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bibliocratic · 3 years

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I was going to write this for the Aspec Archives week, but I got overexcited, so here we are.

AU: Mythical creatures. OG Archive team.

Some CWs apply, see tags.

The sea is more than water, her elder brethren taught her, warned her, chided her. It is home and harm and hungry, and you should not face it alone. Her siblings were older, ever knowing better, boisterous and boasting braver, but even they worried, scolded and fretted when she swam out too far alone into deep waters.

It will love you, but it will not always be kind, her eldest sibling bit out, snapped to mask their anxiety. There can be no bearings, in the deep-deep down, no anchors to denote where the sky lies.

When her people sleep, they rest wedged into some secure rock or crevice, tails looped around tails so no one is lost while dreaming.

You cannot be a shoal of one, my dearest, my youngest and bravest, the oldest of their shoal had said, when she told her she was planning on taking the rising when the waters warmed. Ascending landward on the tide swell, letting the shimmering scales of her tail split into skin.

She had not used the name Sasha at that time because that was a landward name she chose with care. Her folk gather names like a garland of pearls, to be constantly strung longer through life as age advances them; names for qualities, for momentous events, for hopes and desires. Her first name, gifted by her shoal, was guttural. It starts at the back of her throat, trails off into a susurration through gills. Mer is a difficult language to learn, though not impossible.

Tim tried. There is no one singular language of those who skirt the deepwaters, so he attempts to mimic her dialect. His pronunciation stumbling, he makes tentative sentences with the butchered grammar of fry. Martin’s grammar is even worse, though he picks up the eddies and waves of the sounds easier.

Jon, like most things in life, takes it as a challenge. One day, almost stubborn with nerves, to perform his task to perfection, he pushes out a juvenile approximation of her first name. Clipped and textbook and the stress in the wrong places, but Sasha smiles, showing her sharpest teeth in delight. Instructs him where to hold the hum at the back of his throat, how to roll the third phoneme upwards like an air bubble. Jon repeats it and repeats it, quietly smug and pleased at his achievement, and the sea in her soul rocks fondly at the sight.

She broached landward in the rising two moons after her age of maturation. She was one of a handful to come to shore. A sibling in Brighton who she phones every week, another two in Holyhead. Her first shoal traverses to warmer waters when the season shifts, and she would feel the rock-hollow absence of them if it was not for Tim, inviting her to participate in a hundred-and-one inane activities that keep her from feeling swept out; Jon, with his libraries of questions and intrigues, his quick-silver tongue; Martin, who sometimes swims a little further out from them but who finds her small knick-knacks in charity shops and craft markets and leaves them on her desk for no reason other than he has thought of her.

She makes three necklaces, plain with a strong chain, a single pearl attached. And on a day where her folk traditionally string garlands of seaweed and mangrove roots and colourful plants from coral reefs in a celebration of family – there is no one word in her language for this idea; it poorly translates into hierarchies like sibling and brethren and elders, but these are not concepts that fit it exactly – she gifts them to the shoal that will anchor her in the depths of the sea, and bestows upon them names. Most Mer names are wishes for quick fins, calm waters, safe shores, and so she wishes these for them in a language they are not quite proficient in yet.

Her landward shoal is smaller than is traditional. But she loves them as treasures of her heart, and thinks she understands what her siblings told her, about anchors.

His parents, both harpies from local nests, are perplexed when his wings start coming in.

Must be a colouring from your mum’s side, his dad hums thoughtfully when Tim’s primaries grow in long and shining like struck bronze. He runs a careful finger down the central line of the rachis, and the wing shudders and jumps, the feathers still sensitive, and Tim complains that it’s ticklish. His wings are too small to fly away as his dad dives in, captures him in careful arms, corkscrewing upwards a little off the ground with Tim squirming and squealing and squawking in play, but they flutter and flap nonetheless.

The wing span’s from your dad’s side, no-one from my nest ever went more than five foot, his mother says, rubbing at the dark brown of his downy secondaries. Tim stretches them out wide, eager to boast at their length, the tips of his longest feathers reaching past his arms held out wide.

Danny’s wings are smaller. Magpie like, bold lines of white broken up by blue and black, the same as his parents. Tim’s wings, broader, a colour like beaten brass that tips into gold at the ends, draws attention, but he’s never been embarrassed. His family never treated him differently, so he didn’t dwell on it.

He can fly, though he doesn’t often. After his parents died, and after… after Danny, he moved to London, where there’s tighter airspace regulations and permits involved, so he mostly doesn’t bother. This doesn’t mean never, however. He has learned, while working in the Archives, that from the ground, his wings have enough lift to pick up both Jon and Sasha by at least a foot. He thinks he could probably manage Martin as well, if it wasn’t for the unfortunate fact that Martin is mildly allergic to a whole host of things, including feather dander, meaning he gets a bit watery eyed whenever he gets too close to Tim’s wings, and he’s a sniffing, red-eyed mess come moulting season.

Anyway, he can always fly when he leaves the city. When it’s been too long since Sasha’s scales touched seawater, she invites him out to the coast. Jon apparently has had enough of the coast to last a lifetime, and Martin gets funny about large bodies of water, so it’s often the two of them. She swims out, the greenish scales of her tail catching the sun-struck water, and he, above, feeling the breeze brush through his cramped wings, follows her wake. When she breaches the surface in a playful arc, he swoops down, trying to catch her at the same time as she tries to splash him.

“You never thought to look into it?” Jon asks. Always brewing with questions. Tim is obligingly holding out one of his wings, and Jon, who takes everything like a project, has books out and webpages up but with no further clue as to why his colouration and span differ so from his parents.

Tim shrugs. “Doesn’t matter really, does it?”

Jon hums, clearly not agreeing, and Sasha rolls her eyes fondly, and that is the end of that.

Marysia had hoped her child would not take after her husband. She’d lit candles and attended masses during her pregnancy, worn the beads of her rosary smooth. Her child had been born on land, miles from shore, and her husband had been a grounded man, who had folded up his pelt on their wedding night for her and swore to wear no other soul than his human one.

But then her husband leaves, the box where he kept his second soul empty, and Martin is eight years old, and he wakes up one morning glassy-eyed and complaining of nausea, his lip bleeding from where his sharpening teeth have ripped the skin, and she knows her prayers were not answered.

It is not unknown, for the second soul of some folk to flourish later. But it is a rough awakening, to have one’s body grow a new skin out of itself, and Martin is off school for over a week, riddled with fever and fervour, constantly parched, crying and sweating out salt-water.

She watches his skin prickle with grey and black fur, blotching with white over his stomach as he coils up under his covers, throws them off only for his limbs to reduce to shivering. His brown eyes have gone black-shot, his cries a mix of language and barks, and Marysia fears she will lose her only child to the sea.

It will be hard for him to fit in, she tells herself. It would be best to choose one, and he has his friends and family and her on land, and who knows where his father is now, and surely it would be cruel, an unnecessary agony for him to endure some other foreign pull away from all he knows.

She does what she thinks is a kindness, though that is neither excuse nor forgiveness. After nine days, his fur has come through, sleek and soft, his whiskers twitching, and she helps him peel it off as one would do clothes, revealing sweat-sheened limbs, his eyes slipped back into brown again. His gaze still distant and feverish, he tries to cuddle into her, and she soothes him while she finishes stripping off his pelt and folding it neatly.

While he sleeps, she burns it in a fire in the back yard.

When he comes back to himself, she lies and tells him that he’s been sick with a bad fever. And he trusts her, and never questions it. He doesn’t understand that she’s burnt a part of him up, scattered the ashes to the winds, but it was for the right reasons. To keep him safe, and happy, and with her.

He grows up human-limbed and cloven-souled, and she never tells him the truth.

Sasha floats in an ever-dark, stolen away and hidden. There is a knot, a cage-trap around her legs, which have fused into her tail although there is no water. The sea, far away, like the wail in a conch shell, throbs in her soul as she strains and shouts and snarls in the wrapping of spider’s webs.

The sea is the only thing with her in the dark.

Sound has a particular quality, underwater. She hears it first, an echo that shivers through her, like being thrummed on the backdraft of some shallow wave. And then it is a wash of insistence. A command.

The compulsion uses her names, landward and seaward and it pulls and demands her attention, and she shrieks and cries back, struggling in the depths. She is being called home, up up up to breach the surface, and she cannot help but answer.

There is a crack and the sea splits, and she is choking on cold and dusty air.

“Sasha!” someone is saying. “God, is she – she’s not – ?”

“Get that stuff off her, come on. Sasha. Sash, love, can you hear us?”

A series of thuds as she splutters. A twisting, gnarling screech, and several swear words.

“Jesus!”

“Shit – shit, get her out of the way.”

“Boss, move, give me the – ”

The screech degrades into a glitching, warping scream. There is the multi-layered sound of compressed air, and crackling fire,the woosh and stench of something burning.

In time, she cracks her eyes open to the punch of light. Her tail flaps weakly. Someone is pulling great strands of silk that has clumped like poorly soldered iron around her limbs, making visceral noises of disgust. She’s cold-stream shivering, surrounded by broken wood and chippings.

“Hey, hey, we got you. We got you. You with us, Sash?”

The faint scratch of feathers against her cheek. Furnace-warm arms are holding her.

Jon is kneeling down in front of her. Holding an axe and stinking of smoke, and she knows, she knows, that it was his voice she heard, although she doesn’t yet understand why.

Martin throws a blanket over her as she shivers, her tail shrivelling and bisecting into legs. He has silk in his hair, and his fingers are trembling, but his face is broken with a look of such relief.

“It’s you,” he says, and his hand touches at his throat, at the necklace she made for him. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

It’s Martin in the end that carries her out of the tunnels, tucking the blanket completely around her. He is talking in the scatter-gun way he does when he is anxious, babbling, and she can’t bring herself to listen. He smells of soot and saltwater, and she’s never noticed that before.

She falls asleep, curled up into his hold, drained and shaken, but feeling utterly safe.

Jon is human. Completely, one hundred percent, although Sasha had joked once that way way back there must have been some Spinx in the family. Tim’s long suspected that Martin’s not quite human, no matter how he presents, but that’s Martin’s business, not his. Some folks have lineages that are rare, or mistrusted, or misunderstood, and Tim’s not one to pry.

Jon, though. Human through and through. Which is why he’s so worried.

“I shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Jon says. Martin’s with Sasha, making sure there’s no nasty side effects to her imprisonment in the table. Jon’s had a face on him for a while which means he’s Worrying with a capital W, and it’s taken hours for him to untangle himself into a blustered declaration to the rest of the class, spiked with nerves. “That place, it had her. It shouldn’t have… I don’t know what I did, but I told her to leave, a-and she could. And she shouldn’t have been able to.”

“And you think that you did that?”

“I – I know I did that, Tim, I felt it, o-or. I mean, I felt something!”

“Ok, alright. Alright. Let’s, let’s calm down and look at this logically.”

Jon goes over what he said while they struggled to rescue Sasha from the deep. It was something he said, he’s sure of it, which is why he is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the main archive office space with Tim, his trousers getting dusty and his temper scraping frayed, getting increasingly frustrated when he tries recreating exactly what he did with his voice, going through questions and commands and instructions and inquiries. And while Tim answers, it’s clearly not what Jon’s looking for, and he’s rubbing the hair at the back of his head in the way he does when he’s getting increasingly frustrated and is too bull-headed to walk away.

Then Jon, rolling his eyes and seething in annoyance, asks him a throwaway question, one of many he’s been trying – what’s your favourite colour? (seriously, Jon, that’s what you’re going with?!); What did you do at the weekend? (you know what I did, you and Martin were with me!).

“Why did you join the Magnus Institute?”

They both sit, frozen and horrified as Tim’s mouth opens and his words trip over his tongue in their eagerness to leave his mouth. As his eyes grow wide and water with tears as he cannot stop speaking about Danny, about the Covent Garden circus and Joseph Grimaldi. As Jon sits, ramrod-backed and cannot stop listening, a muscle jumping in his jaw. His expression wars between frantic and panicking and hungry.

Tim feels wrung out and hollow once he’s finished. Jon’s manic with apologies. It takes both of them a long time to calm down.

“Maybe… maybe you’re a siren or something?” Tim suggests, but Jon is shaking his head.

“It’s this place, Tim. It’s those statements, when I read them. It’s … I – I think they’re doing something to me.”

Tim looks at Jon and the light strikes off his eyes in a way that it shouldn’t on a human.

He touches Jon’s arm.

“We’ll sort this,” he promises. “We got Sasha out, didn’t we? The four of us, we can get to the bottom of this, yeah?”

Jon nods, and gives a small fragile thanks, and that’s human enough for Tim.

Marysia told herself she was not a bad mother. That her son was simply a hard child to love, that he had all the worst trappings of his father, his brown eyes perpetually caught with a far-away look that doesn’t know where to place its longing. But even as she sickened, and he sloughed off every facet of himself in a pathetic attempt to please her, she couldn’t find anything but sorrow in her heart to look upon the man grown over familiar in face, a growth that grew deep-set and fungal into contempt.

She almost spat the truth out to him. Once or twice, with the thought that confessing might bring them closer. She wished he’d chosen the sea instead, so she wouldn’t have to look upon her amputated, half-formed child who would always be lost.

But she never did.

And Martin finds out alone, cornered in an unlocked office, his hands dropping the lighter as a thousand eyes open and watch satisfied as they pour his mother’s choices down his throat to choke him.

It starts when Martin starts sleeping in archive storage. When Tim watches worms burrow into Jon’s skin at the same time as they latch and gnaw and wriggle under his own. When they get Sasha back, and find Gertrude’s corpse and Jon leaves and gets hurt and hurt and hurt again, and the world around them gets smaller and meaner and there is nothing Tim can do.

He takes to storing food in their desk drawers. Nothing that will go off, or won’t keep. Tins and dried goods and non-perishables. He lines the walls of Martin’s storage room with fire extinguishers of different types, fire blankets, and spare first aid kits bulging with plasters and bandages and antiseptic wipes. He buys blankets and pillows and rope and penknives. He stress-moults constantly, and tucks his feathers out of sight, irritated and embarrassed at the sight of them, and it occurs to him that nesting is not a healthy way to deal with this.

He wants his family safe. He used to think it was such a small thing to ask for.

He thinks about that when the bomb goes off.

He burns, and he is dying.

His rage and fear burn off into a different fury. That it has come to this, his family so threatened, that all he has to his name is his sorrow and trauma and frustration and vengeance.

Tim wants nothing more than to live. To see them safe. To rail and rage against what seeks to harm them. So he burns and he burns and burns, his wings aflame and his mouth twisted in a scream, and does not die.

They dig him out breathing from the rubble. His skin stained grey with ash and soot.

His new wings stretch out red as the sunset.

#tma #the magnus archives #fic #alternative universe #mermaid!sasha #pheonix!tim #selkie!Martin #regularOGhuman!Jon #with added Beholding spicyness #cws for implied child mistreatment #cw fire #cw burning #cw canon typical violence #cw compulsion #ask to tag

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wastrelwoods · 4 years

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my favorite genre of rec lists are “good shit you’ll probably miss if you sort by kudos” so I figured it would be good to make one with. some underrated gems from the penumbra tag

1. sealed with a -- by availedobscurity (5k)

set mid-season 2, juno/peter, juno leaves mars, solves a train murder, and meets a familiar face. i love amy i love that she wrote this fic featuring my absolute favorite top-tier femme fatale trope which i WILL NOT spoil and i think about it all the time. technically marked as a WIP but stands alone as a perfectly good oneshot

2. shake the dust by caelta (16k)

season 3 casefic, juno/peter getting-back-together focus. wonderfully fraught and funny in all the right ways with just an excessive smattering of puns and delightful turns of phrase and dad jokes that are just so stylistically right for penumbra. juno and peter’s easy back-and-forth banter contrasted with all the pining going on just under the surface? i don’t know why more people don’t know about this one it deserves more

3. in remission by gaytypo (3k)

season 3 vespa character study, short and sweet but i just really appreciated the exploration of vespa’s schizophrenia by an author who knows what the hell they’re talking about! and also just the crime family looking out for each other

4. give us your strength, world by nex_et_nox (4k)

mid season 2, juno hanging out at the lighthouse after monster’s reflection and before returning to hyperion city...if u hadn’t guessed i love fics that focus on non-romantic relationships and those are ALWAYS criminally underrated but listen. why must a fic have a romance. is it not enough to see juno steel, 40, stumbling around and hissing like a feral kitten being domesticated?

5. zichronot by julomaiboulomai (5k)

season 3, my favorite of the several very good fics about juno bein’ jewish. i like the contrast of the past and present sections and sort of. the two families juno has had? i also chug that respect julia juice hard i think her fic always slaps. AND i love that everybody gets a chance to have their relationship with juno highlighted and i think that juno being in. a season of life about recovery and making amends works really with the observation of Rosh Hashanah here basically it’s just a really well-crafted fic! its good

6. sunrise, sunset by easiIyamused (4k)

pre-canon, mag and peter! mag and PETER! cannot get enough of the complex, fraught family dynamics and just ANY exploration of mag being. a loving father but not a good man. and also nureyev being a precocious little twink....god i’d die for him. what a baby. who gave him a knife. SIGH anyway this is probably one of the MOST deeply underrated ones on the list

7. it’s alright, it’s ok by atlantisrises (3k)

season 3, juno/peter with an outsider pov. all the goodness of two queer men who had rough childhoods gently taking a child under their wing when she needs help...i’m weak to that damage. half a kidfic and half a casefic, i guess? anyway i think it’s great

8. a slightly kinder world by dooiney_oie (8k)

canon divergent AU, set at the end of murderous mask. i think it’s funny we all knew benzaiten was dead years before we knew the first thing about him but the second he showed up we all determined “no i’m gonna need more of this fool” . anyway i live for the benten&juno&”rex glass” dynamic here it’s really somethin

9. i’ve been having revelations (and i’m gonna let them shine) by barelyanybears, dreamsanddeath, gerrystamour (12k)

season 3, juno/peter focused but with some appearances from the rest of the family. just...just the most sweet domestic shit ok the concept? of just two thieves off exploring the galaxy and building a magpie nest together? and building a life together? good lord. i ALSO think on the other side of the coin the depiction of juno dealing with chronic pain was really nuanced and interesting and i stayed thinking about it for a long time

10. a distraction by aesphantasmal (1k)

nonspecific AU....the juno/peter cat-and-mouse dynamic becomes...a homoerotic swordfight!! god everything this author writes is so good and underrated i think they have the banter so down every time they write it it’s just...the centerpiece here. as it should be!

11. with feeling by acerbicsarcasm (9k)

juno/peter and also BEN. ALIVE. you know how it is! musician AU that feels romcom in tone to me in a way that i absolutely mean as a compliment because now i think about it this definitely inspired my last minibang fic

12. the signal and the noise by ty(umami) (10k)

what’s your toxic trait, mine is putting WIPs which haven’t been touched for a year and a half on a rec list. listen. i would pop bottles if this fic were to be continued but i do think what is already posted stands up as a SUPER interesting bit of writing with some cool worldbuilding and characterization. canon-divergent AU from the season 2 finale, that good theia! brand amnesia content, and really memorably good prose

13. comfortably bound by axel_knochenmus (2k)

season 3, juno/peter but mostly focused on juno’s...extensive experience with uhhh riding the uh,, subway. choosing the bottom bunk. sfw but with obvious implications of past bdsm experience, basically. this is the funniest goddamn fic i think it’s delightful, and also i’m just charmed by fic that explores juno being kinky in a way that doesn’t imply it’s unhealthy of him to have a history with that. its like how he just knows a lot about cardstock and collects bad art. he’s lived a life

14. every story has its chapter in the desert by howlikeagod (1.5k)

mid-season 2, juno and jet missing scene immediately post “monster’s reflection”...sometimes a man does emergency brain surgery on you in the middle of the desert and you don’t actually know his name because you’re just not on that level yet. listen. i know i simp but i can’t not hype sarah up i think her writing is spectacular and i think a lot of it DOES get the recognition it deserves but this is one of her less known oneshots that i like a lot

15. do-over by vitreousmonotreme (2.5k)

AU/futurefic, peter nureyev and a mysterious stranger who corners him in an alley...this rly just caught me by the brain and hasn’t let go since 2017 but listen. if peter nureyev DID go on a heist with his kid from the future would that be bitchin or what

16. coltsfoot by northisnotup (6k)

ANOTHER futurefic and another kidfic. i’m being exposed here for my personal weakness to well-written kidfic but while THAT is undeniably cute enough this fic is ALSO a canon-divergent AU so sarah and ben are alive. and its really a fic about juno’s complex relationship to motherhood and recovery? YEAH anyway fuckin. tear this fic up into bite sized chunks dunk it in your soup it’ll cure what ails you

17. become a thief in the night (become a dog on the run) by elanoides (8k)

pre-canon, an alternate nureyev backstory written just before angel of brahma! i can see why it didn’t get an immense amount of traction considering that timing but like. i’m suggesting it, read it, you’re missing out. sometimes a fic does not have to be even a little bit canon-compliant to be a really compelling character study and i’m SO fond of this one because as i mentioned earlier kid!nureyev is just such a precocious twink

anyway that’s what i have that’s my gift to you

#the penumbra podcast #i dont think it'll show up in the tag there's Links #but anyway spread this if the spirit moves you #rec list

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vroomian · 4 years

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(headdesk slam) Yes, that was 2/2 percent didn’t even realize I forgot to add it in the message until after I sent it and spent like 5 mins internally screaming at myself. I’m a mess of a human being tbh. Really? I’m surprised because it feels like Xi fits perfectly in this AU. Xi as accidental cryptid is the best thing, in both worlds. That’s a relief to hear. My anxiety and I don’t get along so I tend to go to worst possible scenario. You’ll probably regret that soon enough. 1/2

I’m like a magpie if something catches my interest and I’ll fuss over it and go all crazy. Especially now, seeing that you did that hob oneshot and mdzs that is two of the main three bl web novels that I now of. Like, of the three I’ve only fully read svsss and my mind immediately went to wonder where Xi would fit in that verse and at this point he’d totally be where the biggest amount of knowledge is and that my mind went ‘what if Xi was head disciple of Qing Jing Peak?’ 2/?

But that’s pretty unlikely given Xi’s desperate avoidance of feelings, plot, and responsibility. Though I could totally see him as a reluctant head disciple and desperately trying to avoid plot. Plus, definitely the first to notice that something would be off with this new Qingqiu. That said, bullying in his peak would not fly with him so I could see Binghe crushing on this unknown elder disciple.

3/3 I’m sorry I don’t want to make it seem like I want to push you to write another AU when you’ve got enough on your hands. My mind just just went ‘ooh what if this happened?’ And I wanted to share my thoughts with you because I think it’s interesting. So yeah, again feel free to ignore this. I’m like that guy from the meme with the pictures on the wall and red thread when my brain goes nuts lol.

long ask so this goes under the cut

okay there are a million different ways this question could go, because like. is yrz female in this universe? is he male? is he older than the main characters? is he younger? which sect is he living near? is his family nice or assholes? which version of the story is he in? the sssvs version or the actual original demon path novel (or whatever it’s been a while since i read the novel)??? does yrz get a system???

because the answers to those questions change the story drastically

okay so lets do two versions

one: it’s sssvs. yrz has a ‘background character system’ or something. he’s gotta have a system otherwise he wouldn't get without a thousand li of cang qiang sect. so this systems chooses him (lets say he’s a guy in this universe) because its low key and yrz is low key and it was like hey lets be low key together!

lol system.

lol.

but the system and yrz get along pretty well, and they get into the peak they want -- which is Wan Jian peak, because if yrz can’t join the library peak because of Plot reasons, he’s going with hsi second love. Swords! plus i don’t think there are literally any named characters from the story, except the peak lord.

so. timeline wise, i think that none of the peak-lords have ascended yet, so yrz does his natural thing --- he over performs and becomes the head disciple for wan jian peak as consequence and it’s literally just in time for the former peak lords to ascend, so yrz is like. stuck. as a peak lord.

both the system and yrz are horrified and confused as to how this happened. or, no, by then the system understands the Mistake it made in choosing yrz. on paper yrz is very unassuming! but in reality yrz has no chill. he’s never even heard of the concept of chill. he does everything at 110%.

I think that the bulk of this story takes place waaaay before the sssvs cannon, and lbh is sir not appearing in this fic. instead its -- liu qingge! and mu qingfang! both??? both is good! i think he meets lqg first, when he challenges yrz to a spar in the middle of a high stakes missing because lqg is a meathead jock at that age, and yrz is like. no? do your job? dumbass. (yrz has no idea who this shouty brat is, because the system is taking a nap. it wakes up and kicks itself for leaving yrz alone to do stuff.) yrz is older than lqg and kicks his ass because... well. because it’s hilarious really. so he gains a lqg shaped stalker.

yrz has a lot of interest in both sparring and healing, and with lqg following him around, yrz spends a lot of time at the healing peak and meets mqf there. mqf gets a huge crush almost immediately but never said anything. it’s not surprising that yrz quickly bonds with these totally cool new disciples -- and then learns that both of the are the succeeding disciples for their peaks. oops.

system gives up.

version two: bing-ge edition!

no system this time around and yrz stays far far away from the cang qiong. he joins a small sect to learn than fucks off to have adventures by himself as a rouge cultivator. so, male version again BUT yrz gets cursed or something and gets the ability to change gender at will because that’s funny and useful. also you know. porn world written by a “straight” guy. there are reasons for that kind of curse imma just gloss over.

then the plot happens. all of immortal demon path’s many, many chapters are playing around in the background of yrz’s life, but she manages to stay out of it -- until one night yrz gets accidentally recruited by a cult dedicated to bringing down the evil demon lord lbh, because this cult has a book yrz is after. she ends up being used as bait for lbh (because he eats virgins now according to rumors. he’s up to wife number 249 by now so it’s not wrong !)

yrz gets ‘saved’ by lbh, who’s kind of smirking and going ‘oh, no need to thank me, it was what anyone would have done,’ while totally expecting sex. yrz is like ‘oh, cool. bye then.’ and just. takes the book and leaves.

lbh: *surprised pikachu face*

and by the time he registers no sex is going to be happening, yrz is long gone and enjoying her brand new book.

after that, lbh and yrz end up seeing each other (mostly because lbh is trying to impress this woman and nothing is working) and yrz is like stop being a creep, i’m not interested in you. lbh needs to drink his respect woman juice and downsize on his harem a bit. yrz wouldn’t touch that with a twenty foot pool.

anyway i think it comes to a head when they both get doused in pa pa pa juice and lbh is like oh this is more familiar, shall we? and yrz is like bitch. and goes to a brothel in the city instead. at this point yrz and lbh are more like antagonistic buddies than anything else. lbh has too many wives and zero friends.

lbh starts developing some squishy feelings and is like what the fuck is this?? gross?? but he says nothing because he doesn’t get it.

then the cross over happens, bing-ge vs bing-mei!!! and after than happens, yrz is just chilling at home and lbh shows up at her place like really fucked up and subdued. he’s like ‘why him? why did he get the good teacher? what did he do right?’

yrz is like... hm. emotions. ew. she trys anyway because she’s finally ready to admit that she does like this trash goblin at least a little. so she takes care of him while he’s being depressed. lbh cooks for her and she’s like. this is so fucking good. thank you.

and lbh is just in love now. it’s nothing like he feels for his wives, but yrz makes lbh feels safe and accepted. it’s a comforting and comfortable love. yrz’s stupid little house is more of a home than lbh’s stupid palaces.

look. i stand by the head cannon that all lbh wants is to be a househusband, no matter what version im talking about.

lbh vanishes for a whole night. yrz is like hm, my house feels empty now. weird! and then lbh comes back and announces that he just divorced all his wives. he doesn’t want to be powerful anymore so can i stay herer with you.

yrz is like... sure.

and then there’s a long, long courtship and lbh marries yrz and archives his dream of just being fucking happy. the end!

#rivaladmirer21 #vrrm writes #so many possibilities #this universe is so funny #i can't decide which one i like better #svsss

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secret-engima · 4 years

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*tiptoes in* . . . Nox Verse, Wings AU? or a different verse, if you like, but Wings AU plz?

Ohhhhhh.

Ohhhhhhhhh okay I have.

Little to no experience with Wings AUs or what tropes people usually put in them but I do love the concept of Humans With Wings so okay-

Same rules as Nox!Taur verse, Nox came from a canon timeline where wings were not a thing, he and Ardyn got flung into an alternate timeline where wings were a Thing, proceeded to freak out over WINGS ON THEIR BACKS WHAT IN THE WORLD.

Also gonna make Ardyn a Fem!Ardyn in this AU just like Taur verse because that amuses me.

Everyone has bird-like/feathered wings of some kind and what animal they most resemble is often considered a hint to personality but that’s just- stereotyping nonsense really. Anyway, species of wing varies even in families, but tend to run along similar lines. Birds of Prey will often have Birds of Prey kids, but if the parent is an eagle, the kid can just as easily be an owl or a falcon as they might be an eagle etc etc. Wing culture is ... a Thing. Like not touching wings without permission, grooming being a Major Family or Romantic Bonding experience and flying is also totally a Thing.

Ardyn and Nox, understandably, give more than a few people heart attacks over how poorly they care for their wings and Cid takes it into his head to FIX that asap after meeting first Nox and then Ardyn. He is ... more than a little flabbergasted when both are just like “show us how it’s done” because that means- touching their wings. They trust him like that? They ... no. No they probably are idiots and don’t get the significance so he will TEACH them that but also Cid is an Emotion when they still let him touch their wings after his explanation on Wing Things.

Ardyn and Nox are just super grateful to have someone who will explain his stuff because Galahd wing culture is a little different so Axis is not much help and Dave never thought he had to say anything.

The royal line are almost exclusively birds of prey but there are some exceptions. Usually the big ones like eagles and stuff but sometimes hawks or even vultures (Mors was a vulture btw). Regis is a golden eagle. Clarus is also a golden eagle while Gladio is a bald eagle and Iris is an outlier as a red-tailed hawk. Cid is a house sparrow, Cindy is a pretty warbler of some kind. Weskham was a Canadian goose. Ignis is a chickadee because they’re pretty and Prompto is a fluffy burrowing owl.

Cor is the world’s most aggressive and Fite Me™ barn swallow.

Mock his wings and you will be Stabbed™. He is faster and more maneuverable than anyone here barring the incredibly rare hummingbird.

Then you have. Nox. And Ardyn.

Ardyn and Nox are both owls.

This is ... extremely unusual, as no Lucis Caelum in this AU has ever been an Owl. Not in recorded history at least. Eagles, Falcons, Kites, Hawks, even Vultures, but never Owls. Considering the night’s association with daemons, owls are even looked at with some suspicion in certain places, considering owls are also nocturnal creatures.

Ardyn laughs quietly as she tends her tawny, red, white, and black speckled plumage of a barn owl. She finds it funny. Nox’s wings are especially amusing to her.

Nox is a snowy owl. Silky white feathers with black specks in them, the one owl that is known to go about in the day, yet is still associated with the night because of all its night-flying kin. She suspects that their wings are a subtle message, especially after learning that young Prince Noctis of this world is not an owl, but a speedy and pretty merlin (I think they’re called pigeon hawk in North America?).

Stuff goes down ... kinda like canon Nox verse? But during the marilith raid Nox actually doesn’t warp Noctis away, instead getting there early enough to save Noctis’s wings and back and picking a fight with the Marilith, so Regis shows up, freaking out from the attack AND Cid’s phone call moments earlier to see the Marilith getting torn apart by an absolutely FURIOUS stranger. A teenager with massive, bristling wings of a snowy owl and glitter eerie white-orange colors in the firelight only to turn eerie blue-white as they reflect the light of-.

An armiger.

A powerful, complete, deadly armiger that is NOT Regis’s and cannot be Noctis’s because his son is huddled there in the arms of his wide-eyed nanny, watching the teenager stranger tear the daemon apart with magic that feels thick as a tidal wave and all but screams fury-fury-don’t-touch-MINE-DON’T-TOUCH-.

The marilith dies and teen stands there breathing hard, wings mantled and fluffed, armiger spinning around him in deadly circles.

Then Regis reaches out and touches his magic to the stranger’s in awe-shock-disbelief-hope-confusion and-

The teen looks at him with blue-blue eyes and Regis has just enough time to see his own features in a younger face, to see that face crumple with something like fear and hurt and longing denied while the heavy magic tangling with Regis’s SCREAMS a mix of love and fear and loss and hurt and longing-

The teen disappears and snap-crack of a warp.

Anyway Regis investigates because of course he does and he drops in to visit Cid without calling ahead because of Cid’s earlier phone call and finds one fluffy and worried Ardyn Izunia pacing in the kitchen of Cid’s home.

Much shouting happens.

The shouting wakes up Nox, who manages to drag himself out of bed long enough to bowl Regis and Co over with angry magic before passing out on the floor, which leads to an EVEN MORE UPSET Ardyn.

And then everything kinda goes to Nox verse canon with Nox waking up in the Citadel and Ardyn being there and Noctis being adorable as he talks them into staying.

Some other thoughts on a wing-fic AU:

Nyx is a lesser striped swallow.

Btw human wings are not nearly as confined in color/plumage as the birds they take after, with human boys and girls often getting the colorful plumage where the Actual Birds are much more rigid in who gets the pretty feathers or not. No one knows why. The only people who care are the taxonomists.

Lib is a blue heron.

Tredd is a northern cardinal (and proud of it, most Furia’s aren’t northern cardinals but rather other small birds but oh boy does Tredd love having red wings to go with his red hair. Luche is a Sigh). Luche is a woodpecker of some kind. Axis is a falconet.

Pelna is a grouse of some kind.

Titus is a harpy eagle.

Crowe is not a crow, Crowe is a magpie. Anyone who cracks a joke about that will get their nose broken.

Emperor Aldercapt is a cassowary. Because I Said So.

Oracles are like- Owls almost exclusively. No one knows why. It is thought that the first Oracle Aera was actually a swan, but 99% of Oracles are owls (am I totally making a hint that the original Ardyn of this dimension had a kid with Aera who went on to be the founder of the Oracle line after Aera was murdered and the wings were the Astrals tweaking things to be a permanent, silent reminder of Somnus’s sin in killing the first Oracle? Yes. Yes I am). Of course there are OTHER people out there with owl wings, but Oracles are the ones who just- keep having owl wings, no matter who marries into their line.

Luna is the first tawny colored Eastern Barn Owl in the line in a long time as most Oracles are True Owls (so like- Screech Owls, Great Grey Owls, Horned Owls, etc etc).

Ravus is a Great Grey Owl.

Hope that satisfies your ask anon!

#SE asks #anon asks #Nox verse #Nox!Wings verse #wingfic #wing au

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