Shadowgast Works in Progress
This week, we have eight of our favorite works in progress to rec! Check them out under the cut, and don't forget to comment and kudos if you like them!
Monsterchen by drow_skies (22239, Teen)
Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes
Something is very wrong with Essek. He has far too many limbs, is sporting claws and sharp teeth, hisses and growls, and can probably fit inside Caleb’s component pouch. But Caleb is certain he can reverse this strange Aeorian magic.
Reccer says: Long Essek fic treated seriously. Not updated in a while, but still super fun!
Coping Skills by eldritchmochi (251061, Explicit)
Reccer's Content Notes: None
BDSM fic starring a disabled Essek and service top Caleb
Reccer says: Startlingly realistic depiction of both the bdsm community and the realities of disabilities. Also super hot.
Kintsugi by Chekhov (83853, Mature)
Reccer's Content Notes: Major Character Death, Dementia
It's a story about Caleb's keen mind break in apart with age, coming back together after an accidental consecution and his way back to Essek..
Reccer says: The process of Caleb and Essek losing and then finding each other again is so beautifully written. At times the story is very sad, but in the best way.
Starling by kaiannae (226460, Mature)
Reccer's Content Notes: Graphic Depictions of Violence
Bren escapes Vergesson, snatching a fairy -- small humanoid-like beings kept as pets and arcane focuses by mages -- on his way out. Now he just has to survive whilendealing with both his own trauma and the fairy's. He is, however, starting to suspect fairies might be more than hes been led to believe
Reccer says: Fairy!Essek au, dealing with the effects of trauma and survival. Lots of little hints as to fairies being more intelligent -- more human -- than they seem.
The Melody of Your Gravity by sarahlizzie (22887, Explicit)
Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes
Caleb and Essek are musicians navigating fame, fortune and a newly added relationship.
Reccer says: The Popstar AU I needed in my life. It is sooo good.
Cascade Effect by firefright (6867, Teen)
Reccer's Content Notes: Omegaverse
part of a series of omegaverse. Essek travels with the Nein to Aeor, while trying to navigate his twnse situation after the exposure of his betrayal, and Caleb and his strained-at-best relationship.
Reccer says: Such a wonderful take on omegaverse w an omega Essek and alpha Caleb. The whole series is well written and Cadcade Effect is no exception!
tether the lark by duckbunny (7433, Explicit)
Reccer's Content Notes: Choose Not to Warn, under-negotiated kink; it's a part of a series
Caleb and Essek develop their relationship admits the deadly dangers of Aeor and their own relationship with pain.
Reccer says: It's very well written, poetic and gloomy. The way Caleb and Essek's complicated relationship with each other, with kink and pain is really captivating.
Reports of my safety have been greatly exaggerated by ghosttopiary (7595, Mature)
Reccer's Content Notes: Graphic Depictions of Violence
essek is caught as bait, but he refuses to lead his friends into a trap.
Reccer says: Its so heartbreaking and intense! Leaves you wanting more!
Aeor is for Lovers is an 18+ Shadowgast Discord server. The above fanfic recommendations were pulled from our community for this weekly event. All fics, unless otherwise specified, will primarily feature Shadowgast. Have any questions about what this is? Check out the FAQ! Next week, we’ll be back with Science Fiction!
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let's throw a curve ball (is that the right metaphor? I know nothing) 21 and/or 16 for the Caleb/WD* au
*Willie's Dad ;P
How do I even explain this AU? Well, Yeo wrote in some fic or tags something about Caleb being Willie's stepdad and it spiraled from there.
Today had been awesome. He had spent the morning skating around town, landing some sick tricks, and then he and Alex had a date. They'd gone to a cute little cafe and a music store and gotten ice cream together and talked and talked and kissed for hours.
So yeah, Willie had an excellent day.
Until he came home and found his dad making out with his dance teacher in the kitchen. Like, full on making out, with tongues and teeth and rucked up shirts and in the kitchen where Willie made his sandwiches.
"What the fuck?" he blurted out, because seriously, what the fuck?
"Willie!" Dad said, and gross, his lips are all shiny and his face is all flushed. "Okay, so, I can explain..."
"IN THE KITCHEN?" Willie shouted instead, because well. He knew his dad wasn't straight. And had recently started dating again. Though could he have found anyone else to date besides his dance teacher? "With my dance teacher? Really dad? You couldn't just go on the apps like a normal person?"
"Well actually," Caleb started, and Willie decided he really didn't want to hear the rest of that story. And Caleb wasn't his teacher here, so Willie didn't have to listen to him. So he covered his ears and shouted 'ew ew ew' all the way to his room.
He hid under the covers, trying to wrap his head around this. He pulled Lancelot close, burying his face in the plush dragon's soft stomach.
He'd told dad he was fine with him dating. And he was. But why did it have to be his teacher? What if they broke up and Willie had to switch dance schools? Or worse, what if they stayed together and Willie still had to switch because of bias or something? Those classes were cut-throat sometimes, and he could see the dance moms out for blood if Willie got a part they wanted their kid to have and they found out Caleb was dating Willie's dad.
Because it wasn't like he disliked Caleb, or anything. Sure, he was a little extra sometimes, but that's part of what made class fun. And he never got weird about gender stuff, all parts were cast based only on talent. The dress code was lax, and the rules weren't so stifling they made dancing un-fun, unlike some of the other studios Willie had tried.
Also Caleb was just really cool and accepting. And funny, in a snarky way. And he never let anyone get away with any kind of bullying. And when Willie was having trouble with a certain part of the routine, he let Willie stay after class and worked with him on it.
So okay, maybe Willie understood those were all things that could be nice for a boyfriend to have. Alex was also cool, and funny, and kind, and principled. But still... the kitchen. Where they ate.
There was a knock on the door, and Willie grumbled out a 'whaaat'. Because he wasn't actually mad at his dad or anything.
"I brought you Oreos as a peace offering," his dad said, sticking his head through the door.
Willie sat up, pouting. "You may enter," he allowed, making grabby hands. He had no idea where Dad had hid those from him, because usually Oreos didn't last in this house.
Dad sat on the bed with him, forking over the goods. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Caleb sooner," he said, as soon as Willie's face was stuffed with cookies so he couldn't talk back. His dad was a wily one. "We really wanted to make sure we had something before we told you."
"Do you?" Willie asked.
The way his dad's face turned shy and happy at the same time said everything Willie needed to know. "I think so. I really like him, Willie."
"Uh yeah, I could tell," Willie said, because while he was happy for his dad, he did Not Want To See That. The shy smile turned into an embarrassed grimace. "Two rules. One: no matter what happens, you won't make me switch dance classes, and Caleb won't be weird about it."
"I promise," Dad said, holding out his pinkie. Willie hooked his pinkie around it, and they shook on it. "What about the second rule?"
"No sex in the kitchen!" Willie said. "Or any of the shared living spaces! No sex on the couch, or in the garden, or on the stair case, or wherever else you two want to get nasty."
His dad sighed, but held his pinkie out again. Only when he promised that did Willie deign to share his Oreos.
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Angstpril 2023 Day One: Liar
There were very few things in life that Eadwulf insisted upon without any chance of compromise. Choosing battles was a matter of survival under the tutelage of Master Ikithon; incurring punishment was easy enough to do even without the added risk that stubbornness presented. To resist bending only made it inevitable that one would eventually have to break, and as far as Eadwulf was concerned, the world offered little of great enough importance to justify tempting that fate.
It was not an oath made lightly, then, when he promised that he would return every day that he was able to one particular cell in the depths of Vergesson Sanatorium.
Astrid refused to speak to him for weeks after the incident, after what he did that night to save her from a fate far worse than a scar. So, with no one there to swear it to, he made his promise to the gods themselves.
He knelt on the floor of his bedroom, hands clasped together in his lap. Outside the small window above his bed, the cool light of the nearly-full moon fanned out across the skies, setting the shadowed room aglow with the night’s ghostly haze. His gaze settled on the nearest mountain peaks; ancient and immense and unmoving, he thought they must be the closest things to gods he would ever lay his eyes on. When thoughts of his past, of his people, of his own actions that night threatened to creep to the front of his mind, he pressed them back into the darkness of memory. They were gone now; there was nothing more to be done for them. Instead, he turned his thoughts again to Bren, to bright red hair and wild eyes and roaring flames and the crack of rock against bone.
“If I condemned him to this fate,” he whispered, so quiet it was more thought than speech, “let me be the one to see him through it.”
Only a moment later, the soft moonlight was eclipsed by the silhouettes of two ravens coming to rest on the windowsill, and he knew somewhere deep within him that his oath had been sealed.
The next morning, he rose earlier than usual and ate his breakfast as quickly as he could manage to hold it down. The sun still hadn’t even begun to show itself in the young day’s sky when he slipped past the guards at the sanatorium, giving each of them a look which told them not to stand in his way if they valued their lives. They had no way of knowing that, in truth, he wasn’t sure if he would have the courage to make good on that threat; they only saw the determination in his eyes and stepped aside.
As he pushed through hall after hall, he wasted no time looking at anything other than the faces in each cell, searching for blue eyes and red hair. Any strange looks that may have been aimed his way were lost in the blur of stone and bars and wrong faces.
When he finally turned a corner and saw a short-cropped burst of orange in the nearest cell, he was just in time to stop the guard who was preparing to enter with whatever sad excuse for a breakfast they had prepared for the day. He caught the guard by the arm, stooping down to look her in the eye, and pressed a few coins into her hand.
All he said was, “Let me.”
She stared at him for a long few seconds, head tilted to one side, before shrugging.
“If you insist.”
Handing him the tray of oatmeal and water, she unlocked the door of Bren’s cell and started off toward the next one down, leaving Eadwulf there alone. He slipped through the door, closed it behind him, and crouched down next to Bren, truly taking in his current state for the first time.
Perhaps the most noticeable thing should have been how beat up he was – the dark bruises, the blood that no one had bothered to wash from his skin. But instead, all Eadwulf could see was how empty he looked. There was always such a fire behind his eyes, a kind of passion and life there, like his mind was working so feverishly to puzzle the world together that you could watch it happening from the outside, and now? That fire had been all but doused. His eyes were glazed over, wandering helplessly around the space, looking through it all and not truly seeing any of it. There was a slight strain on his face, a clench to his brow that Eadwulf knew his resting face didn’t possess, which betrayed some process of thought, no doubt an unpleasant one. It was distant, though, and passive, as though the thoughts had taken on a life of their own within his mind and he, in this clouded state, was helpless to resist or engage them at all. When his gaze finally fell on Eadwulf, there was a soft spark of recognition that sent Eadwulf’s heart into his throat.
Eadwulf returned every morning after that, and again every night, so long as he wasn’t off on a mission or locked away for the sake of some punishment. Each morning, he fed Bren whatever breakfast the guards had prepared, careful to make it a far more gentle process than the other meals likely involved. As Bren’s hair grew longer with time, Eadwulf took to brushing it, and trimming it when the ends began to fray. A few times, he considered cutting it short again; surely, it would be more comfortable for Bren to have less of it. But there was no ignoring how his eyes fluttered closed at the feeling of it being brushed, or how he hummed in a way that almost seemed to approach contentment — better to keep it long, Eadwulf always ultimately decided.
At night, Eadwulf would clean him — easy enough to do with a simple spell, but most nights Eadwulf wiped his face and hands the mundane way first, probably more for his own sake than for Bren’s — and tended to whatever wounds may have been sustained since the last visit. Then, he would take out whatever books he had been able to find that day, sit by Bren’s side, and read. Bren’s favorite of the books, judging by the way his eyes brightened ever so slightly at the sight of its cover, was an old children's story about a young boy and a cat prince, so they always started and finished with that one. In between, they cycled through as many of the other books as Eadwulf thought they safely had time for, and by the time he closed the fairytale for the final time, Bren was almost always slumped against his side, asleep.
Eventually, once the rifts between them had been repaired, Astrid joined him for some of his visits, though she was quickly given more responsibilities than him and often found it more difficult to get away. On those days, Astrid would braid Bren’s hair once he had brushed it in the mornings, and alternated reading with him at night.
And after every nighttime visit, he would sit in his bed and write a few lines in a journal: how the day’s visits had gone, what had gone on in the outside world that day or over the past few days, what he and Astrid were doing in their own lives. Someday, he told himself, Bren would have his mind back. Someday, he would hand over the journal, a meticulous record of the days Bren was locked away. Someday, Bren would be able to read it, and it would be as if he hadn’t missed a thing at all.
In all that time spent in Bren’s cell, Eadwulf never feared being discovered by Master Ikithon — not out of carelessness or apathy toward the consequences he would inevitably incur, but because he knew it was foolish to assume he hadn’t already been discovered at the very start. The archmage’s gaze took immense care to avoid, and nowhere was it more omnipresent than in the halls of the sanatorium. The chances that he had gone unnoticed were laughably slim — it was better to assume Master Ikithon was well aware, that a confrontation would come soon enough.
And come it did.
One morning, nearly two years into his visits, Eadwulf arrived at Bren’s cell to see his teacher standing there, calmly watching him approach. Inside the cell, he could see Bren’s eyes wide and his face held more tensely than usual. He was shifting slightly where he sat, as though his own body were the walls of a prison preventing him from running away.
All at once, Eadwulf was overcome with the urge to run forward, to lunge at Ikithon, to scream, because how dare he come here and strike that kind of fear into someone so helpless, hasn’t Bren been through enough? But he pushed the urge down and kept calm as he walked in spite of it. It was him that the archmage was angry with, it was him who would face the consequences of his actions; Bren had no reason to be afraid.
As it turned out, neither did he. Master Ikithon wasn’t angry, not at Eadwulf nor Bren; he never said or even suggested that Eadwulf would be punished, and the calm smile never fell from his face. He seemed entirely unfazed — pleased, even — by Eadwulf’s actions.
“You are welcome to visit our dear Bren whenever you wish, Eadwulf,” he said in a tone that could almost be mistaken for good-natured, “as is Miss Becke. In fact, I think it’s wonderful that you three have grown to care so much for each other, even after all this time. By all means, do continue to come visit him if it pleases you.” Moving closer, he added in a lower tone, “I would only urge you to remember that it is for you, yes? As much as it pains me to say this, Bren is — how shall I put this? — absent, by all accounts. You are a smart boy, I have no doubt you’ve noticed. Each time you leave this place, it is to him as if you were never here at all; he won’t remember. The sharp young man we knew is, I’m afraid, no longer with us.”
And every night since then, as silence fell over the sanatorium’s halls, Eadwulf would look down at Bren, tucked against his side the same way they had once grown used to laying in their beds, and ask himself: how could that possibly be true?
How, when he still squirmed at the mere sight of his old teacher standing nearby, when his eyes still sparked at the sight of his favorite fairytale’s cover, when he still remembered how to fall asleep next to Eadwulf like it was as simple as breathing, could Bren be gone? How could it be possible that such a sharp mind, so full of passion and of life, simply slipped away? Even if he remembered none of it, even if each day felt to him like the first time, Bren seemed in his own way to welcome their company far more than any other’s, to relax in some small way at their presence; did that not count for something?
It would take him many more years to truly make sense of it, to fully understand the weight of what it meant, but the simple fact remained: that Bren was gone was the first of Trent Ikithon’s lies that Eadwulf ever saw through.
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