#the little creature is her magical familiar he's grumpy but still sweet he looks out for her

[lesbianb]

a gentle soul with a mysterious origin among the stars, soraka protects the team on their perilous missions from behind the frontlines. despite her fragile appearance, the second-year carries immense healing power[.] her unprecedented command of the starlight and willingness to put everyone else’s needs ahead of hers has earned the team’s trust and respect—the ever-humble warrior, soraka only shyly accepts her responsibility. […] she has a special connection to the stars, though she and her team do not fully understand it yet.

[missingartist]

The Witcher’s Mate Chapter Three

Geralt followed the golden-haired Mage with an intense brooding. The sky was beginning to darken, and the streets were almost deserted apart from a few stray stragglers who watched as they walked by, the others were drunks who swayed where they stood, to fascinated with their rum bottles to take notice of the trio. It had been many years since he had last seen Cersi, she had still been at the court of King Lidwig, her lover, it had been many years since his death and her self exile from court life. Hiding in this backwater town, away from the war and the troubles of the outside world. She had led them to a ramshackle building in the middle of a market street; the wood was worn and old, pitted by time and the weather. The smell of moss seeped out the pores of the place, mixed in with the smell of herbs and smoke but all undermined by that sweet smell of apples and the ocean. The mysterious women and her smell. She was here. The woman in the market must be the other healer, Adva, the girl Fagen warned him off of.

Inside was much like the outside. But the scent of sweet and fresh salty water was much more intense it permeated the room soaked into every piece of cloth, every piece of wood, every piece of stone. The hut was a long room, a large fireplace that flickered lowly above a brewing pot of burning herbs filling the room with the smell of rosemary and nettles — poor man purifying herbs, unusual. Why would the Mage’s use these? More importantly, what was in need of purifying? 5 bodies laid inside on campers beds, cramped into the space meant for 2, all sleeping deeply. A man sat on a desk laden with apparatus that has all been pushed careless to make room for an ornate leather book that he was feverishly reading. The man was of handsome feature, soft jawline lined with a thin stubble across his dark skin and dull green eyes. As soon as he saw them, the short man stood and thrust the book into his exotic satchel etched in magical symbols. Geralt narrowed his eyes at the unfamiliar man with interest before his eyes once again rested up against his old acquaintance.

‘Tradi its nice of you have finally taking responsibly for your duties. Tradi of Browdon, Geralt of Rivia. Geralt is an old friend back in my courtesan days, come to sort our beast problem.’ Cersi spoke uninterestingly, cocking her hip to the side as her eyes ran over the patient lying motionlessly in their beds.

‘Ahhh the Great White Wolf, an honour. If I can give you any assistance, my door is always open to distinguished guests. But I fear the beast we had here will be your match.’ Tradi bowed with a flourish and held his hand open to Geralt who remained unmoving.

‘I think you should leave that up to the professionals?’ Geralt huffed out in annoyance.

The male healer snatched his hand back to his body and narrowed his eyes in angry, raising his nose in the air in defiance. ‘I think you will find that I have a good range of experience, for 10 long years I was a head researcher at the Guild Sorcerers for dangerous creatures. I know many creatures and none documented have the power to rip through tissues and curse the blood with toxins without anyone seeing it. To vanish into thin air like it was never there.’

‘Hmmm’ Geralt grunted looking down at the arrogant man in front of him as they glared at each other.

‘The child seems a little stronger today, that’s good the toxic seems to be withdrawing. Geralt this the latest victim found outside her home, father and pregnant mother died. Slashed and ripped, mother died straightway; it was the toxins that got the father. They are powerful magic of some kind, but nothing I have ever come across ’ Cersi called to the Witcher, pulling the rough blanket away from the girl's and loosen the bandages around her wound for Geralt to investigate.

‘Claw marks, powerful beast, one long strike, indicates that the creature was moving when it delivered the blow, fast. Perhaps, a wolf, but the livers and heart were left. No respecting wolf would waste a meal. Hmmm.’ Geralt inhaled deeply, several times, having to struggle through the intoxicating scent of apples. ‘Hmmm, mountain moss. Only grows at the very top of mountains, no way a peasent family from Brightwater could come into contact with this substance, the creature must have tracked it in. Griffin then but never met a Griffin that had toxin in their claws. Not the style for them to attack villages, especially unprovoked. What have you been using to heal this blood poisoning.’

‘At first, we used Swallow, it took the edge off but too slow, healed the wounds but not the toxins going through their system. Nothing we could do but make them comfortable, we nearly lost this child 4 days ago. That is till Adva brew a similar healing potion using, limes, honey, dittany root and wormwood. And doubling the effect by burning rosemary and nettles. It has…’

‘That is something we need to discuss Cersi’ Tradi interpreted angrily ‘letting that simple-minded child lose on these poor devils. Burning rosemary and nettles, I wouldn’t use those herbs to heal an injured dog.’ Tradi huffed angrily.

‘Well they are working, at it not like we have a vast range of supplies, we had no stock. Adva did the best she could with anything she could find. Your just jealous because they are working.’ Cersi glared at the other Mage, with rage in her eyes.

‘Jealous of that orphan wretch. No match for the Great Tradi of Browdon…’

‘If he was so great, then why did he get kicked out of his Kings court.’ Cersi gritted out in pure venom.

‘I will not stay here to be insulted by the Whore of Court…Good day’ Tradi snapped, clutched his satchel to his chest and flouncing off into the distance.

‘Well, that was awkward.’ Jaskier stood wide eyes as the door clattered close.

‘Forgive Tradi. He is a grumpy old twat, but so would I be if I was as untalented as him…so Geralt have you figured out what it is yet.’

‘If I were to put money on, I’d say a Griffin, but never seen on giving of toxin scratches.’

‘Well, whatever it is I am sure you’ll get to the bottom of it. Lord Fagen has sorted out lodging at the Tavern of Carnal Appetites… well, that what the merchants call it. It is at the end of the town, looking over the port, can't miss it. Afraid I won't be able to take you there, one of us has to stay in the hut, and as Tradi has gone off it a hissy fit, it falls down to me. Adva works at the Tavern; she will be able to help you if you have any questions or need supplies. You best hurry, I hear they are putting on quite a little party for you two some of the best whores in the land at your disposal.’ Cersi smoothly sighed, giving a half laugh as the bard escaped through the door without her having to finish her sentence. ‘You have an interesting one there. No good in a fight but I hear the songs are excellent, never heard of a Witcher with their on songwriter before.’

‘Is this going somewhere Cersi? You know I am not one for half-hidden questions and answers.’ Geralt quipped as he folded his arms as he learnt against the stone mantle of the fire.

‘Ahhhhh that is the Geralt I have missed… Let me be a little more straight-edged. I felt what happened in the square; I can sense your questions and your confusion.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’ Geralt shrugged.

‘Oh, Geralt. I am far older than you so don’t try to lie to me, I felt that energy bond being created. I have seen some soul bonds in my time but never with the couple never actually touching or meeting. For a bond link, this to be created is unheard of. From the reaction of poor Adva had must have been a powerful one; indeed, I had to send the sweetling home.’ Cersi was no fool; she had been waiting for this for a long time. Truth and honestly she did not think it would be Geralt, the white wolf that would stumble across the little healer, that was a surprise, not much of one given recent events. It did, however, threw some unneeded confusion into the pot, muddied the water, that was a concern, she would need to rectify that quickly to make the process as smooth as possible.

‘I vaguely seem to recall your friend at the square; she probably inhaled too much rosemary and nettle.’ Geralt face remained impassive, but his golden eyes swirled.

‘Vaguely recall? I’m surprised about that; you didn’t take your eyes off her. At one point I thought you were going to jump off the stage carry her off to your cave.’ Cersi teased, moving over to wash her hand in the basin to the right of the fire and Geralt.

‘As I said, no idea what you are talking about, I think you have spent to much time away from court, you're losing your edge. Witcher’s do not get soul mates.’

Cersi silently observed the Witcher out of the corner of her eye for a long moment as she scrubbed her hands. ‘Well, then, I must be mistaken. You better catch up with your friend. Give my love to Adva; I hear she is making roast lamb.’ Not looking up as Geralt left without another word.

Cersi waited several long moments scrubbing her hands thoroughly before picking up a dagger from beside her and adding a few drops of her own blood to the water, watching as the deep red liquid dissolved in the clear water and a bright light because to ripple across the basin. The Mage waited and waited until a familiar figure replaced her own reflection.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ‘Geralt of Rivia, you are most welcome to our fine establishment. If you require anything, and I mean anything, please let me know… Our Sirens of Brightwater are at you and your friend's disposal. I reserved the best table for you here’ Madam Vivian greeted, fanning herself with a garish fan as she indicated to a velvet-covered table in the middle of the room.

‘Hmmm,’ The hulking Witcher replied as he surveyed his surroundings, scrunting up his nose.

The smell of the room was overpowering, intense perfume and oils to overpower the smell of sex and cum that lingered underneath. Sweat and body odour where another murky smell that offended his nose, he would prefer to be covered in selkie guts again than have to endure the nauseating smell. The only thing that made the room tolerable was the hint of crisp apples and the fresh ocean breeze — an undercurrent of pleasure in a sea of disgust. Ignoring the offered table, Geralt marched off to a bench table in the corner of the room. It had a good view of the bar, which a heavyset man, dressed in beautiful clothes looking very uncomfortable tended to. Hired security doubling as staff, interesting. Geralt ponders as his eyes again searched the room again.

On the opposite side of the room, there was a large hatchway window opening up to the kitchen, the girl from the market flittered around the room tending to two large lambs turning on a spit, basting it with herbs and what smelt like lemon, occasionally she would pass a hunk of meat to the boy turning the spirt who would guzzle it down immediately with a gapped tooth grin. Her skin was pale, but a rose flush dusted across her cheeks and chest. From this distance, even if he didn’t have Witcher's eyes, her eyes sparkled dangerously in the light of the coals, creating hundreds of little stars staring back at him, a gentle smile painted on her lips. Every now and then a patron would wander passed, throwing her a greeting or stopping to chat. She was a short, curvy thing, meaning she would have to learn across the wooded serving platform. Causing the blouse, she had over her bodice to give way a little, and the onlooker caught an eyeful of creamy cleavage. Rage filled his vision as he watched the men jeered and whispered behind tankards of mead with offensive jokes. Part of him, a big part of him, wanted to pull out his sword and slash their throat. Feel the warmth of their blood pool against his skin.

‘This place is amazing!’ Jaskier roared gulping on his goblet of wine, a woman sucking upon his neck already.

Geralt ignored his friend who busied himself with devouring a woman mouth as her hand explored the regions of his pants. Instead, he busied himself drinking mead and watching the young kitchen maid. Her face was partially hidden by the curls that mopped around her head, dark roots that faded into a honeyed blonde; they bounced about her as she dished up plates of meat and cheeses. Geralt amber eyes remained on the figure of the girl as she hummed softly as she worked, but the Witcher saw the dark circles underneath her eyes, and the effort the woman had to put in as she moved. Geralt eyed her with concern as he felt the wavering force of magic filter through the air.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Geralt was on his third mead when the Madam of the tavern reappeared and made her way over to her favourite girls. Nesta and Bela huddled in the corner of the room. Nesta let her hair loose, brushed to a healthy shin, a deep split in her bodice ran down to her navel, showing off her pert breast and slim waist. To her face, she had applied a thick band of charcoal to create a smokey eye, and a faint shimmer of blush to define her cheekbones. Bela was to the left of her, a taller, slimmer woman, dressed in a forest green dress, she was older, nearing her 30s, but still kept an athletic figure, men liked her for the thin body she possessed and girlish charm which she played to her advantage. They had spent the last hour as requested by Vivian watching the white-haired man quietly drinking. ‘How has he been? Has anyone taken his fancy?’ Vivian mumbled from behind her fan.

‘No, he just keeps looking at the wall? Maybe he doesn’t fuck on the job? Maybe he needs to keep his stamina up or something’ Bela spoke is a sultry whisper, pouting at the thought of having to wait. Bela was one of the newest girls, but she also had almost 10 years on the rest, the madam thought it is employing someone more mature might have given her a little more brains, it seems that there was little to be had in her.

‘A Witcher is mutated, has several times the stamina and strength of a normal man. I think one fuck would set him up for a night of hunting. I think perhaps he has a type.’ Vivian purred following the man's gaze. ‘Get Adva to bring the food to the table. Tell her to be accommodating. ’ The madam gave both the girls a big grin, and she grabbed a pitcher of mead and made her way to the table and began to fill the silver tankard without asking, eyeing him discreetly and gave a smile as he eyes never wandered far from the shy kitchen maiden.

Bending down she whispered low into his ear ‘You have a good eye for women. However, that particular girl is just a mere servant…though, I am in the middle of persuading her to sell her virginity. There has been a lot of interest in Adva, such a good-natured girl, gorgeous, especially when out of those rags. Inexperienced, would need someone to break her in. If that is something, I can tempt you with; I would be happy to keep you in mind. I'm sure she would be an honour to accept your offer. I was thinking 50 gold coins’

‘The only thing I want to break in is a leg of lamb.’ Geralt growled lowly, aggressively, through gritted teeth.

Vivian scarlet smile faltered, and an ugly sneer replaced it but as quick as it appeared it disappeared, replaced with a strained smile. ‘Of course,…. Ahh, here it is now. Adva, please give the Witcher extra attention, make sure he has everything he needs.’ Vivian cooed at the young girl before flicking her fan up and swayed away. Leaving the golden eyes and blue eyes to meet.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Adva ached. Her body felt heavy with the want of sleep. It the haze of everything that has happened at the square she had only managed to splash some water in her face before Vivian had put her to work, prepping two full lamb, soup and cakes, she hadn’t even had time to make sense of what occurrence earlier. The connection between the two felt intense, heavy and energetic. In the back of her mind, she was aware that Witchers were the vessel of magical force due to the mutations that their body was put through, since the attacks she had become tender and raw to the chaos around her making her extra sensitive. It must be why he was affecting her so much! It was nothing, she was sure, she doubted the Witcher even felt it, it was paranoia.

‘Adva…Viv wants you to personally bring food over to Witcher. Be nice; I think she has something planned. Tread carefully’ Nesta whispered across the hatch, as she passed.

Panic surged through her as she stared wide-eyed at the opening; she hadn’t been realised that the Witcher was here. That was good right? It meant that everything she felt was it her sleep-deprived head. With her faltering strength, she carved off a leg of lamb and ladled the sizzling juices onto a wooden bowl with the cooked vegetables, wedging that under her arms while picking up another tray laded with cakes and cheeses. As quick as she could she matched out to immediately be hit by an overwhelming scent of spice, wood and mint. Usually the tavern smelt of perfume and lavender, but the smell faded into the background for this wintery warming fragrance. The anxiety seemed to melt away, and her heart slowed, and an overriding sense of comfort as she made her way through the crowd of laughing people. The girls were strategically placed throughout the establishment, Vivian was a wise woman, made it her business to know the indulgence of her customers to please them and ensure they kept spending the coin which is why she was surprised to find the Witcher sat alone in a dark corner. Even before she saw him, she could feel his eyes burn through her, those circles of fire that swirled followed ever her every movement. Vivian was standing next to him, giving her her sternest look before she greeted her and departed to a safe distance to observe.

‘Sir your meal’ Adva tried to smile as she placed the heavy platers around him, her arms sighing with relief as they were unburdened of their bounty. ‘Is there anything else I can get you?’ She tried to smile, but the penetrating stare he held was daunting, unwavering and powerful, which is why his first words surprised her,

‘Dwarven Spit.’

So they finally meet! The next chapter will be there meeting and little action, as requested by one of the readers. How are we finding it? I am trying to stay true to the character of Geralt, but he is damn hard to write. What do you think of the characters? And once again, if you want to see or want me to included anything, just let me know.

Also I am open to request, so feel free to send them through.

[vesuvian-sunsets]

3 and 10 for apprentice questions? 🥰

Thank you so much for the ask! 😊 Sorry that they got a little long... I've thought a lot about these particular topics 😅

3. Do they have a familiar? Why did you choose that animal? How did they meet?

For Merin:

Merin's familiar is a spotted hyena named Finley. Finley is a very friendly, very enthusiastic, very gentle little bean. To her, everyone is a friend until proven otherwise. Quite the opposite of Merin, who is a lot more reserved and guarded around people she doesn't know. But! Finley brings out Merin's soft side like no one else but Asra and Muriel can.

I picked a hyena because a large predator seemed appropriate for Merin. People look at Finley and treat her with caution, just as they look at Merin, with her scars and magic, and do the same. And, honestly, Merin's about as likely to actually hurt someone as sweet lil Finley is, even if they can both be rather intimidating when pressed.

Merin first saw Finley while exploring the Red Market about a year before the game begins. Finley was being sold by one of the exotic animal traders down there. And, because Finely's so friendly and energetic, she was pretty miserable cooped up in a cage- not because of mistreatment or anything, just because she wanted to be running around and interacting with people. Of course, Merin didn't know that, and just saw this sad little hyena pup, looking at her with biggest, saddest puppy dog eyes you could imagine.

And she tried to just ignore the hyena. She really did. She certainly didn't have money to buy her.

But seeing the poor thing that sad and in a cage... she couldn't just sit by and do nothing. So... she waited until the trader was distracted, popped the lock open with a quick spell, and scooped Finely out and into her bag (it was a good sized bag don't worry). Then she got out of there FAST. And... then had to come to terms with the fact that she now had a hyena. And had to figure out what to tell Asra...

She doesn't regret it for a moment though. Finley's one of her best friends, and is QUITE a lot happier trotting along at Merin's side and napping in the shop's many pillow piles than she would've been in some noble's private zoo or whatever.

For Xori:

Xori's familiar is a red tailed hawk named Panrell. He's a grumpy, ill tempered bird who dislikes pretty much everyone but Xori. He does come to begrudgingly like Portia and Julian on their routes though. He loves Xori dearly and is fiercely protective of her.

Originally, when I had started the game knowing very little about it, I'd wanted her to have a crow familiar. But then I found out that Julian had a raven, and that was too similar so I switched it. Honestly, I like having Panrell as a hawk more. It better fits a druid, and it better fits her personality before her death. Fierce and proud. A true creature of the wilds.

She met Panrell when she was a child. She found him tangled in a hunter's snare after trying to get at a caught rabbit. She'd cut him free and healed him up, and then he flew off. She thought that was the last she'd see of him. But he kept coming back, and she started leaving out scraps of meat for him. Eventually he decided to trust her enough to land on her shoulder. And then they were inseparable.

At least... until Xori died.

Panrell stayed around the Lazaret for a while after her death- not wanting to leave her alone. But eventually he'd had to leave for the forest.

Asra looked for him once he returned, and still more once he'd brought Xori back. To no avail.

But in Xori's dreams, she was often guided from danger by a hawk. The same hawk every time.

During the events of the game, Panrell does find her again. But their connection had frayed with her death. They couldn't talk to each other, and for a while Xori was just very confused as to why this hawk had just... befriended her for some reason??? Even more confused as to why there was a strange sense of completion, of coming home, whenever he perched on her shoulder.

But she finds out the truth and rebuilds their connection over time.

10) Describe their magical abilities. What are they best at? Worst?

For Merin:

Merin's specialty is pyromancy. To her, her magic feels like fire just beneath her skin. It's not painful. It feels warm and comforting. It feels powerful. In times of stress or when she has little time to think, fire always jumps quickest to her palms to defend herself with. She also can't really be burned by fire. So when she needs light she just summons a flame to her palm, letting it dance across her skin.

She's also pretty good at using magic to bypass locks, at forming shield spells and wards, and also sensing things with magic- like illusions, portals, etc.

What she struggles with most is healing. It's so different from the natural state of her magic- hot and bright and burning- that it's quite a struggle to force it to soften, cool, and turn soothing. It takes a lot of work, and for years she couldn't do it at all. It's pretty fitting that she passed out after healing Muriel in his first chapter- because that really would've taken a lot out of her to accomplish.

For Xori:

Xori's specialty is nature magic. Her magic is soft and green and blooming. It feels like sunlight dappling on leaves. Like rich dark soil that's full of life. She doesn't remember it, but she was born to a tribe of nomadic druids. Nature magic is in her blood, and not even amnesia and death were able to take that from her. Her favorite defensive spell is to conjure vines and roots from the earth to ensnare her foes. And, unlike Merin, she's very good at healing magic. She's a very nurturing person, and so soothing pain and healing wounds is practically second nature.

What she struggles with the most is any sort of illusion magic, any sort of spell that requires trickery. She's a terrible, terrible liar who wears her heart on her sleeve. And you can generally tell what she's feeling just by looking at her face. So, obviously, her magic simply isn't built for deception.

[sourirez]

Abusage

Summary: The imprisoned god finds amusement in a strange half-mortal while he’s kept in Midgard. What he doesn’t expect is for the princess to turn into a warrior as he leaves with a scar not only on his body but in his heart, only to be healed by the same person that very evening.

Loki X Reader

Part 1

The quiet sound of the room filled the gray walls while the only thing that moved inside the room was Loki’s chest, his breath filling the air. The compound was empty today, no signs of any souls while the merciless god remained alone, the state in which he was the most calm and peaceful.

He thought about his mother, whom he hadn’t seen in a long time but because he was with Thor, he knew she wasn’t worried much. He had learned how to use certain midgardian tools like a box with people in it and also how to warm food, it was Tony who showed him the use of technology here, something they didn’t need much in Asgard as magic did the most. He had gone out with Bruce and Steve once, they didn’t want to take him out but after Nat but him in casual midgardian clothes, they didn’t want to waste the effort.

Midgard was different, so much more violent and filled with a little too many problems, even for a god. He had seen so many people shouting outside, seemed like peace had left this city whereas Tony said that peace was just found around here, after his arrival and defeat. Loki saw the reflection of sunrays called rainbow and found it rather childish how the colors were all so simple yet, he enjoyed the observations around here.

His hair was growing, it was still slicked back and it’s raven color was brighter than ever, creating a contrast between his eyes. He was bored most days, almost to a point where he couldn’t take it but there were times like when he talked to Y/N that made things a little better for him, she was interesting after all.

Loki had learned that Y/N was really a half-god. He had found it suspicious how he hadn’t heard of her but after talking to his brother, he knew she was the lost daughter of Cyra. He had heard so many stories about her mother, how she was the most fascinating women on Asgard and how much of a brave warrior she was on the battlefield next to his father. Loki saw some of these traits in Y/N, but he didn’t comment because his observations were only for himself.

He walked slowly, cautious of any other souls that could be in the building since it was a training day for some young midgardians he had seen, they had something different about them but nothing that stood out too much. He had observed a few of them while Y/N taught them the art of fighting and a few rules of the universe she had been taught before.

Loki had realized that Y/N was not a midgardian in the way she behaved, neither was she an Asgardian like her mother. Loki saw all kinds of realms and creatures in her: she carried herself around like the king of Alfheim, with class and much respect but she knew too much about the universe and its flaws to be a king. She fought like her mother, an Asgardian blamed for things she didn’t do, there was a shadow to her, something that kept Loki interested but he also knew that it wasn’t much of a thrilling shadow she had, it was made of all the broken parts she had.

Loki and Y/N were similar in ways they wanted to deny. They had both been let down too many times, by family and their close circle. Y/N had seen way too much compared to the grumpy god yet, he would deny this any time it came to his mind. Loki couldn’t read her mind either, it was a spell she had and much stronger than any other spell Loki had come across so he also wondered if she was trained by witches like Frigga had been.

His slow and steady steps brought him towards the noise. It was the huge training room that was occupied with a few familiar faces Loki had come to know. Slow grunts and the sound of flesh hitting metal filled the room,s the glass walls made everything even more visible while Loki approached the two people training, it wasn’t very much like training and more like one of them kicking the other’s ass. It was simply amusing to him.

The compound was soon filled with what they called ‘the team’. Loki was not the most content but he didn’t mind the company of some mortals around here who possessed a great deal of knowledge much to his surprise. He sat around the glass wall and watched the youngsters train, some of them had talents while some were simply pathetic in the eyes of the god. 

A dark chuckle escaped his lips when Sam fell on the ground once again, finding it hard to fight against super human powers, Loki was actually surprised he lasted this long. Due to the small sound he made, all eyes were on him now. He met all of their judgemental eyes before Tony spoke, sarcasm dripping out of every word that came out of his mouth.

“Wouldn’t you like to try, Reindeer Games? ” he spoke, there was first silence and a few giggles. This was a nickname Tony had given him and Loki was unsure of the meaning, yet it annoyed him so a hiss came out of his mouth instead of an answer.

If Thor were here, he would make the mortals know of the powers Loki possessed, none of them measured up to his level of accuracy and skill when it came to fighting, he was a god after all. The small footsteps interrupted his thoughts when Y/N came in, ready to fight in less clothes with more flexibility.

Bucky was the in the room, waiting for her so he could train. He didn’t need to but he knew it was a fun way of relieving the pent up energy he had inside him. While Loki’s eyes traveled from Y/N’s braided hair to her hands as she covered them with black gloved designed for her, the others spoke but he didn’t hear, he was too busy looking at his own view in front of him.

The gloves were actually to help Y/N with her powers. She was able to control a few things much like her mother, maybe even more powerful but she wasn’t fully comfortable with using them here, not in front of them. They had seen her hands light up and create illusions, weapons and different realities but they had never seen it in the compound, it was far too dangerous here.

Cap touched Loki’s shoulder, more like a push it was to get him out of staring and thinking, he was in his own world for a bit too long.

“Why don’t you go for a round with Y/N, I’m sure she’ll measure up to you.” he joked, Loki’s eyes glistened while they met Y/N’s.

Her mouth closed before she said anything, shrugging his shoulders as to say that it was alright. Nat was amused at this, she knew how well of a fighter Y/N was and knowing Loki was a demigod, she stood a chance to win for sure. Y/N didn’t say anything, she just waited for some sort of a reaction from Loki while he found this opportunity amusing.

He was searching for an opportunity to see the ex-assassin at work. Ever since the fast healed scar on her neck and their talk about her past, Loki had grown even more interested. The warrior who had a dark past just like her mother seemed too much of an intimidating story and Loki wanted to know, anything and everything Y/N was capable of not only on the battlefield but on the daily.

“Okay.”Y/N heard Loki say and that was all it took for her to come out of her thoughts.

She didn’t doubt herself nor her skills, she was trained on more than one realm and was experienced but she knew too much of the god. All the stories she had been told as a kid about the mighty brothers came to her while the admired god turned into an enemy on the training grounds, much faster of a change than she was used to.

Unlike others in the compound, Y/N wasn’t intimidated at Loki’s usual self. She knew he tried to annoy her, bore her but she only found his efforts more interesting than she had expected. Thor was a sweet person for sure but Y/N was interested in the mysterious god born after him, he was everything but what was expected of him and this caught Y/N’s attention a little too much.

“Alright.” Y/N said, stepping into the empty room while the team watched them through the glass door, it was protected from the inside yet, it was clear to see.

Loki’s gaze first traveled around her exposed neck, her hair came out of a few places yet it almost seemed like she did it on purpose. Her face was far too beautiful of a creature’s to be here, fighting with him. He knew of the gloves and their specialty but he let go of that, he didn’t want to seem to interested in the woman before him.

“Wanna throw the first punch?” Y/N joked, but before she knew it, Loki was already holding a weapon against her neck, it was an illusion he used.

Loki chuckled right before feeling a warmth on his stomach, was he bleeding? He looked down after letting Y/N go only to see nothing, she had used her powers to stimulate the feeling. Loki didn’t have much time after that when Y/N kicked her stomach, landing a few punches around his neck, making Loki stumble and fall onto the floor.

Y/N blew her hair out the way, feeling Loki’s strong grasp on her waist while he chuckled, way too darkly for someone who was about to be thrown into the ground once more. They heard the reactions of the avengers through the doors while Loki dragged Y/N’s body across the room. Y/N kicked her way out of his grasp, a little too fast for the god right before she felt a metal object right under her neck.

Her breath was not audible but it was there while Loki didn’t let go, holding her body tight against his while the team seemed simply terrified, he could kill Y/N if he wanted. 

“You minx.” he practically growled while she smiled slowly, finding it almost endearing how he had given her a nickname just when he was about to kill her. 

While thoughts made their way into Loki’s mind, Y/N hit his crotch, a little too cliche but his grasp loosened and the next thing he knew, Y/N had kicked her across the room until his back hit the wall, a loud thud across the room while the god stood there, trying to gain his balance and find his knife.

It was all too fast for anyone but Y/N as her actions took up a few seconds. After kicking Loki across the room, she grabbed her knife skillfully and just when he stood up, threw it across the room. A smooth sound could be heard by everyone around the room right before the knife stuck on the wall, right next to Loki’s cheekbone where there was a small cut. Too fast, Loki thought after he felt the cut on his cheek.

Avengers cheered slowly, Y/N’s face was nothing but celebratory. Her eyes didn’t leave Loki’s for a long time, there was something Loki had stumbled upon her during the fight that she found too hard to explain and so she just stood there for a while, facing the god with wide yet calm eyes as he bled. Her breath slowly calmed down under his gaze, her mind cleared and she gave her a small smile before walking out of the room.

Loki didn’t know what had just happened, it was far too fast and unexpected for him to digest. The god had just experienced his first individual defeat, he was bleeding and was in a state of utter shock but nevertheless, he was even more interested in the woman who was responsible for his current state.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

Staring at the reflection of himself on the ceiling, Loki’s eyes drifted to his scar. It was healing up slower than usual, probably because Y/N used some magic on it before she threw it. It was Loki could think about, how fast it all happened was the additional cherry on top. He had kept his cool around the half-god for some time now but when she threw that knife, there was so much she could see, so much of what Loki was out of his mask.

Y/N was also shocked, the god was not the sarcastic trickster she knew of at that moment. There was more than a whole universe inside the raven haired man before her, she had seen it in his eyes. There was so much sorrow, pain and fear he had but he was simply perfect at hiding it, much like he had done in the past years of his life. Y/N also saw regret, small hints of the past weighed him down a little too much.

Y/N kept these to herself while they stayed at the corner of her mind, creating curiosity and interest towards the god even more. Loki’s gaze left the ceiling and his scar when Rhodey came in the room with Thor, all the avengers were amused by the scar and how it had all happened, Loki saw it in their faces much like his brother’s.

Unlike what he would usually do, Loki wasn’t angry at Y/N nor he wanted to hold some sort of a grudge to unleash upon her in years to come, if she would be around. Loki hoped she would but he was aware of the unpredictability of the future. He was simply impressed at the creature, she was way too bold for a princess yet the way she carried herself told Loki otherwise, she was a whole different world in herself.

“Brother, you’ve been well?” spoke Thor, Loki didn’t know why he was here since he had been gone for the last week.

“Kind of you to ask after abandoning me here.” Loki said, sarcasm dripping from every word as he sat on the bed, Thor was sitting on a chair.

“I came to tell you about an event today, you need to make no trouble.” he spoke once again, Loki knew Thor was here for Jane yet he ignored it. He was used to being the second choice at this point.

“And?” Loki said, standing up while his brother kept his eyes on him, Rhodey was long gone.

“There’s a celebration being thrown, they have invited you as well since you have been quite bored. I ask nothing but for you to keep your mischief away today.” said Thor, trying to act as gentle as possible.

“They’ll have Y/N around for any magic tricks you might wanna pull.”

Tony appeared in the room, an apple in his hand while he winked at the demigods before him.

“And seeing how well she’s kicked your ass today.” Tony continued, walking in the room and his gaze met Loki’s scar.

“I think we’ll be just fine.”

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

The sky was dark, it was nowhere near a navy color while stars decorated the vast universe. The street was crowded, cars and guards coming out of each corner while everyone kept themselves occupied with a glass of champagne. Loki was staring around, trying to get used to the new realm he was in.

The party was one of Tony’s many, it wasn’t unusual that it happened but it was usual that a demigod who tried to destroy the very place they were in was invited. He chuckled, the guards and their guns would do nothing but harm if he tried to escape but the harm would be to the city once again.

Walking in the building, Loki’s eyes met the chandeliers, grand and well designed with too many lights on them. The place reminded him of one of the palace’s he’d been to, gold in many corners with statues and fountains inside the glass windows while laughter and greetings filled the thin air.

The place smelled of vanilla and champagne when the demigod’s eyes met the so called team. They were all here, wearing suits and expensive dresses while Thor walked towards them. They had smiles on, something rare Loki got the see and he also saw them out of their armors for the first time, they all looked different.

“Look who it is!” said Tony, the team laughed while all Loki did was to roll his eyes. He had gotten to this Midgardian sarcasm and dealt with it pretty well up until now.

As much as he wanted to deny it, his eyes searched for Y/N around the place. It was too crowded but for a god, it was nothing to search for someone in this place. He looked around for a while, his gaze met tones of women and men dressed in fancy attire with a drink in their hands yet Y/N was nowhere to be seen.

He was far too proud to ask anyone about her just when she appeared. She had left her wavy hair down, it created shadows around her face as she walked. Her maroon dress complimented her skin color completely as she made her way towards the group. She simply glistened under the lights, her face was accentuated with make-up and a few simple jewels and Loki could tell she took her beauty from her mother, it simply left him breathless.

He didn’t shift while she greeted the team, everyone except Loki. She was feeling a little guilty about the small scar on his cheek and knowing the stories about him, she was sure he was mad and annoyed at her so he remained away from him the whole time. Nat and Bruce got up dancing after a while, moving their bodies to the beat while the others also got up from the circle table, they had too much to drink.

Y/N chuckled at the crowd, all the foolish stumbling they made seemed to amuse her while she sat on the table across from the god. Their eyes met frequently, mostly because Loki didn’t seem to look away and Y/N waited for him to do so. She didn’t have much to drink even though he was good with her liquor, Midgardian drinks were far too weak.

The night and the dim lights created shadows on Loki’s skin, Y/N couldn’t keep her gaze away while she watched the city lights reflect on his porcelain skin. His blue eyes stood out while his slicked back hair and a few strands of hair on his face made him look like out of this world, even though he really was. He was wearing a suit, no tie with an unbuttoned shirt until he could reveal some of his silky skin. There was a green scarf around his jacket, matching the green detailing on his shoes and sleeves.

She gave him a smile while her gaze fixated on his eyes first, his scar second. Loki liked the small game they were playing until a slow song came on. There was a hint of fear in Y/N’ eyes when Loki walked towards her, leaving his chair while the rest of the team remained in their own world. He sat next to her while all her eyes did was to follow his figure, everywhere he went.

“Hello, Lady.”he spoke, a hint of mischief in his tone only she could see.

“Hey, Mister.”said Y/N, playing along while his eyes traveled up and down her body, finding her too good.

“Would you care to join me on the dance floor?”Loki asked, way more kindly than he would usually do.

Y/N was relieved and stressed. Loki wasn’t mad nor annoyed, that was her worry all along. The god was now next to her, asking her to dance with him. It was a slow song playing as they got up, Loki took her hand in his and she followed her, his touch was gentle unlike it had been in the fight today.

Her breath was slow while their bodies touched, Loki’s one hand was on her waist while the other held her hand up, intertwined fingers while they danced. Y/N could feel his heartbeat, his shallow breaths confident as they warmed her face with a steady pace. She didn’t look at him for a while, making sure she would not step on his toes as they waltzed around the room.

The crowd made a circle around them as they traveled from corner to corner around the room. When Y/N looked up, she realized he had been staring at her for the whole time. The lights around the room reflected from the surfaces of the glasses on the tables, creating small crystal shadows around the room while the two souls danced, almost perfect.

“I thought gods don’t bleed.” said Y/N, out of the blue after realizing that Loki was nowhere near holding a grudge about the small scar, he was simply impressed was all.

This earned a small chuckle from the demigod as he held her close, his chuckle filled her ears as a smile made its way to their faces. Loki smelled of mint and what Y/N imagined a mystic creature to smell like, it took her out of the thoughts she had and put her into reality.

These souls were both scarred too deep, betrayal and sorrow was carved into their minds as it appeared many times in their lives. Somehow, they would both come to heal each others’ wounds, all they would need was time and patience as they would come to grow together. The two kids who were dancing together would be each others’ light and dark but they were not so aware of this.

“You amuse me, dear.” Loki spoke, finding some sort of comfort in the exchange of a few words with the half-god. Her gaze met his once more, their crystal eyes filled with something out of the blue.

“Well, It’s an honor, Prince.” she spoke, not realizing the fact that he called him a prince.

In Y/N’s mind, Loki had always a prince ever since she heard of him. He was a misunderstood one but Y/N saw more elegance and nobility in Loki than in Thor. He was meant to be a King someday, there was no doubt in her mind but somehow, things had gone wrong and there he was now, imprisoned in a place far too weak.

With the change of a song to an even slower one, Y/N’s hand slipped from Loki’s and landed on his shoulders while Loki’s hands held her by the waist gently. The two creatures could easily be mistaken for lovers from outside but the truth was, they were nothing but a pair of familiar strangers to each other. Loki danced with the half-god while her heartbeat could be felt against his. Their eyes met every now and then, breaths against each other while Y/N’s mind was nothing but confused.

This man before him was nothing she had been told. She wasn’t the one to believe a couple words but it wasn’t just the mortals around here who told him about the merciless god who was now holding her against his body ever so gently. He was misunderstood, a little too reckless and loveless, nowhere near a monster. So she looked at his eyes for the last time that evening and found something she didn’t know he was capable of.

Tenderness.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

Taglist: @themusingsofmany​ @yuzuhirado​ @parkbearum​

[welcometothepenumbra]

SECOND CITADEL – THE HALLOWED HALLS OF HELICOID (PART ONE)

SOUND: RAIN. TRAIN ARRIVES, CREAKS TO A STOP. DOOR CLANKS OPEN.

CONDUCTOR: Ah, good evening, Traveler. And welcome… to The Penumbra.

SOUND: DOOR CLANKS SHUT.

Take your seat, please, take your seat.

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING.

MUSIC: STARTS.

The junction lies ahead, so if you’ll allow me just a moment.

SOUND: TRAIN WHISTLE.

We are now approaching Fort Terminus.

SOUND: TRAIN BRAKES.

Our next stop?

The Hallowed Halls of Helicoid.

SOUND: DOOR CLANKS OPEN, RAIN.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

MUSIC: STARTS.

SOUND: WATER DRIPS, ECHOING.

RILLA: Quanyii? Can I ask you a question?

QUANYII: Oh I so hope you will, Rilla.

RILLA: If magic is really, um—

QUANYII: My favorites are the ones I don’t feel like answering, because then I just lie! Or sometimes, I lie just because it’s fun. Do you ever do that, tall, dark, and cranky?

SIR CAROLINE: I don’t.

QUANYII: See? She’s doing it right now!

RILLA: Uh… okay. So, if magic is inconsistent, and unreliable… how could you just make the sun look like it was setting, or make this brace that helps me walk without—

QUANYII: Ughhh. Boo. It’s no fun at all when you ask me a good question. Fine, fine. It’s really very simple…

SOUND: RECORDER STARTS.

Oh!

RILLA: That’s good. Just speak clearly into the receiver.

QUANYII: Ohhh, what is this?

CAROLINE: Have mercy, they’re encouraging each other.

RILLA: It’s an audio recorder. I made it.

QUANYII: Ohhh, I adore it! And it’s so handy – usually I just put my voice in a rock when I want to remember something, but I always forget where I put it.

RILLA: You can just… do that?

CAROLINE: Ughhhhh.

QUANYII: Oh sweets, that’s nothing. Give me a few days and a part of your soul and I can teach you to put your voice in anything! (LAUGHS) That was a joke, obviously. The soul is useless. I’d probably ask for a toe.

RILLA: Just one? That’s not bad…

CAROLINE: Enough.

SOUND: RECORDER CLICKS OFF.

You have outstayed your welcome, witch. We have agreed to your terms. But you will not continue meddling in official Citadel affairs like this. Leave us.

MUSIC: ENDS.

QUANYII: Oh, she’s angry now. Do you think I should have asked for her toe instead?

CAROLINE: When I tell you to do something, witch, I mean now.

SOUND: SWORD UNSHEATHING.

QUANYII: Oh no, a sword. How pointy.

RILLA: Sir Caroline!

QUANYII: You’d really hurt me? Me? With the sword that I gave you, after the big, bad monsters stole yours?

CAROLINE: I am on the job. Technically, I would be justified.

QUANYII: Oh so we’re talking technicalities! Well if that’s the case, then technically, without me, you don’t have a sword. Pop!

SOUND: POOF, JINGLE.

All gone!

CAROLINE: Ughhhhh.

QUANYII: If you can’t handle one cursed sword, cutie, you’re not ready for this fortress. And definitely not ready to fly solo.

CAROLINE: I have broken out of many prisons before, and I am stronger than I was then. I can handle whatever these monsters have in store.

QUANYII: Breaking out? Breaking out is nothing compared to what we have to do next. We’re breaking in, then out.

CAROLINE: We don’t need you for this.

QUANYII: It’s not about need, babe; it’s about want.

SOUND: WOOD CREAKING.

Like how I don’t want you to get crushed by that wall trap you’re ignoring above your head.

CAROLINE: …What?

RILLA: Sir Caroline, look out!

QUANYII: And stop!

SOUND: CHIMES, CREAKING STOPS. CLOCK TICKING.

RILLA: You froze it in midair!

QUANYII: Stopped time around it, actually. It will continue on its course… in a second.

CAROLINE: Magic.

QUANYII: Okay babe, maybe step out of the way of the falling trap and then whine? Because this is starting to get exhausting.

RILLA: Sir… Caroline?

CAROLINE: Hmph.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

QUANYII: There… we’ve passed… through!

SOUND: BIG WOODEN CRASH. TICKING STOPS.

(BIG SIGH) And that, sweets, is how you make magic work for you. Magical spells, commands, etceteras, and so-ons only work if the universe feels like answering them. If I asked the universe to stop that pile of wood from crushing our sweet little knight, it might work once every hundred times. But, if I ask the universe to take this watch I worked on so very hard, and pretty pretty please, universe, can you just make it a time-stopping watch, just for me, just if I do enough so it’s basically already one anyway, then—

RILLA: Then the impossible, magical phenomenon isn’t stopping time… it’s making the thing that can stop time.

QUANYII: Very good. See? And you wanted to leave me behind. Whatever would you do without me?

RILLA: Thanks, Quanyii.

Sir Caroline?

CAROLINE: (SNORTS) Hrrraaaah!

SOUND: CRACK.

I would have been fine. Goodbye.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

QUANYII: Now what did that trap ever do to her?

RILLA: Excuse me just a second, Quanyii.

What is your problem? I thought you said you didn’t hate witches!

CAROLINE: I didn’t until today. She doesn’t belong here.

RILLA: So? She’s helping us, isn’t she?

CAROLINE: Only because she’s more likely to get what she’s after by helping us than not. But this is not the arrangement.

RILLA: What arrangement?

CAROLINE: It doesn’t matter for you. This will likely be the only day you ever see a real witch.

RILLA: Well, then… what does it matter? We need to help the Citadel, right? Maybe this witch is breaking the witch-rules, or whatever, but, that only affects her, right?

CAROLINE: (FRUSTRATED SIGH)

RILLA: Why can’t you just accept that we got lucky?

CAROLINE: Because this is my investigation, under my control. And I will not allow anyone to insinuate that the first investigation I earned was a success only because I got lucky.

RILLA: So you’d rather fail?

CAROLINE: I would not have failed. I would have solved it on my own. And now she has taken that from me.

RILLA: Okay, fine. She broke you out of the cell, you didn’t get to come up with a big plan, cool. But unless you want me to lock you in one of those cages myself, that’s over. So deal with it and do your job.

CAROLINE: (SIGHS) Fine. We will use the witch. But if you breathe a single word of this in the Citadel—

RILLA: Sure. Whatever.

CAROLINE: Good.

Witch!

QUANYII: (SHRIEKS)

RILLA: What?!

CAROLINE: Are you alright? Damn it, why wasn’t I watching her—

QUANYII: I’m fine! It’s my pocketwatch! Your mean little show making me work extra hard to save you from that falling trap put a crack in my pocketwatch, you beast! My poor baby! Shhh, it’s alright; we’ll get some crushed dragon-eye jelly on you in no time, little tick-tock.

RILLA: Wait… dragon’s eye? L-l-like from—

QUANYII: Dragons, silly! They exist just a little outside of time themselves, you know. That’s why there never seems to be one around when you need them; because they’ll be around some other time instead.

RILLA: So… you study monsters? Use their parts?

CAROLINE: Where do you think all those magical powers come from? Witches are scavengers. They take stronger creatures’ power because they can do nothing on their own.

QUANYII: I couldn’t say it better myself! Very smart of us, isn’t it? I know grumpy is impressed.

CAROLINE: I am not. It’s pathetic.

RILLA: Aren’t you here because you literally pushed Damien down a flight of stairs and stole his job?

CAROLINE: You, charmed one, probably haven’t noticed the disadvantages one starts out with in a field brimming with people who want to see you fail. I will do anything to level the playing field.

RILLA: So you think you’re better than me because you made it big in the boys’ club?

CAROLINE: I know I’m better than you, actually. The men have nothing to do with it.

RILLA: Despite the fact that my job is so dangerous, difficult, and illegal that nobody else will do it? That’s really where you’re putting your foot down, here?

QUANYII: Oh, are we measuring how hard our lives are? Should I take out my magic hardships yardstick?

CAROLINE & RILLA: (IN UNISON) Yes!

QUANYII: Well, I don’t have one, because that makes so little sense even magic won’t touch it. Instead of measuring your problems, why don’t we just agree that we all have it hard, and try to make things better for one another? Everyone deserves a little help. Everyone.

RILLA: That’s… not bad advice.

QUANYII: Yes, we all have problems, ladies. Look at me, for example. I have this little cough that just won’t go away. (FAKE-COUGHS) And on top of that, I’ve wanted the four thumbs of a reptilian familiar for nearly ten minutes now and I still don’t have them!

RILLA: His thumbs?!

CAROLINE: The lizard is mine. He must answer for his crimes.

QUANYII: And does he need his thumbs to answer for them? No? Good. See? We help each other and we all get what we want.

CAROLINE: Hm. That’s the first sense you’ve made all day, witch.

RILLA: No! You- you can’t!

CAROLINE: Excuse me, herbalist? Do you have something you’d like to say?

RILLA: Yo- you can’t hurt him! I- I have to talk to him!

QUANYII: Oh, that’s perfect! Then you can talk to him while I take off his thumbs, and then the knight can have his head. And if you decide you have more questions later, I’ll just put my hand in his skull and we’ll have a little chat! (LAUGHS)

RILLA: But—

CAROLINE: This argument is over. Her terms are fair enough for now. We can decide the rest when the lizard is dead.

RILLA: No, we actually can’t—

CAROLINE: And in the meantime, if he is as heavily-guarded as you say, witch, we should have a plan of attack before we press on. What can we expect from this fortress?

QUANYII: Ooh, just the biggest, spookiest, creepiest-crawliest monsters of all! Fort Terminus is the monsters’ last stronghold in the Northern Wilds, and that’s saying something. Monsters as individuals love to stake claim to a spot and stay there; but as a group, they can never agree on one place to defend together, let alone a building. I hear even their Senate never meets in the same place twice. So the fact that they work together to keep this place up should tell you how badly they need it.

RILLA: For what?

QUANYII: Things so horrible no monster wants to be near them. (LAUGHS) Oh, that was a face! Do it again, again!

CAROLINE: Then this is their point of exile.

QUANYII: It is. And the few times they’ve managed to work together to come up with a combined method of attack… it’s their armory. (WHISPERS) A warehouse of horrors.

RILLA: Few times? Like… they aren’t now? But aren’t we at war with them?

QUANYII: You are! So imagine how you’d do if they really unified!

RILLA: Saints…

QUANYII: Oh, don’t worry, sweets. They’ve only done it once in all of recorded history, and that was nearly three thousand years ago.

Though, of course, that one was so bad it wiped out most of recorded history before it.

RILLA: Three thousand years… the Fall of the First Citadel?

CAROLINE: That’s enough about the fort – one mission at a time. How are we approaching it?

QUANYII: Because the monsters fear it so, few know how Fort Terminus is operated from within. There are no guards assigned to it – that would defy their freedom – so I can only tell you about what the monsters know: the entrance. Fort Terminus has no front gate. Instead, its only entrances are through its cells, each of which have two sealed doors: one on our side and one leading into the fort itself.

CAROLINE: So the lizard’s sealed in on our side… and then whatever operates the fortress takes him in from the other side.

QUANYII: It takes some time, I hear, but yes. And that’s why we’re headed toward those cell blocks now.

CAROLINE: (CHUCKLES) So that’s your strategy? Entering through the front door?

QUANYII: I made it all by myself!

CAROLINE: Of all the inane, stupid—

QUANYII: And I will not be accepting criticism at this time.

CAROLINE: If you had consulted a strategist – like the one you’re speaking to right now – you would know that approaching an encampment from the front is a recipe for failure. If there is ever a way to approach from behind, you take it.

QUANYII: Oh, she likes it the other way in, does she? When’s our date, again?

CAROLINE: The other way– uh, opening– uh, hole! Augh! The other one! Yes, the other one is the only one that makes sense!

QUANYII: Oh, the other path, you mean, that’s fine. Well, we’ll just turn around and go that way.

CAROLINE: I think we should.

QUANYII: Right now?

CAROLINE: This instant.

QUANYII: And then we’ll just navigate this labyrinth backwards, wake up the gigantic snail-slime-beastie that so easily trapped you and sent you down here in the first place, kindly ask him to scoot over so we can access the hidden chamber that he’s sleeping on top of, and then, navigate a second and far more dangerous labyrinth, directly into the monsters’ high-security nightmare-fort, just so we can take the back door in to trim the gecko you’re after. Sounds fun, sweetie! Lead the way!

CAROLINE: (AFTER A PAUSE, GROWLS)

QUANYII: (LAUGHS) Oh, don’t be so grumpy. You wouldn’t want to take that other path anyways. Musty, smelly, covered in that nasty Judge’s slime… oh, and positively dripping with deadly boobytraps. Everywhere. Floors, walls, you name it. You’d have to be… (LAUGHING) You’d have to be a complete idiot to go in through there!

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

TALFRYN: (FADING IN, YELLING)

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

JUDGE HELICOID: (FADING IN) Get back here! I say, get back!

SIR DAMIEN: Talfryn! Another spike wall, on your left!

SOUND: CLINK.

TALFRYN: Guhaaahaaaahh!!

SOUND: HEAVY CREAKING, SQUELCHES.

SIR ANGELO: Come now, Sir Damien. If you tell him about every obstacle, he’ll never learn!

DAMIEN: And if I don’t, he’ll never live, Sir Angelo, so– pit trap!

TALFRYN: Whoaaaaaaahhh!!

SOUND: STUMBLING FOOTSTEPS.

ANGELO: An excellent attempt, warrior-in-training! One pointer: most great jumpers lift off with their legs, not by spinning their arms in a circle—

DAMIEN: Pit!

TALFRYN: Again?! Gah!

SOUND: THUD.

Ooof!

ANGELO: Much improved! Now may I recommend landing with your feet instead of your face?

TALFRYN: You guys… you guys, I can’t run forever!

ANGELO: Think of it as training, Talfryn! A knight must have an open heart, and jogging does wonders for the valves!

TALFRYN: But—

JUDGE: If you don’t want to run, then don’t. Listen to your instincts, hem hem! (SNORTS, SPITS)

TALFRYN: Whoa!

ANGELO: Excellent work! Remember to stay hydrated, now!

DAMIEN: Sir Angelo, this really isn’t the time!

ANGELO: (GASPS) Not the time?! Sir Damien, there is always time for two things: hydration, and stretching! And he has that wonderful backpack canteen his brother made him, with the straws and… what is that called again, Talfryn?

TALFRYN: Backflask! Please!

ANGELO: Backflask! Ingenious invention. I’ve already ordered five of them myself.

TALFRYN: Please, guys! You gotta help me find a place to hide!

DAMIEN: A room! There’s open space just ahead, Talfryn. A perfect place for you to make your stand against this terrible snail!

JUDGE: Don’t you dare!

ANGELO: Excellent advice, my rival!

SOUND: CLANKS.

Stare the beast down, spear in hand—

SOUND: CREAK.

—and it will surely listen—

SOUND: CLANKS, THUD, CLANKS. RUNNING FOOTSTEPS & SQUELCHES STOP.

ANGELO: (THROUGH THE DOOR) …Saints, man, did you just close the door on us?

JUDGE: (THROUGH THE DOOR) Open this door! Shellwrecker! Open it, I say! (GRUNTS)

SOUND: BANGING ON DOOR.

TALFRYN: I just gotta… find a place to hide until… (GROANS)

JUDGE: (THROUGH THE DOOR) Intolerable rudeness! To come into an honest universe-fearing snail’s home and invade his basement. And without even the simplest formal request!

SOUND: BANGING ON DOOR.

ANGELO: (THROUGH THE DOOR) Hmmm! Sir Damien, did you hear that?

DAMIEN: (THROUGH THE DOOR) Do you mean the creaking of the wood, or perhaps the giant squelching beast of slime that threatens to kill us both unless someone does something about it, Talfryn!

ANGELO: (THROUGH THE DOOR) No, no. Something the monster said gave me an idea.

DAMIEN: (THROUGH THE DOOR) Well, what is it? Quickly!

SOUND: BANGING STOPS.

JUDGE: (THROUGH THE DOOR) Yes, yes, I too would like to hear this plan.

ANGELO: (THROUGH THE DOOR) It’s…

DAMIEN: (THROUGH THE DOOR) …Yes?

JUDGE: (THROUGH THE DOOR) We’re waiting.

ANGELO: (THROUGH THE DOOR) Well that’s no good. I’m afraid I’ve let the dramatic pause go on too long and now I’ve forgotten.

JUDGE: (THROUGH THE DOOR) Alright. Back to it, then. Hmph! (GRUNTS)

SOUND: BANGING ON DOOR.

TALFRYN: Nowhere to hide! Just a bunch of tapestries and stone walls and rugs and chairs and… why does a snail need a chair?

Ahh! No time!

JUDGE: (THROUGH THE DOOR) A basement! The gall! A snail’s basement and nothing more! (GRUNTS)

ANGELO: (THROUGH THE DOOR) The idea! It happened again! When he said snail!

DAMIEN: (THROUGH THE DOOR) Don’t build it up, then, just say it!

TALFRYN: (STRAINING) This rock seems… loose!

SOUND: SCRAPING.

(GRUNTS)

SOUND: FABRIC RUSTLING.

Stuck! No! Third lunch, why would you do this to me? I gotta leave my armor outside! (GRUNTS)

SOUND: FABRIC RUSTLING.

ANGELO: (THROUGH THE DOOR) Snails fear salt! My satchel is still upstairs, and it is full of the finest salt, which you must throw on him, young Talfryn!

TALFRYN: (QUIETLY) Now he wants me to run all the way back?

JUDGE: (THROUGH THE DOOR) No! No, I say, no! Not the salt! I, a land snail, cannot bear salt! Oh, you wouldn’t dare! (GRUNTS)

SOUND: BANGING ON DOOR. BIG CRACKS.

Ha! Nearly through!

SOUND: FABRIC RUSTLING, SCRAPE.

(MUFFLED GRUNT)

SOUND: MUFFLED BOOM, SPLINTERING. HEAVY CREAKS, SQUELCHES.

ANGELO: (MUFFLED) At last! Run for the salt, my… begads, where has my pupil gone?

DAMIEN: (MUFFLED) And why is his armor in a pile on the floor?

ANGELO: (MUFFLED) Well, that’s simple enough, Sir Damien. Nudist combat must be a specialty of this family; we’ve seen as much from his brother—

DAMIEN: (MUFFLED) It’s only his armor, Sir Angelo.

ANGELO: (MUFFLED) Oh! Then the answer is simple. I have no idea.

JUDGE: (MUFFLED) He can be as clothed or as nude as he likes; I say, as free or as contained; but please, gentlemen, he cannot use the salt! Aaanything but the saaaaalt!

TALFRYN: (QUIETLY) Okay, salt. Maybe I can make it to the door while they distract the big snail… (DEEP BREATH) It’s just one monster. You can do this, Talfryn.

Sir. Talfryn.

JUDGE: (MUFFLED) Defensive measures must be taken! (GROWLS)

SOUND: BUBBLING.

ANGELO: (MUFFLED) Sir Damien!

DAMIEN: (MUFFLED) It wasn’t me! The bubbles are just… appearing!

ANGELO: (MUFFLED) My friend, for such an impressive storyteller that excuse was shockingly unimpressive.

DAMIEN: (MUFFLED) Sir Angelo, listen to me! The slime itself is boiling!

ANGELO: (MUFFLED) Oh my, it has become a bit warm, hasn’t it?

DAMIEN: (MUFFLED) He’ll boil us alive, Talfryn! Slay him! It is your duty!

JUDGE: (MUFFLED, STRAINING) Not… boiling… just…

SOUND: SEVERAL WET POPS, BIG SIGH. BUBBLING STOPS.

…birthing. Now that’s better.

BAILIFFS: (MUFFLED, IN UNISON) Most Horrible Judge Helicoid! Tell us how we may serve!

DAMIEN: (MUFFLED) Little soldiers of snail’s slime! They’re everywhere!

ANGELO: (MUFFLED) Hm, yes. Perhaps it is time to end our lesson for today, Talfryn! There are… rather a lot of monsters out here now, and we may have jumped from Basic Knighting to Extremely Advanced. Now, Sir Damien and I will free ourselves and slay these fiends! (GRUNTS)

SOUND: STRETCHING, SNAP.

Oh, dear. You weren’t pretending to be stuck, were you, Sir Damien?

DAMIEN: (MUFFLED) No. No, Sir Angelo, I was not.

JUDGE: (MUFFLED, BIG LAUGH)

TALFRYN: (WHIMPERS)

JUDGE: (MUFFLED) Now, Bailiffs. Your instructions are quite clear: we guard the entrance to Fort Terminus, and no humans are to pass the doors of our court without our capture. Is that understood?

BAILIFFS: (MUFFLED, IN UNISON) Yes, your Horror!

JUDGE: (MUFFLED) You two will stand guard by the entrance. And the rest of you: search this room! Every crook and crevice! I want that human found immediately, this moment, at once! Hem hem!

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS, CAVE AMBIANCE.

QUANYII: (WHISPERING) And… stop.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS STOP.

This is just about the place, ladies. Ohhh, who’s excited? I’m excited! It’s supposed to be so very dangerous!

RILLA: (QUIETLY) What kind of security measures do they have?

QUANYII: (QUIETLY) A guard, for one thing.

CAROLINE: And?

QUANYII: (QUIETLY) A second guard. (NORMAL VOLUME) And that’s it! But they’re really very powerful, I hear.

TROTTER: (DISTANT SQUEAL)

PORCUS: (DISTANT) Ha! How’s that for master prankster, ya stupid—

TROTTER: (DISTANT SQUEAL)

SOUND: THUD.

Wipeout, dude!

PORCUS: (DISTANT) Loser! You big… dumb…! (SQUEALS)

TROTTER: (DISTANT) Hey, man, you started it. Just give me back my nosh!

PORCUS: (DISTANT) Get lost!

TROTTER: (DISTANT) Give me the bones!

CAROLINE: This is your high-security prison cell? Two pigs fighting over scraps? (LAUGHS)

PORCUS: (DISTANT) Fine! Take ‘em!

SOUND: CLATTERING.

You stand guard here. I’m gonna wait around the corner.

TROTTER: (DISTANT) Suit yourself, brah. (CHEWING, CRUNCHING)

PORCUS: (QUIETLY) Moron. He didn’t even count them.

CAROLINE: If it’s just a few monsters that need slaying, I can finish this in seconds. So. Witch. Can you stop those pigs in time, like that trap in the hall?

QUANYII: They’re much bigger, sweetie. I might be able to manage one.

CAROLINE: One’s enough. Herbalist?

RILLA: I’d be able to do a lot more if you’d give me back the compounds you confiscated.

CAROLINE: Mmm, yes. Then that’s a dead end. I threw your weeds away when my bag began to stink.

RILLA: You threw away all my…! (GROANS)

CAROLINE: But, you can sing, can’t you? Do that.

RILLA: Why would I sing?!

CAROLINE: I’ve been advised to use my subordinates’ strengths when strategizing. If it works, wonderful. If not, you can tell the Queen she’s wrong later. And that’s beautiful in its own way.

RILLA: Sir Caroline—!

CAROLINE: It doesn’t matter what you do, because I will be doing the actual work here. Just distract it for one second and it will be dead the second after that. Do you think you can do that, herbalist?

RILLA: (SIGHS) Fine. But I’m not gonna sing.

QUANYII: Booooring.

CAROLINE: Witch: freeze the wide one. I’ll sneak up where the unsettlingly muscular one can’t see me and behead his frozen comrade. Then, herbalist, you will distract the musclebound one, and when he sees you I’ll behead him, too. It should be over in seconds. Now: places.

RILLA: But I—

CAROLINE: You will follow my orders or this will fail. Remember the courtroom? Now: places.

RILLA: Fine.

QUANYII: Someone’s cranky.

CAROLINE: Freeze the pig.

QUANYII: But still, babe, you’re being a little harsh to—

CAROLINE: Just do it!

QUANYII: (SIGHS) Alright.

SOUND: CHIMES, CLOCK TICKING.

PORCUS: (VOICE SLOWS TO A STOP) What? Trotter, did you hear…

QUANYII: You only have a second. Go!

CAROLINE: I know that. Stop holding my hand.

QUANYII: I’m only worried about—

CAROLINE: I meant literally!

QUANYII: Oh, oh, right, there you go.

CAROLINE: Good.

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

And… ha!

SOUND: SLASH, WET POP.

QUANYII: (EXHALES)

SOUND: TICKING STOPS.

CAROLINE: A clean cut. And, ugh… softer than I expected.

TROTTER: Porcus? Did you say somethin’?

CAROLINE: Come on, herbalist…

RILLA: H-hey! Hey, you!

SOUND: FOOTSTEPS.

TROTTER: Whoa, dude, your voice got really different! All high and nice and stuff!

RILLA: No, look over here! Over here!

TROTTER: Whooaaaa, huh huh, I am trippin’ on these bones, man; you sound like you’re behind me or something! (SQUEAK-LAUGHS)

RILLA: (SINGING) Hey, I’m a human and I’m over here!

QUANYII: (QUIETLY) Oooh, she is good!

TROTTER: Huh?

Candy-canes! Whoa-hoa-hoa-hoa! What are you doin’? (CHUCKLES)

We just locked you up, didn’t we?

RILLA: Uh… yeah.

SOUND: DISTANT FOOTSTEPS.

TROTTER: Gnarly, candy-canes. ‘Cause there’s really only one option from here.

SOUND: BLADE UNSHEATHING.

RILLA: Sir Caroline, any second now!

CAROLINE: Now.

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

(BIG GRUNT)

TROTTER: Whuh—

SOUND: SLASH, SQUISH, WET THUD.

RILLA: Saints, they’re really just… bags full of blood, aren’t they?

CAROLINE: They were, until they met my blade—

QUANYII: Caroline, the pig!

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

PORCUS: (BIG SQUEAL)

SOUND: HEAVY BOOM.

CAROLINE: Ahhh!

PORCUS: You’re pretty quick, ain’tcha?

CAROLINE: You…?! I cut your head off!

PORCUS: Yeah, and. What’re you gonna do about it?

CAROLINE: Cut it off again, obviously.

PORCUS: Wha—

SOUND: SLASH, WET POP.

CAROLINE: There. He’s dead this time, yes? We can all agree that the pig is dead?

SOUND: BIG WHOOSH, PIG SQUEAL, POP. THUDS.

QUANYII: Well, he definitely was dead.

RILLA: But… but he’s…

PORCUS: Back in business, candy-legs. Trotter, now!

TROTTER: (SQUEALS)

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS.

RILLA: Whoa!

SOUND: CLANG.

TROTTER: Dang, candy-canes, you can really hustle—

CAROLINE: (GRUNTS)

SOUND: SLASH, WET POP.

PORCUS: Whoa!

SOUND: CLANG. BIG WHOOSH, PIG SQUEAL, POP. THUDS.

TROTTER: Man… (CHUCKLES) …that always feels cool.

PORCUS: A little help, Trotter! (SQUEALS)

SOUND: CLANG.

TROTTER: Ughhh, just a second, dude, just a second.

CAROLINE: (GRUNTS)

SOUND: SLASH, WET POP.

TROTTER: I’m comin’!

SOUND: BIG WHOOSH, PIG SQUEAL, POP. THUDS. CLANGS, GRUNTS.

RILLA: Saints, she’s… taking turns dueling both of them?!

SOUND: DISTANT WHOOSH, POP. THUDS.

QUANYII: Fun to watch, but not very useful. (CALLING) Cutie, unless you’re going for a personal best on most times you’ve killed the same pig, I don’t think this is getting you anywhere!

CAROLINE: Well I don’t see you helping! Can’t you throw lightning-bolts or something?

QUANYII: Lightning bolts! What do you take me for, some cheap little sorcerer?

CAROLINE: Yes, actually! (GRUNTS)

SOUND: SLASH, WET POP.

QUANYII: Ooooh, that’s so sweet! But I don’t do lightning, babe. It makes my hair all frizzy.

SOUND: DISTANT WHOOSH, POP. THUDS.

CAROLINE: Well, do something, you—! (GRUNTS)

SOUND: CLANGS.

PORCUS: This ain’t workin’, Trotter! We’re gonna have to take her on together!

TROTTER: But, uh… I mean, what if she, y’know…

PORCUS: Don’t be a moron! It ain’t like she can fight both of—

CAROLINE: (GRUNTS)

SOUND: SLASH, WET POP. BIG WHOOSH, PIG SQUEAL, POP. THUDS.

PORCUS: Nyeeaah! I said, it ain’t like she can—

CAROLINE: (GRUNTS)

SOUND: SLASH, WET POP. BIG WHOOSH, PIG SQUEAL, POP. THUDS.

PORCUS: (SIGHS) I said—!

CAROLINE: (GRUNTS)

SOUND: SLASH, WET POP. BIG WHOOSH, PIG SQUEAL, POP. THUDS.

TROTTER: I think I get it, dude.

PORCUS: Ugh, good! Now get her!

TROTTER: Okay…

SOUND: CLANGS, GRUNTS & SQUEALS.

RILLA: He sounded… scared.

QUANYII: Wouldn’t you be? She’s a force of nature with that blade, isn’t she?

RILLA: No, I mean if they keep coming back to life, why would they be afraid of teaming up against her?

That’s it. (CALLING) Sir Caroline! They’re magically bound! I think they’ll only stay dead if you kill them both at the same time!

TROTTER: See, bro? This is what I was tryin’ to—

PORCUS: I told you to shut up! (SQUEAL)

SOUND: GRUNTS, SQUISH, HEAVY CLANG.

PORCUS: Wuh-oh.

CAROLINE: Thanks for the help, pig. Now let’s test her theory! (GRUNTS)

SOUND: STAB.

PORCUS: (GASPS)

(PAINED) Alright. Alright, knight, ya got us.

CAROLINE: I know.

PORCUS: (PAINED, GASPING) Ya beat us, fair and square. Damn, you’re good. Hoo-ee!

CAROLINE: I know that, too.

PORCUS: (PAINED) Please… just… one more thing, lady… now that ya got me. Somethin’… super important… about this fortress… (GASPS)

CAROLINE: Your words. Then your head.

SOUND: SHINK.

PORCUS: (PAINED) I just… gotta tell ya… that…

SOUND: DISTANT WHOOSH, POP. THUDS.

Every one’a you losers likes to gloat over your wins, don’tcha? (GASPING CHUCKLE)

CAROLINE: Why, you…! (GRUNTS)

SOUND: SLASH, WET POP.

(PANTING) Damn, he was stalling! Herbalist, look—

TROTTER: (SQUEALING LAUGH)

SOUND: GRUNTS, RUSTLING.

RILLA: Let me go!

QUANYII: Oh, his sweat smells like barbecue! Get him off, get him off!

TROTTER: I’ve got both of your human buddies, dude! Let Porcus through or I give ‘em both the kibosh!

SOUND: BIG WHOOSH, PIG SQUEAL, POP. THUDS.

PORCUS: (GRUNTS) Good goin’, Trotter! Now kill ‘em and let’s get outta— (YELPS, CHOKING)

SOUND: FABRIC RUSTLING.

CAROLINE: Give them both if you want your friend to leave here.

TROTTER: Haw! You blind, brah? You can kill him as many times as you want.

CAROLINE: But we heard you in court. The herbalist said it herself—you’re magically bound. If he doesn’t leave here, dead or alive, neither do you. And I may not be able to kill you, but I can certainly make you wish I could.

PORCUS: (CHOKING) She’s got a pretty good point there, Trotter!

CAROLINE: Give them here and you both leave.

TROTTER: (SIGHS) I’ll toss you one now. But, you don’t get the other ‘til Porcus and me split.

CAROLINE: Fine.

RILLA: What?!

QUANYII: Oh, babe, I knew I could count on you! Just say the word and—

CAROLINE: The herbalist – the one you call “candy-canes.” Give her here.

QUANYII: You beast! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!

TROTTER: Bummer. I’ll miss ya, candy-canes.

RILLA: Ahh– oof!

CAROLINE: And here’s yours.

PORCUS: (SQUEALS)

QUANYII: How dare you! You take that back! You take me back! You’re heartless, heartless, HEARTLESS! (SOBBING)

PORCUS: Just… shut up and go, Trotter! Take the witch with you!

TROTTER: Obviously, dude! Smell ya later, humans! CAROLINE: What’s that? No ‘thank you’? Nothing?

RILLA: (PANTING) That… was so stupid!

CAROLINE: Of course.

RILLA: Why did you pick me? Quanyii could’ve helped you more! She could’ve stopped time, or put them to sleep, or something! You could have killed both of them!

CAROLINE: That is very possible, Rilla. But slaying monsters is only the second of a knight’s priorities.

RILLA: What?

CAROLINE: Instead of taking two irreplaceable trophies, I have chosen to protect you, a citizen of the Second Citadel. I will never forgive you for it. But it is my duty, and a good knight is bound to her duty.

QUANYII: Duty! I’ll show you duty, you fairweather knight!

TROTTER: Aw man, dude, listen to her! She’s so heated!

PORCUS: Just move it, already!

QUANYII: Deal-breaker! Ice queen! Frost-fraud!

SOUND: SIZZLING.

TROTTER: She’s– o-ow. She’s like… really heated, actually. Ow– ow, ow!

CAROLINE: And also, I knew the witch could take care of herself.

PORCUS: Trotter, what the hell is it now?

TROTTER: Hot, brah! She’s hot! Hot! Yeeeeowww!!

SOUND: SIZZLING FADES.

RILLA: So, you didn’t learn anything? This was still just part of your plan?

CAROLINE: Oh, well, now you’re both whining. Isn’t being in charge a treat?

QUANYII: Nobody likes a cop, babe. Thanks for the reminder. And those dates you begged me to go on? Cancelled.

CAROLINE: There are no dates.

QUANYII: Cancelled!

TROTTER: Let’s get outta here, man! Forget the Senate!

PORCUS: Right behind ya!

CAROLINE: Enjoy it while you can, pigs! Your heads are mine!

TROTTER: Over our dead bodies, dude!

PORCUS & TROTTER: (SQUEALING LAUGHTER)

SOUND: RUNNING FOOTSTEPS DEPARTING.

CAROLINE: Yes! That is very literally what that would entail! You stupid…! (GROWLS)

SOUND: CLANG.

RILLA: Whoa!

CAROLINE: (PANTING) Thank you.

RILLA: But… you saved my life.

MUSIC: STARTS.

CAROLINE: I’m going to make something absolutely clear: you will have questions about what I say next. I will not answer them.

RILLA: Uh, okay?

CAROLINE: I’ve lived a lot of lives before this one… Rilla. And when you reinvent yourself, or when you’re forced to reinvent yourself, well it’s… (SIGHS)

RILLA: Like the old versions of you keep bleeding into the new one. It gets hard to draw boundaries and figure out the new rules. I know.

CAROLINE: That’s… yes. Precisely. (CLEARS THROAT) I like my life as a knight much better than any other I’ve had yet. I’d like to keep it. So thank you for reminding me how to do that.

Well?

RILLA: Well what?

CAROLINE: I said you’d have questions.

RILLA: No, it’s cool.

CAROLINE: Well I told you, I won’t answ- what?

RILLA: You’re a knight now. And you’re even a good one. So… I don’t care what you used to be.

CAROLINE: Good.

Thank you, Rilla.

RILLA: Thank you, Sir Caroline.

QUANYII: And thank me, Quanyii—

CAROLINE: Quiet.

QUANYII: Hmph.

CAROLINE: That’s a good girl.

(DEEP BREATH) Now, let’s get you two patched up, and then we’ll find our lizard.

MUSIC & SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

***

SOUND: TRAIN MOVING, MUSIC.

CONDUCTOR: If you’ve enjoyed this tale, please consider donating to The Penumbra on Patreon. Our artists work tirelessly to bring you these stories, and if you have the means, we hope you will support our efforts. Every dollar helps. You can find that page at patreon.com/thepenumbrapodcast.

You can also support The Penumbra by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter @thepenumbrapod, following us on Tumblr @thepenumbrapodcast, telling your friends about us, telling your friends to tell their friends about us, and especially by rating and reviewing our podcast on iTunes. Every rating, comment, and kind word spreads our stories further and inspires us to keep creating more and better tales to come.

We would like to give special thanks to all who support us on Patreon, but especially to Minchowski, Aurora Cyr, Demi Prince, Camille Blanton, Ota Arcana, Christine Kim, Rowan Collins, Garrett M, Jay Iannuzzelli, Karin Z-H, Fiona Parker, Regan, Ko, Kim Zeugin, Atha Lang, Charlie Spiegel, and Jaimie Gunter for their incredibly generous contributions per episode. Thank you.

Did you know that The Penumbra has merchandise for sale? It’s true! The Penumbra has partnered with DFTBA to bring you the posters, shirts, and pins your heart desires. Just go to dftba.com and search for The Penumbra Podcast.

This tale, the Hallowed Halls of Helicoid, was told by the following people: Melissa Ennulat as Rilla, Leslie Drescher as Sir Caroline, Melissa De Jesus as Quanyii, Jason Mellin as Talfryn, M Sutherland as Sir Angelo, Matthew Zahnzinger as Sir Damien, Glenn Moore as Judge Helicoid, Stuart Evan Smith as Porcus, Michael Underhill as Trotter, and Kate Jones as the Bailiff.

If you wish to know more about our ever-expanding, infinitely-creative team of artists, musicians, editors, designers, and managers, you can read about them in the show notes of this episode.

I’m afraid this is the end of the line for today, dear Traveler. We hope you will ride with The Penumbra again soon.

ALL SOUNDS: FADE OUT.

[kayannesartblog]

Another Oc troupe So the basic idea of these guys is that they live in a sword and sorcery world that takes place around the 19th century. In this world, there are people who are born with the natural affiliation towards magic and spell casting, and are able to wield it better than others. It's not exclusive to them, and isn't a secret or anything, but there tends to be a bit of stigma against it. The vast majority of magic users at some point in their lives acquire a familiar, a creature that is bound to them by magical forces that re beyond their control. The reason for this, is a naturally occurring phenomenon that causes an enormous flux of magic to flow over the world for a very short time, casting a binding spell between a seemingly random creature, and a human with particularly strong magical abilities. These creatures can be anything as small as a mouse, to as large as a dragon. No matter what, the two are bound to each other, forging an instant connection and deep spiritual link. So, as you can guess, this tends to cause a bit of difficulty hear and there, especially when one is a member of a particularly high standing family, and suddenly becomes infatuated with a daemon. So these guy. From left to right, Nell A warm, motherly ditz of girl. Nell is bubbly, proactive and little to optimistic for her own good. She was born the daughter of a librarian and grew up surrounded with books and stories of grand adventures and terrifying creatures. Through her studies, however, she noticed that there didn't seem to be anything all that close to an all encompassing guide to the creatures of myth and magic throughout the world, only bits and pieces here and there. when her mother died, she set out on her journey to make the first ever encyclopedia of magic and has been travelling the road ever since. She's a sweet thing, but lacks forethought and tends to make a lot of genuinely stupid decisions that would have likely gotten her killed by now were it not for her familiar. Despite this, she;s generally acts as the fountain of knowledge within the groups due to her extensive knowledge of magical creatures and monsters. She's good at cooking and thus, generally good at alchemy. She also knows a few healing spells but otherwise isn't super apt at magic. Tench. Nell's familiar, despite looking like a bear is in fact a species of changeling. Though stuck in the form of a bear, he is able to change size at will, being able to grow from the size of a mouse to the size of a house. He's a simple creature and loves lounging around in the wilderness with a temperament similar to that of a large dog. He is, however very intelligent and is the sole reason that Nell is honestly still standing. Tracy Tracy is a young Blacksmith and main character of the story, along with his adopted daughter. He's a rather headstrong and grumpy individual at times, traits that in all honesty are primarily due to stress. Unlike the others, he has not magical ability and has never once been able to actually use it. He found Disty alone in the woods when she was only a baby and has been raising her as his own ever since. He left his mountain village with her when he was but 16 years old in hopes of finding her birth parents, assuming he's be gone a few weeks at most, but the weeks turned to months, which turned to years, and suddenly a decade had passed. He still holds out hope of one day finding them, but by this point it's primarily to give the poor creature some closure as apposed to wanting rid of her. Tracy also tends to be rather quick tempered and ill mannered, traits that he's unfortunately passed onto Disty. Disty Disty herself is a very feisty young girl. She's very rambunctious, tends to enjoy confrontation and rarely shows a lot of weakness. Occasionally, there's an air of superiority about her, but this is primarily to mask her insecurities over not actually knowing anything about who she is or where she came from. She cares for Tracy very much, however, and tends to seek him out for affection whenever she's needs. Being a cat like creature, she's very nimble when on all fours but tends to stumble when on two legs. She also has numerous catlike qualities such as the habit of taking overly long naps and digging her claws into things. Akron (Aki) Basically the one that kickstarts the story proper. He's a prince, or lord or whatever the brother of a king is called. He's shy and somewhat withdrawn and rarely smiles, though is generally very polite and friendly if need be. He grew up in a palace and as such, is rather sheltered and doesn't understand a lot about the real world, let alone what it's like to live from place to place for years. Domestically speaking, he isn't very good at anything. However, he is very adept at elemental magic and is able to contort water, air, cast fire bolts. Stuff like that. He's also very protective of those he cares about and will not hesitate to jump into a battlefield if he needs to. Yuhin. Yuhin, is Aki's familiar. He arrived at Aki's door when he was around 16 years old, having been in a strange trance for what was apparently a few days. Before he could be thrown out however, Aki manged to persuade his then father to allow him to stay as his personal servant. Yuhin is a strange, naturally malicious and highly dangerous creature which normally views humanity as little more than a snack, so persuading the King was not an easy task, and Yuhin was often treated rather poorly because of it. He does have the ability to transform into a more humanoid appearance, a tactic normally used to ensnare pray, but it is not meant to be used over long periods of time and is rather exhausting to keep up. Eventually, he was accused of attacking someone and sentenced  to torture/death, leading him and Aki to flee from his home in order to protect him. Yuhin, is mischievous, manipulative and borderline evil. He views humanity much in the same way humans view cattle, only really making exception for Aki who her genuinely cares about

[authormitchel-blog]

Slytherin Harry and The Goblet of Fire Part 2

The Weasley’s home was just as alive and full of magic as it had been, though two new faces greeted him.

            “How are you doing?” said a red head Harry hadn’t met before. The man grinned and held out a rough, large hand. Ah, thought Harry, this had to be Charlie, Ron’s brother from Romania. He had a broad, good natured face which was weather beaten and so freckly he almost looked tan, but it was the large burn on his muscular arm that tipped Harry off the most.

            Next, Bill, the other brother, got to his feet smiling. Harry knew from Ron that Bill worked for the Wizarding Bank Gringotts, and that Bill had been Head Boy at Hogwarts, but where Harry had always thought Bill would be just an older version of Ron’s other brother Percy, fussy and law abiding, Bill Weasley looked down right illegal.

            He was tall, like Ron, with long hair that he had tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing an ear ring with what looked like a fang dangling from it. He looked like he had just come from a rock concert, with leather, no, dragon hide boots, too.

            Just then, a flurry of sparks burst into the room.

“What was that?” Harry asked.

            “Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes,” said Ron, clapping Harry firmly on the shoulder. The twins came into the room next. “Our newest invention,” they said together.

            “Yeah,” said Ginny Weasley. “Who knew all those noises and explosions coming from their room were actually leading up to something.”

            “And not just fireworks,” said Fred.

“But all sorts,” said George. “Prank wands, trick sweets.”

            “Brilliant,” Harry said amazed. Percy came over then and shook Harry’s hand before skiving off to finish some very important work.

            “He’s enjoying the new job then?”

“Enjoying it,” said Ron darkly. “I don’t reckon he’d come home if Dad didn’t make him. He’s obsessed. Just don’t get him talking about Crouch.”

            “Yeah,” said George. “They’ll be announcing the engagement any day now.”

“A Minister’s husband, we couldn’t be more proud,” said Fred, making cow eyes in the direction Percy had gone.

            Mrs. Weasley moved into the kitchen after greeting Harry and offering him some food. “Have a bite dear, I just need to finish the rest then we’ll be ready to eat.”

            “Are you staying for dinner, Remus?” she asked.

“Can’t, Molly, but thank you, you know how Sirius gets.”

            “How is he?” Harry asked. “He sounded good in his last letter.”     

Remus smiled, the one he seemed to only have when he thought of Sirius.

            “He’s becoming a barrister apparently. He’s been studying the law and writing letters to send to everyone he can find to see if he can expedite his case. He wants to have you with him as soon as possible.”

            “I want that too,” said Harry. “But you guys will be home soon, and I can come see you.”

“Of course,” said Remus. “We’ve already received partial free hours with Arthur’s help so that we can come here some days to see you. And of course, you can always come over ours. We may have to employ some non-magical means as to stay off the radar. But Sirius can’t wait to see you.”

            “Tell him that I feel the same,” Harry said as he walked Remus out of the house.

“And thanks for coming and getting me today.”      

            “I wish I could have come sooner,” said Remus, looking regretful. “Your cousin will be alright by the way. It’s a simple charm. He should be back to normal by now, in case you were wondering.”  

            And before Harry could tell him that he hadn’t been wondering.

“It’s okay, Harry, wanting the best for family doesn’t stop just because they don’t want the same for you. It’s engrained in us to want good things for family and to want them to love us back.”

            Harry nodded, but he didn’t want to think about it.

Then, Remus touched his shoulder.

            “But family comes in many different boxes, and I want you to know that you have a family, families actually, and that we all love you and want the best for you and we want you to know that we care.”

            Harry smiled.

“Even if that means blowing up someone’s fireplace?”

            Remus laughed, looking younger in his joy.

“Yes,” said Remus, chuckling. “Even if it means blowing up someone’s cousin.”    

  NEXT CHAPTER

            After explaining the concept of a portkey they began their climb up Stoatshead Hill. Harry couldn’t ever say that he was in shape, but after a summer of being ignored and locked away in his room, this time his choice, he was more out of it than normal and the climb was taking its toll on him. When Harry made it up the hill he saw Mr. Weasley shaking hands with a ruddy looking wizard with a scrubby brown beard who was holding a moldy looking old boot in his hand.

            “This is Amos Diggory everyone,” Mr. Weasley introduced. “He works for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. And I think you know his son Cedric?”

            Cedric Diggory was an extremely handsome boy of around seventeen. He was also Hufflepuff’s seeker and Captain. After everyone said, “Hi,” Amos Diggory asked good naturedly, “All these yours then, Arthur?”

            “Oh no, only the redheads,” said Mr. Weasley. “This is Hermione, friend of Ron’s and Harry, another friend.”

            “Merlin’s beard,” Amos Diggory said, his eyes widening. “Harry? Harry Potter?”

“Er…yeah,” said Harry, feeling a little uncomfortable with all the attention. “Ced’s talked about you of course,” said Amos Diggory.

            Really, thought Harry.

“Yeah, he told us all about playing against you.”

            “Yeah,” said Harry, breaking into the other man’s litany. “Well your son’s a great flier sir.”

            Amos Diggory looked pleased and Harry thanked Pansy for that little piece of advice. People always like to talk about themselves and a change of subject was only as far away as you could bring up their child or ex. And Amos Diggory did just that until they were surrounding the boot and the portkey activated.

            The campsite was amazing. Harry had rarely seen so much magic or so many wizards in one place with the exception of Hogwarts. Mr. Weasley sent Ron, Hermione, and Harry off on an errand. On their way back they ran into Seamus Finnigan. They had wandered into a patch of tents that were all covered with a thick growth of shamrocks, so that it looked as though small, oddly shaped hillocks had sprouted out of the earth.

            “Like the decorations?” said Seamus grinning. “The Ministry’s not happy.”

“Just showing some pride,” said Dean Thomas, their classmate and Seamus’s best friend. Seamus clasped Dean on the back and Dean smiled at him good naturedly. Seamus gave Dean a bright smile in return, looking at his best friend like he was a member of Ireland’s team.

            “Right-o, Thomas,” he said.  

 The trio after giving vows of loyalty to Ireland set off to investigate the other team’s side:           Bulgaria.

            There, each and every tent was adorned with the image of Viktor Krum.

“He looks really grumpy,” said Harry, looking at the boy’s surly face and heavy black brows.        “Really grumpy?” Ron raised his eyes to the Heavens. “Who cares what he looks like? He’s unbelievable. He’s really young, too. He’s a genius, you’ll see.”

            After getting the water, they met up with a few more familiar faces. Oliver Wood spotted Ron’s red head, and mistaking him briefly for one of the twins stopped and pulled him into a quick conversation. He had made the Puddlemere Untied Quidditch team and Harry felt happy for him. Wood was a good player. He knew from last year that Flint had made Bulgaria, he doubted that he would be playing tonight but he was still happy for his former Captain.

            “There you are,” said an all too familiar voice.

Harry turned around to see his old Captain coming up behind the trio, eyes only for Oliver Wood.

            “I said to meet me by the gate three minutes ago, Wood.” The man looked like he had last year. Large, burly, with a no nonsense air about him, and that tone in his voice that said that Harry…no Wood, this time, would be running extra laps.

            Flint reached Wood then finally noticed the three people Wood had just been talking to.

“Potter? What are you doing here?”

            “I’ve just come to see the match,” Harry said. “With the Weasleys. We were just getting water when…”

            “Great news,” said Flint, cutting him off. “Now, can we get going Wood, or do you wanna keep chatting with the third years instead of meeting the Bulgarian team?”

            Wood looked at Ron like Flint had somehow just announced that Wood was about to give Flint top secret Quidditch secrets, but then he said, “It’s just to gather intel, Flint, you do remember that right?”

            “Right, right,” said Flint unflinching. Then under his breath, “Intel on how thick Krum’s broomstick is.”

            Harry nearly choked. Flint patted him on the back, said cheerily, “Nice to see you, Potter, mess up my team while I’m gone and I will find you.” Then walked away with Wood following quickly at his footsteps, keeping up their argument about intel verses waxing brooms.

            They passed Ernie Macmillian who still flinched slightly when he saw Harry, heir of Slytherin or not, but always made an effort to wave regardless. Ernie was normally okay after the first bout of boasting passed his mouth. Still, they didn’t stay long.

            They also passed Cho Chang, a very pretty girl who played seeker for Ravenclaw. She waved and smiled at Harry and as Harry raised his hand to wave back, water splashed all over his front as Millicent clapped him hard on the back.

            “Oi, Potter, try not to dribble, yeah?”

“Millicent!” he said, throwing himself at her, and nearly dropping the water all together.

            Millicent hugged him back just as hard as he hugged her, but then pulled away like it was all Harry’s idea. She looked the same as ever, perhaps a little bit taller, but still broad around the shoulders. Millicent would never be a small girl, but to Harry she was the most wonderful bit of magic he had seen all day. She looked healthy, her skin tanner than normal because of the summer. Her hair had grown back, and she was now wearing it in a longer, slightly tousled way that framed her round face nicely.  

            “Granger,” she greeted and pulled Hermione into a tight hug. “Got your letter, nice of you to tell me that you were staying with the Weasleys. I recognized it for the cry of help that it was and have come to rescue you.”

            “Ha, Ha, Bulstrode,” said Ron.  

“Oh Weasley, sorry I didn’t see you there,” said Millicent. “Though perhaps I thought you were one of those floating Muggle contraptions that they use to attract the attention of feeble minds at automobile parks. It’s the red, is all.”

            Ron rolled his eyes, but Harry could see that he was holding back a small laugh.

“What are you doing here? I didn’t think you liked Quidditch,” Harry asked.

            “I don’t,” said Millicent. “But events like this are equally about the connections and esteem as they are about the actual game.”

            Ron looked at her blankly.

“Meeting people,” elaborated Millicent. “Haven’t you noticed all of the different wizards here, from all over the country? My father knows a good investment opportunity when he sees one. He might be a barrister by title, but his heart runs gold.”

            Harry nodded. He had seen the influx of different wizards. He had heard a group of kids their age speaking French not a few moments ago.

            After agreeing that Millicent would come back to the camp ground with them, Harry and the group started to make their way back.

            Mr. Weasley was having quite the time lighting a fire, so Hermione quickly stepped in and showed him the correct way to not scald himself.

            Millicent shoved her way into the tent past a surprised looking Fred singing Ginny’s name. Fred quickly followed her back into the tent though he was just saying something about taking a walk around with George.

Then Harry noticed that someone else was standing by the fire.

“Everyone, this is Ludo Bagman, you know who he is. He’s the one we’ve to thank for getting us such good tickets….”

            Ludo Bagman was easily the most noticeable person Harry had seen so far. He was wearing long Quidditch robes in thick horizontal stripes of bright yellow and black. An enormous picture of a wasp was splashed across his chest. He had the look of a powerfully built man gone slightly to seed; the robes he was wearing stretched taut around his belly that he surely had not had when he had played for England.

            Bagman waved his hand as if to say the tickets had been nothing.

“Fancy a flutter on the match, Arthur?” he said eagerly, jingling what seemed to be large amounts of gold in his pockets.

            Mr. Weasley bowed out, not eager to get on Mrs. Weasley’s bad side. Harry couldn’t blame him. Then the twins stepped up.

            “We’ll take your bet,” they said in unison as they came back outside. “We have 20……… that Ireland will win, but that Krum will catch the snitch.”

            “Now, boys!” chided Mr. Weasley, still looking as if Mrs. Weasley was going to pop out and catch him at any moment. “You’ve worked hard for that money. You shouldn’t risk it.”

            “Now, come on Arthur, it’s their money, let the boys do as they please.”

“And girl,” said Millicent, walking up and handing some money to Bagman.

            “Ms. Bulstrode,” he greeted happily. “And what would you like to bet.”

Millicent smiled, looking as if she was going Bagman a favor by having her cater to his bet. “What they said,” she gestured to the twins.

            Bagman looked like he wanted to warn her off such a bet, but she said, “I’m sure,” then disappeared back into the tent.

“Yeah, dad,” said Fred. “If Bulstrode can handle it then I think we’ve got this.”

“ Yeah, don’t worry, Dad,” said George.

            “Absolutely not. If your mother finds out she’ll…”

“Okay,” said Bagman, but added a conspiratorial wink in the twin’s direction when Mr. Weasley wasn’t looking.

            “Have you seen Crouch?” Bagman then asked.

“Mr. Crouch?” said Percy, suddenly abandoning his look of poker-stiff disapproval and exchanging it for a look that was positively writhing with excitement.

            “Yes,” said Bagman. “The man knows over two hundred languages, and I really need him to help me with a troll delegate right about now, but I seem to have lost him.”

            Bagman looked around, and shrugged.

“Any news of Bertha Jorkins yet, Ludo?” Mr. Weasley asked.

            “No, though being as forgetful as she is she’ll probably wonder back in October sometime thinking it’s still July.”

            “Someone should be sent to look for her,” said Mr. Weasley. “She’s been gone quite a….”

            With a snap, like a quick change in subject, Barty Crouch apparated in. Looking rather stiff and uptight, the elderly man was dressed impeccably in a crisp suit and tie. His hair and mustache neat and trimmed perfectly. He shoes were polished to shine. Harry could see why Percy idolized him.

            “Some tea, sir?” Percy offered.

“Oh,” said Mr. Crouch, looking over at Percy in mild surprise. “Yes….thank you, Weatherby.”

            Fred and George choked into their cups. Percy went very pink around the ears, but busied himself with the kettle as Crouch bid a curt farewell to Mr. Weasley then left with Bagman to meet with the delegate.

&&&

            Mr. Weasley was right, they did have good seats. They were close to the Minister himself, and Millicent and her family. Harry waved at her, and noticed the rather similar looking but older girl sitting beside Millicent looking bored even with all the excitement in the air.

            Harry sat and looked in front of him.

“Dobby?” said Harry, incredulously. The house elf turned slightly, and Harry realized his mistake.

            “Sorry, I just through that you were someone I knew.”

“But I know Dobby too, sir,” squeaked the elf. “My name is Winky, sir, and you, sir. You is surely Harry Potter.”

            “Yeah, I am,” said Harry.

“Dobby is a always talking about you Harry Potter, sir, he says that you are the greatest wizard to ever live, sir. And that you are brave and good, sir. But Dobby isn’t here, sir, and he wouldn’t be up this high either unless maybe you asked him, sir. Dobby would do it for you. Dobby is quite fond of you, though he is getting wilder and wilder. Out there with no family to serve and doing whatever he likes…being downright bawdy.”

            “He’s just having a little bit of fun,” said Harry. “House elves is not supposed to have fun Harry Potter,” said Winky. “House elves does what they is told. I is not liking heights at all, Harry Potter,” she glanced towards the edge of the box and gulped---“, but my master sends me to the Top Box and I comes, sir, to save his seat. Winky is a good house elf, Harry Potter, sir.”

            “So you found someone to consort with even lower than the Weasleys did you, Potter?” drawled the voice that haunts Harry’s dreams.

            “Only when I have to share a room with you, Malfoy.”

Harry could hear Draco roll his eyes.

            “Enough Draco, your mother is waiting,” said another familiar holier than thou voice: Lucius Malfoy.

            Harry watched as the blonde and his father walked away, looking up for the first time to see that like he had, Malfoy had shot up quite a few inches over the summer. Whatever, Harry thought, his face is probably still as pointy as ever. He was still a git, just maybe a taller git.

            Then the show began, and Ireland rained gold from the skies as Harry and Ron watched from Omnioculars.

            Harry looked down at the field as dancers made their way to the center of the pitch. Music started and they started to dance. “Veela,” Harry heard someone say in an awed tone. Harry didn’t know what the big deal was, until he started to watch them. Ron nearly bumped him out his seat in an attempt to get closer to the creatures on the field.

 Harry’s own mind started to go blank. The Veelas skin was moon white, their hair white gold. The nagging suspicion that the Veelas white blonde hair reminded him of someone kept Harry mostly sane while George looked like he was about to follow Ron over the edge. And before Harry could remember who they reminded him of or follow the others, they stopped.

            Ron looked like he had been abruptly woken from a vivid dream while Fred like Harry, merely looked a little dazed. Malfoy further down the aisle looked as if he hadn’t been affected at all. Harry wondered at that before he saw Draco remove something from his ears.  

            Millicent eyed Harry wearily as if to make sure that he was alright, and motioned to Fred and George, George of who was nearly passed out on the ground. Harry laughed as George’s more together brother tapped him on the cheeks lightly to spur him from the stupor the Veelas’ dance had put him in.

&&&

            The game was amazing. Ireland had won. Bagman announced the ending of the match. “Krum may have caught the snitch, but team Ireland are the winners!!!” Then after removing the sonorous from this voice. He said a little hoarsely, “They’ll be talking about this one for years.”

            “A really unexpected twist that… shame it couldn’t have lasted longer….Ah, yes… yes, I owe you.. how much?” he asked, as Fred and George had just scrambled over the back of their seats and were standing in front of Ludo Bagman with broad grins on their faces, their hands outstretched.

&&&

“The Ireland supporters are really going at it, huh?” asked Fred as the group plus Millicent walked back to the camp. Ginny and Millicent were singing Irish folk songs with George as accompaniment. Ron was still going on about the beauty that is Krum in motion when they entered the tent and Harry heard a particularly loud explosion of fireworks before Mr. Weasley rushed into the tent.

            “Kids, now!” he says in a tone Harry had never heard from the older man before.

The group rushes outside. “Dad, it’s just the Irish,” said Fred.

            “It’s not the Irish!” said Mr. Weasley panicked. Then the sight before Harry’s eyes changed. No longer were the screams he was hearing those of triumphant joy, or the shouting that of congratulations, but of terror. The fireworks that Harry thought were going off in the distance were no longer bright lights in the sky, but light from wands that were exploding tents in the distance.

They were under attack.

            “Fred, George, take Ginny and go that way, we need to meet at the portkey. We need to help the Ministry.”

            People were running everywhere as Bill, Charlie, and Percy took off with Mr. Weasley in the direction the ministry officials were gathering against the threat. Millicent gave Ginny Weasley a panicked once over before joining in beside her, Fred had one of Ginny’s hands and Millicent the other as George held his wand out, cast Lumos, and started to lead them back to the hill.

            Harry, Hermione, and Ron followed in behind them, but as people rushed past, the two groups got further and further separated from one another. As the group got further away from the explosions and the subsequent fires, the woods started to grow darker, and quickly the two groups lost one another.

            Harry was about to demand that they all link hands so that he didn’t lose either of them when he heard Ron yelp in pain.

            “What happened?” said Hermione anxiously, stopping so abruptly that Harry walked into her. She illuminated her wand.

            “Tripped over a tree root,” Ron said, sounding slightly embarrassed.

“Well, with feet that size it’d be hard not to,” said a drawling voice from behind them.

            Draco Malfoy was standing alone nearby, leaning against a tree looking utterly relaxed. Ron uttered a particularly nasty word in the English language, but Malfoy only laughed.

            “Oh, Weasley, hadn’t you better be hurrying along now,” said Malfoy, as he refused to address Harry directly since Harry had snubbed him in the booth. “You wouldn’t like her spotted, would you?”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?” said Hermione.

“Granger, they’re after Muggles,” said Malfoy. “D’you want to be showing off your knickers in midair? Because if you do, hang around…they’re moving this way, and it would give us all a laugh.”

            “Hermione’s a witch,” Harry snarled.

“Have it your own way, Potter,” said Malfoy, grinning maliciously. “If you think they can’t spot a Mudblood, stay were you are.”

            “You watch your mouth!” shouted Ron.

“Don’t mind him, Ron,” said Hermione, seizing Ron’s arm to restrain him as he took a step toward Draco.

            There came a bang from the other side of the trees that was louder than anything they had heard that night. Several people screamed nearby. Malfoy chuckled softly, but Harry heard the shaky quality it held.

            “Scare easily, don’t they?” he said loudly. “I suppose your daddy told you all to hide? What’s he up to----trying to rescue the Muggles?”

            “And where are your parents?” said Harry, his temper rising. “Out there wearing masks, like real heroes?”

            “If they were I wouldn’t likely tell you, would I? But there’s no need to ask where your parents are?”

            Harry just rolled his eyes. He knew now what his parents died for. And now that he had Sirius and Remus, Harry would never forget what his parents had done for their world.

            “Let’s go,” said Hermione, “We need to find the others.”

“Keep that big, bushy head down Granger,” Malfoy sneered, but Hermione looked as over Malfoy and his taunts as Harry was.

            The trio set out on the path again to find the others.

“I’ll bet you anything his dad is one of that masked lot!” said Ron.

            “Well, with any luck, the Ministry will catch them,” said Hermione fervently.

Hermione scanned the forest, but Fred, George, Millicent, and Ginny were nowhere to be found. The forest was packed with other people, just not the people that they were looking for. They encountered a group of teenagers arguing in what Harry thought was French. Hermione mentioned that they must be students from Beauxbatons, another wizarding school.

            “Oh…yeah…..right,” said Harry.

“Fred and George can’t have gone that far,” said Ron, pulling out his wand, lighting it like Hermione’s, and squinting up the path. Harry dug in the pockets of his jacket for his own wand….but it wasn’t here. Only his Omnioculars.

            “Ah, no,” Millicent was never going to let him live this down. “I’ve lost my wand!”

“You’re kidding!” Hermione and Ron scolded in unison, like two very upset parents who were very disappointed in their child.

 ��          “Maybe its back in the tent?” offered Ron, after they had searched the immediate area.

“Or it fell out of your pocket when we were running.”

            “Yeah,” said Harry. “Maybe…”

Then a rustling in the woods drew their attention, and Winky the house elf made her way into their field of vision.

            “There is bad wizards about!” she squeaked distractedly as she leaned forward and labored to keep running. It looked as if she had just escaped some invisible force instead of a thorny bush. “People high…high in the air! Winky is getting out of the way!”

            And she disappeared into the trees on the other side of the path, panting and squeaking as she fought the force that seemed to be restraining her.

            “What’s up with her?” said Ron, looking curiously after Winky. “Why can’t she run properly?”

            “Bet she didn’t ask permission to hide,” said Harry. He was thinking of Dobby and the way that he would have to beat himself up anytime he did something that he knew the Malfoy’s wouldn’t like. And before an argument could break out between Hermione and Ron that Harry would be forced to join, they set off once again.

            They followed the path deeper into the woods, passing Goblins and wizards who were spouting nonsense. Harry saw Stan Shunpike, from the Knight Bus, before he, Hermione, and Ron ducked into a clearing. Hermione was just saying something when she broke off abruptly. Harry and Ron turned around and looked too. It sounded like someone was staggering toward their clearing. They waited, listening to the sounds of the uneven steps behind the dark trees. But the footsteps came to a sudden halt.

            “Hello?” called Harry tentatively.

There was silence.

            Harry got to his feet and peered around a tree. He was about to ask, “Who’s there?” when without warning, the silence was rent by a voice unlike any they had heard in the wood; and it uttered, not a panicked shout, but what sounded like a spell and a battle cry.

            “MORSMORDRE!”

And something vast, green, and glittering erupted from the patch of darkness Harry’s eyes had been struggling to penetrate; it flew up over the treetops and into the sky.

            “What the…?” gasped Ron as he sprang to his feet again, staring up at the thing that had appeared.

            For a split second, Harry thought it was another leprechaun formation. Then he realized that it was a colossal skull, comprised of what looked like emerald stars, with a serpent protruding from its mouth like a tongue. As they watched, it rose higher and higher blazing in a haze of greenish smoke, etched against the black sky like a new constellation.

            Suddenly the world erupted into screams, but when Harry looked back to see the person who had conjured the skull, he was gone.

            “Who’s there?” he called.

“Harry, come on, move!” Hermione had seized the collar of his jacket and was tugging him backward.

            “What’s the matter?” Harry said, startled to see her face so white and terrified.

“It’s the Dark Mark, Harry!” Hermione moaned, pulling him as hard as she could. “You-Know-Who’s sign!”

            “Voldemort’s……”

“Harry, come on!”

            Harry turned before a series of popping noises filled his ears. Harry whirled around, and in an instant, he registered one fact: They were surrounded, and each of the twenty or so wizards that had appeared out of thin air had their wands pointed right at them.

            Without pausing to think, he yelled, “DUCK!”

He grabbed the other two and pulled them to the ground.

            “STUPEFY!” roared twenty voices….there was a blinding series of flashes and Harry felt the hair on his head ripple as though a powerful wind had swept the clearing. “STOP!” yelled a voice he recognized. “STOP! That’s my son!”

            Harry’s hair stopped blowing about. He raised his head a little higher. The wizard in front of him had lowered his wand. He rolled over and saw Mr. Weasley striding toward them, looking terrified.

            “Ron…Harry…” his voice was shaky….”Hermione…are you all right?”

“Out of the way, Arthur,” said a cold, curt voice.

            It was Mr. Crouch. He and the other Ministry wizards were closing in on them. Harry got to his feet to face them. Mr. Crouch’s face was taut with rage.

            “Which of you did it?” he snapped, his sharp eyes darting between them. “Which of you conjured the Dark Mark?”

            “We didn’t do that!” said Harry.

“We didn’t do anything!” said Ron, who was rubbing his elbow. “What did you want to attack us for?”

            “Do not lie, sir!” shouted Mr. Crouch. His wand was still pointing directly at Ron, and his eyes were popping….he looked slightly mad. “You have been discovered at the scene of the crime!”

            “Barty,” whispered a witch in a long woolen dressing gown, “they’re kids, Barty, they’d never have been able to….”

            “Where did the Mark come from, you three?” said Mr. Weasley quickly, jumping on the pause in Crouch’s allegations.

            “Over there,” said Hermione shakily, pointing at the place where they had heard the voice. “There was someone behind the trees….they shouted words…an incantation…” Crouch seemed to doubt Hermione’s words, but none of the other Ministry wizards apart from him seemed to think it remotely likely that Harry, Ron, or Hermione had conjured the skull; on the contrary, at Hermione’s words, they had all raised their wands again and were pointing in the direction she had indicated, squinting through the dark trees.

            “We’re too late,” said the witch in the woolen dressing gown, shaking her head. “They’ll have Disapparated.”

            “I don’t think so,” said a wizard with a scrubby brown beard. It was Amos Diggory, Cedric’s father. “Our Stunners went right through those trees….There’s a good chance we got them….”

            “Amos, be careful!” said a few of the wizards warningly as Mr. Diggory squared his shoulders, raised his wand, marched across the clearing, and disappeared into the darkness. When he appeared once again, he was dragging something or someone along with him.

            It was Winky. For a few seconds Crouch remained transfixed, his eyes blazing in his white face as he stared down at Winky. Then he appeared to come to life again.

            “This….cannot…be,” he said jerkily. “No…..”

He moved quickly around Mr. Diggory and strode off toward the place where he had found Winky.

            “No point, Mr. Crouch,” Mr. Diggory called after him. “There’s no one else there.”

But Mr. Crouch did not seem prepared to take his word for it. They could hear him moving around.

            “Bit embarrassing,” Mr. Diggory said grimly, looking down at Winky’s unconscious form. “Barty Crouch’s house elf…. I mean to say….”

            “Come off it, Amos,” said Mr. Weasley quietly. “you don’t seriously think it was the elf? The Dark Mark’s a wizard sign. It requires a wand.”

            “Yeah,” said Mr. Diggory. “and she had a wand.”

Ludo Bagman showed up to make matters even more colorful.

            “But she couldn’t have done that, she would have needed a wand.”

“She did, and I think we should hear what she has to say for herself.” Crouch gave no sign that he had heard Mr. Diggory, but Mr. Diggory seemed to take his silence for assent. He raised his own wand, pointed it at Winky, and said, “Rennervate!”

            Winky stirred freely. Her great brown eyes opened and she blinked several times in a bemused sort of way.

            “Elf!” said Mr. Diggory sternly. “Do you know who I am? I’m a member of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures!”

            Winky began to sob, rocking herself backward and forward on the ground in what Harry recognized as a self-soothing gesture. He was reminded forcefully of his own past.

            “As you see, elf, the Dark Mark was conjured here a short while ago,” said Mr. Diggory. “And you were discovered moments later, right beneath it! An explanation, if you please!”

            “I….I….I is not doing it, sir!” Winky gasped. “I is not knowing how, sir!”

            “You were found with a wand in your hand!” barked Mr. Diggory, brandishing it in front of her. And as he did, Harry knew where his wand had went.

            “That’s mine!” he said.

Everyone in the clearing looked at him.

            “Excuse me?” said Mr. Diggory, incredulously.

“That’s my wand!” said Harry. “I dropped it!”

            “You dropped it?” repeated Mr. Diggory in disbelief. “Is that a confession? You threw it aside after you conjured the Dark Mark?”

            “Amos, think who you’re talking to?” said Mr. Weasley, very angrily. “Is Harry Potter likely to conjure the Dark Mark?”

            “Of course not,” the zealous man seemed to concede. “Sorry…carried away….”

“I didn’t drop it there, anyway,” said Harry, jerking his thumb toward the trees beneath the skull. “I missed it right after we got into the woods.”

            “So,” said Mr. Diggory, his eyes hardening as he turned to look at Winky again, cowering at his feet. “You found this wand, eh, elf? And you picked it up and thought you’d have some fun with it, did you?”

            “I is not doing magic with it, sir!” squealed Winky, tears streaming down the sides of her squashed and bulbous nose. “I is…I is…I is just picking it up, sir! I is not making the Dark Mark, sir, I is not knowing how!”

            “It wasn’t her!” said Hermione. She looked very nervous, speaking up in front of all these Ministry wizards, yet determined all the same. “Winky’s got a squeaky voice, and the voice we heard doing the incantation was much deeper! It didn’t sound anything like Winky did it?”

            “No,” said Harry, shaking his head. “It definitely didn’t sound like an elf.”

“Yeah, it was a human voice,” said Ron.

            “Well, we’ll soon see,” growled Mr. Diggory, looking unimpressed. “There’s a simple way of discovering the last spell a wand performed, elf, did you know that?”

            Winky trembled and shook her head frantically, her ears flapping, as Mr. Diggory placed his wand against the tip of Harrys.

            “Prior Incantato!” roared Mr. Diggory.

It was the Dark Mark.

            “I is not doing it!” Winky squealed, her eyes rolling in terror. “I is not, I is not, I is not knowing how! I is a good elf, I isn’t using wands, I is not knowing how!”

            “You’ve been caught red handed elf!” Mr. Diggory roared, though Harry knew that he knew her name. “Caught with the guilty wand in your hand!”

            “Amos,” said Mr. Weasley loudly, “think about it…precious few wizards know how to do that spell…Where would she have learned it?”

            “Perhaps Amos is suggesting,” said Mr. Crouch, cold anger in every syllable. “that I routinely teach my servants to conjure the Dark Mark?”

            There was a deeply unpleasant silence. Amos Diggory looked horrified. “Mr. Crouch…not….not at all…..”

            “You have now come very close to accusing two people in this clearing who are the least likely to conjure that Mark!” barked Mr. Crouch. “Harry Potter….and myself! I suppose you are familiar with the boy’s story, Amos?”

            “Of course…everyone knows….,” muttered Mr. Diggory, looking highly discomforted.

“And you are aware of my own history, and that I detest anything tied to the Dark Arts.”

            “Yes….b….”

“And I am fully aware that, in the ordinary course of events, you would want to take Winky into your department for questioning. I ask you, however, to allow me to deal with her.”

            Mr. Diggory looked as though he didn’t think much of that suggestion at all, but it was clear even to Harry that Mr. Diggory fell lower in the hierarchy at the Ministry than Mr. Crouch did.

            “You may rest assured that she will be punished,” Mr. Crouch added coldly.

“M-m-master…”Winky stammered, looking up at Mr. Crouch, her eyes brimming with tears. “Mmmmaster, please.”

            Mr. Crouch stared back, his face somehow sharpened, each line upon it more deeply etched. There was no pity in his gaze.

            “Winky has behaved tonight in a manner I would not have believed possible,” he said slowly. “I told her to remain in the tent. I told her to stay there while I went to sort out the trouble. And I find that she disobeyed me. This means clothes.”

            “No!” shrieked Winky, prostrating herself at Mr. Crouch’s feet. “No, master! Not clothes, not clothes!”

            Harry knew that the only way to turn a house-elf free was to present it with proper garments. It was pitiful to see the way Winky clutched at her tea towel as she sobbed over Mr. Crouch’s feet.

            “But she was frightened!” Hermione burst out angrily, glaring at Mr. Crouch. “Your elf’s scared of heights, and those wizards in masks were levitating people! You can’t blame her for wanting to get out of their way!”

            Mr. Crouch took a step backward, freeing himself from contact with the elf, whom he was surveying as though she were something filthy and rotten that was contaminating his over-shined shoes.

            “I have no use for a house-elf who disobeys me,” he said coldly.

Mr. Weasley got Harry’s wand back and excused them.

            “What’s going to happen to Winky?” said Hermione, the moment they had left the clearing.

            “I don’t know,” said Mr. Weasley.

“The way they were treating her!” said Hermione furiously. “Mr. Diggory, calling her ‘elf’ all the time…and Mr. Crouch! He knows she didn’t do it and he’s still going to sack her! He didn’t care how frightened she’d been, or how upset she was…it was like she wasn’t even human!”

            “Well, she’s not,” said Ron.

Hermione rounded on him.

            “That doesn’t mean she hasn’t got feelings, Ron. It’s disgusting the way…”

“Hermione, I agree with you,” said Mr. Weasley quickly, beckoning her on, “and you’ll find that many others do as well. But now we need to get back to the tent and see if we can find the others.

            “We lost them in the dark,” said Ron. “Dad, why was everyone so uptight about that skull thing?”

            “I’ll explain everything back at the tent,” said Mr. Weasley tensely.

But when they reached the edge of the wood, they were stopped by a large group of anxious looking people.

            “What’s going on in there?” they asked Mr. Weasley.

“Who conjured it?”

“Arthur…it’s not…Him?”

            “Of course it’s not Him,” said Mr. Weasley impatiently. “We don’t know who it was; it looks like they Disapparated. Now excuse me, I want to get to bed.”

            He led Harry, Ron, and Hermione through the crowd and back into the campsite. All was quiet now; there was no sign of the masked wizards, though several ruined tents were still smoking.

            Charlie’s head was poking out of the boy’s tent. “Where are….”

“I’ve got them here,” said Mr. Weasley, bending down and entering the tent to see Fred, George, Millicent, and Ginny waiting for them.

            Bill was sitting at the small kitchen table, holding a bedsheet to his arm, which was bleeding profusely. Charlie had a large rip in his shirt, and Percy was sporting a bloody nose. Fred and George looked unhurt though shaken. Ginny was sitting near Millicent and the two looked shocked by what they had gone through.

            “Did you get them, Dad?” said Bill sharply. “The person who conjured the Mark?”

“No,” said Mr. Weasley. “We found Barty Crouch’s elf holding Harry’s wand, but we’re none the wiser about who actually conjured the Mark.”

            “What?” said Bill, Charlie, and Percy together. “Harry’s wand?” said Millicent.

            “Mr. Crouch’s elf?” said Percy, sounding thunderstruck.

With some assistance form Harry, Ron, and Hermione, Mr. Weasley explained what had happened in the woods. When they had finished their story, Percy swelled indignantly.

            “Well, Mr. Crouch is quite right to get rid of an elf like that!” he said. “Running away when he’d expressly told her not to…embarrassing him in front of the whole Ministry…how would that have looked, if she’d been brought up in front of the Department for the Regulation and Control….”

            “She didn’t do anything…she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time!” Hermione snapped at Percy, who looked very taken aback. Hermione had always got on fairly well with Percy better, indeed, than any of the others.

            “Hermione, a wizard in Mr. Crouch’s position can’t afford a house-elf who’s going to run amok with a wand!” said Percy pompously, recovering himself.

            “She didn’t run amok!” shouted Hermione. “She just picked it up off the ground!”

“Look, can someone just explain what that skull thing was?” said Ron impatiently. “It wasn’t hurting anyone…Why’s it such a big deal?”

            “I told you, it’s You-Know-Who’s symbol, Ron,” said Hermione, before anyone else could answer. “I read about it in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts.”

            “And it hasn’t been seen for thirteen years,” said Mr. Weasley quietly. “Of course people panicked…it was almost like seeing You-Know-Who back again.”

            “I still don’t…”

“Ron, You-Know-Who and his followers sent the Dark Mark into the air whenever they killed,” said Mr. Weasley. “The terror it inspired…you have no idea, you’re too young. Just picture coming home and finding the Dark Mark hovering over your house and knowing what you’re about to find inside….” Mr. Weasley winced. “Everyone’s worst fear….the very worst….”

            There was silence for a moment. Then Bill, removing the sheet from his arm to check on his cut said, “Well, it didn’t help us tonight, whoever conjured it. It scared the Death Eaters away the moment they saw it. They all Disapparated before we’d got near enough to unmask any of them. We caught the Roberts’ before they hit the ground, though. They’re having their memories modified right now.”

            “Death Eaters?” said Harry. “What are Death Eaters?”

“It’s what You-Know-Who’s supporters called themselves,” said Bill. “I think we saw what’s left of them tonight…the ones who managed to keep themselves out of Azkaban anyway.”

            “We can’t prove it was them, Bill. Though you’re probably right.”

“Yeah, I bet it was,” said Ron suddenly. “Dad, we met Draco Malfoy in the woods, and he as good as told us his dad was one of those nutters in masks. And we all know the Malfoys were right in with You-Know-Who!”

            “But what’s the point?” asked Harry. “Levitating Muggles… I mean?”

“That’s their idea of fun,” said Mr. Weasley. “Half the Muggle killings back when You-Know-Who was in power were done for fun. I suppose they had a few drinks tonight and couldn’t resist reminding us all that lots of them are still at large. A nice little reunion for them,” he finished disgustedly.

            “But why did they disapparate then?” asked Ron.

“Use your brains, Ron,” said Bill. “If they really were Death Eaters, they worked very hard to keep out of Azkaban when You-Know-Who lost power, and told all sorts of lies about him forcing them to kill and torture people. I bet they’d be even more frightened than the rest of us to see him come back. They denied that they’d ever been involved with him when he lost his powers, and went back to their daily lives….I don’t reckon he’d be over-pleased with them, do you?”

            No, Harry thought. He didn’t think Voldemort would be pleased at all.

***

            The rest of the summer went by in a calmer manner. They got their books, played Quidditch, and Harry ate more food than he thought he could hold. The only majorly exciting thing had something to do with a wizard named Mad-Eye Moody. Mr. Weasley and Amos Diggory had rushed to take care of that matter. Then before Harry knew it, it was time to board the Hogwarts Express.

            Bill and Charlie decided to come and see everyone off at King’s Cross station, but Percy, apologizing most profusely, said that he really needed to get to work.

            “Don’t worry about it,” Fred told Percy. Then to George he said, “I think their having a lover’s tiff?”

            “I agree,” said George. “If my lover forgot my name I’d be quite miffed myself.”

“Oh, poor boy,” Fred said, gazing after Percy’s retreating form as he hurried to get ready for work.

            Millicent met them at the station. She was waiting for them as they went through the barrier.

            “Wow!” she said when she saw them. “Ginny, I never would have guessed you were hiding that in your family tree,” Millicent said as she eyed Charlie as he lifted Ginny’s trunk onto the train.

            Ginny laughed at her.

“Charlie’s not that great. He volunteered to help me pack my trunk…it took two hours, Millicent, TWO hours!” Ginny bewailed.

            “That’s fine, Ginny, I like a thorough man.”

“Ugggh,” Fred gagged as he had caught wind of their conversation. Millicent merely blew him a kiss. And though George got on the train to save their seats, Fred had quite the time trying to get his trunk on the train until it was time for everyone to say goodbye.

            “Goodbye, Charlie,” said Millicent in an over dramatized fashion.

“See you, Bulstrode, I’ll send you that book we talked about soon.”          

            “Great,” she said, flashing the dragon tamer a bright smile.

“Yeah,” said Fred, clasping Charlie hard on the shoulder. “Send her that book on dragon grooming, she really needs to get those scales under control,” he said before boarding the train. Millicent scowling at his back.

            “Bye, Charlie, I’ll miss you,” said Ginny.

“Ah, don’t worry, Gin,” Charlie said. “I might be seeing you sooner than you think.”

            After quite a few more intriguing and frustrating hints about what was in store for them this year, they boarded the train. Millicent, Ron, Harry, and Hermione ducked into a compartment and Hermione held her hand to her mouth, “Shh,” she whispered suddenly.

            They listened, and heard a familiar drawling voice drifting in through the open door.

“Father actually considered sending me to Durmstrang rather than Hogwarts, you know. He knows the headmaster, you see. Well, you know his opinion of Dumbledore…the man’s such a mudblood lover…and Durmstrang doesn’t admit that sort of riffraff. But mother didn’t like the idea of me going to school so far away. Father says they actually learn the Dark Arts there, not just the defense rubbish that we do…”

            Hermione got up and shut the compartment door before Malfoy and his gang could walk by.

            “So he thinks Durmstrang would have suited him, does he?” she said angrily. “I wish he had gone, then we wouldn’t have to put up with him.”

            “Durmstrang’s another Wizarding school?” said Harry.

“Yes, and it’s got a horrible reputation,” said Hermione. “It puts a lot of emphasis on the Dark Arts.”

            “Or they used too, you would never know now,” said Millicent. “As the school and their secrets are kept well-hidden.”

            Harry looked at her blankly.

Hermione assisted.

            “Other wizarding schools like to conceal their whereabouts so nobody can steal their secrets. Hogwarts itself is concealed from Muggles,” she said. Then added, “But I think Durmstrang must be somewhere in the far north. Somewhere very cold because they’ve got fur capes as part of their uniforms.”

            “Ah,” said Ron. “Think of the possibilities. It would’ve been so easy to push Malfoy off a glacier and make it look like an accident…Shame his mother likes him…”

            Several of their friends looked in on them as the afternoon progressed, including Seamus, Dean, and Neville. Seamus was still wearing his Ireland rosette, the tiny voices squeaking the names of Ireland’s members. Dean reached to try and reenchant it but the normally relaxed Seamus pulled away from him in an odd gesture.

            Dean shook it off though, and Harry knocked it down to the superstition of it all.

Neville listened jealously to the others’ conversation as they relived the Cup match.

            “Gran didn’t want to go,” he said miserably. “Wouldn’t buy tickets. It sounded amazing though.”

            “It was,” said Ron. “Look at this, Neville…”

He rummaged in his trunk up in the luggage rack and pulled put the miniature figure of Viktor Krum.

            “Oh, wow,” said Neville enviously as Ron handed him the figurine.

&&&

            They were all positively soaked as they made their way into the castle. Peeves was launching water balloons at unsuspecting fifth years soaking them even further until Professor McGonagall threatened to get Dumbledore.

            Harry sat at the Slytherin table beside a very decidedly not wet Blaise.

“How did you manage this?” Harry asked the dark skinned boy and his dry clothes.

            “What?” asked Blaise. “My mother taught me grooming charms before she was concerned with teaching me how to walk. It’s not my fault your magical education has failed you.”

            Harry laughed.

“Could you at least shoot a drying charm at my underwear then, it’s turning into a swamp down there.”

            Blaise laughed at him but took pity just as the sorting was about to start.

After the sorting hats song, Professor McGonagall called the first name.

            “Ackerley, Stewart!”

“RAVENCLAW!”

            “Baddock, Malcolm!”

“SLYTHERIN!”

            It was normal for the houses to cheer loud for their new classmates, but Slytherin seemed to be trying to outdo even that standard today. They cheered loudly for Baddock, and though the rest of the houses would seem to have every reason to not clap for the newest snake after news of what happened at the Cup had spread, a few gave a polite clap. Even the people at the Gryffindor table who Harry knew had been distressed from the attack didn’t react any different than normal.

            “Creevey, Dennis!”

Tiny, Dennis Creevey, Colin’s brother edged forward, tripping over Hagrid’s moleskin, just as Hagrid himself sidled into the Hall through a door behind the teacher’s table.

            The hat was placed on his head, and the announcement was made:

“GRYFFINDOR!”

            After the sorting and the feast, Professor Dumbledore got to his feet.  

“Now that we are all fed and watered. I must once more ask for your attention, while I give out a few notices.”

            Most of the notices were the same, until Dumbledore said, “It is also my painful duty to inform you that the Inter-House Quidditch Cup will not take place this year.”

            “What?” Harry gasped. And Malfoy who hadn’t been paying attention to Dumbledore in the slightest was now shushing everyone in his immediate vicinity so he could hear what the man had to say next.

            “This is due to an event that will be starting in October, and continuing throughout the school year, taking up much of the teacher’s time and energy, but I am sure you will all enjoy it immensely. I have great pleasure in announcing that this year at Hogwarts….”

            But at that moment, there was a deafening rumble of thunder and the doors of the Great Hall banged open.

            “Aw,” said Dumbledore as the odd looking man, clunked his way into the Great Hall. “May I introduce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher? Everyone, Professor Moody.”

            It was usual for new staff members to be greeted with applause, but none of the staff or students clapped except for Dumbledore and Hagrid. Everyone else seemed too transfixed by Moody’s bizarre appearance to do more than stare at him.

            It was the man’s eyes that did it. One of them was small, dark, and beady. The other was large, round as a coin, and a vivid, electric blue. The blue eye was moving ceaselessly, without blinking, and was rolling up, down, and from side to side, quite independently of the normal eye, and then it rolled right over, pointing at the back of the man’s head so that all they could see was whiteness.

            “As I was saying,” proceeded Dumbledore as Moody took his seat at the staff table. “We are to have the honor of hosting a very exciting event over the coming months, an event that has not been held for over a century. It is my very great pleasure to inform you that the Triwizard Tournament will be taking place at Hogwarts this year.”

            Dumbledore explained the rules, and that it was a competition. One person, a champion, from each of the three major wizarding schools in Europe would compete. Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, and Hogwarts.

            Then and Harry wasn’t sure whether it had to do with the fact that the competition hadn’t been held in a hundred years or the death toll, Dumbledore announced that there would be an age limit.

            Harry could hear all the hopefuls in the Great Hall bust out in outrage. Precautions would be put in place and no one under the age of seventeen would be able to enter. Malfoy looked downright disappointed while a rather large looking Slytherin seventh year merely nodded to himself.

            “The delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be arriving in October and remaining with us for the greater part of this year. I know that you will extend every courtesy to our foreign guests while they are with us, and will give your whole-hearted support to the Hogwarts champion when he or she is selected. And now, it is late, and I know how important it is to you all to be alert and rested as you enter your lessons tomorrow morning. Bedtime! Chop chop!”

            They had been dismissed.

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, @dontgostakinmyheart!

Read on AO3

*****

Always be there

“I knew it was a terrible idea to go in here. I fucking knew it”, he murmured to himself, a slight trace of tension in his voice. The young man also knew that he should better be quiet in a deeply haunted place like this. But the fear loosened his tongue in a poor attempt to try and deal with his running mind.

He couldn’t. He couldn’t do it any longer.

Stiles stared down to his bluish fingertips and white knuckles, the firm grip which held the wand. His robe’s end was already wet and cold sank into his shoes and socks, making him chatter his teeth uncontrollably. Still Stiles didn’t want to stop making his way through the ankle-deep snow. Every few steps he saw drops of blood covering the pale white landscape that lay in the darkness before him, rendered by dark and rotten trees.

No, he had to fucking move on.

“Did it ever come to your mind that this injured dog-wolf-thing possibly went crazy and might attack you? No? Good. Why should it Stiles? Go in the middle of the night into the Forbidden Forest to hunt a wolf thing and tell nobody about it. Great idea .”

Sarcasm, his only defence besides some magical abilities, wouldn’t save him either. He was also skipping Potions right now, just to follow this dog - or wolf, whatever - which would certainly get him into trouble.

And yeah, Potions class. In the middle of the night .

Maybe the injury was caused by one of the hippogriffs , he wondered. But the hippogriffs looked unharmed. And why, Stiles added in his thoughts, why would a single wolf attack a herd of hippogriffs, which are way too strong for it? It made no sense. What if it attacks me out of pain? On the other hand it didn’t look like it could do anything anymore.

Stiles pushed his thoughts aside.

“Focus, Stiles. It’s going to be fine.” He knew that Mrs. Lovise, one of Hogwarts Gamekeepers, would take care of any harmed animal. Even a wild wolf… or maybe even a grim.

Well, maybe not a grim...

Suddenly, he heard a low crackle to his left and froze before he turned around slowly to face whatever he could possibly face. A loud, pounding noise hammered unsteadily in Stiles ears, but it didn’t come from outside because it was his own heart beat.

Blood drained, black fur and a pair of glowing wolf eyes stared directly at him. Stiles swallowed. He hadn’t thought about what he would do if the wolf was still able to move. It had looked so injured in the meadow, right beside the big lake. Stiles had seen this wolf vanishing into the forest, in an almost crouching manner. But this specimen, in an indescribable way, still looked majestic and more than able to kill him in one strike.

Shit.

“Hey little grumpy wolf.... I’m not here to hurt you, okay…?”

Stiles raised his wand to slowly cast the levitation spell – nope, he wouldn’t even try to carry a hundred fifty pound animal on his shoulders.

“Just let me-...”

But right before he could say the first syllable, the wind carried a deep growl towards him and sharp, white teeth appeared in the darkness. Within seconds the boy felt fear flood his mind, right before the wolf jumped.

“ Shit .”

__________________________________

Pain rushed through his head, filling his mind with terror. He couldn’t be dead, right? It was too painful for being a dead corpse. Stiles’ head felt like syrup, dull pain hammered down his spine and caused a low, painful moan.

Where am I? Fuck...

Whatever was underneath him, Stiles could recognize that it was too warm to be snow. It was too soft and cuddly, like a pillow. Weird.

“Wha… nh …?” Stiles whispered slowly, he felt so damn weak.

“Shht, shht. Easy. You are safe now”, a calm female voice filled his mind with peace, just for a moment, but...

The forest. The wolf! Stiles’ eyes opened rapidly. He slowly tried to sit up and moaned quietly, but he did recognize the room as his sight sharpened.

He was in the Hospital Wing, but how the hell did he end up here?

“Where’s the wolf, what-”, he was so confused. Stiles remembered the wolf attacking him before he passed out, but it didn’t explain why he was still alive? It didn’t make sense.

Slowly and cautiously Stiles began to move - It felt like a flashback to his first Quidditch lesson. When he got hit in his face by a quaffle, the pain was quite similar to what he felt now. He bent his fingers and his toes, he just wanted to make sure, that he wasn’t missing some parts of his body. But nothing of him was ripped out by sharp wolf teeth.

You lucky one.

“Mr. Stilinski, please lay down. Everything is fine. Mr. Hale brought you here and-...”

Stiles tuned the nurse’s voice out instantly, his thoughts exploding in surprise.

What did she say? Hale?

Derek Hale ?

It didn’t make any sense why he would have carried Stiles back. How did he even find me?

Derek Hale was a Gryffindor and a sixth year. He was famous - well, according to the hand full of students who always were around him. They were even calling themselves the Hale Pack – and he’d never looked at Stiles once.

Ok. Well, he actually did look at me one or two times in his entire school career, but his gazes always were darting and sharp, Stiles thought.

He felt dizzy and so his thoughts stumbled back and forward uncontrollably.

Stiles was a fifth year and he never thought about forcing himself through the wall of people that encompassed the Hale Pack. Okay, he’d often thought about it. But he kept those thoughts secret. Derek had everything he didn’t have. He looked like a greek god, was big and strong, he was the cool guy everyone wanted to be with.

He had everything.

Almost .

A pointy voice inside his head reminded him, of what Derek had lost a long time ago.

He was an orphan, he didn’t have parents like Stiles. Well, Stiles at least has his dad and… he would see him soon because of the christmas holidays.

Derek would stay here. Possibly all alone.

Instantly Stiles felt bad for his selfish thoughts and looked up to a worried face right above him. It was the nurse. Right, she was here, too.

“Where is he?” Stiles asked, furrowing his brows. The only answer he got back was a mug of fluid he couldn’t identify. It smelled sweet and spicy at the same time.

“Drink this. It’ll help to get you back on your feet”, she added gently.

Stiles sighed and emptied the drink hastily. “Where... is-...” he coughed. It tasted terribly! Did she want to burn off his tongue? For God’s sake! “...is he?” Stiles finished hoarsely.

In a sadistic way she looked pleased, due to the fact he'd almost died because of the drink. “Mr. Hale is lying just next to you. He is fine. And you, Mr. Stilinski, should thank him for what he did. The tebo could have killed you. Both of you!”

A tebo? He had heard about this boar-like creature, but a tebo, in Hogwarts ?

“What is a tebo doing here?” he couldn’t resist to ask. Tebos were dangerous, he could imagine that it might have found use in Care of Magical Creatures.

“It escaped its cage and Mr. Hale, who was around when it happened, rushed out to capture it…” Stiles heard a sigh.

“I’m so glad that both of you weren’t badly injured. The tebo is gone, no one knows where it went. But more important: What were you doing out there?”

“Ehh…” Damn it.

“I saw this wolf, and… I was on my way to potions, really. I just wanted to check on the new hippogriff foal. Did you see it? It’s a sensation to breed hippogriffs in captivity successfully. Well... When I saw the injured wolf, I had to follow it. I thought, maybe it was harmed by the tebo…? I couldn’t ignore this…. So… Umm… Yeah. I should look for my saviour now. I have to thank him, right? So… ehm.”

He gesticulated excessively with his hands before he started cautiously to stand up. Stiles avoided the nurse’s gaze and hoped that he was owing her no more explanation.

The boy sneaked silently to the bed next to his own.

Derek seemed as if he was sleeping. Two long scratches were marking his cheek and a thicker scratch ran down his throat. He looked terrible, but he wasn’t in critical condition.

And how did he save me? What is with the wolf? Was that Derek?

Stiles didn't understand, his mind began circling unsteadily around itself. Underneath Derek’s terrible appearance, an indescribable softness covered his face. Stiles couldn’t even tell why he noticed that.

“Was that you?” Stiles began to speak in a low voice.

On one hand he didn't want to wake him up, on the other hand… He had to know.

“I mean”, he continued slowly. “The wolf in the forest.” He had no other explanation for what had happened. If Derek really was the wolf he had seen…

A memory struck Stiles’ mind and he gasped for air.

“A wolf saved me in the forest from freezing when I was a child”, he started to tell him the story from a time when everything was bright and fine.

“That... was also you, wasn’t it?”

He recognized this pair of bright golden wolf eyes, their stare. But if Derek was not the wolf, he’d made a total fool out of himself again. But hey, it was a familiar feeling.

A long time ago he had been a young boy, lost in a forest. Not the Forbidden Forest, but it was winter and only a few days before christmas. He hadn't been able to find his way back, and had almost frozen to death until a big, black wolf showed up and led him back to civilization.

He’d never forget that.

“Idiot”, a raw voice broke through the silence and Stiles froze.

Shit. Did Derek hear everything  the Slytherin had said?

“What?” Stiles repeated raising his eyebrows. He suddenly felt insecure about this. He never really talked to Derek before.

“Wandering alone into forests every time… What the hell was your business out there?” Derek snorted and Stiles’ eyebrows rose further upon his forehead.

“Are you telling me that you were worried about me?” He was kidding, right?

But the glint in his bright green eyes told Stiles in a silent manner, that Derek was fucking serious. He also didn’t answer him, and with that, he confirmed Stiles’ suspicion.

“I just wanted to help the injured wolf”, Stiles repeated quietly after a while. He didn’t know that the wolf was also Derek fucking Hale, but even if that had been the case, for him it didn’t matter… The Slytherin kept this thought for himself.

There was complete silence for one or two minutes.

“Thank you. For… well. Saving me. You’re going to be okay soon, right?”

Silence again, but then Derek nodded slightly and Stiles wondered what his facial expression could possibly mean. He looked somehow… lonely.

Where is his pack? Stiles wondered and sat down on a chair next to the bed, his legs felt still weak. He wanted to accompany him. By this time all other students were already back at home to celebrate the holidays. Scott, Stiles’ best friend, included.

And so time went on, silent but not uneasy or awkward.

Stiles gaze wandered through the room. Christmas decor was floating in the air, even some of those moving portrait figures were wearing Christmas clothes.

What a picture - ha, what a pun …

“Why did you save me? I mean...”, Stiles slowly began to talk.

“It’s my fault. I didn’t expect to be attacked, it was stupid to go into the Forbidden-...”

“Shut up, Stiles”, Derek cut him off. It seemed that he wasn’t the most patient guy in the world.

“Hey”, he began, but a few seconds later he realized that Derek had called him by his name.

“Why do you even know my name?” Stiles added after a while, sceptical and shoving a chocolate frog - found a few minutes ago, abandoned in its package and in an empty bed next to Derek’s - in his mouth.

“Mh, these are so good.” He saw Derek's expression of distaste, guessing he didn’t like them.

“You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Disgusting.”

“Well, grumpy wolf, I asked you a question. And I will not stop talking until you answer me”, Stiles smirked and a low, dull croak came from inside his mouth. It was the chocolate frog.

“Our mothers were friends.”

Silence.

“She wanted me to watch over you”, Derek added.

“What?” He didn’t say more than that. Stiles was speechless. His mother knew Derek’s mother? They were friends? Inside his chest, Stiles’ felt an edgy but warm tingle. He wanted to know more about their friendship. He definitely would ask Derek about it soon.

“You heard me,” he remained silent a moment, “but I don’t do this just because she wanted me to.”

Stiles wondered what that could possibly mean and furrowed his brows. “Why else would you unless… you… actually like me?”

Derek frowned and Stiles closed his mouth at this sight to prevent himself from babbling or saying anything more - at least for now. Except… his mind was racing again and he couldn’t be quiet.

“Not that it matters in any way. Um. I just… I thought you hated me, okay?”

He saw how Derek furrowed his brows and how his eyes dared him to go on.

“Yeah. Gazing at me like that… that's why.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“What? Why? That’s not really gentle either, ok? Don’t be such a sourwolf. And yeah, I know that you were the wolf in the forest. And you know what? It didn’t matter if I knew it at the time or not, I’d have followed you anyway.”

Stiles took a deep breath, he wasn’t finished yet, but...

“Shut up.”

Again his lips shut together and heated, unspoken words turned his face into a pout.

The silence that followed his outburst was only disturbed by Derek, sighing quietly.

“I don’t hate you.”

[easkyrah]

can you please do a nessian prompt with "she loved so hard because she knows how it feels to be loved so little"? i came across this quote on pinterest, and i immediately connected it with your type of writing. plus it screamed nessian, so yeah. thanks :)

I think this is sort of a rambling. I hope this lived to some sort of measure in your expectations. It’s almost twelve at midnight here and I should be doing my physics free response. No regrets. Yet. 

“With a love so sweet it makes me sadCan we go back to the world we had?”

She loved so hard because she knew how it felt to be loved so little.

Nesta had adopted to her Fae body too well. 

The Cauldron had apparently known that she would have embraced death with open arms, unlike her sisters and her sisters’ friends. The Cauldron had created her younger sister differently to mock her own transformation. The Cauldron had ensured that Hell would be always fingertips away from her, a measure she could glance at quickly, but never fully hold and embrace. 

A dimension that she could dream of in her good nights, but never cross over into, no matter how hard she tried. 

It might have borderlined suicide, really.

In fact, it was.

Cassian had been outraged at first. Until he realized that no blade could penetrate her skin and that the skin remained smooth as time passed. Until he realized that her sense were sharper and remained sharp. Until he realized that her cold exterior wasn’t a facade, but an integral part of herself. 

When Elain had spotted a wrinkle on her face, and Feyre had noticed her joints had hurt from winnowing, they had ventured to the Suriel. The magical creature had informed Feyre with almost disappointed grumpiness that Nesta would outlast the other Archerons not because she was the eldest, but because the Cauldron had injected within her the curse of a tie.

As long as the Cauldron existed, so would Nesta. 

Rhys told her to accept it as a gift. That near immortality was considered an aspect of the High Fae. 

Nesta didn’t want to be Fae, much less a High Fae. How could she allow herself to accept this body, a body of destruction and might that had ruined her human society so thoroughly? She was a living weapon where no longer were her words barbed.

“Are you going to join us for dinner?” a sweet voice chimed, interrupting Nesta from the thick book of Velaris’s history that laid within her lap. All the celebatory festivals of rebirth and resurrection, of freely living life without stringent regulations —

Nesta looked up into the eyes of Mor, the female who had told her of her history with Cassian a thousand years after she’d met Rhys’s Inner Circle. A small part of her had delighted that Mor had seen nervous and almost afraid of Nesta’s reaction. That someone she respected actually feared her.

Nesta shook her head softly, offering a slightly edged smile at Rhysand’s third in command. She lifted the book off her lap in explanation, and Mor gave her a quick nod of her head. 

Before the Fae danced out of the room, she looked quickly over her shoulder. Hesitation lined her face, as if something sour stuck in her tongue. After a moment’s thought, Mor squared her shoulders, and said, “Do you ever regret it?”

Nesta blinked. “Regret what?”

Those previously warm eyes turned cold. “For letting him go.”

Mor did not flinch as Nesta slammed the book shut steeling her own eyes. “This does not concern you, Morrigan.”

“You taught him how to fly. You taught him the human ways. You taught him to settle down. You taught— ”

“Enough,” Nesta seethed. She could feel the roots of flame and embers begin to stir within her. 

“You gave him an inkling of hope to find love that avoided him for his entire life.”

“Is that not what you offered him in your warm bed?”

Nesta watched as something inside of Mor snapped, and the blond-haired beauty surged for her. Before she could blink and let a wall of smoke and fire kindle into existence, shadows folded within seconds in front of them, and Azriel stood gripping Mor tightly within his embrace.

Dark, large wings folded over the other female’s body, and Nesta watched as the spymaster whispered soothing words into his lover’s ears. The words that were to be a gentle caress, meant for both females, Nesta’s honed ears catching every syllable. 

“She loved so hard because she knew how it felt to be loved so little.” Azriel slightly bent his head into her direction, blue Siphons flaring. When Mor touched his cheek, he gently placed a hand over her palm, willing her to let him finish. “Her love was letting him go because she could not let go of her past. And still cannot.”

Nesta stood up, eyes blazing. The audacity for this male to assume that she could not move on was atrocious. Before she could open her mouth and arm herself, Azriel winnowed out of the library with Mor in his arms.

A lover’s embrace, full of acceptance and openness. Rhysand had waited an eternity for his mate, for that chance at love. While Feyre had seen life as a great canvas to paint on, Nesta had seized it as a sheet to toss all her pain on. She could not be the sparkle and shine as Mor’s life to Azriel’s shadows and silence. 

She could not be the girl the others could easily fall in step with. She was the girl they’d stub their toes on and walk away from, the occasional obscenity slipping from their tongue. 

Nesta shoved the book back into the shelf, and stared aimlessly at the other rows. “If he truly loved me, he would have continued to fought for me,” she vocalized to open space, her share of pain burning inside of her.

Her body continued to be forged by silence and loneliness, misunderstanding flooding every vein. Cassian had understood her, though. Understood her too well, always ready to fire back a retort to her own words. But Rhysand’s commander deserved more than a ruined girl who saw the world with too much raw emotions for her already hardened body she had to part of. He deserved a female who breathed in spires of delight, rather than flumes of hatred.

“I used to ask myself why I wasn’t good enough,” a deep, male voice sounded behind her.

Nesta froze, ice freezing every tendon and muscle.

“Wonder what I did wrong. How I could change myself for you. Why we weren’t working.”

A warm hand touched her shoulder, and she flinched.

“I could transform into another male who wasn’t a bastard, and you still wouldn’t accept me. I could give you an endless sky, but you’d settle for a lone star.”

A finger moved along her jaw, turning her head to stare at brown eyes filled with devastation. 

“Then it dawned upon me. It’s not because I’m not good enough. It’s not because you’re not good enough. It’s because your past wasn’t good enough. What others had done to you, and you to them. Because, you, Nesta, live in the past, and not in the present, or for the future.”

A thumb wiped away a stray tear that had unwillingly wrenched itself from her eye. 

“That’s why the Cauldron chose you to share itself with. Because you are the past, present, and the future. You are immortal in every aspect. And you do realize that I love every part of you, Nesta?”

Nesta blinked, and slightly withdrew from the male in front of her. “Your words are nothing but laced with prettiness.” 

“Did it hurt when you hell from heaven, sweetheart? Because you are a fallen angel.”

“I dug my way up from hell, Cassian. And I wish to return there.”

The red siphons pulsated around them, curving and encircling around both their bodies. Flares of warmth ran along her skin, and for once, Nesta allowed herself to relax in the tranquility. 

“You think hell will offer you penance, Nesta? Is that why you push me away?” He slowly leaned forward until his forehead touched hers, his wings arching around them. The cocoon of safety and familiarity he held—

It was wrong. It was wrong that Nesta could see herself in Cassian’s embrace.

A lover’s embrace.

Nesta winnowed out of Cassian’s arms. 

She would not allow herself to fall for the whims of feelings, not when it would lead to hurt and heartbreak. Not when betrayal came with every close face; not when betrayal came from those holding familiarity rather than those fleeting strangers.

Because this male had still continued to pursue her relentlessly after years and years of rejection.

She could not take it anymore.

Nesta became a pillar of ice and steel, her words a flame of fire. She did not let an inkling of regret or sorrow flood through a single pore. 

“I do not deserve a bastard born nobody. Is that why you find yourself in the sheets of any female who shows advances towards you? So that you could feel wanted?”

Cassian’s siphons died out. 

“I see why Lord Devlon and the others harass you. You are nothing without your wings. You are nothing without your brawns. You are nothing without anything.”

Cassian might have fallen onto his knees, but Nesta’s vision was too-blurry and hazed with red to see.

“You think love will triumph. That I perhaps I could love from afar. You were wrong. Always.”

Cassian might have pleaded for her to stop, but her ears were clogged with bitterness from the memories plaguing her. 

“How could I love something worthless? I had your hopes up, did I not? That you could find love?”

Cassian’s wings fell around him, and Nesta knew that it was the true picture of a fallen angel.

“You do not deserve love, which is why you have not found it all your life. There is no love for monsters, for killers, for those who shed blood on the battlefield.”

Nesta closed a hand over her heart, willing every wall and chip to stay intact.

Cassian’s throat bobbed, and his head remained down, as he rasped out, “You always got the last word. The last jab.”

Nesta walked among the shelves, forcing her feet towards the exit. 

She can feel every ounce of warmth leave her body, and stiffness overtake her. She was broken enough that she turned back to stare at the figure that could have provided her with everything and anything she desired.

Finally, the male who had taught her to once smile, lifted his head, his mouth set in a grim line. 

Nesta eyed him, forcing him to look away, so that she could leave and collapse and let her walls down for once.

But Cassian shattered any notion of allowing herself to lower those walls, as soon as pain flickered through his eyes, and he swallowed, clearing his throat. 

“I, Cassian Motel, reject you, Nesta Archeron, as my mate.”

Nesta did not leave the library as she fell onto her knees, a sharp pain spiking through every ligament and vein like an intruding shrapnel.

“I deserve love,” Cassian hissed, wings enveloping his frame. Once, he would have embraced her with those wings as well. “I deserve more than a decaying bitch.”

Nesta found each word to chip away at her walls.

“I deserve more than royalty.”

Her body jerked at that, and somehow, her eyes met with Cassian’s torn ones.

“I deserve more than the Princess of Carrion.” I deserve love and happiness. 

Before Nesta can demand an explanation, or maybe take back her words, or even beg for forgiveness with an apology, her once-mate heaved a large breathe, and winnowed away, leaving her in the musky smell and tang of old books.

A clogging sensation clouds her throat and fogs her mind. 

For the very first time, Nesta realized that she had never been truly alone. 

And that this was utter silence. 

[diminuel]

My uncoordinated thoughts on 12x10 under the cut! ♥

A note in advance: I’m not entirely sure how to use the angel pronouns now, so I’m going to go along with what the show provided so far.

I’m not sure what to read into Benjamin playing that game every night. Does he do it because his vessel enjoys it? Or do I have to look deeper into some meaning for it?

I think Lily’s appearance is cool. I wasn’t sure if I’d like her but she’s great.

Does Lily have two angel blades because those are the blades of the ones she killed already? How did she get her hand on the first angel blade to kill the first angel of Castiel’s old garrison? Was it her boyfriend’s?

I loved Benjamin’s distress call

I like Dean’s shirt, sweatshirt thingy, the dark one with the collar slightly open.

It seems that Dean is disgruntled about Mary jumping right back into the hunting life. I understand that because he lived through a young Mary telling him that she wants out of the hunting life. I’m sure that Dean would prefer her to be the kind of mom who stays home and makes them chicken soup for dinner. If she’s out there, hunting, that means he always has to worry about her. (But maybe he also isn’t sure how do deal with the fact that his mother is a real person, with her own crap to deal with, independently of her role as mother that Dean’s familiar with.)

Judging from Sam’s “so are you just going to walk past each other in the kitchen, not saying a word” comment it seems like they’ve been doing that for a while. On one hand I’m glad that Cas is apprently haning out in the Bunker a lot (understandable, since it looks like he’s been hanging out in it for the 6 weeks the Winchesters were gone) but on the other hand I feel a bit sorry for Sam that he has to witness this kind of thing. I wonder if Sam and Cas did/ do talk.

Dean’s being a little bit of a hypocrite. Why can he get grumpy about Cas maybe causing ‘cosmic consequences’ by breaking Billie’s deal if Dean’s the one who make ‘cosmic consequences potentially following’ possible in the first place. If he hadn’t made that deal with Billie, then Cas wouldn’t have had to intervene.

Addendum to that thought: Cas and Dean have apparently not talked, but is there anyone that talked to Dean about the six weeks in isolation? If he says things like ‘it was worse than hell’ that must raise alarm bells in everyone else. So... did anyone try to talk to him about it...?

That Cas has to ask if Dean’s included in Sam’s “we’ll go with you/ we’ll help” makes me a tiny bit sad. Yes, Cas knows that Dean’s angry with him even though it’s (in his and my opinion) a bit undeserved. But he seems to think that Dean’s angry enough that he doesn’t want to help Cas at all.

And of course Dean has to ruin it by being mean. Both Sam and Cas are unamused.

(Side note: Damn Dean, your lashes look good this episode. New mascara?)

Sam tries really hard to mediate. Poor guy. Also thank you Sam for always taking Castiel’s side in situations like these. You’re the best.

Dean takes his criticising a bit too far by calling Castiel killing Billie a “knee-jerk choices”. Excuse me, Mr. Winchester?? Without Castiel’s knee-jerk choices you would be long dead. You relied on Castiel’s heart based knee-jerk choices to betray Heaven and do the right thing. You have always relied on Castiel choosing you over Heaven. So stop it. Enough.

“He’s sarcastic but he’s thoughtful and appreciative”. You tell him, Cas. And what do you mean by “what’s that supposed to mean” Dean? You know exactly what he’s saying. And you know exactly that he’s right. You probably haven’t said a word of thanks or of comfort since Cas stopped the deal from happening. For God’s sake. Dean might be thoughtful and appreciative, but he usually isn’t or at least he usually don’t communicate that when it matters. (Dean can be rather insensitive, especially when it gets to supernatural creatures. And Cas still belongs to that category after all. Just look how callous Dean was with the Zana’s deaths even though Sully was right there, being upset. Dean’s got no tact when it gets to the feelings of supernatural creatures.)

I like that Cas memorized the name of Benjamin’s vessel. And it seems like Benjamin and Cas actually talked about the topic since Cas seems to know quite a bit about their special relationship.

Both Dean and Sam seem suprised by the angel with a male name in a female vessel thing. As if they had never seen that before (in season 4 Cas and in season 6 Raphael)

While I love Castiel’s “Benjamin is an angel, his vessel is a woman” comment, I would have wished for it to be elaborated a bit. So far we still only know from canon that angels use he/she pronouns for other angels which don’t fit their vessels all the time, that Castiel doesn’t correct Dean to say that Benjamin is a man, but that he’s an ‘angel’ instead which seems to imply that their gender identity (if they have one) can’t be explained by human concepts of “woman” and “man” and that angels don’t ever comment on the gender of their or their siblings’ vessel, which implies that it usually doesn’t matter.

So back in 1901 Cas still served under Isham. He also served under Anna at one point, so when and how long was Cas actually a garrison captain? It couldn’t have been more than a couple decades. 

Cas’ “if I plan to do anything else stupid, I’ll let you know” is my high light. Dean looks so taken aback.

I love the conversations between Mirabel (Mirabelle?), Isham and Castiel. And at first Castiel’s voice is sweet and soft, but he quickly changes tracks when they start accusing him of things.

It seems to be uncommon to keep vessels for over 100 years, which I can understand. There are human souls in that vessel after all. But why do they say that they kept them so long because they’re not “careless”? Has Castiel no longer had his previous vessel available because he was “careless” and lost her somehow? I assumed that he released her upon completing his mission, or that he was pulled out of her like he was pulled out of Jimmy once. Or maybe he even lost her as recently as during the siege on hell, which would explain why Cas first had to find a vessel before he could contact Dean. All speculation on my part.

Of course Dean can’t wait outside. Of course Sam saw that coming. *lol*

Cas seems hurt when Mirabel says that they didn’t think he would care that old friends died. I mean it shouldn’t surprise him, considering how malicious angels have been to him in recent years (no matter what he tried to do for them) but he still is hurt.

Ahaha, Dean. He looks so appreciative when Isham tosses him some dollars so he can buy himself a pie.

Dean and Sam (especially Dean) have always been of the opinion that Cas needs better friends than the angels because they don’t treat him well or are rude to the Winchesters. This makes me think that a) I love that Dean & Sam defend Castiel and tell him that he doesn’t have to let them treat him so badly and b) that they don’t think that Castiel cares enougha bout angels to go through such humiliation to try to help them. I wonder why they still don’t get that because Cas has been trying and trying and trying again to help angels. Dean and Sam might have enough distance to be able to tell that they’re not being kind, but they don’t understand how much history Castiel has with these people and how much he might still care about them. And as c) I also wonder if Dean sees the parallel there; the angels disrespect Castiel’s dedication and his previous work as well as his friends, and still he wants to help. Maybe it makes Dean realize that Dean’s not behaving much better than the bad angel buddies. (Sure, it’s not on the same level, but Dean’s still mean to Cas even though it’s totally unnecessary.)

Dean, you can’t look into angel magic light. You should know that by now.

Cas back in 1901 was pretty good at doing what he’s told, but he still flinched when Lily’s kid screamed. That’s very consistent what we’ve seen so far of Cas.

Also, she’s so cute, help.

That little fancy hat.

That bland looking dress.

Cute.

Cas in 2017 is also cute.

Castiel finding such clear words to counter Sam’s argument that they have to talk to Lily because her feelings of anger and resentment are justified because her family was killed suprised me. "Are you saying these angels deserved to die? Are you saying that I deserve to die?” Of course, in this instance is was a very good idea to go talk to Lily but a simple “Cas was just following order” would of course not have worked.

I wonder why it was so draining for Cas to heal Isham. We’ve seen him heal other angels before and it never cost him so much energy. Also, something must be amazing about Castiel’s healing ability is Isham says that he hasn’t feel that good in a millenium. (Angel medic Cas *lol*)

“Cas is our family so we won’t let you hurt him” ♥♥

I know it’s a dramatic scene, but the way Lily draws the papers to the floor after she spent such a long, fumbling while to try to collect them (why even? why not just grab May and run?) is hilarious.

What’s with Cas’ “oh goodie”? *lol*

The interaction between Sam and Lily is great, of course he’d understand what’s at stake when Lily says that parts of her soul burn away every time she uses Enochian magic. (Though aside: but using sigils doesn’t right? I assume sigils channels powers through a special symbol, i.e. the power is in the word/ symbol itself, so the only price you have to pay for those kind of spells is your blood, instead of bits and pieces of your soul.)

One of the most important details of this episode was Isham’s “you survived hell. You were chosen by god” I really want to know more about this. Why was he in hell? For Dean? And why was he chosen by god? To go to hell? To rescue Dean? For something else? Tell me more!!!

Dean has never shown any regards for using the angel banishing sigil on Cas or on someone else when Cas would also be removed. Nice to see him reconsider and not use it after all. ;w; (Though I wonder if he quickly thought about all the times he blasted Cas away.)

Castiel is the best, so sweet.

Sam, there’s a chair, why are you sitting on the table?

And that’s it for now! Sorry that this is so unstructured...! And long.

[taubenschlag94]

To the Beat

A Jeanmarco fanfiction. Read on ao3 if you want

Jean thought he was being really clever. Like seriously, with a red beanie on his significant haircut (the two toned undercut), sunglasses on and a giant black hoodie that hid his slim figure he was sure no one would recognize him. Not like he expected any of his classmates ould be here, but you never know. Maybe some of the girls were also into Harry Styles. And hey who would judge them? That guys music was pretty good. Okay Jean didn’t thought Harry Styles music was “pretty good”, he thought it was awesome! He was convinced Harry would be the next King of Pop! He had been looking forward to this concet for months! Right now he was standing in front of the merch stand, really wanting the shirt with Harry lying in a pink puddle, but it was 40 fucking Dollars!! All his savings had already been used up for this ticket, but he really wanted a souvenier. That was when he heared a familiar voice next to him. “The one on the right side pleace. size L, yes thank you.” This wasn’t happening. THIS was NOT happening. Marco fucking Bodt was standing right next to Jean handing the guy behind the table 40 bucks for a Harry Styles Shirt. The guy Jean had been a crush on for the past year was at a Harry Styles concert. Was he here with a girlfirend Jean didn’t know about? (He had done some intense facebook stalking on the guy.) Jean was about to make a quick escape, cause he couldn’t be seen at a Harry Styles concert, that would ruin his reputation as the “cool guy who doesn’t care about shit” Of course Marco Bodt turned around right this second and brightly exclaim “Jean!” Jean would have sold all his comic books right this second for being swolloed by the ground. Marco took a step clouser. “DIdn’t know you would be here too. What a shame, I could’ve picke you up! My mom let me take the car tonight!” “I....eh...” Very eloquent Jean, he thought. Smooth move.

Marco was still smiling and Jean was sure his heart could handle this. Marco had transfered to their school in January, and Jean had been immediately drawn to the guy. He wanted to be friends with him so badly that he first didn’t realized that he had a crush on Marco till it was too late. Since that fatal day in May when they went out with Connie, Sasha and Thomas for ice cream and Jean had dropped his icre cream after two bites and after everyone had laughed at him and Jean was about to make an awkward exit, grumpy mumbling something to himself how everyone could stick their ice cream up their arses when Marco had offered him his own ice cream, feeling sorry for Jean. Only after he heared Sasha wispering “indirect kiss” into Connies ear, making them both giggle, Jean blushed the deepest red every seen on planet earth, making everybody laugh even harder, made him realized he was in love with Marco Bodt.

And now said person was standing right in front of him at a concert Jean couldn’t be more excited about making this place his personal heaven. “Can you hold this for a second?”, Marco suddenly asked, giving Jean the pink puddle shirt he just bought. Jean took it when Marco pulled his own hoodie over his head, he wore a shirt under it but Jean caught a glimse of his bare stomach and almost fainted, then Marco took the shirt back on put it over his head. Now Harry’s face was on Marcos body and Jean was sure that this was the most beautiful view he would ever see. “Looks good.”, Jean managed to say and was very proud of himself for not stuttering. “Should we go inside?”, Marco suggested and led the way, Jean on his heels. “Tbh” Yes Marco acutally said tbh he was the kind of guy who could pull this up without sounding stupid “I’m kinda glad that I met you. Beeing alone on a concert his pretty sad, even when it is Harry Styles!” He shyly grinned at Jean and Jean could swear his ears were going red. “You’re here on your own?”, Jean asked supirsed. “Well yeah, I don’t think any of our classmates know Harry Styles.” “Philistiners.”, Jean grumbled. “Right?”, Marco laughed. Then added:”But I’m actually not too suprised to see you here, I mean I am, but thinking about it, you always had a good taste in music.“ He grinned sheepishly and Jean felt his cheeks heating up again. He kinda wished he hadn’t abondened the sunglasses a while ago. “Ah well..”, then he thought screw it. Marco was here on his own so Jean probably couldn’t say anything sheepishly embarrassing  about his choices. “I just love the way his music makes me feel. When I shout those lyrics out in my room or in the shower I feel like I could rule the world. His music actually makes you feel something, it’s nothin’ like this pop trash that you hear every day.” Marco nodded and Jean felt himself breath a little easier. The hall was packed and Jean and Marco tried to get as close to the stage as they could. They were both thankfull to their height advantage in regards to all the giggling girls around them. Their shoulders were pressed together and Jean really, really didn#t want to move. Harrys front band was amazing and Jean wished he checked them out before the concert so he could sing along like Marco did. Said wasn’t ashamed at all to sing at the top of his longs, and he wasn’t that good of a singer, but Jean found himself liking that part of him just as much as the rest. He kept sending Maroc side glances, watched how the lights threw coloufull shadows ofer his face.

When the front band left the stage and an anouncer told them Harry would be out in 10 minutes, Marco grabbed onto Jean’s arm. “I am so excited!” he shouted and all Jean could do was nod in agreement. His heart was hammering so hard in his chest, Marco next to him and Harry Styles would stand in front of them in just a few minutes. This felt like the best night ever. The lights then dropped, a drum sounded and they heared the anouncer voice again “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN; TONIGHT WE PRESENT YOU.... HARRY STYLES!” Girls screamed, spotlights were flimmering around the hall till they stopped in the middle of the stage were you could already see the band asembled which were already playning and then HE walking onto the stage, wearing a flower patterned suit. “Tell me something tell me something you don’t know nothing...” Jean hearted skiped a beat, the air felt electrical around him and he wished he had something to hold into. And because this was Harry and because his music always made Jean felt brave and Jean really really wanted to do this he reached his hand out and when Harry sang “And I’ve been payring, I never did before.” he grabbed Marco’s hand. Marco looked down suprised, but then squeezed Jeans hand back and he never felt this good before. Marco’s hand was warm, but not sweaty and his palms soft and Jean could feel every knuckle of his fingers pressed to his. This was magic. And together with the rest of the crowed they sang “OH tell me something I don’t already know!”

Harry started the concert with his more soft songs. Two ghosts, sweet creature (which Marco told Jean was his favorite, cause it remended him of his own sister and him) then the bass took a swingy tone and Caroline started playing. Their hands still locked Jean and Marco started swinging their shoulders in the rhythm, light dancing to the amazing tune. Singing out loud “SHE’S A GOOD GIRL” Jean could feel everyones good energy in the room, there was no one sad in here. A room full of people and love and a-ma-zing music.

For the next song Harry was handed his own guitre and after the first few tunes, Marco suddenly yanked his hand free form Jean’s grip, just to put his arm tight around Jean’s neck, jumping up and down “omg I love this song!” Jean was a bit confused cause he wasn’t familiar with the song. But seeing Marco this excited just made him grin like a fool and he slung his arm around Marco’s waist and jumped with him. Marco of course knew the lyrics by heart and sang along to “Who's that shadow holding me hostage? I've been here for days”

A rush of braveness hit Jean again and he felt happiness flowing trough him like waves and he really really wanted to kiss Marco right now. And like if Marco could read his thoughts he tunred his head to look at Jean a conflicted look on his face before shaking his head and then grinning and when Harry sang “Look what you’ve done to me.” Jean was about to lean in, ready  to kiss Marco, Marco bowed his head down and pressed his lips to Jean’s. All his thoughts suddenly were fuck yes, fuck yes, fuck yes.

When they parted Marco seemed to have trouble looking into Jeans eyes. “You know.”, Jean started, never feeling more brave than in this second. “I was waiting for Kiwi to pull a move on you, but this works just fine.” He didn’t let go of Marco’s hips who had his arms hanging around Jean’s shoulders. “What?” It was a nice change to see Marco speechless for once. “I’ve liked you for quite some time.” Jean continued. He had to scream to make himself heard. A new song had started playing but right now he only wanted to focus on Marco whose face had turned an adorable shade of pink. “No you haven’t”, he exclaimed hiting Jeans shoulder. “Why didn’t you ever say something! I always found you where adorable but didn’t know which way you swung so...” Jean pouded, “ ’M not adorable.” That made Marco laugh “Yes you are and I like that.” He was grining and biting his lip. “This is the best night ever.”, he then said and Jean had to pull him down in another kiss, cause he didn’t know how else he could express what he was feeling cause he was feeling too much. And Marco happily leaned more into the kiss softly moving his lips against Jean’s. He was so soft and Jean never wanted to let go but then that particular drum sounded and the pulled away quickly from each other to scream at each others face “SHE WORKED HER WAY TROUGH A CHEAP PACK OF CIGARETTES!”

This was the best song ever! You coudln’t just sing along you had to scream it. But when the chours sounded the were at each other faces again. This song was just to sexy to not make out. By the second verse they saw Harry falling backwards into a chair that had been placed behind him. He was wearing a green suit by now, his shirt was hanging open, legs wide and he looked incredible. 

“It's New York, baby, always jacked up Whole tunnels, foreign noses always backed up When she's alone, she goes home to a cactus In a black dress, she's such a such an actress“

Harry stood up again kicking the char away while screaming “She’s driving me crazy.” Everyone around them was screaming, this was amazing. Jean was sure he was this close to fainting, holding tightonto Marcos arm.

When the concert was over the walked out holding hands. Marco lazily swinging theit locked hands between them leaning his head onto Jean’s. THe night was warm and every part of him felt tingly. He wanted to jump and dance he was full of energy and happy. Incredible happy.

_____________

Sorry for any typos, english is not my first languages Hope you enjoyed this, cause I sure did writing this The-Parkster once wrote a script for a Harry Style music video and the Kiwi performance was inspired from it you should ask her about the script it is incredible!