudden question crosses your mind inspired by his previous words. “My Lord, the Vortex…is she…?” you blurt out, slightly hesitating.

“Dead? Yes.”

You bow your head, not knowing how to process the fact. Rose Walker seemed so young and she had so many dreams she wanted to fulfill that you felt them, despite your fleeting interaction with her. You feel your heart clench at the thought of her life being cut short.

“Do not grieve of Unity Kincaid, my dream. Hers is a noble yet necessary sacrifice for the sake of the Dreaming, and of her great-granddaughter, Rose.”

“Unity?” you ask, confused. Wasn’t Rose the Vortex? “Rose is alive?”

Shut up, shut up, NOW, comes the Voice’s sudden warning.

“Yes, she is. You know of her?”  He asks, stepping forward, suspicion marring his dark features.

You shake your head, realizing your error; if he finds out you had met with her, he’ll discover your little tryst in the Waking, and if he does, he’ll surely uncover the connection which led to it. That was a stupid, stupid thing to say, you inwardly scold yourself.

“I heard from Lucienne, sir,” you say, mentally crossing your fingers that he doesn’t press any further.

Putting on a blank expression, the Dream King purses his lips, as he releases the sand in his palm.

“I will call for you tomorrow. Do not be late.”

As soon as his form is engulfed in his sand and he vanishes, you make a wild run for the Library. Hidden in one, or two, of those books, are incriminating passages that detail your meeting, and subsequent stay with Ollie, and once the Dream King sees those pages, you could definitely say goodbye to your plans of staying in Ollie’s dreams for good. If he even so much as gets a whiff of your affections of anyone else besides him, there’s no telling what he won’t do to you, and more importantly, to Ollie.

You push the heavy doors to the library quietly to avoid drawing attention to yourself. As noiselessly as you can, you dash through the shelves, skimming through the books in a mad rush. To your alarm, there was no ‘Oliver Chapman,’ not in the ‘O’ or even in the ‘C’ wings. Cursing mentally, you wonder: has Lucienne read them? Worse, has your Dream Lord gotten ahold of them? Are they hiding it from you, knowing you’d try to tamper with them? Letting out a huff of frustration, you sit on the floor, wondering where else they may have kept Ollie’s books of dreams.

The office, whispers the Voice.

Of course. The Dream Lord has an office in the Library, separate from the rest of the space. Not that he needed it, of course; he just usually asks for books to be brought to his throne room where he normally reads them. But why would the books be kept there?

You try to strain your ears for any signs of Lucienne; thankfully, it looks as if she’s out on an errand, so you sprint in the direction of the Dream Lord’s office.

Located at the farthest end of the Library, you’re panting heavily by the time you get there. You push your ear against the doorframe to listen for any sign of life inside. When you hear nothing, you turn the doorknob and push.

Locked.

“Fuck,” you mutter under your breath. There is only one person – or being, for that matter – that has the key, save for the Dream Lord and his Royal Librarian.

You run out of the Library in search of the said being. You find him tending to your favorite garden in the palace grounds, his hands deep in the dirt, planting more of those accursed red flowers – Mervyn the Pumpkinhead.

The keys, attached to his toolbelt, lie discarded beside him, along with his other gardening tools. You know full well you couldn’t just walk up to him and ask for a key to the boss’s office in the library – or is it that easy?

You don’t really have the luxury of planning an elaborate heist for his set of keys, so it’s now or never. Steeling your resolve, you walk up to where Merv is, opting for a much simpler plan.

“Hello, Merv!” you call as you approach.

He stops digging into the flowerbed and turns to you, giving a mock salute. “Hello, kid! What can I help ya with?”

“I’m looking for Morwyn. Have you seen her?” you ask, hoping to put up a convincing act.

He scratches his pumpkin head and replies, “No, I haven’t. Whatcha need her for?”

“I kind of locked myself out of my room, and I need to get something from there,” you say sheepishly, rubbing the back of your head to make it look believable.

“Uh, I have the key in there somewhere, but I’m in the middle o’ something, see? Why don’t you take ‘em keys instead? It’s the gold one with the tiny ruby at the bow.”

Bingo.

“Really, are you sure?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he waves you off, continuing his digging on the flowerbed.

 You grab the keys and take off as Merv calls out from behind you, “Give ‘em back, ya hear?”

“Sure thing!”

It takes you a few good minutes to find the key that fit the doorknob. Once you do, you wildly look around you to make sure you weren’t being watched, before you turn the knob and push the door open.

No one has been in the office for quite some time if the dust on the desk in the middle is anything to go about. The room is larger than you expected, and the natural light streaming through the stained glass windows illuminates the numerous towering shelves of books untouched for many years. Wanting to waste no time, you skim through the many bookshelves. They’re thankfully arranged in alphabetical order, so you find an entire shelf dedicated to the name ‘Chapman’ in no time, with Ollie’s name placed at the farthest end.

Curiously, you pick up the book a few places before Ollie’s name first, and with it, you make a startling discovery: the books of dreams on the shelf not only belonged to random ‘Chapmans,’ but to the males in Ollie’s entire lineage. You just picked the book of dreams belonging to Ollie’s great-great-grandfather.

But, why? Why is Ollie’s book of dreams, as well as his male ancestors’, singled out among the infinite number of dreamers?

“Have I told you before that the Chapmans were cursed? Well, the males, at least,”  Ollie’s words from almost a year ago echo in your head.

This isn’t the time to unearth Ollie’s family mystery, though, so you make a mental note to do more research in the future and set those thoughts aside. You carefully leaf through the pages to find the section where you made your appearance – your meeting with him, spanning a year, detailed in twenty-full pages. Setting the book on the floor, you get to work.

Hardbound books were tricky to manipulate, with the pages stitched to a section of the book’s spine, so you use your fingers to remove the stitching of the last twenty pages with care – simply tearing the pages away would leave a sign of the book being tampered with. Once you’re sure there were no traces of your crime, you put the book back in place, and scramble out of the office, locking it behind you. You hand the keys back to Mervyn (“What took you so long, kid? Couldn’t be hard to spot a key with a damn ruby, innit?”) and rush to your room. Barricading yourself inside the bathroom, you set the pages alight with a matchbox you stole from the kitchens before washing the ash away with water.

Look how you’ve turned into a cold-blooded criminal mastermind, you inwardly deadpan.

***

4 Days Until Deadline

Afternoon tea with your Dream Lord isn’t as bad of an experience as you thought it would be.

Matthew had fetched you from your room, and you had followed him to the same balcony you had met him with the morning before. You found your master, already sitting beside a table full of your favorite sweets, drinking tea from his cup. He had stood up to greet you, taking your hand in his and kissing it, before leading you to sit across from him. You both sit in somewhat companionable silence while you munch on a cinnamon bun, with him just sipping his tea and watching you with blue, ever-observant eyes.

Until…

“May I ask a question, my Lord?” you shyly break the stillness, setting down the pastry you’re nibbling back on your plate.

You watch a corner of his mouth turn upwards as he sets his cup on a saucer. “Ask away, my dream.”

“I was wondering,” you say slowly, choosing your words carefully. “If you would allow me to continue forming dreams along with my new…role?”

Just then, you could feel the atmosphere change to one of palpable tension, the small grin vanishing from his face.

Tentatively, you add, “Please?”

“I think not. Your duty is to me, alone,” he declares flatly, his cold stare making you squirm in your seat.

You bite your lip and break eye contact with him.

“It’s what I’ve been doing all my life, your majesty,” you whisper dejectedly.

“And that will change in four days’ time.”

“Will you take away my ability to form dreams, too?”

The Dream King seems to contemplate this. The pause is long, before he responds, his tone slightly softening, “I could never bring myself to take that ability away, my little dream. It is part of who you are. I intend for you to keep it.”

But what good is keeping it if he forbids its use, you ask yourself. Still, you give him a subtle nod and a small ‘thank you’ to end the topic. You leave the cinnamon bun untouched, suddenly not feeling very hungry anymore.

The quiet that follows your conversation becomes heavier, so you’re thankful to Matthew for interrupting, quietly delivering news that you couldn’t quite hear. When your King gets to his feet, you swiftly follow his example out of politeness.

“I’m afraid I must cut our date short, my dream. I have matters to attend to.”

You bow your head in response but he takes your chin in his hands and promptly gives you a single, prolonged kiss on the mouth. You close your eyes until he lets go of you, and bids you to ‘stay here.’

Noticing fine grains of sand in the air, you realize he has transported you to your chambers – you turn to him with a protest bubbling in your throat, but you find that he’s gone, and to your irritation, the door locked from the outside.

***

3 Days Until Deadline

Clear as day, Dream of the Endless recalls his first visit to the first Chapman who had crossed his path many centuries ago.

He had not paid him, or any of the other Chapmans, much attention since he had placed a curse on the males of his lineage (except for that one occasion), a curse that felt righteous and just after a slight he had committed against him and his Realm.

Now, as he faces the dream of his only living descendant, he finds himself wanting very much to place another, more potent curse on Oliver Chapman, the mortal whose embrace now cradles the dream he so deeply cherished and ardently pursued.

Or Oliver’s dream-version of you, more accurately.

Morpheus knows this, but he couldn’t help the bitter jealousy burning in his heart as he watches the mortal lavish the lips of your dream-version with his own. He has not felt the urge to smite anyone for dreaming of his creations so lasciviously in a long time – this is an image of you he’s disrespecting, and he refuses to sit idly while this human corrupts you.

An image of you, he corrects.

With a lazy flick of his fingers, the dream-version of you taking Oliver’s shirt off melts before the human’s eyes. He ensures it’s the most gruesome sight this errant dreamer has ever seen: the dream-Mera’s skin peels off starting from her head down to her feet, followed by her flesh boiling and steaming away in an amalgamation of blood and gore, and with a final flair, he makes her bones disintegrate into dust. Oliver’s screams of horror permeate the dream-space – he couldn’t deny the screams gave him utmost satisfaction.

Dream watches curiously as Oliver attempts vainly to regain lucidity by counting his fingers aloud. It’s a trick that could’ve worked, but curiously, the dream remains volatile in his favor.

Morpheus decides to twist the knife, taunting him,  “You’ve lost control, lucid dreamer.”

The mortal snaps his head in the Endless’ direction, looking confused, possibly wondering why he couldn’t take over the dream. Medication, perhaps? But Morpheus has not the slightest interest in why a lucid dreamer has lost their ability. He is, however, greatly invested in finding out how such a mortal might develop a certain fascination with you.

“Tell me: what is my dream doing in yours?”

“Who the fuck are you?” Oliver replies, growing more confused. “And who the fuck are you talking about?”

In his fury, Dream could feel himself transforming into a nightmarish image he rarely ever shows his dreamers. No one has ever woken up seeing this form of his with their sanity intact, so he tries to rein in this metamorphosis.

“The dream you were defiling,” he spits out, his bellowing voice echoing the dream-space, “Belongs to me. Explain yourself, Oliver Chapman. My patience is waning.”

Oliver rubs his head in frustration. “I don’t know…I don’t remember.” He looks at both his hands, now coated in blood that isn’t his. “Fuck, there’s so much blood… where is she? She’s injured, I need to help her. I just wanna help her, man. I have to find her…”

Dream narrows his eyes at the mumbling man before him, somewhat disappointed that he could no longer extract reliable information from him in such a state. Recognizing that his fun is over, he transports himself with a pinch of his sand back to his Kingdom. He thinks it’s best that he confront the only other being in existence who had the answers he seeks.

***

When Matthew came flying into the balcony of your room, delivering the message that your King has summoned you to the library, your heart leaped to your chest at the suddenness; your little tea date, as the bird has taken to calling it, hadn’t been due until a few hours after midday. You hastened to dress out of your pajamas and rushed to the said meeting place, your heart beating so fast you could hardly breathe. Had he found out, you wondered?

You find your Dream Lord pacing restlessly to and fro near your favourite reading spot. He stills, looking at you with hardened eyes and clenched jaw, seemingly trying to control the fury you could feel emanating from him. It’s a look that was almost enough to curdle your blood.

He doesn’t even wait for you to get close – immediately he’s upon you, cornering you to one of the bookshelves, making you yelp instinctively. He grabs hold of your wrists and pins them above your head as his body covers your own.

“You will tell me everything, my dream, and I might be inclined to spare Oliver Chapman: why is he dreaming of you?”  He growls, his face, inches from yours, contorted in pure rage.

Fighting inwardly to maintain your composure, you respond with another half-truth. “I was injured, my Lord, from a battle I enacted in a dream. I got in his dreams somehow, and he helped me, he nursed me back to health. I stayed there for a while so I could recuperate.”

“Is this the truth, my Mera, or are you keeping anything else from me?”

You wince at the way his grip closes on your wrist further, cutting off the circulation.

“Please, my Lord, you can check for yourself,” you dare meet his eye with your own fearful ones, trying to drive your point.  “The dreamer’s name is Belladonna San Mateo – I reenacted a medieval battle for her. It’s the truth, sir, please…”

He pulls his head away as one of his hands releases your wrist and grasps your chin, so you had nowhere else to look but those silvery swirls of galaxies in his cruel eyes. After a few agonizing moments he dips his head, giving you a warning:

“If I find you in the embrace of any other, mortal or otherwise, I shall personally see to their torment in their waking, their dreaming, and their afterlife.”

When he lets you go, you couldn’t help but let out a gasp of relief, clutching your chest to calm your rapid heartbeat.

“There are matters I must attend to. As such, I must regrettably cancel our meeting for this afternoon,” he says, his face once again the stony mask that spelled no room for negotiation.  “Stay in your chambers. You are dismissed.”

You turn on your heels and dash away from Library, glad to give the place a wide berth. He had met with Ollie, visited him in his dreams, and didn’t like what he saw. You don’t like the sound of your creator potentially bringing harm to your doctor, so a visit may be long overdue, and it has to be soon.

***

2 Days Until Deadline

As discreetly as you can, you take a plunge into the sea of dreams and navigate your way into your doctor’s dreams, praying to the Fates that he’s asleep at the very moment.

Once you land in the space, Ollie greets you with a tight embrace, one which you return with as much enthusiasm. You had missed him terribly and had been worried out of your wits upon learning of his meeting with your Dream King, so when you let go, you make a fuss over him, checking him and his form for any sign of injury.

“Hey, I know you find me irresistible, but I didn’t know you were bold enough to cop a feel,” he jokes, earning him a half-hearted shove and a slap on the bicep from you.

“This is no laughing matter, you idiot!” you chide him with your arms crossed, relieved on the inside that he was unharmed.

In response, he grins coyly from ear to ear. “You were worried about me. I kinda like that,”

Pouting, you say, “Yes, I was bloody worried. I’m sorry I couldn't visit sooner.”

Ollie turns away from you, scratching the back of his head. “No, it’s quite alright,” he mumbles. “I'm sorry, too. I couldn't do much work on the runes the last few days, Mera. I've been, uh... shit, I... don't know how to say this…”

“What’s wrong?” you get right in front of him to press him, worried at his guilty tone.

With the most apologetic expression you’ve seen in him since the dreamcatcher incident, he replies, “It's the sleeping pills. I've been on them and I think they might've hampered my hypnagogia.”

His revelation makes you drop your jaw in surprise. “Wha-fuck, why are you taking them? And how come you've never told me about this?” You grab hold of his arms to demand answers.

With a placating look, he responds, “I swear, I've been taking them sparingly, but I've been needing a lot of sleep because of... you know. But it's okay now, honest! I didn't take them today, and I'm in full control.”

You place your palms on his cheeks, putting on a serious expression. “You have to get off those. I'm being serious, Ollie.”

“I am! I’ll keep it that way, I promise.”

Not letting go of him yet, you look into those gentle, green eyes, trying to detect signs that he may be hiding something.  But this is Ollie, too, you think to yourself. You know him to be bad at keeping secrets. Satisfied with what you saw in his eyes, you let him go, offering a soft apology: “This is my fault. I'm sorry I pushed you into this.”

“No! Hey, no, Mera, you didn’t,” he corrects you with a firm tone. “I've been prescribed these since I was little. You know, the Chapman curse and all that. Oh, and I’ve finally figured out a fitting name for the invention.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“I’ll call it MiraSleep. It’s a sort of, play with your name and the word ‘miracle.’ That’s what you are to me, you know. Everything I do now, I do for you.”

Not knowing what to say to his heartfelt admission, you stare into those forest-green eyes of his, a look of agreement passing between you two. Finally, you flash him a grateful smile, which he returns with his own sheepish grin.

“So, Ollie,” you start with a slightly more cheerful tone, fighting back a blush creeping on your cheeks without much success. “Mind telling me what it was you dreamed about that involved me?”

He breaks into fits of nervous laughter while rubbing the back of his hair. You already know you don’t like what he’s about to say.

“You’ll never believe it if I told you.”

***

You walk back into the palace grounds with high spirits after you visit Ollie’s dreams. He had immensely cheered you up despite his retelling of a rather salacious dream he had engaged with a dream-version you at that moment he lost his lucidity – the dream with which the Dream Lord had walked in on and had taken absolute offense to. He had assured you that the momentary lapse in his dreaming abilities would never happen again, and with that, you’re confident that by your next visit, you could finally stay in there with him without having to worry about being chased after by a certain Endless.

It's this thought that helps you endure your master’s company and his not-so-subtle touches during your morning ‘date’: as soon as the sun had risen in the Realm, he had summoned you through Matthew to accompany him in a morning walk around his Kingdom.

He smugly parades you around the busy town square with your fingers intertwined in his; on occasion, wrapping an arm around your waist as he rubs circles over your clothed skin; at times, even kissing your hand while not breaking heated eye-contact; all these gestures of his affections for the entire Dreaming to see. To the townsfolk, he introduces you as his princess-consort, much to the Dreaming residents’ delight – they had not had a princess-consort to dote on for eons, and so they lavish the both of you with promises of gifts that they are to send to the palace to congratulate their King and to his ‘pretty little dream-bride.’

Just grin and bear with it, as the Voice comments.

Touching as it was, the Dreamfolk’s welcome of you as Dream of the Endless’ new princess-consort breaks your heart even more, knowing that you’ll eventually disappoint them by running away as soon as you have the chance to. Breaking your previously-cheerful outlook further, you walk past the sea of dreams with the thought of never coming back to form the dreams of the mortals forever once you’re free with Ollie.

Before you left his dream at dawn, Ollie had asked you whether you were actually ready to leave your job for good. He knows there was nothing else you loved more than forming dreams for humans and inspiring them. You had never given it much thought before, but your brief stay with him had also made you realize one thing: while you were planning to abandon the role you had loved with all your heart, he had a device that would do the same for millions of other dreamers. While not under your name, the device Ollie had invented would be his and your legacy, and perhaps you could make peace with that. This comment of yours earns you a proud smile from Ollie that rivaled the brightness of the sun – it’s a smile you’re sure you’ve burned into your memory.

***

1 Day Until Deadline

When you wake, you’re greeted with a massive headache – it’s an ominous warning of your days closing in on you. Only one more day until your King’s imposed deadline, and you could only hope Ollie makes a breakthrough with the runes by tomorrow, or all will be lost.

After you had been dressed up by Morwyn, who as usual, gushed over the gown your Dream Lord has selected for you to wear for the day, Matthew delivers the news of your morning activities. According to him, they will consist of morning tea and brunch with his boss in your favourite spot in the Royal Library. When you arrive in the garb he had chosen for you to wear for the day, he gives your red-satin-clad figure an appreciative look before he greets you with a soft kiss on your lips and leads you by the hand to the leather couch you had fallen asleep in so many times.

You engage in light, minimal conversation during tea. You find yourself almost enjoying your time together, discussing your past dreamers with a sense of nostalgia.

That is until an attendant brings a trolley full of books to his side and you inspect the names printed on the books: each containing the name of every dreamer you had visited in his absence.

Perhaps your face had paled when you noticed the books, for he flashes you a small smirk, before assuring you,  “It is only procedure, my little Dream. Lucienne told me that you had insisted on finding me in the dreams of mortals even after it proved fatally dangerous for you. I should like to read of your unwavering loyalty with my own eyes.”

His words only made you fidget in your seat, abandoning the cinnamon swirl you had started to dig into a few moments ago.

Your discomfort does not seem to escape his watchful eyes.  “Unless, you had something to hide from me, my Mera?”

From the rim of your teacup, you smile wanly, sipping your tea before quietly shaking your head. Inside, however, your heart is practically threatening to escape your ribcage, sending bile to your throat and souring your tastebuds.

“I imagine this will occupy the rest of my day. Stay and read with me.”

Having no choice but to comply, you excuse yourself to pick out a book, choosing one you had read from cover to cover so many times in Ollie’s study.

Choosing a book was the easy part; concentrating on the pages proves a lot more of a challenge, especially when you have your master inspecting your work right in front of you. His occasional praise of your handicraft almost always makes you jump on your seat, thinking that anytime, now, he could be going through Ollie’s book of dreams, potentially exposing you. It takes all your energy to remain composed before him lest he notices your odd behaviour and decides to investigate the source of your restlessness further. The day goes on agonizingly slow, but thankfully, he only goes through the first half of the pile on the trolley.

With a loud pouf, he closes the final book shut and places them on top of the growing pile on the coffee table. Getting up to his feet, you copy his movement, inwardly glad for a dismissal and looking forward to your time alone, stewing in your own worries. You brace yourself as he steps closer and takes your chin in his thumb and forefinger before dipping his head downwards to plant an openmouthed kiss on your lips, one that you now know you’re obliged to kiss back. You expect the kiss to be brief, but he apparently has other ideas: he wraps his arms around your body and maneuvers you. You both end up on the couch, with you straddling his lap. As if predicting your actions, one hand grips the back of your neck and the other holds your hip in place, preventing you from getting away.

He drags his lips away from yours to the groove of your neck while his hand pulls the sleeve of your gown downwards to expose more of the flesh he had longed to mark for a long time. You let out a whimper in protest, before softly pleading, “My Lord, please, we’re in the library…”

Against your skin, you feel him chuckle deeply.  “Would my little dream prefer the privacy of her chambers, then?”

He does not wait for your response. Instead, he continues licking and sucking on the exposed skin below your clavicle, dangerously close to your right breast. You let out a startled gasp as you feel his hand go under your gown and start stroking your inner thigh. Your body seems to betray you at that moment: you start feeling heat pooling in your belly, indicating your arousal, no matter how unwilling.

From a short distance, a door in the library creaks open, and a pair of footfalls you recognize start making their way to Lucienne’s desk.

You feel your King let out a growl of displeasure at the disturbance; a second time his librarian has interrupted you – a second time you owe Lucienne one for deterring him from any further actions.

Against your ear, he then whispers,  “Tomorrow could not come any faster, little dream. It will be a union you will remember for eternity.”

With unexpected gentleness, he spins you around and sets you down on the couch beside him, and without a word, walks away as if nothing happened.

You clutch your heart and adjust the sleeves of your dress, willing the tears threatening to spill to go away. Tomorrow, you’ll be gone for good, and well away from him – it’s a small reprieve that allows you to clear your head and quickly lock yourself inside your chambers, holding Ollie’s dreamcatcher like a lifeline.

***

0 Days Until Deadline

My little dream,

Proceed to Fiddler’s Green

…Reads the note that Morwyn delivers to you along with your morning coffee. You hope this visit wouldn’t last long; after this, you had every intention of going back to Ollie’s dream. It’s the day of the deadline your King has given after all, and you’d have no other opportunity to escape if you let this day pass.

Don’t go, the Voice warns in your head; but what choice have you, other than comply? After all, it could just be one of the last commands you’d ever obey from him. Not wanting time wasted, you refuse breakfast and begin the long tread to the heart of the Dreaming, and into Gilbert’s sanctuary.

You had been so close to meeting each other in the Waking, during your stay in Hal’s Bed and Breakfast. It’s perhaps pure luck that your paths did not cross, for you’re not sure how Gilbert would’ve reacted, or what he would’ve revealed to the Dream King once he went back.

After your walk for what seemed like hours, the grassy patch of land full of lush, blooming bushes and thick, tall trees greets you with what feels like an urgent breeze, almost making you stumble.

In your head comes Gilbert’s grave tone: “Mera, what are you still doing here?”

Feigning hurt at his words, you reply, “Hello, Gilbert. Am I no longer welcome in your lands?”

“Why, but of course you are, my dear,”  he amends. “But, given how dire your situation is, I hardly think this is the best time for a leisurely visit.”

“What do you mean, ‘my situation?’” you ask, your brows furrowing in confusion.

His breeze blows more insistently against you, making your dress billow along. “The Dream Lord has come to me about two days ago asking about you and a man called Oliver Chapman.”

Shit.

Every part of your body stills at the news, your heart sinking to your stomach.

“Now, if your relationship is anything as close as he had implied, this mortal is in danger, as are you. He has instructed me just this very morning to keep you here for as long as I could while he deals with this Chapman fellow, but I could not bring myself to keep you in the dark, especially as it sounded like you care much about him.”

Fiddler’s Green was just a diversion, the Voice concludes.

“You must go, Mera,” Gilbert says with another strong gust of wind as if trying to get you running.

Turning back to him one last time, you start, “Thank you, Gilbert –”

“Go!”

You need not be told further. With all the strength you could muster, you run as fast as your legs could carry you, not caring who or what you bumped into or if you tripped. With breakneck speed, you make your way to the sea of dreams, and will yourself to land in the dream of the man you love, your only remaining refuge, hoping against hope you weren’t too late to save him.

Ollie, startled by your sudden appearance, runs to your side at once. You gasp greedily for air, clutching a stitch on your side from all the effort.

“Mera, fuck... are you okay? What’s all this rush?” he asks, holding you by the shoulders to support you.

Tears of relief gather in your eyes as you take his unharmed form. You’re not late; you still had time.

Letting the tears cascade down your cheeks, you break the news to him:

“He’s coming. He’s coming for us.”

Author notes on the Chapter:

***********************************************

Link to the next chapter

Oh my god this went out of hand!! I'm sure I had mentioned on a tumblr comment that Ollie would only be around for around two chapters, but sorry, things and plot points seemed to have a mind of their own lol. Dream seems to have found them out!! How will their confrontation go?! Aghhhkk

As usual, thank you for sticking with me in this!! Love lots!!!

******************************

Author's notes in general:

Thank you, THANK YOU for reading!!

Please engage, comment and reblog!! I love feedback from you guys :) This is my first ever fic, so kindness is truly appreciated!

Thank you to my queen @queenshelby@endlessdreamqueen3 for encouraging me to pen this, as well as to my fellow Dark!Morpheus writers whose work I have thoroughly enjoyed and keep rereading :)

Post date: 12/19/22

Edit date: 12/19/22

Taglist: Just lemme know please if you want to be added, too!

Tagging the following:

@wt-fxck

@sandman-33

@reallystressedhoneybee

@akiraquote

@safe-teycar

@ponyboys-sunsets

@izziclee

@spygrrl99

@intothesoul

@thecrazytealady

@tastyinspection8860

@kittenssss-blog

@trinittyy

@mxacegrey

@sarahbullet235

@blu3what

@justporple

@emy635

@ggxsan

[rayless-reblogs]

Writing Patterns Tag Game

RULES: List the first line of your last 10 posted fics and see if there's a pattern!

Saw this (thank you @boobaloof!) and decided to give it a whirl.

All fics can be found on my AO3.

A Dream So Like Waking (Tales of the Abyss):

Natalia woke still dressed in a strange bed with the scent of selenias in her hair.

Welcome Home Discarded Faith (Tales of the Abyss):

It had otherwise been been a dull afternoon – gray, humid, excessively long.

And So All Yours (Tales of the Abyss):

Princess Susanne might lament the fact that neither of her sons chose to live in Fabre Manor, but she surely couldn't be surprised.

With Your Hands Your Hearts (Tales of the Abyss):

Natalia proposed to Asch on the night of his twenty-second birthday, and they announced it to Ingobert the next morning at nine-thirty, after his breakfast.

We Could Be Friends (The Caligula Effect):

Daisy never had enough time on her lunch breaks, but that day she knew she wouldn't even have time to sit and eat.

Jumping Off Cliffs (Fate/Extra):

When we cross into Alice's realm – and just now it feels more like Alice's realm than it does the SE.RA.PH's Arena – I remind myself that I have to keep hold of who I am.

The Muse of Last Songs (Transistor):

The thing is, with our hair, there wasn't anyone in my family who wasn't called Red at some point in our lives, as a casual nickname, or a love name, or whatever.

Constant As the Southern Star (Tales of the Abyss):

Natalia and her consort almost spent their wedding night in separate rooms.

Repaid With Life (Fate/Extra):

Archer regarded the enormous digital hamster ball around his Master (Tamamo disparagingly called it a fishbowl, and Nero more fancifully called it a snowglobe, but even in metaphor Archer would take durable plastic over glass any day) and gave himself a little nod.

The Muse of Songs Unfinished (Transistor):

It's risky, but it's not impossible.

Patterns?

I've heard my style described as "punchy", and I think I see it here. I tend not to ease into things with atmosphere or setting (which could work against me, in some cases) and instead lead with something declarative. I'm pretty quick to establish which character's pov we're working with.

Some of these examples vary in tone, but I think my voice is consistent. (But then, I would. That's really more for the reader to decide.)

Please go ahead and do this meme if you'd like to!

[lightsonparkave]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO LIGHTS ON PARK AVE! WE’RE OFFICIALLY FOUR YEARS OLD TODAY. Join the celebrations by submitting a work! There’s a little less than a week and a half left until Round 48 closes on August 31, and you have 143 prompts to choose from. There are no minimum work requirements or limit to how many works you can submit.

Not sure you can finish your work in time? Little messages are great presents too. What has the past year of Lights on Park Ave been like for you? Do you have a favorite prompt or round? A favorite LoPA work? Want to make a rec list of your favorites or wax poetic and show some love for a specific work and/or creator? Go for it. Let the Steve/Tony community know! The LoPA askbox is open or if you want to make your own Tumblr post or tweet, you can mention @lightsonparkave​ or tag #lightsonparkave. Whatever method you choose, I’ll make sure to share your message/post on here and Twitter.

Or maybe you’re not up to making anything this time. In that case, let’s take a walk down memory lane. Here are all 15 Lights on Park Ave works for previous rounds this past year.

EDIT

.616

"Now and Forever" - MissionCritical

MCU

Steve finding Tony after losing everything, losing Tony, and then finding his way back to Tony, where he belongs - Steviecpt (on Tumblr)​

Ultimates

“Make Such Fools of Ourselves” - @ralsbecket (see a sneak peek on Tumblr) The one where Tony reminisces on the journey he took with Steve, from professional colleagues to intimate lovers.

FIC

.616

“Puppet Master” - @nostalgicatsea Time flies when you're having fun or so the saying goes, but Tony can't say that he's enjoying himself if he can't remember any of it, even if the way that Steve looks at him now is everything he's dreamed of for years.

616/MCU

“forfeit your fate and watch it pay” - XtaticPearl/@suitofhumour The Civil War seems to be building even though it isn't a war yet but he's starting to believe that Steve won't back down if it came down to it. It's been a long week of longer days and Tony just wants to ignore all the red alerts for one day. Tomorrow he could go back to fighting his friends again. Fittingly, he gets a multiverse hopping Steve dropping into his home in the middle of the night.

AU

Electric Touch - @iam93percentstardust All I know is this could either break my heart or bring it back to life Got a feelin' your electric touch could fill this ghost town up with life And I want you now, wanna need you forever In the heat of your electric touch ~ But with Tony… He looks at him, and he wonders if Tony can bring him back to life. Every lingering touch, every smoldering glance, every knowing smirk makes Steve feel like he’s been lit up inside and they’ve haven’t even kissed. And he’s still scared, but he’s hoping—he’s hoping—that this story has a happy ending.

“Severed Ties” - @ayapandagirl/fluffypanda Severance AU, Cap says goodbye to Iron Man

"Severed Ties" continuation - @ayapandagirl/fluffypanda Severance AU, Cap and Iron Man don’t kiss

“start all over again” - @areiton He’s always wanted to see, what the warm water shoals were like.

“the closest to heaven that i'll ever be” - @tinystark616 Steve is an angel whose job is to take care of the people in New York and take their souls to Heaven when they die. After Maria Stark dies and begs him to please take care of her son, Steve decides it couldn't hurt to keep an eye on Tony. What Steve's not expecting is how easy and inevitable it is to fall in love with him.

MCU

An excerpt from a 1970 Steve/Tony Endgame @marveltrumpshate fic - @nostalgicatsea Most of his life, he had been busy looking over his shoulder or at the horizon. 

“give your heart to no one” - @areiton (also on Tumblr) He wakes up and finds out he’s lost everything.

“Hit and Run” - @nostalgicatsea Here they both were, Steve careening forward, the brakes useless and broken, Tony in the middle of the road. A collision years in the making.

“The End” - @tinystark616 It all started when Steve Rogers fell in love with Tony Stark.

“Together” - @tinystark616 Carol has rescued Tony from space, and now he has to confront his feelings for Steve while processing the trauma of losing the fight to Thanos. Tony realizes that the Steve that came back to him isn't the same Steve he used to know, but that he has changed as well..

[calehenituse-brainrot]

I dunno what you're going through, but allow me to gift you a fic! ❤

.

*ehem*

.

You've never been good at cooking. Well, it's not like you make the kitchen explode or manage to bring a dead fish back to life, but sometimes the soup would gain a mouth and the fried chicken (which you decided to fry whole instead of cutting it into pieces... Why...) would try and fight you back via fist fight.

There are also times when the lemonade you make would turn purple instead of pink, and wouldn't taste like lemonade but fucking strawberries and you just have to wonder how that even happens.

Where were you going with this?

Oh, yeah. You can't cook.

And it's not your fault. The instincts of being a witch is hard to let go, especially if this is how you've been since birth.

But then you've gotten memories of a past life. You've suddenly remembered a man with reddish-brown eyes and small smiles. Warm hands and soft lips. Arms wrapped around perfectly around your body. Waking up felt cold and lonely, and suddenly you've gotten a craving from a past life that you can't recreate because your new life instilled all necessary skills to survive.

Craving for the man.

And then craving for the food. Because food is number one in comforting a person.

But, well...

Witches are still not accepted, and should people find out about you, you'll be burned at the stake.

But, maybe you're gonna be found out sooner than later because you're losing against that motherfucking fried chicken. You should be winning because of your knife and your make-shift shield that's the cover of the pot, but the fried chicken is also somehow a master of martial arts and bitch slapped your weapons away before you could even attempt to stab it.

"What kind of witch-craft did I even--"

You looked towards the recipe book.

And found out that it wasn't a recipe book but your Witch's Tome 101 for Dummies.

You cursed and uncursed your past self. And then, you undid the curse on the chicken.

Well, you tried.

Because now the chicken decided you weren't worth the trouble anymore and opened the locks of your window. THE CHICKEN DIDN'T EVEN HAVE FINGERS HOW THE FUCK DID IT EVEN--

You tried to stop it, tried to grab it before it could happily jump into freedom, but it jumped and will now be seen by hundreds of people.

This is it. This is how you'll die.

The fried chicken is running loose in the city all because you had a dream of a past life and craved for food from it.

(Actually, you craved the hot man in it, so the next best thing was the food.)

Ha.

Hahaha.

You're so dead...

A knock on the door has you hitching your breath. Your forehead is somehow beaded with sweat, and you have to wonder if the people are now out to get you.

It hadn't even been minutes since the fried chicken decided it wanted a life for itself outside the four walls of your home.

With shaking hands, you unlocked your door, and slightly opened it to see who's at the other side.

A man... A beautiful man, mind you, was standing at the other side of the door with a scary swordsman behind him.

And... Shiiiiiiiiit...

The scary swordsman has the fried chicken wrapped up in thick rope. Serves that chicken right! BUT ALSO--

"Miss? I think you should let us inside."

You gulped.

You suddenly remembered who this beautiful man is.

Cale Henituse. The man. The myth. The legend himself was standing at your doorstep, probably ready to slay you if you say even the wrong thing.

And so, accepting your fate, you decided death via beautiful man wouldn't be so bad.

Stupid craving for beautiful men and fried chicken. Haaaaaaa....

.

.

Annnnd that's it! Witch!Reader and some very innaccurate witch craft finding her connection to her past lover via enchanted fried chicken! I hope you like it! ❤

OH MY GOD🥺🥺🥺

THIS IS SO CUTE ??? THANK YOU SO MUCH YOURE AMAZING AT THIS!!!

i was having pretty tiring day lately and this definitely lifted my mood🥺💗

also,

🥺🥺 you're making me wanna write thisISJSBWK i could write a witch!reader x cale but it probabily would end up making no sense since the only kinda witchy thing i do is tarot and im not even good at it😭😵‍💫

[hanafubukki]

Twisted Wonderland Masterlist Part 1

Ace Trappola

Warmth  (Platonic or Romantic)

Deuce Spade  

Warmth  (Platonic or Romantic)

Riddle Rosehearts

Signs of Affection

Just a Bite 🍓

From Rose Red to Snow White

I Suddenly Became the Mother of the Red-Rose Tyrant?!

Cater Diamond 

Those Who Smile the Brightest 

Lilia Vanrouge

All in Time Series (complete; just adding the occasional extras): Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3,  Fan-Baby, FanArt, FanArt 2, Fan Art 3 Fan Art 4

You’ll Be in My Heart  (Romantic)

Through Time, We Are Bound

The Beauty of Your Eyes 

Time and Time Again Series (Incomplete): Time and Time Again , We Meet Again and Again , The Years Pass By

“I Want to Bite Your Ears”

Binded by Fate 

Long Night  (Mature)

Protection From Afar 

A Missed Valentine 

Just A Human

Affectionate Gesture

Your Smile

Courting 

Awakening ,  Eternal Love

My Future Past

Textbook Lilia

Howl’s Moving Castle AU

God of Death and Destruction x Human AU

My Future with You

Cuddles with a Bat

A Fae’s Love (Mature)

Malleus Draconia 

Without You, Who Am I? (Romantic or Platonic)

Has He Loved Before You?

To Be His Queen 

Queen of the Fae

Be Mine

 A Special Day Between Us

The One I Treasure

Let My Voice Guide You From A Million Miles Away 

The Hearts of Those You Touched 

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes 

Dragon Cuddles 

True Love Kiss

Love Everlasting

Future Queen

A Happy Ending

Sebek Zigvolt

 Bookish Delight

My Lady 

A Cute Side

Silver Vanrouge 

Dream 

Twst Knight of Dawn

To The Past

My Love

Leona Kingscholar

His Beloved Master [Youkai AU]

Ruggie Bucchi

You Are Loved [Youkai AU]

First Year Gang

What?!

Empath! MC 

Heartslabyul Ver.

Scarabia Ver.

Savanaclaw Ver. 

Ramadan & Eid Al-Fitr & Eid Al-Adha

Heartslabyul Ver.

Savanaclaw Ver.

Octavinelle Ver.

Scarabia Ver. 

Pomefiore Ver.

Ignihyde Ver. 

Diasomnia Ver. 

Grim & NRC Staff Ver. 

Eid Al-Fitr in Twisted Wonderland 

Eid Al-Adha in Twisted Wonderland 

Ramadan Headcanons (2023): First Years , Second Years , Third Years

Cliche! Royalty AU Otome Game:

Diasomnia Ver.

Ridde Rosehearts Ver.

Ace Trappola, Epel Felmier, Azul Ashengrotto Ver.

One-Shots/Drabbles 

The Prefect

Leona Kingscholar 

Dire Crowley 

Lilia Vanrouge 

Replaced? How Foolish.

Hell Hath No Fury

Silver (Twst)

Sebek Zigvolt

Flirting Series: Riddle Rosehearts , Trey Clover, Ace Trappola 

HTTYD Quote Lilia X Reader Drabbles 

NRC vs RSA

Lilia and Malleus: Hair Fiasco 

Diasomnia: If world 

Silver’s Tears

Diasomnia Carrying Lilia, Lilia Carrying Diasomnia

Feeding Sebek: Love language 

Diasomnia Love Waking Silver 

Big Brother Silver AU: The Love of a Family

Sick Fic Drabble

Learned Habits of Love

Misc.

Zhongli: 

The Beauty of Your Eyes

The Happiness That Only You Can Bring

[kettlequills]

c11, waking dreams: master of fate

Read on A03 here.

The next day dawned cold and clear over Raven Rock, heralded by a stiff and chill wind blown over the clawing peaks of the Moesrings. Frea gratefully kept her hood down for the soot-speckled snowflakes to kiss her hair and ruddy cheeks with flecks of welcome coolness. She was the only one; the dark, narrow streets of Raven Rock were utterly deserted despite the egg-yolk warmth of the pallid sun creeping over the churn of the seaspray out the harbour. Distantly, she could hear the mighty puffing of the forge bellows; old Mallory had seized an early morning start to his work. The night lamps were still alight, flickering with arcane-ruby warmth in the sunken recesses of the sullen houses with their glistening chitin shells.  

Stamping on the ale-soaked and ashy slush ringing the Retching Netch’s gutters, Teldryn ran chitin-plated gauntlets up his armoured arms with hair-raising screeches that jangled on her nerves.

Nikulas, stubbornly wrapped up tightly in his furs, was turning a slow, bilious red. “I’m not going,” he said, obstinately. “You can’t expect me to leave you here! Farani told me to go with you, to keep you safe!”

“Nikulas.” Frea couldn’t help the cut in her tone, they had been arguing since full dark when they’d woken in the bowels of the Netch. “You must, I need you to take word of what I am doing back to the Skaal. I will be days behind you at most, but I need you to warn them to keep away from the Tree Stone until I can return to cleanse it.”

“Frea…” His nut-brown eyes, shrouded by the fur of his hood, were deep and drawn under the furrow of his brows. “You are our only shaman.”

“And I will return,” Frea repeated as soothingly as she could, “Not long after you.”

Nikulas shifted his weight between his feet, thumbing at the seam of his glove. His breath misted like that of the frost-spitting dragon Frea and Laataazin had faced at Nchardak, streaming trails of icy mist even as it raised its glossy royal-blue and silver wings and fled howling into the great cup of the sky. Dragons seen flying over the temple of Miraak, the restless dead stirring from their tombs, the whispers that even now boiled from the Stones too far to hear but just close enough to sense like a tongue on the neck; myths and mysteries were stirring out of the unquiet earth, waking monsters enrapt by some unknown call to life resounding through every bone and stone of Solstheim.

Frea needed to protect her people, arm them with what she knew. The Skaal could not be caught unprepared by a disaster like this again, there were too few of them to lose. He knew it, as well as she did. They needed this knowledge and the awareness of threats on the rise.

“The Traitor turned to our people first for a reason, Nikulas,” Frea urged him, taking hold of his fur-covered shoulders. He avoided her gaze, cheeks reddened, but Frea tucked a lock of hair behind his lightly pointed ear, encouraging him to look at her. “He picked us off out of our village, familiar hunters, trappers and outriders disappearing from the icy paths, knowing the lowlanders would not know before his army was too strong. The lowlanders already think us all dead. Will you make us pay the price of our isolation a second time? Time to prepare alone will grant us the advantage, will firm our steadfast hearts against the whispering of the enemy.”

“…All right,” Nikulas said unhappily. A true Skaal, through and through, blood of the mountains. “I will return to the village.”

She exhaled. “Thank you.”

He glanced away from her, frustration written in the taut line of his shoulders, and she could not let them part in anger. Tugging his arm, Frea pulled him into an embrace, the fur of his hood tickling the snow in her hair as she pressed his forehead to hers. Something in her slotted into warm completion when he did not push her away, but closed his eyes and leant back into her, the heat and smell of his breath scented with onion from their hasty breakfast brushing over her cheeks like a caress from the concept of home.

He was warm and solid and there in her arms, her kin, her people, and in her burnished heart grew a fierce and loving desire to protect. No more Skaal would die. No more.

All it would take would be Frea to be separated from her people for a short while. It was agony, but it was a short price to pay. She had done it before, with Dragonborn Laataazin. This time, the victory against swelling threat would be absolute; she would ensure it herself.

“Be safe, brother,” she murmured.

“Shaman,” Nikulas said back, with equal reverence and quietude. “… Frea.”

His warm brown eyes found hers, steady as the deep heart of an oak. The warmth of his skin, the smell of his stringy hair, the streaky kohl under his eyes to protect them from the snow; desperately she tried to memorise him, pull him closer into her until the bones of their skulls ground through their foreheads, like if only she could try hard enough she could bring this fledgling part of her people with her, down from the mountains into the warm ashlands where the elves roamed, with their restless dead.

The hammer across her back dug painfully into the meat of her shoulder. Rolling it against the yoke of the strap, she ruefully stepped back. Nikulas turned to face the mountains, and it was as if the sunlight came into his eyes as he looked into the stony breasts of rock and snow where deep amongst the peaks the village awaited him. He was a son of the mountains; the sweat of the lowlands did not belong on his brow, the soupiness of the air was not meant for his lungs.

Without another glance back, Nikulas adjusted his strung bow over his shoulder and set off at a hunter’s easy lope. Amongst the houses and the rising kiss of dawn, he was briefly silhouetted against the sun, the furs of his hood glowing gold. The raking tip of his bow over his shoulder seemed to draw orange fire through the creamy twilight blue, like a god from Storn’s old legends of the Hunter Fox, whose ears were so sharp they rent the All-Maker’s veil between the living and the hall of the dead. All the old heroes came tumbling out, with gods-ale on their breath and dragon-song in their bellowing voices to root out the heresies striding the icelands that birthed Frea’s people, long ago, before even the Guardian and the Traitor, before even when Solstheim was a bigger land, unsundered by sea, in the old age of dragons and gods.

But those were simply stories of the heroic past, just as the Traitor would be again – a footnote, in the Skaal’s legend.

Behind her, Teldryn was packing crushed herbs in his pipe. With a flick of his finger, he lit it and puffed deeply. He hummed low in his throat and the gravelly sound seemed to travel all the way through Frea’s spine down to the soles of her boots. His hair gleamed with oil like brushed night, his grey skin stippled faintly with blues and yellows, carded through by the stark lines of his facial tattoo. His lips were wet with balm that kept them from cracking against the sharp, ashy air. His fingers were long and graceful, arched like the great ribcages of whalebone washed up on the rocky shore, harvested and picked clean by the wildfolk. Frowning, she glanced away before he could catch her looking at him, tugging at the straps of her gear.

“That’s the stuff,” he murmured to himself, then, “Ready to go, Skaal?”

“My name is Frea, Dunmer,” Frea sighed, and he grinned at her impishly. His smile made his red eyes sparkle like rubies in firelight. “Where is Talvas?”

“I’m here!” the elf in question cried, dashing out of the Retching Netch. He had half his buttons done up in the wrong holes on his sunshine yellow robes so they hung off him like a strange, colourful tent. His arms overspilled with papers and there was sauce on his cheek. “Oh – you would not believe – you see, at Tel Mithryn, I – well…” His grey cheeks purpled at the sight of Frea’s impassive expression, stony as the Bulwark. “… I overslept.”

“Lead the way,” she said, gesturing to the well-trod path out of town.

“Oh, right, yes of course, we should be heading…” He turned round and round, holding his map up to the rising sun until the squiggles of ink were backlit, as striking as Teldryn’s tattoos.

“White Ridge Barrow?” Teldryn intervened, not without a cynical glance to Frea that had her pressing her lips together in a refusal to smile, “It’s this way.” He pointed.

“Right,” said Talvas, again, and blushed. “Well, off we go then.”

He set off, made it three paces, and stumbled over the hem of his unfastened robes. Maps and papers went flying. Talvas yelped.

“By Azura,” Teldryn muttered.

“Aye,” sighed Frea.

They shared a look, then Frea bent to help the hapless mage gather his papers.

After their slow start, it proved to be a gruelling trip. Barely had they stepped out of the gates than they were attacked by more of the shambling, eyeless ash-spawn lurching out of the dusty grey soot. The early morning chill and calm proved evasive under the humid ash-cover, and Frea had to rewrap her eyes and mouth with damp cloth that stuck unpleasantly to her skin every time they stopped, lest she choke to death on the dust. Bitterly, she envied Nikulas his ability to take the switchback Skaal hunting paths up the mountains, quicker, safer, and cleaner, to boot.

Teldryn seemed entirely unaffected, strolling through the ash clouds as if his boots did not kick up plumes that roused the ‘spawn, at times even smoking his pipe. His atronach followed them at a distance, heat simmering off it like the fire round a cookstone. It was a slim comfort that Talvas appeared just as miserable as Frea; the young mage clearly struggled to keep up with Frea’s mountain-bred stride or Teldryn’s apparently indomitable stamina. He shrouded himself in magical flames that no matter how hot they burnt never seemed to touch his robes or the rings he wore on his bare hands, but still shivered even with sweat on his brow.

The Dunmeri sellsword refused to keep his mouth shut, turning every quiet moment into an opportunity for aggrandisement. If the best damn swordsman in Morrowind wasn’t making sly jokes or complaining, he was bragging. A headache quickly took root behind Frea’s eyes and stayed there, but she gritted her teeth, thought of her people, and marched on.

It all began to go truly downhill after the sixth time they were attacked on the road. This time, reavers, a band of four skinny and ragged, one elf mage and three humans; Nords, Frea thought, by their salt-rough accents as they swore at her. One had a tattered mask hooked to his belt, still glowing faintly with enchantment, pale as bone and as striking as the very first time ones like it starred in Frea’s dreams, when the cult of Miraak had begun swarming around the Tree Stone, stealing free minded Skaal with their purple-tongued lies.

Immediately, Frea had gone for the ex-cultist, swinging Laataazin’s hammer as hard as she could. The momentum was intense; the wind whistled and shrieked, and the hammer all but leapt eagerly through the air, its brutal blunt face a vision of crushing evisceration. The cultist danced back, and the hammer met nothing – arrested by its weight Frea continued to spin, and narrowly avoided a rusty axe in the back.

Afterwards when the reavers were corpses bleeding dully into the ash, Teldryn rounded on her and snapped, “Is your sentimentality going to get us killed, Skaal? You don’t know how to use that damned thing!”

“I know enough,” she spat back, hot, tired, and angry. “If you’d not been distracting me all the way – what’s that?”

For Teldryn had scrabbled in the bloodsoaked dirt and come up with the ex-cultist’s rusted axe. “Here!” he thrust it at her, “Use this, and maybe we won’t all get killed.”

“No!” Frea hefted the gory-headed hammer, its threatening weight a solid and steadying burden. Reminding of her purpose, her people. What she was doing all this for. And Laataazin’s gift, to protect her people. She had to keep it safe for them, until they returned.

“Why carry around that thing?” Teldryn demanded. “It doesn’t make you the Dragonborn!”

His scorn hit too close to home, and Frea blushed hotly with anger and embarrassment. She slung the hammer off her shoulder and stepped up to him, squaring off against the shorter elf until his face was in shadow from her broad shoulders and looming height.

“You do not understand, elf!” she told him, jabbing him in the chest. “I was charged with using this weapon until its rightful master returns to claim it!”

Teldryn’s red eyes burned like coals. “Grow up,” he snarled, “Are you truly waiting for that drunken s’wit to come back and save you? They’re not coming back, Azura be praised, they’re dead in a ditch!”

“You may think the worst of the world, but I don’t,” Frea hissed back, “I believe in my friend. I believe the All-Maker sent us what and who we needed. I believe in all the sacrifices we have made to reach this point!”

Teldryn started laughing before she was done, bitter and raucous. His atronach did an uneasy flip behind them. “Tell me, Skaal – what kind of warrior leaves their best weapon to fight a would-be god, in the hands of someone who doesn’t even know how to use it?”

Frea hardened with fury, but he only shook his head at her, the poison in his fiery eyes so disappointed it seared her. “Face it, I knew it when that fetcher, rat-faced off more sujamma than Geldis’d sold all year, swaggered into the Netch looking for a local to take ‘em up to that temple, and I told them: no amount of money’s worth that death-wish, and I knew it when they came back with some pretty, brainless Skaal in tow with a blindspot as big as your precious fucking honour!”

“How dare you-!” she began to hiss, but he cut her off with an impatient swipe of his hand, the silver ring on his finger glinting like a star.

“The Dragonborn’s abandoned us to whatever the fuck’s going on now. Get used to it, kid, the heroes don’t care.”

“Enough!” a clap of lightning, and Frea looked at Talvas. His eyes were red rimmed, he was shaky and pale. “We just killed four people, and you two are arguing about – what, how you could have done it faster? No –!” He raised his hands, forestalling their objections. “Shut up! It doesn’t matter! Both of you, shut up and help me find this damn barrow, so I can go home!”

He turned away, his breath rising on nearly a sob. Frea glanced down at the four dead bodies, cooling slowly besides the path. Blood sprayed liberally across the dirty ash, dripped slowly from the head of the hammer over her back. She could smell its iron tang even through her cloth, feel its warmth against her back. Talvas held the sleeve of his robe to his mouth and shuddered, like he was going to be sick.

Silence.

“Fine,” said Frea.

With one last glare at Teldryn, she shouldered the hammer again and went to Talvas. She tried to reach for his arm, to comfort him, but he shook her off, marching away with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, like he was keeping himself held together. His cheeks were very pale; Frea suddenly saw how very, painfully young he was, even through his elven features and strange, luxury-softened skin. He stood out in his cheerful yellow robes like a butterfly pinned to a board, a familiar hollow misery tense in his eyes.

Dropping her hand, Frea fell back. The first were never easy. Had it truly been so long since her own that she was numb to the brutal cost of violence?

In the dust behind them, Teldryn searched the pockets of the dead and rolled them into a pile. He tossed a flame spell into the corpses and left them there to burn, the pillar of greasy smoke like a trail marker in the sky.

They reached White Ridge Barrow after one long, tense night spent camped out in the wilderness, huddled up against the ash-blown trees. On the morning of the second day, snow had started to fall heavily, slowing their progress. Frea went ahead, breaking the snow with her sturdy legs for the smaller elves. Teldryn walked behind Talvas now, in case the mage stumbled and did not rise; his flame cloak had long flickered out, and he shivered like a sad plant in the harsh gusts. Unable to bear the pathetic sight, Frea had leant him her cloak which presently swallowed him in a mound of furs, until only his black hair and chilly, red-pinched ears peeked out the top.

Frea could not help the rise in her mood as they worked their way higher into the mountainous, rugged landscape. The air seemed easier to breathe, fresher and clear. The snow was dirty grey from ash, but the further they got from the warmer lowlands the less they found. The path was not hard to find, either, broken by wandering feet; perhaps a herd of wildfolk had come through this way, leaving no trace of their presence but softened snow over hard-packed, pressure-crushed ice.

Not hard to find for Frea, anyway, the two elves followed her like sooty ducklings, complaining about the chill on their boots. But Frea heard the earthsong of the All Maker in the rock and snow, in the playful wind that tossed at her hood and pinched her cheeks. The All Maker smiled down on them from the chilly sun, and Frea was at peace.

The ruin itself crouched like a squat reikling in the lee of a rocky cliff, the hump of its stony back gathered with wicked icicles. At first it was nearly invisible, a hulking shadow of black rock nestled resentfully against the sturdy lip of unhewn stone, but Frea felt it, that stillness in the air that whispered of the resting place of the old elders. The elements here were poisoned by ancient magics, necromantic spells and dark, twisted energy bent to the service of dragons and their priests, gods amongst men. It manifested as an eerie chill that crept up Frea’s spine. The All Maker’s presence in her blood dimmed, a couched warning she did not need.

There was darkness here, ancient and slumbering.

They approached in cautious silence, Teldryn recasting his flame atronach for some needed light. The daedra’s crackling face stared eyelessly forward, the graceful arcs of its soaring body sending twists of light across the old stone, painting the ice with rubies. The vast porch of the ruin was held up by a wavering column of ice-packed brick, blackened by the remnants of some ancient fire and thousands of years of scouring. A hollow coolness enveloped them as they stepped beneath its shadow and faced the wrought-iron doors, sealed against intrusion. Talvas clustered uncertainly close to Teldryn’s atronach, seeking the heat.

Frea glanced at her companions. “Ready?”

Talvas swallowed, but nodded, his grey face pallid and blue. Teldryn only smirked, flipping his sword easily in his hand. Facing forward, Frea pulled the hammer off her back. With a creak, she pushed the door open, and then as one, they stepped into the abyss.

The first thing Frea noticed was the cold. The second, the silence.

It was deathly still, so cold that her breath plumed in front of her as she stared into the slick, icy darkness. The tunnel’s mouth was ringed with ice, sleeting over the steps down into the dusty ruin. There were no whispers, no skitters, no uneasy shivers in the rock with the presence of watchful eyes – nothing but silence, and cold, and death.

The frost-choked walls stretched on and on into the bowels of the earth. Not even dust fell in the wobbly, watery gleam of light through thick ice. It was like the whole place was suspended in time, caught between one breath and the next.

Frea’s boots handled the slippery ice well, but Talvas and Teldryn had to crawl at points, easing themselves down smoothened steps on their hands and knees. The fire atronach Teldryn kept behind them as to not weaken the ice they scrambled over. Her passage left little runnels of melted icewater, dripping clear over entombed shadows of what looked like hundreds, thousands, of tiny, spidery bodies.

Entire cobwebs had been plastered against the wall and frozen solid, egg sacs had ruptured in the howling cold and frozen mid-explosion, spiders trapped in perfect form, some still curled up in their webs, beneath the ice. Their eyes gleamed, bright and dead.

“I hate this,” Teldryn announced, “In case you were wondering, I truly hate this.”

He eased himself round the frozen-solid corpse of an uncomfortably translucent spider the size of his torso with a grimace Frea could all but feel even behind his chitin helmet.

“This ice is not natural,” said Frea, “I wonder if we will meet the mage who cast it?”

“By the Three,” Talvas moaned, and no one said anything for a little while.

Eventually, the cramped, winding tunnels opened out into a hall, and the spiders began giving way to bodies, instead. Mostly human, a few others, and all absolutely dead. Some were frozen still sat in chairs or in beds, abandoned games of dice stuck to their cold, frost-bitten flesh. Others had fallen, their expressions twisted up in terrible shock and horror. Whatever had come for them, they had not expected it.

“Loot’s still here,” said Teldryn, prising some coins off the table with his dagger, “No one cleared this cave.”

“Then where are the elders?” asked Frea, and an uneasy silence fell. Numbered among the dead, they had seen no draugr, no walking dead, but plenty of niches, tombs, and resting places. They had been here – but where were they now?

“Where’s this artefact you’re looking for?” asked Teldryn, and Talvas shrugged uneasily. “Experience tells me its probably at the ass-end then,” sighed Teldryn.

They proceeded further through the ruin, into the sanctum of White Ridge Barrow. Here too, it was dark and still and silent, but there was barely any ice. Only a trail of frost, oddly familiar, blazed the way down through the ruin like a clairvoyance spell. It was only when Frea’s eye landed on Teldryn’s atronach doing a lazy flip that she realised what the frost trail reminded her of; the fire that played at her ankles, blurring and burning along behind her in a smoky line.

Frost atronachs did not float with ice trailing under their feet, though, they stomped. Their ice, though it felt different to true ice, did not feel as rigidly unnatural, as dead as this ice did. This ice was near-sentient with a palpable aura of sorrow and the rigid, static anger of the dead. It seethed, crunching bitterly under Frea’s boots like it resented her and every living thing that passed over it. With a subtle and malignant glitter, it reflected the shine of their weapons, the elves’ glowing eyes, like it watched them.

And in the distance, a soft scratching started. Nearly inaudible, like a grating against the inside of Frea’s eyes.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, it went.

Squeezing the grip on the hammer, Frea swallowed around a dry throat. She kept her eyes on the ground in front of her and edged forwards, wishing that Teldryn had taken the lead. Talvas behind her cleared his throat.

Scratch, scratch – silence.

The scratching paused.

Frea froze in place. With a grunt, Teldryn collided with Talvas, and they both hit her. She lost her grip on the ice and slid, and with a hoarse yell all three of them tumbled down the sloping staircase to the icy bottom. Teldryn swore loudly the whole way down, his fire atronach flickering after them with the smug air only the flighted could, at the flightless.

They landed heavily on Frea, crushing the breath out of her. She started to complain, but Talvas shushed them both impatiently.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. In the silent darkness, the scratching started up again.

“Can you hear that?” Frea hissed, and she felt Talvas nod against her shoulder.

“Let me guess,” Teldryn said, dourly, “We are going towards the creepy noise.”

“We have to investigate,” said Frea, shaking them off her like puddles of sulky, armoured rainwater. Teldryn groaned in resignation.

The scratching got louder the further down the trail of ice they went. They edged round the corner into a wide hall capped by a magnificent subterranean wall, carved with strange, archaic words that bit at Frea’s vision, demanding attention. She scanned the darkness carefully, but nothing moved.

“I don’t see anything,” she whispered, and felt Teldryn press up behind her. His warmth tickled at her nape as he came up behind her with a creak of leather and the soft rasp of chitin on chitin. She waited in taut silence while he judged the room ahead.

His closeness made the pit of her belly shiver and roll over itself. She was near enough to smell the musk of leather and sweat, armour oil and soot that clung to him. His lips brushed her ear as he settled forward on his toes, leaning into her space. Her heartbeat picked up.

With a flick of his fingers, he gestured his flame atronach forwards. She drifted past, a pillar of gracefully twining flame. Insouciant, unbothered, she made her way into the centre of the room, and executed a single, lazy flip.

Then, quite promptly, she exploded.

Teldryn’s hand clasped immediately over Frea’s eyes, pushing her back against the stone. She yelped, but he shushed her, his warm voice catching in her ear like smoke in her throat. Her toes curled. She felt the strength of his grip, his fiery heat, the tough wiriness of his arms, his compact chest. He was like no man she had ever touched; no Skaal with their sensible layer of padding and hair, no, he was all raw, lissom elf, blazing with rude heat.

Quite against her will, Frea’s face flooded with pink.

“We’re good,” he said.

Teldryn released her, and she yanked out of his arms and stormed away before he could see her bright blushing cheeks. She did not want to deal with his teasing. And she knew, she knew he would have something to say about this. It was just – blood. It was warmer next to him than it was anywhere else, it was just a simple reaction to temperature. She was still angry with him.

It didn’t mean anything.

She was distracted by Talvas’ loud cheer. “This is it!” he darted over to examine the rock wall, fingers trailing over the jagged carvings. “There should be a stand…”

He turned, and his face palpably fell. The towering lectern Talvas was approaching sat directly across from the wall of dragon words and the large tomb between them. It radiated a fearsome aura of darkness. Tentacles squirmed forever just inches away from their goal, hidden eyes nestled between their thick, oily strands and glistening wetly, even as immobile stone and metal. It loomed threateningly, just tucked out of sight of the entrance, but planted opposite the silent tomb of the barrow’s most powerful elder like a terrible, ominous watcher.

A vicious black stain scarred the top of the lectern, where a Book should be.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, went the eerie noise.

“This isn’t right,” he said, “No, no, there’s supposed to be…”

He started forwards, but Frea grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. His sunshine yellow robes bunched up around her hand and he wheezed indignantly.

“Stop,” said Frea, “That looks like Herma-Mora’s work.”

“It’s not…” Talvas grimaced. “Fine, it’s the artefact I was sent to retrieve for Neloth. He knows how to study the Books! There are no safer hands for them than his.”

“No,” Frea snarled at once. “Those Books are evil-! We should be so lucky that they have all gone, back to their dark master.” She spat on the ground, like it could shake the image loose of her father’s body, pierced through with Herma-Mora’s writhing, hungry corruption.

“I’m more concerned about where the dead are,” broke in Teldryn diplomatically. “Perhaps one took the other?”

He had wandered off to the side during Talvas and Frea’s exchange, and now as she turned to face him, he kicked the front of a coffin. The eerie scraping redoubled itself, along with a faint, nasty snarling Frea swore she could feel on her throat. Teldryn flipped his sword, grinned at them, and wrenched the coffin open.

A desiccated draugr fell out.

Darting to one side, Teldryn raised his sword for a killing blow, but the draugr did not attack him. It did not even look at him. Instead, it dragged itself forward on its skeletal arms, its blue gaze burning with a ferocious and unspeakable purpose. Teldryn’s glittering red eyes tracked it crawling across the floor towards a dark passageway.

He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t suggest following that,” he said, “That’s creepy shit, that way.”

“We should follow it,” said Frea, and Teldryn groaned. “It could be a trap.”

“Exactly!” said Teldryn, “That’s why we shouldn’t follow it!”

“Wherever its going could be where the rest of the draugr are,” suggested Talvas. “Maybe they have the Book?”

“For the record, I don’t like this,” Teldryn grumped, but fell in line behind Talvas anyway.

“You don’t like anything,” Frea snapped.

“Nothing that’s likely to kill me, no,” Teldryn retorted.

Ignoring them, Talvas forged on after the draugr fearlessly, conjuring a magelight that floated above his head. Frea brought up the lead, glaring at the back of his head. She remembered being pressed against his chest in the passageway and fought the spreading warmth in her face. Her own blush roused a sour taste on her tongue, remembering the bitter flash in his eyes as he mocked her for her belief in her friend.

She looked down at the hammer she held. It was too heavy to carry it without an immediate threat present, not like Laataazin had, hoisting it on one powerful shoulder like it weighed nothing at all despite having a head almost bigger than theirs. For all her size, her strength, Teldryn was right. She was used to her dual hand axes, quick and biting and good for scaling cliffsides in a hurry. She wasn’t a warrior, like he was.

But she was a shaman, and she would always fight for her people.

She felt the touch of the All Maker in the sun that pierced shyly the long tunnel, warming her cheeks. It was wan and pale, but all their steps picked up with palpable relief. No one wanted to linger here.

The passageway was steep and dusty, winding up to the surface. In places they had to scramble up on hands and knees, goat-hopping up collapsed stairways. A chill, fresh wind wisped past them, ruffling the sweat on Frea’s brow.

The draugr was unaffected by the ice and had already made it out onto the broken snow by the time Frea scrambled out of the half-collapsed exit. The snow here was crushed and spotted by dozens of walking feet, spotted with decayed fragments of cloth and rust. A skeleton was sprawled across the path, its rat-gnawed bones ancient and brittle. The dead had passed through, heading inexorably away from the ruin, into the snow.

“Where are they going?” Talvas asked.

Frea did not answer. She frowned at the skyline. The tracks were headed loosely southeast, towards the heart of the mountains. Were the missing deadwalkers of White Ridge Barrow planning to go through the mountains to the lowlands, or worse, to the temple that lurked in its centre? What was the likelihood that Frea’s suspicions of the Traitor’s murky and incomplete defeat had something to do with this as well?

A glacial wind picked up as they followed the draugr, scattering snowflakes and bites of icy hail. A roiling fog lingered at the peaks of the mountains, obscuring the glittering snowfields. The broken snow stretched on, punctuated by the detritus of death; fallen organs pickled and dry, scraps of skin and bone. The snow fell, swift and remorseless, threatening a gathering blizzard. Above, clear and unconcerned, the sky was smooth and untroubled by clouds.

“It is magical,” Frea called over her shoulder, reaching back for Talvas’ hand. He took it, his grasp hot and sweaty against her glove. “I cannot feel the All Maker in this.”

“Great,” Teldryn muttered, gripping onto Frea’s belt.

“We must be getting close!” said Talvas.

They kept close to her as they pressed on, using her taller body as a wind break. Frea pulled her scarf up over her nose so the wind had less of her cheek to bite. Bending her shoulders to the unnatural wind, she grit her teeth against the sting of prickly, defensive magic that steered the wind’s howl. It almost pushed them away with intangible hands, protective and malignant.

Teldryn saw them first. With a hiss, he pulled on Frea’s shoulder, halting her in her tracks, and pointed. Through the thickening snow, Frea glimpsed a knot of strange, tattered figures, standing motionlessly in front of a collapsed cliff as if uncertain. A few draugr were braving the climb up the ice-slick rock, tumbling back down again almost as soon as they got up.

In their centre, a great and terrible figure hovered. Not in the way Teldryn’s atronach had, as if buoyed by its own flame and heat, but like an image, pasted onto the world after the rest had already been drawn in. It did not fit, hanging there listlessly like a corpse from a tree, at once too animate to be truly dead, and not enough to be alive. Forewarned by some arcane sense, the figure turned towards them, the blizzard swirling around its tattered robes. The mask on its face gleamed coldly, cruelly, with ancient and deathly darkness. It spoke, in a rumbling, inhuman voice, guttural and harsh, its skeletal hands gesturing in front of it. Icy blue scales guarded its shrunken chest, royal blue and white.

Though the wind was harsh, its dead voice carried clearly through the air, echoing with an uncanny resonance like the wind loved its words too dearly to let them die. Dragon-tongue, and dragon-words.

“Bronze balls of Seht! That’s a dragon priest!” cursed Teldryn, “We need to get out of here.”

The words were familiar, tickling the back of Frea’s mind. It almost sounded like old Skaal, the tongue of stories and myth. She picked up odd words, here and there, and when the dragon priest stopped it extended its hand and beckoned to them. That was a gesture she did know.

“Drem. Bo-aav het, mal-briinah,” the undead priest rumbled. Its bleached white hair blew softly about its mask, escaping from holes in its ragged hood.

“It’s not unfriendly,” said Frea quickly, and Teldryn scoffed disbelief.

“It’s an undead,” he hissed.

“These are her ancestors,” said Talvas, peering uncertainly round Frea’s shoulder. “By the flame, shut up and let her handle them.”

“Los Frea,” she said, mustering herself, and clapping her palm across her chest.

The dragon priest drifted forward a step, the light shimmering over the icy scales on its chest. Closer, she made out the intricate details on the frayed and tattered robes, fractal patterns that reminded her of snowflakes. The mask gleamed coolly, like the reflection of a still pond under moonlight. Unholy blue eyes blazed out from behind the mask. It radiated wrongness, an offence to the sky that held it.

“Zu’u Dukaan,” the priest, Dukaan, growled back, imitating her. “Koraav hi drog-Krosulhah? Bo mu krii se munax nau golt. Zu yah thuri-Miraak. Aav-mu, Frea-briinah?”

“What did it say?” Teldryn asked her urgently. He was gripping his sword, staring at the dead with terrified hatred.

Frea recognised only one word, Miraak. She bared her teeth, reaching for the hammer. “Traitor!”

“Vahlok-aar!” The dragon priest screamed back, and summoned its staff to its hands. “Alduin rel ko Solstheim fen al! Mu fen stin! Aar – krii daar wo krif thuri-Miraak!”

“Mu fen stin!” a deathlord bellowed, and the fight was on.

There were too many of them. The draugr swarmed them like locusts across the snow, blown back by Teldryn’s fire and Talvas’ wild, explosive spells. Frea guarded their front, swinging Laataazin’s hammer like an instrument of doom. But they kept coming, and all the while Dukaan tossed chunks of ice and pure force at them, forcing them to run behind rocks.

“We need to run!” Teldryn shouted as one such temporary shelter shattered around their heads, sending chunks of razor sharp rock rocketing through the air.

“Miraak!” Dukaan wailed, as if in answer. “Faal Dovahkiin bo! Rok aak mu!”

“We can’t outrun that!” Talvas yelled back, “it’ll shoot us down from behind!”

Teldryn swore loudly. Frea swung Laataazin’s hammer into the chest of a draugr, grunting as the hammer nearly spun out of her hands in its eagerness to maim.

Teldryn shot across the ice and parried the blow, jarring Dukaan’s staff from its grip. It dropped the staff and retaliated with a blast of frost that he dodged nimbly, his sword dancing out flickering with fire. He traded swings with the priest for a minute, and then hastily scrambled backwards as his atronach bulled in and exploded in flames, its summon expired.

Dukaan seemed unfazed, and blasted him backwards. Teldryn collapsed into a snowdrift, but Frea could not spare a second to check if he was alright, she was already charging forward to re-engage. The draugr knotted around Talvas, who yelped.

Lightning forked – a sudden, hard flash of stark purple. A ring of draugr collapsed into fire, and a powerful storm atronach swirled up from the ashes, tossing thunderbolts. Talvas was screaming, somewhere, but magic was snapping over the sky, frostbolts and thunder crackling among the fire.

“Zahkriisos!” Dukaan howled with such clear grief that Frea bit her own lip, hard. “Ahzidal! Aak hin fahdon! Krosulhah! Hon-ni dii zaan?!”

Frea closed with it, going for an overhead strike. Dukaan swayed back out of the way, its eyes glowing fiercely with magic. Its scale armour glinted wickedly.

“Your people are dead!” she taunted the priest, “Your time is gone! And soon, so will you be!”

Dukaan’s guttural snarl was her only reply.

Dodging a blast of frost from Dukaan aimed at her head, Frea squinted over the battleground. Teldryn, there – sword in hand, back to back with someone – Talvas? But then – who was that, on the ridge, graceful arms upraised like a conductor, hurling thunderbolts like snowballs?

She had no time to question it, because sensing the battle turning, Dukaan flung itself at her with an immortal screech of rage and grief.

The dragon priest pushed her down, its skeletal hands going for her neck and squeezing. She coughed for air, pushing at the intractable arms. Dukaan’s masked face loomed over her. This close, Frea could almost see hints of what Dukaan had once been; alive, mortal, like her and her people. Before the gruesome pact with power, following the traitor past death. Stringy, brittle white hair poured out from around the hood, a veritable mane when it was alive. Dukaan had Nikulas’ small pointed ears, Farani’s thick hair, but harsh blue eyes that glowed with fierce undeath. Whatever colour they had been was wiped away by the cursed magic that animated it now.

Its hands were icy cold, fighting for purchase on the thick furs around her neck.  She knew, somehow without knowing, that the dragon priest could not even see her, that some other foe had gripped its deathless mind. It screamed as it choked her, insane with rage and a brutal sorrow that burrowed into her heart like an ice spike, aching and chill. Frea writhed under its hollow-boned grip and wheezed for breath, dark spots appearing before her eyes.

She was going to die. It was going to break her neck, and she was going to die here, without ever going home again.

Uselessly, her fingers twitched for the haft of the hammer knocked out of her hands. Hot tears squeezed out of her eyes, blurring the gruesome visage of the dead priest, the rasping gasps of her final exhales muddying the icy visage of the scalloped mask.

A spell rippled over her head and struck Dukaan in the chest like a clap of thunder. The dragon priest was blown backwards by the force. Frea’s ears rang. She scrambled to her feet and lurched for the hammer, grabbing it and swinging it over her head. She still couldn’t breathe, wobbling for steadiness around crashing, discordant colours.

Dukaan’s eyes seared her, wrought in horrific agony, a grief so potent it ached. A second spell clipped the edge of the mask and it spun, pinwheeling away from the rotten face. Laataazin’s hammer crashed into the weakened skull half a breath later, shattering it into an explosion of bone fragments. The awful blue gaze winked out, but she kept going, couldn’t stop. The hammer lurched in her hands like a living thing, directing her, moving her, driving her to a final and brutal vengeance. She kicked the dragon priest’s body off the hammer and struck again, pulverising the chest this time, ancient bone and scale cracking under the fierce warsong of the hammer like eggs.

Dukaan’s deathless body began to flake and ash. Her next swing scattered the ash into an explosion of mothwing softness, arcane remains glittering in the foul snow. Dukaan’s mask, empty and still, lay a short distance away. Abandoned there among the blue-purple shimmer, it was almost beautiful, like captive silver in the heart of the aurora.

Breathing heavily, Frea raised her head, sweat stinging into her eyes. She blinked it clear – and saw the impossible.

A stone stood, pulsing with power, around the chest of a she-elf, whose fingertips dripped magic. She lowered her hands, her flaked-blood eyes throbbing with that terrible, wicked glow. Her summons flickered around her, the shapes of one – two –  three storm atronachs, standing at her shoulders like sentries, like bodyguards. Her body looked wrong, moved wrong, the joints stiff and unrolling, a blank, voidlike spot in the world where a normal body should be. The red stone sat in her chest like a disease, lurid, livid veins crawling up round her ears, into her brain like a cancer.

“Friend or foe?” Teldryn called from somewhere.

Frea hefted the hammer over her shoulder but fell before she could get it up past her elbow. She wheezed for breath, tugging at the collar of her furs. A slow agony spread over her shoulders and spine, starbursts pinwheeled angrily behind her eyes. Dukaan’s hands were still around her neck, clenching on, cold as the grave. The snow was wet against her knee, which throbbed with a distant ache – the forewarning of a mighty bruise.

The elf’s eerie glow died, and she pulled her robes around herself, shivering faintly. Through blurring eyes, Frea watched her stumble over to them, her gait uncertain and unsure, like the recently blind or terribly cold. She leant heavily on her lightning staff like it was a walking stick, burrowing into the shawl wrapped around her shoulders and face as if it were a security blanket. Her summons winked out as if they had never been there at all.

She reached for them like a child for comfort, her small grey hand crusted with ice crystals and snowflakes. Talvas met her, cautiously, and took that outstretched hand, gasping at her coldness. He gathered her against his chest, a flame cloak flickering weakly to life, despite his exhaustion.

“Frea.” It was Teldryn, Teldryn, coming up next to her. His warm hand clasped around hers, the other wrenching at his gauntlet. The chitin came off and he tossed it carelessly into the snow, his shimmering eyes red and concerned. “Frea, breathe. Where are you hurt?”

She wheezed, voice stoppered in her throat. He hovered above her, alien and handsome face twisted with some expression she couldn’t identify. Though he was gentle, the first touch of his fingertips to her throat made her hiss a strained objection.

“Azura,” murmured Teldryn, not a curse but somehow a prayer, and at once the pain in her throat dissolved to warmth.

Frea choked, and then coughed. She curled over herself, his restoration magic tingling in her bones like glitters of starfire, licking the inside of her skin. She could taste the goddess in the back of her throat, impersonal and twilit, a cold kind of glow that spoke of the gaps between the stars. A terrible knowledge and potent, esoteric grief ebbed at the agony Dukaan’s scrabbling madness had left behind, soothing the bruising of her throat with a coolness like a stranger’s chilly hand to her skin. Teldryn supported her onto her side in the wet snow, rubbing her back smoothly to ease her breathing.

“Thank you,” she rasped out, eventually, and his hand hesitated on her back.

“Think nothing of it, Skaal.”

“Travellers.” It was the she-elf. She spoke the mainlanders’ Cyrod thickly, through a grating voice. She lingered against Talvas’ chest, who brushed her down with a gentle, distracted air. After a stilted moment, her own Dunmeri fire began to lick against her skin, outlining her in a glowing wreath. Talvas smiled at her encouragingly, and stepped back, his own flame cloak as bright and boyish as he.

Teldryn rolled his shoulders back and matched them, his own fire strong and hot. She felt it from where he crouched next to her, the arcane birthright of his elf-blood burning like pitch in his veins, warming him with the hearts and ashes of his ancestors.

“Who are you?” Talvas asked her, curious but not unfriendly.

“Pardon my interruption,” continued the stranger, as if he had not spoken. Her fire was muted and dim, as shifting and strange as she was. Beside the brilliant bright yellow of Talvas, the rich and fierce heat of Teldryn, it reminded Frea of embers recently splashed with water, the faint memory of heat amongst sodden, silent ash.

Teldryn shifted beside her, groping for his gauntlet in the snow. His flaming hand cut a path through it, melting the thickly packed snow like it was freshwater. The light from the three elves blazed against the gathering teeth of the storm, outlining them like pillars, like beacons against the dark. The snow whipped at the robes of the mages, dusting the rich black of Talvas’ hair like dots of stars. Around them the ice was softened, dampened, gleaming with its own watery blood and the smoking remains of the dead draugr. Dukaan’s ashes shimmered.

Feeling human and alone, Frea gingerly pushed herself to kneeling. Her chest ached at the movement but surrounded by fey elves burning with their own magic, she did not want to lie dead like a corpse in the snow. Besides, it was getting cold, even for her.

“Sadrith accent if I ever heard,” he muttered. “Mainlander Telvanni,” he clarified for Frea, in an undertone.

Frea nodded. She wasn’t quite sure what a Telvanni was, but Teldryn spoke as if it was a bad thing. One of the Dunmeri clans, perhaps, a rival one to his own? The Dunmeri fought like scrapping foxes, always snapping and snarling. They warred with one another like they did not fear the winter.

“Are any of you … injured?”

“Thanks to you, nothing that magic can’t fix,” Frea managed. Her voice still sounded strained, but at least she could breathe easily. “May we know your name, stranger?”

“… Sarothril,” she said, slowly, as if struggling to recall.

“Sarothril?” Talvas repeated, “That’s funny – I saw, that is…” he trailed off, and then cleared his throat, “It’s just, I could have sworn I’ve heard that name before. Oh!” He snapped his fingers. “Ildari Sarothil. Any relation of yours?” He beamed up at her.

“Ildari,” she repeated. “Ildari Sarothril.” She lurched a step closer. Her movements seemed wrong, sickly, as if she shivered with a vicious premonition none of them could see. “I am Ildari Sarothril.”

“Oh…” Talvas’ eyes widened. “I have to tell Master Ne-!” Her eyes gouted with red flames, and Talvas backpedalled hastily, as if thinking better of mentioning his irascible, often unfriendly mentor to a powerful stranger. “I mean, maybe I’ve made a mistake, I just, I swear – I swore I saw your name… somewhere at Tel Mith- uh, never mind. Are you a mycologist? An author?”

“I … was … learning,” she said, with great and painful effort.

“A researcher, then, I must have read one of your books, you are impressive with conjuration,” said Talvas. “Are you quite well, Miss Sarothril?”

It was a question Frea couldn’t fault him for asking. The conjurer may have helped them with powerful magic, but now the battle was over she stood hunched over, leaning on her staff, and looked nothing so much as lost. There was a dullness in her red eyes, more brown than the vibrant glitter of Talvas’ and Teldryn’s, and her skin was greyed with pallour. She looked half-erased, like charcoal washed by the waves, all blurred lines and silent misery. Her fire kept close to her body, like it was shy.

Uncomfortably, Frea was reminded of Dukaan, of the silence in the Skaal who were taken by Miraak, beating away at the Tree Stones. It was the expression of somebody who was transfixed by a darker, higher calling, perverting their mind and stealing their senses.

She had no doubt this elf was more than she seemed. Simply insane, or dangerous?

Frea was not willing to bet a sick woman’s life to a magical snowstorm to find out.

“Come,” said Frea kindly, “Sit by our fire tonight, mage. Your help was timely. I am Frea, of the Skaal.”

Not to mention, Dukaan’s conjured storm had not blown itself out yet. It would not last long without its caster to sustain it, but Frea could feel the snow soaking through her furs, and she had no desire to be out late in it. She would not leave a stranger who had aided them out to freeze – let alone a sickly, strange one, who she was not certain had the wherewithal to find shelter on her own. Where had she come from?

“Sero. What were you doing up here?” Teldryn asked her flatly, and her lip pursed at the thought that their minds had followed a similar track. “Isn’t anyone taking care of you?”

“Niyya,” offered Ildari, dazedly, as if that meant anything to them. A name, perhaps? It sounded human. “Timely.” She looked down at herself, as if surprised by the concept that she could ever be something so convenient as in the right place in the right time.

“I’m Talvas,” said Talvas, brightly, and took Ildari’s hand. It seemed as if he meant it to be a brief gesture, but she clutched onto him like a lifeline. Talvas’ smile wavered, but he bolstered himself with kindness, and leant into her as if granting her his heat. “Don’t worry, we’ll help you.”

“Are you Telvanni?” Frea heard her ask, voice soft as ash on snow. “You look just like Master Neloth.”

“I – oh, well,” Talvas stammered back, “I don’t – really, I’m just an – do you think so?”

He sounded as if he couldn’t decide if he were flattered or insulted by the comparison.

Ignoring this interaction, Teldryn grunted, pocketing what looked like a necklace from the corpse of a draugr, stripping them of their valuables with the efficiency only a mercenary could have. Teldryn scooped and picked up Dukaan’s mask, flipping it in his hands.

“Cursed thing, this,” he said. “Probably worth some money.”

“Cursed,” said Ildari, and extended her hand for the mask. Talvas took advantage of the distraction to step away, resettling Frea’s cloak around his shoulders like it could hide his blush.

“Hey,” said Teldryn. “First pick of loot is mine.”

Frea planted the head of Laataazin’s hammer in the snow and used the haft to lever herself to her feet, blinking away spots. Her legs ached, and there was cold snow clumped on her knee and hip, where she had lain against it. Thinking of the Dragonborn’s warm small palms folding against hers as they scrambled over the mountain paths together, she ate some of the cold-staying berries from her pouch, their tartness popping over her tongue like kisses.

“Come on Teldryn,” said Frea. “She probably just saved our lives.”

“Your life,” said Teldryn, churlishly, but gave the mask to Ildari anyway. “Suppose it saves me the trip to Skyrim to find a decent buyer,” he said.

He heaved his pack onto his back, squinting round the half-circle of light the flaming elves made. “That’s everything.” He turned to Frea. “Where to, Skaal?”

She would have been irritated at the assumption that she had planned out the route for them already, but she had spent the walk up keeping a weather-eye out for shelter as a matter of instinct. She was Skaal, and he was a lowland elf – off the beaten path, it was her word they followed. She refused to admit to the small kernel of pride that his deferral conjured in her; it was practical, nothing more.

She cast an eye at the sky. “Come,” she said, “I saw a cave not far back.”

They set off, Ildari trailing after them like a ghost. Talvas hung back to speak with her, his chattering bright and interspersed with her awkward, confused replies. When Frea glanced back, she saw them huddling under her borrowed cloak like a pair of orphans, her white hair on his shoulder like a splay of bone. Teldryn walked closely behind Frea, letting her break the snow for him. The cave Frea had in mind was not far, a crack of shadow against the ice wall. She had stayed here once with Laataazin, nestled in the heart of the earth as a freak summer storm shook the peaks. The Moesrings were a haunted place, unquiet with the memories of long unburied dead and whispers from beyond. It was not uncommon to find cracks in the mountains, like the pressure of the stubborn, strange presence from beyond had tunnelled into soft rock.

In its shelter, Frea set to lighting a fire from the rolled fuel she carried with her, compact dung, quick to catch and slow to burn. Teldryn helped her, sticking his hands fearlessly into the young fire to rearrange it to a perfect shape to hold the heat all night. He kept his helmet on. In the dim light, from beneath, the shadows made the shell glimmer like living snakes across his body.

Talvas sank to his seat and groaned, rubbing his calves. “So much walking,” she heard him mutter. Ildari more fell than sat next to him, as if she had forgotten how to bend her body. She didn’t seem bothered by the graceless descent, but instead watched them all with wide, too-still eyes.

Frea set snow to melt for water, idly brushing at the frost still clinging to her hood from one of Dukaan’s misplaced attacks. Teldryn roped Talvas into helping him set out their bedrolls and break into the rations for their meal. In quiet agreement, no one asked Ildari to do anything. She curled her legs against her chest, staring at Frea with a divot between her brows, like she was trying to work out where she’d seen her before.

After an uncomfortable moment, Frea sighed and rose to her feet. She went to the elf and tucked her cloak firmly around Ildari’s shoulders, encouraging her onto her side. Ildari, pliant, went without a fight, letting Frea cover her up in the furs. Her skin was very cold to the touch, like stone, and her eyes absorbed the light rather than reflected it.

“I’ll bring you some food in a moment,” Frea told her kindly, resisting the urge to brush her straggling white hair away from her forehead. “Will you be alright here?”

Ildari stared at her. “Alright here,” she repeated, and then bit her lip, a darkness creeping into her gaze. She touched Frea’s cheek, her nails digging into the meat of her jaw, then lightly dragged a fingertip down the bruising of Frea’s throat.

Gently, Frea caught her hand, and replaced it under the blanket. “Try and get some sleep,” she said.

Obediently, Ildari closed her eyes and went limp. In moments, she was breathing softly, rhythmically. Feeling eyes on her, Frea looked up to see Talvas watching her, his unfathomable red eyes liquid and dark in the firelight. She felt at once a strange and sudden distance from her travelling companions, and missed Nikulas so strongly it ached.

She turned away, setting out her own bedroll. Their rations warmed on flat stones by the fire, and she busied herself poking at them. She did not look up when Teldryn hunkered down next to her, but blinked in surprise when she saw his bare arms, unarmoured, in the corner of her eye. His forearms were corded and lean with muscle, the right trailed with the dark shapes of another tattoo that disappeared tantalisingly up the sleeve of his shirt.

“Need warming?” he asked gruffly, after some time.

Realising he was referring to the frost that still clung here and there to her boots, Frea replied ruefully, “No. My people do not mind frost. Besides, it will remind me to duck an ice blast faster, next time.”

Teldryn chuckled. It sounded like stones grating in his throat – an unpleasant descriptor for a sound that made the tips of her ears warm. “Have it your way, Skaal.”

He did not move away, despite the conversation lapsing. His closeness brought a prickle of first awareness and then a stilted kind of guilt. She had been so angry at him all day for daring to question her, to poke so brazenly at her grief, but he had remained patient. Protecting her from the fire in the tunnel, healing her from the dragon priest’s attack, even now, lingering by her side in case she needed the benefit of a Dunmer’s powerful internal warmth.

Grumpy, irascible Teldryn shamed her with his kindness.

After a moment, a tentative kind of peace offering, Frea said, “Laat took a sword and shield with them, to fight the Traitor Priest.”

It was difficult to get the words out. The press of memories was hard to ignore, her father’s body pierced through with tentacles and horribly mutilated, bleeding wetly into the snow. Laataazin’s grim, resolute eyes, crimson in the dying light of the sun. The plume of their breath misting before their scarred lips as they pressed their hammer into Frea’s shaking hands.

“For your people,” their unreal, too loud voice whispered, dual-toned and throbbing with godly power. Frea’s ears cracked and bled and her nose streamed ruby, but she had leant forward into them regardless, too pain-stricken to stop them from leaving, too furious to want them to stay.

The Dragonborn had given them a strange, wry smile that had reached nowhere near their flat, sad eyes, and ducked into the cabin they had been sharing with Farani while they worked with the Skaal. The last Frea ever saw of them was their short, stout frame cresting the top of the hill, the shield on their back blazing like a molten eye in the setting sun.

Teldryn eyed her warily, as if uncertain what to make of this strange offering. He snorted softly. “A shield would have been useful today.”

“Aye,” Frea sighed, glancing down into the fire. A shield, to block Dukaan’s powerful magic attacks, without needing to run and duck behind rocks? Yes, it would have been better than the hammer. If Ildari hadn’t been there, Frea would have died from the need to get close enough to use it properly without a good defence. “It would have. Or my axes – you were right. I am not made for this weapon. It could have killed me, today.”

“I often am,” he said slyly, and when she glowered at him, he gave her a roguish smirk. Then his countenance shifted, became more serious. “A Dragon Priest – we were lucky. Nothing would have changed that. And,” he admitted, “that strike on the lich’s head was a good move.”

“Your parry, across the ice?” Frea countered, “I’ve never seen anyone move so fast.”

“Hah!” he grinned. When he smiled like that, his tattoo bunched strangely over his cheek, drew attention to the softness of his pale grey lips against the rasp of his stubble. The line of his cheekbones, the gleam of his teeth in his cheeky smile, transfixed her.  “Best swordsman in Morrowind, what did I tell you?”

She rolled her eyes, face warm from his teasing, and then made to move.

“Listen,” he touched her arm to hold her back. “I don’t trust that mage.”

“Nor I,” she said. “She is hiding things from us.”

“Glad we agree,” he said, and released her. His eyes were gimlet in the firelight. He glanced down at his hands, turning a strange ring round his finger. The embossed moon and star glittered silver with strange power. “Watch the kid’s back.”

“And who will watch mine?” she retorted.

“I wouldn’t mind the view,” he replied without missing a beat, and had the temerity to grin when she shoved him.

Though their teasing had made her smile with a lingering and strange softness, a knot had formed in her stomach, tense and uneasy. She went to bed that night with hazy dreams blurring to a backdrop of the Dragon Priest’s betrayed screams and the haunted look in Laataazin’s eyes. In the dream, she begged Laataazin to come back and help them, but the Dragonborn only shook their head, placing hammer after hammer into Frea’s arms until the weight dragged her down, down, into a sea of inky, writhing tentacles, and Teldryn’s warm, laughing red eyes.

Notes:

“Drem. Bo-aav het, mal-briinah.” – A greeting. Come help us here, little sister. "Los Frea." - She is Frea. (Grammatically incorrect introduction). “Zu’u Dukaan. Koraav hi drog-Krosulhah? Bo mu krii se munax nau golt. Zu yah thuri-Miraak. Aav-mu, Frea-briinah?” – I am Dukaan. Have you found lord Krosulhah? We go to kill the cruel in these lands. I seek Lord Miraak. Will you help us, sister Frea? “Vahlok-aar! Alduin rel ko Solstheim fen al! Mu fen stin! Aar – krii daar wo krif thuri-Miraak!” – Servant of Vahlok! Alduin’s rule over Solstheim will be broken! We will be free! Servants – kill those who oppose Lord Miraak! “Miraak! Faal Dovahkiin bo! Rok aak mu!” – Miraak! Beware, the Dragonborn comes! He guides us! “Krosulhah! Ahzidal! Aak hin fahdon! Zahkriisos! Hon-ni dii zaan?!” – Krosulhah! Ahzidal! Help your friend! Zahkriisos! Do you not hear me calling your name?!

[vvienne]

XICHENG FIC RECS

hold my hands by Snooze (Chiruka)

Transplanting a core into a new person isn’t without repercussions. One year after the events at Guanyin Temple, Jiang Cheng found himself once again faced with the possibility of losing everything he had. Reconciling with his brother, learning to let Jin Ling go, and dealing with his blooming emotions toward the First Jade of Gusu — will Jiang Cheng accomplish what he wants before time runs out?

it all passes someday by screamlet

A week before the anniversary of Wei Wuxian’s death, there was a commotion outside Lan Wangji’s house.

*

Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji over the years.

The Unlikely Expression of Love by manamune

When everything has settled, when everyone else has moved on with their lives and their friends, Jiang Cheng has a realization which shouldn’t actually be a surprise:

He’s lonely.

Indigo, lavender, and violet (I don't wanna be red) by ohwhatevrewhatevr

It, in the pale colors of the late morning, is the closest to perfect Jiang Cheng will ever reach. He strokes Lan XiChen's hair and presses a light kiss to where his ribbon and hair meet. The sky is a pale blue, and the pastels of flowers and clouds are spread out through the window, a brilliant world waiting for them, them in the gentian house, safe from stronger breezes - there is the clutter of birds fluttering and chirping outside. It is a warm, perfect, spring morning.

Jiang Cheng and Lan XiChen have been together for an year. In which, no one ever really gets over things, Jiang Cheng has the misfortune of interacting with his brother, the juniors help out with the proposal, and there's a marriage.

Altitude by starknjarvis 

When Jin Ling lures Jiang Cheng to the Cloud Recesses under false pretenses, he finds himself out of place among this new family Wei Wuxian has formed.

Lan Xichen, at least, seems pleased to have his company.

Perhaps there is still a chance for Jiang Cheng to make amends and move forward.

[Modao Zushi Online] GLITCH REPORT: My Brother Got Chased Down And %$@*$&@ By Gusu Dungeon Boss??? by oh_fudgecakes

Modao Zushi Online is a virtual reality MMORPG. Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian are top ranking players in its new server, currently tied with their arch-nemesis from their previous server, Wen Chao. In an attempt to defeat him, they take on the Gusu Dungeon Boss, Zewu-jun, to win the reward of a legendary weapon. Ever the cheat, Wei Wuxian tries to take advantage of a glitch to defeat the seemingly undefeatable boss. It backfires. Jiang Cheng gets fucked by a boss monster.

He can't get enough.

Meanwhile, Lan Xichen, the unwitting staff member in charge of controlling Zewu-jun, absolutely did not sign up to be pulled into a secret virtual reality fling with a player. Mod Ji, who has to deal with Wei Wuxian's incessant glitch reporting of his brother's sex life, is long-suffering.

Mulberry by xxdz

Jiang Cheng grits his teeth and pushes harder. He feels like torn silk, the embroidery needle sinking in again and again and again; patiently, desperately, endlessly trying to make something beautiful out of something broken.

Jiang Cheng builds his sect, learns embroidery, and raises his nephew.

we can raise a little family by lanyon

“Well, brother,” says Wei Wuxian, leaning against the outside of Jiang Cheng’s chambers. “I had heard that you and Xichen went on a night hunt and came back with a baby, which is not the order I’d choose to do things in…”

In which Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen acquire a baby of unknown origin, and are the very last to know what it means.

Beyond the Impossible by Silverine

Summoned by Lan Qiren, Jiang Wanyin goes to the Cloud Recesses to drop his nephew Jin Ling, expecting to discuss relevant matters with his old master. Instead, he's asked to take with him no other than Sect Leader Lan himself, all the way back to Lotus Pier. If the reason why he accepted such an outrageous task is indeed a mystery, he's about to be surprised by how this entire trip, their encounters, and his warm company, suddenly feel fated.

Incrementally by xxdz

Jiang Cheng is trapped in a day on repeat where he begins by waking in Zewu Jun’s bed at dawn and ends by dying painfully at dusk.

It’s getting very irritating, and he has the sneaking suspicion that his chances to solve his own murder are rapidly running out. Soon, his death will be much more permanent.

All in all, worst birthday ever.

Audience of One by WinterDreams

“Then let an established star go first,” Lan Xichen interrupts again before Lan Wangji can give a stubborn reply. Both men twist toward Lan Xichen, and he smiles at Wei Wuxian’s tilted head. “If I publicly date a man for awhile first, your engagement shouldn’t receive as much backlash.”

Or, that AU where everyone is famous in some way or another, Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji have been dating in private for years, and Lan Xichen and Jiang Cheng pretend to date publicly for their brothers' sake.

A Bit of Ruthlessness by jirluvien

When Jiang Cheng hears that Lan Xichen went into seclusion following Jin Guangyao’s death, it’s almost as if he can see the grabby hands of a restless ghost, reaching out for something to keep him company. For something warm and living and devastated. And as history has proved time and time again, the Lans are perfect victims when it comes to giving in to ghosts.Yeah, no. Not on Jiang Cheng’s fucking watch.A story about grief, determination, unexpected friendships, abandoned watchtowers, and letters. So many letters.

All Tied Up In You by Clearpearls

Yet again, the night had come to this:

Jiang Cheng on the floor, kneeling, Zidian wrapped around his wrists.

Alone.

Thank You, and I'm Sorry by Hamliet

Jin GuangYao might be dead, but his story is not. Taking advantage of the chaos he instigated, someone makes an attempt on the life of the young new leader of the Jin Sect. When Jiang Cheng takes Jin Ling to the Cloud Recesses to have him study while he attempts to work with Wei WuXian and his husband Lan WangJi to eliminate the threat, he encounters a mourning Lan XiChen, lovestruck teenagers, and a persistent corpse--and both pairs of brothers find themselves struggling to move on.

saturn's rings (don't be a heartbreaker) by iskendaris

Set after the seige of burial mounds, Yunmeng rebuilds as they hold the first Discussion Conference at Lotus Pier. Sometimes the night is a gift, a refuge for loneliness. "So stern, Sect Leader Jiang," Lan Xichen murmured, "So glacial... What will it take to melt that icy exterior? What can I say?"

"Nothing. There's nothing you can say or offer."

reciprocity by jukeboxhound

There’s a pause before Lan Xichen says, in a tone that’s a little more neutral, “I would like to paint on you.”

“…What?”

“Of course, if you say ‘yes’ but then change your mind at any point, for any reason, you need only say so and I will stop immediately,” he adds.

Well, silver lining: Jiang Cheng is feeling much more awake than he was a moment ago.

Talent Hunt Crew Finds Angry Guy Shouting On College Campus, Recruits Him For Vocal Projection Abilities by oh_fudgecakes

Jiang Cheng, resident Angry Guy and heir to a conglomerate empire, has never been the apple of his father’s eye. Quashed under the shadow of his brilliant brother, the music prodigy Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng sees his chance to turn things around when he is recruited by the All-Stars Lan Talent Hunt. One problem: he can’t sing to save his goddamn life.

As he struggles to develop his nascent singing abilities, Jiang Cheng finds himself sucked into the whirlwind drama of reality TV, helped along by his adoring siblings, his irritable vocal coach Wen Qing, and strangely enough, the unfairly attractive host of the All-Stars Lan Talent Hunt, Lan Xichen. Somewhere in the glare of the stage lights and an unexpected first love, Jiang Cheng stumbles upon the thing he was searching for all along: the courage to dream — and to attempt the impossible.

Marginal Costs by ohwhatevrewhatevr

“You think you know what you want, Er-Ge,” A-Yao says. “But you should consider what you’re willing to give first,” he says wryly, taking Lan XiChen’s chess piece with slim, skilled fingers.

Lan XiChen looks up at A-Yao’s concentrated expression and the hint of contentment on his face that he is special enough to be allowed to see.

“It’s not just one decision, but the lead up to many more. One decision decides what else you’re going to have to pay, and each time you have to ask yourself, ignoring the sunk costs, if this time it’s worth it as well.”

When his sworn brother looks up at him with those clear, amber eyes, waiting, Lan XiChen feels the pull and gives in: he asks.

“Are you happy being in love?”

(First half is two sad sworn brothers talking, internally mourning how unfortunate their other sworn brother’s death was :/ and second half is when a mopey boy in blue meets an angsty boy in purple whilst chasing a demonic cultivator, and a lil bit of sexy dual cultivation happens.)

Somewhat Tender by theherocomplex

There is no defense against kindness; it has always undone him.

I didn't expect you to be lonely (too) by bettydice (BettyKnight)

Jiang Cheng's life is a mess, he's a mess, and he doesn't miss his brother at all. So when his sister gifts him ten sessions with a massage therapist, who turns out to be someone he was crushing on for a hot minute as a teenager and is still as hot as ever... yeah, that might as well happen. It won't have to mean anything.

This feels intimate to Jiang Cheng in a way that's probably very inappropriate and maybe even pathetic. Nobody touches him like this, right where he’s hurt the most. There's no one who handles him so gently, so carefully.

It's the gentleness that's his undoing, he thinks. He would be able to deal better with it if it was painful.

Life for Rent by yodasyoyo

“Yeah well. You’re not taking me seriously. This guy is my soulmate!”

“Soulmate.” Jiang Cheng rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

“Just because you don’t believe in them—”

“I believe in them!” Jiang Cheng says. “I’ve never denied they exist.”

“Just last week you said that it was an evolutionary quirk that had been used by greetings card companies, movie makers, and corporations to exploit lonely and vulnerable people.”

“And I stand by it! That doesn’t mean that soulmates aren’t real. Just incredibly unlikely and probably pointless.

-

Or:

Xicheng vs Soulmates. Fight!

Halfway Around the World by theherocomplex

Normally, Jiang Cheng would be seething, jaw clenched tight, if someone sounded like that while they were talking, but — Lan Xichen has the trick of always making you feel like you're in on the joke, whatever the joke is. That you're laughing together.

Whelmed by yodasyoyo

For months now Jiang Cheng’s been idly fantasizing about how it would be if something were to come between Wei Ying and Lan Zhan. Mostly those daydreams have been simple enough — they break up (probably because Lan Zhan is boring or Wei Ying is annoying), Wei Ying is sad for a couple of days (Jiang Cheng’s willing to allow some space for feelings, he isn't a total monster), but then Wei Ying realizes he’s better off, he gets over it, and Jiang Cheng gets his brother back.

Unfortunately the fantasy version of events has only proven partially true, so far. They've broken up. Wei Ying has been sad.

Now weeks have passed, though — and Wei Ying is still sad, every. Single. Day.

It’s like Jiang Cheng's stuck in a looping GIF, and it’s driving him insane.

Or:

Jiang Cheng plots, Lan Huan pines, and, unfortunately for Lan Qiren, Wangxian are inevitable.

[ditttiiiwrecks]

OT7 Fic Rec Master Post:

 last updated (16/05/2021) 

If my master-list is anything to go by I am clearly obsessed with ot7, so here are some of my favs. 

Some of these stories are linked from Ao3. If any of those fics have been cross posted to Tumblr, please let me know. 

Current Fic Count: 25

Give all these amazing authors some love ♡ & To all the authors, Thank you so much for writing. I am so beyond grateful for all the work and time that you put in to writing these stunning pieces of literary art. 

This list is by no means complete, so if you have any recommendations, send em my way! ♡ Happy Reading!

~Love, @ditttiii  ♡

1) Void by @btssavedmylifeblr

Summary: You are the only female crew member on a 12 year space mission with seven handsome men. The sexual tension is real, y’all. 

2) Make You Know Love by @btsismybiass 

Summary: Growing up, Jungkook had always shared everything with his brothers; toys, food, clothing, friends, and even girls. The seven were inseparable — secrets were not allowed. Halfway through senior year, Jungkook was sent to a school halfway across the world, though he wouldn’t tell anyone (that didn’t already know) why. Years later, he has an adjoining apartment with his best friend (who is hopelessly in love with him) and 6 brothers he has yet to tell her about. One night, she comes barging into his home unannounced only to be met with a group of sexy foreign strangers.

3) Armed to the Fangs by @jingabitch

Summary: You grew up in the Hunter’s Guild, understanding that it is your sacred duty as a hunter to protect humanity from the vampires that lurk in the dark, draining the life from anyone unlucky enough to be caught. While making the rounds one night, you encounter Taehyung, a fabled born vampire - not that you know that when he tries to entice you into a dark alley. Next thing you know, you’re kidnapped and taken to their home, where you realise that all of them somehow crave your blood and seem to know more about your past than you do. Finding out about where you came from might be the key to setting humanity free.

4) Sanctuary by @softykooky

Summary: some people are lucky enough to be born into a family that loves them. others meet their family in a coffee shop while on the run from the korean ambassador, while they’re holding a man at gunpoint and beating him to a pulp for treason against their syndicate.

5) Eunoia by @wishesunderthestars

Summary: You are a world famous director and you have dedicated your life to your job.You have everything you could ever dream of; wealth, recognision, talent, your friends and family. But loneliness ins’t cured by success. So what happens when you somehow rescue seven hybrids? Can they fill the void?

6) Tangled Hearts by @writersrealmbts

Summary: You have seven hybrids and life with them can be both good and stressful. Some days are better than others, but in the end, you know that they’re always there for you, in more ways than one.

7)  Diamond Tears and Little Wings by @writersrealmbts 

Summary: You’re a fairy, taken in by BTS. You need lots of love and care, otherwise your light will fade and you turn to stone. Between the seven of them, you should never feel unloved. Right?

8) Rose & Thorns by @minniepetals 

Summary: a lone rose, a little broken, until Jungkook came along and the two of you saved each other. and in doing so, Jungkook showed you a world where he shared with his six other mates.

9) The Butter Series by @minniepetals

Summary: their names alone had every men and women turning their heads and falling at their feet. successful, prestigious, handsome, rich and untouchable to anyone that looked their way. and you? you were just an employee who worked for them. who would have known you meant so much more to them than you could ever imagine?

10) Stray Cat Strut by Bang to the Tan (TyphloticHaruspex)

Summary: When your grandmother passes away, she leaves her countryside house in your name. The longer you stay, the harder and harder it becomes to explain away the odd happenings. What kind of secrets does this sleepy town hold? And why do the local animals act so strangely around you?…

11) BACK HOME by @alexlwrites

Summary: : The one where, after living abroad for years, you move back to Korea and your old high school friend Namjoon offers you his place to stay while you get settled, casually forgetting to mention that: a) he still had a massive crush on you. b) he lived with six other guys.

12)  A Hundred Percent Human by Wrienne

Summary: In which you are forced to take care of seven hybrids in a twist of fate. After your estranged mother passes away, you're left with an unwanted will and the heavy burden of responsibility. Although you're desperate not to stray from the familiar path you thought was laid out in front of you with a fully human boyfriend who loves you more than anything, your life is thrown upside down once more after another unfortunate incident (that may or may not have to do with said boyfriend) occurs. Drunk and down on life, you finally decide to deal with the house and the unsavory business your mother left behind. However, to your shock, you find that seven very different hybrids are included with both the house - and the business. Seven hybrids you never even met before - even less agreed to take care of. Set in the not too distant future where infertility has become mankind's greatest issue. Will contain sexual content.

13)  I’ll Still Stay by @sugamoonv

Summary: Y/N, living in a society where hybrids are seen as commonly as pets and working a well-paying job, finally decides to adopt a hybrid for herself. But what happens when instead of one new companion, she leaves with seven? And what happens when nature decides that these companions are meant to be more than that?

14)  The Gateway to Your Heart by @justimajin

Summary:  ❝You gave me the best of me, so you give you the best of you.❞

15)  Like I Do by interlude__dream

Summary:  It's summer in Seoul. You didn't expect much to happen during your nights working at a coffee shop, but somehow, giving one kid a sandwich wrapped up your fate with seven hungry boys more tightly than you could have ever imagined.

16)  w e a r e a l l m a d h e r e by cath_mg

Summary: In which you're a model student who just managed to catch not just one, not two, but all seven 'transfer students' who just happened to visit your university.At the end of the road, will you stay or will you run? Or...

17)  Follow Me Down by ARMY_BRAT

Summary:  It was supposed to be a simple vacation to a foreign land. You certainly didn’t expect to wake up drugged and caged like an animal in the basement of seven beautiful men.

18)  Sharing is Caring by always_bias_wrecked

Summary:  You decide to let the rest of Bangtan watch you and your boyfriend Jimin have sex one time. Now suddenly everyone seems to want a piece of you, and Jimin doesn't seem to mind sharing.

19)  Ruin Me, I Dare You. by porcelainbones

Summary: Where a regular wannabe author discovers the members of the biggest band in the world are her soulmates. All Seven. (not a reader insert)

20) Abundance by @angelicyoongie

Summary: You never expected that you would end up adopting a hybrid, and if someone had told you that you would end up with seven? Well, you would have thought they were crazy. But here you are, with three different packs of hybrids that don’t get along – but all want to stay with you. Yeah, it turns out crazy is an understatement.

21) You Never Walk Alone by @agustdakasuga

Summary: You live a quiet life in your late grandfather’s cabin in the woods. You go to school just to graduate and get your diploma, not to make friends or stand out from the crowd. That was until one day, you enter your home to see a pack of wolves that need shelter.

22)  Accidental Friends by erakun

Summary:  Meet Bangtan, international superstars, the pride of South Korea, the love and hope in the dark of many lives, the role model and celebrity crush of so many people, and a group of people you often stumble across in your day to day life. You become acquaintances, slowly become friends, and- that's it. You are in a platonic friendship with Bangtan. Let me say it again. *clears throat* PLATONIC.

23)  Lifeline by @forgottenpasta

Summary: What happens when a witch curses seven vampires to share one fated mate between them?

24) Restitution  by @cloudteawrites 

Summary: When an estranged uncle leaves you his massive fortune you wonder if the universe is playing a joke on you. when that fortune comes with seven hybrids, you know for sure that it is.

25) The Lore of the Forest by spield

Summary: Nothing ancient and magical is ever really lost. When the descendants and heirs of the myths and legends come together to live a normal life, something - someone - is thrown into their plans. Bringing with them aid, magic and so much more.

[agathasangel]

promise me you’ll never hurt me (Ally Mayfair-Richards x fem!reader)

This is my first fic! Hopefully it’s good, and I’ll write more if you guys like it. Please ignore any possible inconsistencies haha.

Warnings: lots of talk of death/murder, hurt/comfort, angst, anxious!reader (who ends up being surprisingly chill with murder), Ally and the reader don’t have the healthiest relationship

Summary: You've always been one to frighten easily, but Ally makes you feel safe. That is, until you find out how her ex-wife really died and you begin to worry that the same fate will come to you.

At first you thought that Ally was the woman of your dreams. She taught you everything you know and has changed your life for the better. Her son loves you, and you feel like the three of you are a real family. Not to mention, Ally was the most beautiful woman you had ever seen in your life. Best of all, Ally actually understood the fear and anxiety that always ruined your past relationships. She told you all about her ex-wife, Ivy. Ivy never seemed to sympathize with Ally’s fears or be really interested in Ally, no matter how hard she tried. You always tried to be as much of a source of comfort for her as she was for you, after hearing about everything your girlfriend went through.

“I’m sorry she treated you that way. You deserve so much better, Ally.”

“Well, look at my life now. I have you now. You’re the best girl I could ever ask for. And, (y/n)? I never want you to feel the way I did. If you’re ever afraid, I want you to come to me and tell me.” And you would. And every time, she made you feel better.

But you also knew Ally coddled you. You knew that the group she led, and that you were a member of did extreme things in the name of their vision. You believed in this vision too, but Ally knew you weren’t capable of hurting or killing another person, whether he deserved it or not. At least not yet. So she shielded you from it. You weren’t stupid, you knew that there was more going on than what your girlfriend was willing to show you. But you both knew that it was still important work that needed to be done. Ally knew that you supported and believed in her too much to compromise anything, but she couldn’t take any chances. Especially now, when the rumors about Ally and about her past with Kai Anderson’s cult were worse than ever.

You knew the rumors going around about your girlfriend were just that, rumors. Purely slander to make Ally look crazy or unfit to lead. Nothing your girlfriend wasn’t used to.

The most popular one of these rumors was the one that you wanted to believe the least: That Ivy wasn’t in fact killed by Kai Anderson, but by Ally. When Kai was arrested, he confessed to all of the killings but credited Ally for killing Ivy. But Kai couldn’t be taken at his word. But the longer the rumor existed, the more you wondered. Why would he lie about not killing Ivy when he confessed to all the other murders? The more you wondered, the more you hated yourself for it. Ally wouldn’t have killed her own wife. Ally would never hurt you. She always protected you. But the more Ally opened up to you about Ivy, and the bigger a part you began to play in SCUM, the less you could ignore it. You never told her anything. You didn’t want to upset her. You tried to put the thought out of your mind. Your girlfriend did not murder her ex-wife. 

But, being you, you had to be absolutely sure. You did more research on the situation with Kai, looking for his confession. He said that Ally poisoned her wife with arsenic. The thought of this constantly ran through your head. You knew it was a lie. You knew that Kai Anderson was a master manipulator and was somehow able to get into your head from beyond the grave. Ally could tell, too, that something was wrong. You were barely eating, getting such little sleep, and you showed her far less affection than you used to. She became concerned. You wanted to tell her, but you didn’t want to add to her plate, or make her angry.

One night you just couldn’t sleep, and instead lie awake on the edge of the bed. “(Y/N), what’s the matter? What are you doing awake?” Ally said as she stirred in the bed one night

“Nothing. I’m ok”

“You promise?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” you said. You allowed yourself to cuddle into her. Ally held you close to her. It felt so good that you decided to pretend everything was okay.

“I’ve missed this.”, you told Ally.

“I love you, (y/n).” she told you as she drifted back to sleep.

After this you started to force yourself to stop worrying, stop believing stupid lies and rumors. Typical (y/n), falling for anything anyone says. You always were quite gullible. Ally always protected you, and she loved her family more than anything. Between sweet moments with Ally and several SCUM meetings where you were being exposed to more and more, the you became less sensitive to this fear you felt of the woman you love.

Ally was away on business while you stayed with Oz. She would be getting back later in the evening, so you decided you wanted to cook dinner for your girlfriend to welcome her home. You didn’t cook much, Ally preferred to when she was home and Oz liked very simple foods, so you didn’t often find yourself, for example, searching through Ally’s expansive spice rack. Until you found a bottle that didn’t seem to belong. 

It was an arsenic bottle. And it was nearly empty. And the fear felt real again.

You woke up on your bed with Ally sitting next to you, dabbing your forehead with a wet cloth and whispering for you to wake up, Oz was watching, equally worried about you.

“You passed out, (y/n). Oz says you saw something that scared you. Do you want to tell me what it was, baby?”

you couldn’t remember.

“There was a bottle that she put down right before she fainted.”

Right. Shit. 

This slowly began to register on Ally’s face as well, which confirmed your fears even further.

“Oz, can (y/n) and I have a private conversation?”

So Oz left you two alone, and Ally began.

“What was in this bottle?”

You decided you had to confront her, no matter what the consequence would be. “It was- it was an arsenic bottle. It was almost empty. Tell me the truth Ally. Did- did you really poison your wife?” you managed to say, despite your fear of the woman you believed was your protector.

“I did. And I was going to tell you, I was. I was just waiting for the right time.”

“And when, exactly, would the time be right to tell your girlfriend that you murdered your ex-wife? When, huh?”

“You’re still so innocent and you don’t understand, (y/n), everything Ivy had done as a member of that cult.  Everything she did to me!” 

“And that justifies killing her? Your own wife?”

“You don’t get it, but you will understand someday, trust me.”

“But I thought you loved her. Ally... am I... am I next?” you said as your eyes began to fill with tears.

Ally looked at you as if she had just been slapped.

You began to cry. “Will you just get rid of me if something happens between us? I know too much about- I-”

“Stop, stop it (y/n)! Is that what this is about? Is that why you’ve been so distant with me for that whole time?”

You just nodded.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Why do you think?”

“Are you really that scared of me now?”

“You killed your wife! You were married, you had a nine year old kid together, you even worked together! I’m just some girl you’ve been fucking for a year, how could I be anywhere near that important to you, Ally?”

“Hey, first of all, you are not just “some girl I’ve been fucking” and you know it. You mean so much more to me than that. I love you more than I’ve ever loved any woman, do you understand that? But you have no idea how much Ivy hurt and humiliated me. Before I joined that cult she and the girl she was cheating on me with both wanted me either locked up for the rest of my life or dead so that they could take my son. I didn’t have another option.” Ally began to soften and lead you back to the bed to sit with her. “Believe me (y/n), I still regret it, every day. But it’s what I had to do. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, my love, I just didn’t want to scare you.” 

 “I know. I don’t quite understand, but I know. But Ally? I really know what you’re capable of now. And that scares me. And it scares me that despite knowing the danger, I still love you so fucking much.”

“But (y/n), you’re not in danger. I’m your protector, I have been since the beginning. Why would I ever even think to hurt you?”

“I don’t know. What about SCUM? What if I became some kind of liability to the gr-”

“I would protect you from them. You and Oz come before anything or anyone else.”

“Ally, I need you to promise me you’ll never hurt me.”

Your girlfriend put her arms around you and whispered, “I will never hurt you, (y/n). And I’ll protect you from anyone who tries. At any cost. You are safe with me, you always will be. I love you.”

“I believe you. I believe you, Ally. I can’t be without you anymore. I want things to go back to how they were. I’m sorry, Ally.” You rested your head on her shoulder and she gave you a kiss on your head.

“It’s okay, I understand. If I were in your position I would be suspicious too, but I promise that you truly have nothing to worry about. I’ll do anything to prove to you that you’re safe with me.”

That night the two of you began to make up. You went downstairs and ordered food (since you were never able to finish cooking) and assured Oz that everything was going to be ok. Luckily he didn’t overhear the conversation you and Ally were having.

The three of you had a relaxing night together, with dinner and a movie marathon, while Ally held onto you the whole time. The two of you put Oz to bed together.

“Mom, is (y/n) gonna be ok?” You heard Oz ask as you left.

“As long as I’m around she’ll be fine. Good night, Ozzy.”

Ally followed you into your bedroom.

“Is everything alright, my love?”

“As long as I’m with you, it is.”

[qqueenofhades]

26 for Helnik 💙 (I know, I know, I'll see myself out)

26. Love Beyond Death

Nina is dreaming again, and as ever, she does not want to wake up.

She doesn't know where they are. Nowhere they have ever been in life, at least. Matthias never set foot in Ravka, and if this is Fjerda, it's far from the Ice Court and the spartan cells of the witch hunters and Jarl Brum's pitiless cold eyes. She doesn't think so, though. They wanted to run away somewhere entirely new, and maybe this is that place. It's a garden, the sunlight is clear and strong, and whenever she finds herself walking the hedge-paths toward the fountain at the center, her heart leaps. She knows he will be waiting, and he is.

"Nina," he murmurs, and she can feel it, feel his voice rumbling in his chest, after she's run to him and thrown her arms around his neck, as he holds her close and nothing, no fiber in her, can possibly believe that he is not alive. Because he is alive, he is here, tall and blond and stubborn and stupid as usual, smiling down at her, as if this is some strange halfway-between place where they can still meet. Maybe it is. Nina is the Corpsewitch, after all; the one who can command the dead to do her bidding, and she has never let go of Matthias, not for a day. Not really, not truly, not in her memories or in her dreams or her love. Why shouldn't she be able to bring him here, and see him again?

They stand together, hugging silently, Matthias's chin resting on her tumbled hair. After a while, he says softly, "How are you?"

"Not.... not that good." Nina snorts unsteadily. She wants to ask the same of him, but what can the answer be except dead? Unfairly, unjustly, long before his time, and she has never quite relinquished the idea of doing something about it, reversing the course of fate, figuring out the darkest Grisha arts if need be. She knows that he doesn't want that for her, to lose herself in pursuit of a hopeless dream, but it's not hopeless, that's the thing. His body is still perfectly preserved beneath the ice, and her power has fundamentally changed. If she was able to restore life to what has died, why not him? Why not them? Why?

"Matthias." She looks up at him. "What if I could find a way to do -- to do it? To bring you back? Would you... want that?"

Her voice cracks on the end, just because she's afraid that he will refuse, that he will whisper it again -- Little red bird, let me go -- and her selfish heart won't be able to stand it, even if she has to abide by his wishes. He frowns, looking at her worriedly, and says in a bossy voice, "Nina, don't do anything foolish."

She chokes. This has to be him, unless her memory is conjuring him with truly faultless accuracy, because nobody else can master that knack of simultaneously concerned and patronizing. "You let me worry about foolish, drüskelle."

"Well," Matthias says slowly. "Obviously, yes, I want to be alive again. I want to be -- to be with you. But your life will have changed, gone on, and it wouldn't be the same. I don't -- I couldn't bear if it you were unhappy as a result."

"Unhappy?" Nina laughs, breaking perilously close to tears. "Unhappy? You think I've been anything but unhappy since it -- since you -- since everything? It wasn't fair, Matthias. It wasn't right. Some stupid random drüskelle kills you and my own power can't be used to save you? I don't accept it. I'll do it, I'll find a way. But only if you want. If you want to stay here -- if you want to be at peace -- I'll understand."

It rips her heart out to say, but she does, and waits in unbearable silence. Matthias's eyes crinkle up at the edges, soft and wanting, and he touches her chin. "Oh, Nina," he says. "You're still the bravest person I have ever known."

"Thanks." She sniffs undignifiedly. "So...?"

"If you can find a way to do it and keep your soul," Matthias says, "you have my blessing to try. I can't stand it either, you know. If I came back and you... weren't you."

"Okay," Nina whispers, stretching herself toward him, and they kiss for what might be the very last or the very first time, the end of their lives together or just the beginning; when she wakes up, it is up to her to determine which. "Okay. Okay. Okay."

[spooky season fic prompts]

[lightsaroundyourvanity]

Bumbleby Big Bang: Nov 18-22

it’s been a crazy two weeks guys but sadly.......... the bumbleby big bang has come to an end (for 2020 at least!!) -- and WHEW. what an incredible ride. you guys have blown me away with your talent, with your enthusiasm, with your hearts. I never expected this little event to grow so big and so beautiful and like. wow. rock stars, every one of you. I can’t wait for next year!! 💕💕💕

Nov 6-9: Here 

Nov 10-13: Here

Nov 14-17: Here

The Festival of Fauna

fic by @dazzleyourmindseye

art by @askjar

Eager to share a piece of her culture with her team, Blake invites Yang, Ruby and Weiss to a festival on Menagerie - a night of dancing, bonfires, and celebration of faunus heritage. Afraid of moving too fast and fracturing their newfound romantic relationship, Yang has been struggling to reign in her intense feelings for Blake – both physical and emotional. Blake is unsure of how to help her girlfriend loosen up – but a night of romance by the sea and under the stars just might do it.

By The Stars

fic by @letsseethroughdaphneblue

art by @m-lahulia

Everyone’s looking for something on the Remnant Cross-Continental Trail. Hiking from one end of Sanus to the other is no small feat. Most seek adventure, some go looking for themselves. Blake knows she’s looking for the latter, while Yang has convinced herself adventure is all she’s after. Over what feels like the longest and shortest months of their lives they confront past demons and admit to harsh truths. They start to find themselves in the trail and in each other along the way.

Dance Partners

fic by @ginalcelah

art by triggerman_art

My entry for the 2020 Bumbleby Big Bang! A canon-compliant "what if," set in Volume 7 and following Yang and Blake as they make the jump into their first date. It's a long night as they dance around accepting their love for each other, while their friends all reflect on how far they've come...and how far they may yet go.

While this is a stand alone piece, I also intentionally wrote parts of it to call back to an older Bumbleby fic of mine. I won't drop the story name, but if you've read it, then maybe this will read as somewhat of a sequel. If you haven't read it, don't worry! I specifically made sure this story stands on its own.

Flight

fic by @pugoata

art by @sunnyteea

art by @6iirls

AU: Blake is disillusioned: with her career in the White Fang Ballet, with her oppressive boyfriend and ballet master, and her life in general. A chance visit to the Shattered Moon Circus, however, introduces her to trapeze artist and aerial dancer Yang, who offers to teach Blake how to fly. As she learns to let go and trust in the people who catch her, she falls in more ways than one when it comes to Yang.

“Blake,” Sienna says, calmly. “Have you lost your goddamn mind?”

And maybe she has. After all, Blake can't just run away and join the circus.

Immolate My Devotion

fic by @sleebyswords

art by @celestialstariart

As the daughter of a Count to a nation of Faunus citizens, Blake Belladonna has to deal with blurry memories from a past life and finding an arranged marriage to protect her people from harm as their country’s King has been violently replaced and they are swept into an empire against their will.

Yang Xiao Long appears to be the only option Blake has left, but there’s something about her inky black hair and ferocious red eyes that seem unnatural on her. Yang is feared by almost everyone, but the more Blake learns about her new wife, the more familiar she becomes.

And why does Blake dream of golden hair and lavender eyes?

when i dream of dying i never feel so loved

fic by @thecousinsdangereux

art by @saigamiproject

Yang dies. She wakes up. She fights. She dies. The world stays the same, the situations barely change. Yang wakes up, she fights, she dies. She also falls in love — one repeated day at a time — with the one woman on Remnant who could possibly understand, even if her memories of Yang are erased with each reset. (Yang gets used to the dying, not so much the look in Blake’s eyes that marks her as a stranger.)

take it from your grave

fic by @twelveclara

art by @corvophobia

I’ll never leave you, even if it’s me. Yang makes a promise in spite of fate; fate makes her regret it.

Eight teenagers run away from home, bound by a duty to return for a ritual in which one of their lives will be traded for the rest of the world’s peace. At least, that’s what they’ve been led to believe since birth: Be strong, be smart, and be alone. If you are to die, it is an honor.

Or maybe it’s a lie.

Eight teenagers run away from home, and upon returning nine years later, they’ve broken a few too many rules to go quietly.

(Blake thought she was seeing things, then. Thought she loved a girl so much she made her a god, mythologized her, created a folktale so gorgeous and enormous it’d surpass the one they actually lived in. Now she knows she wasn’t.)

Eternity

fic by ace_hlnwst

art by @generalxiaolong

Yang Xiao Long is a captain in Vale's army. King James Ironwood is sending her on a dangerous mission after discovery of Yang's betrayal. An immortal beast lays in wait for Yang as she attempts to rescue missing people from the kingdom, rumoured to have settled in the middle of the forest under no rule. The more Yang learns about Vale and King Ironwood, the more she wonders if the missing people had the right idea, immortal beast or no.

From The Heart

fic by @softlighter

art by @yourfriendlele

Yang Xiao Long has seen it all at Patchwork Bakery. Engagements, graduations, birthdays, she’s baked a cake for it all. At least until she gets an order to celebrate the breaking off of an engagement. When she delivers the cake to a certain Faunus, she has no idea how her life will be forever changed. But life isn’t a recipe to follow step by step, and sometimes life requires baking from the heart.