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gayregis · 3 years

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what's a witcher headcanon you have but has literally nothing to back it up?

like i know eskel would be scary good at estimating times for a microwave and milva would be a god at jenga. why/how do i know this? who's to say

i can actually somewhat explain both of those headcanons. eskel either can cook (correct, wholesome headcanon) or can’t (wrong, stereotypical canon) and both of these possibilities mean he has to know how to use a microwave really really well. as for milva, butches love construction, jenga is practically the science of building houses but as a game.

as for my own... hm kind of difficult because a lot of my headcanons are based in canon so... some of these are more connected to canon than others, but they’re closer to my own uniqueness rather than sapkowski’s work:

dandelion

dandelion’s family (the de lettenhoves) paid for his college education in exchange that he would never use his true name and titles when he published his works, because they are a family largely involved in governmental appointments, and did not want any horrible saucy love poetry (most of what he wrote when he was nineteen) being linked back to them. to this day they’ve disowned him, he lost his lands, and he is forbidden from coming back to any of their estates if not undercover. it’s all very hush-hush. they tricked him into thinking that it was for his own good, telling him that his real name was far too famous, even more famous that he would be soon...

dandelion’s father died when he was young, which led his mother to guide his childhood (basically instructing the servants to raise him) in a strict and masculine direction... this obviously did not work out as planned. but it’s largely why dandelion is regarded as a disappointment by his family, because he was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps to stay at the estates (ha!) and marry (ha!) to create an alliance with another noble family.

dandelion and essi’s entire backstory that i’ve planned out: essi enrolled as a student at oxenfurt and as a first year she was appointed by the department to be under dandelion’s guidance. they hit it off on the wrong foot at first (essi thought dandelion was lazy and slovenly, dandelion thought she was prissy and stuckup). but dandelion quickly recognized that essi was extremely talented and had a gift for music, so he asked her why in hell was she directed for further guidance? she admitted that she had stage fright... horrible stage fright. he laughed, thinking she was joking. she wasn’t. the story that follows then is that essi’s stage fright was symbolized by her iconic hair which fell over one eye, which was mocked by her peers - dandelion advised her to own it instead and turn it into a persona - much like what he did when he was her age, his peers called him dandelion (buttercup) on account of his blonde hair that has a tendancy to fan out like petals, and he adopted it as his persona.

on a similar note, what dandelion’s office at oxenfurt looks like: it’s basically treated as a walk-in closet for outfits he’s purchased but doesn’t have a permanent space elsewhere for. other valuables that can’t be kept on his person or in his saddlebags are kept here too. it’s much less of an office to do work and way more of a storage room. the desk has many finished bottles of alcoholic drinks and a lot of manuscripts stored inside (his own, because of the works he admires, he can recall from memory precisely what was written in them)

milva (sorry all of them are about her being a lesbian)

the dryads of brokilon adore milva more than they would ever let on. they find her very interesting because she’s a human, but she’s also one of them, but she also works with the scoia’tel. when milva comes back to brokilon after a journey, she finds herself crowded by dryads asking her how she is doing and what happened on her trip. because of this, milva’s quite good at storytelling, in her own colloquialisms and manners of speech. the dryads are captured by her stories of the world beyond brokilon, and very much enjoy her company, though milva was unaware of exactly how much they enjoyed it (if you get what i’m saying).

milva realizes she’s a lesbian in toussaint because of her encounter with the baron de trastamara, in which she rebuked his marriage proposal and cried at the kitchen table and in the stables. she appreciated the baron’s friendship more than his romantic advances, and she was crying because she was upset that she couldn’t find true romance in her heart for him. angouleme states at the kitchen table that the hunting trip was overnight, suggesting that the baron asked milva for sex. i headcanon that he did, and milva couldn’t find it in herself to say yes. when the baron became upset at this and pestered her a little to find out why she refused his advances, she had an emotional outburst at him and left at once, for she herself didn’t really know.

additionally, many of the women shopkeepers in toussaint flirted with milva but she didn’t understand their advances. particularly a fishmonger and a fletcher, both of which are OCs... it wasn’t until angouleme (not giving milva an option on whether to accept her company or not) followed milva around on errands one day that she witnessed their interactions and then (in a very annoying little sister manner) bugged milva about how cute of a couple they would be, to which milva took shock and offense. but this got milva thinking about the subject.

regis

regis took on a variety of ridiculous titles when he was younger. “the prince of darkness” and things like this. it added to his already quite-long name. it sounded as stupid as it does with me explaining it.

regis has never paid rent or taxes. he acquired the house and shop in dilingen because he came to the city after he had rehabilitated himself, and found it in a state of disrepair and abandonment. he fixed it up very nicely (perhaps much like as he did with himself... symbolism!) and grew flowers in the windowsills. when city officials came to investigate, accusing him of taking up residence illegally, he simply placed them under a vampire’s spell and told them: “nonsense, i’ve always lived here!” to which they replied, “oh, of course you have, master barber-surgeon! apologies for bothering you!”

in his house and shop in dilingen, the layout is like this: the first floor is the shop, which carries a variety of medicaments, herbal remedies, and also has a setup for surgery. behind a hidden door is the stash of mandrake brew that only select customers know to request (regis only tells them about it if he has vetted them beforehand - i.e., known them well and known them well enough that he knows he will not start an addiction for them, i.e., he doesn’t sell to the young and stupid, or horribly depressed and afraid, but just those looking to enjoy life). the second floor is his house, which is decorated sparsely much like his cottage nearby fen carn. it’s nicer, with furnishings sourced from around the city, but is still humble. the attic is the setup for barber-surgery, but for birds - mostly corvids but other urban birds as well, that have injured themselves or are having other troubles. he welcomes them to roost and come to him with any problems they may be having.

angouleme

angouleme’s biological mother was young(ish) when she had her, which also pressured her into giving her up to relatives - she was an unmarried maiden, and being a noble, that is significant for making political alliances with other noble families. they pretended she was a virgin so she could remarry and bear children in marriage; however, because she and the other nobility of cintra were slaughtered, caught right in the crossfire of the nilfgaardian massacre of cintra, she didn’t survive into her first pregnancy, so angouleme has no bioligical half-siblings.

angouleme is trans and likes dressing femininely, but on account of her situation was never able to on the road, until she got to toussaint and had not only the safety but the finances to do so. somewhat based on canon that she was happy to get out of riding pants in lady of the lake, the narration calls her a “pretty girl”... it’s just nice to imagine her happy and with gender euphoria instead of dysphoria

regis is a good mentor and guardian to her in toussaint. it started as them both being up late in the kitchen and regis (as he does) giving advice, without suggesting any shame or judgement. after a while, angouleme trusted him enough to ask him for help when she got into trouble with local banditry. thens he invited him to help her on heists. he was hesitant at first but agreed, citing that she needed supervision for such activities. he brings a book to read while she does whatever she needs to do, but perhaps is more involved than he would admit - pointing out hidden safes and such in the darkness with his vision.

i didn’t do any for cahir or geralt because i feel like canon’s already gotten them enough?

#ask #anon #the witcher #dandelion #milva #regis #angouleme #thoughts

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otterskin · 3 years

Text

Finnesang - Prologue : Two Birds, One Song

All published chapters on AO3 - but here’s Chapter One, just to hook you.

Blurb: Odin is missing a raven. Without Muninn, Odin isn’t quite who he used to be. The only thing more dangerous than a man with secrets is one who can no longer keep them.

After a near-perfect Coronation years ago, Thor's become exactly the kind of king he believes his father would be proud of - if his father were still the man Thor thought he was (if he ever was).

Loki knows his place - servant of Asgard, advisor to his brother, and caregiver to his ailing father. Important roles, defining ones - and yet he feels forgotten. Sometimes literally.

Being forgotten is fatal when all that you are is someone else’s lie.

PART ONE:

UNMADE

ᚲ ᛟ ᚹ

The RAVENS

Once we were ravens, and that only.

To be ravens is a good thing. Ravens can fly. The Sky belonged to us when we danced in it. At night we'd steal the stars away when our black bodies blotted them out. We did not belong to the Earth or the Sea, though we took the bounties of both. Some would call us thieves for that, but we were ravens only, and accountable to no-one.

And yet we were not content. We wished to have more.

We wished to be more.

When we heard it first, we could put no name to it. It was a sound, many of them, wound together in a tangle - and yet it could be followed.

So follow it we did.

We soared through rain and thunder, through blazing sun and piercing wind. Always, it moved forward, as living things must. We followed. We could not bear to live again in silence.

We beat our wings in time with its tempo and our hearts beat in time with its base. There was nothing but the song and the journey to possess it.

We followed it through forests, through villages, through cities and out into the sky again.

We saw a figure walking through clouds. He looked like one of the people who lived below - he was covered in scales like them, had four purple eyes like them, dressed as they did. But at once we saw that he was not one of them. None of them could walk the skies as easily as we flew in them. None of them sang as he did. He was a new thing, and we wanted to have him.

We danced about him, and he laughed in wonder at us.

He paused in his song to call out to us, as raucous as any lowly crow, “What are your names, then?”

We jeered. Play the sounds, creature.

He took up the thing of sticks and strings from around his neck and strummed it.

We ventured nearer, needing to feel the pulse of the tune. One of us landed on his right shoulder. One of us landed on his left. Through our toes, we could feel the rumble of his flesh, the rumble that became the sounds we would soon learn to call ‘music’.

"Hearing, I ask, from the ho-o-ly races

From Norn’s eyes, watching high and low

I will soon relate, to this tree of faces

Old tales remembered from long, long ago…”

We did not yet know what words were, but still we jittered to encounter them. The scales that disguised the singer as one of the people of below fell away, revealing pale, pinky flesh and worm-like toes where wing feathers should be. His eyes were now only two, and they were very, very blue.

"Have you no names, then? I’m between names myself at the moment. A fair number of them just…did not work out. Perhaps you can help me think of the next one.”

Before we could berate him for stopping, he continued to sing.

"I asked for companions, the Norns sent me birds

I asked them for names, but they gave me none

I suppose since I am the master of words

It falls to me to give them both some!"

He reached out to stroke our chests with a finger. It was warm. We didn’t dislike it.

“I may have made those lyrics for you, but the tune is not mine. I really should not be singing it. Yet lately, I cannot seem to get it out of my head…

“My father was a fine singer himself,

Though only when he sang with my mother.

They sang this for me when I was my first self

When I still had a sister and brother.”

The music ended. We looked at the creature. He stared hollowly out across the green skies as if he did not like the colour of them.

“It seems that no matter where I go or what I call myself, I am burdened with memories and thoughts. Not just of what was, but what could have been. Do you know what that is like, my feathered friends?”

He seemed unhappy. That was no good - his song had brought us joy, and it would not do for him to have none of his own. We called his music to our minds and cawed to it best we could, harsh and throaty.

His eyes brightened. “You are very clever, aren’t you? You’re different from the birds on Asheim. Though not so clever that you’ve yet to realize what sordid company you’re keeping now.” He strummed his instrument with a grin. “I’ve thought of names for you. You shall be Huginn and Muninn - Thought and Memory. But names are not free, my corvid companions. Upon your wings I will settle a burden, so that I might journey lighter…”

He touched a wing-toe to his head. It began to glow, bright and silver. When he withdrew the toe, it came away with a long strand of silver. It broke free from his head, and at once began to wiggle like a worm. We could not help but swallow eagerly in anticipation. He offered the worm to the first of us on his right shoulder. Without hesitation, it was devoured. He put his finger to his head once more, and this time drew out a golden worm. This he offered to the second of us, on his left shoulder. Once again, it was devoured.

He continued in this manner until we were full to bursting. The silver and gold writhed in our guts, hot and cold, filling us with emptiness and sorrow, with warmth and joy, all at once. It was only then that we realized we were no longer only ravens.

Our minds were pulled away from our bodies, away from the green skies of our home. We were taken into another body, under a different sky, in a distant time.

There, we were a boy. There, there was a garden…

It was a beautiful place.

A tall, red-bearded man held hands with a woman. Together they worked the land, pulling and pushing earth and water. Beside them were two children, a boy and girl. The girl coaxed plants from the soil, and the boy called animals to live in them.

The eyes we ravens watched from were distant, hovering far above the scene.

The man looked up at us. He opened his mouth, perhaps to call us down, to join them -

But all that came out was a terrible, wailing scream...

ᚼ

The ravens awoke, groggy with sleep. The baby’s wails echoed down the dark hallway, piercing even the great golden doors meant to shut away the rest of the world.

Thought looked at Memory. Memory looked back at Thought.

“You go,” croaked Thought.

“Muninn went last time,” complained Memory.

The wailing grew louder. It was a noise somewhere between a wolf having their teeth pulled and a crash collision between two speeding metal boats, complete with the two pilots arguing over whose fault it was afterwards. It was the very opposite of music.

“Huginn turn,” insisted Memory.

Huginn huffed, puffing up his feathers and shaking the sleep off of them. He flapped down off his golden perch and onto the bed. There was only one occupant, still slumbering on one side. On the other, the furs were flicked open. Huginn thought to look at the remaining shoes. The slippers were still there, but Frigga's boots were gone. Muninn remembered that she often went to the Garden at night - the only time she really could. She would not be back until sunrise.

Huginn hopped over to the remaining lump of furs. He pulled back the edges of them, revealing Odin’s face. He looked so very different from the creature who had walked the skies of the ravens’ homeworld. The red colour had long leached out of his hair, and his soft face had sprouted a grey beard and moustache to match it. At least his eyes had stayed the same - until a few nights ago when even one of them was taken from him.

Muninn recalled that he’d told them it was a trade of sorts. An eye for a baby. Huginn thought that was a rubbish trade. Odin's right eye had never screamed at them, which made it better by far.

Not wanting to waste any more potential sleep time, Huginn pecked near the newly-empty eye socket. At once the lump of furs erupted with a curse, sending Huginn flying into the air.

Odin attempted to insult his birds again but was drowned out by the baby screaming its boat-crash-wolf-yelp cry. So instead he sighed, beckoning to his birds to follow him as he lumbered out into the hallway.

Muninn tried to hide his beak under his wing and pretend he hadn’t seen the gesture. Huginn circled back and harassed him mercilessly.

“Need both,” Huginn tutted. “Always two ravens.”

Muninn relented, and soon both birds perched on Odin’s shoulders: Huginn on his right, Muninn on his left. As light as they were, Odin still moved slowly. He’d had very little sleep since returning from the final battle. The war itself hadn’t been particularly relaxing either.

Huginn felt the thought bloom in his mind as it occurred to Odin. How easy it seemed when I first took the child. Just seeing a friendly face after being abandoned had been enough to quell its cries.

They entered the nursery. Immediately the cries doubled in volume.

"Shhh-shhh-shh-sh.” Odin attempted, but the child only stopped its tears to hiccough loudly and suck in more breath, ammunition for further cacophony.

Hastily, Odin seized at a bottle waiting in a basket of ice and tried to stopper the babe with the bottle’s teat. Its mouth clamped shut and refused the milk, turning this way and that to escape.

“Still?” Odin asked it wearily.

I thought I saved you. But if you do not eat, all I have done is prolonged your death.

The thought tasted of hopelessness. It was not a favourite flavour of Huginn’s.

The babe reached out, seizing at Odin’s hand even as it ignored the bottle it held. Odin scooped the child into his arms, jostling the ravens as he patted its back. Nothing seemed wrong with it; its changing cloth was clean, its guts clear of gas. It was not even alone anymore - and yet it still would not stop crying.

“Go outside?” suggested Huginn.

“Remind baby of home,” agreed Muninn.

Odin nodded, eye still droopy with sleep.

They stepped onto the balcony. The night was clear and brimming with all the lights of Yggdrasil. As hoped, a chill was in the air.

And yet the baby still cried, digging into Odin’s beard as if trying to crawl away from the cold.

The old god sighed. “What am I to do?” he asked his ravens.

“Always, Odin ask only himself for counsel,” chided Muninn.

“I tried to turn to Frigga,” Odin protested half-heartedly.

Muginn cocked his head in judgement. The raven did not need to remind Odin of what he had done to Frigga. A flicker passed through both their minds: the memories of her face when he’d returned, bearing a strange infant to replace the one she so recently lost. She’d been waiting to share their grief - and Odin had instead asked her to disguise it, much like the false child he’d pressed to her breast.

“Odin did not think that one through,” observed Huginn.

“No. He did not,” agreed Odin, rubbing at the gauze over his socket again. He sighed.

Even Frigga’s reaction had been a friendlier welcome than he’d gotten from his own son.

I don’t know why I expected a warm welcome on my return - how could he even recognize me? He was but a babe when I left. But to see the boy instead glare at me with such suspicion, to insist on standing between his own mother and father...

But was the boy wrong to try and protect Frigga from me?

The first thing I did on my return was to break her heart.

“I am a wicked man,” Odin sighed.

"You are required to be a good king above being a good man. The two are often mutually exclusive concepts.”

Odin turned his head slightly to frown at Huginn. “That voice…”

The babe kicked him hard in the chest, trying again to squirm free of Odin’s grip.

Without thinking about it, he started to hum, bumping the child up and down as he did so.

Miraculously, the tiny creature quietened. Unscrunching its face, it peered up at him and his ravens. It seemed mesmerized by the tune.

Odin would have been glad of it, had he not recognized just what he was humming.

He stopped.

The babe immediately crumpled up again and began to fuss. Huginn, too, dipped his head in disappointment.

Despite his audience’s clear call for an encore, Odin did not pick up the tune again. Instead, he summoned the milk into his hand and tried again to feed the child. “Come on, boy,” he muttered, trying to turn its face back out from his chest. “I know it’s not as good as giant’s milk but we haven’t had any volunteers.”

His attempts jostled the ravens about on his shoulders, causing them to flap and squawk. Huginn wondered how comical they would appear to anyone walking in on the scene. Odin, King of Asgard, Conqueror, feared throughout the realms, encumbered by clingy ravens and an obstinate baby.

“Eat - the damn - milk,” Odin muttered, accompanying each word with the jab of the bottle.

“Baby liked that song,” Muninn recalled.

“Sing next time,” urged Huginn, a spark of independence clashing against Odin’s clear reticence.

“I don’t know that I can," the man muttered. “I haven’t sung in years,”

“Odin sang for many years before,” Muninn said slowly. “Muninn would know if Odin forgot how.”

“See? So sing now!” demanded Huginn.

The other raven looked away from his brother. “Muninn doesn’t like that song. It hurts.”

Huginn looked over at Muninn, scandalized. “We ravens like the song!"

But Muninn just fluffed his feathers again and wouldn’t meet Huginn’s beady eye.

The babe knocked the glass bottle from Odin’s hands. It hit the stone floor of the balcony and broke open.

Odin nearly cursed again, catching the ugly word with one syllable already hanging out of his mouth. Spending years around soldiers instead of the Court and his family had roughened his vocabulary. That was what he used his voice for, crass words and orders to make war. Not song. That belonged to a version of himself he’d long put behind him.

He would go and get a nursemaid and damn the consequences, he would go and fetch Eir and have her diagnose the child, he would go -

The baby detonated with a keening scream, piercing his eardrums and threatening to further shatter the glass bottle with its ferocity.

He would go mad if he didn’t do something right now.

Well, go madder. He must have been mad already to have taken this child in the first place.

It shouldn’t have come as easily as it did. For one thing, his voice had deepened significantly since he last said these words, and it strained at first, trying to hit the notes that used to be within easy reach. But even before he dropped to the next octave down, his seidr was stirred, flowing outwards with the euphony. In many ways, this had been how he’d first learned magic - how he first learned to speak with the air and sky, and all the intricate veins that threaded the universe together. A thousand strings to be plucked and molded into melody.

“Hearing, I ask, from the ho-o-ly races

From Norn’s eyes, watching high and low

I will soon relate, to this tree of faces

Old tales remembered from long, long ago.

Of old was the age when Ymir yet lived

No sea nor waves, nor sand was yet there

Earth was not yet, nor heavens forgive'd

All that was was the gap to nowhere.”

Muninn shifted uneasily. Memories of millennia were tangled inextricably in every bar. But to the babe, it was merely noise, clean and new and without connotation. Spellbound, it fell still in Odin’s arms.

“Lead me home, my mothers of yester

Lead me to my heart and its way

Free me from a body that festers

Free me from the urge to yet stay.

Take me from this o-ode to slaughter

Take me from Hel, though I may belong

Lead me to my sons and my daughters

Lead me home to the heart of my song.

Shield-time, sword-time, we enter the gold halls

Wind-time, Wolf-time, ere the world falls.”

Muninn thought of Bor, Father of Odin. He once said this was a sad song.

But did it have to be so for everyone who heard it? Odin wondered. Could it not be something else for this babe?

It could mean safety, comfort. It could mean that this child had a home…at least for a little while.

“Little while?” Muninn croaked. “How cruel.”

The All-Father ignored him and continued to sing.

“I remember yet the giants of yore

Who gave me bread in days gone by

Nine worlds I knew, Nine worlds at war

Nine voices became one battle cry…”

There were many ways this story could go. If it weren’t for me, this babe’s tale would have ended shortly after it had begun. What could be less cruel than the gift of possibilities?

“Muninn cannot remember the future, only past,” Muninn scolded. “Odin cannot know if saving baby means good or bad. It just is.”

“Even bad better than nothingness,” Huginn dissented. “This good deed.”

“Deeds have reasons why done,” Muninn muttered. “Were reasons good?”

Huginn turned his back on his brother, disgusted with his treachery. “Odin not parley with ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Odin just is. Muninn play silly games.”

“Only one rose from the sea of blood

Broken were oaths, words not what they seemed

Before the breath of liars, we scud

Shaped, like clouds, by forces unseen..."

“Odin make promise by taking baby,” insisted Muninn.

“Odin makes no promises,” Huginn hissed.

“I know the horn of Heimdall, well-hidden

As lost as the things it’s meant to return

What would I ask, if it were mine to be bidden?

Would I make new or ask to unburn?

Alone I waited when the Old One sought me

The Terror of Gods gazed in mine eyes:

‘What dost thou want? What comest thou to see?’

Dost thou look for something living or died?

‘Before thou ask, be aware there is cost -

An eye for an eye, a thought for a thought

If I am to return that which you lost

Be aware that the price is the same as the bought.

'Would you know yet more?

Knowing that wisdom is weight?

Would you know yet more?

Knowing no knowledge will sate?

Would you know yet more?

If you knew that knowing meant a forever war?’”

The babe was staring at Odin with rapt attention as if there was nothing in the universe more awe-inspiring than an old man mumbling his way through a doom-stricken ditty.

Odin tended to be the most powerful person in any room - or planet - or galaxy, really - that he happened to walk into, and so he was used to rapt attention. But there is nothing quite like being the end-all, be-all centre of existence in the eyes of an infant. For one thing, people tended to get nervous when the most powerful person in the galaxy walked into the room. This babe just wondered. It would have marvelled at him just the same if he were a moderately-successful goatherd.

This child knew so little of the world. So little about Odin. Hardly any different from most grown men, in that respect. How precious that ignorance was. How unfair that after all the world had done to this child in his short life that that innocence should be placed in Odin’s hands.

Moved to pity, Huginn bent down to preen at the babe’s few dark hairs. Muninn took off from the other shoulder, heading back inside.

“Lead me home, my brothers of yester

Lead me to my heart and its way

Free me from a body that festers

Free me from the urge to yet stay…

Take me from this o-ode to slaughter

Take me from Hel, though I may belong

Lead me to my sons and my daughters

Lead me home to the heart of my song.

Shield-time, sword-time, we enter the gold halls

Wind-time, Wolf-time, ere the world falls.”

The song was nearly complete now, and Odin was surprised to find himself slowing down, as if unwilling to let the moment go. Each time he returned to the chorus, there seemed to be some strange reciprocity from the babe. Though it could not sing, its fledgeling magic nonetheless reverberated with the melody, like the threads of a spider’s web plucked by the breeze.

"The serpent is bright, but now I must sink

My father of yester is leading me home

The sky becomes light, no more must I think

of old tales remembered from long, long ago.

It didn’t seem till now...

...so long, long ago."

It was done.

Muninn returned, bearing with him a fresh bottle of milk. He dropped it into Odin’s waiting hand. The babe seemed loose, almost liquid in Odin’s grasp, though its eyes were still bright and alert. It didn’t fight the bottle this time - but neither did it suck at the teat. Odin sighed.

“Did I ever know what was in giant’s milk, Muninn?”

The raven considered, then shook his head.

“Can you think of anything that would convince the child to drink, Huginn?”

The second raven considered, then shook his head.

“Fat lot of good you both turned out to be, eh?” Odin sighed, but there was a smile in it.

The king tried to return the babe to its crib, but its fists had knotted painfully in place in his beard. It was no use; he’d just have to take it to bed and hope it would behave until morning.

When he settled back into his half of the mattress, another pang of guilt crossed his chest.

I should be with her.

Instead, he pulled the blanket back up over himself and carefully tried to lie down without disturbing the infant.

“Give her time,” he said, though the babe was already deep in sleep. “She’s a warm heart and love to spare. She just needs time to say goodbye.”

The babe gurgled. Then, unmistakably, it hummed. Clear as the skies when Thor was in good spirits, it was the song Odin had imprinted on him, already echoing back. He listened to it make its way through the tune. At points it would stop, as if waiting for something; it took Odin a little while to realize that, even in the depths of sleep, it was waiting for a response. He’d hum back to it, sometimes along with it, creating a strange little harmony.

“We’ll make a proper Asgardian out of you yet,” he chuckled, and for a moment he could imagine that Frigga had merely gone to freshen up, that the babe was everything Odin was pretending it was, that his family had been spared their latest tragedy and all was, for that moment, well. He could forget all the inconvenient parts of reality.

The world could just be him and his borrowed boy.

He could stop the crying.

He could make things right.

“Could. What a damning word that is.”

Odin cracked open his eye and saw him in the corner of the room. Wrapped in shadows, and just as immaterial. His beard was a deeper red than it ever had been in life, and the curve of the downward-pointing horns of his helmet outlined his harsh face.

“Could is a word for regrets. Regrets are the stories we wished we lived. You were always too fond of stories. Stories are not real.”

Odin shut his eye. “Neither are you, Father.” He didn’t need to open it again to know that Bor would no longer be there. It was just a passing thought.

But the spell had been broken.

The bed was cold. His wife was still gone to the Garden to mourn over her true son while he coddled a painted imposter in what should have been her sanctuary. And even then, the babe was still sickly, still hungry, and he had nothing to fill him. He had made nothing right, only forgotten that everything was still wrong.

“Huginn - Muninn,” Odin called. “Go to Jötunheim and observe the children there. Learn what they require to suckle and grow, and return soon.”

The ravens bobbed their heads in acceptance of their task. They took flight.

The skies of Asgard roiled with starlight, but the clever birds knew which precise point of light was Jötunheim’s sole sun. Together they flew, side by side, into the ether. Light streaked, sound ceased, space bent around them, and they tore through -

We tore through…

We did, didn’t we? We ravens went to Jötunheim. We did - we saw and learned and we returned…The child lived, thanks to us…So why, why did the light and the sound continue, becoming darker, malevolent, angry? Why did it shout and accuse and become oh so terribly sad even as raging fire swept about us, between us, blackening the blackest of feathers and consuming, consuming, it was in Muninn’s mouth, it was in his stomach, it was devouring him from the inside out and he was in pain, such terrible pain and I, I the raven needed to go to my brother, needed to save him, but the moment we became I it was already too late.

Muninn was gone. A hole where a raven should be. I screamed for him, but a raven’s voice is not music, and it could not call him back.

I flew on.

My thoughts were dark.

Such angry, grieving thoughts.

My blood was dead. Taken from me. Stolen. By an enemy beyond my reach.

But not all my enemies were so.

Where was I going?

Somewhere cold, somewhere far away - and why?

To see the giants, the red eyes in the blizzard.

To Jötunheim, to the giants, to war -

As Asgard had done time and time again.

Yes, to war!

To war!

ᚼ

Huginn awoke with a start. Red light was streaming through the window behind him, courtesy of the sunset. He looked across from his golden perch to the empty one on the other side of the bed. As it had been for decades, it was empty.

So was the bed.

Huginn blinked at it. The sheets had been flung from the bed with force.

The door remained shut, likely still locked. But, as the breeze from the open window reminded the raven, that was not the only way out of this place.

With a flurry of greying feathers, Huginn took flight. He passed out the back of the golden room and felt the wispy touch of shattered spells try to catch at his feathers, to no avail.

The rook circled Asgard, wings straining, searching, searching.

He heard him before he saw him - the whistling of wind around the corners of the city and the low, dull roar of the stars as invisible strings drew from their raging hearts. Footfalls echoed mightily off the golden buildings, and at once Huginn knew they could not be dissuaded from their path.

There was nothing a raven, even one who was not only that, could do.

There was little anyone could do, really, but there were some who would try anyway. Inconveniently, today had to be the day they weren’t on Asgard.

Huginn braced his aching pinions, fixing his beady eyes on a star in the sky the way other ravens fixed on the glimmer of a mussel in the water.

He flew into the sky, following the faintest sounds of a half-remembered melody.

***

This and the rest on AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21638704/chapters/51598693

#finnesang #thor fanfiction #loki fanfic #thor fanfic #my fic #loki #thor #odin #huginn and muninn #huginn

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alarawriting · 4 years

Text

52 Project #25: Where The Winds Of Limbo Roar

... it is a point of pride to me that I never reuse a title, not even between fanfic and original fic. The title of this almost certainly should be “Veteran of the Psychic Wars”, except I already titled an X-Men AU fanfic that, so I pulled the title from another part of the lyrics.

Story derived from a prompt from @writing-prompt-s. I’m not putting a link on a story as long as Tumblr search is so broken that it excludes posts with links, so check the reblog to my main blog @alarajrogers for the full credits.

***

When their guard patrol passed the building where the psychics sat or laid on their mats, deep in their meditations, Soffrees snorted. “Look at that,” he said, pointing a thumb behind him at the windows of the battery. “We go out on the front lines and risk our lives. They sit in an air-conditioned room, or they nap in it, and they get served their food without even getting up to go get it… and they get paid three times what we do. What the fuck, man?”

“I know, right?” Baslicos chuckled grimly. ��Be born with telepathy! Get the whole world handed to you on a platter! Join the army, get pampered like it’s a resort for rich old ladies!”

“What do they even do that’s worth that kind of money?” Soffrees shook his head. “They tell us ‘they defend us from psychic attack.’ Well, you know, I wear this chain—” he took out his charm chain, with his tags and all the charms on it, and waved it a bit – “to protect us from attacks from pink hippoceroses! And see, it works great, because when was the last time you were attacked by a pink hippoceros? Now gimme more money!”

“I knew a guy in basic training, always used to claim he was under psychic attack. Turned out he was just nuts, man.” Baslicos turned the corner – and ran straight into a tall, heavily-muscled man in a top brass uniform. She backed up. “Oh, sorry, sir—” and then her eyes went wide, as if registering who he was. “General Marcus! Sir! I apologize for running into you, sir!”

Marcus waved a hand. “At ease, private, no need to fall all over yourself apologizing. Just watch where you’re going next time.”

“Sir,” Soffrees said, almost reverently. “Can I tell you what an honor it is to meet you, sir? I went into the army because of the stories I heard about you!”

Marcus was a 60-something man with a shock of white hair that apparently rank and age allowed him to get away with not combing into regulation haircut or shaving; it was wild and bushy on his head. There was a small black bird sitting on his shoulder. Stories had it that he had been in combat since he was a young child; that he was immune to psychics; that he’d single-handedly captured the commander of the Ferlan army and forced them to surrender, twenty years ago… and many other stories that made him legendary. “I agree, sir!” Baslicos said. “It’s an honor! You’re a great hero!”

“You kids,” Marcus said, shaking his head. “You focus on the wrong things.” He gestured over at the psychic battery. “I heard what you two were saying about the psychics. You talk about what a great hero I am because I’ve been out on the front lines my whole life, but you don’t even think of who supports you, who lets you go out and serve without poking your own eyeballs out of your head.”

“Sir, I’ve never met anyone who’s been attacked by psychics,” Soffrees said.

“Sure you have. Right now. Me.”

“You? Uh… wasn’t that a long time ago, sir?”

“It sure was,” Marcus agreed. “Because for the past twenty-five years or so I haven’t served in an army that didn’t have a psychic battery, and because I’ve trained my own abilities so even when I’m outside battery range, and inside the range for an enemy battery, they can’t get through. But that’s me. Just two years ago at Fire Heights, we lost five soldiers to a psychic attack when an enemy missile took out our battery. You never heard about that?”

“I was in Basic at the time, sir,” Soffrees admitted.

“I, uh, hadn’t signed up yet. Sir.” Baslicos looked down for a moment as if she was ashamed of not having served for even as long as Soffrees.

“Well.” He motioned the two guards over to the grass on the side of the building. “You’re relieved for a bit. Sit your asses down and get educated.” He turned to the bird. “Find Lieutenant Kallimik and tell her to assign two guards out here for the next hour or so to cover for these two – what are your names?”

“Private Soffrees, sir!”

“Private Baslicos!”

“Right. To cover for Soffrees and Baslicos, because I’ve got them.”

“Two guards. Cover for Soffrees and Baslicos. Asshole,” the bird said.

Marcus sighed. “Not asshole. Can we just forget I ever called Kallimik that?”

“Birds don’t forget. Asshole.”

“Not asshole. If I hear you relayed ‘asshole’ you don’t get any bacon tonight, you hear me?”

“I’m Falli. I love bacon. No asshole.”

“So what are you telling Kallimik?”

“Two guards. Cover for Soffrees and Baslicos. Not asshole.”

“Just go deliver the message,” Marcus said wearily, and Falli flew off. “Messenger corvids. ‘It’s better than sending an encrypted message on a bird’s leg!’ ‘You can train a corvid to carry the message to the right person and not deliver it to anyone else!’ ‘Corvids recognize faces and telepaths can’t read them!’ I miss the days when we sent columbines. Those birds weren’t smartasses.”

“Sir, columbines can’t talk. How did you send messages?” Baslicos asked.

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “What do they teach you kids? We’d tie coded messages on paper to their legs, or give them tiny backpacks to wear. I know, corvids can be given more destinations, they’re smarter, and if they’re shot down, the enemy can’t get the message off of them. But columbines make pretty coos, not wiseass comments about an offhand remark you unwisely made about a subordinate one time.” He sat down on the grass, next to a patch of dirt left from too many people taking shortcuts, and patted the ground. “Come sit, privates.”

Somewhat awkwardly, the two soldiers sat down. “What are we doing, sir?” Soffrees asked.

“Getting yourself an education. You think the psychics aren’t important? Aren’t worth protecting, because they’re not doing anything as serious as what you guys on the front line do? I’m going to tell you about the psychic attack I survived, that no one who was with me did.”

The two soldiers arranged themselves in respectful positions. Their opinions were their opinions, but both of them practically hero-worshiped General Marcus, and if he had something to say to them, they’d listen raptly.

***

“It was during the War for Independence. We’d been moving in from two directions to secure the Gap – I know you soldiers know where the Gap is, right?” In the dirt, with a short pencil he’d had in a pocket, he drew a squiggle for a mountain range, a gap of a few inches, and then a second squiggle. “We were here and here—” He drew X’s in front of the two mountain ranges – “and then they came pouring through the Gap before we could get there.” Extra scribbles to demonstrate the enemy, as a funnel with the narrow bit through the Gap and the wide part between the two X’s.

“Now we had the numbers, between our two groups, that we could have crushed the Monarchists, if we moved fast enough that we could prevent them from getting reinforcements through the Gap. But they had far too many soldiers for either of our groups to defeat them on our own. We had to coordinate the attack. Problem, of course, was the large mass of enemy soldiers between us.

“We sent out several messenger birds. Columbines, in those days. I don’t know how many. A lot. None of them came back. Back then, we had a lot fewer telepaths and they weren’t as well trained. We couldn’t get a message through by psychic, either. If we were to have any hope, a team of people was going to have to cross through enemy territory, deliver the message, and then back, with confirmation.

“Captain Noori picked me and three other soldiers as her crack team to get the message through. Their names were Anders, Caprikin, and Starros. That doesn’t mean anything to you, I know. You look at me as a hero, because I’ve survived. I fought the Willel when they conquered my homeland. I fought for the Demos here in Danza. I fought in every war we’ve had since, and I lived. So I’m a hero. And Noori, Anders, Caprikin and Starros are forgotten. They shouldn’t be. They were bigger heroes than me; they gave their lives to the cause. They were people, like all of you, not numbers.

“Anders and Caprikin fought the Willel with me. I was eleven when Anders and I started doing occasional sabotage, but we didn’t get really effective as guerrillas until Caprikin joined us. He was short – so short, and so baby-faced, he looked eight when he was thirteen, and he looked like a Willel, and he could speak their language without an accent. He’d find a soldier alone, or two soldiers, near an alleyway where we could hide, and he’d pretend to be a Willel boy who’d lost his mother. Sometimes it didn’t work. Willel soldiers could be brutal. One time one of them struck him with the butt of his rifle, in the face. It wasn’t safe or easy work by any means. But when he succeeded at it, when he distracted them and they got involved in trying to help him, we’d come out of the alley with our knives and the guns we’d stolen off the bodies of the last Willel soldiers we’d done this to, and that was that.”

He chuckled, remembering. “The wild thing was that he looked like this innocent lost lamb, but Caprikin was the funniest, most foul-mouthed son of a bitch you would ever have served with. He always had a wiseass comment for any situation. Me, I have no sense of humor, so I don’t even remember any of his jokes… it was years and years ago, but it upsets me. Why didn’t I write this stuff down when I had the chance? Why did I trust to memory?... You soldiers need to write things down. Take pictures. The people you’re fighting beside right now, they’re going to be a part of your life until you die, even if they died forty years ago. Even if you don’t like them. You’re all going through hell together; that forms a bond you’ll never forget, but you’ll forget the details. You’ll forget their faces, you’ll forget the jokes they told…” His voice drifted to a stop as his gaze went far away.

“Sir?” Baslicos prompted.

Marcus’ eyes came back into focus. “…oh, here’s something I remember about Caprikin, but it isn’t a joke. We signed up to fight the Monarchists, all three of us together, and the sergeant doing the recruiting said Caprikin couldn’t join. He was too small, too weak. He’d get killed. So he put on one of our travel knapsacks – even heavier than yours, we had literally everything we still owned in them. Must have been 50, 60 pounds. And he politely asked the sergeant if he could demonstrate his skills, and asked the sergeant to come at him. The sergeant was a big bruiser of a man; he laughed, but he did it… and Caprikin used his momentum to lay him out flat on his back. Sergeant didn’t say a single word against him signing up, after that.

“Anders was a lot more serious than Caprikin. Very quiet fellow, very restrained. He was a low psychic, though, and when we figured out what he could do, when we were eleven, that was when we started risking ourselves to fight the Willel. That, and they’d just killed his father. He could send out a… targeted wave of ‘don’t notice anything.’ You know the fellows with the low psychic ability ‘don’t notice me?’ Where they can walk right past you and unless you’re blocking psi, you don’t even see them? Anders was a little more powerful than that. He could make it so everyone around him, in a donut-shaped range where we at the center wouldn’t be affected, would just… stop noticing anything unusual. We two, and we three when Caprikin joined us, could just run past a few guards, covered in blood and carrying weapons, and they wouldn’t even look up.

“By the time he was an adult, Anders had a lot more control over his field, so he was generally sent out on scouting parties. He used it on leave and on the rare occasions when we weren’t in an army to go exploring. Bird watching. Used to draw them. When he started as a kid he had some talent but by the time he was a man he was amazing. You’d have thought those birds would fly off the page. He drew other things, too, things from nature, always. He refused to draw pictures of any of us. Said he wasn’t good enough. I wish he had.

“Starros… she was such a strange one. Some people called her “the Robot” because she hardly ever showed emotions in her tone of voice. More or less everything was a harsh monotone, unless she was really happy or excited, and then it was a bubbly high-pitched monotone. She had an amazing poker face – her face just never changed, no matter what her hand was – but I learned her tells. She’d drum her fingers on her knees, under the table, and when she was anxious, she’d drum faster. Starros wasn’t interested in romance, or sex – didn’t even much like hugging, and she’d just stand around looking confused and embarrassed if you said something like ‘You’re a damn good friend.’ She didn’t get any of that. But she’d kill or die for her friends. If there were five rations and four people and Starros and they were her friends or comrades, she’d tell them to take the last ration and divide it out. She’d drop whatever she was doing to help you. Didn’t know how to say ‘I love you’ or ‘I like you’ or even ‘You’re my friend’, but she’d drive the getaway car through the flames of hell and crash the gates of the Demon Emperor’s palace to get you out, and cover you while you were running for the car.

“Anders and Caprikin and I spent our childhood fighting; she spent hers studying weaponry. Reading about it. Reading about war. She was obsessed with it. I don’t normally think book learning is ever a match for experience, but in her case… I guess it depends on the book, and how many of them you read, and how close you read them. Every weapon any of us used, she knew how to clean it, how to take it apart if it was a thing you could take apart, how to use it and more importantly when to use it. Any weapon the enemy used against us, too, and she knew all their strengths and weaknesses. Funny thing was, for all she knew about guns, she couldn’t shoot one worth a damn. Couldn’t aim it. I never saw her hit the broad side of a barn. But give her something she could hit the enemy with – a cudgel, a knife, a sword, even a morningstar – and she was amazing. You couldn’t stop her.

“We were – well, I’m not going to say we were the best of the best. I don’t know that. But I can say we were some of the best, and that’s why Captain Noori picked us to accompany her.

“Noori, now. She could shoot. She was an amazing sharpshooter – could take the tuft of feathers off the head of a flying cardinal. She fought in the resistance against the Willel, too; she was in a re-education camp at one point, when she was a child. They tried to strip her of her religion, her language, her culture, and what they got was a lifelong enemy. She got her start shooting messenger birds with her slingshot as they crossed over her city, taking them down with rocks. I think she was doing that when she was nine. Even younger than I got my start.

“In combat she was incredible. She’d stay absolutely in control, all the time. Starros might have seemed like a robot out of combat, but in combat she’d scream, she’d shriek and howl and groan just like most of us do. Whereas I never heard Noori make a sound she hadn’t decided to, not in a fight, not until the end. You couldn’t hear her move, either. In darkness, she turned invisible – you couldn’t see her with her dark skin and her dark uniform, and she didn’t make a sound when she walked. We joked she’d been a cat in a past life.

“Out of combat, though… she could be tough, as a leader, but back then there were a lot of female soldiers who thought they’d impress the rest of us by being tough all the time, never show any emotion but anger, and Noori was never one of those. She was always as kind as she could possibly be to civilians, and if she saw a kid in trouble, she’d help – with us watching her back, of course, because Anders and Caprikin and I all remembered how we’d used that against the Willel. She cried when the battles were over and we counted up the dead; she’d walk among them and say their names and whisper prayers for every one of them, with tears running down her face. One time, one of the privates was upset because he couldn’t write his mother a letter; turned out it was because he’d never learned to read or write. She’d come to the barracks at night and work with him, taking an hour or two every night to teach him.

“We’d have willingly followed Noori to hell. Which is what we ended up doing.”

He lost himself for a bit then, but caught his thread back before either of the soldiers had a chance to try to prompt him. “We were going to cross the Gap along the mountain range line, where the Monarchist presence was as narrow as it got, but of course their presence was thicker there than elsewhere, so we ended up having to spend a day moving around the edge of the territory they held to get to a place that was favorable for us to cross through.” With the pencil, he drew the movements he and his squad had made, against the rough map he’d already drawn in the dirt. “And then the second day, it rained. Well, of course, when you’re trying to sneak across enemy territory, rain’s usually to your advantage, so we made good progress, until the wind whipped up and it was just one step short of a hurricane. We had to dig ourselves a bunker and take shelter in it until the wind died down.

“What we didn’t know was that this was going to smash up one of the Monarchist barracks to the north of us, so they’d called in help from their people south of us. Of course, that meant we ended up running into the Monarchists marching north. We saw some combat, then. The point to sending a tiny group of five soldiers across enemy territory is to make it more likely that they don’t get caught, obviously, because five people can’t fight off an entire army. If it wasn’t for Anders’ ability and the fact that there are a lot of natural caves in that area, we’d never have made it. We had to hide out in a cave. The Monarchists searched for us for five days. We ran out of rations, had to drink from a muddy spring in the cave. By the time they were finally gone, we were… not in good shape.

“So we were less careful, on the rest of our journey. We had to steal food, since we were out of rations, and we weren’t covering our tracks as well as we’d been. Anders was overpsyched, couldn’t hide us anymore without terrible migraines, and he was tough and loyal, he’d have tried, but Noori wouldn’t inflict that on him. She decided that our best strategy was speed. And that meant we couldn’t pussyfoot around trying to sneak around a sentry or two; we just needed to kill them and keep moving.

“By the time we got across the Monarchist territory and back into Demo-held lands, the entire Monarchist army on this side of the Gap knew about us.

“We knew it was going to be hard, getting back across the Gap. We knew we’d made it hard for ourselves by racing across the territory, killing every Monarchist we ran into. But our window was closing; messenger birds from our spies and sympathizers said that there was no more than two weeks before Monarchist reinforcements spilled into the Gap. It was a four-day trip across the Gap if you didn’t have to take a day to detour around enemy territory and you didn’t have to hide in a bunker for a day and a cave in five more. Our comrades over here couldn’t give us more than a week to get the message across. And we’d have no way to get the message back here that we had, or hadn’t, gotten the message to our people.

“The message was that our partners on this side of the Gap were going to move in a week. And they were taking a leap of faith, because if we didn’t get the message through to our side in time, if our side didn’t mobilize and join them in a pincer movement to crush the Monarchists, these Demos would be crushed themselves, and we’d be next. No matter what it took, we had to get the message across in a week.

“Of course we knew better than to send people with secret information in their brains; we knew the enemy had telepaths. I’m sure you all know about me – it’s hardly a well-kept secret nowadays that I’m a blocker. They hypnotized the others, our psychics putting blocks in their head so they wouldn’t be able to remember what the message was until we got back to our side. I was the only one who remembered – but they all knew I knew it, so when I told them how much time we had to get the message through, they knew it was important.

“We had five days. Five days, to make a trip that took us eleven on the way in.

“They sent us with Elias, a combat psychic. Now, I see that look on your face. You’re wondering, if there’s such a thing as a combat psychic, how come our telepaths in the battery don’t go out into the field? Why don’t we have combat psychics?”

Soffrees said, “Uh, I wasn’t going to interrupt you to ask, sir, but… yeah, why don’t we have combat psychics? Sir.”

“The answer is, we do, but you haven’t met any yet, because the telepaths in the battery are so much more powerful than a combat psychic could ever be. Combat psychics have to worry about being hungry, having to pee, watching where they’re walking, not getting killed by enemy fire… put it this way, can you read a book while you’re walking? Through enemy territory? When you might be sniped at any moment, and there’s trees all around you could walk into? Trust me. Psychics are a lot more effective when they’re free to meditate in silence and use all of their mind on their power. We don’t need combat psychics right here because the battery right over there—” he pointed back at the building with the psychics in it—“puts up a wall of psychic defense with such a large radius, none of you have yet been deployed out of it.

“But we needed Elias, because the moment we crossed an invisible line, a short distance into the territory they’d claimed, he reported that the Monarchist psychics were after us.

“Anders did everything he could do. Elias did what he could do; I didn’t know him well, but he was a good man. Noori, Caprikin, Starros and me did our best to protect them both so they could devote more of their brainpower to shielding us.

“The Monarchists had destroyed forests and farms, turning a lot of the countryside into wasteland where you could see straight to the horizon, but they couldn’t do anything about the fact that technically, the Gap is still part of the mountains, just a part that sank low enough that now there are hills and crags and rocks set into the earth, all over the terrain, instead of mountains. We made as much use of terrain cover as we could. Did our best to avoid getting caught by anyone, because we knew the moment we killed a sentry to silence him, their psychics would be on us. Elias and Anders were protecting us by making it so the psychics couldn’t tell exactly where we were, but the enemy had battery telepaths; there was no way Elias and Anders could stand up to an attack by high psychics in a battery.

“We were a day from the border, a day away from home, crossing through some very rocky territory, when they found Elias.

“I don’t know what he saw. He screamed, and wouldn’t stop, to the point where we had to gag him to keep him from summoning the enemy from all around. Anders tried to surround him with his field, but it was no good – the high psychics in the enemy battery had locked onto him already. We had to abandon him, to try to outrun their ability to triangulate on us next. Never saw him again, not even as a name on the rosters from prisoner exchange when we finally beat the Monarchists, so… I’m pretty sure he died there.

“We ran. We tried to find a vehicle – a car, a carriage, maybe a horse – that we could steal and make better time, but we couldn’t find anything before they found us. For a few hours the others saw hallucinations – it was Starros who confessed to it first, saying she kept seeing her mother and older brother calling her, and then everyone but me mentioned they were seeing them too. They didn’t all admit to who or what they saw. We knew this was bad – hallucinations meant they were catching us in the edge of their effect, and that meant they were focusing in – but what could we do? Anders tried, for all the good it did us, but all that happened was for half an hour he didn’t see any visions. He was far, far too overpsyched by then to fight them off in any meaningful way.

“On a grassy plateau surrounded by sheer rock on one side and a relatively small drop on the other, they zeroed in on us, and attacked, full force. The others all started screaming, and dropped to the ground, all of us but me.

“Noori was crying for her parents – she seemed to be remembering how she was taken away from them and thrown in a re-education camp – but then she started shrieking, ‘No! No!’ She got up, backed away, and ran – straight into the stone wall. And then she just kept getting up and running into the stone wall, over and over. I tried to pull her away, to stop her – she was smashing up her face, there was blood and contusions all over her head – but when I grabbed her and bodily dragged her, she fought me like I was one of the monsters she was seeing, and then she broke free of me – after breaking my nose and two fingers – and slammed into the wall again.

“Starros thought the ground had become glass. Very, very fragile glass. She kept screaming at all of us to get to safety before it broke, it was going to break. I think she saw her family members, and maybe friends of hers, fall through the glass. There couldn’t have been anything good underneath it. She was sobbing, begging us to get to safety before the glass broke, crying because she couldn’t save us. She thought her weight would surely break the glass if she went out on it to try to rescue us.

“Caprikin thought he was covered in – something. I don’t know. Spiders? Snakes? He thought they were all over his skin and pouring out of every orifice, and he stripped naked and started ripping at his skin with his nails, trying to get whatever it was off him. Then he started screaming about how they were burrowing into his skin, they were inside him, and he started throwing himself at the ground, over and over… and I couldn’t stop him, either.

“And Anders just calmly put his own eyes out with his thumbs, pulled out his tongue and bit it off, grabbed a long, thin wire brush we used to keep the equipment clean and shoved it into one ear as far as he could push it, and then farther. I don’t know if he actually managed to pierce his brain with it, but he fell over unconscious after that.

“But I’m a blocker. I wasn’t touched. I can’t project. I couldn’t make a field around my friends like Anders could. But they couldn’t touch me.

“Almost.”

He sighed deeply. “I hated that, you know. Sometimes you think the weirdest things in combat. I saw my friends writhing and screaming and going mad all around me, and if I could have saved them, I’d have been grateful for my blocking ability. But I couldn’t. So all I could do was watch them suffer, under an attack that left me be, and… part of me wished I wasn’t a blocker. That if we were going to die, we would all die together. Stupid, I know. And the duty ahead of me wouldn’t allow me to die with them if I could help it, under any circumstances.

“I had to leave them. I was alone, with no support, with four friends that were dying of madness, and I couldn’t save them, I couldn’t even help them. I figured I could maybe knock them unconscious and hopefully they’d be better when they woke up, but if I did that, I couldn’t keep moving with them. If I left them behind, they’d be captured or killed. If I stayed with them, I’d be captured or killed. And I was the only one with the message, the vital message that would drive the Monarchists out of the Gap if I got it through, and would result in both groups of Demos being massacred if I failed.

“I didn’t have the strength to put them out of their misery. Emotional strength, not physical. I had a gun, I could have done it, but I couldn’t make myself end my friends’ lives. I rationalized, telling myself, maybe they’d be captured, maybe we could ransom them back with a prisoner exchange. Telling myself I didn’t need to kill them, because even if they were taken captive, the secret was buried in their brains deep enough that the enemy psychics wouldn’t be able to get it out. Like that was the only consideration. Like I wasn’t dooming them to dying horribly of their madness, or being executed by the Monarchists.

“I knocked Caprikin out, and Noori. Anders was already out, and Starros hadn’t done herself any physical damage, so I didn’t need to knock her out, and I wanted to leave her with maybe the ability to defend herself? Maybe, if the psychics let up, she could… do something?

“I was lying to myself, of course. The psychics wouldn’t let up. They’d peel her brain, looking for the secret, since the other three were unconscious. Wouldn’t find it – our psychics were good, they knew how to bury an encoded secret properly – but that wouldn’t stop them from trying. And if a squadron of Monarchists found them, she wouldn’t be able to fight back – she wouldn’t even be able to leave the tiny bit of land she was squatting on, the only safe place she thought existed.

“I left my friends behind, and I ran, because so many more of my friends would die if I didn’t.

“I mentioned that I was almost immune to psychics. I’m not a blocker in a battery, though, with a whole team of projecting blockers with me. I was just me; they had a battery. So they managed to break enough of my walls loose that they made me hallucinate, like they’d made the others hallucinate before. I saw my friends, dripping with blood, asking me why I left them behind, saying they despised me for abandoning them. My family, during the occupation, and the things the Willel might have done to them after they disappeared and I never saw them again. I could see the real world, faintly, behind the hallucinations, so when enemy soldiers turned up, I was able to fight them. But the psychics made me see them as something else. I’d blow a man’s head off, and he was Caprikin, back when we were boys. I’d stab a woman who was trying to stab me, and she’d be Noori.

“I’ve been fighting in wars all my life. I’ve seen so many dead. Lost so many friends, lost my family – I’m used to grief and horror. I walk with it every day, I see it in my dreams. So they couldn’t break me. They tortured me the entire way back to our camp, and a few times I was almost killed because I was too distracted by illusions to fight back, but they couldn’t stop me, no matter how much psychic force they turned on me. The only reason they didn’t hit me with overwhelming real-world force was that I was blocking them too hard – they didn’t know where I was the way they’d known where my friends were. They could reach the edges of my mind, but they couldn’t get in deep enough to know where to send soldiers after me.

“I got back through the border and I got the message through and you know how the Battle of the Gap went. But I didn’t fight in it. As soon as I got the message through, I broke. They weren’t still attacking me, but they’d poured so much poison into my mind, now it was attacking itself. All the guilt I felt at leaving my friends behind, all the guilt I’d always felt at being the only member of my family to survive, and the thought that maybe they were taken because the Willel knew about my resistance activities, and went to my house to get me, and took my family instead because I wasn’t there… I heard my family denouncing me, telling me I’d gotten them killed. I still saw Noori and Anders and Caprikin and Starros. Sometimes even Elias. Other friends I’d lost over the course of the wars I’d fought. I was 27 years old and I’d been fighting since I was 11. I’d lost a lot of friends in that time.

“It didn’t stop until the battle was over, until they were able to get me in front of a high psychic on our side who was able to bury most of the damage. Not remove, not eliminate, not cure… bury. I still see those things, sometimes, as nightmares mostly, or when everything’s quiet and I’m trying to sleep. I’m in my 60’s now. It’s pretty clear to me that I’ll see those visions until I’m dead. I’m used to them now but they still horrify me.”

The two soldiers’ eyes were wide. “Sir, I… I’m sorry,” Baslicos whispered.

“We didn’t know,” Soffrees said.

“Of course you don’t. If you take a medicine for your headache, and it’s so good you never get a headache, sooner or later you might get to thinking, wow, I don’t have a problem with headaches anymore, why do I have to keep taking this drug? That’s human nature.” He stood up and brushed off his pants. “They should have taught you in Basic, and I’m going to have to see about our training programs for new recruits. They need to make it clear what the psychics do. Because those men and women in there? They find spies, and bombers with ‘you don’t see me’ powers. They root out enemy secrets. They’re an early warning system, they know when enemy forces are approaching. And they protect you, every day, from horrors that could melt your mind. Because that’s what psychics do, in a combat battery. They find the enemy and they drive them insane. Ours, theirs, all the psychics do that And all of them protect their people from the enemy psychics who are trying to do the same thing.”

“I thought that was supposed to be a war crime,” Baslicos said tentatively. “Driving the enemy insane?”

“It’s not. They debated it, but in the end, it’s not. Because you can’t tell the difference between a man that the psychics peeled for information and a man they just deliberately drove mad – both are going to act the same level of fucked-up, and none of the world’s nations want to give up the advantage being able to use psychics to read prisoners for information would give them.” He shook his head. “You ask me… it should be a war crime. Our psychics should be defending us, not doing that and trying to break the enemy at the same time. But, it wasn’t my call, and that’s how war goes.”

He lifted his head backward, gesturing at the battery. “Those poor bastards in there, they burn out. One slip-up and an enemy psychic might get into them, rip their minds apart. And even if that never happens… they do their tour and then they’re haunted for the rest of their lives, because they committed atrocities, and they know it, and they felt it from inside the minds of the people they were doing it to. Or, even if they didn’t… they felt it when it happened to our soldiers, the people they’re protecting. You think they’re being pampered? Just because someone’s taking care of their bodies? They’re shitting in diapers and they can’t even feel it. Someone feeds them mush, like they were infants, and they can’t feel it. They’re on the front lines, with their minds, the whole time they’re in there.”

“We didn’t know,” Soffrees repeated.

“You do now, private. So make sure you tell everyone else you know, if it comes up. You defend those people with your life. Because if it wasn’t for them… there are worse things than death, and I’m telling you, these are the people who will save you from those things.”

He motioned their relief over. “You guys can go back to whatever you were doing; I’m releasing Soffrees and Baslicos back to their watch. Tell Lieutenant Kallimik I want my bird back.”

“Sir, your bird called Lieutenant Kallimik an asshole,” one of the two guards said.

“Goddamnit it.” Marcus facepalmed. “I told that bird. Yeah, okay, tell Kallimik I’ll see her in person to get my bird back before she eats it, and you can tell Falli I said no bacon tonight. Not one little bit.”

“We’ll let the Lieutenant know, sir,” the other guard said, and the two of them marched off, as Soffrees and Baslicos resumed their patrol, and the General went wherever he’d originally been going.

#52 project #soldiers #war #telepaths #psychic battle #tw: induced insanity #tw: self-harm #tw: gore

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supposed2bfunny · 4 years

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Yoo it’s me & you got me thinking. So 2D,spoiled only child,not real thoughtful(prob didn’t realize his mum did his laundry til he moved out and his laundry wasn’t magically clean anymore) & Murdoc leaves little candies and things in his pockets/around the house for him. Phase 5, Murdoc’s in jail. Suddenly there’s no candy around for him all the time. He’s confused about this until Noodle is like “who do you think did all that stuff for you?” What do you think that realization is like for him?

Uhhhh this may have expanded beyond anything I had in mind when you sent this ask hours ago, nips. Short ficlet under the cut!

It’s the second or third day after Ace moves in and the band moves forward with the new album that 2D finds the last vestige of Murdoc lurking on his things like a smelly miasma. He pulls on a worn sports jacket, a gift from FILA from 2013 or 2014, slips his hands into the pockets, and finds something heavy and metallic lurking in the right-side pocket.

Pulling it out, he beholds a silver ring bearing a skull, the sort of thing Marilyn Manson would have pulled off well in the 90s, that gothic bulkiness in which Murdoc has always aspired to look cool in and has never quite succeeded.

After a moment’s inspection, 2D does the logical thing: he hurls the ring down the staircase of the Spirit House, grinning with satisfaction at the sound of it bouncing off the wooden floors below and rolling away to be forgotten amongst debris and clutter and apathy.

“Tosser,” he mutters to himself.

The weeks wear on. Recording goes well, the band gets on just fine, and 2D does not think about Murdoc.

However, he does suffer a few completely unrelated hang-ups that put the faintest damper on his otherwise now-near-perfect and tosser-free existence.

Primarily in the loss of surprise candy.

He wonders for the first time where all the sweets have gone.

And this leads him down the rabbit hole of wondering where they came from for the first time. For as long as he can remember, 2D has always been pleasantly surprised by hard candies, lemon sherbets, blue-raspberry lollies, Jelly Babies, even the rare Cadbury Creme Egg in the pockets of his jackets, or in his jeans, sometimes tucked into his beanies or even shoved into his pillowcases. Sort of like a tooth fairy has graced him at random times, leaving behind his preferred snacks. Good omens, if ever there was such a thing.

It’s always reminded him of the way his mum used to leave Flake bars on his pillow after doing her weekly shopping, even when his dad went through his health kicks and tried to ban sweets from the house.

He doesn’t exactly notice the loss until he’s standing in line at the market one day, purchasing several boxes of his preferred frozen chana masala dinners, when he impulsively grabs a few chocolate bars on his way to check out.

It’s only then that it occurs to him he hasn’t found any mystery goodies lying around for him in several weeks. Where had they come from in the first place, he muses. Noodle? Maybe Russel?

It doesn’t seem likely that Russel was giving them out, since he prefers to cook whole meals himself to serve the band. That leaves Noodle. And why wouldn’t she be sharing candy with him these days? Are they having a row?

As he makes his way home, he ponders what he could have done wrong to upset Noodle. She’d seemed perfectly fine the other day when they went out for bubble tea. She’d even laughed when he’d sucked the boba through the thick straw by sticking it between the gap between his front teeth. Things had seen positively chilly between them!

Being the brave, no-nonsense man that he is, and the de facto leader of the band now that the tosser is locked up for lord-knew-what, he figures he ought to confront her about it straightaway.

So he gives it a couple of days, in case she needs to blow off steam or cool down. Then a few more days, figuring she can approach him first to apologize, he should really be the bigger man. Then he gives it yet a few more days, just to be sure they are in fact having a row. Because rehearsals seem normal. Noodle’s spirits seem as high as ever, her Instagram posts emoji-saturated, her smiles genuine, her laughter nonstop as she develops a close bond with Ace and the two become inseparable.

Finally, he bumps into her one night: they’re nothing reaching for their preferred coconutmilk ice cream sometime past two in the morning.

“Great minds think alike,” she smiles. “I’ll grab the bowls.”

“Hey, Noods,” he says, leaning back against the counter casually and popping the carton open. “Can I ask you something?”

“What’s up, Dee?”

“Are you...aw, it’s gonna sound so silly! You ready to laugh? You’re not cross with me, are you?”

She hands him a bowl and spoon and gets scooping. “Cross with you? Not at all--” he nearly drops his bowl in relief--”why do you ask?”

“Nah, forget it. What’s Ace say? Fuggeddaboutit?”

She pulls a face. “That was a really shitty accent.”

“Aint that the point?”

“I guess,” she concedes. “Anyway, I want to know why you thought I was cross with you: just tell me!”

“Well...I guess I kind of miss the candy you always shared with me.”

Noodle pops her spoon into her mouth, sits on the kitchen table and crosses one leg over the other. “Huh? What candy?”

“I mean, you’re the sweet tooth queen, Noods! You always have candies on you, and you used to share ‘em with me. And I guess I miss it a little bit.”

“When did I last share candy with you?” she asks. “It’s been like, a million years since I placed one of those bulk orders of the good stuff from Japan that I like.”

“No, no, not any Japanese candy. I just mean like, Jelly Babies and stuff. You used to leave ‘em in my coat pockets, or sitting out on my keyboards to surprise me. Like, rewind a month or so ago, you’d do it all the time.”

“No I wouldn’t,” she answers, looking thoroughly perplexed.

“But...” he frowns down at his ice cream. It’s too cold still, hasn’t begun to get all good and melty the way he likes it. Just a lump of chill and ice. “Then who did?”

“You mean the little presents Murdoc always used to leave out for you? 2D, that was all Murdoc.”

There’s a pause as 2D continues to leer down at his bowl, almost forgetting that he’s not alone in the room. He remembers the skull ring he’d found and thrown. He remembers the candies sitting on the bench by his piano in the basement, the comic books rolled up and jammed into the case of his acoustic guitar, the comic books he has no memory of purchasing though they feature his favorite heroes. He remembers the fidget cube he’d found one day in his sock drawer, and the Cadbury Creme Eggs next to his condoms by the bedside.

“Hey,” Noodle’s voice draws him back out. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he says quickly. “Everything’s fine, luv.”

She arches a brow at him; she knows he only calls her that when he's unfocused. “It’s okay to miss him, you know,” she says gently. “Sometimes I do too. He was pretty indulgent towards you, when he wanted to be. Can’t blame you for missing that.”

“Yeah right,” he forces a chuckle. “Think we’re all doing better with that sod out of the band for a bit. I’m having a nice time stretching my legs, so to speak. Really, I’m much happier these days, in case that wasn’t obvious.”

“Okay,” she responds, and she sounds patronizing, but maybe it’s just his imagination. “I’m gonna go finish the movie I started,” she hops off the counter, leaving him to his thoughts. “G’night.”

“’Kay, night!” He sits down at the table properly, intending to finish his dessert. But while it melts, he figures he has time for a smoke. He pats his pants pockets, realizes he doesn’t have any cigarettes on him. Murdoc always had ciggies with him, no matter where he was, no matter what level of dress or undress he was in. These days, 2D often finds himself with smokes but no lighter, or playing with a lighter but lacking in smokes.

Not in the mood to get up to find some, he instead sits there, fiddles with his spoon. It seems wrong to qualify Murdoc’s behavior as kindness, given that the word is so contradictory to his entire persona. Murdoc is not kind. Never has been. Murdoc is a tosser, a criminal, an impulsive crackhead with a tendency to make decisions that hurt those around him.

A selfish prick...whose arbitrary actions have unwittingly brought him joy for months, years, shit, he can’t remember when he first started noticing these little treats and presents left out for him, like a corvid collecting bottle caps for a preferred human companion.

He hates Murdoc then, not for his cruelty and nasty behavior, but for his capacity to defy his own constructed persona.

Sometime deep into these thoughts, he realizes that his ice cream has melted beyond the point of being softened and melty: it’s just a puddle of coconutmilk soup with a caramel swirl. It’s also lukewarm. It’s also approaching four in the morning.

Joints cracking as he stands, 2D brings his bowl to the sink, then approaches the bottom of the staircase. He pulls up the flashlight on his cellphone, casts it around the foyer and the living room, peaks under unpacked boxes of records and ottomans collecting dust and many, many, many pairs of shoes.

He doesn’t find that ring he’d thrown. Eventually, he gives up looking and heads to bed.

For the first time since he’d received a phone call from the local police station, he dreams of Murdoc, wakes up with crusty eyes and tight lungs and stares at the ceiling for a long time. He feels less like the leader of the band then, and more like a wayward child. A runaway. A vagabond. Directionless.

Eventually, he reaches out an arm, fumbles blindly till he finds the notebook he’s been writing lyrics in. With a sigh, he hoists himself up into a sitting position, rolls his shoulders; a joint cracks somewhere in his neck.

His pen scratches dryly a bit against the blank page at first, reluctant to share its ink with him. The hiss of nub against paper, friction. Then, the ink floods out, all at once.

#anon asks #nip anon #2doc #2doc asks for beck #2doc fanfiction #niccalpot #AYYY I'VE WRITTEN RILLAZ FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE JANUARY!#YAY!

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jonathan-cranes-mistress-of-fear · 4 years

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Jonathan Crane Fluff Alphabet

A = Attractive (What do they find attractive about the other?)

Jonathan finds attraction in things his partner hates about themselves. Scars, stretch marks, fat rolls, the things we’ve been conditioned to hate. He loves those special aspects of a person, it’s what makes them unique.

He’s also a butt person. Loves slapping butts.

B = Baby (Do they want a family? Why/Why not?)

Not really. He’s not outright against it, but he doesn’t feel like he’d make a suitable father. He worries that he’ll repeat history and become abusive, plus he knows hes generally not a good person. He won’t magically change once a baby is born, and he’d rather not see an innocent person suffer in the same way he did. It would take a special person to convince him to start a family.

C = Cuddle (How do they cuddle?)

Jonathan likes to be the big spoon most of the time, but being the little spoon is nice too. He likes to be held, because it’s a feeling he never got to experience as a child. He doesn’t cuddle often, mostly when hes’ exhausted and can’t argue. He wouldn’t admit it, but he likes cuddling.

D = Dates (What are dates with them like?)

One word, simple. He likes dates that aren’t really considered dates, like going to the coffee shop or library. It’s more important to spend time with the person, no matter what you’re doing with them. Even reading in the same room is considered a date.

E = Everything (You are my ____ (e.g. my life, my world…))

You are the Hroo to my Hraa (not the exact format, but you get the jist)

Or alternatively

You are my Mistress/Master of Fear

F = Feelings (When did they know they were in love?)

He didn’t always know, in fact he usually hides those feelings, preferring not to confront the possibility of being in love. He’s too afraid of being rejected, so much so that he buries his feelings.

He finally realized one fateful day when he was with his partner in the lab, making toxin. Only someone who loved him would’ve gotten so close.

G = Gentle (Are they gentle? If so, how?)

He TRIES to be gentle, but sometimes he can be rather abrasive. He is kind of an asshole and you just have to deal with it, That’s not to say he doesn’t try to be gentle, but it is a struggle.

He spent his whole life like this, so don’t expect him to change immediately. It will take time for him to warm up to you.

H = Hands (How do they like to hold hands?)

He likes lacing his long fingers in between yours. He things holding hands is special, and it’s something he doesn’t do on a first date. He’s gotta get to know you. That said, he loves holding hands. The small gesture means a lot to him. Will gladly hold hands while reading or cuddling.

I = Impression (What was their first impression?)

Doubt. He didn’t want to jump into things. He wasn’t impressed at first, believing that he was not worthy of another persons company. SO he stayed distant, it was a security measure. Eventually he got closer though, and he didn’t regret it.

J = Jealousy (Do they get jealous?)

Yes. He’s not as bad as Edward, but he does get jealous. He can’t help it. He worries deep down that it’s all a lie, a trick. He is just waiting for his partner to turn on him, cheat on him and break his heart. It’s happened before, after all. He does not forget easily.

K = Kiss (How do they kiss? Who initiated the first kiss?)

It was probably his partner, and the first kiss was awkward. He doesn’t have much experience after all, but he tried his best. He may have pulled away or kissed their cheek instead, but it was still a meaningful gesture.

L = Love (Who says ‘I love you’ first?)

His partner. He doesn’t say “I love you” lightly, he takes the phrase very seriously and only says it when he truly means it. That being said, he will say it eventually, and it will be well earned.

M = Memory (What’s their favorite memory together?)

His favorite memories are the simple ones, reading together in a corner of the library or cuddling after a night on the town fighting the Dark Knight. He likes the small stuff, the little things mean a lot to him.

One time his partner tried to feed a crow and got bit, he laughed but felt bad afterwards. That’s when he taught them the proper way to interact with crows and how to befriend the creatures. That’s a favorite memory of his.

N = Nickel (Do they spoil? Do they buy the person they love everything?)

He can’t afford to spoil with gifts or things like that, but he spoils them in other ways, like reading aloud to them or letting them cuddle when he’s in a bad mood. Jonathan feels that the small things are worth their weight in gold.

His idea of spoiling them is not injecting them with toxin, that’s the sad truth haha. (whatever floats your boat jon)

O = Orange (What color reminds them of their other half?)

Bright reds and oranges, yellows and golds. The warm colors.

P = Pet names (What pet names do they use?)

Mistress Lover Child Pumpkin Darling

Q = Quaint (What is their favorite non-modern thing?)

Books. Books. and More books. He loves vintage books, old ones with hardback spines, dusty covers and secrets hidden within. He collects them and loves getting books as gifts. Want to worm your way into his cold heart? buy him a nice book.

R = Rainy Day (What do they like to do on a rainy day?)

He either works on his toxin or sits and reads, listening to the rain pitter patter on the roof. He likes rainy days, they’re his favorite. Overcast skies bring him joy. (he hates the sun haha)

S = Sad (How do they cheer themselves/others up?)

He doesn’t. He just waits for the feeling to fade. Others, usually his partner or a friend like Harley and Edward try to cheer him up when the depression hits, sometimes he works, sometimes it doesn’t.

He doesn’t dwell to much on these moments though.

T = Talking (What do they like to talk about?)

He looooves to talk about psychology and literature, science and corvids. Bring up crow sand he’ll list facts upon facts about the curious birds. Once you get him talking about a subject he adores, he’ll never stop.

U = Unencumbered (What helps them relax?)

A nice sweet tea, he has some happy memories from his childhood and this is one of them. He used to chug the stuff, now not so much, but he does enjoy them and he’s very serious about it too. Gotta have the right amount of tea, ice and sugar. It’s very particular and will tell you if you made it wrong.

V = Vaunt (What do they like to show off? What are they proud of?)

He’s very proud of his work in fear and phobias. This is something you’ll learn quick because he likes to brag (well, to batman mostly) about his work.

W = Wedding (When, how, where do they propose?)

He doesn’t propose with a ring, he’d rather get something more permanent. A tattoo is what he has in mind, something to share with his partner, something that won’t break or fade away or get lost. Of course, this is only after he’s been together with his partner for a long time.

X = Xylophone (What’s their song?

“Your Suffering” by Maiden Names.

Y = Yes (Do they ever think of getting married/proposing?)

Not ever. He didn’t think he’d get that far. He only started to think about it several years into the relationship. He doesn’t really WANT to get married, but if his partner is the right person, he will consider it.

Z = Zebra (If they wanted a pet, what would they get?)

Well, it already has several pets. Nightmare the raven was his first, followed by Craw the Crow and many other corvids. He also has a black cat, one he cares for greatly.

When he was a kid though, he wanted a tarantula. (he did eventually get one in collage, but it died after a year, sadly)

#Jonathan Crane #Scarecrow #The Scarecrow #Fluff Alphabet #Mistress' Headcanons #Mistress' Headcannons

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callsignbaphomet · 4 years

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Okay, so like I said on a previous post this is mostly unedited, messy and it certainly coulda been leagues better but I finally managed to write something so I’m not gonna complain. Also yes it’s their Skyrim versions.

Trevor was wrong, Ginger was wrong, Latoya was wrong, they were all wrong. He wasn’t getting any better, in fact, he could feel it was getting worse. Two days of a headache that was getting worse and worse especially during the day. Two days of a growing hunger that no amount of food could satisfy or stay down for long. He couldn’t even keep water down anymore. No matter how many hours he slept or rested he was still too tired. Moving felt agonizing at this point. It was now on the eve of the second day that he agreed to return to his home but no matter how much the others pleaded to accompany him he refused. Symptoms were bad during the night, but they were worse during the day and some company to make sure he arrived safely was the right course of action though he refused to let the group go out of their way just for him.

He felt it was a rotten thing to do, leaving without letting any of them know or saying good-bye, but he knew they would insist on going back with him so he did the only thing he could to avoid it. Jelani set off to the manor long before the sun rose over the horizon. It would’ve taken him at least four hours to reach his home so if he calculated it correctly he’d only be exposed to daylight for only half an hour. He could manage it; he’d been managing it for several days now. What was only half an hour more? So he grabbed his horse, his raven, and his belongings as quietly as he could and without a second thought rode off into the night. He rode for what felt like hours and hours. Eventually he saw the sun rising over the mountains that dotted Skyrim and forgot how much longer until he could see the manor in which he grew up in. The route didn’t feel right but it was familiar to him, he wasn’t entirely sure if he was near or far, the signs on the corners were a blurry mess, the letters melted into each other as he tried to focus his sights on them so he figured he’d go by memory but even that was failing him. So he continued to ride. If he had to guess it was almost midday now and he still hadn’t reached the manor. He was hunched over the horse, hands barely gripping the reins, and his eyelids felt heavy. At one point he could even swear he felt his heartbeat less and less as well as having difficulty breathing.

What could he have possibly been infected with?

Dagny crowed loudly as she took off to the sky and for that minute he woke from his daze long enough to see a blurry mess of buildings in front of him. Was it Falkreathe? Whiterun? Rorikstead? He wasn’t sure, he could barely make out anything in front of him and the more he tried to focus the worse he felt. Suddenly he felt as if he couldn’t breathe and in his panic he fell off his horse landing hard on the dirt road only a few feet away from the entrance to Rorikstead. Dagny flew down to her perch on the saddle and looked down at Jelani. She then swooped down to him and grabbed some of his hair with her beak and tugged on it like she normally did when trying to wake him in the morning but he wouldn’t budge. When that didn’t seem to work she cawed at him as loud as she could and tugged harder but there was no response.

“Hey,” A guard cried out as he ran towards Jelani, “Are you alright?”

No response. The guard looked around the area with his right hand hovering over his sword in case it was a trap or a robbery gone wrong and the attackers were still in the area. Once he felt it was safe he shoved Dagny away unaware that she has his pet, not a scavenger, and kneeled down beside him to check up on him.

“What’s happened?” Another guard asked as he walked over to the first guard.

“No idea. Wasn’t an attack from what I can see. No arrows, no cuts, and no blood anywhere.”

“Is he alive?”

The first guard placed his hand on Jelani’s chest to see if he was breathing but he couldn’t exactly tell. The second guard groaned out loud and moved the first guard, “Not like that, idiot.”

He placed his index and middle finger on the side of Jelani’s neck and checked for a pulse which he wasn’t finding any. After a minute he shook his head and the other guard understood.

“Oh, no. No, wait a minute,” The second guard said as he moved Jelani’s hair away from his face to get a better look at him, “I know him.”

“Who was he?”

“There’s a healer that lives near Falkreathe. Few years back my little cousins fell gravely ill and my aunt and uncle took them to his house. He had a little brother living with him. This is him, I’m sure of it. Grab the horse and follow me, I’ll send word to his brother.”

The second guard picked him up while the first one grabbed the horse’s reins and guided him into town. Once in town Jouane intercepted the two guards and asked what had happened and after briefly explaining Jouane paused for a moment. He couldn’t possibly leave a body out in the open, it was disrespectful to both the deceased and to the people living in the town. He asked both guards to follow him which they did. They circled behind the buildings and reached the back of Rorik’s manor and opened the cellar doors. Jouane knew Rorik never set foot down in the cellar so it would be the perfect place to leave the corpse until his family came to collect him, Jouane would explain to Rorik later, he always knew how to handle Rorik and just about everyone in town.

The guard that recognized Jelani volunteered to ride out to Falkreathe once his shift was over to alert Jelani’s brother of his passing and accompany him to Rorikstead.

Dagny hadn��t left the area. When the guard shoved her off she flew up to the roof of the inn and watched as they carried Jelani to the basement of the manor and left the horse, Bheka, near the cellar doors. Once she saw the guards and Jouane left she flew down to the doors and pecked at it as if knocking. She did that several times and each time waited for an answer but nothing came. After staring at the doors for a few minutes she looked up at Bheka and flew up towards the saddle and perched herself on the horn and waited.

Once the guard’s shift ended and his replacement arrived he made his way to Rorik’s manor to grab a single belonging from the corpse to bring with him as proof. As he turned the corner he saw the horse was gone but even more worrisome was that the cellar doors were wide open. He went down to the cellar but the body was gone. He was sure he was dead when he checked his pulse, there was no doubt about it. He frantically searched all over the cellar but to no avail. Someone either moved the body, Jouane had sent someone else to alert the family and they came to retrieve the body or he was still alive and awoke only to leave and was now wandering around the area quite possibly dazed and confused. The guard went back out and was going to find Jouane but a faint neigh caught his attention, he looked up towards the hills that adorned the northern side of Rorikstead and in the distance he made out what looked like a horse. He turned to the cellar and then looked up at the horse again weighing his options. He was well aware that sabercats roamed the wilds and a horse as beautiful as that didn’t deserve to be mauled to death by one of those beasts. He made his way towards the horse keeping an eye out and listening for trouble. Bheka seemed calm and was grazing away at the cool grass without a care in the world. On the saddle’s horn sat the raven he saw earlier, now he was sure the bird had belonged to the dead Redguard and he felt a pang of guilt rising from within for scaring it away from its former owner. Dagny kept her eyes on the guard and stood still, she almost looked like an adornment.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, there’s a good boy.” He clicked at the horse as he reached for the reins but was startled when he heard a branch snap behind him. He quickly turned around only to see nothing. Just shrubs, trees, and overgrown bushes covering the hilltop. It could’ve been a fox or a sabercat for all he knew. Whatever it was he wasn’t going to stay long enough to find out, as he kept an eye on the bushes he stretched his right arm and tried to grab Bheka’s reins but accidently grabbed the saddle’s horn where Dagny was resting. She pecked at him and cawed loudly which prompt the Nord to turn around and grab his hand, rubbing where the corvid had pecked him. It’d only been a warning peck but it didn’t hurt, more like startled him even more than he already was.

“Listen here, bird. I’m in no mood for games.” The guard said in an accusing tone as he pointed at Dagny. As he reached for the reins yet again he froze in place when he heard a low hiss coming from the bushes behind. Bheka snorted loudly as he stomped at the ground with his forelegs, the guard kept his focus on the horse as a jolt of adrenaline laced with fear traveled all over his body. The horse kept stomping at the ground, its ears were locked forward, nostrils were flared, and the whites of its eyes were now visible. It was scared of something that was right behind him and the horse was looking right at it.

His right hand slowly crept towards his sword. He had it all planned out in his head. With a single move he’d swing his sword as he turned to face whatever was behind him. He hoped that by swinging his sword he would injure whatever was behind him buying him time to strike a second and hopefully fatal blow. He was ready. It was a move he’d done dozens of times before. He knew the exact weight of his iron sword and the length of the blade by heart. He’d driven off many would be robbers and raiders in his time as a guard. This was his job; this was what he’d trained for. His hand had grasped the grip of his sword, all he had to do now was swing and turn his body with the momentum of drawing his sword.

He was ready.

He was also much slower than his stalker. A set of sharp and cold claws sliced the back of his head. The Nord lost his grip and balance as the pain quickly registered and all he could muster was a measly groan as he fell to his knees and watched the horse take off in a panic with the raven flying after it. As the pain intensified he could hear the attacker making their way towards him but before he could turn around his attacker grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled back as hard as they could. The guard lost his balance and fell back and finally laid eyes on his stalker.

There was a low grumbling snarl caught in his throat as he looked at the guard. He wasn’t exactly sure what was driving him but he knew he wasn’t able to take control, it was as if someone else had possessed him and he was helpless to stop it. The fear in the guard’s eyes aroused him far more than anything else ever did. His nostrils flared as he smelled the blood and it was driving him mad. The irony substance smelled sweeter than any mead or wine that ever passed his lips. He had to taste it. He didn’t know why and didn’t care to know either, he just needed to taste his victim’s blood, he was almost lusting for it.

“Please…” The guard managed to gurgle out as he brought up his left hand. “Stay away, please…”

He didn’t care for the man’s pleading, in fact, he was surprised to find himself feeling indifferent. He stood over the guard and sat on him as he watched him plead and beg for his life. It only made the blood smell twice as sweet and twice as tempting. He lowered himself and actually heard the man’s heart beating loud and fast, and then in one fell swoop he bit down on the guard’s throat as hard as he could. The guard struggled and tried to push him off but when he bit down again there was a loud crunch and suddenly the guard stopped moving. He paid no mind to it; all he could taste, and smell was that sweet blood that had been calling out to him. It was a sloppy kill and most of the blood fell to the ground but what didn’t he lapped up and sucked out of the wound in an almost animalistic and desperate manner. Once he swallowed the last bit of blood from his first victim Jelani somehow felt weaker than he had the last few days. He motioned to stand but fell back to the ground as his head spun. He lifted himself up but kept his head low as he swallowed the blood that was still coating the inside of his mouth. It was then he noticed his teeth, long and sharp fangs had replaced all four of his smaller and more blunt fangs. He rubbed each one with the tip of his tongue and finally processed that what he was tasting was blood. A cold wave of panic washed over him when he laid eyes on the body in front of him. He was starting to realize what had just happened, like a veil was lifted from his eyes and he was in control again. He managed to stand back up all the while keeping an eye on the dead Nord. With one hand he clutched his stomach, the other he used to cover his mouth. The guard was dead for sure and he was responsible for his death. Jelani could still smell blood and realized he was covered in the guard’s blood. His hands, bottom half of his face, and throat were stained red. He shuttered as he lifted his hand from his mouth and saw it was dripping with blood and that’s when he noticed claws as sharp as his fangs and interlaced between them were strands of the guard’s brown hair. They must’ve got caught when he slashed the back of the man’s head. Jelani covered his mouth again as he heaved heavily once again as if to vomit but nothing came up. He turned around to see where his horse had run off to. Thankfully Bheka hadn’t gotten far but as Jelani approached the horse it reared in fear as it snorted. Dagny seemed to be all right, she perched herself on his left shoulder as she usually did. He then grabbed Bheka’s reins and tried to calm the horse down.

“Bheka, it’s okay, it’s me. Please, it’s still me.”

After a minute Bheka seemed to calm down and once he did Jelani mounted his horse and road as fast as he could to the only place in Skyrim he felt he could be safe: home.

“Listen, you’ve been working on potions all day long. Night is still young, how about I make us some dinner and we can eat and drink out in the balcony. Stronghold can hold itself together for two more nights.”

“I am getting a bit tired.” Loke said as he put down the last sealed healing potion and gently planted a kiss on Nagronar. “Let me clean this up and I’ll help.”

Nagronar chuckled as he stood up, “Oh, no, you don’t. Clean up and meet me in the kitchen but you’re only going to watch.”

“I like more than just watching, you know.”

Caught by surprise by the comment Nagronar let out a hearty laugh which in turn made Loke smile sheepishly. As he was about to say something else they both heard the front door open and quickly close. There was only one other person with the key to the manor so Loke poked his head out of the alchemy tower and called out, “Jelani? Is that you?”

There was a moment of silence before Loke and Nagronar heard footsteps running across the wooden floor of the manor. As both men looked at each other in confusion Loke heard a door open and then close.

“Jelani?” Loke called out once again but there was no answer.

“That’s odd.” Nagronar said as he looked back at Loke who now looked worried. “I hope nothing happened.”

Loke carefully put all the potions and alchemical ingredients aside before he and Nagronar went down to the first floor to look for Jelani. The kitchen and greenhouse doors were wide open so he hadn’t hid in any of those rooms. The alchemy tower doors were also wide open, the only exception was the washroom but the doors had an odd creaking sound so he was certain his brother hadn’t gone in there. The only place left was the cellar. Loke reached for the handle and pulled on it, surprisingly it wasn’t locked and after a minute of reflecting on whether he should follow his brother or not he climbed down the ladder followed by Nagronar.

“Jelani, are you okay? What happened? Why didn’t you answer?” Loke called out as he reached the bottom of the ladder. He was still unsure if following him down was a good idea. One thing that Loke knew about his brother that no one else knew was that when he was a child he would often hide out in the cellar when he was either angry or upset. He often said the peacefulness and quiet of the cellar helped him think and calm down. Because of this Loke was worried. He slowly approached the wall that divided the old forge and the rest of the cellar. He didn’t want to intrude on his brother but his silence was making him worried, he wasn’t sure if he was hurt or if something had happened to him out there. He just needed to know if he was okay for him to relax.

“Jelani?” Loke called out once again.

“Stay…back.”

“All right, but I just want to know if you’re hurt?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, can I go over to you? Is that okay?”

“I don’t wanna hurt you.”

Loke looked back at Nagronar, he was worried and confused as well but was also alert. Something didn’t seem right; Jelani was not violent, and he wouldn’t hurt anyone without any reason much less would he hurt his own brother. Loke then took a step forward and gently said, “I know you wouldn’t. I’d still like to get close to see if you’re alright. Can I?”

“Okay…” He finally conceded.

Loke slowly made his way around the wall and found his brother sitting on the floor with his head tucked between his knees. First thing he noticed was the blood on his clothes which made every alarm in him go off at the same time but he remained calm so he wouldn’t startle Jelani. He kneeled down in front of his brother and the smell of blood hit him hard.

“Are you hurt? Can I see?”

Jelani tried to stop himself from crying but he couldn’t any longer and began to cry as he recalled the events. He knew Loke saw the blood and assumed it was his and that he’d been injured somehow. He gathered himself as best he could and through tears and sniffles said, “It’s not mine. I—I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t. It was as if it wasn’t me anymore and something else took over.”

“You’re not making any sense. What happened?”

“I killed him. I didn’t want to but I couldn’t stop myself and when I saw the blood I completely lost control and then…then…”

Before he could finish the sentence Jelani leaned his head to the side and threw up. Loke quickly stood up and backed away as he saw the large puddle of blood. Nagronar moved in but stopped behind Loke when he saw the blood on the floor and the blood covering Jelani. Loke kneeled back down and wiped some of the blood from his brother’s mouth, he felt cold to the touch and could feel him trembling though he was almost sure it wasn’t because he was cold. With his thumb he raised Jelani’s upper lip further up and noticed the two fangs and then noticed the bottom two fangs and sighed. He could feel his eyes beginning to burn but he held it together for a little longer.

“When did it happen?” Loke asked in a whispering tone.

“Tonight.”

“Maybe there’s still time. Maybe a dose or two of cure disease might do the trick.”

“It won’t work.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Loke, I’m not a child!” Jelani yelled at the top of his lungs and then looked directly at Loke. His eyes were the same shade of blue as they’d always been but they had an otherworldly glow to them and the sclera had turned as black as the void. “Don’t lie to me. It’s too late, you know it as well as I do.”

“It’ll be alright, we’ve been through worse. We’ll get through this.”

“You have to kill me.”

“What!? No! No, don’t say that. It’s gonna be alright, I swear it.”

“I don’t wanna hurt anyone else! Please, just get it over with before I hurt you or anyone else!”

Loke reached forward and hugged Jelani as tight as he could. In turn Jelani broke down in tears again and returned the hug. Nagronar who had obviously heard the conversation between the siblings made his way over to Loke and kneeled next to them. He didn’t have to ask the blood covering the younger brother, the claws at the end of his fingers and the pleading began to make sense.

“You know,” He began, “I know a werewolf who is kind, gentle, and loving.” He paused for a second when Loke jerked his head towards him. He looked at him with pleading eyes but Nagronar gave him a small smile to reassure him. “They lost control once but they learned to gain control over their new nature and haven’t hurt anyone since.”

“Werewolves don’t need to kill people for their blood, Nagronar.” Jelani said as he leaned back and wiped his tears away.

“So we find a way. Besides, little brother, there’s plenty o’ murderous bastards out there askin’ to be put down, ya know.”

Jelani actually laughed a bit and leaned back while staring at nothing. Sure, he was a mercenary. Yes, it was true he took on bounties and most of them ended with the involved parties dead, but they were scum who robbed, killed, and hurt others just for a handful of coins or less. He had absolutely no problem raising a blade to end them but that was an agreed upon contract against raiders or in self-defense. He could still see the guard’s face and worse yet could still hear the man pleading for his life and the worst part was how he felt nothing when he killed an innocent man in cold blood. No remorse at the time, he just saw the man and acted upon what he felt he needed to do which would normally make him sick to the stomach.

“I’m tired.” He quietly said.

“That’s fine, little brother,” Nagronar responded before Loke could, “Go ahead and get yourself cleaned up. We’ll take care of the rest, all right?”

“Don’t worry, it’ll be okay.” Loke reassured him as well.

Jelani nodded and quietly stood up to go and wash up and get some clean clothes and hopefully fall asleep for as long as he could. He hadn’t been able to get a descent night’s rest since he’d fallen ill and after he threw up he felt he could sleep for years.

“I don’t know the first thing about vampires.” Loke admitted as he stood to get a cloth that was hanging off a barrel near the old forge. “All I know is they have to avoid direct sunlight and drink blood.”

“Hmm, I may know of someone that can give us all the information we need. In fact, a mutual friend of ours knows her.”

“Who? I mean, we can’t just trust anybody with this information. It’s hard for me but I can easily hide I’m a werewolf. Vampires, on the other hand, have their features out for the world to see. Nagronar, these Vigilants of Stendarr maniacs declared it open season on vampires since they attacked one of their buildings!”

“I know, shh, I know. Calm down. This didn’t exactly happen at the best of times but he’s one of the best at illusions. He’s smart, he’ll manage.”

“I know he is and I wasn’t doubting him…” Loke reached behind him for a bucket and began to mop up the blood on the floor. “I’m just—I don’t wanna lose him. I don’t want anything to happen to him. I don’t want him to have to go through anything bad!” Loke slammed the cloth he was using to clean up the puddle and sighed deeply as he tried to gather himself. Yelling, screaming and certainly making a bigger mess wasn’t going to fix the problem. He had to focus on trying to keep his brother safe or at least as safe as he could now. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I did say, ‘We’ll take care of the rest’, didn’t I, my love? At first light I’ll find the woman I spoke of and come back with everything we need to know. I’ll stay here for a few more days until things settle down. I’ll go and make sure all the windows are closed and while you finish up there.”

The guilt of murdering the guard haunted Jelani for hours and after crying to the point of exhaustion he finally gave up and fell asleep. He wouldn’t be able to guess how long he slept. When he did awaken he remained in bed and after some time he fell back asleep and the cycle repeated. Through the haziness of being between sleep and awake he could sometimes tell Loke was checking up on him and would sometimes speak to him, whether he answered or not he was unsure but Loke felt calm which was a relief. After a while he could smell a distinct scent that arose whenever Loke was nearby. It was berries and rosewood with something else though he couldn’t quite pinpoint it. The berries and rosewood he could explain, their mother at one point in her life picked up the hobby of making scented oils, a hobby her eldest picked up from her. The other smell he couldn’t identify, it wasn’t a bad smell, it was familiar yet he could not identify it. He remained in that cycle of sleeping and awaking just long enough to fall back asleep though he wasn’t sure for how long it went on.

On a rainy sundown Jelani awoke and felt a certain jolt of energy writhing through his body like he had never felt before. He felt awake, strong, and aware of everything. He sat up on the bed and placed his bare feet on the wooden floor and was surprised to feel nothing. Not the cold of the air or the cold of the wooden floor and for a moment he thought back on all the times he’d done exactly as he was doing now and quickly put his feet back up due to the coldness of the floor. Yet there he was with his bare feet touching the floor and not registering the temperature. It felt odd. He then looked up at the roof and listened to the rain fall on it, a sound he heard many times through out his life but this time it sounded far more intense, as if he could really hear every drop hitting the roof. He kept staring and then he noticed just how sharp the details of the wood looked. The manor was far older than even his parents were and no amount of upkeep could possibly make the wood look like that. He then looked around and focused, everything looked much clearer and sharper. He could even read the titles on the spine of the books on the shelves at the end of the hall. It was then he noticed his entire bedroom was dark, not even a single little candle was on and he could see all of that as clear as if it was midday on a clear summer day. Jelani was astonished for sure but he was also nervous at these new revelations and somehow eager to discover what else there was. He finally stood up from the bed and he caught the faint smell of rosewood and the other familiar smell.

“Loke.” He thought to himself.

He made his way to the first floor and heard two voices speaking and a second scent hit him, this one was of pine mixed with what he guessed was body odor. He wondered if he could actually smell people’s scent.

“I’ll go put the horses away, dear.”

That was Nagronar’s voice. Jelani quickly made his way down the main stairs, across the dining room, then the gathering room and stopped at the entrance of the manor but didn’t see the orc or his brother. A few seconds later the door opened and Loke walked in covered in rain. He’d heard them all the way back there and they still hadn’t come into the manor. It was astonishing.

“Jelani? You’re awake! Are you alright?” Loke happily asked. He quickly took off the wet coat and furs and hugged Jelani.

Rosewood and that wild smell, his brother’s scent. As soon as it registered in his mind he smiled and hugged his brother back tighter than he had ever hugged him before.

“I am,” Jelani answered and gently pressed his forehead against Loke’s in that familiar way they always did, “How long have I been sleeping?”

“Three days and you awoke just in time.” Loke said as he grabbed a knapsack he’d set down when he entered the manor and quickly made his way to the gathering room but not before grabbing Jelani’s hand and pulling him with him. When they reached the room Loke sat on one of the chairs and sat Jelani next to him. Loke seemed oddly enthusiastic. Maybe he’d found a way to cure vampirism.

“While you were resting Nagronar got into contact with someone who knows a lot about things most of us don’t. She gave him several things to help us out. On the table right behind you is a wooden box with what looks like potions. I mean, technically they kind of are. Blood potions, it’s a much watered down version of blood but it is in no way a replacement for it, okay? You need actual blood from humans or mer to survive but those will help you keep what she called the bloodlust under control. You can feed every other night and she said you wouldn’t need to kill anyone for it. If you keep the supply of blood steady you just need one bite from anyone.”

“Wait a minute, wouldn’t I be turning people if I bite them?”

“Apparently it doesn’t work like that. Bites don’t infect. She said it was through consuming a vampire’s blood—she called it accepting the gift—whatever that means or by contracting sanguinare vampiris from a spell vampires use. Some kind of drain attack which is what I’m guessing happened.”

“What happens if I don’t feed or have access to any blood potions?”

“You can go three days before you succumb to bloodlust. It’s a survival state of sorts, from what I understood your body takes over and searches for sustenance. You’d be in some kind of hypnotic state. She said some vampires refer to it as ‘stage four’ and it’s dangerous. You’d try to find some blood no matter where it comes from.”

“Is that what happened? With the guard?”

Loke lowered his gaze and nodded.

“Oh…”

“It wasn’t your fault, Jela. You couldn’t help it. If we try to keep it in check it won’t happen again. I swear it. Three days at the most, on the fourth day you lose control over yourself and may even be hunted down. Apparently illusion spells don’t work on vampires in stage four. She said most vampires use a type of glamour spell to hide their features or have a spell that emits from them to make others see them as still living.”

“Sounds easy enough. I’ve been practicing illusions since I was a child.”

“Exactly. But you don’t have to do that here, you’re perfectly safe here. She also advised against travelling during the day but if you absolutely have to you must cover up as much as you can and avoid too much time under the sun. She said exposure to direct sunlight is agonizing. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you won’t be affected by the cold either.”

“Yeah, I actually noticed that a bit earlier. Actually, I noticed a lot of things sort of…changed. I can see, hear and smell…better? If that makes sense?”

“It…actually does. She also warned me that you’re far more susceptible to fire spells now and healing spells don’t work on the undead…but, she told me of a place where I can get my hands on some healing spells that do affect all manner of undead including vampires.”

“Did she say anything else?”

Loke groaned as he tried to keep his laughter down which wasn’t exactly working. “You’re not gonna believe this but you guys kind of have to sleep in coffins.” As he finished the sentence he covered his mouth to stifle his laughter.

“No, absolutely not! I am not doing that. You insufferable toad, stop laughing!”

“It’s not everyday, ya soggy sweet roll. It’s just every so often to keep your energy up or something like that.”

“What about food and water? Wait! Oh, please tell me I can still drink.”

Loke bit his bottom lip to avoid laughing again and shook his head much to Jelani’s disappointment, “No more need of food, water or alcohol. From now on the menu is blood and sometimes blood potions.”

“Son of a bitch…” Jelani complained as he threw himself back against the chair and sighed deeply. The spiced wine in the cellar he’d been saving and savoring after was out of his reach. He turned to Loke in the hopes that he was joking but the smirk on his face and the slow shaking weren’t filling him with much confidence.

“Well, not all is lost. You’ll stay young and gorgeous forever, little brother.”

“Eh…”

“Oh, stop pouting. Here,” Loke turned to grab his knapsack and rummaged through it. He then pulled out a book that looked very weathered and old, and handed it to Jelani but before letting go his expression turned serious, “There isn’t much written on vampires, most of the information is word of mouth but it’s out there. There’s also a lot people out there who’ll hurt you or worse because of what you are. I don’t think I have to state the obvious but I still will, you have to keep this to yourself and know who you can trust. Part of me wants to lock every door in this house to keep you safe in here but it’s not fair to you. You’re so much smarter and better than I am so I know you’ll be alright, I trust you. But if anything happens I’ll always be on your side, no matter what.”

Both gave each other a smile and pressed their foreheads against each other’s. Jelani understood Loke’s worries and admittedly he was worried as well but Loke was right. Keeping him inside the manor for the rest of his life wasn’t the answer. He’d be back on the road again and off to find the group, whether he’d go farther than he usually did was still left up in the air. For now he wanted to stay home until he could understand his condition better and admittedly until he felt Loke was more at ease with the entire situation.

“I’ll go and start dinner.” Loke said as he backed away and playfully ruffled Jelani’s hair, “Nagronar’s gonna stay for a few days. You alright with that?”

“Aye, it’s a good idea.”

“I thought so too.”

Loke let go of the book and reminded Jelani about the potions as he left to go into the kitchen. Jelani looked at the book’s cover and the pages that had turned yellow with time and wondered how many people handled the book before him. It had that distinct smell all books have, a smell he loved and adored. To be able to experience the smell at the magnitude he was experiencing now made having been turned into a vampire almost a blessing. The book had certainly seen better days but it still held together nicely enough, still, he handled it with as much care as he could. He opened the book and saw the title that was written on the first page, Opusculus Lamae Bal.

#001022 #la: skyrim #Jelani tag #Loke tag #Nagronar tag

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dzamie-oc · 4 years

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Smaugust 12 - Forest

Two girlfriends venture out into the forest to play with some young dragons. A short, happy fic. (1867 words)

"C'mon, Rivka, it's over this way!" Wren pointed off into the woods as she stepped off the path, a bright smile on her face and an insulated lunch box in her other hand.

Rivka followed along, being sure to avoid brushing against the bushes and prickly-looking plants along the way. "If you say so. What are you bringing me to see, anyway?" The two women came up to a stream, stopping as Wren looked around. "Is it the ducks, oh little bird?" Rivka pointed down to the water where it flowed around a bend; standing in the shallows was a pair of ducks, quacking quietly as the waterfowl warily eyed the humans. "I hope it's not, but those are cool ducks."

Wren looked over and gave a soft "aww," before shaking her head. "Nope! Even cooler!" She started walking confidently off in a different direction, saying, "saw my blaze, it should only be a few minutes' walk." At her girlfriend's hesitation, Wren beckoned on, glancing behind her to make sure she didn't trip over a root or vine. "Perfectly safe, I come here every couple of weeks."

The pair continued on for, as Wren predicted, a few minutes, turning left or right at certain trees or rocks. At one turn, Rivka pointed out a curious, red X on a rock. "Yeah," Wren answered, "that's one of my blazes I use to find my way there and back. Most are higher so other hikers don't think to follow, but there's only so much I can do with a rock." From then on, Rivka made sure to glance up whenever Wren turned; most of the time, she could see two red marks about twenty feet or so up a tree: one faced the direction they came from, and the other pointed the direction they were going.

"Hey, Wren?" Rivka asked, "I thought you were deathly scared of heights."

"I am. Even named myself after a low-nesting bird. Why do you ask?"

"How'd you get the nerve to mark something that high up? That's, like, second story and a half, without the whole stairs and floor beneath you." Rivka squinted at the next blaze and ran her gaze up and down the tree. "For that matter, how'd you mark it in the first place? No offense, babe, but I can't really see you lugging a twenty-foot ladder through the woods by yourself."

"I didn't!" Wren chirped as she skipped forward, growing a little faster as they neared the end of their trail, "I got some help from my friends. You'll figure it out after we sit down for a bit."

"Sit down? Oh, you really should've told me, I would have worn, like, actual pants," Rivka said as she followed Wren around a large boulder, "I might end up just... stand... ing..." The woman trailed off as she looked at what appeared to be a bench, roughly carved but carefully smoothed, made out of a section of a thick log. Wren sat down in the middle and patted one side for her girlfriend to join her. After a moment of confusion, Rivka accepted her offer and sat down next to her. "So, what is it you wanted to show me?"

"Well, much like the fairytale princess you love to accuse me of being," Wren said, pulling a small bag of deli meat fom the lunch box, "I have befriended some creatures of the forest." She took a piece of turkey and threw it a distance away, then another one a bit closer, and so on, then repeated in a second direction, creating two trails of meat leading towards them.

"With... meat," Rivka observed with a renewed sense of worry. "Little bird, I hope you charmed a crow or raven, and not a bear."

"Nah, corvids can be jerks. Especially blue jays," Wren said, dropping her voice and motioning Rivka to do the same, "but I did meet some winged friends. Try to stay still and quiet. They know me, and they'll know I trust you, but they don't know you, yet."

The woman nodded, eyes darting silently between the two trails of turkey in the canopy-shadowed sunlight. After a minute or so of staring, she saw something small move next to one. Rivka tensed and watched the next bit of meat closely, hoping to see what happened to its vanished sibling. As she watched, a small, dark green, reptilian head poked out from behind a leafy plant. It moved up and down, inspecting the offering, then darted out, snapped the bite up, and dragged it back behind the plant to eat. A few seconds later, the small, scaly body crept up on the next bit of meat. It was small and a distance away, and its mottled dark-and-light green scales camouflaged it well, but Rivka easily noticed the body shape and wings. "A... a dragon?" she whispered.

"A few," Wren whispered back, "the one on the right is only a year or two old." As Rivka looked away from the tiny creature, she saw two slightly larger dragons at the other trail, in similar, patterened green, though with bigger splotches of color. One of them was holding a bite of turkey in its jaws; the other one raised its paw like a cat. And then, like a cat, it batted at the one with food. After getting snapped at, there was a tense second before they leapt at each other, rolling around in a tangle of scales, hissing and chirping. As one, they froze, looked towards Wren and Rivka, and separated. The one with the meat in its mouth gulped down its snack, and the other claimed the next tidbit. For a moment, Rivka wondered whether they would keep alternating, when the one that got batted trotted towards the women.

Rivka went stock-still, both to avoid spooking the little one and mentally preparing herself to bolt if it should desire the taste of human flesh. However, it instead leapt up on the other side of Wren, then rested its head on her leg. Wren simply smiled and slowly stroked down its back. "Hope you two are getting along better than last time," Wren said. The dragon chirped. "That's good," the woman replied. "That reminds me, Rivka. If we ever want kids, we should adopt, and not a baby. Skip the loud and experimentally violent phase."

"Sure thing, babe. But wait, aren't dragons vicious?" Rivka asked, watching in awe as one received affection, another steadily snapped up bits of meat, and a third carefully inspected each morsel before taking a mouthful of turkey, and sometimes grass as well. "Like, raze a small town and demand sacrifices?"

"Wrong species," Wren replied, "these guys don't get so big. They'll still mess you up if you're not careful, but the 'eat you in one bite' sort don't live around here. I asked."

"You... asked? Who?"

Wren nodded. "You gotta promise to stay calm, first."

This, naturally, set Rivka on edge. "Wren, little bird, when have those words EVER inspired calm?"

Her girlfriend's eyes widened in understanding, and she slowly shook her head while the dragon at her side squirmed its way onto her lap for petting variety. "No, as in, stay calm so you don't startle them. Especially this little lady. If she decides to cling tight to my arm, those claws of her are kinda sharp."

"Fair enough." Rivka watched the dragons for a few seconds as she took some deep breaths. "Okay, I'm calm. Who'd you ask."

"Well, that little guy is a yearling, right? Ah." Wren winced as the dragon in her lap put its jaws on her finger; the dragon immediately recoiled and headbutted her instead. "Anyway, you'd think his mom or dad would be around to keep him safe, yeah?" Rivka nodded. Wren smiled and tilted her head back, flicking her eyes up for just a moment.

Rivka's blood froze. Slowly, inevitably, she turne her gaze upward, climbing up the large rock they were seated in front of. Atop it, resting with its head on its paws, was a sleek, green dragon, all deep green on the back and lighter green under the belly. She stared, unwilling to move.

<Hello there.> A feminine voice came from an unknown direction. Rivka jerked her head in one direction, then remembered the smaller dragons and slowly looked all around.

"Did you... did you hear that?" Rivka asked Wren.

Her girlfriend gave her a small smile. "Probably not, though I wouldn't know if she can speak to both of us at once." The dragon in her lap wriggled until it slipped off, chirping in surprise when it hit the ground. It flared its wings and pounced at its sibling again, and the two tumbled around. "But I assume Jade talked to you."

Rivka looked back up. The dragon tilted her head. <Rivka, yes? Wren loves to gush about you. I'll refrain from actually making the "ah, you must be my maiden sacrifice" joke, then.>

The smallest dragon finally ran out of meat scraps and instead yanked at Rivka's shoelace, undoing the knot and very slightly tugging at her foot. "Uh... Jade, was it? How do I get my shoelace not eaten?" She found herself tensing, as though the dragon would demand she let it be eaten.

A sudden memory - or, not a memory, but more a sense of reverse deja vu - appeared in her mind, of reaching down, taking a gentle grasp on the dragon, and lifting him away from the inedible noodle. <That should work.>

Rivka blinked, shook her head, and bent down to do so. The two other dragons tumbled into her leg, froze again, then parted, each chirping once at her before finding spots near or on Wren. The hatchling in her hands pawed at the air as she carried it, as though swimming, then stretched and flapped its wings before laying down once she let go on her lap. "You're not worried that I'd hurt... her? Him?"

The human turned to look at the dragon, but she was still in the same relaxed position as before. "You... would you eat me if I hurt him?" A quick glance at Wren showed the woman play-wrestling her lunch box from both dragons.

Jade tilted her head and crinkled her eyes in what Rivka hoped was an approximation of a smile. <No, but if it helps motivate you...>

Wren turned towards her. "She's messing with you, isn't she? Don't listen to her, you're fine, she's friendly. Enjoy the dragons."

A look back at the green dragoness rewarded Rivka with the sight of Jade flicking her tongue out like a snake. "Alright. But if Jade eats me, I'm not sure if I'll haunt you or her." She slowly began to stroke down the back of the hatchling on her lap, before long rewarded with soft purring.

Wren and Rivka soon spun up a conversation, occasionally interrupted by the dragon watching them. As the day progressed, Rivka found herself more and more interested in following her girlfriend next time she decided to go visit the dragons.

#dragon #smaugust #writing #writers on tumblr #fluff #smaugust 2020 #text

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livestosave · 4 years

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Qrow As Munin

So, I have some problems with people drawing on the scarecrow from the Oz books as Qrow’s primary allusion in RWBY. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a good thematic allusion, and there’s a few basal similarities, depending how far you want to stretch, but it’s far from the best fit. Although it’s often treated as his secondary and less important allusion, I find Qrow’s parallels to Muninn - Odin’s second raven from Norse mythology - to be far more accurate.

So, let’s start with Muninn’s name. Although it is commonly interpreted as ‘memory’, that’s not actually the most accurate translation. Huginn does pretty directly translate to ‘thought,’ but Muninn doesn’t translate easily at all. However, a more accurate translation would actually be desire, or emotion. Assuming the names don’t just mean basically the same thing. So let’s run with those, shall we? Qrow is essentially the manifestation of Ozpin’s will. If Oz needs something looked at, taken care of...Qrow is the member of the Inner Circle who make sure it happens. He is Ozpin’s desire made flesh.

Muninn is sent out by Odin each day to observe the world, and bring back to Odin what Odin needs to know, whispering it in his ear. The information is privy to no one else. Here we see our first major checkbox, as Qrow is Ozpin’s primary information gatherer.

In theory, Raven and Qrow were very similar. Like Odin, Ozpin gave them the same capabilities (being able to turn into a bird, in this case) and trusted them the same amount. They were twins, came from the same place, exposed to the same things...trusting one meant trusting the other.

Qrow grew to define his life by his service to Ozpin, to the point that finding out it was all a lie (in his mind) nearly destroyed him. This is important, as in Norse mythology, Huginn and Muninn are widely interpreted as being manifestations of Odin’s intellectual capabilities, making Qrow - the remaining of the pair - somewhat reliant upon that relationship. Without that bedrock, Muninn/Qrow has no purpose in life, and arguably no life at all.

The next point is actually a bit specific, so my apologies, however: referring back to that ‘part of Odin’ thing, there’s a word for this in Norse. Fylgja (followers) are essentially ‘familiars,’ in an English folklore sense: they are spirits closely tied to the ‘soul’ (no such concrete concept existed in pre-Christian Norse culture) of the main person, and are closely connected to the character of their owner. The animal’s form is often that of an animal that symbolically compliments the primary being. As a raven/crow, Qrow does actually fulfill this part of the allusion, corvids being exceptionally intelligent and good at problem-solving. Their association with death is also easily tied back into Ozpin’s reincarnation, of course, as it was easily tied to Odin’s being the god of battle. Fylgja also oftentimes appear places before their primary being, as physical manifestations or dreams for those in the area. Similarly, Qrow arrives in Haven before Ozpin, to give him what he needs when he arrives.

There’s...a lot more, but I think you all get the point, so I’ll end here. TLDR: Qrow is Ozpin’s spy, the extension of his will, and deeply, closely tied to who Ozpin is, and very damaged without Ozpin to ‘return’ to.

#Headcanons: Qrow #(Hi I'm...very emotional about this bird)#(I also love his Munin allusion SO MUCH it is SO GOOD)

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empathicstars · 4 years

Text

Nothing More Important

It’d been a long, grueling, impossible fifty hours. Longer and more grueling and more impossible, believably, than Neoma’d expected it to be. After all, how difficult was it to find a singular officer in a world where identification was required for everything one did?

Apparently, difficult. She’d been awake and running around the base since 2100 hours on, uh... --... how many days ago was it? One, two? It was hard to keep track. All Neoma could remember any longer was the pounding of her feet on pavement, of the crisp air that felt drier and drier the longer she was out in it, of the feeling of brick beneath her fingers and metal against her arms as she climbed and scaled the impressive base in search. The teams by her side had switched off five separate times, and more than once someone had attempted to relieve her.

But she’d made a promise. She told them she’d bring her back.

And she would.

Doctors marveled at how she was passing each examination they ran on her in attempts to force her to take her leave. She didn’t seem to be tired, and any scrapes or bruises were beyond minor. What she’d told Jim just before he drifted to sleep was true: she didn’t get sore. But that didn’t mean that spending fifty hours wide awake, soothing every officer she came into contact with, and walking the length of one of the Federation’s biggest bases multiple times over was enjoyable or restful for her. ( That didn’t mean that part of her wasn’t still shaking from an encounter with a limp body in a river, that her disagreements with all of those close to her wasn’t burning a coldness somewhere hard in the back of her throat. )

Ah, Jim… Fuck. When he learned about this disaster, she was sure he’d staunchly refuse to ever sleep again. And after all her hard work. Ancestors. It felt like all of her effort with everyone was coming up to nothing, now. Encouraging Reg out of his shell, building and mending a relationship with John, her friendship with Luci, Jim… ancestors, she was tired.

Part of her wondered, briefly, if she could convince Spock to keep all of this on the down low from him -- especially now that it was over. But she didn’t have to know him very well at all to know that that wasn’t an option.

But at least it was over. At least it wasn’t like waking up on Corvid.

At least this was a nightmare that would end.

After checking every Federation and non-Federation ship, the Institute, all of Yorktown… after climbing every building, sliding under every tree, dipping herself deep into water and barging in through every library… Neoma had decided, on a whim, to check for Liana on incoming ships, and was rather floored when it worked. An Aella -- not Liana -- Moore was on a non-Federation supply ship, heading back to Yorktown, and Neoma was going to be there when she docked. It only took a few calls to the captain of that ship to put together the pieces. Liana’d beamed on from a civilian transporter, rather than a Starfleet-specific one -- a transporter that dealt with such a large volume of use that it had no choice but to delete profiles of those who passed through it -- to his ship. She’d been on the base and had been trying to find another ship to lead her elsewhere. It was only a half a day, it seemed, before she’d buckled internally, admitted to him that she’d snuck aboard his ship before shields went up, and requested to take the next return trip with him. He’d agreed, and now she was less than twenty minutes from docking.

And so, here Neoma stood. Waiting for her. In a bustle of laughing, chattering people, moving swiftly and gleefully throughout a shuttle bay. Her pole collapsed at the magnetic belt on her side, her arms crossed, her hair pulled back into a fishtail braid that she thought maybe looked alright whenever she’d done it. She tugged at the tie to let it free from its mess, let her hair fall around her, catch briefly in the wind.

For a moment, it was almost too easy to believe that Liana wouldn’t show up, after all. That the information had been a farce. That she’d reported Liana’s recovery prematurely, and she’d have to resume activities again. That this was a break, and not the end.

But relief touched some distant part of her when she spotted a thin figure walking through the crowds. Dressed in a long white dress, a single book clutched to her chest, as though it’d protect her from the reality she was about to face. Ancestors, Liana looked about as shitty as Neoma felt. Black hollows beneath her eyes, pale, paper-thin skin, body bent in on itself. She stared at the floor with the same guilty expression Meeth wore when he knew he’d done something wrong.

The same expression her girls had had…

Neoma breathed out. Released the fifty hours that’d passed -- released the memory of Amila and Naith pouting -- and focused on the start of this hour, focused on the face of this girl.

The security officer reached out, palm up, and waited until the kid’d walked to her side to drape her arm around her shoulders. She felt Liana stiffen beneath the contact of the half-hug, but Neoma still leaned forward to distribute a kiss in her hair.

“Welcome back, Liana.”

Liana’s head tilted up so painfully slowly -- and when their eyes met, everything in the kid’s face was open, childish, shocked. She was round, and gentle, and small, and… Ancestors, she looked like she was about eleven years old. “H… i.”

Neoma squeezed her with one arm. “You really gave us a fright, you know.”

“I… I did?”

The confusion would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so heartbreaking. Maybe still would’ve been if Neoma hadn’t spent the better part of these past few days fighting that fright.

She smiled, instead of answering -- tapped her with her thumb and began leading her away from the ships. “Where were you off to?” Conversational. Light.

Liana stared back down, once again. Felt a little bit closer to Neoma than she had moments before. “I don’t…” Nearly choked. “I do not know. Just… away. As far away as possible.”

“Well,” with humor in her teeth, “you know, if you want to go far away, the Enterprise is a great place to do it.”

Liana’s lips flattened, and she ducked her head further, but it somehow read almost as a small smile might.

They walked for a bit in silence, and, wow -- how good silence could sound. How good walking could feel! But what sounded even better, y’know, was conversation. Especially conversation that mattered. So…

“I hear you don’t want to be a Betazoid. You don’t want to be an empath. That right?”

She jolted, as though something horrific had been found out. “Y… yes.”

“Why not?”

The sounds of the crowd from the bay were beginning to disperse. It made her pause sound even louder. “I… I want to be normal. I want to be… like everyone else.”

Ha. “You are like everyone else.”

“No.” Her voice was dark, steady, so suddenly it was surprising. It was too much like the Aella Neoma’d met one time in a communications bay. “I am apart from them, and they from me.”

“Apart?” Neoma’d never been fantastic at clamping at her humor -- and now was no exception. A hard laugh, rough and grainy and loud erupted from her.

“W-- what is so funny?” Ah, there she was, again -- the petulant child annoyed with the humor she didn’t understand. ( So much like Amila. So much it burned. ) “That is not funny.”

“Ha… you really have no idea, huh?”

“Of course I do not. That -- that is why I asked.”

“No, no… I meant…” Okay. Stop smiling. Serious Neoma time. “Everyone’s been in a frenzy looking for you. Spock, Reg, John. Casper. ’Ve had to tie almost all of them back from going out to look for you.”

“What? No -- no, you are -- you are lying.”

“What’s the point in lying, Liana? Already got you here.”

She paused. Perhaps, Neoma supposed, to consider that maybe it was true. “R… really?”

“Really really. Do you know how many times I had to wrangle Spock into submission?”

“The -- the commander?”

“Unless there’s two of ‘em.”

“But -- no! W… why would he…? No. He… he must be like this with everyone.”

Neoma was able to temper her amusement back to a chuckle, this time. “Nah. He told me you two were close.”

“What?” She was watching her, now.

“Yup. He gave me a lot of invaluable information about where to look for you, too. I don’t think any of them’s gotten a lick of sleep since your disappearing act.”

“I… oh, I…” Her shock fell into something else. Something small and sad, plain enough for even Neoma to get. “I did not mean to worry them. I did not know they would realize my absence. I -- I just wanted… to be free.”

Free, huh? Neoma sighed -- probably came out more like a huff. Either way, the noise was low, rueful. She didn’t get it. Ties were the best part of life. Hadn’t she just said something like that in the comms a few days ago? Having a spot to call your own, and a sky you knew… that was precious. But…

“Well, my girls wanted to see the stars. They wanted to be free so, so bad. But you don’t have to run away to see the stars. You’re… already in Starfleet.”

“But I…” A frustrated breath from her. “I do not want to be.”

“Why not?”

“I… I do not like it! It is scary, and dangerous. I do not want to live on a ship. I… I do not want to be what she was.”

“Ancestors, kid.” It came out before she could stop it. That she was so vehemently said. “She who?”

Liana’s voice fell low, quiet and stripped and now anything but the acid she’d once tasted. “Aella.”

Oh. Fuck. Well, okay. “Why are you separating them?”

“What?”

“You and her. Who you were and who you are. You’re the same people.”

“N-- no! No!”

Another one? Really? “Sorry, but… yeah.” Neoma recognized the wiggling -- like an animal wanting to be put down -- and so she stopped, turned to face her. Wherever they were now, it was quieter. Less clattering, less people. Neoma pressed both her palms into Liana’s shoulders, watched her shrink, slightly. “Listen to me.” She waited until her gaze lifted, even if was only minute at first. “I used to live beneath a volcano. I’d sleep with a burlap sack over my face, and wake to watch the guar. I hadn’t been ten miles from where I lived. I hated fighting. I just wanted to watch my guar in peace. Fabric like this…” She rubbed at Liana’s shoulders. “I’d never even seen it before. It was a whole different world. And now look at me. I’m a security officer out in space. Lightyears away from where I raised those guar. On ground that isn’t really ground. On a planet that’s not really a planet. Using technology, every day, when the most expensive thing I used to own was… I don’t know. Maybe my staff. And if you’d asked me then where I’d be now… I’d never see it. I’d never see this.”

“Then how did you get here?” By now, Liana was staring at her. Her eyes were large, glassy, fixed. Neoma felt the weight of her attention keyed into every single word. “Why are you here?”

“Things changed. Lot of things changed. And I got new perspective. And... I guess that’s what happened to you, too. No, you don’t know why you’d want to live on a ship, or be in Starfleet. No, it doesn’t make sense to you. But you don’t remember the perspective that made you want to be here. So of course you’re confused. Of course you’re lost. But what… what if you could rediscover that perspective? What if you could learn more about yourself?”

The eyes staring back at her were brimming with tears, now. She opened her mouth twice -- two false-starts -- before she found her voice.

“I… I am scared something would happen to me. To who I am. John tells me he has a Haliaan waiting to heal me… but I do not believe it will heal me. I believe it will kill me.”

“Kill you?”

“Who I am…” Her palm raised from her side, and she stared at it, pressed fingertips against it. “I will be gone. Another person will take her place.”

“No. Hey, look at me. No. Same person. Just new perspective. Okay? And it’s not gonna be like a…” She lifted a hand, only for as long as it took her to snap. “... you know? You may get the perspective and decide… hey. I still want to go to the Institute. I still want to leave Starfleet. And then you can. But then you’ll know, too. And something like sensing someone’s emotions won’t set you off so much that you disappear.”

Eyelashes fluttered, and a tear fell to Liana’s cheek. Neoma moved to wipe at it with the back of her hand. The kid’s eyes shuddered closed from the contact.

“I’m not gonna make you stay in Starfleet, okay? It’s your life. But… if you’re going to leave, I’m gonna make you say goodbye.”

It was supposed to sound almost jesting, that last sentence, but… Liana wasn’t opening her eyes. Wasn’t relaxing again. Fuck. Neoma’d not fucked up, had she?

Neoma was grasping at new words to throw Liana’s way when she spoke again, in a voice so quiet it was almost drowned out by the nothing around them.

“They… really missed me? They really… worried about me?”

“Really, really.”

Liana’s lips thinned, and she stared down at her hand again. Edged a foot a bit against the ground. “Then… then I should at least try. For them.” Tentatively… “After all… there… is nothing more important than family, yes?”

When Neoma laughed this time, she felt it -- felt the joy, the relief, the end of a nightmare. And this time, when she pulled Liana into a hug, she felt a warmth in her belly that would’ve made it nearly impossible not to.

“That’s exactly right, kiddo.”

#( drabble. )#[ IT'S NEOMA AND AELLA INTERACTING IN OHANA!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHH #this is an AU where like... Aella's lost her memory. she goes by Liana. she ran away. it's all Fun and Awful #obviously from Neoma's POV but like... she's the Focus of the story SO!!! POSTING IT HERE TOO!!! ]#v: ad augusta per angusta

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neomacaught · 4 years

Text

Nothing More Important

But she’d made a promise. She told them she’d bring her back.

And she would.

But at least it was over. At least it wasn’t like waking up on Corvid.

At least this was a nightmare that would end.

The same expression her girls had had…

Neoma breathed out. Released the fifty hours that’d passed -- released the memory of Amila and Naith pouting -- and focused on the start of this hour, focused on the face of this girl.

“Welcome back, Liana.”

Neoma squeezed her with one arm. “You really gave us a fright, you know.”

“I… I did?”

The confusion would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so heartbreaking. Maybe still would’ve been if Neoma hadn’t spent the better part of these past few days fighting that fright.

She smiled, instead of answering -- tapped her with her thumb and began leading her away from the ships. “Where were you off to?” Conversational. Light.

Liana stared back down, once again. Felt a little bit closer to Neoma than she had moments before. “I don’t…” Nearly choked. “I do not know. Just… away. As far away as possible.”

“Well,” with humor in her teeth, “you know, if you want to go far away, the Enterprise is a great place to do it.”

Liana’s lips flattened, and she ducked her head further, but it somehow read almost as a small smile might.

“I hear you don’t want to be a Betazoid. You don’t want to be an empath. That right?”

She jolted, as though something horrific had been found out. “Y… yes.”

“Why not?”

The sounds of the crowd from the bay were beginning to disperse. It made her pause sound even louder. “I… I want to be normal. I want to be… like everyone else.”

Ha. “You are like everyone else.”

“No.” Her voice was dark, steady, so suddenly it was surprising. It was too much like the Aella Neoma’d met one time in a communications bay. “I am apart from them, and they from me.”

“Apart?” Neoma’d never been fantastic at clamping at her humor -- and now was no exception. A hard laugh, rough and grainy and loud erupted from her.

“W-- what is so funny?” Ah, there she was, again -- the petulant child annoyed with the humor she didn’t understand. ( So much like Amila. So much it burned. ) “That is not funny.”

“Ha… you really have no idea, huh?”

“Of course I do not. That -- that is why I asked.”

“What? No -- no, you are -- you are lying.”

“What’s the point in lying, Liana? Already got you here.”

She paused. Perhaps, Neoma supposed, to consider that maybe it was true. “R… really?”

“Really really. Do you know how many times I had to wrangle Spock into submission?”

“The -- the commander?”

“Unless there’s two of ‘em.”

“But -- no! W… why would he…? No. He… he must be like this with everyone.”

Neoma was able to temper her amusement back to a chuckle, this time. “Nah. He told me you two were close.”

“What?” She was watching her, now.

“Yup. He gave me a lot of invaluable information about where to look for you, too. I don’t think any of them’s gotten a lick of sleep since your disappearing act.”

“Well, my girls wanted to see the stars. They wanted to be free so, so bad. But you don’t have to run away to see the stars. You’re… already in Starfleet.”

“But I…” A frustrated breath from her. “I do not want to be.”

“Why not?”

“I… I do not like it! It is scary, and dangerous. I do not want to live on a ship. I… I do not want to be what she was.”

“Ancestors, kid.” It came out before she could stop it. That she was so vehemently said. “She who?”

Liana’s voice fell low, quiet and stripped and now anything but the acid she’d once tasted. “Aella.”

Oh. Fuck. Well, okay. “Why are you separating them?”

“What?”

“You and her. Who you were and who you are. You’re the same people.”

“N-- no! No!”

“Then how did you get here?” By now, Liana was staring at her. Her eyes were large, glassy, fixed. Neoma felt the weight of her attention keyed into every single word. “Why are you here?”

The eyes staring back at her were brimming with tears, now. She opened her mouth twice -- two false-starts -- before she found her voice.

“I… I am scared something would happen to me. To who I am. John tells me he has a Haliaan waiting to heal me… but I do not believe it will heal me. I believe it will kill me.”

“Kill you?”

“Who I am…” Her palm raised from her side, and she stared at it, pressed fingertips against it. “I will be gone. Another person will take her place.”

Eyelashes fluttered, and a tear fell to Liana’s cheek. Neoma moved to wipe at it with the back of her hand. The kid’s eyes shuddered closed from the contact.

“I’m not gonna make you stay in Starfleet, okay? It’s your life. But… if you’re going to leave, I’m gonna make you say goodbye.”

It was supposed to sound almost jesting, that last sentence, but… Liana wasn’t opening her eyes. Wasn’t relaxing again. Fuck. Neoma’d not fucked up, had she?

Neoma was grasping at new words to throw Liana’s way when she spoke again, in a voice so quiet it was almost drowned out by the nothing around them.

“They… really missed me? They really… worried about me?”

“Really, really.”

“That’s exactly right, kiddo.”

#( drabble. )#v: ad augusta per angusta #[ this will make sense to exactly no one not in the group BUT! aella and neoma interacted for like. KIND OF the first time and i just....#i'm sobbing over it!!!!!#neoma's a security officer and had to go find aella and like!!! wow!!! ]

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charmingstrangeness · 6 years

Link

Rating: Teen

Characters: Hashida Kanshichirou, Sakata Gintoki

Word count: 2105

Summary:

In which Hashida Kanshichirou seeks an escape from the weight of his new responsibilities as an adult - only to find a charismatic and suspiciously familiar silver-haired drunk instead.

[ao3 cross-post]

This idea was rolling around in my head since my first watch of the show, and a zine felt like the perfect opportunity to finally write it out. And so, here it is - my contribution to Samurai Heart: A Gintama Fanzine. You can (and should) check out the zine at @gintamazine on both tumblr and twitter!

Huge thanks to everyone involved with the zine - it was a lot of fun and i'm super proud to have worked alongside such a talented group of people! Extra thanks to the zine mod, who put in a ton of work to make sure everything sailed smoothly, and extra extra thanks to the other fic contributors (Liatheus, UnidentifiedPie, corvidity and jackopancake) for your beta reading, edits, comments, and general conversation <333

Enjoy!

One foot in front of the other.

He tries to lose himself in the act of running – the sharp breaths that come as gasps more than anything else, the burning ache in his leg muscles, the way his surroundings blur and fly past him – until an errant rock connects with his foot, and suddenly Hashida Kanshichirou is sprawled in the dirt, panting hard and no further from escaping his own spiral of anxieties than he’d been when he began his desperate flight.

Now that he’s still, tendrils of the conversation he’d been trying to outrun take root in his mind – you’re an adult now, Kanshichirou, it’s time for us to talk about you taking over the family business.

Gritting his teeth, he picks himself up from the road. The fact of the matter is, he’s only sev— eighteen years old. An adult? He feels like a child still – a child being thrown into a lifelong responsibility before he’s ready to handle it. Kanshichirou snorts derisively; thinking of the Hashida corporation as a mere “family business” is laughable on its own, and his grandfather wants him to be in charge of it already? Kanshichirou isn’t ready for that yet. He’s not even ready to think about it. And he doubts he’ll ever be ready to give up his morals, either; he knows what kind of ethically dubious things his grandfather does to keep the Hashidaya going. Taking over from his grandfather, going against his own conscience for the sake of profits… That’s not the kind of life he wants.

Kanshichirou kicks at the rock that brought him down and watches it skitter down the road. He’s not entirely sure where he is – some seedy part of town, by the looks of it. The street is lined with bars and cabaret clubs, their colourful signs flashing beacons of hope in the night for those weary of their problems and looking for an escape. To his left, soft light spills through the doorway of a pub. The warm glow is inviting, beckoning even, and Kanshichirou shrugs. Eh, what the hell. He may still be two years short of legal drinking age, but according to his grandfather he’s enough of an adult to run a goddamn conglomerate, so why not? How else do adults deal with their problems beyond trying to drink themselves into oblivion, anyways?

The bar stool is a hair too tall for him; Kanshichirou feels awkward hopping up onto it, and he slips off gracelessly and has to try again. He tries to get comfortable, but no matter how much he adjusts himself on the poorly padded seat, it’s just not possible. Swallowing nervously, he silently thanks the heavens that no one seems to be paying attention to him, lest they immediately spot the fact that he really doesn’t belong—

“And what’ll it be today, sir?”

Kanshichirou jumps in his seat, one knee smacking painfully into the underside of the bar. Across the counter, the bartender stares at him expectantly.

What do people even order at bars? For a brief second, Kanshichirou forgets everything he’s ever known about alcohol or adulthood or life as a whole, and he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.

“S-saké, please?” The quaver in his voice is unmistakable; surely the bartender is going to throw him out—

But no, the man only nods, and turns to the shelf of liquor behind him.

Kanshichirou exhales the smallest sigh of relief as the adrenaline begins to drain from his system. He’s passed the test – no one here will question him now. Satisfied, Kanshichirou leans his elbows onto the bar.

“Oi, aren’t you a little young to be drinking saké?”

Kanshichirou jumps a little less this time. He turns to the speaker, ready to defend his position as a proper adult of legal drinking age, and is promptly halted in his tracks by an overwhelming sense of familiarity; Kanshichirou thinks of framed photographs, in his own house and in his grandfather’s estate, of a different man – a man with a gleeful grin and sparkling eyes and the same wild, silver hair as the man sitting two barstools to his right in the present moment.

But Kanshichirou’s father is dead, and has been since before he was even born; he knows this, has always known this. And the man beside him shares no resemblance to the man in the photographs beyond that wavy silver hair, either – the face is wrong, and those eyes are lifeless, like a dead fish…

Kanshichirou shakes his head to clear out his thoughts. “I’m an adult, I’m allowed to be here,” he snaps. He didn’t come here to be plagued by memories, or to be belittled by strangers. He came here to drink, dammit – to drink and be properly irresponsible about his duties. Just like any other responsible adult.

The man snorts. “An adult? Barely. You sound like you still need to grow some hair between your legs, kid.” His face is flushed, and his words are a touch slurred.

Kanshichirou rolls his eyes. “Who are you to tell me where I still need to grow hair? Besides, the bartender is already serving me anyways.”

“Damn Kabukichou bartenders never check for I.D.,” the man mutters. “Irresponsible, really. I swear, I’m the only human being alive in this universe who actually gives half a shit about keeping our image family-friendly…” He trails off into indiscernible mumbles, glaring angrily into his cup.

What strange man, Kanshichirou thinks as he turns back to the bar, just as the bartender places a cup and a small flask of saké in front of him.

“Thank you,” he says with confidence. The bartender only nods before wandering off.

Some of that confidence immediately wanes, however, as he looks down at the saké. He knows it’s supposed to poured into the cup but… How much? And is there some secret pouring technique that only true adults know? What if he does it so incorrectly that everyone realizes he’s not supposed to be here?

“Never poured your own saké before, huh?”

Kanshichirou looks up – the man is smirking, and god Kanshichirou wants nothing more than to wipe that shit-eating grin off his face.

“Screw off, old man. Tend to your own drink.”

“Hey, who’re you calling a shitty old geezer?!” The man frowns. “Kids these days. What are you even doing here, anyways?”

“Having a drink, obviously,” Kanshichirou rolls his eyes.

“Damn you, you know what I meant. Why are you here, you shitty brat? Explain it in thirty words or less!” He gestures dramatically towards Kanshichirou, alcohol sloshing over the rim of the cup in his hand.

“I told you, I’m here to have a drink.” Kanshichirou’s voice falters a bit, and he glances towards the ground. “You know… to deal with stuff. That’s what adults do, right? They drink to fix their problems.”

The man raises an eyebrow. “Oh, do they now? Now there’s a mark of your age if I ever heard one.”

Kanshichirou frowns. “What, you think that just because I’m young I can’t have problems?”

“Nah, I just think that you’re naïve for believing that alcohol will fix them.”

The man’s words drive through Kanshichirou’s body like a nail. He’s right, of course; Kanshichirou knows he’s right (but he doesn’t want him to be right).

“What kind of problems are you running away from that have you looking to get drunk at a seedy bar, anyways?” The stranger shifts over a seat so he’s sitting right beside Kanshichirou. “Aren’t you too young to be doing this kind of thing?”

Kanshichirou winces. “It’s… a big responsibility. I don’t want to deal with it right now.”

“How big?”

“Really big… It’s, well. It’s kind of deciding on my future, you know?” Kanshichirou’s brow wrinkles. “I’m being pressured to make a big career choice, but I’m not really ready to make it yet.”

“Ah, I see.” The man nods sagely. “Who is it, your mom? Your dad?”

“My grandfather,” Kanshichirou corrects. “He wants me to take over the family business, now that I’m finally eighteen, and he wants me to start right away.”

“So what, you’ve got a steady career and some kind of fortune lined up from day one? Doesn’t sound so bad to me. Do you know how many people would kill to be in your position?”

“It’s a good opportunity, I guess, but it’s not what I want.”

“So what do you want?”

“I want…” Kanshichirou furrows his brow. “I want to make choices I can be happy with? I want… an enjoyable life, I guess.”

“Like a cherry blossom?”

Kanshichirou blinks in surprise. He’s heard that phrase before – according to his mother, it was something his father used to be fond of saying, back when he was alive.

I want to live like a cherry blossom.

It wasn’t something that had ever made sense, but… hearing it now… Kanshichirou feels like he finally understands the sentiment behind those words.

“Yeah… like a cherry blossom, I guess.”

The stranger takes a slow sip from his drink in response. Kanshichirou waits, expectantly.

“You know, kid… It’s true that sometimes, the things other people value aren’t always important. Being filthy rich, or living long enough to meet your great-great-grandchildren, or any of that. But even then… life is full of responsibilities, and you can’t just ignore them.” The man turns to face Kanshichirou. There’s something in his eyes, but Kanshichirou can’t tell what it is – it’s not motivation, but it isn’t defeat, either. “Maybe the way your grandfather lives his life doesn’t appeal to you, and that’s okay. But taking over the family business doesn’t mean following in his footsteps, you know?”

Kanshichirou cocks his head. “I… guess? I don’t know what you mean, exactly.”

“I mean, if you’ve got your own code, your own brand of bushido, you can still follow that. You can take over the company, but then run it the way you want to.” He gulps back the rest of his drink and slams the cup on the counter. “You don’t have to run from your responsibilities. You can meet them head on, and make the choices you want to make, and still live a happy life.”

Kanshichirou stares into his cup of saké and considers the stranger’s words. While the thought of following his grandfather’s legacy is certainly terrifying, the thought of changing that legacy…

Maybe I could…

A rustle to his right breaks Kanshichirou out of his thoughts – the man is standing up.

“Ah, wait! Are you going so soon?” There’s a silent plea in his words – please stay, you make me feel better about this, I want to keep talking to you.

“Sorry, kid. I’ve got my own responsibilities to deal with.”

“Oh…” Kanshichirou scratches the back of his head awkwardly and gazes at the ground. “Well… thanks for the advice. It helped.”

The stranger smiles. “Any time, kid.” He takes a few steps away from the bar, then stops and looks over his shoulder. “Listen, Kanshichirou—”

Kanshichirou’s head snaps back up.

We never—

“—in a couple years when you’re actually old enough to drink, come find me, okay? And we’ll share a drink for real.” He turns and walks away.

“W-wait!” Kanshichirou jumps off the bar stool. “Who are you? How do you know my name??”

The man raises his hand in a sort of farewell wave. “It’s a promise, okay? Remember, a samurai doesn’t make a promise he can’t keep.”

For a second, Kanshichirou sees it – sees the same man, walking away from him, only this time he’s walking away from a park bench, into a quiet spring night… Then he’s back in the bar, and the man is disappearing out the door, and Kanshichirou’s knees are buckling at the sudden memory.

Who…

“Hey, take responsibility for your tab before you leave!”

Kanshichirou spins around. The bartender is glaring at him from across the counter.

“S-sorry!” he practically squeaks, and stumbles back to the bar. “Here, let me get my money.”

“And I’m assuming you’ll be paying for your dad’s, too?”

Kanshichirou starts. “My dad?!”

“Yeah, that guy you were with? The one who just left without paying his bill.”

“He’s, uh, he’s not my dad.”

“Oh really? You too look exactly alike, you know.”

Kanshichirou laughs. “Yeah, that’s fair. And heck, I’ll pay his bill anyways. Just tell me who he is.”

“That’s Yorozuya Gin-chan. He runs the odd jobs place a few blocks from here.”

Yorozuya Gin-chan, huh? Kanshichirou can’t help but smile as he digs for his wallet.

I’ll find you again, Gin-san, he thinks. It’s a promise.

#gintama #gintama fanfiction #gintama zine #sakata gintoki #hashida kanshichirou #fic #oneshot #sugar content #aaaaaand here we are finally #hope yall like it!#and dont forget to support the zine :D

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pippki-writes · 3 years

Text

An Ill-Fitting Name: Snippet 7

NOTES:

Snippet 1; Snippets 2 & 3; Snippet 4; Snippet 5; Snippet 6

Going off into another POV now, but since it’s part of Isaiah’s story I’ll throw it under the same tag. Eventually Isaiah learns to make a friend. I am mostly posting these in the order my deranged mind wrote them, so if you were expecting coherence? An overarching narrative structure? I’m so sorry, you should recalibrate those expectations.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&

I have been in exile before. Some more beautiful than others. The first thing I learned is not to hope. Others may find it sustaining, but for me, hope served as a reminder of the things I couldn’t have in exile, and the contrast of it would always threaten to break my heart. It’s bad enough to see a human heart broken, but ten times worse for one of my kind.

So. I do not hope.

The second rule of exile is knowing, invariably, that this is the worst one yet. Even if this is not objectively true, the exile one must presently endure is always worse than one that’s been completed. It does me no good to think of exiles past, whether they were much easier or far more torturous. They are not the existence I must suffer now.

A tolerable exile is full of knowns. What I can and can’t do. Where I can and can’t go. Much less preferred is the exile I’m in now, and not simply because it is the one I must live through. It’s an exile without a definite end. It will end eventually—they all, eventually, end, when you live as long as I do—but the conditions that would set me free? The infuriating sort: you’ll know when you know. When you see it. When you feel it. I’d rather be sentenced to a thousand years cast away from every life before, at least knowing I can count the days, can know where I stand, than this.

This is a most unusual exile. I can spread night-black wings and take to the skies, wherever I want to go, but I am trapped. Heard, but not understood. Seen, but never known. I cannot speak—only sound the call that comes of a sharp beak.

Hell, I can’t even understand the other crows.

At least, not in the meaningful ways they understand each other. And not in the ways I understand people. Nor do the crows understand me—I confuse them, I think. It’s not just that I can’t communicate properly. Nor is it because I’m quite obviously bigger than they are. I wonder if they can tell, somehow, that I am more than this shape, that I’ve been twisted and reformed, and bound down from a mischievous too-big existence into the body of a crow.

He wouldn’t tell me why a crow. Angry gods don’t need reasons. That’s the sort of thing that angry gods say, when they do things for no reason at all.

It’s easy to forget sometimes, when you’re lost in the thrill of pushing someone else’s buttons, that the someone in question is an angry sort of god. That the power you wield is NOT the same. That a mood can turn faster than a breeze and cut you down very quickly.

He’s not the only reason I’ve ever been exiled, but his are always the worst. And as I seem to have trouble learning, doubt it’ll be the last time he does this to me. Doesn’t matter now. I pissed him off good, and lost a lot for my trouble.

It’s been—let me count, hm, the numbers of the years don’t exactly line up nicely for easy math—seventy four years now. Seventy four years of carrion and French fries snatched from parking lots. Seventy four years of learning what polite puzzlement looks like from a corvid. Seventy four years and counting, accepting the facts that define my current fate.

Sometimes, he’s told me the terms of an exile. “You will stay among these islands until the last fogs leave for the season.” Or, “you will stay with this doomed cause until it drives you mad.” Sometimes he would even say why. “You don’t appreciate beauty,” or “your indecision damns you,” things like that. What had he said this time? “You’re so insufferably selfish. You think you’re clever, but all you do is think of yourself. You don’t care about others, and if they knew better they wouldn’t care about you.” Yes, it had been about like that. As good as I had gotten for a why.

Crows are social creatures, which is why seeing just one is a bad omen. But most people these days have forgotten what signs portend ill and well. Or maybe the signs have shifted. Whatever the reason, the young man (all men are young, when you’ve lived as long as I have) didn’t seem concerned by the presence of a crow all on its own perched on the back of a truck in the parking lot. He pulled out his phone, not daring to approach, his fingers spreading the picture on the screen, trying to get closer with a camera that no doubt couldn’t. He is strange, though I am stranger, and I watch him concentrate, his one good eye flitting from the screen to look at me, and back to the screen again. One good eye, the dark brown of rich soil, and the other eye missing, a ruined starburst of scar tissue radiating out from an unseeing sliver of white. An old wound, by the look of it. He straightens up, tapping on the screen, and takes one last look at me before going into his motel room.

Later, scattered carefully in the mulch near the door he went in, I find a few handfuls of crunchy cat food. I have had many forms, have eaten many unusual things suited to those forms. Crunchy cat food is pleasing to the body of a crow. I wouldn’t have eaten this sort of thing in times before, but now I gladly do.

The next day, I am on the roof, and the young man is focused on me, waving and pointing at something in his hand. A peanut. More of them, scattered in the mulch, and he deliberately tosses the one in his hand among the others. I top my head to the side, and wait for him to leave before collecting the offering. The peanuts are unsalted. I think I prefer the cat food.

Somehow, it seems I’ve gotten my preference across to him over the course of several days. I glide down from the rooftop to the little pile of kibble at my spot next to the shrub, and I do so before the young man has returned to his room. I tolerate his presence, not too close but not as far as before. As I grab a piece of my little snack, I see over to the side, he’s holding up his phone, slowly and carefully, camera open, to frame us both in the picture. He aims his other hand so that it points to me in the image, and even from this distance I can see mirrored on the screen of the phone, he is smiling. A genuine smile. Hesitant at first, like maybe his face had forgotten how to express excitement. I’m sure that’s how my face will look again one day, when I get it back, the memory of emotions having slipped away to the rhythms of weathering decades of avian existence.

Most immortals have tried to kill themselves at some point, and I’m no exception. Usually at least once per exile. I thought maybe this time I’d succeed. Surely, as a bird—

But no. There I was, broken wings, blood spilling, neck wrong-angled, thinking this time I’d won, like an idiot let down my guard and closed my eyes, waiting for death to come—

And there he was instead. Snapping my wings back into shape. Putting my neck back in alignment with uncaring, clinical precision. Gathering my blood from all its spilled places and returning my vitality. I was angry, and tried to tell him, and hoped he could understand every four-letter word when all it sounded like was a shrieking string of “CaaW”s.

He tsk-tsked and wagged a finger at me lightly, no indication on his terrible face that he could understand what I’d tried to convey. “Not allowed,” was all he said before he disappeared again.

The young man is even closer. Not close enough to touch, but he puts the cat food in the usual place and then sits on the curb in front of his room. I glide down from the rooftop and flutter to my feet. He has a nervous energy about him—I usually see him pacing the parking lot, opening and closing a pocket knife in his hands, or whittling sticks down to nothing, but for now his hands are empty and he simply taps the tip of his shoe up and down on the asphalt. I get the feeling he’s resisting playing with the knife because I am so near.

“I’m calling you Cat,” he says softly, “since that’s the food you seem to like the most.”

I turn towards him and top my head to the side. I have had many names in my time. Some better than others. This one feels appropriate.

“You can call me—“ he stops himself and chuckles quietly. “Whatever birds call people, huh?” He lapses into a thoughtful silence for a bit, watching me, before resuming. “Will you be my friend, Cat? I don’t...exactly have a good track record, with making friends...but I’m trying. Trying to be different this time.” He’s talking to his shoes now, staring at them intently, a crease formed in his forehead. “I’m not a good person—I wasn’t, I’m still not, I’m not going to be...but I am different. Not good, but...better.” He gives a little sigh. “And I think I’d like to make friends. Starting somewhere. Whaddaya say?”

I do what I can. A soft call in response—low-high-low, with a little hop and flutter of my wings. His expression brightens.

“All right! I’m gonna find you the best cat food I can.”

I do not name the bastard god I’m beholden to, because it would give him satisfaction if I so much as even think his name, but I admit with great hatred in my heart and coursing through my hollow bones that he was right, the bastard, that I would know. It is no certainty, but I can feel the possibility that the young man who calls me Cat and who would be my friend could bring this exile to an end.

But I’ll be damned if I know how that’s supposed to happen.

So I take to the air and decide to go find a shiny button to give my new friend instead. This could just be one of the bastard’s tricks, that I’ll know who can help, but never be able to figure out how to free myself from this exile. And then I realize my latest mistake—deep down, rather than just take each day as it is, this realization has given me cause to hope. To hope for something different. That bastard really does know how to cut me, I think, with an angry flap of wings. This is undoubtedly my worst exile yet.

- NEXT SNIPPET -

#an ill-fitting name #My writing #original story #original work #original writing #original fiction #magic fiction #Fictional gods #Snippets

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tabletopjourneys · 3 years

Text

Brambles Session 1

The players wake up in an unfamiliar research center stationed in the middle of the notorious Shadowood with no clue how they got there. Fortunately there's one researcher left relatively unscathed who can give them some answers. @gher-bear @aradow @telurin @epimetala

Odilya the halfling, Furrhaathandesh the black dragonborn, Trisk the tuxedo tabaxi, and Keir the aarakocra each wake up in a small, unfamiliar room. With no memory of how, they all quickly discover they were found in a now-broken portal room after the head researcher, an elven druid/botanist all alone with her 10-year-old daughter, sent out an SOS. A mysterious figure was involved while the head researcher and her daughter were locked up safe in a panic room. Said figure left a note that the other researchers, all infected and covered head to toe in brambled vines, were locked in the medical bay in stasis and they were going for help. It is raining too hard for anyone to want to leave, so they get a view of the research team from the observation room, Trisk breaks some of the equipment, and the players are then all herded back toward the already-broken portal room to see if it jogs any memories.

(Read More Insert)

(Waking Up Is Hard To Do)

Before the game officially starts, rolls are made to determine quality of sleep and dreams - nobody rolls high enough for hints of proper memory or starting insight.

Odilya rolled highest and had nightmares that are already starting to fade. They have left her waking out of sorts.

Furrhaathandesh, Trisk, and Keir all rolled into the next group, leaving their dreams full of high adventure and satisfying victories. Those feelings linger, but they also don't feel as rested as they could be. However, they also wake up naturally at the end of a dream cycle with full awareness of their foreign surroundings.

Everyone wakes up in their own private room on a bed big enough for a dragonborn, regardless of their species. It doesn’t appear to be a prison cell, in fact there are locks on your side of the door that are unlatched and a small window to see out of. Immediately to your left is a desk and chair. There is a modest dresser across the room from you, next to the door. On the wall behind you is a window with the curtain drawn.

Anyone who lifted the curtain to look outside saw a stretch of rocky ground cast in dusky blues and grays by the weather and possibly the time of day. Beyond the relatively clear ground, about ten feet back, grows a gnarl of thickets and woods. It’s not a uniform growth - some of it starting a little closer, even more of it a little farther. A large, jagged boulder sits almost centered. One of the players (I wanna say Keir) noticed movement in the varied thickets, bushes, and trees, but it was maybe the shadow of an animal in the woods or branches swaying in the wind, the sort of movement she might’ve expected from a wildwood regardless.

Only one player (Furrhaathandesh, I think?) noticed the same, but also saw unrecognized twiggy creatures moving around, possibly watching him back from the safety of the trees and shrubs. Only Odilya mentions directly investigating her room and she finds what she’d pretty much expect from a college dorm room, it’s giving her flashbacks of her own from her university days. It’s even got similar types of things in the desk, study notes, an unfinished letter home, various writing implements. This does appear to have recently (still?) been someone else’s dorm as opposed to a guest room.

The rest of you added later: Furrhaathandesh thinks the bed could be comfier. He is very curious as to where he is but assumes there is a magical explanation because of the mage light and the general mysterious of it. He assumes it's not necessarily something super malicious because his pack is sitting nicely on the desk in the room.

Trisk tries to get back to sleep, but his blanket is a bit scratchy and not as comfortable as he's used to. There's a slight draft in his room, and, cracking an eye back open, he sees a room similar to his novice days in the temple, sparse and impersonal. His bag and holy items are settled in a pile on the floor. The decor here is thoroughly disappointing.

Keir sees a plain room, little frill or extra flare. Some small colored rocks on the top of the desk.

(Leaving Their Rooms)

Odilya comes out first, triggering Lillian’s improv NPC dialogue “Oh you’re awake!” (etc.). Shortly after, Keir begins scratching at her door, Trisk hides in blankets, Desh is trying to look out his door's window.

Lilian invites everyone to come out, following behind Odilya to check on the last door where they hear Keir scratching at the wood.

Lillian mentions how she found everyone in the portal room and assumed they were the help she requested.

Odilya lies successfully to say that she is and thought reads Lillian, picking up that she’s incredibly anxious, illustrated by scattered, mile-a-minute thoughts. Things are seriously not right and she’s actively worried about her research team.

People start emerging from their rooms, Trisk leaving last, still wrapped up in the blanket from his bed, but also in full armor.

Odilya introduces herself, but before conversation goes further people continue emerging from their rooms, Trisk leaving last, still wrapped up in the blanket from his bed, but also in full cleric armor. Someone interrupts the current discussion about what’s going on to ask about food being offered (Trisk, I think?)

Lillian says they should all definitely be caught up on everything that’s gone wrong but they must be hungry, so she’ll set out some food and they can all talk while they eat. She guides them to the dining room just south through the open doorway in the hallway everyone was in and invites them to make themselves comfortable while she fixes up some food.

Light interactions between the players, another round of abandoned introductions as most are more curious about what the others remember. There is a small interaction between Lillian’s daughter, Ari and Trisk, primarily. She likes the big kitty though darts out of view, scared, when he throws trail rations toward her in the kitchen doorway, expecting her to catch them. Odilya tries to encourage her when she pokes back out of hiding and picks up the trail rations, smiling shyly.

When Lillian brings out the first serving tray of food, prepared to set each one down buffet style along the center of the table, Odilya offers help. Lillian waves off the need, but allows her to take each tray as she brings it in. Odilya uses this as an excuse to stealth purify food and drink on each one just in case. Unfortunately, this leads Furrhaathandesh to think she might be poisoning it and Odilya fails to reassure him she’s doing the opposite, you know, just in case. He doesn’t voice his continued doubts aloud.

Trisk obliviously volunteers to be a test subject anyway by helping himself without thinking twice on it. The moment Odilya sets a tray close enough he begins chowing down. Food’s safe!

(Conversations Over a Meal)

Lillian joins them and begins to try and explain what little she knows about what happened. She talks about the research team finding these odd masks that looked organic and about the day one of them actually put one on and was wrapped in vines,being moved like a puppet. In the chaos, while the others tried to work on a solution, she sent out an SOS through the portal room’s communication systems and then locked herself and her daughter up in the panic room. After that, she didn’t see anything else for a period of time she seems obviously confused about, and troubled by her own lack of clarity.

When she finally left the panic room, she found a note left on the dining room table and another pinned to the portal room door by whomever put her team in stasis (she is clearly puzzled how they managed this as well) and then finding the group of players. She tells them she used enchanted carrying cots to move them all to the rooms they woke in, not wanting to really undress everyone, but used a prestidigitation device on them first, even though they weren’t particularly dirty.

It is revealed that however they got here, they blew out the teleportation crystals which will need replacing before it can be used to get out.

One of the players asks if they can leave. Lillian talks about the brambled creatures outside that tried and failed to get in that are out there waiting, including an entire flock of corvid where the brambles grew like a moss along their feathers, she’s never seen anything like it. She does say everyone is welcome to try leaving, she won’t keep them here, but because of the brambled creatures, she wouldn’t recommend it.

Odilya asks to see the note, which Lillian hands over. She rolls a high investigation and notes that this particular piece of paper has been frequently worried at, parchment worn as if Lillian nervously handled it on the regular. She also finds a smear of oxidized blood in the corner that first looked like dirt. It was obviously written in a hurry and there’s a puncture mark through one of the letters, likely from writing on an uneven surface. Odilya doesn’t share this information with anyone. I think everyone else either takes a turn looking at the note or glances at it over Odilya’s shoulder or maybe she turns it so they can see. Either way, I’m pretty sure Odilya keeps hold of the note. It reads: “Research team has been put in medical stasis. Going for help."

Bask was mentioned as guiding Trisk here, Lillian rolled a nat 20 on Bask knowledge and says she’d take all the help they can get and is thankful for Bask’s grace.

They all talk about getting a look at the research team from the observation room mentioned and Lillian agrees, so long as they don’t touch anything, it should be fine under the current circumstances. She asks if anyone’s been trained in magitech healing devices and gets a bunch of blank looks. She asks who’s the replacement healer then, to which Trisk says “I don’t know about replacement, but I am a healer, pretty sure I can figure out your devices.”

“What do you mean you’re not a replacement?” Lillian looks around at the players. She finds out that none of the others were sent, or at least they don’t remember being sent. That leaves only Odilya as someone sent by the foundation (and even that’s not true though no one but Odilya knows it).

The foundation is discussed at some point, Lillian is asked if she owns it. She admits she does not, she’s just the head researcher - currently the only researcher. However, as she introduced herself as Lillian Isley, she then has to explain that her parents are the reason it’s named The Isley Research Facility (and the Isley Foundation, respectively).

Once their meal is pretty much concluded, everyone wants to see the medical observation room to get a look at the research team. Now that she knows only Odilya was sent and no one seems to even be aware of magitech devices for healing, she repeats that no one should touch anything, but it should be fine under the current circumstances and leads the way, not bothering to clean up after their meal. (! There's a Greenhouse Sidequest)

She stops off in the landing room between dining room and medical observation tour-guide style and mentions the spiral staircase leads to the greenhouse but it’s been closed off. Most of the players hear rustling above. When asking Lillian about it, everyone finds out that in taking care of an entire research facility on her own while keeping an eye on a child at the same time, some of the plants in the greenhouse have grown out of hand and past the points they were deemed safe. As such, they’re running amok through the greenhouse. Lillian adds that thankfully, they have enough in the stores to feed everyone and she can create food and water if need be, but she would also welcome help with this particular problem if anyone’s of a mind to do so.

She has an exchange primarily with Furrhaathandesh about this. He’s been travelling through the shadowood with his friends - none of whom are with him, and he thinks he might know what she’s talking about. He saw a large patch of something similar to what she describes - hearty, thorny vegetation thriving in a patch where other trees are both being choked out and appeared to have recently taken a lot of lightning damage in a storm that missed the thorny growths entirely.

Someone (Furrhaathandesh, I think?) says they’re interested in seeing how they might help Lillian with this situation later, after they all get a look at the research team.

Lillian says she would be very thankful if they did. Trisk is having a serious case of hunter-kitty eyes over the noises and intense attention to the empty space above that shows the greenhouse roof more than twice as high as the dining room ceiling. Via the greenhouse roof beyond the invisible barrier, everyone can tell it’s raining very hard now.

(Inside the Observation Room)

“Here’s the observation room.” Lillian unlocks the magic door to medical observation, and reminds everyone again about no touching. Odilya and someone else (don’t remember who) both watch the magic lock gestures Lillian uses on this door and are confident they can copy the movements. However, an arcana check shows they also recognize that the magic is partially keyed to Lillian herself so even perfectly copying the gestures, they probably couldn’t unlock the door without her.

Once inside, she approaches a crystal base in the center of the room that has a floating shard of inert, liquid silver material. “This is the interface crystal.” With a few gestures interacting with floating white-blue orbs of various sizes in almost decorative orbits around the liquid metal, said metal begins to take on the shape of the figure in bed five. Lillian informs them of this aloud and notices Trisk reaching out to touch the newly formed, bramble-covered research from bed 5 replicated T2-style by the interface crystal.

He’s hesitating, but as soon as she gives him permission to touch the figure (just avoid the orbs of light, please, and mind the thorns replicated, they will be just as sharp as the real thing), he does so without hesitation. Lillian explains that the interface crystal exactly copies each figure in a bed and that it’s one of the commands she’s managed to figure out on her own. She says she’s not sure which researcher this is as the system is unable to identify the people buried under the plants and match them with their files. However, given relative size, she’s fairly sure Loda is in bed two, and Eln is probably the largest figure in bed three.

Lillian also informs everyone that the two people who knew the magitech devices in the observation room best were Lo (Loda) and Rik - she is uncertain which of the other three figures is Rik. She also tells everyone that she’s gotten the computer to recognize bed two as Loda, but it’s still having issues about that.

This is when Lillian draws their attention to the status readouts along the east wall. She’s preparing to tell everyone about the status and readouts of the research team according to these groups of crystals when Trisk decides to cast a level 3 dispel magic on bed 2 (Lo’s) crystals, thinking it would go through maybe and dispel this potential bramble curse from her.

Lillian notices this movement and tries to stop him too late. “Why would you do that?! What were you thinking?!” Lillian is now angry and completely baffled, now blocking his way from accessing anything else over there. Of the He breaks the vitality monitors and poison/toxin scanner and makes Lillian mad. Each large crystal cluster is made up of 5 crystal shards with an orb of the same colour floating over it. Each bed was represented by a different colour glow with some spears’ light pulsing slowly, wavering in lazy loops, or moving back and forth or up and down like a scanner light.

The pink crystals and orb that represent bed two were a high-level enchantment throughout the cluster with the orb not getting included in the dispel. All but one spear of that crystal cluster went “dark” (as in just unlit/no colour) after the dispel. Successful dispel on: Vitality monitor readout enchantment (a crystal for temperature, heart rate, and brain activity) and detect poison/toxins spear.

This is when Trisk (and everyone else) finds out that thankfully he didn’t break anything vital, but now they won’t know if Lo’s vitals change or if a toxin or poison enters her system. They also find out that the last remaining crystal detects magic - which would have told Trisk there was nothing to dispel if he’d waited for an explanation.

Though she is raising her voice at Trisk, it’s less of a violent anger and more of a worried and incredulous “I can’t believe you did that!” sort of reaction. All the same, it is making her daughter hide even more behind her in an obviously anxious way.

Furrhaathandesh looks prepared to help Lillian reinforce the no touchy for the giant tabaxi and Lillian notices the way he shifts his weight in a supportive sort of ready stance.

Odilya casts calm emotions but this unfortunately only gets Ari and Furrhaathandesh. It at least helps the little girl not be scared any more.

Fortunately, Lillian isn’t of a mind to fight a group of adventurers, but she does herd them out of the observation room now that they’ve seen (and Trisk has broken something lol) to discuss plans of action around less sensitive equipment. “Thankfully you didn’t hit the stasis field with that dispel.”

Pretty sure Trisk suggests that maybe they should take one of them out of stasis. Lillian is against this idea as it risks her team and reveals that there’s a back up stasis field anyway, one that will also prevent Trisk or anyone else from going into the medical bay directly, as they will get hit by the backup stasis field set on the entire room (with bed-specific stasis fields as the primary).

She approves of the idea of maybe getting a sample from outside to study instead of risking the team though, except that it’s raining very heavily right now. They’re welcome to try anyway, so long as they follow proper procedure when bringing it inside. A pin is put in gathering a specimen for now.

(Let's Just Go To the Already Broken Portal Room)

Lillian successfully manages to be the last one out of the observation room, which she locks behind her and then bends down with a half hug for her daughter and murmurs, “Go to the panic room, for now Ari, okay?” She gestures toward a door near the spiral staircase and confirms it’s the panic room after Ari looks around at the others and reluctantly nods before disappearing into the room, door locking. “It just seemed safer to have her wait in there, just in case something else potentially dangerous is fiddled with before I can explain how it works.”

From there, she suggests they all see the portal room she found them in, maybe that would kick-start some of their memories and she’ll maybe finish the tour from there since it’s probably going to rain like this all night.

Furrhaathandesh mentions again, if they have time, they could also help her with the shambling plants in the greenhouse after.

Lillian again expresses how grateful she’d be for the help.

Still in the landing area, she then tries to gesture them on but Trisk doesn’t budge/take the hint and waits for her to lead the way. With a sigh, Lilian turns to Furrhaathandesh as an ally who was prepared to help her in the previous room. “Help me keep an eye on the tabaxi, hm?”

Furrhaathandesh readily agrees.

Lillian leads the way to the portal room and that’s where we stop for the night, everyone in the room trying to see if they remember anything.

#Brambles #Session 0 #Diem is DM #The Isley Research Facility #The Isley Foundation #Botanist Lillian Isley #Ari Isley #mentioned npcs #Loda #Eln #Rik #Ei #Tira #Bask #The other campaign is still ongoing

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