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kradogsrats · 2 years

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Ghost (Fic)

a.k.a. “Rayla Enters the Bodyswap AU and is Not Having a Good Time, also Maybe the Actual Plot Starts?”

Quick recap of the AU situation, since it’s getting hefty:

Harrow agreed to the soulfang body switch with Viren

Viren died the way he lived: like a gigantic drama queen (also the primal stone was destroyed)

Callum and Rayla didn’t meet, and Ezran didn’t find the egg

Claudia is now High Mage, and has secret possession of the egg, a cautious rapport with Aaravos, and Callum as a recently-acquired apprentice

Harrow, meanwhile, has a lot of feelings and is following them toward peace with Xadia

—

Claudia learned a great deal about Moonshadow elves, after… after. When they first returned to the castle, she spent days picking through the wreckage of the tower, working under the nervous watch of guards worried over the structural integrity of burnt support beams. She had collected and examined the warped and melted weapons and the remains of fine leather armor. She had found the five unblemished, moon-white cords still looped around charred bones—one per corpse.

It wasn’t enough, so she read everything she could get her hands on, then sent birds to Evenere and Duren for more. She read about their assassins’ methods—near-invisibility beneath the full moon, unique weapons and combat styles that harmonized in pairs but disrupted any organized defense. She read about the sacred oath they made to slay their target, and the way they were bound to it.

The five white cords in her father’s—her workroom, resistant to every cutting tool and spell for severing she had tried, meant two things: the assassins’ task had been left undone, and there was someone out there who might come back to finish it. Claudia would be ready for them.

It was still almost purely luck that she caught the girl.

She had taken to walking the ramparts of the castle’s curtain wall after dark, hoping the air would clear her head after hours spent in High Council meetings, followed by more hours going over spellwork basics with Callum in the upper workroom, followed by even more hours down in her father’s sanctum with Aaravos. Up before dawn and awake until well after dusk, sometimes she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the sun.

She was especially agitated that night. Aaravos had greeted her earlier with a gift—the caterpillar-like creature he spoke through had spun from its silk a thin disc, about the size of Claudia’s palm, feather-light but solid. A lens, for you to see clearly things that might otherwise go unnoticed, Aaravos had said, with his ever-present half-smile. The threads of silk were less dense toward the disc’s center, allowing her to peer through it—though tilting it slightly in her hand shifted the spaces from translucent to a disorienting void-black. Held before her face, she could see the room as if through watery glass, colors dimmed and details smudged. Everything was dulled save for the frame of the mirror—each raised rune along its border blazed with a different color, shifting and weaving in a rainbow of light.

Claudia was young, but she was not a fool. A being like Aaravos only gave gifts because he would expect something in return, sooner or later. His attitude of benevolent service was a clear ruse, an attempt to trick her into stacking up favors he would one day call in. She had no idea what Aaravos wanted, from her or otherwise, and no sure way to find out short of walking straight into his arms. But she had taken the lens.

Later in the afternoon, she had experimented a bit more with it—the more concentrated reagents in the workroom shimmered with threads of color, her father’s staff glowed with a pulsing iridescence of purples. She wanted badly to see what it could expose of the dragon egg, but reluctantly held off on that exploration. She knew Aaravos’s little minion could listen for him as well as speak, so it stood to reason that anything she saw through the lens would be revealed to him, as well. She’d have to get a pouch for it, to keep away prying eyes on both ends.

She had just stepped out onto the east wall from the corner watchtower, lost in thoughts about lenses and secrets and inscrutable elves when she felt… something. An odd prickle on the back of her neck, like the subconscious awareness that an object in a cluttered room had been moved when it should not have been. It was a feeling she associated with the presence of unknown magic. The long stretch of battlements ahead of her was deserted, without even a guard in sight.

Her hand went to her satchel, and closed around the lens. She drew it out slowly, then held it up and turned it this way and that, as if examining its details in the moonlight. The shifting angle let her glance through it to scan the rampart walkway ahead of her. In the dimmed image of the lens, she saw the bright silver outline of a slim figure crouched in the shadow of a merlon. A slim figure with a drawn sword.

Claudia panicked. Her hand shot out, the double-serpent bracelet unwinding on command to ensnare her attacker. The figure deflected the first strike with their sword and a clash of metal, and avoided the second with an acrobatic dodge that carried them out of the narrow field Claudia could see through the lens. She whirled, trying to track the attacker, her hand darting into her satchel again for the clay vials kept within easy reach near the top. She snatched one out and crushed it in her fist in the same motion, scattering the mixture of powdered slowusk shell and the ashes of several sleep-inducing plants inside it in a broad arc through the air as the matching incantation rolled off her tongue.

The expanding cloud glowed violet, brightening and throwing off sparks where its effects were strongest. Claudia peered into it, one hand still clutching the lens, the other back in her satchel ready to grab another vial.

A shadowy figure slowly appeared out of the spell-cloud, staggering toward her unsteadily. The sword slipped from their dangling hand and clattered on the rampart’s stones. Another step, and they fell to their knees, struggling to remain upright. The blurred shadows of the figure resolved into sudden clarity as they swayed, and Claudia caught a glimpse of a pale, feminine face before they finally, finally collapsed and lay still.

Claudia sat down hard where she was, her limbs boneless and trembling. Her heart was pounding, and she struggled to slow her breathing back to a normal rate. She still clutched the lens tight to her chest—it had saved her life, for sure.

When she felt like she could move again, she tucked the lens away and forced herself to crawl to the limp, face-down form. The sleeping spell was a potent one, but she hadn’t used it often, and had no idea how much time it would last. An hour? Less? Even if it was more, it was best to work quickly.

The slender horns poking out from bone-white hair confirmed the attacker as a Moonshadow elf, if their invisibility beneath the full moon had left any doubt. Claudia gingerly rolled them over. A girl—thirteen, or maybe fourteen years old? Her dirt-smudged face was still slightly rounded by childhood, despite a leanness from clearly having missed more than a few recent meals. But elves were frequently smaller and more delicate than humans, as well as being longer-lived, so ages were hard to gauge. Her hair was hacked short and ragged around her pointed ears, as if cut inexpertly with a blade not meant for the task. The dark-colored, flexible armor she wore was finely-made but dirty, and worn to the point of threadbare in the spaces between the leather. The overall impression was of someone who’d spent months living alone in the wild.

Her face, even slack with sleep, was somehow mournful—a faint downturn to the corners of her mouth, a barely-there crease between her white brows. The moonlight on her long, pale eyelashes cast delicate shadows across the deep purple markings that slashed down her cheekbones like tears. She was pretty, beneath the rough trappings—if you were the type to be into elves.

Claudia blinked, surprised at how far her mind had wandered. She was suddenly tired, the adrenaline having drained from her veins and left her with heavy limbs and a clouded mind. She should check the prisoner for weapons and find a way to restrain her, then see if she could summon a guard.

She patted her hands down the elf’s sides, feeling for hard lumps that could be hidden knives. It was only when the back of her hand brushed against rough, crusted cloth that she finally noticed the stained bandages wrapping the stump at the end of the girl’s left arm. Claudia gently peeled them back to reveal a wound that was congruent with the rest of the girl’s appearance—which was to say, not looking all that great. However the elf had been living recently hadn’t done its healing any favors.

She replaced the bandage and checked the rest of the girl’s limbs—all other extremities were present in the expected numbers, with no hidden blades save for the one tucked away at the small of her back. It was identical to the one she had wielded, the two obviously meant to be used in concert. The craftsmanship was exquisite, a complex series of joints allowing them to presumably fold and lock into different configurations—not dissimilar from her father’s staff.

Inventory of her prisoner taken, Claudia paused to considered her options. If she called for the guards, the elf would be taken to the castle’s main dungeon and questioned by the Crownguard, then members of the High Council, and eventually King Harrow himself.

Her mind filled with dismay at the thought. Harrow. Harrow would pardon her.

Even though the Moonshadow elf was almost certainly one of the assassins whose mission was why Claudia’s father was dead, King Harrow would let her go. He’d look at this skinny, maimed wretch, so near to the age of his own children, and he would spare her any justice at all. He would probably even hand her right back to Xadia in peace.

Or… Claudia could take her. Keep her contained and figure out what to do with her later.

It was almost definitely some form of treason. But so was concealing possession of the Dragon King’s living egg, and probably also consorting in secret with an elf of mysterious motivations sealed behind a mirror. And as with both of those situations, she just needed a little time. It was her responsibility to fully appraise all the possibilities, not rush into the first course of action that presented itself. When she knew what she was dealing with, she’d bring it to the right people.

She looked around, worrying at her bottom lip with her teeth. If there was any evidence of the elf’s passage, she needed to find it. The eastern rampart was still deserted, but even at this late—or early—hour, there should have been at least one guard somewhere along it’s length.

She found him twenty paces or so further along the walkway, covered by one of the banners that usually hung down the wall’s face. His throat had been cut. She gently closed his staring eyes, shuddering. He must have died only moments before she had stepped out onto the wall. If she’d been more alert, if she hadn’t lingered, then maybe—

She shook the thought away and forced herself to look critically at the body. If she wanted to keep her prisoner secret, she’d have to do something about him. She reached into her satchel, searching for one of the basic reagents used to close a cut. The spell wouldn’t have saved him—it was meant to soothe the scrapes of everyday life, not mend a mortal wound—but it might be enough to hide what killed him.

The flesh of the guard’s throat knit together reluctantly, and Claudia was shaking with exhaustion when she ended the spell. She’d cast it on Soren dozens of times over the years, and it had never been so difficult—apparently it didn’t work as well on corpses. She half-rolled, half-dragged the body to the edge of the wall, then managed to shove him up over the lip of parapet in one of the embrasures. The plates of his armor scraped loudly on the stone, and she paused anxiously to look around again.

Still nothing. She didn’t know when the guards changed shifts or positions—it had never been important, before. Hopefully she had at least a few more minutes.

She looked down at the body one last time. “I’m sorry,” she said. The words sounded absurd even to her, but she felt like she had to say something. “I… hope you find peace.” Then she tipped the corpse the rest of the way over the parapet and down the long, rocky cliff to the river below.

She sighed and looked back to the sleeping elf. Her prisoner was much smaller, and not wearing plate armor, but it was still going to be a trial for Claudia to get her all the way from the top of the castle wall to her father’s—her study, not to mention through the painting passageway and down below the catacombs to the waiting cells.

She wrapped the girl in the same banner that had concealed the dead guard, and began the long, slow process of dragging her to their destination.

—

The sleep spell was fortunately more potent than Claudia had feared. It was just after dawn when the Moonshadow girl to returned to consciousness, and Claudia had been waiting for hours.

She had hesitated over how to best restrain the elf—the chains in the cell were meant to keep a prisoner’s arms extended above their head and twisted in a way that made standing difficult, but they also operated on the usually-reasonable assumption that said prisoner had two present and functional hands. There was no way to clamp the iron ring to the elf’s stump-ended arm without it sliding right off, so she settled for chaining her good wrist, then tightly swaddling the other arm across her chest with the banner, almost as if it was being immobilized for healing. A touch of magic knit the ends of the cloth together seamlessly and far more securely than any knot. Finally, she bound the elf’s knees and ankles together—presumably an assassin would be as deadly with her legs as with her arms, and Claudia was taking no chances. There would be no one to help her if things went badly.

The elf began to struggle against her bonds immediately when she woke. Claudia watched surreptitiously through the cell door’s tiny window for a while, until her prisoner seemed to have exhausted herself. Satisfied that the restraints would hold, she sent a message to the High Council, pleading illness to excuse herself from that morning’s meeting, another to Callum dismissing him from their afternoon lesson, and a third to the kitchens with the request that breakfast be sent to her study. Then she settled in for a nap.

She awoke mid-morning, refreshed enough that a mug of hot brown morning potion could take her the rest of the way to feeling like a human being again, at least for a few hours. The breakfast tray she retrieved from the study was simple fare—bread and honey, some fresh fruit, a carafe of water. The castle cooks had learned long ago that any food sent to the High Mage’s workrooms had best keep for hours, because the chances of it being eaten immediately were slim.

She took care to smooth her rumpled dress and straighten her hair before entering the cell. An immaculate appearance had been one of her father’s many armors, demanding the respect he was due, and Claudia was learning why in her ongoing struggles with the Council. The effort here would probably be wasted on a disheveled, wounded elf—but it did make her feel a bit more confident. She took a deep breath and opened the door.

The elf-girl sat slumped where she was chained to the stone wall, exhibiting every signal of resigned defeat—but Claudia had more than a passing familiarity with approaching cornered animals. Everything was at its most dangerous when it had nothing to lose. Staying well back from reach, she crouched to put herself at eye level with her prisoner. She set the tray on the floor beside her, then folded her arms over her knees and rested her chin on them.

“So, you’re the last assassin,” she said. “Tell me how you escaped, that night.”

It wasn’t a guess, really—all the pieces fit. The shape and details of the girl’s elaborate twin short swords, a perfect match with the twisted remains of the other assassins’ weapons. The white cord Claudia had discovered knotted to one blade’s hilt. The ugly, swollen stump of her left wrist.

The elf didn’t look at her. Didn’t even move.

“Why were you even with them?” Claudia pressed. “You’re practically a child.”

Pale violet eyes flicked abruptly to hers. “Don’t call me a child,“ her prisoner said, with acid below her exhaustion. “You’re barely older than I am. You sound ridiculous.”

“Sorry, this is my first interrogation,” Claudia replied innocently. “What should I call you, then? Do you have a name?”

The elf hesitated. Something shifted behind her eyes, and her shoulders drooped, just a little. “No. I’m no one. Just a ghost.”

“What if I call you ‘Ghost,’ then?” Claudia suggested. “My name is Claudia, by the way.”

The elf—Ghost, Claudia decided for her—rolled her eyes and didn’t respond.

“Well, you must be hungry. I’m always ravenous coming out of a sleep spell. You won’t bite if I feed you, right?” Claudia tore a chunk off the loaf of bread on the tray and held it out.

Aaravos had laughed when she asked him what her prisoner would eat. The same as you do, he’d said. Moonshadow elves drink no more blood than Dark mages.

Ghost fixed her with a look that would have been withering, had it not been undercut by a clearly audible gurgle from her own stomach.

Claudia bit into the chunk of bread herself. “It’s fine, see? Fresh. Hardly any poison.” She tore off another chunk, and lifted the spoon from the pot of honey to top it with a thick, golden drizzle. Ghost’s eyes followed the movement.

She held out the honeyed bread, and Ghost shifted, leaning toward it slightly. Claudia scooted forward enough to tip the bread into her waiting mouth and hear the shuddering sigh as she chewed. “More?” she offered.

Ghost eyed her sidelong, evaluating. “Water?” she asked tentatively.

Claudia nodded and filled a cup from the carafe. She held it to Ghost’s lips, tilting it as she drank greedily. Ghost deigned to eat more of the bread after that, and even a few slices from the apple Claudia slowly peeled.

“What do you want?” she finally asked.

Claudia popped an apple slice in her own mouth. “Tell me how you escaped the tower.”

“Why? Does it matter?”

“Not really.” Claudia picked up a napkin and wiped the knife she’d used to peel and slice the fruit. “I’m just curious.”

Ghost’s eyes slid away from her. “No one escaped. I… wasn’t there.”

Claudia remembered pacing her father’s study, the anxious obedience of waiting for him as his message had instructed. How her eyes had suddenly fallen on the staff where it leaned against the desk—the staff he never went without.

“I understand,” she murmured.

Ghost said nothing, still looking away.

Claudia brushed the crumbs off her lap. “I think that’s enough, for now,” she said, standing and collecting the tray. “I’ll be back later.”

Ghost snorted. “I’ll be here, I suppose.”

—

They carried on like that for most of a week. Claudia didn’t have much in the way of questions—Ghost couldn’t tell her anything useful about the Dragon Queen or major players of Xadia, and Aaravos’s name meant nothing to her. She was simply too young, too junior, and too isolated to know anything.

Nonetheless, Claudia was beginning to feel the growing shape of a plan.

She pretended not to notice as the stump of Ghost’s wrist slowly swelled and reddened. It was clearly getting worse, though Claudia hadn’t examined the wound closely since her cursory look that first night, up on the wall. Ghost, for her part, expressed no pain but grew increasingly listless, eating less and fading more often into troubled sleep.

On the eighth day, Claudia prepared a bowl of water and a stack of clean cloths before opening the cell. She’d borrowed a roll of fresh bandages from the guardhouse infirmary, and had reagents for a variety of healing spells on hand in case things got truly dire.

Ghost was pale—the dark markings framing her cheeks even more livid than usual—and sweating, her body racked with tremors. Her left arm was swollen to the elbow, now; the skin reddened and hot to the touch. She offered no objection to the old bandages being peeled away.

In the better light, Claudia could see that the original wound had been cauterized, but poorly. Most likely Ghost had heated one of her blades and done it herself. If half of what Claudia had read about the Moonshadow bindings was correct, she had probably severed the hand herself, as well. Better to lose it as cleanly as possible than let it rot while still attached and poison the blood.

“That’s infected again,” Claudia said, nodding at it. “Will you let me tend to it?”

Ghost’s eyes were glassy with fever, but still focused on her in a glare. “Why?” she demanded. “What is it you really want, anyway? Revenge for your king? Then why not just let me die?”

Claudia couldn’t help herself—she laughed, long and hard. “Oh, Ghost,” she said when she could breathe again, settling back on her heels to wipe her eyes. “King Harrow is alive.”

“No. That’s impossible.” Ghost stared at her, mouth parted and trembling. “The binding for him released. It released.”

So there were two targets. Claudia filed that away in her mind for later.

“My father pulled out the king’s spirit with Dark magic, and took his body,” she explained, still smiling. It felt good to say the words to what was possibly the one person who might be even more hurt by them than she was, herself. “That’s who your assassin friends killed in the tower. They all died for nothing.”

“I—I don’t believe you.”

Claudia shrugged. “Why should I lie? If it wasn’t true, Dad would be the one here talking to you.”

“As to what I want—well, I think we may be able to help each other, eventually. So for now, you’re more useful to me alive than dead. Though you’d still be plenty useful, dead.”

She paused for a moment to let that sink in, then continued, keeping her voice casual. “Those horns? Ground up, Moonshadow elf horns work one of the most potent sleeping spells ever known. And elf ears of any type have a whole list of uses—they’re harder to come by this far west, so I’ve never gotten to try most of them. But the real prize from you would be an eye. They’re worth a fortune. I’ve read that a properly-preserved Moonshadow eye can be used to pierce even the strongest illusion.”

“I’m sure even your bones have a use, and your skin, if it’s tanned right. I don’t know about all your guts—I’d have to check Dad’s notes and see if he ever got his hands on one of your kind. I might have to do some experimenting.” She tilted her head, as if mentally already dividing Ghost up into parts. “It was a shame all your friends died burning. Nothing usable was left.”

Tears had overflowed Ghost’s pale eyes as Claudia spoke and spilled slowly down her cheeks. It was due to the fever, of course; pain and delirium had overwhelmed what little emotional fortitude she still had. She was barely more than a child.

Claudia leaned forward again, briskly setting the back of her hand to Ghost’s burning forehead. “Now, are you going to let me tend your arm, or do I have to spell you asleep again and do it anyway?”

“No magic,” Ghost pleaded, shuddering. Her voice was high and tight, trembling with emotion.

“No magic, then,” Claudia agreed solemnly. “Just hot water to clean it and a poultice for the infection. Some willowbark syrup for the fever, then fruit juice and broth, later—when you feel up to it.”

Ghost slumped in her restraints. Claudia could see that most of the fight had gone out of her. With any luck, it was permanent. She closed her eyes and nodded weakly, tears still running down her face.

A touch and a few whispered words heated the bowl of water to steaming. Claudia dipped the first of her cloths in it, and began.

—

Ghost’s condition improved over the next few days, though she remained withdrawn. Claudia decided the time was finally right to open negotiations.

She entered the cell and sat, leaning back against the wall. Still carefully out of reach, but close enough to be considered companionable. She looked over to where Ghost was still chained. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, I’m just dandy. Never better,” Ghost huffed derisively. “Don’t you have any friends to bother instead of me?”

“Hm,” Claudia made a show of considering the question. “Not really.”

Ghost rolled her eyes. “Just my luck. What do you want, then?”

“I want to talk about what I think we can do for each other.”

“I doubt theres much I can do for you in here,” Ghost said acidly, “Except, as you’ve pointed out, provide ingredients.”

“So let’s talk about what you can do for me not in here,” Claudia countered. “You also lost someone important to you, that night.” It wasn’t a question, but she paused for confirmation, anyway.

Ghost remained silent, but gave a single, short nod.

“Dad—Dad was my world. He taught me everything I know. Maybe he wasn’t always the best person, but—,” she paused, her throat tightening. “King Harrow is the reason he’s dead. So I want you to kill him.”

She held up her hand when Ghost shifted. “Just listen. You want to know why.”

“Dad gave everything for Harrow.” She grimaced, struggling with the words. “And now Harrow’s up there wearing his skin, throwing away everything my dad did in his entire life—everything he sacrificed for this kingdom, for humanity itself—like it was all for nothing. Like none of it ever even mattered.”

“So, I want—,” she took a slow breath, doing her best to keep it steady and still feeling it shake. “I want him to see everything he’s working for—this so-called peace that’s his grand new vision—in ashes. I want him to suffer. And then I want him to die.”

The silence stretched for a long time.

“You’re insane,” Ghost finally said, staring at her with a mixture of shock and fascination.

“Am I?” Claudia retorted. “How is it any different from what your Dragon Queen demanded?”

“I didn’t say it was bad.” Ghost’s eyes flicked away for a moment, then back to her. “And what about Prince Ezran?”

“Prince Ezran,” Claudia repeated, uncomprehending. Then the pieces came together in her mind. “He was the second target, wasn’t he?”

Ghost watched her coolly. “Is there any better way to make someone suffer?”

There was expediency, there was twisting the knife, there was poetic justice—and then there was… that. “No,” Claudia said decisively. “No harm comes to Ezran. Why were you sent after a ten-year-old boy, anyway?”

Ghost bristled. “It wasn’t only the Dragon King that was slain. Your Harrow also destroyed his egg—murdered their only child and heir. The same fate for his would be justice!”

Claudia thought of the egg, alive and not even ten paces away, and kept her face carefully neutral.

“There’s plenty of blame to go around, and plenty of blood. None of it is Ezran’s,” she replied. “It was Harrow’s hand on the spear, but my father’s will in the spell. The magic came from the last unicorn horn in the human kingdoms, maybe even in the whole world—a horn I claimed. I don’t know who laid a hand on that royal egg, and it doesn’t matter. They wouldn’t even have been in arms’ reach of it if not for all that came before.

“Your assassin friends killed my father. You’ll kill King Harrow. If that’s not enough blood to appease your queen’s sense of justice… then when Harrow’s dead, you can kill me, too.”

She moved to kneel directly in front of Ghost and grabbed her by the jaw. It was dangerously close, but she didn’t care.

“But if any harm comes to Ezran,” she continued quietly, “I’ll start with those pretty, precious eyes and harvest every last thing I can from you. And I’ll keep you alive as long as possible for it.”

Ghost glared at her, her mouth a stubborn line. Claudia stared back, her grip unwavering.

It was Ghost who looked away first. “My heart for Xadia,” she muttered. “Fine.”

“That didn’t sound like a ‘yes, Claudia, I promise Prince Ezran will not be harmed.’”

Ghost’s eyes returned to Claudia’s. “Yes, Claudia,” she enunciated, more than a little mockery in her tone. “I promise Prince Ezran will not be harmed.”

Claudia figured that was the best she was going to get. “Good,” she said, releasing Ghost’s face and standing up.

“So are you going to unchain me, then?” Ghost wiggled the fingers of her manacled hand. “Or is King Harrow going to somehow come to me?”

“Not yet, because I’m not stupid,” Claudia replied. “But give me another day or two and I think I’ll have a solution to both that and your little dexterity problem. I assume you’d prefer to be working with two hands again, right?”

Ghost stared up at her for a moment, then actually cracked a smile. “Yeah,” she said. “I’d like that.”

#the dragon prince #claudia #rayla #no editing we die like men #kradogsfic #ouroboros au

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screechingsandwichhologram · 6 months

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asks about ur channah design/headcanons/lore :3

oooooh yippee!!! so i dont have too too much for her but i do have thoughts about her so <3

most of this will be basics of her design & past life & stuff ?

so first of all, shes a flower based fae. in my dsmp au there's different sublevels of fae - based on the type of magic they're attuned of the most. there's river fae, wild fae, moss fae, etc. hannah is a flower fae (of the spring court). this, appearance wise, gives her natural flowers growing out of her, pointed ears, cat-like pupils, and general unnaturalness (it is important to note that because of this, people had a much harder time telling when she was egged because she was already uncanny). she also has two pairs of wings!!! they are shaped like an orange oakleaf butterfly, but the pattern is a pink version of the chestnut tiger butterly !!! also the second, lower one is feathered. one special thing to note about her is her antlers!!! these antlers are due to her deal with the God of The Wild (nature in general !!!)

very quick sketch of hannah design !! ^

before the smp, (and, according to my own lore, around the end of The New Timeline) she lived in a small village with her grandmother. Her grandmother, of course, wasn't actually her grandmother, but rather an old lady who found her as a young toddler at the end of the woods. Her grandmother raised her, even knowing what she was, and taught her how to properly care for plants. When she was a teenager, after she had grown her wings, her grandmother brought her to the forest to meet her own kind. hannah was welcomed, of course, but kept coming back to the woman who raised her. at some point, the village found out what hannah was, and attacked her grandmother. hannah managed to stop them, and grabbed her grandmother and ran into the forest. the fae weren't too happy with the grandmother being in the forest, and Hannah was a much lower fae, so she didn't have much sway.

hannah ended up seeking out the god of the wild. she told it that she would do its bidding (be its champion!) as long as her grandmother was cared for. it agreed. as a token of her championship, she was granted antlers (well, technically horns but they are shaped like antlers). those hurt to grow in btw.

as the champion of the wild, she did. some stuff. its wasn't much, and was pretty tame. she enjoyed her work (it was basically large scale gardening), but she began to grow anxious and paranoid. she was sure that the god would ask her to do something awful and big soon.

but, then The Collision happened ! and the timeline & world rebooted. because she was the champion of the wild, she was able to survive and was saved, but because she was so closely tied to the now nearly dead god, she fell dormant. she was basically in deep sleep for thousands of years. during this time, nature grew around her, and she gained an almost stone-like texture.

one day, though, a traveler accidentally knocked into her. she was pushed just enough to crack her antlers. over time, the vines growing around her would further the crack, eventually breaking the antlers off. the pain (and the removal of the tie to the god) woke her, and she found herself with iffy memories, in an unfamiliar place, and no one she knew. the fae were few and far in between, so she could not find comfort in her species. she started wearing sweaters because she found she was always cold, and as a self-comforting weight.

she eventually figured out a way off the server, and went to hypixel, where she met purpled. she learnt to fight there, and learned what happened to her home. she also figured out what happened to her. the years of sleep had blurred her memories, loosing the details, but the basics were there.

after some time, she decided to go back to the dsmp. in some feeble hope to try to help the ancient gods (and some strange attachment to the one who gave her only worries.)

at arrival to the dsmp, though, her feathered wings were clipped, and almost stripped bare. they were useless. her butterfly wings were tattered just enough to render them useless as well.

okay thats all i have for her past. uhm now some things.

her colors (of her wings, her roses, etc) are very dependent on her mood. they have become duller over the years

before the dsmp, she had many more roses covering her.

shes sapphic !!! and also demigirl, but uses she/her prns exclusively. oh and also polyamorous !!!

the egg regularly would have her tear out her feathers (and replace them with vines)

she learned how to crochet after the egg

she can make pretty decent pastries !!! she really enjoys it, at least.

thats all i have for rn (its late so my brain is fried) but i hope u enjoy?

#also the whole timeline thing i explained pretty recently in my timeline post (should be pretty easy to find in my blog -#ive been reblogging it a lot because i worked hard on it #c!hannah #rain feathers dsmp #c!hannahxxrose #dsmp #dsmp lore #thanks for the ask !!!!

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tuesday-teyz · 2 years

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I finally managed to read the newst chapter!!!

Enderchest and Enderpearl my beloved, they didn't deserve that fate D: I almost bawled my eyes out-

Also, thx to br I binged read a whole lot of Royalty Aus and now I have questions asdfgjk

I'm like 90% sure there are hybrids and stuff like that it Br, but does that mean that magic also exist? Again, I read like 6 different royalty fics this week so everything got mixed up, send help.

Also, I'm curious on how much will Ranboo's memories coming back will affect the plot, I'm so exited waiting to see what will happen in the future!

But please take care of yourself first! <3 As always, your writing always manages to impress me, but feel free of taking all the time you need, I have seen people demand new chapters fast and as a fellow writer I know its no the best thing to happen, so please know that the piority is yourself!

There are actually no hybrids in BR! At least not by textbook definition. It's going to explained in detail in the fic, but basically speaking winged humans aka avians used to be a whole race of its own, on the same level as some mythical humanoid creatures. Confusion comes from the fact that they are called, well, avians. I just didn't see no point in trying to name them something different when inherently, they are the same.

At some point in history avians were every 5th citizen of Antarctic Empire, but now they are nearly extinct, and over the generations of mixing blood with humans, they've lost a lot of their ancestors' features. Tails are gone completely, hair replaced feathers, their vision is much less sharp and their necks are not nearly as flexible.

Most avians are not even born with wings, but can grow them at any point until the age of 16. Even then, their wingspan is much shorter than that of their ancestors and their instincts are severely dulled. Some are born with wingbones already under their skin, but limbs never actually break through and are not much different than spinal deformalities.

Eryn is pretty lucky not only to have strong avian blood, but have his wings grow relatively early. It gets much more painful with age and there are often cases of teenage avians dying newly fledged because people surrounding them don't know how to help. Even if they do survive, flight is not guaranteed. Wings may not form properly, there is nobody to teach them how, avians instincts can't overpower fear of height... There is a ton of factors affecting it.

A fully flying avian in the Empire is treated as one degree below of royalty. Because they are so rare and unique, avians are protected by the crown and the law. Any avian, regardless whether they have a biological family or not, is taken away to be raised by special facilities that are sort of like boarding schools except students they stay there permanently and have age groups as young as 3 years old. From there avians are often adopted into noble families. Nobles can name them heirs, or have them close companions to their own children. It's a great honor for a noble house to be raising an avian, especially if the type of avian matches the bird on their family crest.

Generally, avians live in luxury, but with very little freedom of their own. They are guarded constantly and treated like fragile pieces of glass. Scribes, secretaries, advisors and councelors, stewards - that they can be. But an avian wanting to become a blacksmith, a shipwright, a hunter, a baker or a physician will quickly have their dreams crushed. They are supposed to look beautiful and be admired and cherished and not do much of anything else.

To your next question, I wouldn't call it magic, not really. There are no spells or curses, stones with magic properties, anything of fantasy sorts is just innate abilities coming from the characters' ancestors. Which traits are inherited from non-human ancestors is also pretty much like drawing a lottery ticket. In Niki's admittedly large extended family there are some who have gills as well as lungs, whose skin is partially scaled and is sensitive to sunlight, who have webbed fingers or are blind. Niki's mermaid ancestory doesn't show itself much in anything else but the color of her hair and her ability to see clearly underwater.

If you are curious about which mythical creatures did or did not exist in BR, this is a non-full list:

•Freshwater mermaids (koi mermaids): went extinct because their natural habitat aka lakes dried out;

•Sirens, saltwater relatives of mermaids: the population of them was always small because of intense competition against other sea predators. Took a liking to the taste of human flesh and were exterminated for that;

•Dragons: were too big & not enough food to sustain them. Officially they are extinct but some believe that a few might have survived by having moved into the oceans and feeding on whales;

•Phoenixes: few descendants still live. They don't have healing properties of their ancestors and can sustain injuries, but won't truly die of anything but old age. In rare cases do grow wings, though mostly jusy have plumage along their faces, backs and limbs. If crushed, powder/dust of feathers have reviving properties that can make someone age slower and fix scarred tissue.

•Faerie courts, small tribes of werewolves & werefoxes, selkies and many more.

#br asks

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tomago · 2 years

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i love you so, natsume sakasaki

sypnosis。the world itself seemed to be against both of you, but no matter where you hide, time will always condemn you; it is this world's greatest foe.

cw , angst , death

shuffle x scribble request — ( OKAY THIS IS A LONG ONE bear with me. could i request a natsume x reader angst. maybe a magic au, and reader is watching natsume do his magic stuff. then something goes wrong with his spells and in turn he accidentally puts a deadly curse on the reader, maybe one that drastically shortens their lifespan. BUT, reader doesn’t know what happened. natsume’s like “no worries, nothing big just a little error” and then he goes off searching for something to help reverse the curse and every day he just returns with nothing and watches reader become worse. and then, DUN DUN DUN he returns home to reader succumbing to the final effects of the curse, basically dying. add in some heart wrenching last goodbye type stuff. and then natsume’s guilt after their death. im so sorry this is so long LMAO 😭 )

note ; hiii anon !!!!!!!! I ENJOYED WRITING THIS SOOOSOO SO MUCH. IM SO IN LOVE. YOU ARE SO BIG BRAINED. JUST. chefs kiss i hope this quenches your thirst— ♪

in a world where fear and trepidation runs amidst the airs that the anemoi blew, the grotesque world as it was had always been ruthless and callous to either human or wizard. even treading across a country to another could be perilous; but that may be why it was incredible. the horrors and innocence alike, the world did not treat you differently.

you've always been fascinated by wondrous things, marveling at any phenomenal miracles. you’re covetous of the world and its wonders; not in the bad way, but in the way which exiled you from both human and wizard. your admiration runs deep, and leads you to meeting a talented wizard, sakasaki natsume.

glistening bottles filled with peculiarly-colored liquid and insects that you've ever seen before lined atop shelves inside his quarters, each and every one yelled 'do not touch' in one look — feathered creatures that suspend time in their rustling wings flew over your head; an indication that his refuge was no place for a human.

and here he was, welcoming you yet again above droplets of still resin that contained stone and bone alike — eroded by time to simply memories of what once was.

"curious, isn't it,", his voice echoes from wall to wall through the incandescent rays of sun that peaks through cracks and fissures of his workplace; and with the slightest flick of the wrist, a spell uttered beneath his skin — cold turned into warmth, and feathers began to descend.

a delightful spectacle was on display for only you, your hand light above his gloved own; your eyes wide filled with awe for his effortless feat, and his eyes not once blinked away from you.

how curious, truly, how you fail to notice a ticking bomb even inside you.

gods, — even if silly myths like gods were true, must have a reason to separate man and wizard. even if his heart breaks to part with you, even if your desire to learn more about natsume still is strong, the inevitable truth that the world has was unrelenting.

no matter how much of a frightening wizard natsume was, there was only much he could do with magic. even if it meant for you to live a normal life, even if it meant you'd be cured and forget all about him, he'd give up all of his tricks in exchange for you to survive.

with every moment you spent with him, your life thins, until it was all but a brittle thread. your body will slowly turn into stone, and you will crumble. but more importantly, natsume will live to see it.

how cruel, really, aren't wizards supposed to be the ones tormenting humans? but why do you put him through all of this suffering? letting yourself slowly be poisoned by natsume's apple, and even licking the poison from his fingertips — was this your plan? to turn into stone with his hands and crush him with his own guilt for being too selfish to have you even if it meant losing you?

but seeing your expression so innocent, not worrying about a single thing — you will never be lovelier than now, and he will never be here again. it tugs on his heart tightly, perhaps, he may be able to steal time from fate just a little longer.

this will be my last confession, i love you, i love you, and i love you.

to who does he whisper these words to, if not your peaceful body that lied on top of the wild unruly fields that you and he once danced in? your skin was cold, it shined; and pieces of you fell into his palms.

natsume shook, his tears uncontrollable; this was it. you had turned into stone.

and upon the banks of lethe, his tears fell; how badly must our story end, and decided, no: against his will he drinks the river's cold waters — and forgets everything.

#natsume sakasaki #sakasaki natsume #enstars #gn reader #requested #scribble x festival #magic au #fantasy au

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troutfur · 11 months

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Question: What would be the reaction in The clanborn Firestar AU if Firestar was a patrician and Tigerstar had told Stonefur to choose, from that other anon? (Idk if Feather or Storm count as Particians, or is it just from Leopard?) Would Stone be expected to pick Fire because it's expected, or would it be better to sacrifice Fire, to create a martyr thus 'Fire Alone,' and enrage the clans to stand up to tyranny? How would Stonestar live with himself if he did pick Fire, and would Fire gift him a life and what would it be?

OK, this is very hyper-specific, and while I appreciate the question it's basically asking me to write a ficlet of a scenario that is very much not how I would write.

So to make it incredibly short: within the augur AU framework Fireheart would absolutely be a valuable hostage who Stonefur would be expected to prioritize, moreso as his son, but threatening to kill him in itself could shake confidence. Better to not let him interfere first before holding him.

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21st-century-ninja · 2 years

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💙 Wild Things — if I may ask about the series and no particular fic — is Master Wu part of this AU? What’s his heritage? Connected to Lloyd’s, presumably, but with how scared of it the poor kid is, maybe Wu and Garmadon are totally different?

Wild Things spoilers below the cut! You have been warned >:D

Prefacing this au as a whole: not everything is set in stone yet. Things might still be changed around as I develop the world further, but as of now, this is where my thoughts are :D

Wu is in this au, although I'm not entirely sure when he's going to appear yet. Both him and Garmadon are full-lined kitsune, which basically means that their line only contains kitsune going as far back as either of them can remember.

(an addon but in wild things au you either are or you aren't a monster. As far as I'm planning now, species do not mix together and create new species. A child of a dragon and a phoenix will either be a dragon or a phoenix, not a dragon with feathers or a phoenix who controls rain. The most influence the other creature has on the offspring is in slight aesthetic differences, such as Jay being a japanese moth variant despite his father being a moth from America!)

Most kitsune live in skulks, or family groups, apart from the rest of the world and there's a wide range of "domesticity" for those skulks. Kitsune need to feast on happiness and affection and love to survive. Some kitsune don't care how much they drain from their hosts and leave them unable to feel or create happiness in their lives at all. Most don't do that. Instead, they have skulk nights where they communally feast on each others' happiness so no one fox comes out of it too drained. Wu leads one such skulk, and if Lloyd ever has a breakdown and runs off into the wild?

#wild things au #fic #999 follower event

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savventeen · 11 months

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🎧 for the ask game please? i'd like some song recommendations because my playlist is like 80% kpop help-

but also!!! hihi savv i hope you're having a good day today ily ♡♡♡

OMG HI XANTHE!!!! 💙✨ i hope ur having a good day too!!!!

okay im gonna go ahead and give u a few bc ur the only one to send one in so far and i have So Many songs i want to write fic for sjdjdkkddk (narrowing it down to three was actually really hard lmao)

first up i'm gonna give you i will by mitski

so stay with me / hold my hand / there's no need / to be brave and all the quiet things you bear / seal them up with care / no one needs to know they're there / for i will hold them for you 'cause all i've ever wanted is here / all i ever wanted / all i want is / always you / it's always you and we're not out of the tunnel / i bet you, though, there's an end and while you sleep / i'll be scared / so by the time you wake / i'll be brave

this makes me want to write qpr reader x member emotional hurt/comfort. like, just them being vulnerable with each other and holding each other (both physically and emotionally) and reader knowing that while they worry for member, member worries just as much over them and. idk, being brave for the people you care about and having it not automatically equal romance :')

(also mitski's one of my all-time fav artists so if u like this song u should check out her entire discography, her songs make me Feel Things, in like, the experiencing the human condition kinda way)

[putting the rest under a readmore bc i apparently have a lot to say OOPS]

okay next i'm gonna give you sweet time by porter robinson [cw: death mention]

and i feel so stupid / 'cause i wasn't scared of this before / but since i met you / i don't wanna die no more so take a long time / 'cause, oh, the world is lucky to be your home, i know / i need a next life / 'cause i'm not satisfied to know you just once / so take a long time

this makes me want to write some kind of reincarnation/reality-hopping au So Bad. just like, the idea of meeting someone and wanting to know everything about them, and not just the them of now, but every them that could and would have been. idk what the plot would actually be, but [member of choice] needs to find you in all these different realities for Reasons and in getting to know all these yous, comes to love all these different parts of you. sometimes it's romantic, sometimes it's platonic, but it's always with the same dedication

but yeah. "i need a next life, 'cause i'm not satisfied to know you just once" ughhhh. love this so much

(also another favorite artist of mine, specifically his album 'nurture'. listen to that shit on repeat so often lol)

okay lastly im gonna give you it happened quiet by aurora [cw: blood mention]

feathers falling out of the pillow / as if time is standing still / i can’t remember much more / but i know it happened quiet / so quiet you fell apart / like a stone can be broken into sand / a thousand pieces / spread across a crying land / and you can’t remember that day / but you know it happened quiet / so quiet / words falling out through the window / all that remains is a silent call / is the earth colored red? / as i land like a flower on the meadow are your dreams as dead as they seem? / don’t you speak over my voice / i will return from the shadows / and i’ll bleed in your bed / turn it red / like the ground outside your window / love is wild

i would love love LOVE to write a dark fairytale/fantasy fic for this, like!!! god, the vibe of this song feels like those stories that start off soft and fairytale-esque but by the end you realize it's actually a dark kind of warning and not a happily-ever-after.

so the basic idea i have would be something along the lines of: reader was once like, a forest guardian or something, and at one point a human came along and was like "let me live in ur forest pls" and they were skeptical but eventually let them as long as they didn't hurt the forest at all. so the human builds themself a little cottage in the clearing and doesn't hurt the forest and so reader lets themself start to get to know the human and oops! they end up falling in love (bad idea) and in a moment of vulnerability, the human attacks them, nearly kills them, and curses them so they can't protect their forest anymore. bc lo and behold, little human is actually a greedy bastard from the nearby kingdom wanting to take all the resources here.

fast forward a bit, and [member of choice] who has some magical abilities, starts getting really weird dreams about the forest on the other side of the kingdom. cue member being enlisted to help reader enact their revenge plot to save their forest (and also maybe reach some righteous havoc while they're at it) and they become best 'villain' bros the end :')

(once again, love aurora so much, i highly recommend checking out her discography haha)

send me a “🎧” and i’ll give you a non-kpop song i want to someday use as fic inspiration

#i wrote so much i'm so sorry sldfjsdlkjfsldkjf #i hope you like the songs at least!!#savv answers #ask game #xanthe 🐢

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shyrose57 · 3 years

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AU(s) where all the mod videos Tommy does, along with some other videos, are all alternate universes, and their residents end up in the SMP. Chaos ensues.

Voice Mod AU:

Universe where nobody talks aloud. They telepathically communicate, and the closer you are, the clearer and louder you are, unless you have the control the lower your mental voice.

Why?

Post-apocalyptic world(because Tommy said welcome to the new world at the start, and I too that and ran with it). They’re the new versions of humans, created after life returned on the planett, and the telepathy is a survival method, because outward noise draws predators, inner noise does not.

This also means they possibly have some other features similar to that. Like maybe Quackity’s duck wings being from some newly evolved duck species in the new world, Wilbur being a bit abnormally tall, or similar. I’m not sure.

Oh hey, no, Wilbur can be like a tree hybrid or something, cause Treebur.

Basically, evolution and telepathy.

Wilbur has a horse named Bert, he is speedy, and spends just as much time dragging his owner out of trouble than he does riding him into it.

The gang is basically just traveling the lands, exploring what’s about.

There are fish-horses, ender-horses, spider-horses, silverfish ponies, and horses that are somewhat like a breed between llamas and sheep in the world.

There are a lot of new horse breeds.

The Quackity of this universe wears clothes a lot like Manhunt Dream’s, hoodie-wise, but it’s all bright blue, and his mask has the :] face on it.

Size Mod AU:

Universe where people can shift and change sizes, though only to certain ones.

For example, Wilbur’s stuck small. He can shift to the size of a small dog, height wise, or that of a flower, but he can’t get big. Quackity can go smaller than Wilbur, or literally bigger than the Enderdragon. Both Tommy can be normal sized, or big, and Phil’s can be about the size of a tree, or become the size of a small mountain.

They all live in a nice house in the plains and spend their time terrorizing the locals.

Wilbur has a little house within the house, and he uses his size to cause havoc more often than not. Quackity is equally guilty of this.

Sometimes when the kids are being particularly bad, Phil puts the smaller ones in a compost bin and holds Tommy off the ground until he starts behaving.

Quackity’s a follower of the Blood God. Not to Techno’s length, but he goes and kills rabbits for him, and dedicates the chaos his giant form causes to the guy. In return, the four always have a flourishing harvest, and Quackity’s absolutely mean in battle.

Wilbur sleeps in one of Tommy’s old shoes that he stole and made into a bed.

Honestly, Wilbur’s kind of like the house mouse. He steals stuff and vibes in his little home in the walls. The cats that occasionally slip in try to eat him a lot too.

Wilbur and Quackity are bird hybrids, Tommy’s a zombie hybrid(cause he’s fighting a zombie and saying ‘I burn’ at that little bit), and Phil’s an iron golem hybrid.

Quackity and WIlbur have little bird-houses set up around the area for them to dart into and hide if anything comes after them.

They all met when tiny Q and Wilbur tried to rob Tommy and Phil. They succeeded with Tommy, but Phil was less than impressed at the attempt. Somehow it resulted in them all sharing a house.

Dragon Mod AU:

Universe set in more medieval-themed world. Phil, Quackity, and Tommy are dragon hunters. Wilbur’s a mischievous dragon sorcerer who enjoys shapeshifting into a dragon to mess with people. The hunters were originally sent after him, but spent more time frantically running for their lives while he laughed at them.

Wilbur’s actually good friends with the actual Enderdragon, who he calls Keithette. It was with her blessing that he decided to pick on the hunters.

He just spends all of his time messing with them. That’s all he does. He messes with them. It’s originally more malicious, which means they had a ridiculous amount of deaths, but they eventually all grew fond of each other, so now it’s more playful.

He helps them find treasure and scares off rivals.

Tommy’s a trained medic.

Quackity and Wilbur are...something? It’s a Skephalo situation. They could just be very affectionate friends, or they could be dating, or they could be messing with everyone. Nobody knows, and everytime they think they’ve figured it out, the two seem to magically know and do something to throw them off.

They’ve confused many, many people with their antics.

(They’re probably messing with people though, because they definitely know what they’re doing)

When the actual Enderdragon and her egg mysteriously went missing, Wilbur rounded up his friends and asked for their help in finding her-so now the group is on a quest to find her and return her to the End.

Natural Disaster Mod AU:

Universe where world ending natural disasters just keep happening. It killed off a lot of people, but honestly, at this point, it’s been going on for years, and those that remain are pretty used to it.

Tubbo and Wilbur are followers of the Mule God, and were brought together by him. Jack and Tommy are two good friends who came together to survive. And Phil’s a top-tier survivalist who keeps an eye on the four, mostly because he’d feel bad if they died too often while they live in the area.

Though they’re all three different groups, they stick together and help each other out.

Tommy and Tubbo were childhood friends before the disasters separated them. A young Jack found Tommy and took him in, and Tubbo was saved and blessed by the Mule God. They’re still friends, but have somewhat grown apart with their differing lifestyles.

Tommy’s a penguin hybrid.

Tubbo and Wilbur have been known to try and scam people passing by, and they have tried this with everyone in the area too-the difference is the ones who stick around know better than to buy it.

Whenever Tommy wants to hang out, he declares he’s rescuing Tubbo, and steals him from whatever he’s doing. Wilbur has long since accepted that occasionally Tubbo is going to be stolen, and doesn’t even blink anymore.

Tommy wears green, and Tubbo wears red.

Storm riding is a favored sport of Tubbo’s, where you grab a hang glider and get swept up into the storm. Jack hates it, but often gets dragged along anyway.

Morph Mod AU:

Universe where shapeshifters are more common, and Tommy, Charlie, Phil, Schlatt, and Wilbur are all a clan of them.

They co-exist with humans, and actually protect the local villages they live close too.

They also spend a lot of time messing with people outside said villages, but that’s unimportant.

Charlie and Wilbur prefer to be aquatic creatures. while Phil transforms into whatever works better for the environment he’s in. Schlatt just does whatever, and Tommy usually sticks to human form, only shifting when he’s bored or he needs too.

Wilbur tried to transform into a horse once, while in fish form. He’s not sure what exactly happened, but long story short, he’s the reason for the myth of the hippocampus.

They have a house in the village, one out, and then general little areas meant for them in animal form.

Because shapeshifters are strongly group-oriented, they prefer to shift in pairs or groups. Charlie and Wilbur typically pair up, as do Schlatt and Tommy. Philza doesn’t really have that instinct as strongly, so he just stays close to them instead.

Laser Eye Mod AU:

Universe set in a futuristic setting, where, due to an ancient void deity becoming malicious, Tommy, Phil, Charlie, and Wilbur are selected to become plasma wielding cyber warriors(futuristic magical girls, basically) to fight back against such threats.

These four’s cybernetics were embued with magic to produce specific plasma that would be effective against threats.

Phil wields divine plasma, and it’s fired out from his cybernetic wings, which were implanted as a military experiment. He can even detach a feather to act as a plasma covered sword.

Tommy wields phoenix plasma, and it’s fired out of his cybernetic eyes, which were transplanted into him when he was in an accident young, rendering him blind. They allow him to see by scanning out the outlines of objects and areas, and feeding the image into his brain.

Wilbur wields soulfire plasma, which is fired from his prosthetic legs, which have a kind of mermaid-motif, with fins and all, and make him a fast swimmer.

And Charlie wields greekfire plasma, fired from his cybernetic arm-it can also fire slime-like globs that rapidly grow and incase the area they’re attached too.

Wilbur was actually the first selected for the program, but he went missing shortly after, stolen and controlled by the void deity, who turned him into quite the obstacle for the others.

They eventually rescued him from it’s control, and after he recovered, he joined the fight.

Endermen and endermen hybrids are common minions of the void deity-it seems to have End-based origins, being able to control them.

Lava Ravine Mod AU:

Universe where Phil, Charlie, Wilbur, and Tommy are all strangers, who get a mysterious invite to an unknown world. It seems like a lovely vacation at first, strangers aside, but things turn deadly when a seemingly normal ravine in the ground begins to grow, the lava inside it begins to rise, and our heroes find themselves unable to leave the world.

They soon realized they may have been selected for their ability to survive, but to do that, they’re going to have to all work together.

Tommyinnit originates from the world of RLcraft, Phil grew up in Hardcore Mode, Charlie is a fallen god from a world of chaos, and Wilbur has lived through a world like this before.

They build a giant glass and stone dome, and live within there, using their various skills to survive.

Wilbur pretty much knows how this world works to a T, and is able to predict when the lava will raise and how quickly. He knows how to survive and work around the heat.

Tommy and Phil have a variety of skills from their lives before, not limited to first aid and cooking.

And Charlie’s got a bit of godly power he can put to good use here, as well as many out-of-the-box ideas for what to do.

Charlie brought a card-game from his old world, and teaches Wilbur how to play. It becomes a favorite past time of theirs.

Jump Mod AU:

Universe where enhanced individuals have recently begun to exist. Tommy, Wilbur, and Quackity are some of many who choose to use their new abilities for their own gain, becoming thieves. They were taken under the wing of master thief Philza, who was in the game long before he gained his new powers.

Or, well, they were thieves. A job gone wrong resulted in them being caught by authorities, and forced into a deal. Once thieves for their own gain, now they’re agents for the government, stealing back what was stolen from their country.

All of them are generally more physically enhanced, with agility, endurance, and all that jazz. But they also have other abilities.

Tommy’s faster than anyone. Wilbur can refract light, essentially becoming invisible. Phil can communicate with birds. And Quackity can change the density of anything he touches, himself excluded.

Philza was actually caught because he stayed behind for his new partners. He had realized someone was looking into them, and didn’t want the younger ones going into that alone.

TNT Mod AU:

Universe where everyone is a mob hybrid, and they live divided in tribes. Tommy, Phil, Charlie, and Wilbur are a tribe/keg of creeper hybrids, who protect their territory, and cause havoc for any trespassers who happens upon them.

No one dares settle there, because these four are just as likely to swear a village’s protection as they are to laugh as they set it ablaze. It’s purely up to how they feel at the moment, finicky keg that they are.

However, there is a reason some do venture here.

Every tribe/(name for grouping of specific mob) guards a certain treasure. For the creeper boys, it’s an orchard of apple trees that grow, not only red apples, but gold ones too-and rarely, a god apple.

If you do happen to stumble upon their territory unintentionally, your best bet is to appeal to Wilbur, as he does have a soft spot for people-of course, you’ll need to make sure none of the others think you’re taking advantage of that soft spot, lest they slowly and painfully kill you for even considering it.

Creepers are very friendly to them, and see them as one of their own. Other mobs, not so much.

The orchard is surrounded by a dense forest, that’s abruptly lets up to a clearing that rings around it. This is where the keg lives, in high tree houses all connected to one another.

Their forest is their pride and joy, and it’s filled with many exotic trees and plants from around the world. Bringing them an addition for it is a sure way to assure your survival, and even gain an alliance, if it’s a really good addition.

Likewise, messing it up even slightly will immediately get you murdered.

Black Hole Mod AU:

Universe where the sun exploded and became a black hole that’s slowly consuming the world. Though many perished, some survived, with the advanced technology in the future.

Wilbur, Charlie, Phil, and Tommy are some of those survivors.

Charlie is a scientist, studying the black hole to see if there’s anyway to perhaps stop it, or survive within it once it consumes them.

Phil’s a former mercenary who came to the lab with Tommy, after finding the young student stumbling about the remains of a city.

Wilbur’s the former on-board scientist from the crew that first encountered the black hole. He was originally presumed dead, but suddenly reappeared one day, and was found nearby by Phil, who dragged him to the lab. He’s...different. He’s seen things.

Charlie and Wilbur graduated from the same university, and were actually working in the same lab before Wilbur joined his crew in space for an up-close study.

Philza has a bad habit of adopting any creature he finds, and it’s become something of a joke by the four. He adopted Tommy, he’s adopted Wilbur and Charlie, and he has quite a few birds and other creatures that followed him back.

Body Shuffle Mod AU:

Universe where glitches a common sight, and humanity has evolved alongside them.

The world basically...well, I wouldn’t say revolves around? But glitches are a large part of life at this point, and players have specifically evolved to be able to work with them.

A common glitch includes the Body Glitch, where random body parts will seemingly vanish off a person without causing them harm or effecting them.

Tommy and Charlie are Takers, people who have a special, glitch-specific gene that allows them to take a glitch effecting a being or item, and pull that effect from said being/item, and upon themselves.

They’re equally loved and hated, considering the rarity of the gene, and what uses it could be employed for.

The two have a business that they use this ability to take and relocate glitches for various purposes.

Philza and Wilbur are the two’s bodyguards turned friends, who protect them from less savory people, and suss out the ones with bad intentions.

Gas Mod AU:

Universe set in a modern fantasy world where a mysterious gas suddenly overtook the planet. Many died. A few survived-but for some of them, that was the crueler fate, as the mysterious gas began to make them monsterous creatures that sought flesh and blood.

Tommy, Charlie, Phil and Wilbur are the scattered survivors in a city overtaken by the gas, banding together to fight back the monsters born from the green fog, and stay alive.

Wilbur was formerly a cartographer on a ship. He’s also half siren, and his most priceless possession is a diamond dagger given to him by his former captain.

Charlie is a doctor, as well as a wizard. His magic pet is a slime-like dragon. Yeah, he’s not sure where the little guy came from either.

Phil got a whole cocktail of heritage, but most are sky-related, so he’s got a strong grasp on air magic, which he uses to create safe bubbles for the gang to breathe freely.

And Tommy’s a low tier human-turned demon after death- an imp, basically. He causes havoc.

They all have to wear gas mask, which are heavily enchanted to keep the gas from affecting them.

The group basically just has a weirdly domestic life in the abandoned city, after they cleared out an abandoned apartment building to chill in.

Surgery Mod:

Universe where the gang are the experiments of a mad scientist having escaped.

Tommy is a poison-based experiment, Wilbur is a Nether-based one, Philza is an End-based experiment, and Charlie is an Over-world based one.

They were all grouped together in a cell because the older three are part of the Dimension Project, and Tommy accidentally imprinted on Wilbur when he was created, meaning he would have died if he was separated from him.

The four eventually decide that they hate this life, and stage a break out with the rest of the guys experiments.

Once they escaped, they decided to travel the world as a family, exploring everything they’d never had the chance to see, and finding where they belonged in this place.

Lava Floor Mod AU:

Universe where all the oceans in the world have been replaced by lava. For Ninja, Tommy, Wilbur, and George, their get-along vacation goes south when they’re stranded alone on a chain of distant islands, far from any sign of civilization.

If they ever hope to survive, they’ll have to put their issues to the side and work together to get to the one place unaffected-the Nether.

Tommy ‘Smokes’ Notfound, and Wilbur ‘Soot’ Fortnite are the two children of the struggling couple George ‘Specs’ Notfound and Ninja ‘Bow’ Fortnite, who haven’t seen each other in years, despite still being married.

The two, knowing how close their kids were, agree to meet up so the two can hang out, which is why they ended up on this vacation on the first place.

Wilbur and Smokes would really appreciate if their parents could get along too-it’d make vacation a lot nicer without all the tension. And yes, they could worry about all the oceans turning to lava, but they won’t. Instead, they’re going to be gremlins who try to get their parents to make up, whether that means divorce, or becoming a happy couple again.

Rising Void Mod AU:

Universe where the planets are being eaten by the void. Tommy, Philza, and Quackity are all aliens who managed to escape the demise of their home planets, and crashed landed on Earth, with the intention of warning them of what was coming.

Unfortunately, the only guy around for miles is Ranboo, a conspiracy theorist who prefers his isolated mountain cabin to the city...and also is in complete denial about the existence of aliens, even if they’re standing right in front of him.

Quackity is from a planet where ores and gems have a large part of fashion culture.

Tommy’s planet was the first to fall. However, Quackity was the one who was closest to be touching, and it leaves side effects-like him occasionally hearing it’s eldritch whispering calling for him to surrender himself to it and stop fighting-

But, y’know. It’s fine. It’s all good.

(Although he does happen to be the most aware of their inevitable fate, and uses humor to cope with the knowledge that no matter how hard they try, he and these people he’s grown to care for are going to die, and there’s absolutely no way to stop that)

Sky Grid Mod AU

Universe where Ranboo is a young, lonely god born to a grid-formed world. Though he has made many interesting creations, he decides he wants someone like him. Who can listen, and answer, and love, and hate.

And the universe loves him, so it answers.

It finds two souls who’ve died too young, and puts them into his hands to mold as he wishes. One, he creates in colors of green, like grass, and emeralds, and poison alike. The other, he creates in colors of red, like lava and poppies, and warm beds.

Their names are Tubbo and Tommy, and they’re different than what he thought they’d be. They cannot be controlled or remade, but they can bleed, and they can laugh, and most importantly, they can make choices.

And they choose to love him, taking him in their embrace as a friend, treating him kindly, and as one of their own, regardless of his power or abilities.

The three make a home in the gridded world, finding themselves and never fearing the fall, because the world loves both it’s godling, and the people made within it.

Terraforming The Moon AU:

Universe where the remains of humanity have fled to the moon upon the destruction of earth. They unintentionally awake age-old space deities, who, luckily for them, feel like lending a hand-mostly.

Wilbur is the only actual deity of the moon, but the rest of the SBI spend more time there than they don’t, because humans are interesting.

Tommy’s the youngest god, a deity of the stars within their young galaxy-it’s a position that was passed onto him by the former star deity, Clara.

Technoblade is the deity of both Mars and Venus. He’s actually been to Earth a few times before it’s destruction, and finds their cultures fascinating-particularly the Greek and Romans.

Philza is the god of the End. The oldest, he’s not just a deity, he’s a primordial of the end of all things. Truthfully, it was the very end of Earth that awoke him from his slumber, and it’s former inhabitants interesting lives that keep him awake.

They all pick a human to favor, and help out. Changes on the day.

Honestly, they aren’t necessarily malicious? They don’t really consider the fact that humans don’t have the same limitations and powers as them, so occasionally they fuck something up that somebody worked hard on, and don’t understand why they don’t just fix it already, not realizing that the humans actually have to take awhile to do that.

One Hundred Player Laboratory AU:

Universe set in modern time.

Wilbur and Technoblade are two university students trying to do a study for their finals-unfortunately, the rats they were supposed to use are both oddly sentient, and incredibly chaotic.

Techno and Wilbur are doing a study of behavior, and other scientific things. To do this, Techno has built a large, complex maze/building thing.

And Wilbur purchased a bunch of rats-except, he probably should have been a bit more careful who he bought from, becomes these rats definitely understand human speech, are all not normally colored, and desire to be as annoying and detrimental to their grades as possible.

To put it lightly, it’s not going well.

George’s If You Laugh You Lose Rematch AU:

Universe set in a chaotic, light-hearted world.

Sapnap, Karl, George, and Dream are some of the world’s residents.

Karl and Dream are chaotic shapeshifters who enjoy messing with George.

Sapnap’s a mischievous nether spirit who likes to team up and help them do it.

Karl can shift into objects, and Dream can turn into animals.

The whole world is comedic, and all it’s residents have a permanent case of the giggles-to the point of making a game of how long one can hold off laughing.

Sapnap usually takes the form of an enderman or enderman hybrid

#dream smp #dream smp au #tubbo #ranboo #tommyinnit #philza #technoblade #charlie slimecicle #quackity #georgenotfound #dreamwastaken #karl jacobs #wilbur soot #sapnap #Bits And Bobs of AUs And Mods AU

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mallowstep · 3 years

Note

📖 (foxstride)

ask thingy

@foxstride

okay i mentioned this to you on discord but i didn't go into it but. okay. okay. the au where mistyfoot is hawk, moth, and tadpole's mother. this has been just. it's been chewing on my brain and i don't know when i'm going to write it so since u gave me a blank canvas, i'm going to ramble about it for as long as i can.

cw: implied/referenced sexual assault; brief suicidal ideation; standard tigerclan content (abuse, child abuse, starvation, dehumanization, etc.); referenced force feeding

okay oh my gosh okay. this has. so obviously i've been thinking about riverclan lately. a lot. it's rcam. anyway. i don't want. i'm trying to get to the point and not loop around aimlessly for two hundred words but okay but okay. anyway.

i've been thinking of all the different ways i can deeply traumatize misty, storm, and feather. and maybe stone. maybe i'll let stone live at some point. that'd be fun.

right so i've been thinking of that and my ideas are all over the place. i'm going to let primrosepaw live at some point. at one point i'm going to have stormpaw, and maybe primrosepaw or reedpaw (and...what's the other one? is it perchpaw or pikepaw? whatever) the point is i'll have some collection of stormpaw and some or all of mistyfoot's kits escape but not misty and feather so we can do survivor's guilt and.

anyway so i was writing the excerpt for the primrosepaw is definitely there au (it's kind of not Tethered because most of these aren't mutually incompatible like that au could be any of the others), and tigerstar has that dialogue about kits yeah?

so when i was writing it, i was thinking about just. he's trying to dehumanize all of them, right? that's his goal with that line. he's separating mistyfoot from her kits, trying to erase the meaning of their relationships. that's like. that's what i was considering when i was writing it.

buuuuuuut. y'know. my brain is chewing on it. and it just. hm. Hm. what if. what If tadpole, moth, and hawk were misty and tiger kits. hm. hmm. hm.

and so i am just instantly. very on board with this. there's so much potential.

so i Think the point of canon divergence is the rescue attempt. i haven't decided if stormpaw is successfully rescued or not. featherpaw doesn't for reasons i'm circling around to, but stormpaw may or may not. it certainly Matters in a broad sense but i haven't made up my mind, and i doubt i'm going to write Multiple aus about this. i mean i might u never know but it'd b like writing an alternate stolag: i mean i suppose i Could but it would feel weird.

okay almost burnt my dinner i said i'm very this has just been slowly rotting my brain out. i like Angst and it's been a while since i've written any.

okay there was fmtws but really that got me started. i'm not a fluff person. and y'all know that by now.

so Back On Topic. so Anyway after the rescue attempt fails/partially fails, tigerstar takes his anger out at the apprentices being Alive on featherpaw and she gets to. uh. help tigerclan practice fighting.

"Let me see her," Mudfur hissed. "No," Tigerstar said. "I've told you." Mudfur growled. Featherpaw dragged herself to her feet, and Mistyfoot glanced back at her. They would leave they would leave they would leave and then she could lie down again and try not to think. "You're not my leader," Mudfur said, and Featherpaw winced. Mistyfoot could see what was going on, but she was sitting still as a stone. Mudfur pressed into their — Mudfur pressed in, laying a wrapped bundle at Mistyfoot's feet. "Let me—" "No," Mistyfoot said. "Just go." Mudfur dipped his head. Tigerstar's steps moved away from them, but the shouts and arguments surrounding Mudfur were just buzzing noise in Featherpaw's head. She made out, "She's going to die," and she thought, that wouldn't be the worst thing.

thank You featherpaw. you will suffer for the au as a whole. anyway this takes place...i'm not Quite sure but mistyfoot does have a reason for not letting mudfur in. and that reason is she is in Denial about being pregnant.

if mudfur comes in he'll know (i have not forgotten that cats can smell unlike the erins), and mistyfoot is acting in denial. altho she rationalizes it to herself as being for mudfur's protection: runningnose is a medicine cat too, and so tigerstar could off mudfur without much effort.

(also i tend to mix up mudfur and mudclaw sometimes understand i am talking about the riverclan medicine cat, not the windclan deputy. i just mistype them sometimes.)

anyway so she has a legitimate reason (mudfur's continual survival, which is better for her and featherpaw longterm), and she does not want mudfur to know.

yeah.

all in all, this happens before the great battle. mistyfoot fights in it (again, denial), featherpaw and stormpaw are reunited (yes i think i made up my mind), (wait maybe stonefur lives too, and then both pairs of siblings reconnect, and stonefur is like "oh Shit" and. okay yes. maybe. i don't know.)

(there's a Lot. ohh maybe. wait best of both worlds okay. mistyfoot Thinks stonefur is dead. but stonefur doesn't get a proper burial but at the same time riverclan is Not going to go for their deputy on bonepile and even if they do go for it, they're not going to stripe his bones nor are they going to let a Physical Cat Corpse rot in camp. so when firestar and greystripe rescue stormpaw, stormpaw Insists they go back for his body, and then they realize he's Alive but obviously mistyfoot doesn't know.)

(there then i get the Best of both worlds. and stonefur and feathertail are in the Chronic Pain club.)

(also the thing w/ fighting is also what happens in "someday when the world is much brighter". not that Particular scene or in that Particular way, but it does happen. i mean almost exactly in that particular way. but that scene is from a different fic.)

anyway okay moving on i did add too much chili powder to my dinner but that's fine i'm still not over when someone refused to give me more harissa because "it's spicy" like yes i know i guarantee my mom makes it spicier.

back on topic sorry. i've been writing this as i do other things bc i have so much to say about this and i don't want to wait for tomorrow to share this because it's been just Rotting away my brain.

anyway so siblings reunite. it's...terse. it's complicated.

there's some parallels going on right? like because both featherpaw and stormpaw are basically in the mindset of looking after their mentors (which mistyfoot and stonefur feel Terrible about), everyone has survivor's guilt (i don't know what to call like, survivor's guilt when it's not actually survivor's guilt so if someone has a correct word please let me know) except for Maybe featherpaw.

featherpaw might be the Only one here who doesn't have survivor's guilt. i don't really want to explore the one way she could end up with it. that's past my comfort level at the moment.

but stormpaw and mistyfoot are the most physically healthy, and stormpaw and stonefur escaped.

stormpaw: i have not been hurt by this in any way

everyone around stormpaw: you have definitely been hurt by this

stormpaw: i have not been hurt by this in any way

stormpaw and featherpaw become warriors, leopardstar makes mistyfoot deputy (because stonefur is still recovering and also no longer wants the position. mistyfoot doesn't either but she's in denial and she doesn't want anyone else to have it. mistyfoot is visibly pregnant and still kind of in denial at this point. like it's been at least a moon and she is refusing to talk about it.)

right so i think stormpaw's name is going to be stormheart because i don't know it was always weird to me that stormfur and stonefur have the same suffix. like given Everything that's going on it feels weird to me. ig it'd actually be less weird in this, given that stonefur is still alive, but do you know How Close stonefur and stormfur are. they're one consonant cluster off. they're One consonant cluster off.

so leopardstar names him stormheart. feathertail can keep her name because it's pretty.

mistyfoot is a moon away from kitting. she refuses to talk about it. to anyone. whatsoever.

feathertail and stonefur decide to stage an intervention.

(they leave stormheart out not because he's not part of the found family, but because mistyfoot literally will not tolerate a single word about this. like a single word. like she will growl at you if you look at her stomach for too long.

so given the fairly high odds that mistyfoot gets violent, they keep stormheart out of it. she's the least likely to attack stonefur and feathertail.

stormheart finds out about this later and is like "do you guys realize if this went south you had absolutely 0 control over the situation. like what are you guys going to do. you incapable of doing anything to stop her if something goes wrong."

feathertail is like "yes. that's the point."

feathertail is both kind of right and also very internally messed up from being used for "training" when she wasn't allowed to fight back. feathertail also hates if you call her by just her prefix. she does not tell anyone this. misty is aware of this, and she tells stone and storm, and riverclan does eventually figure it out. plus it's not like feathertail is close enough to anyone else for them to call her "feather".

okay i'm getting off topic sorry i've been working on a tpb thing for swtwimb, and the one scene i have is cats making fun of her for not fighting back (again she is not allowed to they might kill her if she does), so they call her "featherkit" and that eventually gets brought down to feather and i'm rambling anyway On topic again.)

so stonefur and feathertail are like. "mistyfoot you are like. a half moon away from kitting. it is impairing your ability to do warrior duties. you need to like. acknowledge this."

anyway after a very terse conversation. after a veeery terse conversation, where mistyfoot is like. very close to just absolutely abandoning riverclan. they get her to admit that yes she is pregnant and yes she needs to stop doing warrior duties for the moment.

she wasn't exactly Healthy when she was pregnant because even tho tigerstar made a Point of making her like. eat enough to be healthy and also not violently attacking her. she had still been starved for...idk long enough for her ribs to show. i'm not sure what the exact timeline on this is yet.

also then After Tigerclan she did not eat as much as she should have because (a) denial and (b) she had been forcefed and so now she's. not doing that.

oh wow i've written long enough for my grammar checker to turn off again. that hasn't happened in ages.

all bets are off from here on out re grammar and spelling.

okay so mistyfoot isn't going to move into the nursery. i believe mosspelt has had a litter of 3 kits, or will have one as we see in asir, but mistyfoot isn't. she's not moving into it. stone, misty, storm, and feathertail share a den. no one else is allowed into it for Any Reason.

so anyway, they expand the den. riverclan as a whole might? i'm not sure who's good at weaving bc i don't have headcanons for this time period. probably not feathertail, but possibly stonefur. hm. anyway, they expand the den, mistyfoot will raise the kits in this den, everyone is on board with this.

mostly because it's this or mistyfoot like. runs away. which obviously no one wants. riverclan is on the side of...the four? riverclan is on the side of the four. even if they're not like, even though the four don't trust them, feathertail and misty especially (stone and storm tolerate it much better). but even tho things are complicated, riverclan is certainly going to do actions. they're certainly going to try to demonstrate their support.

okay so mistyfoot gives birth to her kits, and she is. not feeling good. about it. she's feeling terrible about it actually. she's feeling terrible about things. she doesn't want to name them.

usuuually in this situation, after the queens (collective) decided its in the best interest of the kits to be raised by someone other than their birth mother, the kits would be given to another queen.

but see. feathertail, stonefur, and stormheart are All attatched to these kits. deeply attatched to them. and mistyfoot is not willing to give them up either.

so mistyfoot isn't willing to give them up to another riverclan queen, and feathertail, stone, and storm all Want to raise them, and also don't want to give them to another queen.

the queens confer with mudfur that it is absolutely the worst possible thing they could do to forcibly remove the kits from mistyfoot. like that is the Worst option. they'd be lucky to get the kits alive, feathertail and mistyfoot are likely to abandon riverclan, and if misty and feathertail abandon riverclan, stone and storm will follow.

they're stuck in a standstill for a while. the four eventually do name them hawkkit, mothkit, and tadpolekit. the kits are about a moon old and ready to be weaned. mistyfoot is still extremely tense about the affair, but she's willing to part with them. she's able to recognize that's in the best interest of the kits, mosspelt's litter is about the same age, moving them into the nursery is going to give them a more normal upbringing, everyone is on the same page.

feathertail, who's having a lot of self worth issues, decides that moving into the nursery is her best bet for clan usefulness (which (a) feathertail you cannot keep up with kits and (b) the whole Place she's in is bad to begin with), moves in with them.

the kits decide feathertail is their mother now (they're old enough to understand that she didn't give birth to them, altho i haven't decided if they remember misty as their mother and if they're told any information re their birth parents depends exactly What kind of angst i want to write), and feathertail is. okay with this.

unlike asir, she's not blindsided with the tigerstar-is-their-father reveal, so she does have some issues with hawkkit reminding her of tigerstar, he's not really her Big Bad Trauma Nightmares. she has way more issues with the riverclan warriors directly involved in her abuse.

anyway, i don't know what happens tnp era stuff. i haven't gotten that far yet. maybe this will be another au where hawk and/or moth is a prophecy cat. i'm not sure. i haven't gotten farther than this.

but here you go i started writing this like an hour and a half ago and while i did stop to eat, i also just finally put everything i have for this au on one page and i hope and pray that will stave off the brainrot until i have a chance to actually write it.

#long #like 2.5k words of me just Talking #but this has just been consuming my brain holy shit #thanks for giving me unrestrained access to just talk about it #also like for anyone interested in this ask game #i'm not going to give you something this dark #unless you ask off anon and i know you're okay with that #i already mentioned this to fox #usually i don't talk about anything above pg-13 on tumblr but this has been literally rotting my brain away #i have never meant brain rot so literally #ask #ask game #mine #txt

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mimicmew · 3 years

Text

Updated list and info of the species in the Monster AU!

Since some people seemed interested.. here we go!

If you’d like to add your OC or make a new character for this au, use these as a basis! Feel free to ask me any questions if you’re curious or unsure. ALSO IT’S VERY LONG

Humans

CANON CHARACTERS: none lol

- Humans are the basic species of this world.

- They can rarely learn magic and become mages, but most cannot.

- Most humans fear and hate monsters, hunting them down and killing them.

- The Pale Kingdom, regarded as the most hateful kingdom, is currently under attack from a dangerous dragon and it’s siren ‘companion.’ They have managed to cool this by sending regular sacrifices to the ocean.

Sirens

CANON CHARACTERS; Mono, Thin Man

- Sirens are very uncommon, as many of them are hunted down by other species when young, as they are very dangerous.

- Sirens live in pods consisting of 3-15 members. These pods usually exist of siblings from the same hatching, and rarely separate pods fuse to make larger groups. This is uncommon as Sirens are often quite territorial.

- Babies are called pups.

- Sirens never cut their hair, unless they lose a battle. A siren with long hair is to be feared, as they are undefeated in combat.

- For design, Sirens have normal skin colours until their waist, where it fuses into scales. These scales are usually cool colours such as blue, green or purple, and fade into a darker or lighter shade down their tails. They have fins on the sides of their faces that open and close as they emote. They have bright spots across their tail, face and hands. The spots are usually warm colours such as red, yellow or orange. These spots are different shapes depending on where the Siren is from. The only canon ones right now are the eye-shaped spots that both Mono and Thin Man have, so go wild with the shapes! They’ll usually wear shirts as a way of mimicking humans.

- Their magic can be very varied, but is always tied to their voices. A siren without a voice is a dead siren.

- Siren’s grow for their entire life! They grow to about 8 ft by 18, and then they grow roughly half a metre a year, so as you could guess, Thin Man is very long.

Centaurs

CANON CHARACTERS; The Hunter, The Toddler

- Centaurs live in large herds, ranging anywhere from 20 to over 100.

- They live in both forests and open plains.

- They are very naturalist and believe in not taking any more then they need.

- They have a belief that the face (Particularly the eyes) is the most vulnerable place for spirits to enter, so at a certain age, (around 5 years old) they begin to wear masks. This can range anywhere from beautifully hand-carved wooden masks to just… a sack.

- Centaurs have long hair that runs down their back like a mane. It’s not uncommon for centaurs of any age, no matter the gender, to grow out beards or chest hair.

Gorgons

CANON CHARACTERS; The Lady, The Lady’s unnamed mother

- Gorgons come from a long line of cursed humans, which have split off to its own species. They are very rare and usually exist in powerful families.

- Gorgons are almost only female, and can reproduce with the same sex.

- Gorgons have rock-hard scales that are always muted colours. Their underbellies are a lighter colour. The snakes that make up their ‘hair’ can be any colour.

- Gorgon’s eyes can turn people into stone through their eyes, so most cover their eyes.

Harpies

CANON CHARACTERS; Raincoat Girl

- Harpies are tall, with their human arms replaced by large bird-like wings. Their legs are much like that of a bird of prey’s. The can have feathers on any place of their bodies.

- They often resemble an existing species of bird, from a bright scarlet macaw to a pitch-black crow.

- Some harpies live in large flocks, while others live alone.

- they usually wear long singlets that do not cover their shoulders, as to avoid restricting their wings.

- They often gather odd trinkets and items.

Fauns

CANON CHARACTERS; Runaway Kid

- Fauns are the deer-like cousins of centaurs

- They usually live alone in dense forests, but can sometimes be seen travelling with centaur herds.

- They have horns that can be any shape, and long, floppy ears.

Gargoyles

CURREN CHARACTERS; The Janitor, The Wax Bellman

- Not much to say, usually just enchanted statues. Aren’t always made of stone, and can be made of most materials.

- Can really look like anything.

- Usually made to serve a master.

- Don’t need to eat, sleep or drink.

Changelings

CANON CHARACTERS; The Pretender

- Changelings are creatures that, after having a hatchling, will sneak into a human’s house, usually kill or dispose of the human’s child and replace it with their own. Because of this, many changelings grow up unaware of the fact that they are changelings until they grow older.

- They have two forms, a regular human one, and a more monstrous one, often resembling some kind of insect or reptile.

Cyclops

CANON CHARACTERS; The Twin Chefs, The Lollipop boy

- uhh just big Cyclops honestly not much in terms of lore or design.

- Usually very tall and large.

Zombies

CANON CHARACTERS; The Viewers, Some of the Guests, The Doctor

- Zombies can be made in many ways. However, the ones in this area are specifically made by the haunting songs of the Siren.

- They are killed by the first song, then slowly revived by the second, usually over a timespan of about 5 months.

- These zombies are mostly unfortunate humans who got too close, or sacrifices. They can be of any species, however.

Werebeasts

CANON CHARACTERS: Six (werewolf)

- Werebeasts are a collection of species. Some of the most well known are the Werewolves, but many more exist, such are wereboars, werebears and werecats.

- They usually resemble humans, but after some time will shift into a monstrous half-humna, half-animal form. Some will change back, while others will remain like that forever.

- They act very similar to their animals. Some are more human, while others are almost entirely beast.

Ghosts

CANON CHARACTERS; The Sheet Kid, The Glitching Remains

- Just funky little ghosts! usually only of people who died tragic deaths :(

- Usually have stains on their face resembling tears, and can seem like they are fading away, missing parts of their bodies.

Dragons

CURRENT CHARACTERS; The Eye, The ‘Hunger’, The North Wind

- Ancient and powerful beasts, dragons are the most dangerous species to roam this world.

- If you’re going to make a dragon, try to use it for very powerful entities. Double check with me if you’re unsure.

- They can really look like anything, as there are many subspecies, such as wyverns, wyrms, hydras and more. However, they are unfortunately dying out at a rapid rate.

- They cannot die of old age, only of illness or injury.

- They usually have very strong magical abilities.

- While not always evil, most dragons will horde things. These can be jewels, people, plants or anything really.

ALSO:

Here are some species that might exist, but I dont have any proper lore on yet

- Shapeshifters

- Vampires

- elementals (living elements)

- half-borns (people who are half-animal, half-human)

- Fae

- Selkie

And these are just the ‘sentient’ species! Many mythical animals exist too, such as Phoenix or Unicorn, but are only. animals

#monster au #updated version of the monster au species!!!#little nightmares #little nightmares au #besties please #also if anyone wants to suggest any new species or ideas feel free! this is a very loose guide so you can really bend the rules if you want #anyway if someone does make this I would kiss them /p #please tag me if u do btw!!

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fanficsforheartandsoul · 4 years

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Courtship | [Obi-Wan Kenobi x M!Reader] | Star Wars

Notes: This is inspired by @xmalereader Mandalorian x Dark Fey! Reader story. I absolutely adore his stories and the concept, therefore I wanted to write something similar, only with Obi-Wan.

Although this is based off Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, I just mainly used the character designs, while deciding the culture of the Dark Fey myself. So it could be interpreted as an AU

Fandoms: Star Wars, The Clone Wars, Maleficent AU

Warnings: Heartbreak, Slight Fluff, Slight OOC, Obi-Wan Being Oblivious

Summary: Obi-Wan knows nothing about courtship and causes a huge misunderstanding.

Word Count: 7′455

Taglist: -

If you want to be tagged in my stories send me a pm with the fandom/character name! Or comment on the fic :)

Masterlist

Reader is a Dark Fey!

Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka had been on an undercover rescue mission when the transport ship that should have taken them back to the Core Worlds malfunctioned.

That only worsened the mood because their mission target had died and Obi-Wan had gotten his lightsaber destroyed in the process.

Anakin, the great pilot he was, decided it was for the best to try and land on the nearest planet and get help.

But none of them had expected that the small multicolored ball they had landed on only housed a few inhabitants - most of which had never seen a spaceship, or even a droid.

Thankfully they found one of the more progressive tribes.

They had a person who spoke Basic, and fortunately, C-3PO was with them for the rescue mission, so they had another way to communicate. Although, the language of the natives was only partly in his database.

The alien race who lived on the small planet was a species they had never seen before. They were all winged, with feathers of different colors and lengths, and two large horns that were different for each individual.

They called themselves Dark Fey, however the name didn't seem accurate. At least not for him. Dark wasn't a word Obi-Wan would have associated with them.

Especially not with the man who had taken them in.

Y/N was the son of the tribe chief of the village, and his wings reminded the Jedi of a butterfly in one of the Jedi gardens. They were mainly orange, with a speck of white and black and some small blue dots.

His father's wings were even more colorful, but Obi-Wan preferred the ones of the son because they were less shrill.

And like the color of his wings, Y/N was kinder than his father. He wanted to help them find a way back to Coruscant.

"Father, we need to help them," argued the h/c-haired man, his eyes glistening with annoyance when his stubborn parent crossed his arms and flipped his wings.

The three Jedi were currently in one of the giant tree trunks, in the forest where the Fey resided, in a room as big as the Jedi Archives. It seemed to be the tribe's meeting hall.

Y/N's father Aster sat on a throne made out of small tree branches, his red and orange wings spread wide behind his back.

"Don't act like that, please," groaned Y/N, and Anakin and Obi-Wan only watched with furrowed brows, not understanding what kind of conversation was going on between the two men.

C-3PO informed them about the dispute between the son and the father, and they realized that the tribe chief did not want them here.

Ahsoka happily munched on the fruits that one of the younger Fey had brought, oblivious or more likely ignorant of the tense atmosphere in the hall.

Although the Fey appeared not to welcome them, they still provided them with some hospitality. The Togruta flashed a toothy grin at one of the kids, and they giggled.

"You know exactly why I don't want to help them!"

Y/N's father looked at the three Jedi with a stern expression, and the only person in the room who wanted to support them huffed in anger.

"We'll be careful!"

The tension suddenly rose, and Obi-Wan assumed it was because the younger's wings now rose too, his feathers ruffled.

"May I say something?" he asked carefully, all eyes then turned to him.

The five women next to Aster leaned forward to listen, they were probably the elders of the tribe.

Y/N turned to him, his eyes held a hint of displeasure, and Obi-Wan gulped, now asking himself if he had just made a big mistake.

"Speak, human," ordered the tribe chief, the Fey who spoke Basic translated, and he bowed slightly, then made eye contact with Y/N's father.

"We are only looking for a spaceship that can take us off-planet. We don't want to burden you with our presence and neither wish to harm you, we can also camp outside your land if you wish us to."

The pupils of Aster shrank considerably, the air turned cold, and Ahsoka stopped eating. Anakin gave him a worried glance, and the Jedi realized that he had said or done something wrong.

He lowered his gaze, and Anakin mimicked his posture, his hand gripping his lightsaber inside his sleeve tighter.

Silence reigned over them, and Obi-Wan tried to catch a glimpse of the tribe chief, but then Y/N stepped before him, obstructing his view.

"Father...", he began, but Aster interrupted him, standing up from his throne, wings now spreading even further, showing his hostility.

"You became a burden when you stepped foot on this planet!", he snarled and descended the stairway made out of the giant tree.

His son held his ground and ruffled his feathers. A single feather touched Obi-Wan's cheek, and he flinched from the softness.

He looked upwards, and the man before them looked like an unmovable stone, an unbeatable protector, who had descended from heaven to help them.

"They did not know, Father! And they had no choice either!"

Y/N's voice now sounded as agitated as his father's, and the situation was about to escalate - although the Jedi did not know into what - when a calm voice suddenly spoke:

"Believe in your son, Aster."

Everyone in the hall turned toward the gigantic entrance where a single Dark Fey had landed.

It was a woman with snow-white wings and silky hair that reached her hips. The present Fey bowed, and the Jedi knew that the newcomer was a respected figure within the tribe.

From the way Y/N smiled at her and how the woman opened her arms wide, she probably was related to him, although their features showed no real resemblances, besides maybe the eyebrows. Y/N hugged her without hesitation.

"You're back," stated Aster, and his wings slightly relaxed.

The woman smiled and then turned to Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka.

"I apologize that I could not greet you when you arrived here. I am Neela, and you're names are?" she spoke in Basic, and all three of them were surprised.

Although it probably shouldn't shock them that much, when they first met Y/N, he also spoke the language.

The translator seemed to have taught it to the ones who wanted to learn it.

Anakin introduced himself first, a brilliant smile on his lips. Obi-Wan rolled his eyes in his mind. His former padawan had probably realized that Neela seemed to be the only one who could tame the tribe chief to some extent.

Ahsoka greeted the woman with a respectful bow, and Obi-Wan did the same when he said his name.

He stole a glance towards Y/N who's lips now showed a triumphant grin. The man noticed his stare and winked at him. His expression was something along the lines of 'Don't worry, we got this'.

It seemed like the arrival of the white-haired woman turned the tides in their favor.

"I heard you are stranded. Your arrival here is of great significance for us. My husband knows that, and his caution is not unreasonable. We do not wish to get involved with the galactic conflicts that are waging right now, I hope you understand."

So, she's Aster's wife... But Y/N truly doesn't resemble her.

Obi-Wan was curious about the woman. She knew more about the galaxy than the rest of the Dark Fey, or so it seemed.

He nodded, and Anakin replied:

"We do. None of us wants to involve you in the war, we're just trying to return home. Our ship is badly damaged, therefore we wanted to find someone who can take us with them."

While Neela asked about their transmitters, Aster's face darkened, the further the conversation continued, but he did not interrupt his wife.

Ahsoka's eyes glistened with respect, and Obi-Wan could imagine what she was thinking. Aster may be the tribe chief, but Neela held the reins in their relationship, which influenced the whole tribe and important decisions.

Anakin then informed them of the last SOS-signal they had sent before they breached the atmosphere of the planet.

"Someone is probably already looking for us," added Obi-Wan, and Aster's eyes turned into slits.

"They will come and force us to leave!" he growled, more towards his wife than the Jedi.

Neela turned around to face her husband, and he visibly flinched. The woman spread her white wings, and her wingspan was even wider than her husband's and Y/N's. Her aura was way more intimidating than the tribe chief’s one.

"They won't stay, I will make sure of that."

She spoke in their native language, but C-3PO translated it, although reluctantly, and the underlying threat worried Obi-Wan.

If no one arrives will they try to kill us?

But Aster relaxed, and he stepped towards his wife, their foreheads touched, and the tribe chief sighed.

Neela's wings lowered, and she then turned around again, her hand on her husband's back.

"You are welcome to stay until your friends arrive. We will make sure that they will find you."

Their action before not only was a display of intimacy but also an opportunity for a silent conversation, where they had decided if they would help the Jedi or not.

Relief washed over Obi-Wan, and Anakin's shoulders relaxed.

As if on cue ran the Fey children from the one corner of the hall towards Ahsoka, and they laughed and fluttered their wings excitedly. They spoke a few words in broken Basic and twirled around her.

The Togruta blinked in surprise and then joined their happy laughs and followed them to their friends.

Obi-Wan and his former padawan cautiously stood up. Anakin only watched when the small bird-like kids kidnapped the Togruta, his expression showing a hint of worry.

"She will be fine," said a calm voice, and the Jedi knights’ heads turned towards Y/N, who had walked closer.

"I'm worried she'll do something offensive," confessed Anakin, and the man laughed loudly.

His head tilted back, showing a necklace with a long blue feather and his wings flapped wildly.

"Not to be mean, but you already offended us greatly, another misstep won't matter."

The Fey continued to laugh when he saw their upset expressions.

"Don't fret it. it's already a miracle that your droid knows parts of our language. How would you know about our culture."

Neela joined their talk. Her eyes focused on Anakin.

"May I talk to you?"

He shared a look with Obi-Wan and then shrugged his shoulders.

"Sure," he responded, and they distanced themselves, Obi-Wan now being left alone with the chief's son.

"Why..." he began, unsure whether he should ask or not.

"She can feel he's special."

He lifted an eyebrow.

"Feel?"

Y/N turned his in Neela's direction.

"Mother is like you. She was chosen too."

Obi-Wan could guess what Y/N meant, and it honestly didn't surprise him as much as it probably should have. The moment Neela had stepped into the hall, the force had changed around them.

"What about you?" he asked curiously.

Y/N's expression turned somewhat solemn.

"No, I- I wasn't chosen. It's not possible."

The Fey's hand grabbed his necklace, and his wings quivered.

Obi-Wan realized he had touched a sore spot and decided not to pry further.

"Come with me", said Y/N after a short while, and his smile returned to his lips.

"I'll show you where you guys can stay."

The Jedi followed him out of the hall, after glancing back one last time to see Anakin and Ahsoka standing surrounded by Fey.

Y/N lead him across the branches of the giant tree, which seemed to be the main living area of the tribe.

Twice, they used a hoist to travel higher up, the Fey explaining that they had been built for their youngest who couldn't fly yet.

The Jedi could stay in a room, hollowed out of the main branch. The room was sparsely decorated with wooden furniture, and instead of beds, there were three hammocks made out of thick green fabric that felt considerably softer than it looked.

Obi-Wan put his small backpack he had taken from the ship on the table and then turned towards Y/N.

"Thank you for everything."

He smiled at the Fey, and the man's expression twitched.

"It's fine", he responded curtly, and before Obi-Wan could ask if something was wrong, he had already passed through the leaf curtain that gave the room some privacy and jumped off the branch.

Obi-Wan stayed behind with a somewhat worried expression. He remembered what the man had said before. “You already offended us greatly.”

Hopefully they weren’t digging their own graves.

They stayed on the small planet, in the giant forest for about a month, and in the beginning, they held their respectable distance from the Dark Fey.

They got invited to meals and attended them, but only Y/N, Neela, and the translator, who turned out to be a teacher and one of the only Fey who had left the planet before, really talked to them.

If the children were excluded.

They had a great time with Ahsoka, and she played with them and even found some friends in her age group, who were studying under Danosh, the translator. Thanks to him, most of the children could speak a few words in Basic, allowing Ahsoka to communicate with them.

Aster had instructed the tribe members to treat them with respect and give them everything they needed, but his hospitality ended there.

He did not include them in any kind of activities the tribe performed besides the meals.

The Dark Fey were a close-knitted species, and the tribe of Y/N did almost everything together. They ate together, hunted together, played together, and even slept together.

They seemed very suspicious of strangers - at least the adults - and they mostly kept to themselves, only talking to the Jedi if necessary.

While Ahsoka got mostly occupied with the children, Anakin's attention got caught by Neela, with whom he even traveled to one of the Fey's sacred places for the Chosen.

Obi-Wan got mostly accompanied by Y/N, but he did not mind that at all.

He enjoyed the other's presence, and his open-hearted character and he talked with the man about all kinds of things.

He told him stories about the Jedi, the beauty of the Jedi gardens on Coruscant, the vast ice tundras of Ilum, and the force.

On the other hand, Y/N taught him about the Fey culture, the significance of one's first flight, the meaning of life according to the elders.

He told Obi-Wan the story of the Batellia flower, that would soon bloom at a day the tribe celebrated.

"The flower blooms for a very short time and then it dies, its roots forming a bond with another plant."

Obi-Wan had asked the Fey why they celebrated that day then.

"Batellia portrays the honest truth of our lives. We live, we die and then we join the Ancestors and the Phoenix Mother."

Y/N also told the Jedi about the worst punishment a Fey could receive - losing one's wings, and the importance of death in their culture.

But one thing he did not talk about because he thought Obi-Wan knew.

For him, it was obvious; Something even the wingless humans should know about, but well...

Maybe the Jedi were just too dumb.

"What's that?" asked Anakin, pointing at the shimmering blue stone on Obi-Wan's nightstand while drying his hair.

He looked at the stone he was pointing at.

"It's a present from Y/N. It's a "Soulstone" according to him. It glows in the dark."

He smiled faintly, remembering when Y/N gave it to him.

It's already been three weeks since they had stranded on the small planet, and the Fey had found them. And he and the chief’’s son had formed a close bond.

They had traveled twice to their spaceship, Obi-Wan showing it to him and explaining the mechanisms while Y/N watched from a safe distance, seemingly too scared to approach the metal beast.

Y/N also accompanied him to highest tree they had, trying to send another SOS signal. He caught him, when he almost slipped and Obi-Wan clung to him like dear life, because they were so high up.

The Fey had only laughed, his eyes glimmering with something Obi-Wan couldn’t quite place.

His former padawan looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"And the one next to it? Also a present?"

"All of them are presents, Anakin", said Ahsoka, who had suddenly appeared and now strut to her backpack, a new load of her favorite fruits in her arms.

"What about me? I want a present from Y/N too."

The Togruta eyed him strangely, then muttered something to herself and grinned.

"They are just things he had found on his regular trips to the river," Obi-Wan said, trying to calm Anakin.

Although he also questioned why he seemingly was the only one who regularly received gifts from Y/N.

On the other hand, he felt a tingling sensation in his chest, somewhat proud that the Fey apparently viewed him as special.

"Did Neela not give you a present?"

Anakin shook his head but then replied: "I don't really care, the things I've learned on our trips to their temples are more than enough. Did you know that the Chosen use the power of their emotions to strengthen their force abilities? They aren't unleashing them like the Sith, apparently, but I don't really understand the difference yet. Neela will tell me more tomorrow. She's busy with the preparations of today's feast."

Anakin's voice was full of excitement while he talked, and Obi-Wan got reminded of his early padawan days when the boy had commented on every little thing with amazement.

"What's different this time?" he asked, Ahsoka watching the both of them silently, her fruits now stored in her backpack for tomorrow when she would go on a trip with one of the Fey at her age.

"They will perform dances after eating. It's going to be quite a spectacle, according to Neela. She wanted us to stay and witness it."

Obi-Wan furrowed his brows, sitting up from his lying position in his hammock.

"Is that really such a good idea? Aster still doesn't seem too keen on having us around."

Anakin shook his head and pointed at him.

"No, we must come. Especially you, the chief actually requested it."

The Jedi's eyes widened.

Aster personally demanded that he attended? Why?

Obi-Wan wasn't delighted to see the dances after hearing that, and he went to the daily feast with a queasy gut feeling.

The meal went like normal.

The Fey sat in groups in the big hall, various bowls with different dishes on the ground, some of them vegetarian, some with fish, others with meat.

The ages were mixed, and Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, and Anakin got accompanied by several small Fey who had played with the Togruta before.

Normally, Y/N and Neela would be in their circle too, but this evening they were nowhere to be seen.

"Probably still preparing", said Ahsoka, and Anakin nodded with a full mouth.

They both anticipated the dances, while he was the only one who somehow couldn't.

He just worried why Aster would want him to be there.

Not having Y/N around made it worse. The man had acted as a calming presence in the last few weeks, and Obi-Wan had begun to like him a lot.

The Fey was thirsty for knowledge, kind, and also understanding. He liked to listen and Obi-Wan always felt some sort of proudness, when he could guess Y/N’s thoughts or feelings correctly from the way his wings and feathers moved.

The Fey seemed to shine like a light, he was very popular with the others of his species, especially the female ones, and it was obvious that he would be the next chief.

Although, he wasn't Neela's son.

His mother, Aster's first wife, had died a long time ago, and his father had remarried. Neela gave birth to two other sons, but they both did not want to follow in their father's footsteps.

Y/N didn't dislike his father for remarrying, he loved Neela like his own mother, and she loved him like he was her own son.

Obi-Wan admired their strong bonds and Y/N's personality.

He was comfortable around the other man, so comfortable that he had confessed the secret feelings he had harbored for Satine Kryze.

Y/N had listened silently and then patted his shoulder to comfort him. He didn't say a word of judgment, silence was the only thing they shared at that moment, but Obi-Wan felt so much better after telling him.

Everything went well, and although they had been here for three weeks and he knew that Cody and the High Council were probably dying from worry, he felt relaxed and content.

When he swayed in his hammock in the evening, the stars visible through the carved out window at the ceiling, his hand holding the “Phoenix’s heart” - another stone Y/N had brought him that was always warm - he even dared to think that he wouldn't mind staying with the tribe forever.

But now...

Now the peacefulness seemed to be in danger.

Obi-Wan barely ate anything, and when Aster finally stood up, the Jedi couldn't stop his whole body from tensing up.

"Let us go to the Ancestors Realm!" the tribe chief shouted, and the present Fey joined in a cry of joy.

"Come on!" squeaked one of the children and grabbed Anakin's arm.

Another clung to Obi-Wan, and the young Fey pulled the three Jedi towards the hall entrance with surprising strength.

The Ancestors Realm was a place at the crown of the giant tree. They had to use nine hoists so get up there and when they arrived, the air was considerably thinner.

It was a flat plateau out of red lichen, the tufts at the border of the round area were glowing, and it did look like from another realm. In the middle of the plateau burned a bright fire, illuminating the faces of the arriving people.

The Fey sat at the edges, Ahsoka went to the new friends she had made, and Obi-Wan and Anakin joined Aster and Neela, the latter had shown up out of nowhere.

The tribe chief greeted them with a smile, which surprised both of them, and he motioned for Obi-Wan to sit next to him. He hesitated for a second, but when the chief looked at him with true friendliness in his eyes he gave in.

The Jedi carefully sat next to Aster, avoiding the man's wings, which he had leisurely spread behind him, and then crossed his legs.

"Are you ready?" asked the leader, and Obi-Wan smiled weakly.

"Yes...?" his answer sounded more like a question, and the man next to him laughed.

"You'll like it, I'm sure."

He could only nod, a big lump in his throat.

He knew that Aster was watching him intently from the side, but he had no clue why.

But before he could ponder over it, one of the elder Fey began to hum, and the rest of the Fey immediately joined.

It was a tribal melody, and it resounded deep in Obi-Wan's chest. Aster started clapping in a rhythm, and the male Fey followed his lead, while Neela clapped another beat, and the women did the same.

The humming was accompanied by the beating of a drum and a sudden cry caused the female Fey to shout.

It was strange for the Jedi, but all three of them were mesmerized by the following scene.

The shouts were a signal for the dancers, and seemingly out of nowhere appeared the few missing Fey. Among them was also Y/N, who Obi-Wan could only recognize because of his wings.

The dancers were a group of males who wore masks that covered their entire faces, their bodies decorated with glowing paint.

They flew a circle above the sitting Fey, and their wings spread, causing loose feathers to descend.

Obi-Wan caught one, and it only took him a glance to know to whom it belonged.

Aster flashed a grin at him and motioned him to clap too.

He put the feather carefully in his robe, worried that he damaged it, and then joined the clapping, feeling excited from the display of the dancers.

They twisted and turned with surprising speed and elegance, and when they landed, the actual dance began, and the sound of various music instruments echoed in the tree crown.

The young men all randomly picked a person in the crowd and started to perform in front of them.

Their wings were the main attraction of the dance. They spread them and flapped, showing off their brilliant colors.

Obi-Wan watched in amazement, not realizing that a certain person was staring at him intently.

A light shove from Aster startled him, and he noticed the person who had gotten closer to him.

Y/N's eyes glistened from behind the mask, and the glowing blue body paint gave him the appearance of an ethereal being.

He twirled and then hid his lower face with his left wing. His e/c eyes pulling Obi-Wan's attention towards Y/N like magic. The Jedi felt like he was in a trance.

The Fey looked beautiful, but at the same time powerful, his sturdy muscles visible thanks to the fire.

A flame began to burn in his heart and it reminded him of something, however, he couldn’t figure out what.

The feathers shook when the music quickened, and the Fey jumped from one foot to the other, his heels never touching the ground.

The Jedi followed the man's every move, too enthralled to notice how Aster and Neela were staring at him with pleased smiles.

Anakin looked at them with a wondering expression, not knowing what they were thinking.

Obi-Wan's mind got filled with a thousand thoughts. His heartbeat had quickened, and the sudden wish of taking a holographic photo of Y/N dancing surged through his veins.

He didn't expect the man to be able to move like this, like an elegant warrior.

It was a traditional dance, the other men of the group performed the same routine, but Y/N's was somehow special.

It felt sensual and, at the same time, like a plead.

The man's wings stretched towards Obi-Wan. Had he leaned a little forward, his nose could have touched a feather.

The music turned to a crescendo, and he knew the dance would be over soon, already a little disappointed.

With a sudden move back, Y/N spread his arms, that had also reached out for the Jedi, to the side and his wings darted back and froze in a position similar to the Jedi order's symbol.

The ending was improvised by him, the wings of the other dancers had stopped in a different pose. Obi-Wan’s heart jumped and he let out a shaky breath.

The Fey for whom the other dancers had danced began to stand up and clap and howl wildly, their ardor audible in their voices, and Anakin and Obi-Wan joined in.

The dancers walked up to the audience members they had chosen and they pressed their foreheads together. Obi-Wan watched their display of affection with a big smile. He loved the kindness the Fey held for each other.

The tribe leader couple also stood up, he following their lead, when Aster suddenly pulled him closer with an arm around his neck, and the tribe chief asked him:

"Did you like it?"

And Obi-Wan could only exclaim with an excited tone:

"Yes! It was wonderful!"

Y/N's father showed a very pleased expression and then let go of him.

The Jedi wondered for a moment if that was the only thing he wanted to know, but his attention shifted when a glowing figure appeared in his peripheral vision.

"Obi-Wan" uttered Y/N, while taking his mask off, his breathing was slightly heavy.

"Y/N, you were amazing! The dance displayed so many emotions, I loved it!"

The Fey stopped short in his track, and then his lips formed a breathtaking smile, which reminded him of the sunrise in the morning.

"Thank you!"

Obi-Wan's head got suddenly grabbed by the other man, and their foreheads touched in a swift motion.

Y/N's skin felt hot from the dancing, and the Fey's breathing shook his shoulders, but Obi-Wan was solely focusing on the man's closed eyes.

Their position felt almost too intimate, his heartbeat pounded loudly in his ears, but he did not move back, ignoring the sudden flutter in his chest, telling himself this was courtesy and showing his respect for Y/N.

He expected the other to pull his head back, but the Fey did not move, until his father patted his shoulder and laughingly boomed:

"That's enough, son. You'll have plenty of time for that later."

Y/N finally pulled back, although not stepping far away, and he turned to his father, shooting him a glare. Obi-Wan stood somewhat dazed, blinking wildly, and wondering what Aster meant with later.

"I'm proud of you, Y/N!" said Neela, and she hugged the man.

The Jedi smiled at the display of their feelings, and he distanced himself to give them some space and to calm his beating heart.

Get it together. Your heart is acting as if you’re in love.

He turned to Anakin, who talked to Ahsoka, both their expressions still showing amazement.

"That was soo cool!" squealed the Togruta, and his former padawan agreed.

"I now feel the desire to have wings too," added Obi-Wan to the conversation, and they turned around to greet him.

Ahsoka's eyebrows shot up, and she grinned somewhat disbelievingly.

"So, you did it," she said, a matter of factly.

"I did what?" he asked, not understanding what she meant.

She gestured towards his face, and he tilted his head in confusion.

"You got paint on your forehead." Anakin said while watching his padawan with questioning eyes, but the Togruta didn't say what she was hinting at.

And he didn't find out until the end of the evening.

After he had talked to the two other Jedi, Y/N had shown up again and told him that he had to attend a family meeting.

He was apologetic, his expression showing clear annoyance and Obi-Wan felt bad for the Fey, although it wasn't such a big deal for him.

They could talk about his performance tomorrow.

So they said goodnight to each other, Y/N once again pressing his forehead to Obi-Wan's, who let it go without a word.

Aster and Neela also left.

They only waved at them, the tribe chief winking at Obi-Wan, leaving the Jedi once again puzzled about why the man had changed his behavior so suddenly.

Although the Fey poured out some delicious alcohol, the three Jedi decided to go back to their room. They were surprisingly tired from seeing the performance.

When Obi-Wan had already laid down in his hammock, Ahsoka addressed him:

"Congratulations, Master."

He lifted his head to peek over the hammock's edge.

"Congrats for what?"

"You and Y/N."

He didn't understand a word.

"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice sounding slightly worried.

"Don't you know?" she said, now sitting up inside her hammock.

He only blinked. Ahsoka's expression turned baffled.

"The performance today got danced by courting Fey."

Obi-Wan opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out, then his eyes widened.

"Are you saying... Y-Y/N..?", he finally squeezed through his lips, realisation slowly dawning on him.

She mirrored his shocked expression.

"You didn't know?! But you accepted!"

He was panicking now.

"Accepted what and when?!"

Anakin walked into the room, unaware of the sudden revelation.

"What's going o-"

"The forehead touch!"

Obi-Wan sank back into his hammock, his heartbeat thundering in his ear. He had gotten a confession and he didn’t even realize.

"Oh, what have I done?"

The next morning, Obi-Wan felt no motivation to stand up.

He wasn't ready to clear up the misunderstanding that had happened yesterday.

He hadn't known that the dance was about courtship, nor that the forehead was something only romantically involved Fey would do.

He just thought it was something intimate that friends, partners, and family did. The other dancers had done it too, but now he knew the real reason.

That’s why not all of them touched foreheads, they got rejected!

But apparently, he was wrong.

And now he had to take the consequences.

"Come on, old man. Get up", said Anakin with a laugh, and he made his former master's hammock sway.

"Why can't I just die right now of old age?" he sighed, feeling dreadful about what was about to come.

Anakin snorted, and he finally sat up.

He had to talk to Y/N before the whole thing escalated.

But oooh, it already had.

"How did you not realize?!" shouted Y/N.

The Fey was shaking Obi-Wan by the shoulder.

"How should’ve I known?!" he shot back, now also agitated, after the other had told him his parents practically considered them being already married.

"I brought you all these presents!"

"Friends do that from where I come from!"

"You kept my feather!"

"I thought it would be a great memento!"

"I let you touch my wings!!"

"How should I know that's considered to be something intimate?!"

Their voices got louder and louder, and their argument caught the attention of some unwanted spectators.

A group of young Fey had begun to follow their conversation behind some branches, but Obi-Wan didn’t acknowledge them, too angry and panicked at the moment.

Y/N's wings had begun to flip in obvious anger, while Obi-Wan furrowed his brows in annoyance.

"I literally danced for you at the courtship ceremony!"

Obi-Wan gnashed his teeth in frustration.

"How was I supposed to know it was about that?! Anakin only told me it was a dance performance!!"

"But you-you said I danced amazing and you loved it!”

The Jedi didn’t respond to that, only showing a guilty expression.

The Fey bit his lips when he finally realized how grave their misunderstanding was.

"I didn't know...", muttered Obi-Wan, feeling helpless because he knew he had hurt the other.

"Forget it," growled Y/N, then he turned in a swift motion and darted from the tree branch. His wings flapped with such a force that a few feathers fell.

The Jedi only watched how they slowly descended, and they seemed to represent his heart.

It sunk, and a sudden pain in his chest caused him to clench his jaw.

How should I have known?

He told himself that he had had no idea, but deep in his chest whispered a voice that he did. Y/N’s feelings were obvious.

Maybe he just didn’t want to acknowledge them, knowing that nothing could come out of their relationship.

Even if you do like me, Y/N, we can’t be together.

A few days passed, and the atmosphere had turned awkward.

Aster's sudden goodwill had as quickly disappeared as it had come.

After the chief had learned of the misunderstanding, he had almost attacked Obi-Wan. Neela held him back successfully though.

Anakin felt guilty for being partly at fault, and Ahsoka also apologized for not telling him what she had known about the courtship rules.

They spent their days waiting for any kind of sign of the Republic, and they became restless.

Obi-Wan felt genuinely guilty for misleading Y/N, and he grieved for their friendship, which seemed like it had already ended.

The Fey hadn't shown himself to any of the Jedi, and Obi-Wan couldn't help but worry because neither Neela nor Aster had seen their son after he and the Jedi had argued.

Then, one day, a Fey appeared in the great hall, informing Aster of the gigantic triangle that had appeared in the sky and the small flying objects that had landed somewhere close to the forest's border.

Anakin shouted triumphantly, and Obi-Wan felt relief wash over him.

But at the same time, he felt a pang in his chest.

He didn't want to leave, not before he cleared the bad blood between him and Y/N.

But Cody and Captain Rex found a scout of the tribe pretty soon, and they finally reunited only a week after the courtship ceremony.

"Good to see you alive and well, general," said Cody, and Obi-Wan smiled weakly at him.

"Good to see you too, commander."

The clones got accompanied by Plo Koon, and Ahsoka was delighted to see the Jedi master again.

While Anakin and his padawan were happy about their rescue, Obi-Wan couldn't stop himself from wishing they had come later. Now he wouldn’t get another chance to talk with Y/N.

He collected his belongings and hesitated when it came to Y/N's presents. The various crystals and shells on his nightstand.

He contemplated whether to take them with him or not, but the thought of leaving them behind hurt him and he decided to bring them home.

Although they had parted with sour feelings, he still appreciated the memories he had made with Y/N. And his heart honestly didn’t want to forget anything, not even the forehead, which apparently symbolized a kiss.

They Fey did not publicly kiss, one of the things they didn’t display to others, Ahsoka had told him.

When he heard about that, he couldn’t stop his brain from forming all kinds of thoughts and his ears had turned pink.

He walked up to me and kissed me, figuratively!

The misunderstanding was really a disaster.

He now also knew why the other Fey had treated him with more respect even though Aster seemed to hate him again.

It was because he was the object of the future tribe leader’s affections - although he had rejected him.

He shook his head to get rid of the thoughts and left the room, Y/N’s presents stored in his backpack.

He bid farewell to Danosh and the other Fey who had treated him nicely and then joined Anakin and Ahsoka who waited with Cody, Captain Rex and some other clones next to Aster and Neela.

The tribe leader couple accompanied them to the ground and their canon gun ships.

Obi-Wan watched the ships from the border of the gigantic forest and his chest tightened.

Y/N...

He bit his lip, his heart now clenching from the idea of leaving and never coming back.

They were half way there, when Aster and Neela stopped walking.

“We’re not going any further”, explained the white-haired woman and Anakin sighed. He said goodbye first. The chief only nodded at him, but Neela gave him a long hug and whispered something into his ear, while caressing his hair.

Obi-Wan could see that the woman somewhat appeared to be like a mother-figure for Anakin. He felt the pain of saying goodbye in Anakin’s force presence.

Ahsoka also gave Neela a hug and she bowed at Aster who surprisingly patted her shoulder and said:

“Stay sharp, little one.”

The Togruta beamed and then it was Obi-Wan’s turn. He looked at the chief and behind the animosity in his eyes, he could see genuine regret.

He didn’t know what to say and just awkwardly stood there, when Aster coughed and grumbled:

“You would’ve been a splendid son-in-law.”

The Jedi blinked and Anakin couldn’t stop a snort, laughing silently at the blush that swept across his former master’s cheeks.

“Uh- thank you.”

“Obi-Wan,” said Neela and she opened her arms wide. He willingly walked into her embrace and she also caressed his hair, while hiding his embarrassment with her wings.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. If he couldn’t tell it Y/N personally, he would tell his mother.

“It’s alright. Y/N is a little hasty sometimes, especially when it comes to his feelings. I’m not trying to say he rushed into the idea of liking you...”

Obi-Wan’s cheeks heated up again, not knowing how to react when a woman, who was the mother of the man who liked him, openly talked about her son’s and his relationship.

“He’s genuine, but stubborn. He was born here and never set foot on another planet. You swept him off his feet and he got too excited, not registering that our manners and traditions are unknown to you.”

He nodded into her shoulders and she let him go to look into his face. Her blue eyes glimmered with kindness.

“I’m glad you were his first love.”

He blinked and her sentence hit him right in the gut. Oh, wow, he really hurt the man, huh.

She traced the line his knitted eyebrows made and smiled.

“It’s not your fault, Obi-Wan.”

He wanted to reply something but he had a lump in his throat and could only nod.

She let go of him and he stepped back, his expression showing how sad he was about their departure.

“Goodbye.”

The Jedi and clones turned and began to walk away. Every step physically hurt Obi-Wan and he breathed out shakily, face looking down to not see Anakin’s and Ahsoka’s possibly judging expressions.

Suddenly, a shadow sped across the plain and before he could look up, a person landed right before his feet, causing him to make a step back.

He tilted his head, startled, his eyes meeting e/c ones. Time seemed to stop.

"Obi-Wan," breathed Y/N and the Jedi's heart started to pound faster.

"You came," he hesitantly said, his tone revealed his relief.

"Yeah... I have to tell you something."

Obi-Wan turned his head to Anakin and the others, they feigned ignorance and acted as if they weren't listening closely to their conversation, although they were.

"O-Okay, but I want to tell you something t-"

"I fancy you."

Hearing that sentence directed at him caught Obi-Wan off guard.

Not that he never had been confronted by similar words, but it had never been in such a blunt fashion. And also not from a person he secretly liked too. Satine had been a different case.

A blush crept up his neck, cheeks and ears and he swallowed hard.

He had expected Y/N to tell him an apology or a goodbye, but not a love confession.

"I'm sorry. I projected my culture onto you and didn't consider your feelings."

Obi-Wan was flustered and he checked his surroundings again, the clones and the two Jedi now blatantly listening without even trying to hide their interest.

"I-I..." he began, not knowing what to say.

He knew he had to reject the Fey but his fluttering heart absolutely didn't want him to.

"I'm a Jedi, Y/N," he eventually said, his tone sounding pained, and Obi-Wan expected the other man's face to sadden, after all, he did tell him what that meant when it came to attachments, but the Fey's smile stayed on his lips.

"I know. I just wanted to tell you properly."

The smile was the same radiating one he had flashed him after the courtship dance.

Obi-Wan clenched his jaw, contemplated for a second and then, without hesitation, he took a step forward and grabbed Y/N's face to bring their heads together.

Their foreheads touched and the man's eyes widened.

Obi-Wan locked his gaze with his and the Fey sighed, now pressing his head closer and putting his hand on both side’s of his neck..

"You're making this very hard," he muttered accusingly, while tracing Obi-Wan’s carotid artery.

The Jedi laughed weakly, the pain in his chest swelling.

"I know, I'm sorry."

He closed his eyes and breathed in, the smell of damp soil, fruits and leather filled his nose and Obi-Wan tried to engrave the scent in his mind.

"At one point we'll have to stop," whispered Y/N and he grumbled.

"I'm just soaking you in", he replied, eyes still closed.

I don’t want to let go.

He heard the Fey breath out slowly.

Then the man moved away.

Obi-Wan opened his eyes in protest, then his hand got grabbed, and Y/N kissed him.

The Jedi's eyes widened and he remembered that Anakin, Ahsoka and the clones were watching, but his reason got thrown out of the window by his heart and he returned the kiss.

It was a short and bittersweet one. Just like their relationship.

Like the Batellia flower, their love finished before it could even properly bloom.

But Obi-Wan did not look back at these four weeks with regret.

After he had returned to Coruscant and continued fighting in the war, he would often smile at random times, his hands buried in his robes, where he caressed a soft feather.

And he could be damn sure that on a small planet in the Outer Rims, a Fey would trace the faint glow of a blue kyber crystal, he always had with him around his neck.

And who knows, maybe they’ll meet again.

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goonlalagoon · 3 years

Text

We start small || Leagues and Legends

A series rewrite AU for @ink-splotch‘s fantastic Leagues and Legends books.

Spoilers for the whole trilogy below!

Read on Ao3

When George was fifteen, her village left her out for a dragon. The blacksmith slipped a knife up her sleeve as they went, and in the press of bodies she couldn't ask him why. She could only guess at what mercy he was handing her. The villagers would live with shame under their tongues for the rest of their lives, but they would live. The dragon ruled the hillside, great and golden, scales bright against the purple lupins that bloomed there every year, and they pretended it was fear that made them shudder at the sight.

Maybe Jack still survived the bandits who attacked the merchant caravan he was travelling with. Maybe he travelled on with them, bounced from place to place until he found a cause to throw himself into, on some distant shore far from the Forest where he had grown up. Maybe he didn't, one fourteen year old boy with no training and no battlefield experience, just a big heart and a bit of luck on his side.

There was no Dragon Slayer. It would be years before someone earned the old title Giantkiller, and it wouldn't be a red headed forest boy who tried to stand tall under the weight of that history.

Liam Jones powered the towns and villages of the mountains for weeks. The Seeress was almost blind with the burning light that drifted up through the floor, and the afterimage it left behind when it finally winked out was almost worse. There were no tales in the mountains of the Pied Piper.

Beatrice Tanner would never know any of their names.

On the day when in another life she might have opened her door and let a third soul into her shuttered heart, Bea woke as always before the sun to put the bread on to rise, and while the ovens warmed she rolled her dog eared map out over the old wooden table and traced her fingers over hidden paths and scant shelters. She had a network, small but growing, owed petty favours and moments of kindness. She had a list of lives saved, and a list of those she knew were at risk and could possibly be convinced to leave. She had a list of losses, a bitter sting under her tongue and a cold motivator to keep trying.

People still didn't believe her warnings, most of the time. They hushed her for telling children to be careful, to be hidden, and she did it anyway whenever she saw gold glittering in the corner of her eye, when she saw children play with sparks that didn't burn. Maybe they wouldn't believe her, but maybe they'd check over their shoulder anyway. Maybe the children would curl their hands into little fists and ignore the skin of the world pressing in on them, scared by this woman who hissed nightmares at them in the street. She didn't want children to be afraid, but she wanted them to be safe, and when there was a monster on the loose fear was what kept you alive.

She said as much, one day at a market, snapping warnings at children and glaring at the uniformed man who'd asked her what she was scaring children for. She had no patience for coddling, and she had little for the Bureau either. But this one blinked at her, and scratched at his clean shaven chin.

"Stealing mages? Say, d'you mind repeating all this to Sarge? He's the boss of our League, and this sounds like something we should know about." Bea eyed him suspiciously, but the possibility of getting more people to help outweighed her faint distaste for the Leagues.

It was only a few weeks later that May told her that it was really just May, not short for anything despite what the Bureau paperwork said. Bea wasn't quite sure whether this was a sign of trust or of just how much May wanted to get out of her padded armour and into something that didn't chafe quite as much on the healing gash down her side.

Sarge had sent coded reports back to headquarters, and was glaring at the responses. Flash was twisting his fingers, safe with his training and his league, staring sleepless at the ceiling with visions of those who weren’t keeping him awake. They couldn’t give themselves wholly to this cause; the Rangers had a job to do and it was one that badly needed doing - but part of their job was to keep people safe from monsters, so when they left they took some of her gathered information with them, and kept their eyes open.

They sent her news, dropped by the markets they knew she liked to give her the names of people who had helped, people who believed them when they whispered warnings. They sent people to her, frightened or angry or numb, but always desperate, and she sent them on. She didn't ask anyone to be a hero, because heroes were for stories and legends, for Bureau badges and official postings. She just asked people for a little bit of help, and then they offered it again and again.

It was over a year after she met them that they sent her the Giantkiller.

Kay had thick ropes of scarring over his side and arm, the pockmarks of claws pressed deep into his shoulder. He was a child when rocs tried to carry him off, struggling and screaming. He was lucky - the Rangers heard the commotion and brought the beast down, two arrows in its heart, a net of golden fire to catch him as he fell, to pour into gaping wounds and knit flesh back together. When they had to stay camped out for a day while the mage weathered an Elsewhere storm, their Guide showed him how to mix a paste to help the scars heal out of ingredients he could find within an hour’s walk of home.

His father's fury when he said after they left that he wanted to be a Leaguesman too was a burning thing, a bitter thing. He jerked his head down the road the Rangers left by, and listed every time they could have been of use before one lucky day. Kay fiddled with his spoon, because it was true - but that was the point of joining up, wasn't it? To be the person who was there when he was needed. But his father was bitter, furious, so he held his tongue.

When his father was out working in the field and Kay was supposed to be chopping wood, he fenced the air with a stick for a sword the way he'd watched May and Sarge practice in the early morning, as they let Flash sleep late to regain his strength and they kept a wary eye out for any returning rocs. He stumbled over his own feet and knew he was no good.

When he was younger, he'd practiced with his sling until his fingers blistered, and his father smiled over the small game he brought in, the crows he scared away from the crops with a sharp stone to the claws. Kay practiced still, every day, and now he imagined bigger targets.

The rocs came again, as they did every year, and one tried to carry off not a child but the neighbours' sheep. Kay sent it crashing back to the ground. Its neck snapped as it landed and he stood over it, shaking and fierce and frightened. The men arrived at a run from the barn, and Kay's father looked proud and scared and bitter.

"You see?" He said, later, when they’d butchered the carcass and he was watching Kay sort the feathers he'd asked to keep. "Rocs every damn year, and no Leagues here to help."

Kay hummed, non-committal, thinking but I was.

He was too young for the Leagues anyway, he knew. But he wasn't too young to help, so when there were rumours of Things haunting the woods nearby he slipped out his window in the grey dusk and went hunting. He had a handful of mage spelled stones, even if they were spelled for gentle warmth not damage, a gift from Flash to help ease the ache in healing limbs. The Things shrieked like the stones burned, and he was sick behind a bush afterward but the nest was gone, and Things shriek but he'd heard the families who’s homes were closer to the woods than his weeping too, and he knew which he'd choose. His father was pacing when he got home in the soft light of dawn, and he knew without asking where Kay had been. He knew what Kay was making himself into and he was furious and so scared, but Kay couldn't go back to waiting for someone else to save his people.

Kay set out the next morning, when his father was already out in the fields, working off his anger on the weeds. He packed a satchel of food and clothes, his sling and pouches of stones. He slipped the little carved flute his father made for his last birthday into the side of his bag, and set off down the road, refusing to look back.

When he met the Rangers again, it was in the shadow of a giant, the wreckage of a village. They were too late to help bring it down, but they found him digging through the fallen buildings for survivors. Sarge glanced at the sling at his hip first and Kay tensed. They were already whispering about him, the survivors, about the Giantkiller and his sling, and he knew the price of being a vigilante. Sarge said nothing, just gripped the other end of the beam he was trying to lift, hauling it up so Kay could drag the wounded boy underneath into the light.

They had a hushed conference, the Rangers and the Giantkiller, carefully out of sight because they could only shirk this particular duty if no one knew. May shook her head over him but bullied him through a basic staff work drill. Sarge watched, and nodded thoughtfully when Flash muttered "think the Baker could use a field agent?"

His story rolled ahead of him, growing as he went. He cleared a nest of Things in one village and took down another roc in a narrow pass, had a brief run in with bandits that he barely survived. He helped stock a woodpile for a hot meal and repaired a fence for another. There hadn't been a Giantkiller in the memory of anyone younger than his grandmother, and he listened to the old stories that were being dusted off. He hoped no one expected him to live up to all of them.

Bea heard him out, polite but not friendly, and he tried not to shuffle in his seat under her level gaze. She shrugged, eventually, and let him tag along as she smuggled a woman and her sister through the checkpoints in her cart. Kay tucked his sling out of sight and played a sullen teenager for all he was worth so that she could scold him loudly and the guards would shake their heads over the disruption instead of searching through the carefully stacked flour bags.

Someone wrote to her a week later saying they had a wyvern problem - people had long since started writing to the Baker for any help they needed and couldn’t afford from official sources, to see if she knew someone who could help. She sent Kay as a response, and he came back with a burn on his leg and pockets full of scales, scrubbed clean - but he came back. She grew to expect it, became used to keeping his room ready and leaving space at the table for him.

The first time he broke into the Graves' keep, he slipped out of the bakery after she'd gone to bed. They hadn't reached these ones in time, and he'd watched the way her shoulders fell and her lips thinned when he came back too soon, no rescues in his wake and no stories about how he'd helped them escape. He'd looked at her map, and thought but I'm still here.

The keep was easy to break into, because no one else was fool enough to try, and the Seeress was still working her way into her father's toolkit. He'd never held a lock pick but he knew how to remove hinges from a wall so he opened the doors that way, until one of the terrified mages shook off the stupor and started melting through them for him. They fled, and he scrawled the ward diagrams Flash had sent to Bea in the dirt for his rescues to copy with the sparks of power that were left to them. They had suspicions, Bea and the Rangers, dark thoughts about how their foe was finding prey so easily. They had wards that would cloud them from the sight of a seer, briefly, enough to break a trail, and they worked.

Kay led them to the bakery, where Bea fed them and sent them on, and when the house was empty again she wrapped her arms around Kay and hissed don't you dare do that again, don't you dare Kay, you don't disappear on me. He nodded and promised, but they both knew he meant he wouldn't slip away in the night. Kay was young, true, but he wasn't a fool. He could promise not to go without a word, but he couldn't promise he'd come back.

There was no Dragon Slayer, no Piper, a different Giantkiller - but it had never been just about those three friends. They were the ones whose legends were told, but theirs had never been the only hands buried in this war.

In a different village, there was a girl with the Elsewhere pulling gently on her bones. Kay took a warning, because if he and Bea had heard of her then so would the Graves’, and her sister narrowed her eyes at him as she went pale with fear. For all that he was the messenger not the threat, Kay took an instinctive half step back. "If anyone thinks they're taking my sister, they're going to get what's coming to them."

Rosie and Susie had friends, and those friends had already lost people to the machines, vanishing in the night and dropping out of contact. When Kay warned them, told them what he knew, they listened. They planned. When slavers came in the night, Elsewhere cracks tucked in their pockets, they thought this would be easy. The Seeress had seen an orphan girl with magic. If she had seen anything else, it had been shadowy faces with nothing to make them stand out. This is the peril of a Seer; you fall into the habit if thinking that if you don't see something it can't matter.

Slavers came in the night, and never left.

They started calling them Snow White and Rose Red, these sisters with deep roots in the mountain soil who grit their teeth and refused to run, refused to hide. Theirs was a mountain village, no Bureau-sanctioned guard and no walls to defend them, so they built their own. Bea smuggled out every person unwilling to become a civilian soldier, who wanted safety not defiance, and the rest built a fortress.

Kay helped, hands familiar with hammer and nails, the cost of freedom. He made friends, not just with the sisters but with Doc and his sons, the taciturn blacksmith and his two apprentices, the cheerful woman who ran the inn and the cynical one who presided over the fledgling community garden, with a few scattered kids his own age with fire in their veins and fear in their eyes.

(Or was it fear that ran in their blood, twitching at shadows and hearts pounding when they woke at night, and fire in their eyes, a stubborn, worn down fury?)

They named it Challenge, carved it deep over the main gate, a name and a purpose.

Their first siege had been a holding action in the mines, Doc and his sons collapsing tunnels and digging new ones until winter came on and forced the Graves' soldiers back to their own walls. The vigilantes stayed in the mines, huddled together for warmth and comfort, elated and terrified at their own victory. Rosie and Susie roamed the passages, after, speaking to everyone and inviting a selection to a council - Kay was invited too, and sat awkwardly listening to them lay plans for rebuilding, how to build sturdy walls the moment the snows cleared enough. Their second came days after they carved Challenge over the gate, while Kay was still getting all of the sawdust out of his hair.

He went back to the bakery afterward, to pour over maps with Bea and be sent out on missions. They couldn't save everyone. They couldn't save most people, but some was better than none. Kay stared at the ceiling through long, sleepless nights, trying to convince himself that it was okay that he couldn't work miracles. People knew him by sight, now, and some days he didn’t feel he should be looking over his shoulder whenever they called out Giantkiller!

It was a long, slow war, their quiet campaign against the Graves family. Bea’s network grew and grew, despite their heavy losses - mages who escaped and ones who didn’t, the non-magical casualties who weren’t quick enough with a lie or a dodge, or were simply unlucky. Susie and Rosie were a fierce pair, exchanging razor sharp letters with Bea to plan out strategies and contingencies.

(It wasn’t until after his third siege at Challenge that Kay would realise that Bea had never actually met either of the sisters; she had never met Marian, either, but they had never communicated directly so it was easier to recall. The sisters and the Baker sent word back and forth for years, but barely knew anything of each other outside of their shared plans besides what he could pass on - for all that Bea would like to see Challenge, there was bread to bake and travel could be dangerous. Better not to give the Seeress any reason to look again at this sleepy village that she and hers had already gutted for fuel.)

Kay was no natural physician, but he helped to wrap bandages in Doc Frederickson’s infirmary whenever he was in Challenge, between meetings and sentry duty. In the streets and villages people expected him to be a hero; in the infirmary, Doc just expected him to be useful. He cracked bad jokes as distraction, fetched water, and peered over a bewildered man’s shoulder at a neat formula that someone had stumbled through the gates clutching. She didn’t remember where she’d found it, but it had been tucked into the lining of her coat. There was a note on the front in her own handwriting, for all she didn’t recall writing it - My first rabbit was called Snowball, and this is real, not a joke.

Doc’s hand shook so badly that he had to put the unfolded note down before he dropped it. Kay clutched the edge of the desk hard enough to hurt, looking between the message and the woman sat on the edge of an infirmary cot, gold dripping sluggishly from her fingertips to pool on the fabric. It would stain, leaving smudged hand-prints on the sheets and faintly in the mattress below, but they would consider it a miracle not a nuisance. She was sitting, fingertips trembling but no worse this morning than they had been any day of her journey north. She had been dragged from the cells, away from the machines that should have killed her, and rather than dying grateful for a final view of the sky she had found herself weeks to the South, in a town she hadn’t known and a recipe in her pocket in handwriting she didn’t recognise.

It wasn’t a cure, but it was still something no-one had thought to hope for. It was a medicine, true, but it was also a message: somebody, somewhere, was trying to save their mages too. They weren’t the only ones resisting this blight.

This, too: after that first midnight venture of Kay’s they had never been able to rescue anyone from the Graves’ keep. They had fought to prevent people being taken, rescued people from mage warded wagons, hissed warnings to make people hide or flee. They had built a town, walls and watchtowers, a beacon of resistance. But they had never managed to make their way into the keep itself undetected a second time, for all the desperate families who had tried, for all the curses the Seeress and the Mayor hissed when they found the doors open and cells empty. Kay and Bea would exchange long looks over the bakery table, and wonder who on the inside was setting people free and laying the blame at their convenient feet.

(In a lab none of them had never seen, Jillit Chu was saving life after life of people who she knew would never remember her name, secrets written in invisible letters on her skin when she went home at night. Thorne was pouring over reports, Jill’s own records, Jeremiah’s much less successful and yet officially far more vital analyses, the dispatches from his spies in the mountains. He wanted the Graves family dealt with, of course - but he wanted their secrets, too. Thorne was a Bureau man, and while Mayor Graves was always careful not to upset the Bureau, he was no more affiliated with them than the vigilantes that plagued his operations. It had never been the means of production that Thorne objected to, or the Graves’ would have been out of a business years before.

Spider didn’t know this; Andrew Molina had given years of his life to bring the machines down, weaving a web to tear it all down. He was trying to find a gap in his plans to let Sandry slip through; he knew where Sam had gone even if she didn’t, thought if he could get her out too then there would be a life for her away from the wreckage of her father’s dreams. If he had to, he knew he would let her fall with it and take the regrets, but he was an excellent Bureau agent - he liked his odds for achieving both. He wasn’t reaching out to Sam just yet - they were working to weaken the system, but it was slow work. The Baker and her resistance were an irritation, but they weren’t yet causing enough of a disruption to have materially disrupted production, to have strained the system, to be convincing the less dedicated that this was a fight they were going to lose.

Thorne had other agents, he knew, and they heard things the Spider didn’t. Reports that when put together said that this was going to be the work of more cold years - he measured them in people lost, and tried when those the Seeress saw were children to make sure he was spotted on the road, that whispers spread before him, warnings. He couldn’t let everyone slip away, not if he wanted to bring it all down, but he tried to save as many as he could - he felt every mage who burned for other people’s light as a weight on his shoulders. He kept walking, the Seeress’ right hand man, and did not stumble under that burden.)

Robin Hood died on an otherwise unremarkable winter’s day, stumbling back to the treeline with them, held up as much as their rescues. Marian’s hands didn’t shake as she lit the pyre, and Kay wondered if she would stay that cold for the rest of her life. She left with a handful of the Merry Men, the ones who’d been thinking of warmer pastures or those like her couldn’t stand to be beneath the trees without Robin. Kay wasn’t sure if she was angry at him or the world - Marian wasn’t, either. She had fought sieges at his side, before he begged Robin’s help for the last time; she knew his history, this mountain born boy who became a legend. She wouldn’t write to him or the Baker, but Little John would drop mentions into his occasional messages, and some days she was glad for the news.

When Kay had first stumbled into the Woods, an injured mage leaning on his shoulder and pursuit on his heels, it had been Marian who coolly shot down the armed guard and guided them beneath the trees. She had helped bandage up his rescue, and Robin had dropped down next to him at the fire. Kay wasn’t sure he had ever felt as safe as he did that night, curled up beneath the towering trees with their cheerful assurances that he didn’t need to worry about any armed followers tracking him here, dozing off in a borrowed bed roll on the hard ground. The Merry Men weren’t all kind to outsiders, but they loved Robin and respected Marian - if they were told he was a friend, he was a friend. Kay watched the smoke rise, the snow melting around them, and wondered if Robin would still be alive, if Kay hadn’t thought of him as a friend.

The remaining Merry Men stayed out of the fight, after that, nursing wounds physical and metaphorical, but Little John made it clear that the paths through the trees were still open to Kay and his rescues. More than one trembling mage and their shaken family were escorted safely south by the Merry Men after a night or two beneath the trees.

It was a long war, and Kay measured it first in months rather than days, then years rather than months; the Seeress was spreading her gaze further afield as the mountain villages became wary, as anyone with sparks at their fingertips fled before they needed warning. Kay gained scars from vicious brawls with guards, with the long limbed Spider, a bullet wound in the shoulder that would ache in the cold for the rest of his life from Spider’s deputy.

Kay was by no means the only person fighting this war, but he had become one of the lynchpins, the one who most often acted directly against the Graves’ network - his was the face the Seeress saw most in the wake of plans dissolving like smoke. She had a bespoke curse tucked in a pocket, and one vindictive day she set it loose. Bea watched the Giantkiller turn pale, shaky on feet that a moment before had been steady, and crumple. She caught him before he could hit the ground, and carried him gently to his room. She sent out frantic messages through her network, looking for healers, looking for anyone who could help. After three nights of fever, Little John crept into the bakery, cradling a pouch in his large, gentle hands. He was no trained healer, but he knew old stories, knew how to walk into the shadowed trees on a full moon night and ask for help for the deserving. He did not know what he had done, to mix this medicine, but when the sun had risen it had been in his hands.

Kay spent another three nights tossing and turning, but he woke with the sun on the seventh day. It would take weeks until he felt fully rested, and Little John warned him that full moons would make him restless for the rest of his days. He spent his time sorting Bea’s correspondence and helping her in the bakery, until she declared him fit for field work again. Even then they were wary, cautious. They had no doubts who had sent a curse to strike him down, for all they sneered at the hypocrisy - they watched for any sign that the Seeress had known where to strike, but found nothing amiss.

One morning, Kay woke to the sound of shattering crockery in the bakery below; he was wary, fresh bruises on his knuckles and sleeping light, recently home and still listening for ambushes. He crept downstairs, and found Bea pinned to the wall of her own kitchen with strings of golden fire, the butter dish broken on the floor. The slingstone he pitched through the door landed, but its target had moved in time and took a glancing bruise to the arm rather than a blow to the head. She held up calloused palms, but he could see the gun at her hip and the gold holding Bea in place: he wasn’t fool enough to think that she was anything other than ready to take him down if he moved. She smiled, a precise and practiced thing. “Hello. Apologies for breaking in, but I needed to speak to the Baker and the Giantkiller, and I believe this is the right address?” Her smile turned feral, a fierce grin that looked more at home on her lips. “I’m an agent from the Bureau quiet branch, and I thought you might want to know we’re planning to bring the Graves’ down in a few weeks’ time.”

Bea made a scoffing sound, the gold fire glittering off her eyes, and the woman flicked her fingers to twist the fire into nothing again. Kay itched to go to Bea, check that she was alright, but he knew better. There were two of them and one armed intruder - better to keep her looking in two directions, for all that she seemed to think she was on their side, for all that he had no doubt which of them would win, if it came to a fight. Kay had years of experience, true, but you didn’t make it to being a field agent with the quiet branch without a fearsome skillset to your name.

She eyed their distrust with amused, approving resignation, and patiently laid out the bones of the web she and Spider had been steadily weaving, the tipping point that was coming. Kay frowned at the hints, puzzling out tactics, and Bea traced her fingertips over her map - the markers of lives saved, the ones of lives lost. There was an empty room upstairs she still couldn’t bear to use, years later. Kay did not and would never know that sometimes when Bea woke from nightmares these days they had been about waking to find the house cold and the curtains in his cosy room billowing in the night air, for all that he was no more a mage that she was. She eyed their guest with as much professional disregard as the woman had shown her, breaking into a house warded over the years by careful, grateful hands as though it was nothing.

“And why now? Why are you and yours only tearing down the Graves’ now? We know who you are, Agent, and for all I’ve heard of you you’re in the Graves’ pocket, the Spider’s precious protege.” She curled a lip, a mountain woman from a village that couldn’t afford walls, that had begged and begged for Bureau protection and been told to come back with gold in their pockets. “Why have the Bureau decided that now they can deign to get involved? Why are you here, breaking into my home, to tell me you’ve finally decided to care enough to stop it?”

"They killed my brother," snapped Laney, an old, bitter hurt - and the Baker looked back at her coldly, as though that didn't explain anything at all.

"They've killed a lot of people." The sharpshooter stiffened, hand twitching as though she might have gone for a gun if she hadn’t needed them alive. Bea didn't flinch from the movement, expression hard and unforgiving. "How many have you helped them kill? I could tell you, I think, because I hear almost everyone's story about the ones they lost, sooner or later. Do you know what we call you, when we whisper warnings? What legend did you think you were building, in your brother's memory?"

The Ballad of Agent Jones

Laney Jones had stumbled at her brother’s beloved heels for years, until he left the desert in search of new horizons. Years later, she had followed in his footsteps once again, Academy papers in her pocket and a handful of hard-won fire clutched close to keep her warm on the journey. She was planning to find her big brother, one day. She was going to show him what she could do, what she had made of herself, and she was going to see the pride in his eyes once again. It was a warm thought, one she had clung to through cold nights of hidden practice and long days of doubting her worth.

In her second year at the Academy, armed men broke into the fish shop where her study group were having their first meeting. When Thorne took her aside in the days after, to have a private chat with such a promising young woman, he glanced over her skin tone and the name in his file, and paused. He asked, carefully, if she had any connection to a Liam Jones, another powerful mage he had heard of. Laney beamed with familial pride, and a certain quiet joy that she had been put on the same level as Liam. "My brother, sir. He whistles up his magic, though I never had the knack for it."

Thorne called her in again a week later, for another chat, but his face was serious and even the glint of his glasses seemed subdued. There was a thin file on his desk, L. Jones scrawled on the outside. Laney's heart froze, because she knew there was no reason for the Bureau to have files on her, not yet.

"I am sorry, miss Jones, but Liam Jones died almost seven years ago, in the mountains." He pushed the file towards her, sympathy but not pity in his voice. "There are people there who - deal in mages. It seems that there was no one to warn him to hide." He pressed a clean handkerchief into her hand and went to fetch water for the kettle. He could have called for someone to bring them tea, but Thorne understood that people sometimes needed a moment alone with their grief.

The contents of the file had been heavily redacted, because the work of the Bureau quiet branch investigating the trade in mages was an ongoing thing, and a sister's grief didn't give you rights to all of the carefully gathered details. But there were a few stark lines that were intact - a description, a date of capture. A short summary of a doomed escape attempt that made her smile with fierce, pained pride. A date of death.

What had she been doing, that day? Where had she been, when her brother's song vanished from the world?

Thorne made her tea and made no comment on her damp eyelashes, told her she could speak to him at any time if she felt she needed someone who was aware of the situation to listen. He asked for her family's contact details, so that he could write to tell them the terrible news personally. He straightened the papers on his desk and promised to tell her when he sent it, in case she wanted to write as well, but he said that it shouldn't be her job to break it to them unless she wanted it to be.

Laney signed the quiet branch's letter of employment before the week was up.

She would never run the backstreets of Rivertown with Rupert; he would perhaps have trusted Sez, Bart and their secret, steady work to fellow Academy students, if a bit warily, but not to someone with Thorne looking over her shoulder from the beginning. Laney spent her spare hours at the Academy in the library or out on the firing range, and felt trapped, burning in her own skin.

When the battle of Driftwood Island came, when she realised that the monsters of fire were slipping in from the Elsewhere, it was Thorne she went to, to say she could help; she stitched the rift closed while the Rangers held their own in the wreckage above. She didn’t tell Thorne how she’d done it, exactly, but she agreed that they shouldn’t tell anyone it had been her - no point in making her a target, after all.

(Laney wouldn’t remember any of this for years; until then, so far as she could recall she’d spent the whole battle helping to shield sections of lower Rivertown from fire damage. If there was a gap in her recollection - well, it was so easy to lose track in your first real battle, for everything to blur together. The Rangers couldn’t recall exactly who had stitched the rift up while they bought time, and it nagged at them for years, too)

On her first day at the Bureau’s quiet branch as a junior agent, Laney made her way to Thorne's office, shoulders carefully square and chin held level, and asked him what she would need to do to become part of the group working on the mage slave trade case.

Thorne had known her brother's name, his description; not just the dates of his disappearance but those of his escape attempt and death, the clinical numbers documenting how much power had been wrested from his bones. Laney had known, even in the midst of grief - these were not things you could learn without someone on the inside. These were not things you knew, the shadowy quiet branch of the governing powers, unless you had plans to do something with the information.

Laney had her own plans; she had always intended to use the Bureau just as much as Thorne had planned to use her.

When the Seeress saw her, Spider’s newest potential recruit, she smiled slightly in recognition, sinister and small. She asked Laney why she was applying to a role with the Graves' network. Laney had looked her dead in the eye, shoulders relaxed and everything gold around her shining true.

"My brother was a mage, a powerful one. I grew tired a long time ago of being a shadow because I don't have gold dripping from my fingers."

Neither Kay or Bea trusted the Agent and her casually mentioned ally - Spider had been a nightmare in the mountains for longer than Kay had known of this fight, and had never slipped into the Baker’s net to whisper secrets to her deputy. In another life, the Baker’s right hand had been a girl who saw nothing but blood and ash on her palms, who had once let a whole village die, unseen, because she wanted to live; in another life, the Spider had been confident that the Dragon Slayer would understand the price he was paying. He would have offered himself as an informant, trusting in her pragmatism to take his information and keep the source to herself. In another life, Bea had years of listening to George talk haltingly about the place she had once called home, the dragon they had given her a legend for, and would have listened to her, taken the information even if reluctantly.

But the Giantkiller had no such weight on his shoulders, and Spider had spent too long working himself into the Graves’ good graces to risk his position on that kind of gamble.

They didn’t trust Agent Jones or the Spider, let alone the Bureau man with twinkling glasses who slipped into Challenge with a promise of information and a cheerful litany of all of Kay’s illegal activities, but they couldn’t afford not to take their warnings. Challenge prepared for another siege, hunkering down to withstand whatever the Graves’ threw at them, and Kay decided when the Rangers arrived to support the defenders that his life was worth the gamble and followed two shadowy spies into the Keep, a decoy captive.

He’d been here just once before; after that, the Mayor had finally listened to Sandry’s murmurings about weak points in their security, and no-one had broken into the keep since. Spider let them in through a side door, and Kay shuddered as it clicked closed behind him. They burned the machines, Agent Jones lighting the mage blasts, but the engineer wasn’t there, the careful blueprints and plans stored somewhere other than this cold office. Kay turned a corner and ran into the Seeress, the first time he had seen her face to face. They stared at one another, frozen; she was frantically figuring out how the Giantkiller had made it into the keep unnoticed - and he had no idea who he just run into, unsure if he should tell her who he was and hesitating to use force on someone he thought might be an innocent.

Spider stepped up behind him, and the Seeress’ cold mask slipped, fractured as she looked between them, Sandry feeling her steady ground shift beneath her feet. Spider’s hand settled warningly over Kay’s shoulder, yanking him back and cuffing him to a stair-rail to keep the boy in place as the recognition dawned, while he frantically whispered at Sandry - telling her to leave, to slip out of the side door and hide, that she could join her brother and start over. The Seeress snapped out sharp retorts, demanding to know what exactly the Bureau knew of her baby brother, and Kay felt an abrupt, unwelcome fellow feeling - he knew what it was, to fear the extent of the Bureau’s files, to want the names of you and yours kept secret. The Seeress was trembling, torn between drawing herself up and in, hurt and terrified of showing it, and wanting to trust, for just a little longer, that the Spider was on her side.

Mayor Graves turned the corner, calling for the Seeress, his useful little monster, because someone had been in his office, burned his papers to ash. He was clutching a weapon that pulsed gold (in the cells below, there was a trembling body, the magic in their blood ripped free and pushed into a new vessel), concerned but not frantic. He spied Kay, and his face broke into a smirk. Spider stood with a relaxed stance, hand on his holstered gun, face a mask while he weighed options. The Seeress straightened her spine. Her father had told her all her life that mages were selfish, hoarding power, that their work was a sad necessity for the wellbeing of the many. He was holding a gun that took that power and put it in his own two hands - Sandry had made Spider teach her to shoot years ago, on the quiet, because she wanted something she could do, to defend herself and her brother, something to hold onto that would give her power that didn’t rely on words. She knew that this was a power he had made for himself to cling to.

The Giantkiller was a child, still, and almost as young as her brother had been when she pressed a bag into his hands and told him to flee. Her father was pointing a gun at a boy barely older than his son, and everything in him was twisting gleeful with it. She murmured, dispassionate, that the boy might have useful information. That Spider should take him downstairs for questioning, to find out about the gaps in their defences - a security breach such as this must be investigated carefully, for all their sakes. Spider could dispose of the pest, after. Mayor Graves had never been in the habit of listening to his daughter, and she wanted to scream it at him as he dismissed her again without even a word.

The Mayor took an experimental shot at the Giantkiller, burning the ground by Kay’s left leg to cinders, and crumpled to the ground. Agent Jones slipped out of the shadows behind him, ash dusting her fingertips, pistol held steady and familiar in her hand. She glanced down at the body, cold, and wondered if she would regret never getting to tell him exactly why she’d taken aim, a sniper’s precise shot under cover of his own.

Spider stepped casually in front of Sandry, and with a glare Agent Jones holstered her gun before striding briskly by both her mentor and the Seeress to release the bindings holding Kay in place.

“C’mon, Giantkiller. Let’s get you back to your friends at Challenge, and the boss in here to sort out everything else.” She slid her eyes sideways towards Spider. “I’ll be sure to tell him that you have the Seeress in your custody, sir.” Spider gave a resigned sigh, but made no other objection. Kay felt he ought to protest, to argue against leaving the Seeress unchained, to snap that it should have been him who took down the Mayor, but this had never been just his fight, for all his was the name the Seeress had hissed in the wake of foiled plans. He let himself be guided out, Agent Jones brisk and efficient, a polite smile pasted on her face.

Thorne was waiting for them outside, cheerfully confident in his Agents and the Giantkiller. He told Kay that Challenge had withstood the final siege, but couldn’t tell him the cost. Kay, seething, bit his tongue at the man’s oily reminders that in the quiet branch’s service, any messy rumours about illegal activities would be swept under the rug. The Giantkiller jerked his head back at the keep. “The mayor is dead, but the Seeress is still alive in there.” Thorne pursed his lips, nodding. “Good, good. The mayor had to be removed, though alive would have been…preferable. Young Cassandra can take over, however, to maintain consistency - with supervision, of course, before you say anything.” Kay scowled. “She fed mages into his machines for years.” Thorne smiled at him, condescendingly, shaking his head like a kindly grandfather.

“We cannot simply remove every political figure we disagree with. She is young. She will be managed. You should be making your way to Challenge, however. I’m sure your friends will want to hear the good news.” Agent Jones watched the boy stalk away, carefully keeping her face neutral. She was an old hat at manipulating people, after years of practice - she could see that Thorne was trying to collect another recruit. She could also see that he was going about it in entirely the wrong fashion, but she didn’t think it was worth pointing that out.

Thorne glanced at her sideways. “The mayor is dead, Agent Jones?” “Yes sir. An unfortunate necessity to avoid further loss of life.” He heaved a sigh, but didn’t question it. “Very well then. Let us go and debrief Spider, and explain the new order of things to Miss Graves.”

Even with the Mayor gone, the keep was still hostile territory; Agent Jones was on high alert, so when she heard a door click softly closed as they walked through the entry way she waved Mr Thorne on ahead of her, waiting until Dadlus thought it was safe to emerge again. She tackled him to the ground, and had him cuffed and cursing by the time Thorne, Spider and the Seeress made their way back down the stairs. Thorne’s face turned gleeful when he saw her captive. He rubbed his hands together. “Excellent! Good work, Agent Jones.” The Seeress’ head snapped toward him, eyes widening fractionally in surprise before he spoke. “I have a Bureau engineer who desperately needs to pick your brains, particularly as it seems the Giantkiller was able to burn all of the blueprints. You're going to be very valuable to us.”

Spider was staring between Thorne and Dadlus, ice slipping down his spine as he put the pieces together, discovered the game Thorne had been playing all along. He had spent years working in this keep, shoulders weighed down by so many lives he had been unable to save, who he had sacrificed to ensure he could bring it all to an end. He took three long steps forward and slid the knife he always carried up his sleeve between the engineer's ribs. "I didn't let children die for years so the Bureau could turn around and do the same thing all over again." Dadlus slumped to the ground, blood pooling under him. Thorne went for his gun, but Agent Jones was quicker - in a different life, it would have been dragon’s fire that killed Gerald Thorne, but in this one it was handfuls of Elsewhere fire that Laney had been carrying around her wrists for years, hidden even from the Seeress.

Cassandra stared at them both over the cooling body, shaken - she had always seen everything, every secret and every weakness, and here she found both: her lieutenants had been hiding secrets upon secrets, tucked carefully away where she hadn’t found them, and so she was weak where she’d thought her back was guarded. She wondered if it would be a bullet or a blaze that came for her, whether Spider would help or if he would pull her out of the way.

Agent Jones didn’t glance her way: she and Spider were eying each other, weighing up their priorities and potentials. Spider wanted Sandry to go free - she had barely been an adult when he arrived at the keep, for all that it had taken him weeks to discover she wasn’t cold years older. He had realised within those first months of working his way into her network just how young she must have been, when the Mayor told her she was a monster and turned her into a tool.

Laney had always wanted revenge for her brother, justice for the other victims. She had burned the machines with glee and felt no guilt for shooting the Mayor down. She felt no guilt for burning Throne, either - she wanted the machines gone as much as Spider. But she knew who it was who had found her brother, who had sent armed thugs with Elsewhere cracks in their pockets after Liam. She had told herself she would feel no guilt for shooting the Seeress, either, even when she saw the date of birth in the briefing files.

But Laney had spent a year now with Sandry and the Spider; she remembered the squeaky sage in her second year study group, the one she still sometimes met in the University library to chatter over Elsewhere theory. She had heard Sandry talk about Sam, but she had heard Grey talk about Sandry, too. She thought she talked about Liam the same way, sometimes.

“Thorne said we would leave you in charge,” she spoke softly, as though the words were of no importance. “So we will. But you do not re-start operations, and Spider and I will make sure of it.” Agent Jones holstered her gun, turned to the Seeress, and raised an eyebrow. “But the people around here will freeze in winter, without help. Your people, now. So, I’ve a challenge for you - I know you’ve studied how the machines work, how to make them more efficiently. But have you ever tried to figure out how you can wrest this power from thin air and turn it into something useful?”

Laney Jones pressed her hand up to the skin of the world and broke it; in the glow of the Elsewhere she was radiant, and Cassandra would have shielded her eyes if she’d been able to bear looking away. All her life, she had been told that what they did was the only way, only fair.

She stared, eyes stinging, and thought I have never seen a mage burn so bright.

Kay spent the weeks after at Challenge helping to shore up the damage; Bea left the bakery to help, bandaging the wounded and scolding him for taking foolish risks. They knelt side by side in the community garden, repairing damaged trellises and trying to see which of the fragile growths could be coaxed back into health and which needed to be turned to compost. One water break, surveying the rows they’d managed to restore, he idly turned a stone over and said, “What are we going to do now? What’s next?” She didn’t pretend he was talking about the garden, though she didn’t reply until they were carting the next load of dug up plants to the compost heap.

“I don’t know. It’s been so long since I didn’t have -” And he put his arms around her and let her cry into his shoulder; Bea had turned herself to stone in so many ways, over the years, since she woke to a cold house and an empty bedroom, and now her war was won. There would be pieces to pick up, rebuilding that would take years. The Seeress was still in the keep, and for all that Agent Jones assured them she wasn’t going to be a problem it still sat bitter under both their tongues. It would take months for the mountain villagers to feel safe, for a child with sparks flicking between fingertips to inspire joy not terror. It would take years, a lifetime - several lifetimes. There was work for Bea to bury herself in still, but for now there was sun on her shoulders and there would be no mages lost in the night. For now, she could realise they were safe, as safe as you could ever be, and weep for all those who hadn’t been.

Later, shoulder to shoulder in the crowded inn, Kay would rest his head on her shoulder, quiet.

“I think I should go back to the farm, for a bit. See my dad, yeah? Make sure he knows I’m okay.” He nudged her with an elbow, gentle. “I’ll come back, though. But I promised I wouldn’t leave without telling you, so I am. I’m going to head back to the farm and get shouted at, so you aren’t even going to be the only one nagging me about taking risks, then I’m gong to come back to the bakery and chop wood for you.” She laughed softly.

“That’s your life plan?” He grinned, and it was a younger face that looked back at her than she’d seen for years. He was still a child, really, for all that he was growing tall and gangly. He shrugged. "For now. I’d like to go a few weeks with no-one trying to kill me, it’d make a nice change. Later - well. Maybe I’ll go get myself a Badge, I'm almost old enough. Sarge told me plenty of times he reckons I could do it, and I’ve daydreamed about it for years, you know? Be a proper Hero, join the Rangers as an intern. Agent Jones told me Thorne is dead - I didn't ask for details, I thought she might shoot me - and that I didn't need to worry about my name being in any paperwork with the Giantkiller, so long as I say Thorne was tragically killed in the fight with the Mayor. I could do it, if I wanted.” They sat in silence for a while longer, watching the crowd. After a while, Bea ruffled his hair gently. “Maybe you should go to the Academy, get yourself a career lined up. But if you’ll take an old baker’s suggestion - I think you’d make a better Guide, all things considered. You've had enough practice at being a hero.”

In the morning, before he set out for the old farm he hadn’t been back to in years, Kay climbed up the flights of stairs to the uppermost platform of the wall that surrounded Challenge. The wooden posts were riddled with marks, from flung weapons and the sooty streaks left by stolen mage fire, idle carved graffiti left by bored sentries - names and old in jokes, defiant records left when they knew they were all inviting battle to their doorstep. He stood looking out at the surrounding peaks as the sun rose, thinking about the Leauges and Bureau policy, about a roc digging claws into his shoulder and long summer sieges, the machines burning and Mayor Graves crumpling lifeless to his plush carpet, and dug out his pocket knife.

We were here.

#my writing #Jack is a Beanstalk #Beanstalk #Echoes of a Giantkiller #Remember the Dust #this one went way more off canon than usual #I was planning to spend more time with more of the background characters #Sorry Susie and Rosie I'll have to give you more screentime another time #because Kay kind of...took over #L&L fic #the mountain vigilantes never become the mountain vigilantes #other people still step up to the fight #Leagues and legends

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avenger-hawk · 3 years

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Tagged by @altraes (thank you, it was fun to do this~)

List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 of your favorite authors!

(I wrote the first paragraphs because my first lines alone don’t make much sense lol)

1- ACQUIESCENCE (Minato/Itachi) my first fic ever. darkish but just a little, angsty. I’m proud of it cause another author wrote a sequel to it.

to ac·qui·esce: to accept, agree, or allow something to happen by staying silent or by not arguing. A flurry of leaves, swept away by the autumn wind, caught the Hokage's attention while he took off his large hat. That time of the year should have been warmer.

2- THE WILL OF FIRE (Shiita, Danzo/Shisui, Danzo/Itachi) This was dark and shiita fans didn’t like it lol.

Just like his owner, Danzo's studio was dark and dusty. The man didn't look as old as Hiruzen, but he was twice as scary; thus would think a boy of Itachi's age. Not him. He was not allowed to be afraid.

3- WHAT HE WANTED (Itasasu) Even tho I rewrote it cause I didn’t like how I initially characterized them and their dynamics this is my most popular fic. Maybe because it’s a post-ending, canon divergent, fix-it kind of story. Maybe because it’s Itasasu and I put so much love into writing their dynamics and, also, in giving Sasuke a good ending since canon didn’t do him justice.

Sasuke is where everybody wants him to be: in Konoha. With the battle and the arm he also lost the urge to fight. He's had enough of traveling. He's tired of chasing and being chased. So tired that even if he meant every word about starting a revolution, being the Hokage and build a new era, he had wondered, though only for a moment, if he would be able to really accomplish such tasks all by himself.

4- IN POWER WE ENTRUST THE LOVE ADVOCATED (Itasasu) THis is my second most popular fic. This one too was written after the ending and tried to give Sasuke justice. I planned to write a sequel but I got busy with other projects and lost interest in it.

The gates open, letting the shinobi in after a successfully completed mission. Being on duty the following day Sasuke declines his team mates' proposal to have dinner together, the reddish sunset light forcing him to squint as he walks towards the Hokage's office.

5- PRESSURE (Itasasu) Taken from In Power that can be read as a standalone oneshot.

Itachi wakes up to the sound of pouring water.

6- IN DREAMS (Itasasu, Izuna/Sasuke, DARKFIC). This is one of the darkest things I wrote. The Izuna/Sasuke crackpair was for @admiral-izusasu. The plot, the dynamics, everything has a double, or triple reading, plot related and metaphorical for other, real-life issues such as knowing people online, and emotional abuse from narcissistic people. I wrote it when I was fighting against one of these psychos, on tumblr itself, so this fic has a personal meaning for me. But also the plot and the canon divergent ending thing is cool, I think it’s one of my best fics, even though I coulnd’t care less about izuna.

They say that nature will always find a way. After the end of the war flowers keep blooming like nothing happened even if the light is fainter, filtered from the tall branches of the Shinju tree, now grown into a forest spread all over the world.

7- SOMBER CREATION PALE DESTRUCTION (Madara/Sasuke dom/sub-ish). Darkish? Who knows, I write darkfish stuff all the time. I was (and am) very proud of this fic, the canon divergent turn it took (who am I kidding, it’s really cool lol) and the weird relationship/dynamics these 2 created. So I didn’t update it anymore, because doing so would break their thin balance. Ssssh, don’t tell me it doesn’t make sense, I don’t believe you xD

History teaches that Madara Uchiha died at the hands of Hashirama Senju. Their statues were erected in the Valley Of The End where their battle was fought, where the shinobi god ended his best friend's life in order to protect the village they founded together. No one knows that Madara didn't die there.

8- IN THE DARK (kakashi/Sasuke, mob/Sasuke noncon). This is a very dark oneshot that I’m proud of, cause it ‘explains’ canon Sasuke personality in Shinden and later, and that I use as prequel for many fics, like WHW but also OFAF and Broken Things (see later for both).

Things never went as Sasuke wanted. After the war it's no different, although everything seems fine at first, Team 7 finally at peace with each other, the war ended and the village that Itachi protected, even as a dead man, safe. Nevertheless he is arrested when he's still in the hospital.

9- VICTIMS OF PEACE (Shisui/Sasuke dom/sub-ish) I am so proud of this fic, of its non massacre universe, of the dark-ish slow burn relationship between Shisui and Sasuke I wrote, tentatively at first cause no one did it or thought much about it, and because that non massacre filler was bad, but still it was inspiration. I know shiita fans hated me even more for this cause shisui is only paired with itachi, and also itachi/itasasu fans were disappointed but still. This is maybe the fic I’m most proud of.

If a traveler arrived from a random village in the Fire Country he would certainly notice how different Konoha was. He would not be able to pinpoint exactly why at first, because the buildings, houses and shops are similar, just like their gardens, fields and animals. Only after some thought he would understand that the difference is in their people: other villagers are relaxed and casual, even loud. Children run around the streets, chasing each other, playing tag or hide-and-seek. Their fathers bring them presents and their mothers buy them new clothes.

10- OF FEATHERS AND FANGS (DARK Narusasu) I received a lot of hate for this one, which makes me proud of it even more. so many naruto stans were butthurt by my characterization of him as a possessive not sunshine selfless boy and their dynamics as crazy.

Jiraiya used to complain that the first sign of getting old was waking up at night for no reason and not being able to fall back asleep. For Naruto, this only happened after the war.

11- BLACK ROSES (Itasasu, dom/sub-ish) Smutty Bloody Darky Hokage Itachi/Anbu Sasuke oneshot

Because of his farsighted politics, his loyalty towards his allies as well as his iron fist against his enemies, Itachi quickly became one of the most respected leaders in the shinobi world, and because of his unequaled diplomatic skills, along with his vast culture, impeccable manners and refined appearance, he became popular among nobles, including the Daimyo, whose official visits increased since the Uchiha rose to power.

12- NELL’IPOTESI GRANDE (=IN THE BIG HYPOTHESIS) (MetaMoro, not Naruto) I’m very proud of this one cause it’s a psycho-pass inspired longfic set in a retrofuturistic Italy with a totalitarian consumeristic regime. But that fandom is so shitty and they all hate me cause I called them homophobic fascists so no one cares. The excerpt is translated too.

He’s reminded of Pirandello’s* words as he’s riding the automatic taxi across the city, exiting the center towards EUR. COmpared to Milan with its skyscrapers, multilevel streets, automatic cars and incessant novelties, the capital is basically the same as it was portrayed in old illustrations: renaissance and 20th century buildings, seagulls, pines among the Roman ruins, sycamore trees on the Lungotevere, that was probably already busy with traffic when people travelled on horse carriages. (*an Italian writer)

13- DA UOMO A UOMO, MANO NELLA MANO (from man to man, hand in hand) (Metamoro) lol I was hated a lot for this one too. tbh the hate I received in the Naruto fandom is nothing compared to this other shitty fandom

For an artist like Fabrizio, mainly focused on expressing what he has inside, public relations are the hardest part of his job, especially when it’s about events where, instead of fans, of whom he perceives the sincere affection, other artists and professionals are invited. His experience taught him that most of them are hypocrites ready to jump on the winner’s bandwagon as quickly as to throw mud at the loser.

14- STRENGTH THROUGH WOUNDING (wip) (Obito/Sasuke, Obito/Itachi, dark.-ish)

There is something nostalgic in the eerie way the boy's screams resonate through the dark cavern-like hideout, their pain bouncing from one curved wall to another, their anguish filling their crevices. It’s like hearing his past self from an external perspective, like Madara did. Which is fitting, for Obito is Madara now.

15- WORDS UNSAID (wip) (Kakashi/Sasuke)

A black flame that cannot be extinguished: they had been warned about Amaterasu by Jiraiya, but seeing it was impressive nevertheless. The whole area was surrounded by black flames and the rain pouring hard could nothing against it. They found Sasuke there, surrounded, imprisoned by black flames that were extinguishing themselves, so they found a breach.

16- BLEEDING ME (Metamoro vampire/priest darkfic) No one can understand this in the Naruto fandom but it’s an AU interpretation of the Da UOMO A UOMO character dynamics where one is an emotional vampire-like person. I’m very proud of this fic tbh.

According to folk stories the forest was so big and full of dangers that God himself put a church where it ended, so that its priest would protect the people living nearby. It was a small, white building that didn’t match the typical stones and wood brownish ones of that region, with no stained glass windows or fancy columns, spires or gargoyles, only crosses with skulls and bones, and an engraving in an unknown language.

17- WILD CHILD (Metamoro cop/drug dealer AU). At this point I hate that fandom so much but I like my ideas and I write only for my girl whom I met in that very shitty fandom.

Everything seems bigger in children’s eyes. Like the playground in the courtyard of the church, with its slides and swings that for Ermal’s siblings were the setting of countless imaginary adventures which they told him in detail, enthusiastically interrupting each other, when he picked them up after school.

18- TRUE COLORS (Itasasu, dark, dom/sub) By now I’m only interested in writing dark IS and I enjoyed writing this one lol

"I knew you had it in you. You're a sadistic control freak. Even more than me." Orochimaru's voice resounded in Itachi's ears. Again.

19- OF FEATHERS AND FANGS 2: TO REPAIR WITH GOLD (Dark Narusasu). Cause I didn’t piss off NS fans enough I guess? lol this is ongoing and I like this idea so much

It's a rainy day in Konoha but no one seems to notice. Everyone is focused on the Hokage delivering his eulogy.

20- BROKEN THINGS (Shisui/Sasuke) My latest creation, I’m so proud of it cause it’s Shisasu again, my rarepair! and it was supposed to be a oneshot but it got longer because they have such a cool dynamic that things just happen and get longer.

In the Land of Water summers were hot and damp, autumn and spring were damp for the frequent rains and winter was no less, with its cold temperature and ubiquitous dampness. It wasn't a problem for Sasuke though.

Tagging: @renamon15 and all the other authors I can’t remember right now and who want to do this, tag me back so I can read your first lines lol

#I'm not reading nar fics so xD #I'm actually back into reading my old favourite bleach fics cause I used to be into bleach so much before naruto #ask meme/tag game #my writing #fics & art recs #lol for some reason the pressure first line seems funny out of context

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