#what a strange and mystical occurence
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Merlin, writing in his diary with a glitter gel pen: I'm losing my sense of humanity. Nothing matters. God is dead. There is blood on my hands.
#madebypointlesswords making incorrect quotes again???#in this economy?#what a strange and mystical occurence#anywho#merlin memes#merlin bbc#merlin#arthur pendragon#merthur#bbc merlin#merlin incorrect quotes#incorrect quotes
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Bat Family 'Bruce is Tim's biological parent' AU Idea #1
Wherein Jack Drake: a) Regularly tags along on archaeological digs despite not being an archaeologist. b) Commonly smuggles home archaeological finds despite that not being legal. c) Does not believe in curses, hauntings, or any mythology despite the world that he lives in being populated with *gestures at comics* all that.
As a result, Jack is like a magnet for cursed objects and keeps smuggling the damned things home.
The first time little Timmy suspects this is happening, he knows his dad won't respond well to him suggesting the most recent package he sent home is haunted. He knows he'll respond even worse if he tries to get anyone else involved. So he sends his mom a private email explaining what's going on. Janet replies that he's right to be suspicious, that this has absolutely happened before, and that he was right to contact her. She tells him she's sending over a friend who can help and gives him a password that she'll tell the friend so he knows it's okay to let him in the house.
John Constantine shows up within the hour. Tim is certain he didn't drive there (the alert that someone passed through the gates never went off and no one put in a code to open them) but there is a cursed object in his house and John knew the password Janet gave him, so he's mostly just happy to have an adult there to handle the situation. Even if a somewhat bizarre adult.
John takes care of the cursed object and is impressed that Tim reacted to it much faster than most do. He gives Tim his card with instructions to call him if anything like what was happening starts to happen again or if anything else weird starts happening after his father has been to any digs or sent home any strange packages.
As Jack is the aforementioned cursed object magnet, Tim ends up calling John fairly often for someone who doesn't actively work with the occult and is, in fact, a child. John keeps praising him for catching on as quick as he does and giving him information to catch onto other types of mystical/magical wickedness. Tim gets really good at recognizing when magic/curses/spirits are at play.
Then, Janet dies and Jack goes into a coma. Tim is fostered by Bruce for a year and a half and doesn't have to worry about curses or haunted objects for all that time. When they do come across something of the occult, Bruce/Batman has his own contacts, so there was never a reason for Tim to bring any of it up.
Then, the events of Identity Crisis/Crisis of Conscience occur, and Bruce doesn't want to talk to Zatanna (his usual mystic go-to) if it can be helped. He doesn't want to call in anyone connected to most of the Justice League if it can be helped.
So when they come across a cursed object, Tim immediately identifies it and tells Bruce not to worry, he knows a guy who can handle it. The man knows his civilian identity, so they'll have to pretend Bruce bought the object as part of an action or estate sale lot.
John comes and handles it. Before he leaves he comments that he's glad Tim's biological father finally decided to step up and that Bruce better take good care of the boy.
When Tim explains that Bruce isn't his father, the look on John's face clearly shows that he's trying to figure out how to back-step, but not in the expected way. More in the 'I let on information i wasn't supposed to' way.
Which is how Bruce and Tim end up running a paternity test in the Cave at four am.
Alfred and Dick are delighted by the results.
[Alternative ending: John pulls Bruce aside to let him know that Janet told him Jack wasn't Tim's father and that both he and Bruce were on the short list and he hadn't known Jack died or he'd have contacted him already. They have to wait to find out which of them is the lucky one. Either Bruce turns out to be the father and John just lets Tim know he can still call him whenever needed or it turns out John is the father and they decide Tim should still stay with Bruce but John has visitations. Also, Tim might have been showing signs of his Homo Magi heritage when he recognized all these cursed objects. John insists on teaching him to use his magic despite Bruce's unease with it.]
#dc#comics#funny#ficlet#fic ideas#fic ideas I haven't the time for#Bat Family#john constantine#bruce wayne#tim wayne#tim drake#jack drake#janet drake
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Mystery: Oh, How the Iron Coffin Hungers!
There's been a rash of graverobberies across the kingdom that have the authorities suspecting necromancy. For their part, the necromancer's guild has nothing to do with these crimes and is willing to hire your party to help clear their name. The investigation will lead you to through tombs, black markets, and haunted crossroads of the realm, as it becomes clear the culprits are seeking far more than coin or corpses at the bottom of those defiled graves.
Clues & Complications:
A missing body is usually a dead giveaway that a necromancer has been involved in a grave robbery, as most criminals only care about grabbing what valuables they can and wouldn't result to bodysnatching unless someone was going to pay them for it. How unusual then when a few of the bodies begin turning up days after they were exhumed, one in an abandoned cellar, one on the side of the road, and one in a completely different town, which may give a hint as to the culprit's movements.
Working for necromancers has its benefits, the guild is aware of the habits of the corpse trade (only in a theoretical sense, you understand, yes?) and can use their magic to extract information from the cadavers. Strangely enough it appears all the corpses bear the marks of previous magical questioning, hinting that it might be information the robbers were after, not flesh or treasure.
The bodies all belong to minor gentry or well-to-do merchants, the ideal targets for graverobbers who don't mind breaking into a tomb or fussing with a trap (both of which the party might have to do during their investigation) if it means access to better plunder. If the party press deeper however they'll notice a recurring symbol, on a ring or a tattoo or etched into the gravemarker, resembling the crudest sketch of a jawbone.
Just like it seems the party is getting answers, the corpses they've been trailing sit up and lunge for the nearest individual's throat, transformed by dark power into a rampaging ghoul. Chaos ensues as this awakening occurs not just with those corpses that have already been found, but also with those that were previously undiscovered as well as a half dozen or more random bodies scattered across the countryside. Though they seem too possessed with hunger to be capable of speech, if the party manage to restrain one of the ghouls and sate its unholy hunger, they may just get the last few clues they're looking for.
Background: In life all of the bodies belonged to a secret society known as the jawbone club, a bad pun on one of the first mystical objects they'd obtained; a crude weapon made from the skull fragment of some great beast, unearthed on one of their founder's estates by some adventurers clearing a nest of monsters.
Their association started a few generations before as a mostly innocent affair, a nameless but exclusive social lodge where those in the know could smoke and gamble and make the sort of back room deals that occupy much of the energy of the idly wealthy. Those who took an interest in the jawbone realized that whoever held it had greater luck in their personal affairs, in no small part because of the unlucky and sometimes disastrous circumstances that would befall their rivals. They became secretive, an inner circle within the lodge that took on more authority as their powers grew, understanding emerging that if they fed their blood to the jawbone it would grant them power.
Power does not spring from nowhere however, as the weapon was infact an artifact dedicated to the ghoul-saint Doresain, the avatar of a hungry and terrible demon god who was in turn feeding on the hungry ambitions of the inner circle. Unconscious impulses became whispers became visions, as the tithe of blood raised to sacrifices of flesh and fingers, because what was letting the razor teeth of some dead beast scar your body if it meant your hateful old uncle suddenly took ill just after rewriting his will to leave you his fortune.
Things came to a head with Catiro Wayte, the youngest and least favored son of a large noble family. The Wayte clan owned land and mills aplenty and were no strangers to ambition, Catrio and his siblings were practically weaned on it. So when the opportunity came to take hold of his fortune at the price of only a little pain Catrio was only too happy to pay it, and keep on paying so long as he had blood to let and skin to scar. After they'd come to understand what it could do the Jawbone Club had made rules about how often its members could make use of the artifact, fearing not only discovery but one of their number growing in power above the others. Catrio begged, bartered, and blackmailed to jump the line every time he could, hacking away a little more of himself each time, not giving his wounds time to heal up between sacrifices.
One night, when the itch of pride and avarice overwhelmed the pain in his infected flesh Catrio broke into the jawbone's sanctum. It was too late when the others found him in the morning , he'd carved open his belly looking for more of himself to cut away and had died with the artifact buried in his guts. Such heedless sacrifice opened a door for the ravenous hunger of the gnawing god, transforming Catrio's corpse into its mouthpiece, hungry and cruel. For all their resources the Jawbone club were unable to slay their former friend, instead sealing him in the lodge's basement and later an iron coffin they had constructed. They had a select number of their most trusted find a place to entomb Catrio's body (along with the bone it still clutched) in some unknown location and swore all the rest to secrecy, dissolving the jawbone club and swearing never to speak of it for the rest of their days.
The Culprit & The Consequences:
Catrio left much behind on that night he met his end, including a commonborn mistress and a daughter named Heliana only a few years old. One could theoretically source his ambition to his desire to make a place for them in the world, but that would be making things far too simple. Unrecognized by her father’s family and cut off from Catrio’s support Heliana and her mother ended up scraping to get by, with her ending up in the gravemaking trade out of one part practicality, one part wistful desire to perhaps one day find where her father was buried.
after nearly four decades after she and her mother were forced out on the street, Heliana’s crime spree began when by chance she found the first of the Jawbone marked graves. Remembering the stories her mother had told her about the club and its excesses, It took only a little convincing to have her fellow undertakers help her unearth the body, and a few charms learned from a travelling death priest to get the cadaver talking. After that it was just a matter of asking which corpse knew what, tracing her way through the postmortem ranks of the Jawbone club until she found out what had happened to her father and where his body lay.
Originally, all Heliana had wanted to do was give her father a proper burial alongside her some years dead mother, as she was told was always his wish. Plans changed when her father began to speak to her within the iron coffin after she’d unearthed it from its secret hiding space. Through the magic of the ghoul-saint he knew her, knew of her hungry years, and of the long dormant pride and ambition he’d handed down to her along with his blood: a desire to be recognized no matter the cost. He whispered a plan into her mind, a way for him to return to life and use the artifact he still carried to make everything as it should be. Naturally when they caught her agreeing with the corpse, most of Heliana’s muscle deserted her, and might give your party a much needed lead in their tall tales.
The animation of the other jawbone club members as ghouls was only a warning sign, a byproduct of Heliana breaking through the outermost layer of the iron coffin’s wards in preparation of something far more calamitous. Her father’s plan (or rather, the thing wearing her father like a mask) is to have Heliana burn the iron coffin along with her mother's bones in a ritual pyre at the heart of the Wayte estate. Catrio’s spirit will be free, devour the grounds (and his unwelcoming family) and use the power of the jawbone artifact to remake them all as they should be, with him as lord of the manor, united with his lover and child. While she’s more than willing to even the score with the people who denied her birth and threw her mother out on the street, why Heliana doesn't suspect is the horde of flesh eating undead and other malign spirits that will be unleashed should the ritual be allowed to finish.
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Heart of the Fae- Chapter One: The Forest
warnings: mythical creatures? The fae
pairings: Fae!Nanami Kento x Fem!Reader
word count: 2.7k
summary: you enter the forest that everyone has always warned you about and you find yourself in a new, mystical land. except it's always existed and you're the first human in centuries...or so they say.
a/n: This is a collaboration between me and @seireiteihellbutterfly! We hope you enjoy! Dividers by the lovely @benkeibear and banner by me.
Taglist: @beneathstarryskies @an-ever-angry-bi @namikyento @adharadotcom (Please let me know if you'd like to opt out or join in!)
Masterlist
The forest always called you, its depths mysterious and igniting curiosity as you hear the alluring rustle of the leaves. Cool shade and soft breezes seemed to constantly sweep over you, pulling you into the lush greenness, tempting you to explore the path unknown.
There was a constant string of warnings being hissed into your ear.
“Do not wander too deep into the woods. There are tales of young maidens such as yourself being consumed by the forest. Being taken away by beings that we humans cannot comprehend.”
“Do not follow the stray lights you see hiding in the trees. They will lead you off the path, and when they are sure no one can hear you, will suck the life essence out of your marrow and leave you hollow.”
“Do not listen to voices being spoken by unseen lips. They will whisper words sweeter than a mother’s lullaby sung to her babe, before they turn into the shriek of an animal and devour you whole.”
Despite the warnings, despite the promise you gave your mother when she was on her deathbed all those years ago, you couldn’t help yourself. The forest never felt like the monstrous place people made it seem to be. It was there in your sorrow, it provided the rivers and the water you drank, the readily available game that kept your belly full, and the sweet treats of the tart raspberries and honey carefully harvested by your skilled hands. How could anything so nurturing, so pure, mean you any harm?
One day, you forget the warnings, the whispers, the talk of how most unexplained disappearances occurred when one stepped off the marked trails in the forest and find out that there was some truth in the cautionary tales the villagers uttered, even if they were only partially correct.
Your eyes squinted as you tried to see against the glaring sunlight. It was a bright morning, streaks of blinding sun peeking through the gaps between the leaves. You had paused, almost certain you had heard voices. You couldn’t remember how far you had come away from the manmade paths of safety, only that dawn had just started to peek its head over the horizon when you began. Irregular little flashes of light zig-zagged over your head, too radiant to be a hummingbird, the movements almost liquidy, like lava made gold, seemingly having no specific direction to go.
You had tracked them, your pack weighing down on your back, hypnotized at the idea of what they could be, going further into the forest, the trees becoming progressively more wilder and gnarled, bunching up together so closely that in some areas you had to find a way to squeeze through the thick trunks. And then it had opened up; the trees gave way to flat land, a clearing, no, a village, little cottages standing in neat rows for what seemed like miles.
Curiously, you wander towards them, adjusting the pack now starting to grow heavy on your shoulders before spotting a woman hanging out her clothes to dry on a line. As you approach, your pace slows as you see she had the general shape of a human, but her ears…strangely pointed and large…then as the being turned around, you clasp a hand over your mouth.
She had wings.
She was no human. Fairies. The tales the villagers used to say were true, that Fae lived in these woods. Your wonder grew as you watched her walk back into her cottage, unaware that you had been observing her.
You notice a few of the Fae watching you from their spots in the village. One of them leans in to whisper in the other’s ear, and you begin to feel nervous. After all the warnings and the things you had heard, it was actually real. You had always wondered why people had such strong feelings about the forest, and you could now see why.
“Are you lost?” you hear a small voice asking you. You look down to see a sweet little girl standing there. Her eyes are so friendly and welcoming. She’s got the most cherubic face you’ve ever seen.
“I-I guess I am.”
“Come with me.”
You decide to follow her as she leads you further into the village. Your eyes wander as you take in everything. The homes and buildings all have a mystical air to them, but there’s also something royal about it. Something regal and fancy.
Before you even have the chance to look around the little girl’s parents are calling her over. She looks around nervously before she heads towards them. It has become very clear that you are an outsider. You knew the risk of venturing into the forest, but something about this makes you feel so uneasy.
“Halt!” You hear a deep voice calling. You look over your shoulder to see a fairy in armor.
“You aren’t one of us,” he states, grabbing your hand.
“Let go of me!” You try to struggle free, but he’s not letting you go.
He looks at you with narrowed eyes, studying your features. He realizes very quickly that you aren’t a fae at all. He knew it from the start, but he had his doubts about you being human. Most humans don’t make it this far into the forest, so the guard had wondered if maybe you were another mystical creature.
“Don’t fight me on this.” He leans in to tower over you. “If you aren’t a fairy, you have no business here. Who let you in?”
You shake your head, “Nobody ‘let me in’. I just found this place by myself.”
He looks shocked. “That’s…that’s unheard of. It’s been centuries since any human has—no, I won’t settle for this.”
You squirm in his grasp. His tight hold was beginning to hurt you, and you could feel tears welling up in your eyes. Was this going to be trouble for you? Should you have just ignored your instincts?
“Just stop fighting me. You need to see the king. You have no choice.” He explains it to you. “Only the king can decide your fate now.”
He explains to you that you have no choice but to follow him. He’s going to be bringing you to see the king. You swallow hard as you seem to understand what your curious nature has gotten you into.
Everything inside the king’s court is unbelievably magnificent. The candelabras are ornate, Phthalo, and gold in color. The flames are almost unreal. The rest of the decorations mimic the colors and appear like it’s bathed in a mystical glow. Your eyes take in every single detail as you make your way towards court.
Two wide doors are flung open and you notice very few people in the room. The king, a broad and big man, sits on his green throne. He carries himself proudly, and with his long, luscious blond hair and deep brown eyes, you can see he is the picture of a regal man. He smiles at you softly, though you can see that he is trying to keep himself more neutral than the rest of the court.
His eyes are alight with curiosity as you make your way forward. You slowly approach him, observing the kind look on his face, though it does nothing to ease your nerves. Beside him sits a woman who has an icy look to her. Her eyes are like a pair of sapphires like someone plucked the most precious stars from the sky and placed them in her head. The tiara that sits upon her beautifully coiffed hair suggests she’s the queen.
You keep your head bowed. Seated off-center from the king is a man who exuded a warm, kind, personality, his hazel eyes shimmering with curiosity. He holds a smile that suggests he would be the type of person you could whisper secrets to and he’d never tell another soul. He seemed to be eyeing you, displaying a sincere smile. His physique is tall and broad, his golden locks neatly parted and falling pleasingly at the edges of his face.
“State your business, young human.” The king says.
Sitting on either side the king and the queen is a panel of high Fae. One of them in particular shares a striking resemblance to the queen. His snow-white hair and brilliant blue eyes make you feel so inadequate, standing like a commoner in front of the regal-looking court. He smiles at you, but it leaves you feeling cold. Looking into his eyes is like looking into an infinite void that you could so easily lose yourself to. It’s almost like he can tell you’re nervous so you look away.
“I…I am sorry for intruding. I got lost as I walked into the forest.”
The king motions to the pack on your back, “And you don’t suppose you might have been looking for us?”
You try not to get flustered. “Not intentionally. W-well…I can’t say I wasn’t curious. I have heard stories about your people.”
There’s a bit of chatter as you explain yourself. You notice the man with the hazel eyes is smiling at you.
“It has been said that humans are quite curious by nature. But let it be known that your kind isn’t welcome here. We have set boundaries and traps to keep humans out of here.” The king sighs. Then he takes a second to mull over the information. “I suppose you’re not really at fault considering you found us by accident.”
The queen leans in to whisper in his ear, and the king frowns as he considers her words. He thinks about it for a bit. A few more of the Fae chime in, but you can’t make out what they are saying. The king listens to his court before continuing.
“However, we cannot allow you to remain here. This is our sanctuary and humans aren’t welcome here. We’ll have to take precautions if we are to send you back since we can’t let you leave with knowledge of our location and existence.”
“Come here,” the queen beckons, and you know better than to disobey. Once you’re in front of her, she snaps her fingers and another fairy comes to her side. They exchange words you can’t quite make out either. Then the second fairy, an older man with graying hair, comes closer to you. He presses his fingers to your temples, making you shiver at his touch. His eyes are golden and sunny.
“Just relax, okay?”
You nod your head before you start to feel a strange tugging sensation in your mind. It’s almost like someone is going through your memories and trying to erase the ones that you’ve recently made from discovering this place. Your eyes close involuntarily, and your breathing becomes a bit more shallow. Your heart pounds in your chest as the sensations get more intense. Then suddenly, everything stops.
Muttering fills the court. The elderly Fae looks puzzled as he peers into your face. “I’m sorry. I have never had anything like this happen,” he explains. “She was supposed to forget everything she saw after coming here.”
The queen scowls at him, “Are you saying you cannot perform this simple task?”
He shakes his head, “As strange as it is, no I cannot. I won’t be able to perform this on her.”
More chatter erupts in the throne room. No human has ever withstood the memory charm. This would be the first time in history that a human was able to deflect such a powerful spell. All eyes are on you, and you can’t help but look away from the crowd.
“Silence! She will have to stay until we find another method.” The king then looks at you, “Let’s hope someone from this court is kind enough to take you in. You’ll need shelter for the time being. Perhaps…you?” The king points to another one of the Fae of the court.
“N-no, I couldn’t. My wife is with child,”
The king sighs. “I need a volunteer. Please, we need someone to shelter this human.”
Another Fae pipes up, “Couldn’t we just maybe—”
The queen says, “No, no human in the dungeons. That’s reserved for prisoners.”
The beautiful amber-eyed Fae looks at you and he feels his heart thumping hard in his chest. He raises his hand and the king spots him.
“I will shelter her. I can do this.” He speaks so eloquently.
The king cocks an eyebrow, “Are you sure? We could find someone else to–”
The blond Fae speaks up again, “It’s fine, uncle. I promise I can accept this.”
The king thinks about it for a moment, then he faces you again. He knows that you could be some sort of spy that could ruin you all, but when he looks into your eyes he sees this curiosity that isn’t any sort of malice. He finally nods his head.
“You should be grateful that my nephew has a heart. Then it’s settled, you will stay with him.”
You all look towards the man who was smiling at you earlier. The man blushes and looks away shyly. Your heart races when you look at how adorable he is from being so flustered. You feel a blush creeping up on your own cheeks. The king notices everything, but keeps his face impassive. The thought of his nephew taking in a human does not bode well with him. Despite this, the choice has been made and there aren’t many others who have volunteered for your cause.
The king smirks, though he does well to hide it. He then leans over to consult with his wife. She looks at you, then at the man. He approaches you slowly, considering all the options at play here. Then he extends his hand out to you, and you shake it.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Kento,” He brings your hand up to his lips and places a delicate kiss on it.
“F/n L/n,” you offer a hasty introduction. “The pleasure is all mine,” the words flow from your lips. You surprise yourself at how charming you can be at this moment.
The king’s voice fills the room, “Are you sure this is what you want, Kento? You could have someone else house this young lady.”
Kento shakes his head no, his beautiful locks swaying as he does so. “It’s no trouble at all.”
“Then it’s settled. You can stay with my nephew.”
You look over at Kento, and though you have just met him, there is something so comforting about his presence. Was he really the king’s nephew? He takes your hand and guides you outside of the court. You notice a few Fae from the court following you. The tall, lean Fae with the piercing blue eyes seems to have become interested in the matter. He smirks at you and at Kento, elbowing your company in the side.
“Ahhh, so the spring Duke has his pick of the litter, hm? The first human in centuries and you get to lay claim to her?” He pokes fun at Kento.
Kento frowns. “This isn’t what this is about. She needs somewhere safe to stay. It’s not like you were jumping up at the opportunity to let her stay with you.”
The other Fae ignores him and he smiles at you, “I’m Satoru by the way. Kento here pretends he has manners, but really I’m the one you should be staying with.”
“Your kind isn’t in court right now. Just because you happen to be a distant cousin to the queen doesn’t mean you have any right to lay claim on someone. Besides, this isn’t for your own personal greed. She needs our help.” Kento explains, pressing his hand on your side to keep you behind him.
Satoru laughs sarcastically, “So what happens when winter rolls around? You just going to pass her off like some ragdoll? What happens when the spring is gone and your family has to resign their ruling for the next court?”
This causes Kento to emit a low growling noise causing Satoru’s eyes to widen and then suddenly he begins to laugh. Kento almost seems like a guard dog about to attack. The hair on the back of his neck is standing on end.
“Come on, Kentooo, I’m only joking.” Satoru teases once more.
“It’s not funny. Now if you’ll excuse us…”
And with that, Kento pulls you closer to him and he begins to lead you towards his quarters.
#bacon.writes#nanami x you#nanami x reader#nanami x y/n#jujutsu kaisen#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jjk#jjk x reader#kento nanami x reader#kento nanami x you#kento nanami x y/n#nanami kento x reader#nanami kento x you#nanami kento x y/n#fae!nanami#fairy au#jjk au#jujutsu kaisen au#vee and bacon write#heart of the fae
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Now about that Stuck in a room only getting out by fucking prompt… I saw that tag, tell us more about Fatui Scaramouche PLSSSSS
Can you imagine him trying to fuck you with the intention of killing or incapacitating you!!! T_T sex so good it sends you to Celestia (literally). His stamina is endless, so you’re definitely going to be in for a long day.
I think he’d be offended that anyone or anything could ever confine him in a room. How dare this strange, mystical force manage to be greater and stronger than him! Worst of all, he’s stuck with you. >:( maybe you’re just a subordinate, an unimportant underling overseen by the Lord Harbinger, but since you’re with him he might as well put you to use. Scaramouche demands you find a way out or else he’ll give you a way out (death) if you aren’t fast enough. You hurry to try every idea that crosses your mind, desperate to get out before he loses his patience. If the fear of upsetting a powerful Harbinger doesn’t kill you, then he certainly will.
When it becomes clear that nothing is working and words on the wall finally appear, Scaramouche scoffs. This must be some joke. The only way to get out is to be intimate? Please. There must be another way. You’re inclined to agree. No way are you going to strip yourself bare and vulnerable before the Harbinger who has been so ready to strangle you since you first became locked in this room. But time passes and nothing substantial occurs, save for the unbearable stuffiness of the room. Scaramouche doesn’t seem affected by it, but you are and it’s so difficult to focus when you’re sweating buckets in your clothes. So you start small. You shrug your coat off, maybe your shoes and socks next. Scaramouche rolls his eyes at you; you’re so weak.
It isn’t until you have no choice but to render yourself half-nude that the atmosphere…changes. It’s subtle; you don’t notice Scaramouche’s eyes on you until you turn to look at him and he’s staring right at you. He turns away, scoffing about how you ought to stop ogling and use your brain to think of a way out. You’re too busy trying to keep what little dignity and pride you have left intact. Maybe Scaramouche is going insane, but he’s actually communicating a little more. Sure, most of it’s violent death threats and grumblings, but you can at least share his complaints. This room is the worst; both of you can agree on that.
It takes a while before you’re both staring at the wall again, considering the message. You investigated the entire room twice and there’s no sign of any clues that may help you escape. Your key is printed in bold lettering on a wall. There’s no other choice.
So now comes the arduous undertaking that is broaching such a topic to Lord Scaramouche. You expect him to decline right away, as he’s done so for the past few hours, but surprisingly he grabs your wrist and shoves you onto the bed that both of you have avoided ever since you became trapped.
“I’ll kill you if you touch me.” Though he says that, he’s the one with his hands on you, bloodless fingers curled tightly around your wrists to keep them pinned above your head.
You have no choice but to obey. He’s your superior and you’re just the unfortunate soul who happened to be thrown into this situation with him. Although you don’t miss the way he looks over you as if you’re something worth appreciating.
Scaramouche fucks you as if he intends to break you. He has your face pushed into the mattress so you won’t have to look at him. He’s so adamant about that. Don’t look at him. Don’t touch him. Don’t speak to him. Just let him get this over with. But it’s been three rounds now and he doesn’t seem like he intends to stop. You think you may have heard the click of a door unlocking, but it’s hard to approximate when you’re burying your head in your arms and muffling your cries and moans. You feel like an animal in heat, so tacky and hot and insatiable. Maybe it’s the thrill of doing something so intimate with someone who could end your life that has you begging for more. Or maybe it’s because a part of you genuinely enjoys this rough treatment.
So far, he’s fucked you in positions that won’t let you look at him. So you definitely surprise (and alarm) him when you turn over on your back and embrace him while he’s still buried deep. Scaramouche swears he’ll rip you to pieces, but you don’t miss the way his arms cage you possessively in return. You don’t know this—how could you, after all?—but you’re the first person to ever hug him. He hates that he enjoys this. He hates that he’s on the verge of softening up around you. And all because you had the courage to hug him! He’s a mess, but then you’re more of a mess, bruised and bitten bloody. Scaramouche promises both you and himself that he’ll kill you when this is over. But when it ends and you’re both free, he finds he can’t let you go, nor can he give you a brutal death.
You may have escaped a barren room, but you’ve just found yourself in an even bigger cage. And unfortunately this one is far more perilous than a simple room.
Of course it’s a different story if you happen to be a Harbinger as well. :)
#genshin chit chat#n/sfw#he’s so fine i need him#OOOOO SPEAKING OF TRAPPED IN A ROOM…….#being trapped in shakkei pavilion with a sleeping kabukimono who eventually wakes up and………#:) a lot of thoughts
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ｒｅｖｅｎａｎｔ - ｔｗｏ
PART TWO OF 'REVENANT' SERIES
Damon Salvatore x Winchester!Sister!Hunter!Reader
The Vampire Diaries x Supernatural
Mini-Series
Synopsis: Y/N Winchester was tired of living in her brothers' shadows; she needed to do something for herself for a change. When she heads to Mystic Falls, a town she was always warned to stay away from, she finds she may have taken on more than she can handle. Will she be able to eradicate the supernatural from the uncanny town? Or will she find herself tangled amongst it?
WARNINGS: Drinking, Descriptions of Violence.
Words: 2,103k
Series Masterlist
<Previous Part | Next Part >
A month had passed, and Y/N still found herself in the preternatural town of Mystic Falls; with every passing moment, her case became more thorny and twisted. Though, there were two things of which she was certain.
Vampires in this town did not succumb to their usual prison of daylight; the only logical explanation for a lack of night prowlers was that they simply did not need to prowl at night.
Secondly, the reason Y/N could not get any information from the townspeople was because they genuinely did not know anything; she had the nagging feeling their minds were patched up with fake accounts of nefarious events that they were unfortunate enough to witness. Y/N shuddered to think that maybe her memories had been played with, too; after all, she would not know. Y/N took to writing down everything she uncovered; if she were right about the memory tampering, all of her evidence and theories would be there to rediscover.
Y/N begrudgingly gazed upon her tenuous evidence in the form of a journal. Countless farfetched “animal attacks,” both historical and recent, missing persons and hospital break-ins. She knew three blood bank robberies had occurred within a fortnight, and yet no action had been taken by order of the sheriff. It was redundant to attempt a case so premeditatedly shrouded by the authorities, whose ill-judged aims of keeping locals nescient only paved the way for more of these “animal attacks”.
The stalemate the young Winchester found herself in was beyond frustrating; she could not deaden the voice calling for her brothers’ help in her head, though her stubbornness prevented her from doing so. The further this case progressed, the more impossible it became, its virulent tendrils unfurling in every which direction.
But the vampire case was not the only thing that frustrated Y/N; she found herself becoming quite comfortable in the uncanny town. Remaining in the same place for a couple of months gave her a strange sense of stability she had never experienced before. She found herself building relationships, and as depressing as it was, for the first time in her life, she could confidently say she had friends.
The renowned Mystic Grill played a pivotal part in this; every other night, the locals would flock to the establishment, blissfully ignorant of the wary pastimes of their councillors. It was the seemingly tight-knit nature of Mystic Falls that first attracted Y/N to the town, and although she had only resided there for a short while, she had already begun receiving invites to their extravagant founders' events.
Of course, Y/N was wise as to what these seemingly inconspicuous gatherings really were, though she still found the fact she was already being invited heartening.
Though friends and a sense of community were not all that was new, Y/N tried desperately to quell the feelings she had growing for the sardonic Damon Salvatore. Of course, she had had fleeting crushes before, but this time, she found herself infatuated. She was kicking herself for ever allowing it to happen. She would go out of her way to see him, convincing herself that she was only investigating the case, trying to get into the inner loop of the founders' council. Deep down, Y/N knew she was lying to herself.
The sound of a knock on her motel door snapped Y/N from her thoughts. Hastily shoving her journal under her bed and tucking her wooden-bullet-filled revolver in the waistline of her jeans, she strode over and glanced through the glass peephole, finding Caroline, an overbearing but lovely girl Y/N had come to call a friend, standing on the other side clutching what looked like a flyer. With a sigh, Y/N heaved the faulty door open,
‘Hey Caroline, I wasn’t expecting you here; excuse the room, it’s a mess.’
‘I don’t know why you stay here; I keep telling you we have a spare bed.’ Caroline’s response was doubtful; she already knew what Y/N would say,
‘I’ll get my own place eventually; for the meantime, I’m happy staying here.’
Y/N liked the idea of staying in Mystic Falls, continuing the relationships she already held dear. She thought of her brothers and how long her anonymity here would last; how long did she have before they found her and forced her back?
‘Oh well, I didn’t come here to judge your living conditions; I came here to give you this.’
Caroline held out the piece of paper Y/N had thought was a flyer, though upon closer inspection, she could see it was an invitation to a ball.
‘Another event?’ Y/N’s words were incredulous,
‘I know, we always have them, but you need to come to this one.’
‘I’ve needed to attend the last few founders' events.’ Y/N’s fingers formed quotation marks as she spoke; Caroline ignored her jab,
‘Elena, Bonnie and I plan on heading into Richmond to find gowns; you’re welcome to join.’
Although Y/N acted as though she held herself aloof from these girly hangouts, between being an only daughter and living on the road, they had been something she had never experienced before, and she could not help the excitement and giddiness she felt every time she was invited.
‘Okay, I’ll see if I can make it… Will Damon be there?’ Caroline’s eyes rolled so far back into her skull that Y/N was worried they would be stuck there.
‘I’ve told you a million times, and I’ll tell you again. He. Is. Bad. News.’ She very carefully emphasised each word. It was Y/N’s turn to roll her eyes,
‘You know, I don’t understand why you’ve got such a big problem with him; you can tell me you know.’
‘Just trust me, okay? You don’t want to get mixed in with him; it doesn’t end well for anyone.’
Y/N wished she would heed Caroline’s advice; she could not afford to get mixed in with anyone, bad news or not; her lifestyle did not allow it. Though for a century and a half now, it seemed Mystic Falls was in constant danger from the Supernatural, would it be that unforgivable if she stayed and protected these people? Protected her friends?
Y/N quickly learnt that Caroline was a fan of advice; if anything happened, she had an opinion about it. For the most part, Y/N found it endearing; she could tell it came from a place of care. So why was it that she was so vehemently against Damon? What was it about him that caused Caroline’s dismay? These questions riddled Y/N’s thoughts as she sat alone in the very spot she met the dark-haired man, knowing that it would not be long before he sat in the vacant space beside her.
‘Why the long face?’ The satirical voice she had come to adore sounded from her left, and the face in question quickly shifted to a grin,
‘I knew you would be showing up soon; that’s enough to cause despair in anybody.’ Or at least Caroline, Y/N thought sardonically. Damon’s hand quickly covered his heart, his expression mocking offence.
‘You wound me.’
Damon pulled the stool next to the Winchester girl out from under the bench and lowered himself onto it with a hefty sigh, catching the eye of the young bartender,
‘House bourbon please…’ He glanced at the empty crystal glass clutched in her hand, ‘make that two,’ he added,
‘Thanks.’ She muttered,
‘You know, I’ve noticed you never buy me drinks.’ He teased, eyes crinkling with his smile, Y/N scoffed,
‘Nice try, Damon; I’ve seen your house. You don’t need me to buy you drinks.’ Her eyebrows furrowed,
‘What is it that you do for a living any way? How can you afford a house like that?’ Damon did not answer, instead, he waved his hand dismissively. He never answered personal questions; it was beyond frustrating. However, she understood she was being hypocritical; none of her new-found friends knew anything about her, nothing real anyway. She continued,
‘It doesn’t look like you have the time for a job; you spend all your time here.’ Y/N spoke with fake judgment; she spent a fair amount of her time here as well. She raised her eyebrows expectantly, hoping her statement would elicit some sort of answer, but to no avail; Damon simply took a sip from his glass and moved to another topic,
‘Did you get your invite to the ball? I heard the girls were going to get gowns. ’ His tone was teasing as he wiggled his eyebrows. Y/N rolled her eyes,
‘Yeah, I’ve also been invited to the shopping trip; I don’t know what I’m going to get; I've never been a dress person.’
‘Well, whatever you end up wearing, I’m sure you’ll look stunning; that’s something we have in common.’ Y/N's cheeks heated at his comment; she should be used to it by now; their whole relationship was built on cheap pick-up lines.
‘You flatter me.’ A chuckle escaped with her words,
‘Speaking of the ball… Were you going with anyone?’ His words were hesitant but aired with confidence,
‘You’re kidding, right? You’re just about the only person I know in town.’ Y/N was incredulous,
‘Well.. in that case… I suppose I better take you.’
Two days passed, and Y/N found herself in the back seat of Elena Gilbert's SUV, trying desperately to quell the feeling of giddiness settling in her stomach; the idea of a girls-day-out excited Y/N in a way she had not anticipated and although she had tried very hard to act aloof, she fears she had not been successful.
Every time she complained about dresses, shoes and jewellery, Caroline, Elena, and Bonnie shared knowing looks.
The day passed slowly, Y/N quickly learning to nod politely at the dresses she believed were only ordinary and gush over the ones she thought were stunning. By the end of their trip, Y/N knew that the girls would pass as goddesses at the ball, their embellished gowns complimenting each one of them wonderfully. Though she had not foreseen how difficult it would be to come to a decision herself, each dress she tried on never quite hugged or sat the way she wanted it. But when she glanced up at a mannequin she had yet to see, the dress she knew would be hers lied upon its shoulders.
The burgundy gown adorned a tight-fitting velvet bodice, its sweetheart neckline drawing out to meet hanging chiffon off-shoulder sleeves. Y/N thought the skirt looked like deep gushing blood as it extended from the pointed waist of the bodice to the floor, its chiffon overlay flowing delicately to meet the rest of the dress on the ground. Complimenting the dress was a pair of long gloves made to match its ornate material and a necklace of warmly coloured pearls encrusted with a brilliant red jewel. It was utterly perfect.
She drew closer to the gown, fingers stretching out to glide over the impossibly soft textile and called the saleswoman over, asking politely if she could have the dress and accessories to try on. As she held it up before her in the changing room, she was astonished to realise the material was even more stunning up close.
She took timid steps from the changing room, treating the gown with utmost care. As she turned the corner, Y/N heard subtle gasps come from her entourage, her cheeks suddenly deepening to a pretty shade of vermillion.
‘Oh my goodness, Y/N, you’re stunning’, Bonnie spoke earnestly, Elena nodding in agreement.
‘Hot and sexy are the words I’d use; whoever you’re bringing is a lucky guy’, Caroline added. Y/N was sure she suddenly looked culpable; Caroline’s eyes narrowed.
‘You know, you never mentioned who was taking you, only that somebody had asked.’ Caroline’s voice was suspicious,
‘Well, um…’ Caroline raised her eyebrows as though she was already anticipating Y/N's answer,
‘Damon may have asked me the other night.’ Caroline closed her eyes and sighed,
‘Y/N, he’s bad news; how many times do I have to tell you before the message sinks in?’ Her tone was frustrated,
‘You’ve never actually told me why he is “bad news.”’ Y/N’s fingers formed quotation marks around her last words. Bonnie, Elena and Caroline exchanged glances; they knew something they were unwilling to disclose to her, and Y/N would find out what it was.
A/N: I wanted to add a reference for the dress Y/N found, though I could not find one that matched what I pictured, so I decided to draw what I was envisioning instead.
Here is a link to the image: https://i.pinimg.com/750x/60/af/61/60af61d9f9d20b5a4afa52cc71505831.jpg
#damon salvatore#damon salvatore x reader#the vampire diaries#supernatural#dean winchester#sam winchester#the winchester brothers#winchester sister#vampire#mystic falls#x reader#tvd#spn#hunter#ball gown#mystic grill
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Assassins Finding Out Their S/O Is A Witch 💙
Altair Ibn La’Ahad
💙 When he learned; he wasn’t surprised one bit as everything added up, now making sense. All the late nights out, the strange herbs and things made and hidden away in your shared home. But unlike others he was more curious than fearful. In fact so much he would begin to ask questions, understand, and learn all the secrets to life, to the universe. To know that hidden knowledge. He wouldn’t be concerned about your safety knowing you have handled yourself quite fine before he met you and would find that Masyaf is one of the safest places for you where he’d be least concerned.
Connor Kenway
💙 He would be the one whose most accepting of it. Some of it is similar to what his own tribe’s beliefs and practices so he’d be the one who would help you gather materials for any spells/rituals. Even learning green witchcraft and herbalism himself. As for safety I wouldn’t think he wouldn’t be as concerned for yours seeing as the homestead is full of more trustworthy, openminded people who happen to know of Connors native and warrior like background; besides that others may see you as only a doctor. But he would warn you even on the request of Achilles in hopes you wouldn’t speak of it to others outside the safety net. But you always knew to never do such a thing.
Ezio Auditore
💙 It would depend on which Ezio we’re talking about. If he was his younger version; he would be open to it but still question your belief and the way you do things; especially if you believe in multiple existing gods. But after his meeting with Minerva he would believe there’s more to life than meets the eye. Therefore be more accepting and even curious; willing to enjoy the few moments when you open up and talk about it and even watch your work from afar. But if you aren’t in a relationship with him nor the type to fall for his charm then he may be afraid if he offended you and if you might curse him for it. Or he may ask you to do a reading on why he keeps falling into a cycle of never having love or if he ever will find love for that matter. But who knows maybe your cards indicated your future relationship together. 😉 Since it was a time when the witch trials occurred; Ezio would be fearful of your safety. You’d find him being overprotective and upset whenever you ventured out or did anything careless or in which would make you appear to be a witch. (Like if you were to heal people) But knowing you may do so anyways, to the least he would ask you to do so only near the villa and that he’d be the one gather ingredients himself.
Arno Dorian
💙 Although the witch trials declined considerably and even convicting a person difficult; it still worried him. Therefore he would still guard you from any suspicious people. On the other hand he will be confused as to why you believe yourself to be a witch. Yes, there are pieces of Eden with mystical powers. But this is different and he may appear unbelieving or not take it serious. That’s until you prove a point of his “gifts,” his abilities to see things that are not there or to witness memories through people and objects. You’d consider this his “third eye sense,” clairvoyance, or Psychometry. He would be surprised you know of it as he never told you. If not that he’ll start believing you more when he sees spells coming to fruition and your simple “knowing of things.”
#arno dorian#ezio auditore#altair ibn la ahad#assassins creed#connor kenway#ac headcanons#ac 1#ac 2#ac brotherhood#ac unity#ezio auditore headcanons#arno dorian headcanons#ezio auditore imagines#arno dorian imagines#connor kenway headcanons#connor kenway imagines#altair ibn la ahad headcanon#altair ibn la ahad imagine#altair ibn la'ahad
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So now that Netflix!SWK and NewGod!SWK have a MK, does that mean HeroisBorn and Reborn will get one too? Well HeroisBorn does have Liuer so maybe not yet?
It'll be cute if the kid somehow helped him in meeting/winning over HeroisBorn!Mac though. 😅
I just finished watching the film properly, and Wukong/Dasheng in it is so "I didn't plan to be a single father, but I guess this is my life now"-coded. His interactions with Liuer and the baby "Silly Girl" just solidify it.
Jiang Liuer in "Hero is Back" (2015) is actually meant to be that timeline's Tripitaka! The creators of the film stated that Liuer is the 9th Golden Cicada incarnation, and that he pretty much released the Monkey King "early", hence why the seals/measures around the mountain were actively trying to restraint SWK. It's believed that the machinations of Hundun/Chaos in the films is what caused this new timeline to occur.
HeroIsBack!SWK finds his Macaque clutching a strange stone oval that the hunters targeting FFM are very adamant on stealing...
Liuer def would be the little kid that wants their parent to find love and a partner, and now that there's another special mystic monkey in the team with a weird stone baby monkey? Perfect! Parent Trap shenanigans most certainly ensue. Uncle Pigsy is all for it! He can taste the wedding banquet already...
As for Reborn!SWK, his MK has already lived it's first life... and now must be reborn as something new.
Maybe that six-earred monkey demon Wukong keeps seeing in his dreams can help them figure out why a bunch of demons/celestials are so adamant that the two never meet...
#wukongverse#monkey king hero is back#monkey king reborn#sun wukong#liu er mihou#six eared macaque#qi xiaotian#jiang liuer#shadowpeach#jttw inspo character ideas#journey to the west
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The Diviner (Part II)
(Morpheus x Prophetess Reader)
Synopsis: Morpheus could be murdered at any time, but you've found a lead to stop it from coming true.
Warnings: Mentions of blood, hostage situation
Word Count: 1544
A/N: Thank you for all the love I've received on the first part of this series! I hope you enjoy this next one. Don't forget to reblog! I'd love to hear what you think.
Series Masterlist | Part III
You never considered an Endless could bleed as any human could.
You also never considered what fear would look like in their eyes.
You suppose you don’t have to think about it anymore.
—
That first day, you and the others pulled all the resources you could. Hob reached out to a few of his colleagues that dabbled in rare and mystical artifacts. Death kept an ear out on the job, calling in some favors with certain people. Morpheus entrusted Matthew and Lucienne with reconnaissance within the Dreaming. And you touched base with some occultist friends and light magic users.
Morpheus wanted to know what you saw in your vision, but after telling him, he remained silent.
“I told you it was vague,” you said, flipping through your book.
It was nearly sunset, and you hadn’t found anything about this mysterious person. So you switched to looking up protection spells, but they were all too weak. Whoever you were looking for had enough strength to murder an Endless—everyday incantations and ruins wouldn’t measure up. They'd never ensure Morpheus’ survival.
“Are all your visions like that?” Morpheus asked.
In retrospect, this vision was different, but not because of how unspecific it was—you’d been dealing with that since you received your gift.
“No. It was strange. I felt disconnected from it somehow.”
Morpheus sat beside you, waiting for you to continue.
“Usually, I can feel something: temperature, pain, emotions, and most times, I can smell or hear what’s happening. But this,” you shook your head, “it was like I was a spectator, except everything was muffled.”
The thought of being so distant from your power almost made your throat close up.
As if reading your mind, Morpheus handed you the glass of water on the table.
You sipped slowly.
It was all in your head. You needed to calm down and figure out what was going on.
“Does it concern you?” he asked. “How different it was?”
You squeeze your eyes shut and rub the heels of your hands into them.
“I don’t know. Everything about this is unusual, and I…I don’t know what to trust.”
That was the most frustrating thing about all this; who was right? It was a matter of you and Death. For all you knew, she was never wrong.
But neither were you.
“Trust that we will find the solution.”
He said it so simply it made guilt pool in your stomach.
Morpheus had the most to worry about, yet he seemed calm.
“Do you believe we will?” you asked, hating the uncertainty in your voice.
“With all I am.”
—
“It’s been days, and we have nothing,” you said. “How is it that among two Endless, two immortals, and all we have at our disposal, we have not a thread of a lead?”
You were beyond frustrated. Whoever Morpheus’ would-be murderer was, they were doing an exceptional job at hiding.
“I’ve seen nothing in the dreamers,” Morpheus said. “However, if he can kill me, he must know how to avoid the Dreaming.”
You ran both hands down your face. The same thought occurred to you, but hearing it voiced—and by Morpheus no less—felt like a nail in his coffin.
“My sister has yet to know my demise?”
How could he ask that so casually?
You shook your head. “She said nothing’s changed. So, according to her, you’ll be fine.” You sighed. “So, I have to believe we’ll find something to fix everything.”
“Perhaps we need not find anything,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“If Death herself cannot confirm my end, must we search for a solution?”
“Morpheus,” you started, “when you let Destiny into my head, I had no idea how to use my power or why he gave it to me. But I’ve had the past six centuries to figure that out. And when I tell you, it’s to prevent catastrophic things from happening. I’m not exaggerating.
“So, if Death hasn’t seen yours yet, I have to assume we’re on the right path, and if we stop, you die.”
Morpheus stood silently.
Had your bluntness angered him? Who were you to speak to him like that? Especially since you had your first real conversation a few days ago.
“My apologies.”
You hadn’t expected that.
“I often forget it’s been so long since my brother shared his gifts with you. I will do better moving forward.”
You sat there frozen, unable to think of a proper response.
“I’ll return to my realm to check in with Lucienne. She may have discovered something,” Morpheus said.
You nodded. “I’ll reach back out to my resources.”
Before he left, Morpheus regarded you carefully.
“Thank you,” he said.
Your brow pinched. “What for?”
“Not many would help me as you are. I am grateful.”
And with that, he was gone.
—
You could barely contain yourself. You finally found a lead.
It wasn’t much, but your network got the word out enough that someone called you. A new customer of that someone was looking for a specific ingredient few shops sold, and even fewer would admit to selling. But they knew where that customer could find it.
You wrote down the address and hastily threw on your shoes.
If you planned this right, you’d intercept them after the exchange once the dealer left. You’d sneak up on them, use the taser Hob got you, and call for Death or Morpheus to handle the rest.
The dealer only did business within a small window, and you didn’t have time to gather everyone, but you could handle it yourself. You were no stranger to a sticky situation.
The abandoned building you arrived at had probably seen many deals over the years. It was surprisingly sturdy. The only giveaway of neglect was the broken windows covered by garbage bags.
You slipped through the opened door and kept to the shadows, waiting for movement.
Five minutes passed, and you were beginning to doubt the legitimacy of your source until cold metal pressed against your throat.
“I’m so glad you could make it tonight.”
You went rigid, trying to keep as far away from the blade as possible.
“What do you want?”
He laughed. “What do I want? My dear, that’s no way to introduce yourself.” His hot breath invaded your ear. “My name is Warrens. And what I want, of course, is Morpheus.”
It all came together. Warrens faked the information and tricked you.
“So why bring me here?”
“You’re my meal ticket to the Dream King,” he said. “Now, be a good girl and summon him for me.”
—
You never did well with following orders—that got beat out of you at a young age. You became a survivor, and for the longest time, that meant fading into the shadows. Avoiding notice was your number one priority.
However, centuries of men telling you what to do brought that fire back.
“Who said I was a good girl?” You breathe out a laugh, hoping that would piss him off.
The knife slices across your forearm, and you clench your teeth to keep from screaming. Then he’s pulling you toward a pipe.
“I’ve done enough research about Morpheus and his little diviner to know he gave you your powers—to know you owe him and that he has a special little spot for you.” He touches the tip of the knife to your chin when you struggle too much. “So, if you won’t call him, it’s only a matter of time before he shows up to fetch his pet.”
Even with your hands now cuffed around the piece of metal, your features remain neutral save a quirked eyebrow. “I’ve never heard so many incorrect things come out of one person’s mouth.”
His nostrils flare, and he draws the blade down your cheek.
Still, you remain silent, glaring.
He sighs heavily, like what he’s doing pains him.
“You know, I’m not so stupid as to think you’d help me—it would’ve made things easier—but I didn’t give you that vision for nothing.”
Your brow furrows. “What the hell are you talking about?”
A slick grin pulls at his lips, his pleasure seeping out of his pores, and a pit forms in your stomach.
“Come on now, a vision of Morpheus dying? I had to give you a reason to make him come out of hiding. And as the loyal lapdog the stories paint you as, I knew it’d be a sure thing.”
You shake your head. “You couldn’t have known that. There’s no way you could make me have false precognitions.”
He laughs, head thrown back. “And yet, here you are. It really wasn’t that hard at all. I thought a centuries-old being like yourself would be more conscious, more perceptive.”
You narrow your eyes and pull at the cuffs, ready to wipe that grin off his face. But it's mostly to keep the horror off your face.
That's why it felt different. That's why you couldn't feel anything.
He leans down so he’s level with you. “It was easy enough, swiping a used coffee cup. And the spell was even easier, considering I learned from the Order.”
Your heart sinks. Warrens is a disciple of the Burgess'.
And he wants to finish what they started.
Taglist: @sayumiht, @hatterripper31, @snowsatsu, @1950schick, @navs-bhat, @bookshelf-dust, @sapphireonline, @fictional-hooman, @steph-speaks, @ladyredstar1991, @secretdreamlandmentality, @ababycakes, @morpheuss1mp, @boofy1998, @alice-the-nerd
If you’d like to be added to any taglists, please comment or message me with the character you’d like updates on.
#morpheus#dream of the endless#dream#morpheus fluff#dream fluff#dream of the endless fluff#morpheus angst#dream angst#dream of the endless angst#morpheus x reader#dream x reader#dream of the endless x reader#morpheus x female reader#dream x female reader#dream of the endless x female reader#morpheus x fem!reader#dream of the endless x fem!reader#dream x fem!reader#morpheus imagine#dream imagine#dream of the endless imagine#morpheus one shot#dream of the endless one shot#dream one shot#morpheus imagines#dream of the endless imagines#dream imagines#morpheus x you#dream of the endless x you#dream x you
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The Old Prince
Part 10
Author's Note: I had hoped to post this on Friday, but a pesky work-weekend got in the way. Also, this was one of those chapters that never wanted to end! Which is why it's easily the biggest one yet.
Description: Your confrontation with Simon reveals some very big obstacles. (Sorry, it's a bit short, I don't wanna spoil anything.)
Rating: Mature 18+ONLY
Warnings: Monster Oberyn Martell x Female Reader, AU fic, obviously Halloween themed, reader cusses. Smut. And a kinda weird situation occurring in relation to the smut.
Word Count: 9862
Author's Masterlist
He reacts to the name as if he too remembers it, and somewhere deep within him, a rumbling which could rival even the toughest thunder starts to build.
It’s so immense that the very air vibrates with it, and when he opens his jaws to release it, you can hardly believe what you’re seeing when actual lightning accompanies the flame of magmatic intensity, destroying trees and unnatural creatures alike everywhere it goes.
Then, just as your hope rekindles with the apparent shift of odds into your favor, the dying flames reveal that the spirits have finally arrived. But the reason for their tardiness becomes painfully obvious when you realize they’ve all been corrupted.
No longer the lightly glowing figures of mystical energies, they now appear to be solid, straining under their own weight, looking as though something’s tried to rip them apart, leaving strangely thick black smoke pluming out of their open wounds.
Positioning themselves in a circle around the two of you, their new master commands them to destroy, and as if they’ve become puppets on strings, they obey without hesitation.
The polar bear, Ursa, is supposed to be able to freeze things at will, but her powers have also been mutated, so when she tries to create frozen spikes, like spears out of the ground, what happens instead is that she cleaves the ground, creating massive crevasses from which more roots and evil beings spring.
Lupus normally channels the power of the earth to make things grow, and she still does, except there’s only darkness to feed. Only the destructive and malicious beings brought to life by the Darkling are aided by her efforts, doubling in size in mere seconds.
Meanwhile, Caelum is generating multiple twisters where she would ordinarily only manage to spark sudden microbursts for a few minutes at a time. The butterfly is somehow creating toxic spores where she would usually just be able to pollinate anything that grows.
How Octopus is managing on land you have no idea, but she’s covering everything she touches with some kind of corrosive grey slime, which is especially bad considering the area she can affect with her size and the reach of her tentacles.
The bat’s normal power is giving sight to those who wander in the dark, but she’s now creating clouds made of soot, removing all visibility wherever she flies. Although she’s struggling so badly against the forces of gravity, usually not able to affect her much at all, that she’s barely able to get off the ground.
Scarabaeus is supposed to be able to move through any solid structures, but her corrupted form is instead incapable of remaining solid at all, changing from liquid to gaseous form at random, which also has the very disturbing effect of leaving anything she passes through, completely disemboweled.
As for the deer, Cervus, who’s original power is the absorption of both energy and matter, she seems to be in a state of continuous implosion, like a star perpetually about to collapse, sucking everything into its core to be crushed.
In your human form, you’ve never met the spirit of summer before, although you do know her from your other life. She’s easily the largest of the land-living spirits, rivalling Oberyn’s green dragon, although her current mass is much more concentrated than his was.
Also, she wouldn’t normally have much mass at all. But tonight, her might has been transformed from a benign gigantic horse, capable of bringing warmth even to the coldest of places, into a burning demon, seemingly made of oil.
They attack without any coordination, or pre-determined plan of any kind, it seems, coming at Tyrannus from all angles at once. His size puts them at a disadvantage since only the flying ones can reach further up his body than his legs, but they’re unfortunately also highly tolerant to his flame, even with the lightning.
His scales are thick, though, shielding him from their mutated powers, leaving him mostly concerned with keeping you out of their reach.
You know that even Lux has never witnessed all the spirits succumb to the dark one’s power before, because it’s never been allowed to get this far. But Simon’s clever deceit must’ve blinded them until it was already too late. Which begs the question:
Why are you not turning dark as well?
If the Darkling can have such a crippling effect on all the others, how is it you’re not feeling so much as a tingle in your fingertips?
It could be your connection to Oberyn, since love is still more powerful than anything, but the more you think about it, the more it seems like it’s your human form which shields you from his influence.
Strangely, it makes a lot of sense. Because ordinary humans can’t see or be directly harmed by spirits, so logically, your alter ego should be impervious to his manipulation.
However, your body might not be safe from his powers or the spirits’ ability to cause you serious physical harm.
You have demonstrated that you’re capable of incredible healing, but you don’t know how far that reaches. Even Oberyn isn’t completely immortal, so it stands to reason you might have a few limitations as well.
He moves incredibly fast despite his size, having lost none of his usual agility since his body is still the same snakelike shape. So, even though his enemies are repeatedly attacking him from all sides, he manages to evade them while striking both punches and flames at them, slowing them down if not seriously damaging them.
Until Caelum manages to slip past his limbs and teeth, using one of her twisters as camouflage.
Staying in your blind spot, she sinks her claws into your back before you’ve had a chance to notice her, and aside from the fact that having your skin ripped open is always terribly painful, it seems that the black oily stuff which covers them all is also either poisonous or acidic when it enters your blood. Because holy fuck, does it sting.
You’re already laying down as flat over the base of the dragon’s neck as you can manage, but the sharp, lasting pain makes you lose your grip just as Oberyn turns sharply to the left.
“Kaivalya!” you hear a thunderous roar exclaim while you’re falling through the air, which confuses you.
He can’t speak. Not as himself or as Tyrannus, his mouth and throat are incapable of forming words, so how did that just happen?
It doesn’t matter much anymore when you realize you’re falling much further than what should be ground level, which must mean you’re careering into one of the many crevasses Ursa’s made in her attempts to unbalance the dragon.
Your front is facing up, so you can see the darkened sky as you continue to fall, until you drop far enough that the edges of the abyss come into view, crawling with roots and other malicious things, feeding off the conflict and the violence above.
Then suddenly, a bright white tail is breaking through the increasing darkness around you. It effortlessly breaks through the meager defenses put up by the wormlike appendages of this evil Earth, reaching you with such speed and forcefulness that it sends you hurtling upwards instead, as though you were a tennis ball and his tail the racket.
And once you’re back above ground, easily reaching a thousand feet height at the crescent before you begin to fall back down, all three of the flying spirits are converging on you.
A twister forms right beside you, sucking you in and then spitting you out even higher up, before Vespertilio sends a cloud of absolute darkness around you.
You know you’re far enough up that Oberyn has to fly to reach you, and if he was, his wings would create a thunderous sound as they beat against the air and the atmosphere, and you can’t hear anything like that.
But you can hear the rapid, strained flaps of the bat’s wings as it struggles to get to you.
The darkness is so thick you can’t see your hands in front of your face, but you can feel that you’re once again falling and without seeing, you have no way of knowing how long it’ll take before you hit the ground.
Can you survive a broken neck? You don’t know. Just like you don’t know what happens if you get torn to pieces by the spirits. You might simply revert to your spirit form, but then that would likely make you corruptible again.
And maybe that’s exactly what Simon is after. Maybe all this is just about darkening you, because if he can do that, then there won’t be any more hope for the world.
A sound reaches you from somewhere below, and then a strong huff of warm air disperses the cloud underneath you, letting you see that you’re still hundreds of feet from the ground. But you also see a pair of bright blue eyes, which then quickly disappear from your view when the largest jaws ever to exist on this planet are opened wide, right beneath you.
“Trust me,” the same rumbling voice as before sounds, even though his mouth hasn’t moved.
But it’s him. Either inside your head or somehow speaking to you through the ether, but you know without a doubt it’s your Oberyn.
And you do trust him. Which is why you let yourself fall forwards, straightening your arms out in front of you, turning your body into a spear so you’ll fall quicker.
It’s not without fear you pass his rows of giant teeth, falling paralleled to his tongue and heading right for his throat, held perfectly straight to facilitate your journey into his stomach, but he must have a plan.
He closes his jaws in the same moment you reach the bottom of his mouth, and everything becomes pitch black.
You can feel your body continue to fall, even as the walls of his throat begin to close around you, slowing your descent surprisingly gently. And before you know it, you’re at the bottom. Although, it’s not how you might’ve imagined a dragon’s stomach might look, if you’d ever had the crazy idea to imagine being swallowed by one.
There’s no fluid in there at all, to help break down your components and extract the nutrients from your body. And it’s anything but dark.
Just like with humans, his stomach sits adjacent to his lungs, so when the fire is sparked, his entire torso is lit up internally.
You can only see the shine, nothing of what else is actually inside of him, but it’s kinda beautiful.
There’s an intricate and very symmetrical network of veins within the lining of the stomach, and when the fire illuminates them, the heat within his blood makes them glow. And yet, the temperature inside remains unchanged. Probably around forty degrees Celsius, feverishly warm for a human, which is how Oberyn has always seemed to you.
However, the sounds he makes are even louder in here, so when he suddenly roars, you’re instantly on your knees and doing your best to cover your ears, hoping your eardrums haven’t already burst.
“Stop!” you try to yell when it never seems to end, but you can’t even hear yourself over the deafening vibrations.
Apparently though, he can, because he immediately goes quiet, and then that deep voice finds you again.
“Are you alright, my lady?”
You must be hearing him inside your mind somehow, because even if you haven’t already gone deaf, your ears can’t possibly have recovered enough for you to hear normally yet.
“No!” you half-shriek, confirming at least partial damage to your auditory system because you can hardly hear your own voice. “Keep it down, you just blew my ears out!”
“Oh… My apologies. In my defense, I have never done this before.”
“No shit…”
-=<>=-=<>=-=<>=-
He knows you will be safe within him as this much older dragon ate only stone and magma to support his being when there was no other life on this world yet. It has no means of digesting human tissues and bones, nor the need for it.
From the beginning of this battle, the spirits have aimed almost exclusively at you, leading him to the conclusion that Simon has no interest in him, merely in acquiring the last free spirit and completing the Darkling curse.
If this happens, the entire planet will become as the North American continent in a matter of minutes. All of it consumed by death, darkness and despair, with no hope or end in sight. And without Lux to bring back the sun, it will likely remain so for thousands of years.
Tyrannus is too powerful even for all of them combined to vanquish, but Oberyn is equally unable to annihilate Simon while the spirits fight for him, so until the two of you can discover how to liberate The Decem from the dark one’s sickening grasp, the best he can do is keep you safe.
Gambling on the notion that these debased beings all seem unwilling to stray too far away from the group, he remains airborne after swallowing you, intent on leaving the scene as quickly as he can.
Of course, Caelum, Vespertilio and Papilio do not approve of this plan, and follow as he departs due east, back towards the coast.
Their perverted powers are thrown recklessly in his path, the desperation to not disappoint their master now the single goal of their altered reality.
But their quarry is not only much larger than before. He is also armored with scales so thick not even the pressure and heat of the planet’s core could undo him, leaving their mediocre displays of strength little more than an irritation to his ascent.
His theory about their tendency to remain with the group prove accurate when the three flying spirits veer off and return to the blackened landscape before he’s even left the American continent. This thought, however, offers him no peace. For they are stronger as a group, and the longer they remain so, they will fuel and feed the growing energies of hate and depravity until it eventually transforms them completely.
They are still only darkened versions of their original selves, but if Simon has his claws embedded within them for long enough, he will turn their hearts to stone, and then they shall truly become the monstrosities of men’s most feared nightmares.
If this comes to pass, they will never again be returned to their former glory, no matter how much light you might shine upon them. And without them, the world will never truly recover.
He heads northeast across the Atlantic, flying fast and very high now that you are travelling safely hidden from the extreme temperatures and lack of oxygen. The sky is remarkably clear once he leaves the ashes and unnatural darkness of America behind, and he wishes that you could see the beauty of the world from the thermosphere, nine kilometers above the surface.
As Lux, you probably have, but as a human, you never could.
And there is something truly beautiful within such fragility.
It doesn’t take long once he returns to the more familiar troposphere, before he is joined by yet more man-made flying machines, although this time, they wisely keep their distance and merely follow his journey, rather than attempt another confrontation.
Oberyn is glad for this, because aside from the fact that he does not wish to harm them, they may also become most important to the survival of the world, as even their relatively small firepower could prove crucial within the larger picture of this war.
So, he makes no attempt to frighten them, flying calmly even as they dare a closer look.
Despite their oxygen masks, he can see their eyes quite clearly, and when one of the pilots pulls up alongside him, he can see how she tries to measure him from nose-tip to tail-end, raising her eyebrows in disbelief at whatever number she settles on.
He estimates roughly five hundred yards himself.
These are British RAF fighters, which must mean that word of his existence has spread since his latest encounter with such crafts. Although, they all probably think there are two dragons at this point, as there is little resemblance between Tyrannus and his comparably puny longtime green alter ego.
Whatever they believe is irrelevant. So long as he must not fight both humans and dark souls the world’s armies may create their own explanations for his presence. He requires only that they act to protect their lands, as even a small grenade lobbed at the spreading weeds of death will slow their advancement somewhat.
For now, the darkness is contained on the North American continent, unable to spread further until the air and the oceans have also been sufficiently infected. But it is only a matter of time.
As he crosses over the British Isles, a warm updraft fills his wings, allowing him to soar effortlessly. Which is good since just one flap of his enormous wings will displace enough air to potentially create massive wind-shifts on the ground below.
The warm air sits lower in the atmosphere, however, leaving him quite visible to anyone who happens to look high enough, and given the sudden changes in the sounds he can hear from down there, at least some people do spot him.
To that end, the fighter planes are no help, as their noisy engines easily draw people’s eyes upwards, but again, this is largely irrelevant.
Unless the two of you can discover how to defeat Simon, these people will know of worse things than dragons soon enough.
Dodging numerous commercial jets at various altitudes as he crosses directly above Manchester, Oberyn then leaves Great Britain behind, heading for the quieter skies of the Nordic countries.
The RAF apparently are not cleared to continue following him into Norwegian airspace, veering off well before he crosses over land again.
For a moment, he amuses himself by imagining the communication between these pilots and Norwegian air traffic control, because he could picture how it must have sounded if they requested permission to continue following a dragon into Norway’s domain.
Once certain he is alone, he finds a nice large mountaintop with a solid flat surface and sets down as gently as he can to avoid kicking off a rockslide.
You have been quiet since he accidentally broke your eardrums, and he hopes you will have healed already, but he worries that the injury might have nothing to do with your lack of interaction.
“Valya?” he prods, keeping his volume low, and he can feel how you begin to move inside of him.
“Yeah?” you reply, and you sound mostly tired.
“We are safe for now. Would you like to come out?”
“That depends… Would I be going back up, or continuing further down?”
“Up, of course, my dear.”
“Okay, just tell me what to do,” you sigh, but it is clear from your tone that you were only asking about the direction as a way of relieving tension.
“I would prefer not to regurgitate you, but if I lay my head down and keep my body standing, you should be able to crawl out on your own.”
“Alright, give it a try.”
He does as he has suggested, and then experience the peculiar sensation of what a human might compare to an ant trying to crawl out of their throat.
It tickles, but not enough to cause him discomfort, and before long he can feel your footsteps pattering over his tongue and then climbing past the row of teeth on his lower jaw, before a muted thud lets him know you have hit the ground.
Closing his mouth and raising his head enough that he can see the ground directly before him, he finds you brushing snow off your pants, and you appear unharmed.
“How are your ears?” he asks, and you stop moving to meet his eyes.
“Better. But how am I hearing you? Is this some kind of telepathy?”
“No, not quite. As I understand it, this is only possible between the two of us, and only because of the unique bond we now share.”
“Right. Which bond, though? I can think of at least two.”
“Love and Tyrannus?” he guesses, to which you nod, so he elaborates. “All these years, you’ve carried the white dragon within you, unknowingly becoming one with it, so familiar with its energy that you didn’t even realize it when you began to feed it to me. Because to your heart, there is no distinction. We are the beings you love, and we love you equally.”
“Do you feel different? I mean, like there’s two of you in there?”
“Tyrannus has not been alive for eons. He is only energy now. But I do feel some things so deeply engraved into his soul they cannot be erased. His anger… and his hope. Mere echoes now, and yet, so undeniably clear.
He was truly mighty.”
“So are you, Oberyn,” you say softly, smiling slightly as you admire his new form, before you seem to will yourself to return to darker matters. “Unfortunately, we have less pleasant things to talk about, starting with where we are.”
“I believe it’s called the Scandes. The mountain range between Norway and Sweden.”
“Okay. And why are we here?”
“Because we need to think, and this place is quiet. This far north there’s hardly any air traffic and aside from the occasional hiker, not a lot of people. This time of year, it is a bit cold, but nothing I cannot shield you from.
I have wandered these hills and mountains many times in my life, and they have always helped to soothe my worries.”
“I believe you. I feel calmer already. And it does seem prudent to steer clear of the States until we at least have a plan.”
You cross your arms over your waist but then remember that you are still wearing the same torn clothes as before, and this seems to deflate your energy somehow.
“So, can you still change back, or will all that,” you gesture to his general enormity, “not fit within the human form anymore?”
“It will. Although I am hesitant to leave us so vulnerable. My human form is still the weakest part of me.”
“And who’s gonna come after us here?”
“It is the threats one doesn’t see coming that are the most dangerous.
But I see your point.”
Strangely, it feels exactly the same to return to this shape despite the extreme change he has undergone. The dragon folds away as fluently and easily as it always has.
But it does throw him for a moment, to suddenly lose the higher perspective, and he hadn’t considered just how much better Tyrannus’ senses are. He feels almost blind at first, even though his own senses are still far superior to ordinary humans.
“Are you alright?” you ask, noticing his disorientation.
“Yes. Just slightly jarred. The difference in size is a bit befuddling at first.”
“I’m sure it is, but at least I can hug you now,” you say while closing the distance between you and wrapping your arms around him in a firm embrace.
“Oh, I have missed this,” he admits while he mirrors you, breathing in your scent once more and relishing in the feeling of your body pressed against his.
In that regard, there is no comparison. Nothing ever feels as good as your skin against his own, no matter how incredible the dragon’s senses are.
“It’s hard to believe it was still just this morning that we woke up together in your bed. I mean, we’ve been jumping between time zones, so the actual hours might be more, but it’s still the same date.”
“Indeed. How strange that everything seemed so simple then,” he observes, recalling the hours he spent watching you sleep, thinking of nothing but you and how you make him feel.
His entire world had fit into that bed in those precious, serene hours.
“Fucking Simon…” you growl after a minute, pulling away from him as your stress once again increases. “I can’t believe he manipulated all the spirits. I mean, I know they’re emotionally driven, but aren’t they supposed to have better instincts than to be fooled by a Darkling?”
“Well, no, actually,” he replies simply, to which you seem quite perplexed, so he continues. “The only way for any spirit to discern the presence of a Darkling is by the effect it has on the world. To find the being itself, only its capacity to see and interact with them is what provides them a definitive answer.
They can immediately sense if darkness is tainting the world, and where, but they rely on evil to reveal itself, as it always does.”
“Wait… that would mean Simon must’ve understood more about them from the start than any other dark one before him, to let him use their blind spots against them like that.
But I don’t get it. He said he’d been practicing, using his powers, honing them for a long time. How could he do that without them reacting to it, at some point?”
“How he knew about his powers I cannot fathom. No Darkling is born with this understanding. However, if he discovered a way to use them without allowing them to infect anything, then it is possible The Decem were unable to detect it.”
“Not even Caelum? She can’t just sense darkness in the air somehow?” you wonder, getting frustrated enough to start pacing around him, but remaining close since his warmth is all that shields you from the Nordic winter chill.
“No. Only if that power manages to dilute the air, as it now has over the American continent,” he answers, and you throw your arms out to the sides in a gesture which he interprets to be burgeoning anger at Simon’s apparent advantages.
He understands your feelings, especially since you cannot recall any of the details surrounding the spirits and their capabilities, but unfortunately, your foe is the very worst this world has to offer.
As much as he wishes to shield you, he must also make sure you realize exactly what it is you are up against.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but the clouds there are no longer clouds, just dead spores and ashes, remnants of nature now reduced to particles of death. And once he gathers enough of them, he can send those clouds across the seas to infect other parts of the world.
In time, his evil will turn all oceans into vast fields of mud and oil, impossible to travel over or through, filled with the same mutated monstrosities we saw over there. And eventually, the air will be so thick with these ashes that no sunlight will reach us anymore, at which point… salvation will no longer be possible.”
You stop pacing then, once more wrapping your arms around yourself as if the winds have sent a chill through you, despite the heat he radiates towards you.
There is fear in your eyes as you are probably imagining the world his words are painting for you, but you bite it back, determined to find a solution.
“So, what can we do? How do we stop him? Because I doubt we can save the spirits without first freeing them from his darkness.”
“You are correct. Only the destruction of the Darkling will end his reign.
Unfortunately, aside from the spirits, I know of nothing which can kill him,” he admits, but you are undeterred by this.
“You were there when they killed the last one, right?” you recall, to which he merely nods since he can guess where you are going with this. “So, how did they do it?”
Oberyn has avoided visiting the details of this memory for a very long time, but you are right to ask this question, as even though the spirits are not going to be able to help you this time, their methods might reveal some useful information.
“It happened nearly four millennia ago. He was a simple farmer, a good man by all accounts. Until a conflict in their settlement broke out and his wife and two children became the victims of circumstance.”
“The Darkling had a family?” you skeptically question.
“Unlike Simon, they are usually unaware of the evil within until something happens to them which is so painful that their souls are torn apart. This unleashes the darkness and forever destroys the person they once were.
This man went from a loving husband and father to a vicious beast, holding nothing back and sparing no one from his rage. He turned the lands upon which he had lived from a jungle teeming with life, into a pit of death into which countless thousands of people and animals were pulled and tortured to death. He had no wish to corrupt them or turn them into evil beings, he merely wished for all things to die as painfully as anything can.
Today, the place is known as the Lonar crater of southern India, but it was neither made by a meteor strike, nor as long ago as science estimates.”
“His evil created a crater?”
“When living things rooted to the ground are tainted with darkness, they spread it through the bedrock in search of other things to infect, which can lead to the collapse of entire mountains, given enough time.”
“How much time?” you ask, and he can see in your eyes that you are worried about how long it might take before Simon’s evil will create eternal scars upon the Earth.
“This Darkling reigned for three centuries before The Decem was able to stop him. And at that point, the entire European, Asian and African continents were covered in darkness.”
He gives you a minute with that, because it seems to affect you most severely, but the story is not yet over.
“I had no intention of joining the fight, as I could simply fly away from it, not wanting to realize that as it continued to spread, there would eventually be nowhere left to go.
But in the end, it was not the understanding that the world was ending which convinced me to go back, but simply the thought that I would not be the worst monster among such things. That in their midst, I might actually appear… beautiful.”
You step closer to him then, unfolding your arms to place a gentle hand over his cheek. A silent reminder of how you see him, regardless of his form, and he takes a moment to lean into your touch.
“I was late to the party, however,” he continues then. “For a mere fortnight I battled the darkened vegetation at the heart of its outbreak, trying to carve a path to the man responsible, unaware that I was closely monitored by the spirits.
At this point, only four of them had avoided getting caught by the darkness. Ursa, Papilio, Cervus and Equus.”
“The elements,” you observe. “Are they somehow stronger than the others?”
“Not stronger, but perhaps more resilient against corruption. Although, I don’t know why.
In any case, my efforts eventually led them to the Darkling, and once they had access to him, he never stood a chance.
He couldn’t see them coming, so when they all charged him together, he was immediately overpowered.
Ursa impaled him with her icicles, and then each of them took one limb and one direction, pulling him apart, not at the joints, but at the weakened area at the center of his chest where the spears of ice had already broken his spine and sternum.”
“And that was it?”
“No, he was still alive afterwards, bleeding black goop into the soil which seemed to superpower the mutated vegetation. Roots the size of redwoods erupted from the ground, all aiming for the spirits, because so long as he was still alive, the Darkling could reassemble himself.
But the elementals knew better. They had already abandoned the severed pieces, locating his heart instead. Not a lump of red flesh, but rather a small grey stone covered in coiled up vines.”
“So, his heart has to be destroyed before he’ll ever really be dead? How predictable.”
“Indeed. Had Scarabaeus been able to, she would’ve been the one to do it by simply passing through the stone, turning solid in the middle of it. But as she was already dead, Equus was the one who delivered the final blow,” Oberyn finishes, recalling the quaking bedrock in the aftermath of the horse’s powerful stomp.
He closes his eyes for a few seconds then, hoping you have not detected the sorrow which plagues him at the memory, for he knows not how to explain it.
As much as he wishes to ensure you will be well informed of all aspects of your foe, he is leaving out one detail of this gruesome story. Which is that the man, the grieving human, had reemerged once his body had been broken and the darkness within him begun to pour out.
In those final moments before his life had truly been ended, he was just a devastated father, as tortured and tormented as those whom he had killed.
Simon might be different, but he was not born with malicious intent. At some point, something must have happened to him to make him aware of his own darkness, and rather than fear it, he chose to embrace it. But before this, he was likely a normal human boy, with normal human feelings.
Which means if you succeed in stopping him, he might revert to that being in the moments before his end, and if this should happen, you will be forced to watch that boy die in agony.
“Okay, dumb question maybe, but it still needs to be asked,” you sigh, while attempting to massage your own neck. “Can’t we just drop a small mountain on top of him, then? I mean, if all we need to do is crack his dead heart to pieces.”
“Unfortunately, that won’t work, because even if his body is damaged, he can heal it so long as his heart is intact.”
“And, let me guess: because it’s made of stone, the vines around it are enough to make it nearly indestructible from the outside?”
You read the answer in his eyes without him even changing his expression, and you let your head hang low for a minute while you try to think.
“You said that the other Darkling couldn’t detect the spirits. Is the same true for Simon?”
“Yes. But since you’re human, he will be able to detect you.”
“God damned it. Can’t we just catch one fucking break!” you end on a scream, turned away from him, sending your voice out over the mountain range where it echoes around for much longer than your ears can hear.
He steps closer and wraps his arms around your waist from behind, feeling you relax into his chest almost as if unaware of it yourself.
“How do we stand a chance without the spirits?” you ask, and in your voice, he can hear such pain.
Not for fear that you will suffer, if he knows you as well as he believes to, but for fear of how much the world will suffer in each moment you stand idle, unable to act because of the staggering lack of options.
“As Oberyn, I was able to carve a path for them through the death-lands. As Tyrannus, I am certain I can do the same for you, however powerful our foe might be.
The question we face is not how to reach him, but how to get close enough to rip his heart out when he is protected by the mighty nine.”
For a long while, you stand silent within his embrace, although he feels certain he might be able to hear how hard you are thinking if he should focus well enough.
Then, something moves through you. He can feel it, not because you actually move, but through a sudden and very distinct shift in your energy.
No longer somber and despondent, you whirl around and take his hands, abruptly confident, as you appear to have uncovered something workable.
“I might be human, but I’m also light itself. And if there’s any reason I can think of to keep me separate from the other spirits, it must be because I’m their protector.
My place in all this isn’t to fight the Darkling, it’s just to save them. That’s my purpose,” you animatedly explain, your eyes alight with understanding, while he remains uncertain.
“But… how can you? They are no longer spirits at all; their very essences have been destroyed.”
“No, I don’t believe that. Because if it was true, their mystical powers would’ve disappeared completely, but they haven’t, they’re just corrupted. I can bring them back, Oberyn.
Don’t you see? My light heals me because that’s what it was always meant to do: heal spirits.”
Suddenly your confidence becomes infectious, as he realizes how much this all sounds true and right.
There must be a reason for your detachment to the others, a reason behind the fact that not even the protectors of this world can recognize you, and this might well be it.
But his hope is still stunted by one stubbornly persistent problem.
“Alright. Then I suppose all you need to do is figure out how to use it,” he says, and sees the optimism disappear from your frame as if an arctic wind has swept by and stolen it.
He takes a deep breath to re-center himself, reaching the conclusion that none of this is going to be solved right here and now. The world suffers while solutions evade you, but there is nothing to be done about that. If you rush in without a plan, one that actually has a fighting chance, you may well doom the earth to eternal darkness.
“Come, my love. You need new clothes, food and a night’s rest. There’s a village close by; we will go there to recover for now.”
You are not happy with this suggestion. He can see protests wanting to escape your mouth in the way you repeatedly search for the right words to voice your complaints. But in the end, you find none, allowing his reasoning to stand unchallenged.
Backing away, he brings forth the ancient beast, once again slightly offset by the extreme shifts in perspectives and sensory input. You look so small as he offers you his front paw and then lifts you up to his shoulder.
Not wanting to scare people with a dramatic entrance, he decides to walk down the mountain, surprisingly well camouflaged against the snow and protruding rocks in the dark. But this does not prevent him from being spotted by a couple apparently living on the damned mountainside, where no one should have been able to build anything.
Slightly shocked to suddenly hear voices beneath him, he stops, finding their house perched on an outcrop, seemingly without any road or lift leading up to it.
How do they even get to the village for supplies?
They are understandably equally shocked to see him, merely standing paralyzed as he observes them for a few moments.
“Norwegians are unusual people,” he says to you in his mind, to which you chuckle.
“The Vikings wouldn’t have been nearly as successful in their conquests if they’d allowed terrain to stand in their way.”
He does not argue this point, as he has seen Vikings for himself and knows firsthand just how hardy and resilient they were.
You are still several miles from the village at this point, so the couple will likely not cause any widespread panic. He leaves their home untouched, walking carefully past it so as not to trigger any avalanches, and when he reaches the little town down by the fjord, it looks perfectly calm and still.
Creeping as close as he dares, he doesn’t change back until he is just a few hundred yards from the closest houses, to keep the distance you will have to walk as short as possible since it takes so much more time. But no one seems to notice.
It’s late, but the tourist center should still be open, and they often have emergency supplies for unfortunate travelers, such as clothes, in the event someone’s luggage is lost, and stores are closed.
It is easy to find, sporting large flags on top of the single-story building, and it is still open.
“Hei, vhordan kan jeg hjelpe deg?” a tall blonde woman behind the reception greets when you approach her desk.
“Hi, we’re American,” you start, and the woman immediately repeats her greeting in English, which you politely thank her for before continuing. “As you can see, I’m in dire need of some new clothes. You wouldn’t happen to have some sweaters and jackets for sale, would you?”
“Certainly, follow me and I’ll show you where,” the receptionist smiles while getting up to assist you. “May I ask what happened?”
“Oh, that’s a long story and I’m very tired. Do you know if any hotel in town might have a room available?”
“There’s only one hotel here, but last I heard they weren’t fully booked for this week. It’s easy to find, just head down to the water and follow the road, you’ll see the signs.”
“Thank you,” you reply as you arrive in the gift shop area of the center, where there is an entire section devoted to equipping both humans and common pets to survive arctic weather.
You know your size and pick a thinner sweater along with a thicker jacket, to give you more options based on where in the world you and Oberyn might end up next. But as you are beginning to move back towards the receptionist’s desk, where the items must be paid, you lean closer to him and whisper.
“Uh, I’m assuming you have some way of paying for this, because I don’t.”
“Not to worry, darling. I never go anywhere without this,” he says, while pulling out a blank card from a concealed pocket in the side of his coat.
It connects to a bank account in the name of one Christopher Wilkins, who does not exist except on paper, but has a few million dollars all the same. Oberyn has twenty of these identities, all of which have similar accounts at dozens of different banks around the world, which all together adds up to over one billion dollars.
He offers the card for payment and the purchase goes through without difficulty.
You get changed in the bathroom before you leave the tourist center, walking towards the hotel hand in hand, when northern lights suddenly appear above you.
“Are you doing this, Valya?” he asks with a smile, knowing he is probably wrong but wanting to believe it could be true.
“If I am, it’s not by choice,” you sigh, looking up at the dancing green spectacle with awe. “I wish it were, though.”
The hotel is as easy to locate as the receptionist suggested, and you arrive to find the doors open despite the clock on the wall next to it reading nearly 11 pm.
Only half of the thirty rooms are occupied, so he pays for a night in a larger suite even though the two of you do not require so much space. He just wants you to be comfortable, and the suite has a bathtub, which he feels might be needed to get you to relax.
The hotel uses old-fashioned keys for the rooms, so once inside, he drops them into a plastic bowl on a sideboard in the hall, and then immediately begins to work on the buttons of his coat.
You hang up your new jacket, kick off your snowy wet boots, and head straight for the double bed to lay down.
“I feel like I could sleep for a week. But you’re probably not even tired.”
“Not like you, but I could do with a few hours. Adjusting to Tyrannus has taken a bit more effort than my usual transformation. Plus, we don’t know when we might get the chance to rest again.”
Shrugging off the coat, he hangs it up in the hallway closet and sits down on a stool helpfully placed beside the closet, to unlace his shoes.
“And what about food?” you inquire, turning your head towards him as you have undoubtedly not forgotten the green dragon’s appetite and likely draw the conclusion that the much larger white one must require much more.
“Strange though it may seem, aside from a rather unusual craving for pistachios, both my alter ego and I are perfectly fine,” he explains, momentarily wondering if the hotel restaurant might be open, and if he should go in search of some nuts.
However, once the moment passes, he feels only confused by his own hankering.
“But you haven’t eaten anything all day, and you’ve been fighting a lot.”
“Actually, I did eat some unfortunate bystanders in Detroit,” he recalls, which prompts you to sit up on the edge of the bed.
“Detroit was horrible. In every way. All those emergency responders… they died horrifically, and I just stood there,” you remember, and tears form in your eyes at the images which must be burning the insides of them. “I couldn’t do anything.”
“No, you could not have helped them. Those creatures may have been alone, untethered to the greater darkness, but that is also what made them so erratic and unpredictable, though still just as deadly.”
“Yeah…” you agree, turning your gaze down to your own hands, but then something seems to occur to you, as a crease bothers your brows. “But I made one of them stop.”
This surprises Oberyn, who is just about to stand having finished with his shoes, and instead remain still as he waits for you to elaborate.
“I yelled at it to stop, and it did. Just for a moment, and right before you came barreling onto the same street, but it stopped. And it looked angry about it.”
“As if it had been halted against its will?”
“That’s what it felt like, but I can’t be sure. Do you think I could’ve managed to command it somehow? Is that something Lux could do?”
“Possibly. The true power of Day is her ability to spread hope. If you were desperate enough, it is conceivable that you could have forced this creature to stop by using the sunlight as a physical barrier.”
“I can do that?”
“I should think so. You created an entire human being with it, I’d say you could definitely stop one little monster if you set your mind to it,” he winks at you, before getting up and moving towards the bathroom.
“If only I knew how the hell I do these things,” you say as he disappears into the tiled space and turns on the tap for the tub.
“You’ll figure it out, I have no doubts about that,” he replies while checking the temperature of the water, returning to the bedroom before he continues. “On a more positive note, the innocents I killed in Detroit will be the last innocents ever to fall victim to my beast. Nothing like that will ever happen again, because this dragon doesn’t need food of any kind.”
You have your head resting in your hands when he emerges from the bathroom, but you straighten out as you hear his words, and quietly trace his path over to the bed where he takes a seat beside you.
“Really? How can you be certain? You’ve only had it in you for a few hours.”
“Did you not notice the complete lack of stomach acid in there.”
“I did, but I figured maybe you had another stomach somewhere and I just wasn’t far enough through the system to be at any risk of digestion.”
“No there’s only one stomach, but this dragon stopped eating long before Lux changed him. And even when he did eat, it was at a time before organic life had evolved into actual creatures, so he fed only on magma and rocks. It’s what made him grow to such a size and develop those incredibly thick scales.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet. Who needs protein when you’ve got minerals.”
He smiles at you then, even though you are not trying to be amusing, delivering the phrase with sarcasm rather than joviality. You are too tired to enjoy yourself now, so instead of contesting your mildly snarky attitude, he sweeps you off the bed and into his arms in a swift and soft movement, returning to the bathroom where he puts you down in front of the just filled up tub.
“Are you trying to tell me I’m dirty without using any words?” you ask, still presenting the same general irritation, which is why he merely continues to smile warmly while he undresses you.
It takes only minutes for the hot water to begin relaxing you, while Oberyn gently helps you wash your back and shoulders, then your feet, before leaving you to just soak and warm your battered muscles while he steps over to the shower and rinses himself off.
He is surprised to find that he has neglected to notice you leaving the tub, when your hands are suddenly returning the favor, rubbing liquid soap into his back. But he loves the feeling, having never experienced such care from a partner before, and remains still to let you work.
Before long, you are both clean from head to toe, which is when the caring touches change character, becoming craving instead.
He brings you back to the bed without bothering to grab a towel on the way, abruptly needing you so badly he cannot wait long enough even for you to squeeze the bulk of the water from your hair.
Last night had been soft and tender, but when he enters you tonight, it is with fervency, perhaps even a streak of frenzy, giving you hardly any time to adjust before he is already working up a strong rhythm with firm snaps of his hips, making you jolt with each one.
He feels strangely uncontrolled. Fully aware that such treatment could hurt you, but utterly unable to stop himself. Something drives his body which is not so simple a thing as lust. There is a deeper purpose at work, one he cannot discern, but remains a slave to for now.
You seem only pleased with him, though, showing no indication of distress or discomfort, meeting his forceful movements with an equally firm resistance, as if under the same spell he is.
The need drives him so relentlessly that he reaches his peak in mere minutes, coming hard within the depths of your being, where he is so warmly received.
But you do not follow.
As he stills above you, your body remains unsatisfied, which gives him a sickly feeling to his stomach, because however much he seeks his own pleasure, yours is the real price. But this entire copulation has felt off, which intensifies his disappointment with himself, so when he pulls back, seeking your eyes so that he might beg your forgiveness, he is more than ashamed of himself. He feels rotten.
The feeling leaps away, however, when shock takes its place as he sees your face.
Your eyes are frozen, staring at nothing, and the tension in your body has given way to complete relaxation. Too complete.
“Valya?” he whispers, unable to bring any strength to his voice because what he sees within your eyes now is not life.
“Lux?” he tries, even weaker now, hoping merely your human form is lost to him, while the spirit remains.
Your own alter ego taking over, much as the dragon has done to him in the past.
But there is no response from you. No breath. No pulse.
-=<>=-=<>=-=<>=-
You feel wonderful. Even when he pounds into you, all you experience is pleasure, wanting more no matter how good he makes you feel. The pressure builds and shifts, flowing through you at different intensities depending on your breaths, which muscles are tense and which nerves are most directly affected.
It feels like flying through clouds of pure pleasure, devoid of thoughts or intentions.
And then it just… stops.
You feel how he comes, and you’re just one moment away from following up with the best orgasm of your life when everything suddenly goes quiet and still. Not just around you, but in you. No more pleasure, no more heat or sweat or even the cold sensation of the sticky fabric underneath your head, drenched by the water from your hair.
Opening your eyes, you find yourself elsewhere. There’s no Oberyn, no bed, no hotel room. You’re not even sure there’s an Earth.
But there is a presence.
Nothing around you is identifiable, the best you can come up with is that it looks like something Jackson Pollock might’ve painted if someone had asked him what life on a gas-giant might look like. And yet, something here is familiar.
It’s neither light nor dark, and at the same time it’s both, but it’s almost like your eyes and brain aren’t designed to interpret what they’re seeing, so all you get is a colorful mess with the appearance of a flashlight slowly spinning around in the middle of it.
Then you seem to blink, and suddenly you’re staring at yourself, as if there was a mirror in front of you. Only your reflection doesn’t move with you.
“Hello?” you try to say, but no sound comes out, leaving you wondering if you even have a mouth here.
That’s when you realize you aren’t breathing either, so wherever you are, this is a place outside of normal space.
You wonder if it could be some form of heaven, although you don’t believe in that, but it also doesn’t seem like it would be.
No, in your heart you know this is something else. Important to you, specifically.
Your reflection doesn’t move, but you feel certain it holds answers for you, so you try walking towards it. Your legs don’t seem to move at all, but you still glide closer to the other you, so perhaps all you need to do is think of the movement.
When you get closer, her chest starts to glow, as if there’s a shining gem halfway between her throat and her breasts. Then she raises her hands to show you how they’ve started shining as well, right in the centers of the palms, getting brighter with each passing moment.
Eventually, the light becomes so bright you can’t see anything anymore, but your eyes remain open, unbothered by the complete whiteness.
And that’s when you suddenly understand what this is.
Why it happened in the middle of a moment of passion, you have no fucking clue, but given how important it is, you don’t linger on the inexplicable, taking the win instead.
Because you’ve finally found Lux. Somewhere within yourself, she connects you to this other place. Her world. Outside all other aspects of reality, by the looks of it, but clearly also able to interact with everything, everywhere.
She made you, but at the same time, she is you, and here in her world, you’re able to see things the way she does. You understand the power of light and the ways in which you can bend it to your will, as if you’d done nothing else your whole life.
And once everything is clear to you, once you’ve unlocked all this knowledge she put in you from the start, the whiteness turns to dark, gravity returns, your lungs expand on reflex as oxygen once again exists, and you open your eyes to find that the darkness was just the insides of your own eyelids.
Surprisingly, though, it isn’t Oberyn’s face you look up at, but rather two very shocked paramedics, who despite their training, freeze when you come to.
Apparently, you’ve been “dead” for a while.
“Oh… Well, this is awkward,” you say to try and relieve the tension, and then there’s a loud racket before Oberyn appears beside you, having risen so quickly his chair fell over.
He doesn’t speak, but his eyes scream of the pain he’s suffered in however long a time you’ve been unresponsive, so to ease his worries, you ignore the urgings of the medical staff for you to remain still, and sit up to hug him. He trembles like a leaf in your arms, holding you very tightly, before he reaches down behind you to pull the covers up over your bare shoulders. You hadn’t even reflected on the fact that you’re naked.
“What happened?” he finally asks, his voice sore with how hard he must’ve cried.
But you smile in return, so filled with hope now that not even his sorrow can dampen your spirits.
“You brought me to the light, honey,” you tell him, and his sadness gives way to confusion.
There’s no quick or easy way to explain what you’ve just experienced, so you settle for the most important part, which can’t be seen, only felt.
You reach out and place one hand on the shoulder of the paramedic closest to you, locating the darkness in her heart without effort.
“Don’t worry about your father, Nora. He’s not going to hurt himself, he just needs you to stop and listen to his pain,” you say, feeling her father’s agony through the bond of love between them. “You always want to fix everything that hurts, but sometimes pain has a purpose. Let him tell you about it, and I promise you, he will be alright.”
The middle-aged woman looks at you as if you’ve just reached into her heart and given it a good twist, which in truth, you sort of have.
“H-… How do you kn-…?” she tries, but then sorrow rocks through her, stealing her voice.
To answer her, you let the hand at her shoulder channel the light from your own heart, and it glows for just a second as you pour hope into her being.
Her sorrow immediately lessens, brightening her eyes and smoothing the tense lines around her mouth.
You smile softly at her, and she nods in gratitude, even though she doesn’t understand what’s just happened, before starting to pack up their gear. Her colleague looks like one giant question mark, but apparently decides not to argue.
They leave a minute later, and Oberyn places a hand at your jaw, drawing your gaze back to him.
“I do not pretend to understand anything of what has just transpired here, but… you are ready now. Aren’t you? To fight.”
“I am,” you confirm. “I know what we need to do.”
“Does that mean we’re going back to America?”
“No,” you firmly state, finally without a shred of doubt within you. “It means we’re going everywhere else.”
Part 11
The Ten Spirits of the World
Air - Forest - Water - Stone - Night - Autumn - Winter - Spring - Summer.
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Together Forever - Pietro Maximoff x Reader
Summary: Y/n can see dead people
Warnings: death and sacrifice, some swearing
Words: 2.3K
A/N: canon is whatever i want, fuck the timeline, enjoy!
You stared at the mission report on the coffee table, twirling your pen idly around in your fingers. It was a report on your latest mission, one you went on with Steve and Natasha, both of which were in the lounge room with you, along with the other Avengers. Wanda and Vision were talking together, and Sam was having a discussion with Bruce while Tony tinkered away at something.
Wanda, Pietro, and Vision had been on the team for quite a few months now. Wanda and Vision were friendly with the entire team now, however they mostly spoke to each other and you. Pietro, on the other hand, pestered you and only you day and night. You didn’t mind, as you’d been in love with the speedster for quite a few years now. You’d been at Hydra with him and formed a close bond, one that you hoped one day could turn into something romantic. You were able to form bonds with the Avengers as well, but no one else seemed to talk to Pietro.
You put the pen to paper and began to write as something zoomed past you. You looked up to see Pietro leaning against the wall, looking at you with a big grin on his face. You frowned at him, seeing the mischief in his eyes, before he started running around, causing havoc.
“Dude!” you complained, a smile on your face. “I’m trying to concentrate!”
Steve looked over at you before glancing at Natasha, whose observation was already trained on you.
“Sorry to distract you, Princessa,” he said, his grin growing.
“Shut up, Pietro,” you laughed, rolling your eyes.
Silence filled your ears as everyone around you stopped what they were doing, all turning to look at you.
“Did you – did you just say… Pietro?” Wanda whispered, her eyes going wide and glossy with tears.
“Yeah…” you said, confused. “He’s right there.”
You jerked your head in Pietro’s direction, and everyone pivoted their heads, searching for Pietro. All of their gazes landed around him or on the furniture beside him, but no one seemed to see him.
“No… he’s not,” Natasha said, concern lacing her voice.
“Yes, he is,” you said, letting out a disbelieving laugh. “I’m looking at him right now.”
“No, Y/n,” Pietro said sadly. “They’re right.”
You cocked your head at him, confusion evident on your features.
“What are you talking about?” you asked.
Was this some sort of joke? Were they pranking you right now? You looked at Pietro with a questioning glance, and then back to the Avengers. Tony was the one to speak.
“Pietro died, Y/n,” Tony said gently. “Against Ultron, remember?”
You looked at Wanda, hoping that she’d sense your distress and call off whatever ridiculous prank this was, but she simply cast her gaze downwards, tears threatening to fall down her cheeks. Your entire body went numb, and memories you’d locked away threatened to spill over. You looked at Pietro, who had tears in his eyes.
The dam burst, and flashes of robots appeared in your mind, a jet and bullets. A flash of Pietro, bullet wounds peppering his body. You vaguely remembered screaming as he fell to the ground, feeling your entire world fall apart.
“No,” you whispered, your head turning from Pietro to the rest of the group. “No, no, no!”
“I’m sorry, Princessa,” he choked out.
“If – if he’s – dead,” you said, stumbling over the words, “then why – why can I see him? He looks as real as any of you.”
The group looked at each other warily, before Vision began to speak.
“There is a possibility that you are hallucinating,” he offered. “Hallucinations can occur when one experiences a traumatic event.”
You looked at Pietro again in disbelief. He didn’t look like a hallucination – he looked as real as anything, as real as you.
“You’re not hallucinating, Y/n,” a new voice said. “You’re a witch.”
Everyone turned to face the newcomer. He was a person you’d met very briefly in an Avengers meeting – Doctor Stephen Strange. He was a sorcerer and a master of the mystical arts. He had orange magic and cast spells, including the one that allowed him to enter the tower undetected.
“How did you even get in here?” Tony asked, curiosity plastered across his features.
“That is unimportant,” Strange said, waving a hand. “I’m here to tell Y/n to let Pietro go.”
“Why?” you asked immediately, standing up. “Why can’t he stay?”
You looked at Pietro desperately, searching his face. He was searching your own with the same intensity, but with something that gave you the feeling that he was trying to memorise your face, not find a way out of this.
“Keeping him here will only cause you both more heartache,” Stephen said softly.
“But… I love him,” you said, your voice cracking.
“Please let me go,” Pietro murmured, his face falling.
“I don’t want to,” you whispered, stepping towards him.
You took his hands in your own, looking into his eyes. But he looked down and away, not meeting your eyes.
“Please, let him go,” Stephen repeated.
“I love you, Y/n,” Pietro said, cupping your face in his hand. “But it is time to let me go.”
And suddenly you felt it. The invisible, magic string that connected the two of you – the string that held him here, on Earth, with you.
Please let me go. You closed your eyes, tears falling down your face. Pietro kissed the top of your head, pulling you into a hug. You sniffled, pulling back and placing your hands on his face. You wished you could make this moment longer, stay here stuck in time with Pietro forever, but you knew deep down that you had to let him go.
“Goodbye, Pietro,” you whispered.
He leaned his forehead against yours, and you felt him shimmer and fade away, his soul departing from this world.
And then you collapsed to your knees, grief overwhelming your senses.
—————————
Seven years later
—————————
You looked around at the new planet, purples mixing together with pink to create a somewhat gloomy and yet beautiful glow. It reminded you of the magic you possessed.
You had possessed your purple magic since Hydra had experimented on you, but you had only learned how to use it properly with the help of Doctor Strange. He helped you a lot after telling you that Pietro hadn’t actually been alive, but in your grief you’d accidentally summoned his soul to come and rest with you. Your magic had also created a block in your mind, making it impossible for you to access the memories of his death. After some time, you’d been able to remove that block, and now, seven years later, his death haunted your dreams much less than they used to.
“Ready?” Natasha asked from beside you.
Her voice pulled you out of your thoughts, and you nodded determinedly. You were here to retrieve an Infinity Stone – the Soul Stone to be precise. You were going to bring it back to the rest of the Avengers in order to bring everyone back from the dust.
You, Natasha, and Clint made your way to what looked to be some sort of mountain. You climbed it together, helping each other up here and there.
“I bet the racoon didn’t have to climb a mountain,” Natasha complained.
“Y’know, I don’t think he’s technically a racoon,” Clint corrected.
“He eats garbage. He’s a racoon,” you said.
Natasha smiled slightly and Clint rolled his eyes.
“Welcome,” an unfamiliar voice said.
The three of you immediately got into defensive positions, Natasha pulling out a gun, Clint pulling out his sword, and you wreathing your hands in your purple magic. A cloaked figure floated towards you, their tattered, black robes flowing in the wind, and ending in dark smoke.
“I assure you, you have nothing to fear from me,” the figure said, their voice echoing strangely.
“Creepy,” Clint muttered.
“Natasha, daughter of Ivan,” the figure greeted. “Clint, son of Edith. Y/n, daughter of (your/father).”
“Creepier,” Clint muttered again.
“Who the hell are you?” you growled, your magic growing brighter.
“You can consider me a guide,” the figure said, “to you, and to all who seek the Soul Stone.”
“Oh good,” Natasha said sarcastically. “You tell us where it is and we’ll be on our way.”
The figure removed their hood, and you froze as you saw a face you’d only seen in history textbooks. The Red Skull.
“Oh, liebchen, if only it were that easy,” he said.
You looked at him curiously, as did the other two, but you followed him to the top of the mountain, where a semicircle was carved into the side of it. All three of you peered over the edge and into the long, long drop.
“What you seek is in front of you,” Red Skull said. “As is what you fear.”
“The Stone is down there?” Natasha asked.
“For one of you,” Red Skull confirmed. “For the other... The Stone demands a sacrifice. In order to take it, you must leave behind that which you love. A soul for a soul.”
The three of you looked at each other in slight alarm. The Red Skull stood waiting, so you gestured for the other two to move a bit away, so that you all might be able to discuss what to do.
“Maybe he’s full of shit,” Clint said hopefully. “Maybe he has it, tucked away in those creepy robes of his.”
“I don’t think so,” Y/n murmured. “I – I could feel the other stones, back when… when…”
Memories of the battle in Wakanda flooded your mind, memories of those who had dusted creeping back. You pushed them away.
“I agree with Y/n,” Natasha commented. “Thanos left here without his daughter, and with the stone. You think that’s a coincidence?”
You looked over the edge and a sense of clarity washed over you. You knew what had to be done.
“Whatever it takes,” you murmured.
“If we don’t get the Stone, then billions of people are going to stay dead,” Natasha said quietly.
You looked back at the two Avengers, the two people who were a part of your family. Two of the people who had become dear to you, become your home. You grabbed both of their hands in yours and smiled weakly at them.
“Save the world for me, okay?” you whispered.
They both looked at you, shock and fear on their faces.
“You’re not the one who’s doing this, Y/n,” Clint said.
“You have a wife and kids, Clint!” you exclaimed. “And Natasha, you have a sister, and parents! I have no one! It only makes sense for it to be me!”
“We’re not going to let you die,” Natasha snapped.
You looked at Clint and Natasha, the two people who had become so dear to you, and you readied your magic.
“You don’t have a choice,” you said firmly.
You pushed them both back with your power, causing them to fall over. For good measure, you used your magic to hold them down, purple wisps running over their bodies.
“I’m sorry,” you choked out. “I love you guys.”
You turned and ran to the edge, ignoring the burning in your heart. You were afraid to die, but you weren’t afraid to keep your family alive, to make this sacrifice. You heard them call your name over and over, pain evident in their voices, but you pushed yourself forwards, leaping from the edge of the cliff.
As you fell, memories filled your mind. Memories of your friends, your family, those you hoped your sacrifice could bring back. But even in this moment, as you fell to your death, you thought of Pietro, and how much you missed him. And that you were glad that he was dead, so that he wouldn’t have to feel the pain of you leaving him.
Your body collided with the ground, and you felt an unbearable amount of pain for a split second before everything went dark.
Light suddenly flooded your senses, and you stood on the edge of a cliff, this one much different from the one you’d previously jumped off of. It looked over a beautiful valley, green hills rolling in the distance, skies as blue as you’d ever seen them.
Where am I? You thought to yourself. Why don’t I feel dead?
“Princessa?”
The voice came from behind you and you froze as you recognised it. Your breaths came out quicker and tears began to well in your eyes as you turned around to face the owner of the voice.
Pietro looked only slightly older than when you’d seen him last. His silver-blond hair was windblown, likely from running, and his eyes were still the stormy blue you’d previously spent hours looking into.
“Pietro,” you sobbed, running and flinging yourself at him.
He caught you in his arms and hugged you tightly. You did the same, promising yourself to never let go, no matter how long you lived. But were you alive? What was even happening? Was this some sort of dream? You’d had dreams like this before, Pietro coming back, or never even really dying, but this seemed so much more real than a dream.
Pietro pulled away slightly, just enough to see your face.
“What are you doing here?” he breathed, his eyes searching your face.
“Where – where is here?” you asked hesitantly, looking around.
You’d been too busy with the sight of Pietro to take in the golden palace behind you. It stood hundreds of feet tall and glistened in the sunlight.
“This is Valhalla,” Pietro revealed.
You looked around in awe, seeing the birds flying and chirping. You could distantly hear the clash of steel on steel, and the sound of laughter.
“You died a brave death to get here,” Pietro told you quietly. “And now we can be together forever.”
You looked at Pietro, the love you lost, only to be found again in death. You smiled at him and cupped his face, tears lining your eyes.
“That sounds nice,” you whispered.
#pietro maximoff#pietro maximoff x reader#pietro maximoff x you#pietro maximoff x y/n#pietro#pietro x you#pietro x reader#pietro x y/n#maximoff#marvel#marvel x you#marvel x y/n#marvel x reader#avengers#avengers x reader#avengers x you#avengers x y/n#y/n#fanfiction#x reader#fanfic#avenger#avenger x reader#avenger x you#avenger y/n#avenger x y/n#vormir#endgame#pov#quicksilver
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January 2024 Music Prompts: Day 1
Own My Mind ♫ Måneskin
Own My Mind ♫ Måneskin x John Constantine
I'm prayin' at your altar if you know what I mean.
One moonlit evening, Constantine found himself in the centre of a web of dark magic. A malevolent force, whose origins were hidden in the whispers of the underworld, had unleashed a demonic presence on the unsuspecting city. The streets echoed with the eerie laughter of the creatures that lurked in the shadows.
Amidst the chaos, Constantine discovered an ancient altar, its malevolence penetrating the very foundations of the city. The air crackled with malevolent energy as he confronted the demonic force that sought to devour the soul of the metropolis.
"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica…" Constantine murmured, a defiant challenge to the malevolent entity that lurked in the supernatural realms.
As he recited ancient incantations and wielded a weapon forged from celestial steel, Constantine sensed a mysterious presence — an ethereal force drawn to the fervour of his quest. Unseen eyes watched him from the shadows, mesmerised by the determination and courage emanating from the demon hunter.
With each incantation, Constantine's surroundings seemed to quake with an otherworldly energy. The demonic laughter died away and was replaced by an eerie silence, as if the air held its breath in anticipation of the impending clash between light and shadow.
At the heart of the spiritual battlefield, Constantine's gaze caught sight of a figure cloaked in shadow — a ghostly presence lingering at the edge of the supernatural fray. The being, drawn by the resonance of the demon hunter's fervent prayers, watched him with an intensity that reflected a strange fascination.
"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica…" Constantine repeated, the words a rhythmic chant that reverberated through the metaphysical realms.
As the incantations intensified, the shadows parted, revealing the ghostly entity that had been drawn to Constantine's request. A subtle change occurred — a dance of cosmic energies that blurred the line between hunter and hunted.
Constantine, his senses attuned to the supernatural currents, met the enigmatic gaze of the spectral being. The air quivered with unspoken understanding — a connection that transcended the dichotomy of good and evil. In that suspended moment, the demon hunter and the spectral being found themselves connected by a cosmic thread woven from the essence of the mystical battlefield.
The demon, sensing the shift in the balance of power, backed away from the combined force opposing it. The city, once caught in the clutches of evil, heaved a sigh of relief as the supernatural storm subsided. Constantine took one last look at the ghostly creature with a weary but victorious expression on his face.
"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica…" he uttered once more, this time directed at the enigmatic presence that hovered in the aftermath of the battle. “And tell boss Constantine said ‘hi’, you fuck” Constantine added, showing a middle finger to the dark forces who lurked around him.
The city, freed from the clutches of demonic influence, attained a new serenity. Constantine, the demon hunter, and the spectral being, an enigma woven into the fabric of the supernatural, shared a moment of unity — a testament to the complexity of the spiritual battlefield and the unspoken connections that transcend the realms of light and shadow.
After the supernatural storm, as the city heaved a sigh of relief, Constantine and the spectral being stood face to face. The air crackled with lingering energy and their eyes met in a silent exchange of gratitude and appreciation. Without words, a magnetic pull drew them closer together until their lips met in a passionate kiss.
“You saved the altar” the being murmured against his lips, placing her hands on his chest.
“It was bombed once… and I don’t have any heavy arms on me.”
“That’s good, Constantine” she touched his lips gently, tracing them with her fingers before kissing him again.
“I’m prayin’ at your altar…” he breathed, moving his lips to the being’s neck, gently squeezing her hips and pushing her closer to the altar, “if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, I sure know what you mean, John Constantine.”
The boundaries between the hunter and the mystical being blurred, and in this unspoken union the city witnessed a union that overcame the dichotomy of good and evil. The night, once shrouded in malice, gave way to the dawn of a city reborn, where prayers and mysteries lingered in the air like the echo of an ancient hymn, and the kiss between Constantine and the spectral being came to symbolise a love that transcended the boundaries of the constant fight between good and evil and the balance he kept willing to restore.
#january 2024 music prompts#music prompts#fanfiction#fanfic#fic#imagine#drabble#constantine fanfiction#constantine fanfic#constantine fic#john constantine x reader#constantine x reader#keanu reeves fanfiction#keanu revees fanfic#keanu reeves fic#keanu reeves imagine#prompt fics
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Death is Not a Teacher
a reflection on lessons human beings cannot learn
I put my grandfather in the ground last weekend. His death prompted the usual sorts of things that, as you will know from your attendance at funerals and experiences with people in mourning, tend to occur when someone dies. You know, as I know, that people say a lot of things, not because they are useful to say, but because one cannot escape the feeling that something must be said. You have perhaps tried to remain silent—but only for a time—as you will have found that it simply does not do. Eventually you say the same kinds of trite things that everyone else says.
His death cannot be said to have been unexpected. I watched his decline for what must have been at least twenty years. My wife remarked upon seeing him in his casket that he looked surprisingly like he did in life—a reflection of how very nearly dead he had been in his twilight.
I say that to say, now, that even watching his death come, as it were, from afar, even at a leisurely pace, when the end finally came, my father probably articulated best the sense among our branch of the departed man’s family.
“I really took him for granted.”
—
Because death involves reflection on life, and the life of the deceased, as one encounters people who knew the departed for longer, or in another capacity, were more or less close, we come to appreciate something we could have realized if we’d thought about it—that the person was in many ways unknown, that we mistook our small piece of their existence for a whole, that their life in its complexity and interiority involved many stages and many experiences they never shared with us. We didn’t know them at the time, they never volunteered the information, we never thought to ask.
But all this is well known. The piece upon which I wish to focus is the always implicit, but often explicit, pang of regret, and attendant call to action. We ought to have spent more time with them. We ought to have asked them the questions it never occurred to us to ask. We ought to have told them how we felt about them.
We ought not to have taken them for granted.
—
These pangs and appeals add to their triteness a certain edge when death arrives suddenly. A friend’s mother recently passed; she’d had a cancer diagnosis a year or so prior, but one Friday took a dramatic turn for the worse, and by the end of the weekend she was gone. He reported with gratitude he had some time to tell her, as she laid in bed, how fortunate he had been to have her as a mother, &c &c. When my wife was 16, her mother died at 40. She’d gone to the hospital for what appeared to be a severe panic attack and was gone within hours. No goodbyes.
Be sure to tell people how you feel about them, because you do not know how long you will have them. So the wisdom goes.
In my final year of undergrad I became an eleventh hour addition to an honors colloquium that I had learned late I needed to take to complete the honors program. That spring the course was to be taught by a literature professor I had seen but did not know, and I and some two dozen students were to read The Brothers Karamazov. The course immediately took on a mystical significance; professors saw me carrying the book and gave me strange looks, cryptically referring to it as the greatest novel ever written. One class the professor mentioned the example of the novel had prevented a fellow professor from suicide. The novel appeared to carry and to portend mysterious powers.
It is perhaps impossible to overstate the significance of this man to my life. We became Facebook friends soon after I graduated and I stayed on that website in large part to maintain contact with him, commenting here and there on his posts, but, eventually I felt like I didn’t really have much to contribute to his conversations. They tended to unfold between himself and some old friends and I felt like I was sort of a third wheel, and so my admiration took on a greater distance.
I learned recently that in the spring of 2023, that professor threw himself from a bridge.
Suicide makes the question stranger still, because suicide carries a sting of implication. I have observed suicides in other circles, and we are often admonished that we must check in with the people we love and assure them we love them. We are told the warning signs but are told the warning signs are not obvious, and the formal resources our society has for the suicidal are so dramatic and themselves so life-altering we question when it is appropriate to summon them.
I ask you, if he had known that I love him, do you really suppose that would have stopped him from jumping?
Try to find someone in your life and tell them how you really feel. Think carefully of everything they mean to you, stare into their eyes, and say those unspeakable things. Can you even do it? Will they even believe you? You cannot, as you yourself know if you have lost someone, even know—know—what they mean to you until they are gone, in the same way that you cannot know what food means to you until you are starving, and what air means to you until you are suffocating.
—
Death’s lessons do not stop there. Consider this lyrical example from a song that I hate:
He said
"I was finally the husband
That most of the time I wasn't
And I became a friend a friend would like to have
And all of a sudden going fishin'
Wasn't such an imposition
And I went three times that year I lost my dad
Well I, I finally read the Good Book, and I
Took a good, long, hard look
At what I'd do if I could do it all again
And then
I went skydiving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fumanchu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denying"
And he said
"Someday I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dyin'"
The twee sentimentality of this saccharine appeal hides more than it shows. None of these things require a death sentence.
What do you suppose it would really mean “to live like you were dyin’” ? Would it look like this? If you knew death was a week away, if you could grasp that rue oblivion waited and soon, where would your time and your money go? Would your posture toward your credit cards change? How would you eat and drink? Where would you go? What would you say to people? How do you imagine a society that embraced this posture on principle would look? Will you go on living that way now?
As G.K. Chesterton wrote in Heretics of life under the shadow of Death:
Many of the most brilliant intellects of our time have urged us to the same self-conscious snatching at a rare delight. Walter Pater said that we were all under sentence of death, and the only course was to enjoy exquisite moments simply for those moments’ sake. The same lesson was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people.
The threat of Death carries rather a more sinister implication than even Chesterton allowed. It is not solely a question unhappiness numbed through hollow pursuit of transient pleasure. For this we will turn to The Brothers Karamazov and the philosophy attributed to brother Ivan Fyodorovich, summarized in this instance by Pyotr Aleksandrovich Miusov:
Ivan Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in that faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism. That’s not all. He ended by asserting that for every individual, like ourselves, who does not believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become not only lawful but even recognized as the inevitable, the most rational, even honorable outcome of his position. From this paradox, gentlemen, you can judge of the rest of our eccentric and paradoxical friend Ivan Fyodorovitch’s theories.
The lessons of Death include not merely fear but terror, narcissism, immiseration, dissipation, desperation, and resignation.
But it is not merely evil to take Death as your teacher, and to internalize these lessons.
I wish to submit to you, as you yourself know, that it is impossible.
—
Whenever anyone tries to take Death as their master, to live out these lessons, reality soon presses against them, and they set themselves at odds with the life they are seeking to cherish to its fullest. Those who “seize the day” in the form of the hedonism that the carpe diem religion encourages invariably hasten the very thing they seek to defy, their embrace of momentary pleasures soon landing themselves and others in misery, and often an early grave. We simply cannot live like we are “dyin’”.
More abstract but no less important, I rather doubt that you or perhaps anyone who has ever lived seriously believes that you will die someday. You know it will happen. Sometimes perhaps the awe of the realization creeps up on you and you become very close to grasping it but life itself soon whisks it away. Even when the philosophers and the theologians tell you memento mori, they are setting you up not to die, but to live. They tell you to remember this to impel you to orient yourself toward what follows your death, which is to say the thing you wish to outlast you, to live on, or else to mind your own eternal destiny.
Which is to say, they say it in expectation not that you will die but in fact that you will live for ever.
And here we come to an odd point. One of the exquisitely pious mourners at my grandfathers funeral said at one moment as an aside and with significant tone, “well, it is just sad, because, well, we tried to get him to go to church but he was just never very open to it, and so, it is sad...”
Did that person seriously believe he was in Hell? Does anyone seriously believe in this place? No, for the same reason that nobody seriously believes in Death. It is so astonishingly incapacitating that life simply refuses to allow you to go on in this posture. You may feel yourself come close to grasping it—close enough even for conversion—but the most devout, the most relentless, the most frantic evangelist cannot even at the very height of their exertion truly live out a belief that the vast majority of souls are destined for eternal misery. The magnitude of the prospect exhausts individual capacity far before it exhausts itself.
We find ourselves, when faced with That prospect, wondering things that sophisticated and dogmatic theologians tut-tut—asking simple questions to which they have powerful refutations, while forgiving quite easily offenses we know cannot be forgiven. We are faced with the impossible prospect, the great heresy, that we desire their good more than God Himself desires it.
As I reflect on my grandfather, who bore no visible sign of faith, I ask even as I know better, is it possible that I am more merficul than God? I reflect on my professor, who died committing a mortal sin, is it possible—is it possible—that I love my professor more than God?
—
The point that I wish to make is not a philosophical or a theological one, though it is those things, but a practical one.
Life itself forces us to live as though we will go on living. To connect as though we will connect forever, to love as though we will love forever.
Even to take people for granted, because we feel—even when we think we know otherwise—that it cannot ever be The End.
We will see them again.
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"I'm sorry, Y/N, Peter, but your son may be innocent and cute now, but he's destined to be the future evil known as Chasm. A supervillain with Psionics and upgraded powers of Spiderman. He will destroy a lot of people. It's best if you let the Masters of the Mystic Arts take him to Kamar-Taj where we can make sure such events never occur in the first place." Doctor Strange said.
Y/N held Ben tighter in his arms as Peter glared at the sorcerer. "So, you want to take him away from his family because some day, some very far away day he may or may not become a supervillain?!"
"Oh, no, he will be a supervillain. The Masters have foreseen it to happen."
"Well, they're wrong. You said that I was destined for great destruction as the Scarlet witch, and look at me now. No chaos or destruction of any kind." Y/N protested.
"I'm truly sorry, but it has to be done. Please don't make this any more difficult than it has to be." Strange pleaded.
Y/N handed over Ben to Peter as he glared at the older man, eyes glowing red. "How dare you come into my house, threaten my son, and think what you're doing is for the greater good. You will leave and never come back. Otherwise, you will exhaust my patience."
"The full might of Kamar-Taj will stop at nothing until that child is safe in the walls of it. Please don't fight this. I can promise you that you won't win."
"And I can promise you, Mr. Stephen, that if anyone tries to take Ben away from us, they will never be forgiven." Peter warned.
"But I do hope you understand that even now, what's about to happen. This is us being... Reasonable..." Y/N sent a blast of magic at Doctor Strange, who blocked the attack as Y/N used his other hand to hold him in the air and sent him through the door into the hallway, but spelled it to transport him back to his magical sanctum.
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Hey!
I was raised aetheist, and I never really realised how badly Christianity could screw people up. There were some people in my extended family who were religious, but it was always just this vague distant thing that existed on the periphary. The only times I entered churches were in a touristy way, and only then because my mum dragged me into them - I've always hated churches, they have bad vibes.
Then I met my best friend who was raised in a religious family, and they described a lot of the strange, disturbing rituals they would perform in church. Around the same time, I began watching a content creator who was raised in a religious family and was going through the process of reconciling their religious upbringing with their homosexuality.
Since then, I've been really fascinated by how this religion can screw people up and make people doubt their entire being. I think a lot about how on earth this one religion - or cult - from a city thousands of years ago became so persistent and all encompassing.
I was wondering, what do you know about the real-world history of the Christian religion and Jesus? One can assume that Jesus was a real person, but what are the details? Was he a cult leader? A rebel? Both? How did he make people believe he was a prohpet? Why did he make people believe he was a prophet? I'm fascinated by the real historical events that occurred to create such a long-lived ripple effect, but I'm cautious of researching "religious history" on my own because I don't know how to avoid the many dangerous people one would be likely to come across in that feild. Do you have any knowledge to share?
-🟪
My favorite biblical historian is Dr. Bart Ehrman (link to his website). He’s a former Christian, current agnostic which I think gives him a balanced view of biblical history. He talks about what it was like to believe in the Christian story, what it was like to figure out what is real and what isn’t, and what actual biblical scholarship should look like. His books helped me disentangle the complicated stories around Jesus and develop my own sense of scholarship.
Most historians believe that Jesus was a real person who existed around the same time and place as was claimed in the Bible. We have no eye witness testimony about anything Jesus said or did. All we have are copies of copies of legends that people wrote about him decades after his death. We have no real way of knowing what Jesus thought about himself or what he claimed to be.
That being said, we can try to understand the traditions of the stories told about Jesus. I’ve heard a lot of fundamentalists claim to be going back to the “early Christian church” but there were so, so many traditions that sprang up around the story of Jesus all believing different theologies. For example, early Christian mysticism is a weird, wild rabbit hole to go down if you’re ever curious.
We can try to understand the man that Jesus was by looking at the stories told about him. These stories were based in apocalypticism under Roman rule: the belief that the end would come, but hey at least it would free people from Roman tyranny. Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher whose death caused shockwaves of grief among his followers. I do believe that he made promises about the coming kingdom and when those promises were suddenly impossible after he was killed by his government, his followers found a way to make those promises relevant again in their own minds.
I find this stuff interesting, but I really wish that this specific history didn’t affect people’s lives in the modern world. I wish it were just a weird history niche instead of a direct threat to people’s wellbeing. Being hesitant to research biblical history makes sense. There’s a lot of nonsense out there to dig through and it can be exhausting. Take care of yourself first. Biblical history is not as important as your wellbeing. But if you do enjoy researching, have at it! Find people that you respect, hold on to ideas loosely so you critically evaluate them, and be ready to take a break if you burn out.
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[HeroIsBack!SWK finds his Macaque clutching a strange stone oval that the hunters targeting FFM are very adamant on stealing...]
...
Other SWKs opening a portal to see what's taking HeroIsBack!SWK so long, only to see him in a bloody battles aftermath, covered in a lot of blood, missing an arm and holding in the other arm, and staring with big pupils, HeroIsBack!Macaque, who is holding a stone egg and chewing on the missing arm (Flight or Fight makes ya do weird things it seems).
SWKs: ...
LMK!SWK: Umm...you okay, bud?
HeroIsBack!SWK, looking at the others now: I'm dreaming of a solstice wedding now.
I have a whole post I'm working on describing an idea for a HeroIsBack fan sequel, so Imma keep SWK and LEM's meeting short.
Basically once all the kids (minus Silly Girl who was unclaimed by any of the humans strangely) are returned to their parents, Sun Wukong goes home with his new little troop in tow. When he finally touches down though... Flower Fruit Mountain is still in the aftermath of the Burning and is constantly being attacked by human hunters and starving demons. Wukong does the king thing and goes to kill some hunters/save captured subjects.
He gets to the Hunter's camp; only to see the carnage of a one-sided battle, many of the hunters are already dead or gravelly wounded. His subjects are still in cages, but something is busy with the remaining attackers.
Then he gets pounced by a figure lurking in the shadows that mistoke his tall form for that of a man;
Sun Wukong is immediately in love.
This terrifying feral beauty turns out to be his Six Eared Macaque; currently on one of his many human-focused blood frenzys.
After a quick exchange, they realize that the other is a dear friend they thought lost to the War on Heaven. Things are adorably awkward even as they slaughter the remaining hunters together.
Accidental hand-holding occurs when they reach for the neck of the leader of the hunters.
Later once the fight has died down and SWK has released the imprisioned monkeys, the two warriors get talking.
SWK, messed up phyically from the fight (maybe looking for a missing limb): "So... the leader of those hunter. I heard you say that he'd Took Something from you?"
Macaque, currently has SWK's missing arm: "Yeah. My treasure."
SWK, takes arm back: "What kind of treasure?"
Macaque, unstraps bundle from back: "This."
*Treasure is a Stone Egg*
Both Mystic Monkies be like: ╭( ๐_๐)╮ ⬯╭(๐_๐ )╮
SWK: "Well thats... unexpected."
Macaque: "Yeah it sorta just smashed near me after that solar eclipse. For some reason the hunters really want it."
Later Macaque sees Wukong interact with Liuer in a very dad-like fashion and decides to ask.
Macaque: "The little monk. He is your cub?"
Wukong, (chokes on piece of fruit): *begins realizing the parental-energy of his and Liuer's interactions* "Uh...."
Macaque, smiling cheekily: "And he just *happens* to have my title as his name?"
Wukong: "UHHHHHH..."
Pigsy, butting-in expert wingman-mode: "He is such a good dad! You should see how he tends to the baby!"
Macaque, eyes blown wide with excitement: "Baby!? Where?!"
Turns out the bloodthirsty killer Macaque is also a natural caretaker. Known as "Nanai Mihou" to the younger generation of monkeys on the island - much like how SWK himself is "Grandpa Sun".
SWK and Macaque are both having *feelings* about officially becoming parents (parenting Liuer / an actual future baby monkey), and maybe they might ask the other beautifully powerful celestial primate out on a date???
And ofc everybody can see whats blooming between them except the two monkeys themselves - they don't want to get their hopes up. Liuer gets frustrated and decides to pull a Parent Trap on them. Also Silly Girl turns out to be the child of a pair of Important Demons...
I have just realized that this plot set up is like a Hallmark Xmas movie, but with immortal monkeys.
But yeah the sudden shift in plot throws the other SWKs for a loop.
#monkey king hero is back#sun wukong#liu er mihou#six eared macaque#shadowpeach au#shadowpeach#jttw inspo character ideas#possible future fic?#blood tw#wukongverse
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