#the mouse they bat with their paws until it cracks and dies

[jrueships]

THEY MATCHINN they bestiesss 🥰🥰🥰!!!

[dreamsmp-au-ideas]

Shattered Skulls and Tampered Timelines

A/N: Two things!

1) I'm probably not the first person to come up with this, but i personally haven't seen anybody else talk about so if you see someone else with this idea, then that's pure coincidence

2) It's in the tags, but content warnings for blood, a bit of gore, mentions of broken bones, and death.

***

Drifting.

That was an accurate way to describe it, he thought. Drifting. Floating aimlessly through the world, mindlessly going through the motions, doing everything he was asked as simple as muscle memory. The nothingness of it all twisted his stomach and ate away at him like he was nothing but a corpse, rotting away on the ground.

Like the limp and bloodied body of the child laying in front of him.

He never really wanted to kill him, truly. It was the heat of the moment, a quick decision, a thought as sudden as the sickening crack of the boy's skull as it slammed against the wall or the scream ripped from his throat or the way he slumped onto the floor, eyes still open, and totally, undoubtedly dead.

He was supposed to play with his food. The same way cats do, tugging on the mouse's tail, clawing at its fur, batting it with its paws. Only difference was, he had never intended to let go.

Drifting. That's how he'd described it. Carried slowly by a current of air or water. Carried to build the community house by his friends, carried to steal the boy's discs by spite, carried to kill him by anger.

Carried to stumble across the prison cell as a blinding flash of light suddenly burst from the corner of the room.

He was met with a shock of neon colours, first. Purple, cyan, yellow, and what seemed to be a million more hugging the figure of a man with his back turned. Then was a mop of brown hair on his head, pale skin, and then finally a book in his hands, leather with gold strips on the spine and a cyan spiral on the cover.

The figure paused, then looked around the room. He perked up, held the book close to his chest and spun around, meeting his eyes. 

"Oh my god, finally! I made it!" he whooped, grin stretching ear to ear. His eyes shone brightly with something more than just excitement.

He hummed. "Nice of you to join us, Karl," he mused. "Not many people have visited."

Karl narrowed his eyes. "And nobody should." He peered over his shoulder and grimaced. "Tommy... you really killed him, huh?"

"I thought Sam already told everybody."

"He did, I just..." He trailed off, as if not wanting to say it. "You're disgusting, Dream."

"Why thank you, that's a very nice compliment." He hesitated. "Why are you here?"

Karl tapped the book. Its yellowing pages and colourful bookmarks ruffled under the leather case. Wordlessly, he pushed past Dream, kneeling beside the boy's body as it stared blankly up at him. Its jaw was dislocated and its temple was bleeding in three different places, the blood masking a third of his face. The back of his head was practically caved in.

"You didn't even have the decency to close his eyes?" Karl hissed, setting down the book. He reached out and touched the boy's arm. Cold as the leaking obsidian walls.

Dream shrugged. "Pretty sure I punched one of his eyes out of its socket," he hummed.

Karl could have vomited. But instead, he pressed the boy's eyelids down, and that lifeless grey stare was gone.

He put one arm under the boy's knees and the other on his back. Slowly, he hoisted the body until it sat slumped on his body, its head lolling on his chest, and tried not to look at the blood now staining his perfectly good hoodie.

Dream stared. "What are you doing?"

Karl flipped to a page in his book, one hand propping up the body, the other following the trail of words from paragraph to paragraph. "Fixing the past," he said simply.

Dream stepped forward. "Karl, you can't do that."

"It's what needs to be done." He flipped another page.

Dream stepped again. "I'm gonna bring him back anyway. He's not dead forever."

"That doesn't matter. I need to make things right."

"This is wrong."

"You're wrong!" He thumbed through a stack of pages. "C'mon, c'mon, where is it...?"

"What are you–?"

"I need to go back to when it all started," he hurried. "Before everything, before the discs, before Wilbur. Before you got a chance to hurt anybody."

"Karl–"

"I need to make things right!" he snapped. "Tommy needs to be okay again. This server needs to be okay again."

"You don't know what you're doing, Karl," Dream said softly. "Give me the book."

"No!" He snatched the book closer to him, rifling through the pages of bookmarks and trinkets and notes scribbled beside the paragraphs of spells and alternate timelines.

Dream leapt. Karl scrambled put the way, leaving the boy behind and jumping to the other side of the cell. His eyes flitted frantically across the pages until they landed on what he needed. "Found it!"

"Found what?"

"Tommy will be fine, I don't know and don't care about what'll happen to you." He skimmed over the words. "Turn back the hands of time, restore the form..."

Dream pounced at him. "Karl, give me that book–"

Karl sidestepped the attack, running as he read. "Things will go back to how they once were..."

Dream growled. "Give me the book!"

"The subject must not know about the original timeline..."

He went to strike his face, but Karl was quicker. He ducked out the way and the wall shook with the impact. "I'll kill you, Karl!"

Karl read faster. "...guide the subject and ensure their safety, otherwise the timeline will collapse–"

"Karl!"

"–and the traveller will forever be stuck in the Inbetween."

"Give me the book–!"

Karl slammed the book shut and dove to the floor. He pulled Tommy closer to his chest and closed his eyes.

And when he opened them, Tommy was gone, and Karl was lying on a patch of grass. He bolted upright so fast that he probably pulled a muscle in his back, but he didn't care.

"Tommy? Tommy!" he called out, frantically whipping his head around.

Good news: the spell had worked, and they were back.

Bad news: Tommy was nowhere to be found.

He looked around again, until his gaze settled on what looked like a dirt cave. Well, less like a cave and more like someone had blown up a couple TNT mounds into an otherwise perfectly normal slope, but still, it was something. Outside it sat an oak path snaking through the majority of the buildings and in front of the cave.

Karl sprang to his feet. "Prime Path!" He turned to the cave. "Tommy's house..."

Hopefully nobody would be watching as he entered a child's home while he was probably sleeping. He slipped through the entrance (the kid didn't even have a door) and took in the view..

The place was so different, now that he could really see it. Crafting table floor, no windows, dirt walls... for someone who was "married to the grind", he had a pretty shit living space.

Now, if the spell had worked how he'd planned, Tommy would be asleep in his bed. And sure enough, when he turned, there he was, sprawled out on his bed without so much of a scratch on him.

Travelling through different time periods, Karl had certainly gained a new appreciation for his life. But that was nothing compared to the wave of relief he felt once his gaze landed on Tommy. The kid was fine, if a bit younger, with his eyes closed peacefully and not a bruise on his face and his chest slowly rising and falling as he snored.

Karl sighed. Travelling was already tiring on his own. Having another person travelling with him was a whole other story.

"Right," he muttered to himself. "My name is Karl Jacobs. I have the ability to travel through time. I have two fiancés, Quackity and Sapnap. I travelled back to give Tommy another chance and to help the sever not downgrade to how it is now. If Tommy dies again, the timeline will collapse. My job is to help him. His memories should still be intact."

He nodded. That sounded about right.

He pulled out his journal and scribbled a note in one of the blank pages. He ripped it out, folded it and laid it down on Tommy's chest.

Tommy just needed to wake up.

Karl slinked out the exit, staying as quiet as humanly possible as not to wake him up. And he was doing perfectly well, not making a single sound, until he was met face-to-face with a white smiling mask and he nearly screamed until his vocal chords went out.

He slapped a hand over his mouth. "Uh– h–hey, Dream!"

Dream smiled softly. "Karl? You're not supposed to be here, are you?"

"Nope! Yeah, sorry, I was just... returning something to Tommy. I'll be out of your hair now–"

"No, I mean on the server. I never whitelisted you."

Crap. He's forgotten about that.

"Yeah you did!" he blurted out. "You did, uh, ages ago! I just never really came here, uh, a lot, so, yeah."

If Dream believed that, then Karl was either the most charismatic person in the world, or Dream was the dumbest man to ever live.

"...huh. Okay, then," Dream said slowly.

What.

"Yup!" Karl said. "Okay, well, uh, see you 'round!"

He bolted off before Dream could reply.

Now for Tommy to wake up, and for the operation to begin.

***

Tommy awoke with a scream.

It was the last thing he'd done before his head cracked against the wall; scream for Dream to stop and then scream in the agony.

Then suddenly, everything had gone black, and he was with Wilbur again.

His time in the afterlife had gone by in a blur, he could hardly remember any of it. All he recalled was a tall brown blot, the smell of blood and gunpowder, and now suddenly he was awake.

He looked down. A folded piece of paper sat on his chest, and he opened it up.

Tommy,

I can't tell you who I am, but I can tell you that you're safe and that everything's fine for now.

You're probably confused, so let me explain. Everything you remember wasn't a dream. You founded L'Manberg, got exiled twice, got killed by Dream, everything. I've brought you back in time so we can fix everything that went wrong and hopefully change the server for the better.

Hopefully you're where when I want you to be, but if not, then we'll just have to work with it. Here's the rundown: Wilbur's alive, L'Manberg hasn't been founded yet, you and Tubbo are still on three lives, and a lot of the server hasn't been whitelisted yet. That means no Quackity, Ranboo, Schlatt, everything.

It's better if I don't tell you who I am, otherwise it might affect the timeline. All you need to know is that I'm here on the sidelines if you need anything. Write me a note and I'll find it.

Good luck. You're gonna need it.

~Traveller

...well, that probably explained a few things.

He hardly had any more time to think when a knock sounded. He whipped his head around and was met with a familiar face.

"Wilbur!" he grinned, and raced forward to embrace him, burying his face into his shoulder. Wilbur stumbled back, mildly concerned.

"Woah woah woah– hugs? Tommy, are you alright?" he asked gently. Tommy nodded, but made no move to pull away.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine, I just..." He pulled away slowly. "I... I had a dream that I lost you, is all."

He grinner. "Aww, Tommy...!"

"Alright, shut up, you sappy bastard. What do you want?"

Wilbur looked around. "Why is the floor crafting tables, Tommy?"

His mind raced. Fuck, why was his floor full of crafting tables?

"Eret," he said suddenly. "It's– it's Eret."

The puzzle pieces clicked together. That's right, Eret had done it.

Tommy frowned at the thought of him. Maybe he could stop the betrayal this time around.

Everything else went by in a flash. Tommy's head swam with thoughts, painstakingly trying to remember what he had said, what he had done, where they had travelled. He didn't even know where exactly in time he was!

Then Wilbur said something that set off every red flag and blaring alarm in his head.

"So, Tommy," he said nonchalantly enough. "Have you ever seen the TV show 'Breaking Bad'?"

Tommy's stomach turned. "Sort of." It wasn't a yes or a no, a balancing act.

"Imagine what would happen if we could get every brewing stand off the server," he continued, "and then we, make an empire out of producing all the potions on this server."

His head span. He felt sick. His chest hurt with the memory of the arrow that hadn't even been crafted yet. He remembered the towers, the TNT, the button– everything. The heartbreak, the nightmares, the downward spirals, everything leading up to that fateful day when his head shattered like glass against the obsidian wall.

He remembered everything, and he needed to stop it.

[billie-ford]

The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be

1

“I am going to beat the holy fuck, fucking, fuckity fuck outta one of you sorry fucks.”

Those crude words had been the last Billie had heard before looking between her family; kneeling in the hard gravel, sweating, illuminated by the yellow head lights of the heavy duty trucks surrounding them and shaking from the unrelenting cold. It was the cold - or it was the fear. Billie had given Maggie her coat, but even the fur lined denim couldn’t seize the quake of terror in her bones. Her eyes, wide and glossy, didn’t follow the man as he paced in front of her group, only catching the reflective glint of barbed wire as he passed her by. She wanted to look at him. To square her shoulders like the ginger brute to her left and stare with an unwavering anger before standing, fighting them all off like the hero in all of those action movies.

But she wasn’t their hero. And she was so, so scared.

His pacing continued, his boots kicked gravel into their laps and he waved his weapon of choice frivolously while uttering:

“Eenie, meenie, miney, mo..”

Maggie, hunched over in pain, searched the gravel to her left. Her hand found Billie’s and she gave it a tight squeeze, somewhere between fear and comfort. She heaved and whimpered, snot and hot tears and sweat dampened every inch of her face and the hand she so desperately grabbed was an anchor to keep her from completely doubling over - preparing herself for the worst. They were out here for her, warranting her safety, now she couldn’t ensure theirs.

“-and you...are...it.”

The rapid beating of her heart reached her ears, blocking out all other sounds as if she were suddenly thrusted underwater, hands around her throat. Drowning and choking. It was heartbreak she was feeling. Maggie gripped her hand tighter and her breath drew sharply.

“You can breathe. You can blink. You can cry. Hell, you’re all gonna be doing that.”

The first crack of bat on skull met her ear. So vivid and echoing that she questioned if she had been the one to receive the blow. But as the blood splattered on her clothes, on her sweat soaked skin, and she listened to the repeating squelch of brain matter and cracking skull she felt nothing but dread. Unfortunately, she was not the one taking the blows. Now she had to watch as her older brother’s head was beaten into an unrecognizable pulp.

1991

Little feet stomped along the carpeted hallway from the stairs to the dead end. “Abraham? Are you awake?” The seven year old’s shaky voice couldn’t have been louder than a mouse as she knocked carefully on her older brother’s bedroom door. Another sharp crack of thunder caused the child to yelp, banging on the door this time and yelling his name.

The door creaked and with a hand scratching at his curly red fro, Abraham was half awake and staring down at his kid sister. The paper she had taped to his door within the year said it all - B.F.G.

He was looming - all six foot two of him - but his smile was soft, and as another crack of thunder startled the child he guided her into the room and let her bury herself beneath his multitude of quilts.

“Aren’t you too old to be scared of thunderstorms, pup?” 

He was already in bed, eyes closed and half muffled by his pillow before she could unveil herself from the quilt. She wormed her way in the crook of his arm and laid staring at the shadows that danced on the ceiling, her arms crossed evasively. “No..”

“What’s so bad ‘bout ‘em anyways? I think they’re calming..”

“It’s so quiet..then it’s so loud. Like scary movies.” She wasn’t a big fan of scary movies.

“You shouldn’t be watching scary movies.” “But I watch them with you.” “Well I ain’t your daddy.”

Another crack. Despite his teasing, Abraham’s arm instinctively tightened around his little sister and a calloused paw - good for catching a football or starting fights with the other college students - stroked her wild curls.

“I would beat those storms up if I could, ya know. And I’d tell ‘em Big Bad Billie sent me. Maybe I’d let you get a good few kicks in too.” This got a smile from the child. She believed him.

“I wish you could always be around..”

Abraham sat up, his head in his hand and frowned down at the child who glowed dark blue in the moonlight. There was a melancholic air to her naturally, perplexing for someone her age, and that cloud of sadness only seemed to grow heavier with the days counting down to his return to campus. He could see it now; their father holding the back of her shirt tightly as he pulled out of the driveway in his beat up hand-me-down truck. She’d scream and cry and kick and eventually break away from his grasp before running after the truck yelling over and over, “take me with you! just take me too!”

He would just have to keep driving or else his rain cloud would burst too.

“I’m always here for you, pup. Even when I ain’t here.” “That doesn’t make sense.”

He chuckled. “I mean I ain’t never gonna leave you forever. Think about it; I’m only gone for a few weeks until the next break then I’m right back here. When I am gone I call you every night. I send you those little cards from campus. When I’m gone, off to school or work, I’m always thinkin’ aboutcha. When I come home I don’t leave your side. You know I’m always here for you, pup. That means I’ll always protect ya. You know that right?”

“Yeah..” “Y’know you’re tough too right?” “Guess so..” “Betchu didn’t even notice the storm died out.”

Like a dog hearing the mailman she perked up and looked outside. No thunder, no lightning, not even a sprinkle of rain. The trees now danced slowly with the wind and a branch just beyond the glass waved at her lazily. “I didn’t even hear it stop..”

“‘Cause you ain’t all that scared. It’s just all in your head, pup.” “Can I still sleep in here then?” “Well yeah. Or less you done woke me up for nothin’.”

2

Dawn had broke more than an hour ago. The truck was filled with uneasy silence. Faces were dried with blood and tears and breaths were ragged. Sasha sat in the back seat, stroking Maggie’s still damp hair as her head rested, exhausted, in her lap. All three women were emotionally and physically drained. Sasha stared blankly at the back of Billie’s head, every so often attempting to open her mouth and speak but the only sound that managed to come out was a strangled gasp. She drove in stunned silence. Never looking at the two women in the back seat. Her muscles looked lack, spent, as she loosely gripped the steering wheel and her tired eyes brimmed with sadness while focusing on the road ahead. At least she looked to be focused, Sasha had grown use to the far away look that overcame Billie from time to time; when she had switched into autopilot and let her muscle memory guide her to where she needed to be.

“How are you?” Sasha finally croaked after what felt like hours of silence.

“No better than you.”

Sasha had only been dating Abraham for a handful of months, but she had known him for much longer. Loved him for much longer. She loved him like she had known him her whole life and in terms of before and after - she almost did. In his final moments, she had been the only one to receive his recognition - maybe Billie too - but Sasha wouldn’t look away. Only until she had to. Only when the sound of his brutal death made her lunch churn in her stomach and rise to her throat did she find the gravel beneath her. A simple hand gesture, a trademark peace sign, was all Abraham had to send one last goodbye to the two he loved the most.

“Are you going back?” “I have to make sure Maggie’s a’right first.” “What about Rosita?” “She has the others.”

Sasha fell quiet with a nod. Billie was lost, that much she could see. That thousand yard stare usual came with a silent racking of her brain. She didn’t say another word the entire drive, turning her attention back to Maggie who was now looking up at her through half-lidded eyes.

3

“You were out...out here for me.” “We still are.”

Billie followed Maggie on wobbly legs. She was sobbing, Billie’s last statement only making it worse. She reached out for her, her hand brushed off as Maggie kneeled in front of what remained of her husband, the father of her unborn child. Glenn Rhee. The pizza boy that convinced Billie to join him and his group when she was on her own. 

She owed him everything.

“I can make it now, I need you to go back. I can’t have you out here - I can’t have you all out here I need you to go back.”

Billie crouched down beside her, hands squeezing comfort into her trembling shoulders. “I’m not leaving you out here alone,” her voice cracked. “I’m here for you. We’re all here for you.”

Billie hurt for Maggie. Maggie hurt for Billie. They hurt for everyone and everyone hurt for them.

“I’m taking them. I’m taking you too.”

4

Hilltop opened their gates upon recognizing the face behind the wheel of the pickup. Looks of confusion morphed to frowns of sorrow when Billie emerged from the truck, revealing the headless bodies laid in the bed with the simple muttering of, Negan.

She assisted Sasha in bringing Maggie to her feet and led her further into the compound. “Get her to Carson.” Billie croaked. “You go with her, Sash. Make sure she has a familiar face to wake up to.”

“What about them-” “I’ll handle it. Please go.”

She was apprehensive, staring at Billie with worry and only beginning her trek to the infirmary when Maggie’s weight slumped over on her. “Anything we can do to help?” A number of Hilltop members surrounded her. Those who have been so kind to them all, dead and alive, before this.

“Show me where I can bury them.

[marypsue]

Imbalance, 3 / ?

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight / Part Nine / ?

I’m also on AO3 as MaryPSue!

...

The sun sets over the park.

As the light bleeds out of the sky, it bathes the world in red. The treetops, just beginning to turn, burn brilliant autumn colours in the low light, their shadows lying long and black and unnaturally stretched across the grass, striping it with darkness.

The shadow of the hill enfolds the place where, earlier that day, a man had died.

The sounds of traffic from the streets surrounding the park filter through the trees, but otherwise, the only sound is the soft soughing of the slightest of breezes through the tops of the trees. If you listen too long, it can start to sound like a voice.

In the grass, at the very top of the hill, a purple plastic gem glints in the last glorious rays of sunset. Behind it, in a perfect circle about six inches across, the grass is withered and yellow.

As the sun sinks, the circle of yellowed grass creeps, ever so slowly, almost imperceptibly, outwards. And for a moment, the still air around the hill smells faintly of smoke.

...

Usually, Liliana only lights incense out of habit, or because she likes the smell. Tonight, though, she mumbles a blessing she only remembers half the words to as she lights a stick of Full Moon and then, as an afterthought, every candle she owns. It’s not a small number.

Liliana’s never gone in much for actual witchcraft. Heck, she’s even on the fence about the Goddess the others seem to think is the biggest deal since Simon Cowell. But there’s definitely something in nature that’s more powerful and stranger than anything she can understand, and right now, she’s feeling pretty willing to try anything that might get her on its good side.

The room around her slowly fills with warm light and the soothing, thickly sweet smell of the incense. Liliana can feel the tension starting to bleed out of her shoulders as she sinks onto the couch, tucking her feet up beside her.

“What a fucking day,” she says, to the cat who jumps up beside her. Mavis opens her mouth and yawns agreement, her tiny sharp fangs snapping shut before she butts her head against Liliana’s ankle. Liliana leans over, gives Mavis a scritch behind the ears. “You ever accidentally kill a guy by dropping an el cheapo decorative knife almost on your own foot? Of course you haven’t, you’re a cat. You don’t even have opposable thumbs.”

Mavis prpts in acknowledgment and twists her head into Liliana’s scratching fingers. Across the condo, there’s a series of whines, and then a scrabbling, clicking sound and a thunk as Mookie hurls himself headfirst at the baby gate keeping him locked in the kitchen.

Liliana huffs out half a laugh, pushing herself up off the couch. “All right, all right, little guy,” she says, padding over to the kitchen entryway to give the labradoodle a pat. Mookie nearly loses his mind when he sees her smiling over the gate, barking wildly and then spinning around in smaller and smaller circles until he trips over his own two hind legs and falls over in a heap. He looks up at Liliana, panting happily, and she can’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, you’re a good boy,” she says, leaning over to give him a good scratch on the neck. Mookie’s eyes slide closed, his tongue hanging out of his mouth in sheer, canine joy as Liliana ruffles the fur under his collar. “You’re my very best boy. And if I let you in here with the candles you and the condo would both be on fire in a microsecond.”

The hiss starts quiet, almost too quiet for her to notice, but it grows. Liliana turns around, opening her mouth to tell Mavis to wait her turn, she’ll get more ear scritches, but stops.

Mavis’ ears are back, one paw up and batting at the air with a fistful of needle claws, her mouth wide and lips curled back to show off her teeth as she hisses at - nothing. A patch of shadow in the corner, over the shelf with the succulents and Liliana's resin dragon-and-fairy figurine collection (not to be mistaken for the resin fairy figurine collection or the resin dragon figurine collection, which are scattered all around the condo). Where Liliana hadn’t lit any candles.

On an ordinary day, Liliana might chalk it up to Mavis being stir-crazy and try to find her mouse on a string where she’d almost definitely batted it under the couch. Today, though, Liliana takes one look at that patch of darker shadow, and nearly trips over her own feet running over to scoop Mavis up off the couch, ignoring the chunk Mavis takes out of her arm as she backs away towards the kitchen.

“I gotta warn you,” she calls, feeling equal parts ridiculous and terrified, Mavis spitting and squirming in her arms, “I’m a very powerful witch! And I’m not scared to whip up some magic and go all Joaquin on your ass!”

The shadow hangs in the corner, like shadows generally do.

“Shoo!” Liliana shouts. “In the name of the Goddess I banish thee! Scat!”

The shadow doesn’t shift, doesn’t grow lighter, doesn’t actually change at all. But Liliana could swear she hears something, just on the edge of hearing - a soft, resigned sigh, and a dry whispering, like dead leaves rubbing against each other, or fabric rustling.

Mavis chills the fuck out, flopping forward in Liliana’s arms. Behind her, Mookie lets out a confused whine.

Liliana lets out a long breath of her own, finally realising that the warmth on her arm is blood dripping from the checkerboard of scratches Mavis decorated her forearm with.

“Shit,” she mutters, dropping the cat to the floor. Mavis makes a little indignant sound and stalks over to the couch, flopping down right in the middle of it with a little cat huff and a floof of dark fur.

...

Rowan briefly looks up from the Book of Shadows when a shadow flickers across the light from his desk lamp. Seeing nothing that might have cast it, he snaps the book closed and heads over to the kitchen. Moments later, his apartment is filled with the smell of burning sage.

The shadow moves on.

...

Indigo is changing the set for her insulin pump when the kitchen lights all flicker, then dim, like a brownout. She very carefully finishes placing her set on her thigh, tucks the cord under her skirt and up through her waistband, and clips the pump in place onto the skirt's waistband before reaching for the salt shaker sitting on the table beside her.

The lights return to normal. Indigo stands for a moment anyway, with the salt shaker at the ready, before concluding that whatever just happened is over.

Her hands shake only slightly as she grabs her phone.

...

Storm is lying on his bed, blankly rewatching the raw footage for the next video in his most recent Let's Play, when his phone lights up and buzzes itself nearly off the bed beside him, throwing an eerie blue light onto the stippled popcorn ceiling above his head.

For the briefest of instants, a shadowy figure is visible there, haloed in the blue light.

Storm grabs his phone, reads Indigo's warning, and taps out a few characters, a string of emojis that would mean nothing to anyone not already familiar with banishing charms. He fires them back at Indigo.

The bedroom's darkness loses some of its inexplicable menace. The shadow is gone. Storm is, once more, alone.

...

Joaquin's shift ends late. Well, actually, Carlos' shift ends late. But it's Joaquin who's left to lock up the truck and trundle it home in the gathering dark. Which just figures, honestly. That jerk just needs to get a different job if he really hates working at the food truck so much. Or at least start letting Joaquin know ahead of time if he has to skip a shift! Joaquin gets it, shit happens, and honestly he didn't feel much like going to work after this afternoon either, but he's beyond sick of this.

He does kind of get why Carlos keeps coming back to work at the food truck, though. Joaquin'd really have liked to apply for a game design internship this summer, but - it's not like you can just look your dad in the eye and say 'I'm gonna let your dream fall apart so I can go after mine'. Especially not when school's so expensive to start with, and you really need that summer job, and the truck has to be open as many hours as possible to make enough to pay for all the repairs after Joaquin and Taako accidentally blew it up, and...

On the other hand, if their dad ever actually tasted Carlos' cooking, he'd probably kick him out of the truck himself. Joaquin loves his bro, really does, but he's never met anybody else who can make authentic street food that's less appealing than Taco Bell. Maybe if he spent less time showing off and more on the actual food - 

Joaquin shakes his head, and slams the utensil drawer.

The streets are weirdly empty tonight, and the setting sun casts long, creeping shadows from the buildings across the cracked asphalt. The sunset through the haze drips bloody down the tall glass buildings of downtown. Joaquin slides the metal shutter closed over the order window with an uneasy feeling he can’t quite put his finger on. It might just be the changing wind - autumn’s sweeping in with a rattle of dead leaves - but he can’t shake the jittery feeling that he should be preparing for something. That something big’s coming.

He glances back over his shoulder once, as he’s climbing up into the cab, and that’s when he sees it. Stretched out along the middle of the street, stark in the red light, is the shadow of a person.

But there’s no one there to cast it.

Joaquin throws himself into the driver’s seat, and slams the door behind him, breathing hard. He glances back behind him again, but the shadow is gone.

...

Marial shuts down her laptop and blinks in the sudden dark. 

When the afterimages start to clear, she squeezes her eyes shut and flicks on her desk lamp, wincing at the light leaking through her eyelids. She’s really stayed up too late this time, but she managed to hack through a thousand words of essay and she’s actually starting to see the shape of what she’s trying to say, now. 

It’s definitely time for bed, though, or she’s going to be a zombie in the morning. Well, more of a zombie than she already technically is. One day maybe she’ll get tired of making jokes about how she’s (very, very technically) already come back from the dead once, but today is not that day.

...tonight? Does two AM count as day or night, anyway?

Marial sighs, decides she’s given her eyes long enough to adjust to the ambient light, and opens them. 

The dead guy is sitting on her desk.

Marial doesn’t scream. She smacks both hands over her mouth, swallowing down the shriek that threatens to spill out. Everyone else on the floor is asleep - okay, every other sane, organized person on the floor is asleep - and if she screams and wakes them up, she’s not going to have a lot of friends around here. 

By the time she swallows down her shout, though, the dead guy is already gone, the neon of his tracksuit fading into the afterimages still flashing when Marial blinks. Dimly, she thinks she hears a voice, whispery and faint just on the edge of hearing, mutter, “Shit.”

It’s two in the morning and the world doesn’t feel quite real anyway. It’s two in the morning and the poltergeists in those shitty ‘inspired by true events’ movies never vanish and mutter ‘shit’ when the protagonist opens their eyes to see them inches away. It’s two in the morning and nothing makes a lick of goddamn sense and a guy just died in front of her this afternoon for no apparent reason and Marial’s pretty sure she almost died too and why the fuck not.

“Hello?” she asks the empty air above her laptop and a little to the right. “Hey, are you a ghost? Is there some Beetlejuice shit going on up in here?”

The only response is the whirr of her computer’s fan suddenly clicking off, the light that shows it’s charging coming on with a sudden burst of blue.

“Look, this is twice now,” Marial says, sounding bolder than she feels. She pushes her chair out from the desk and stands, slowly, still half-expecting some burn-scarred claw-handed freakazoid to pop out of nowhere and start making terrible puns at her. The dorm stays still and silent. “If you’re trying to get my attention, could you like leave a note or something, instead of popping up right in front of me? I’m trying to not have another heart attack.”

The silence is deafening.

Marial turns in a slow circle, in case the dead guy has popped up behind her while she’s been talking, but there’s no sign of ugly 80s neon. “Is that what this is about?” she asks the thin air, the shadows that cling to the corners of the room. “Some Final Destination baloney or something? Are you here to reap my ass? Because I gotta tell you, if that’s what you’re here for, you better get used to disappointment, because I’m not going fucking anywhere until I get my degree!”

She realises too late that her voice has been rising. She’s almost yelling. 

There’s still no sound and no movement in her room.

“Fuck it,” Marial mutters under her breath, and throws the door open. The kitchenette is just on the other side of the shared living space. To get there, she has to walk past the dead guy sitting on the couch. “Oh, fuck off! That’s it, tomorrow I’m getting some sage.”

The dead guy blinks out of existence as soon as she opens the door, with a sound that, if she didn’t know it was probably coming from a ghost, Marial would call a frustrated huff.

“Yeah, and don’t come back!” Marial says, and one of the other three doors leading into the common area creaks open, Sylvie’s head poking out around it with an accusing glare.

“Who the fuck are you yelling at at two in the fucking morning,” Sylvie demands.

Marial blinks.

“I have no idea,” she admits. 

Sylvie’s glare narrows. 

“Go to bed,” she snaps, before yanking her head back into her room and slamming the door behind her.

Marial sighs, running a hand through her hair as she pads barefoot over to the kitchenette and rummages in the spice cabinet until she finds the salt shaker. 

The line of salt she draws across the threshold and the windowsill of her bedroom doesn’t actually make her feel any safer, but she pretends it does anyway as she bundles into bed. It takes everything in her not to pull the covers up over her head.

...

Refuge is somehow both exactly and not at all as Lucretia pictured it. 

There’s something ironically fitting about her coming here, to a place with a name that means ‘a place to shelter’. A place to hide. 

Not that she’s hiding. There isn’t a single person at the Bureau of Benevolence who doesn’t know exactly where Lucretia is. But - her friends, her family, have gone their separate ways, finally settling into their lives on this plane as they never truly did under the influence of the voidfish. 

They’re finally making this place their home.

And Lucretia? She can’t stand another moment hovering in the skies above this world, making decisions about how best to help its people, save its people, without being part of it. She needs her feet on the ground, for once. She needs to touch this world that she helped save, that she’s helping to build.

Maybe, if she’s lucky, she’ll find a place there for herself. One that isn’t so remote. So distant.

There are all kinds of reasons to start here, in this town that time forgot, and no reasons at all. But something that Merle had mentioned when the boys had told her about how they’d reclaimed the Chalice has wedged itself sideways in Lucretia’s mind. And now, a little over a year since the Hunger’s defeat, she’s finally starting to feel like she can breathe again. Like the world won’t fall to pieces if she isn’t up there watching over it, stitching it haphazardly back together. 

Lucretia finds her old travelling clothes packed neatly in her trunk from the Starblaster, too worn and utilitarian for Madame Director to be caught dead in. They don’t quite fit the same as she remembers - though it’s been so long, she lost so many years to Wonderland and to her own stubbornness, can she really be surprised?

Her old red robe is stuffed in the bottom of the trunk. She pulls the red cloak free from the trunk and holds it out in front of her, at arm’s length, for just a moment too long.

Then she folds it carefully and returns it to the trunk where she found it.

She packs a bag, and takes her staff (no magic within it now but what she channels through it, though any vagabond who thinks that makes six feet of solid oak harmless will quickly learn their mistake), and gives Avi the coordinates, and for the first time since the moonbase was created, she rides a cannonball down to Faerun.

And that's how Lucretia finds herself standing in front of the sign welcoming her to the mining town of Refuge. It's changed some from what the boys had described, she notes, with a flicker of pride - the sign now bears the legend BY THEIR SACRIFICE WE ARE MADE FREE.

She stops only long enough to pay her respects to Mayor Cassidy before making her way to the place she came to see. One of the brothers is sweeping red dirt from the steps of the temple when she approaches. He looks up as Lucretia climbs the steps, and smiles.

The temple doors swing open under her touch.

The light inside the temple is...different, somehow. Softer, paler, and yet also brighter, making it hard to see. When Lucretia looks out the windows that line the temple's main room, all she can see is a perfect, even white.

The woman seated on the altar at the far end of the room looks up as Lucretia approaches, brushing long, silvery hair back behind her ear and laying the knitting she'd been working on down into her lap. Lucretia draws herself up to her full height as she reaches the altar, holds her shoulders back and her head high.

"Lady Istus," she says, and the woman seated on the altar smiles.

"Lucretia," she says in response. "I wondered if I'd be seeing you. Won't you sit down?"

...

"I have a question."

"Yeah Dad, shoot."

"When does Magn- no, Merle. When does Merle get to play?"

"Well, because you just asked that question, probably - probably in the next mini-arc."

[readbookywooks]

Ama And The Bats

Ama, the herdsman's daughter, carried the image of the sleeping girl in her memory: she could not stop thinking about her. She didn't question for a moment the truth of what Mrs. Coulter had told her. Sorcerers existed, beyond a doubt, and it was only too likely that they would cast sleeping spells, and that a mother would care for her daughter in that fierce and tender way. Ama conceived an admiration amounting almost to worship for the beautiful woman in the cave and her enchanted daughter. She went as often as she could to the little valley, to run errands for the woman or simply to chatter and listen, for the woman had wonderful tales to tell. Again and again she hoped for a glimpse of the sleeper, but it had only happened once, and she accepted that it would probably never be allowed again. And during the time she spent milking the sheep, or carding and spinning their wool, or grinding barley to make bread, she thought incessantly about the spell that must have been cast, and about why it had happened. Mrs. Coulter had never told her, so Ama was free to imagine. One day she took some flat bread sweetened with honey; walked the three-hour journey along the trail to Cho-Lung Se, where there was a monastery. By wheedling and patience and by bribing the porter with some of the honey bread, managed to gain an audience with the great healer Pagdzin tulku, who had cured an outbreak of the white fever only the year before, and who was immensely wise. Ama entered the great man's cell, bowing very low and offering her remaining honey bread with all the humility she could muster. The monk's bat daemon swooped and darted around her, frightening her own daemon, Kulang, who crept into her hair to hide, but Ama tried to remain still and silent until Pagdzin tulku spoke. "Yes, child? Be quick, be quick," he said, his long gray beard wagging with every word. In the dimness the beard and his brilliant eyes were most of what she could see of him. His daemon settled on the beam above him, hanging still at last, so she said, "Please, Pagdzin tulku, I want to gain wisdom. I would like to know how to make spells and enchantments. Can you teach me?" "No," he said. She was expecting that. "Well, could you tell me just one remedy?" she asked humbly. "Maybe. But I won't tell you what it is. I can give you the medicine, not tell you the secret." "All right, thank you, that is a great blessing," she said, bowing several times. "What is the disease, and who has it?" the old man said. "It's a sleeping sickness," Ama explained. "It's come upon the son of my father's cousin." She was being extra clever, she knew, changing the sex of the sufferer, just in case the healer had heard of the woman in the cave. "And how old is this boy?" "Three years older than me, Pagdzin tulku," she guessed, "so he is twelve years old. He sleeps and sleeps and can't wake up." "Why haven't his parents come to me? Why did they send you?" "Because they live far on the other side of my village and they are very poor, Pagdzin tulku. I only heard of my kinsman's illness yesterday and I came at once to seek your advice." "I should see the patient and examine him thoroughly, and inquire into the positions of the planets at the hour when he fell asleep. These things can't be done in a hurry." "Is there no medicine you can give me to take back?" The bat daemon fell off her beam and fluttered blackly aside before she hit the floor, darting silently across the room again and again, too quickly for Ama to follow; but the bright eyes of the healer saw exactly where she went, and when she had hung once more upside down on her beam and folded her dark wings around herself, the old man got up and moved around from shelf to shelf and jar to jar and box to box, here tapping out a spoonful of powder, there adding a pinch of herbs, in the order in which the daemon had visited them. He tipped all the ingredients into a mortar and ground them up together, muttering a spell as he did so. Then he tapped the pestle on the ringing edge of the mortar, dislodging the final grains, and took a brush and ink and wrote some characters on a sheet of paper. When the ink had dried, he tipped all the powder onto the inscription and folded the paper swiftly into a little square package. "Let them brush this powder into the nostrils of the sleeping child a little at a time as he breathes in," he told her, "and he will wake up. It has to be done with great caution. Too much at once and he will choke. Use the softest of brushes." "Thank you, Pagdzin tulku," said Ama, taking the package and placing it in the pocket of her innermost shirt. "I wish I had another honey bread to give you." "One is enough," said the healer. "Now go, and next time you come, tell me the whole truth, not part of it." The girl was abashed, and bowed very low to hide her confusion. She hoped she hadn't given too much away. Next evening she hurried to the valley as soon as she could, carrying some sweet rice wrapped in a heart-fruit leaf. She was bursting to tell the woman what she had done, and to give her the medicine and receive her praise and thanks, and eager most of all for the enchanted sleeper to wake and talk to her. They could be friends! But as she turned the corner of the path and looked upward, she saw no golden monkey, no patient woman seated at the cave mouth. The place was empty. She ran the last few yards, afraid they had gone forever - but there was the chair the woman sat in, and the cooking equipment, and everything else. Ama looked into the darkness farther back in the cave, her heart beating fast. Surely the sleeper hadn't woken already: in the dimness Ama could make out the shape of the sleeping bag, the lighter patch that was the girl's hair, and the curve of her sleeping daemon. She crept a little closer. There was no doubt about it - they had gone out and left the enchanted girl alone. A thought struck Ama like a musical note: suppose she woke her before the woman returned... But she had hardly time to feel the thrill of that idea before she heard sounds on the path outside, and in a shiver of guilt she and her daemon darted behind a ridge of rock at the side of the cave. She shouldn't be here. She was spying. It was wrong. And now that golden monkey was squatting in the entrance, sniffing and turning his head this way and that. Ama saw him bare his sharp teeth, and felt her own daemon burrow into her clothes, mouse-formed and trembling. "What is it?" said the woman's voice, speaking to the monkey, and then the cave darkened as her form came into the entrance. "Has the girl been? Yes - there's the food she left. She shouldn't come in, though. We must arrange a spot on the path for her to leave the food at." Without a glance at the sleeper, the woman stooped to bring the fire to life, and set a pan of water to heat while her daemon crouched nearby watching over the path. From time to time he got up and looked around the cave, and Ama, getting cramped and uncomfortable in her narrow hiding place, wished ardently that she'd waited outside and not gone in. How long was she going to be trapped? The woman was mixing some herbs and powders into the heating water. Ama could smell the astringent flavors as they drifted out with the steam. Then came a sound from the back of the cave: the girl was murmuring and stirring. Ama turned her head: she could see the enchanted sleeper moving, tossing from side to side, throwing an arm across her eyes. She was waking! And the woman took no notice! She heard all right, because she looked up briefly, but she soon turned back to her herbs and the boiling water. She poured the decoction into a beaker and let it stand, and only then turned her full attention to the waking girl. Ama could understand none of these words, but she heard them with increasing wonder and suspicion: "Hush, dear," the woman said. "Don't worry yourself. You're safe." "Roger," the girl murmured, half-awake. "Serafina! Where's Roger gone... Where is he?" "No one here but us," her mother said, in a singsong voice, half-crooning. "Lift yourself and let Mama wash you... Up you come, my love..." Ama watched as the girl, moaning, struggling into wakefulness, tried to push her mother away; and the woman dipped a sponge into the bowl of water and mopped at her daughter's face and body before patting her dry. By this time the girl was nearly awake, and the woman had to move more quickly. "Where's Serafina? And Will? Help me, help me! I don't want to sleep - No, no! I won't! No!" The woman was holding the beaker in one steely-firm hand while her other was trying to lift Lyra's head. "Be still, dear - be calm - hush now - drink your tea - " But the girl lashed out and nearly spilled the drink, and cried louder: "Leave me alone! I want to go! Let me go! Will, Will, help me - oh, help me - " The woman was gripping her hair tightly, forcing her head back, cramming the beaker against her mouth. "I won't! You dare touch me, and Iorek will tear your head off! Oh, Iorek, where are you? Iorek Byrnison! Help me, Iorek! I won't - I won't - " Then, at a word from the woman, the golden monkey sprang on Lyra's daemon, gripping him with hard black fingers. The daemon flicked from shape to shape more quickly than Ama had ever seen a daemon change before: cat-snake-rat-fox-bird-wolf-cheetah-lizard-polecat- But the monkey's grip never slackened; and then Pantalaimon became a porcupine. The monkey screeched and let go. Three long quills were stuck shivering in his paw. Mrs. Coulter snarled and with her free hand slapped Lyra hard across the face, a vicious backhand crack that threw her flat; and before Lyra could gather her wits, the beaker was at her mouth and she had to swallow or choke. Ama wished she could shut her ears: the gulping, crying, coughing, sobbing, pleading, retching was almost too much to hear. But little by little it died away, and only a shaky sob or two came from the girl, who was now sinking once more into sleep - enchanted sleep? Poisoned sleep! Drugged, deceitful sleep! Ama saw a streak of white materialize at the girl's throat as her daemon effortfully changed into a long, sinuous, snowy-furred creature with brilliant black eyes and black-tipped tail, and laid himself alongside her neck. And the woman was singing softly, crooning baby songs, smoothing the hair off the girl's brow, patting her hot face dry, humming songs to which even Ama could tell she didn't know the words, because all she could sing was a string of nonsense syllables, la-la-la, ba-ba-boo-boo, her sweet voice mouthing gibberish. Eventually that stopped, and then the woman did a curious thing: she took a pair of scissors and trimmed the girl's hair, holding her sleeping head this way and that to see the best effect. She took one dark blond curl and put it in a little gold locket she had around her own neck. Ama could tell why: she was going to work some further magic with it. But the woman held it to her lips first... Oh, this was strange. The golden monkey drew out the last of the porcupine quills and said something to the woman, who reached up to snatch a roosting bat from the cave ceiling. The little black thing flapped and squealed in a needle-thin voice that pierced Ama from one ear to the other, and then she saw the woman hand the bat to her daemon, and she saw the daemon pull one of the black wings out and out and out till it snapped and broke and hung from a white string of sinew, while the dying bat screamed and its fellows flapped around in anguished puzzlement. Crack - crack - snap  - as the golden monkey pulled the little thing apart limb by limb, and the woman lay moodily on her sleeping bag by the fire and slowly ate a bar of chocolate. Time passed. Light faded and the moon rose, and the woman and her daemon fell asleep. Ama, stiff and painful, crept up from her hiding place and tiptoed out past the sleepers, and didn't make a sound till she was halfway down the path. With fear giving her speed, she ran along the narrow trail, her daemon as an owl on silent wings beside her. The clean cold air, the constant motion of the treetops, the brilliance of the moon-painted clouds in the dark sky, and the millions of stars all calmed her a little. She stopped in sight of the little huddle of stone houses and her daemon perched on her fist. "She lied!" Ama said. "She lied to us! What can we do, Kulang? Can we tell Dada? What can we do?" "Don't tell," said her daemon. "More trouble. We've got the medicine. We can wake her. We can go there when the woman's away again, and wake the girl up, and take her away." The thought filled them both with fear. But it had been said, and the little paper package was safe in Ama's pocket, and they knew how to use it. wake up, I can't see her - I think she's close by - she's hurt me - " "Oh, Lyra, don't be frightened! If you're frightened, too, I'll go mad - " They tried to hold each other tight, but their arms passed through the empty air. Lyra tried to say what she meant, whispering close to his little pale face in the darkness: "I'm just trying to wake up - I'm so afraid of sleeping all my life and then dying - I want to wake up first! I wouldn't care if it was just for an hour, as long as I was properly alive and awake. I don't know if this is real or not, even - but I will help you, Roger! I swear I will!" "But if you're dreaming, Lyra, you might not believe it when you wake up. That's what I'd do, I'd just think it was only a dream." "No!" she said fiercely, and stamped her foot so hard it even hurt in her dream.