| experiments by evil scientists | counseling | nervous breakdown | witch hunt | depression |
| ritualized pain / injury | hugs | substance addiction | betrayal | robots / androids / AIs |
| theft | dungeons | WILD CARD | unexpected consequences of planned soulbonding | confession in desperate situation |
| falsely imprisoned | drowning | amnesia | touch-starved | accidents |
| post-traumatic stress disorder | loss of identity | forbidden love | phobias | asphyxiation |
| AU: SUPERNATURAL | POOR COMMUNICATION SKILLS | POWER DYNAMICS | MEET THE PARENTS/FAMILY | SEX POLLEN |
| CELEBRATORY KISS | TIME TRAVEL | INDECENT PROPOSAL | TENTACLE PORN | RITES OF PASSAGE/ COMING OF AGE |
| AU: MUNDANE | AGAINST ALL ODDS | FREE SPACE | FRIENDS TO LOVER /FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS | FIRST TIME/ LAST TIME |
| IN VINO VERITAS/ DRUNK FIC | BODY SWAP | LOSS OF INNOCENCE | TWENTY-FOUR HOURS TO LIVE | AU: ALTERNATE PROFESSIONS |
| FLUFF | TRANSFORMATIONS | HUDDLE FOR WARMTH | TELEPATHY/ MIND MELD | AU: FUSION |
“This is simply astonishing. I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t seeing this with my own eyes.”
Shan hummed in absent-minded response, most of her attention focused on the task at hand rather than Professor Xi’ns’ excited rambling. With careful sweeps of her brush she gently swept aside layer after layer of coarse sand, fingers stained a dull red where sweat and sand met. At a guess she would say she was uncovering some kind of mural that had been built into some manner of stone floor but that was all she had, a guess. The last survey team hadn’t been able to turn up anything from the natives about what civilization might be responsible.
Which was rather strange, in Shan’s opinion. From the scope of her current project and the small hill over that way where crumbling stone had defied time and the elements to remain perched on top like a broken crown, she would readily support the theory this had been a building at one point. Possibly a temple of some sorts.
Whatever it had been, it had been important. From what she’d seen buried in the sand and from her earlier perusal of the small hill with its remnants, the stone had been fashioned with tools and was not indigenous to the surrounding area. Someone had brought it, shaped it, and then used it to build….something. Whoever these people had been they had been far more advanced than any of the locals they’d managed to communicate with. And yet none of them had any stories to tell?
The surveyors might not have gotten any stories of the builders themselves, but they had heard interesting tales about those who crossed into the Expanse. According to local myth, it tended to be a one way trip. Easy enough to dismiss, right up until all of their equipment went dead simultaneously.
They’d triple scanned the planet’s surface, and even that wasn’t necessarily required considering the survey teams were responsible for conducting a majority of the safety scans. Once they’d landed they had set their handhelds to scan continuously. It was going to be a nightmare to sort out all those scan records later but stars willing, she wasn’t going to be responsible for any of it. Everything had gone perfectly, right up until it didn’t.
Upon reaching the site Professor Xi’n had been horrified, quite vocally, about the state of their equipment. Small portable stations that should have already been prepped and pre-loaded with all manner of analyzing programs were very much dead. Not even a flicker of power could be coaxed (or beaten) out of them. Needless to say Shan had learned a few more words to add to her basic Raptik.
If Shan had an ounce less self control she would have been shedding sparks the moment they arrived. Everything had worked fine until they’d reached the dig-site and started to make camp. Hearing a 10,000 cred computer ‘fizzle’ had been enlightening to say the least.
The survey teams’ scans and the scan’s they’d taken from orbit indicated there was something here.
Shan huffed a sigh. She dragged the back of her hand across her forehead, resigned to the knowledge that she’d probably just spread the red stain to her face as well. So half the team was spooked and the security they’d been obligated to bring were stalking around like angry Terran wolves, just waiting for someone to point them (and their rifles) in the direction of something they could shoot.
There might be whispers of Professor X’ins’ grasp on sanity, but once they’d discovered the equipment was broken he had decided to head back to the ship. Only it turned out it wasn’t just their science equipment. It was everything. Their personal handhelds to the state of the art communicators the head of the security team had bragged about at the start of the mission. Nothing worked. Not even the universal translators embedded underneath everyone’s tongues. Shan shuddered to think how wrong that might have gone if one of the requirements for joining the “xeno-squad” hadn’t been mastering Standard.
If it had just been the equipment, Shan would have chalked it up to some kind of bizarre coding glitch, or even light sabotage from a rival team. Shan snorted. People acted as if the real drama happened in the ruling houses. Clearly they had never been involved in an inter-departmental meeting meant to hammer out ‘The Budget’.
The communicators though, that was what had Shan fighting not to start shedding sparks. The smart move would have been to retreat, and now they couldn’t even do that. Not that Professor Xi’n was heartbroken over it, hence the enthusiastic monologue happening to her right. Considered one of the top pioneers in the field of Xeno-archaeology as well as the winner of the Galaxius Prime not once, but twice, Shan was painfully aware it would take a super-nova to get him off this tech-forsaken rock now that he had gotten curious.
Which was why Shan was currently working with primitive brushes and had a headache that was spreading further and further beneath the curve of her skull with every hour spent beneath the blazing twin suns overhead. If she were Terran she would be cooking from the inside out.
Of course, the professor wasn’t the only one who was curious.
“No magnetic fields or any traces of heavy ore in the soil. As far as our rudimentary tests can confirm there is no viable reason for our equipment to have failed,” The professor said as he passed by on his continuous route through the site. He was suffused with an almost child-like glee, his long reptilian tail lashing back and forth across the red sand. The yellow scales that decorated the underside were almost orange where the sand had collected around the edges.
Shan didn’t begrudge the professor his enthusiasm, it was bound to last right up until he realized the state of his tail and feet. She made a note to make sure she got to her water ration once they called it a night. An irritable Raptik bent on ‘cleaning’ wasn’t going to hesitate to pilfer any water that hadn’t already been claimed.
Sitting back on her heels with a sigh Shan began flipping the brush back and forth between her fingers. It left smears of red across already stained skin and ended up dusting the cuff of her uniform.
She considered the amount of sand she’d managed to clear and came to the conclusion she would be doing this until the end of time. Swallowing back a groan she made to get to her feet, and stopped. In the distance the heat from the baking sand rose in a shimmering wave. Shan blinked in surprise, just able to make out the ethereal shape of what could have been a tower. Pure white it wavered between the harsh line of the horizon where red sand met the yellow-green sky.
Shan slowly got to her feet. “Professor, you might want to see this.”
The ocean had seemed so much smaller in her mother’s stories.
No longer able to endure the crowded hold she and her fellow conscripts had been shoved into Isabeau had secured a spot against the ship railing. Well out of the way of the sailors as they went about their duties, and their wandering hands, but still in sight in case anyone came looking for her. Considering the foul temper Lieutenant Herain had been riding for the past week, she thought it best not to risk it turning in her direction.
Endless waves spun out from the hard line of the horizon to slap at the hull of the ship, the sun glittering and dancing across the shifting waters. White froth crowned each wave and was carried into the air when a strong gust of wind skimmed by, cold and stinging across her skin where the salt water had left it chafed. Isabeau licked her dry lips to taste the now familiar quick burn of salt on her tongue.
It was soothing, the strange push and pull of the ship caught amongst the waves. She felt none of the nausea that had sent poor Edon nearly over the side from heaving. Instead, the longer she stared at the water, the more she wondered what it would feel like. She had swam in a lake once, but those placid waters were a world away from the waves that bubbled and thrashed beneath her feet.
“There you are.” Adali stepped up beside her. She was trying to fashion her hair back into the series of braids she’d had earlier with little luck. By the time she had finished binding them back in place the wind had already tugged several dark wisps free. “Blast it all, why do I bother?”
“Because you refuse to be sensible and cut it.” Isabeau rolled her eyes. Her own dark hair was pulled back into a short tail. She’d cut it shortly after it became obvious her small town would not avoid the Call of Conscription. Better to do it herself than have someone make her do it.
Adali snorted but didn’t rise to the bait. She leaned against the railing close enough their arms brushed. Isabeau didn’t begrudge her the intimacy. Standing half a head taller than Isabeau, Adali made a perfect barrier against the sea-touched winds. And it wasn’t in Isabeau to deny herself or Adali the comfort of touch. After what happened with Ysandra they were all a little shook up.
Together they watched the white clouds gather in the distance, fluffy and harmless for the time being. “Were you tempted to run?” Adali asked, just loud enough to be heard over the rush of the waves below.
Isabeau shook her head. “No. As scared as I am and I am scared,” she admitted, “I can’t risk them making good on their threat and going back for my brother. One person from each family, that’s the law. If I make a run for it they’ll expect him to take my place.” She didn’t think she would ever forget the look in her mother’s eyes as Isabeau was led away by the soldiers, the terror that had turned her mother’s face milk-pale and clutch at Calin as if he too were going to be taken away to fight in the Mad-King’s war.
Isabeau gripped the railing hard enough to bleach her knuckles white. “Calin...he’s too young to fight. They would find another use for him.” Just beginning his sixth year, Calin was still small. There was no doubt in her mind they would would throw him in the gold mines where some enterprising soul had determined a child could reach where an adult could not. Only one in five of those children ever came back and more often than not illness claimed them not long after.
The quiet lay between them, only broken by the waves dancing below. It was oddly relaxing and strangely familiar. It itched at her, the strange impression that she should know the sound.
“I have three older sisters,” Adali admitted. “It nearly killed my parents to let me go, but we all knew out of the four of us, I was the most likely to survive.” She gestured, taking in the way she loomed over Isabeau as well as the broad span of her shoulders. “Once they saw me it was a done deal.”
Behind her, as if to break the melancholy mood, there was a rush of footsteps and then the ragged sound of someone being sick over the side. There was a soft moan that marked the victim as Edon. Out of all of the conscripts he was the one taking to sea travel the hardest. Isabeau tried to sympathize but after the fourth time she’d had to step out of the way or be splattered with Edon’s last attempt at a meal, she was growing short on patience.
The solemn moment was broken as Edon’s miserable retching was followed by a sailor’s frustrated cursing and the two young women broke into simultaneous laughter. “I’d be surprised if that one could take a bath without succumbing to the sea-sickness,” Adali admitted as her chuckles trailed away. “It took a couple outings before I discovered my sea legs. Did you live off the coast as well?”
Isabeau frowned at Adali and shook her head. “No, I’d never seen the ocean until they brought us to Pasima.” One of the largest coastal cities in Maerid, Pasima was often considered the Ocean Jewel. Upon their arrival Isabeau had been dazzled by the infinite stretch of the ocean into the hard line of the horizon, a glittering backdrop against the looming shape of the Summer Palace. Lieutenant Herain had threatened to have her whipped if she didn’t stop dawdling.
Adali scoffed. “I’d believe that if I hadn’t seen you walk across the deck our first day on board. You’d have to be born on a ship to - “
“Sails off the portside! No colors flying!”
Isabeau saw Adali’s face drain of all color before the ship turned into a maelstrom of organized chaos. Sailors erupted from below decks where they had been off-duty and began running too and fro. Isabeau could only do her best to stay out of their way with no idea how to help. Captain Eliza strode out of her cabin and began shouting orders. On her heels was Lieutenant Herain. “Captain! What is happening?”
The captain barely spared him a glance. “If we’re lucky just another bastard the Mad-King has over a barrel.” Isabeau had been present when Captain Eliza had been informed that her ship was being seized in order to transport supplies and conscripts to the frontlines. It hadn’t mattered that all merchants who hadn’t been quick to get their ships out of port before the proclamation went out were all in the same boat, as it were. “If we’re not, you’re going to get the chance to blood your little conscripts early.”
“Pirates in these waters? That’s impossible.” The lieutenant had to scramble out of the way when Captain Eliza strode up to the railing with an eyeglass in hand. “What are we going to do?”
“We’ll pile on the sails and see if we can outrun them.”
Lieutenant Herein gaped at her. “And if that doesn’t work?”
The captain bared her teeth at him in the grim parody of a smile, “Like I said, you’ll get to see what your little recruits are made of.” Her gaze landed on Isabeau and Adali where they were doing their best to stay out of the way. Isabeau didn’t think it was pity that softened the captain’s expression, as much as resignation. As if she were already writing them off as potential victims.
Adali stepped away from the railing, her chin lifted in challenge. She had also recognized the look on the captain’s face. “Do you have anything we can use as weapons?” she asked. “I think I can figure out which end of the sword to grab if I’m motivated enough.”
Isabeau hesitated, then moved up to stand beside her. “I know the basic forms for a spear if you have them. Or a long stave will do.”
Lieutenant Herein bristled behind the captain’s shoulder. “You aren’t seriously going to give them weapons? They haven’t been cleared yet.”
Captain Eliza laughed. “Yes, I imagine you would be hesitant to give your would-be cannon fodder weapons after dragging them from their homes. What would you have them do? Stand aside and hope the pirates are feeling merciful today?”
“We don’t know that they are pirates!”
As if waiting for the opportune moment to embarrass him, the lookout sang out, “Ship approaching. Cannon ports are open!”
“Right. Eames!”
At the captain’s shout a whip-thin man with dark skin trotted up. He shoved a heavy coil of rope at a passing sailor, “Store this before someone trips over it. Captain, we’re distributing the weaponry now. Herris is readying the harpoon.”
The captain nodded. “Good, make sure all the conscripts are armed even if it’s with a table knife.” When Lieutenant Herain started blustering she cut him off. “If you want to deliver corpses instead of conscripts for your Mad-King’s army you chose the wrong boat. Now get out of my way before I have you confined. If we have any chance of surviving this we’re going to need all hands on deck, including you and your lot.” Without waiting for a response the captain swept away, still shouting orders as she passed her spyglass off to her second-mate.
Not wanting to make herself a target for Lieutenant Herain’s frustration Isabeau followed Eames’ gesture to follow after him. Close on her heels, Adali said, “Do you think we have a chance?”
Isabeau glanced over her shoulder where she could see the approaching ship. At this distance she could just make out the movements of the other crew, the wavering echoes of their own call to arms reflected off the water. “I think we have a better chance now than we did before.”
The magic that binds him has begun to fade.
He can feel it in those brief moments of between, when day merges into night and night begins to brighten into day. Thick and clinging as spider silk where the spell was worked into flesh and bone, and spun soft and vicious across the the surface of his mind. He does not know how many seasons he has lost beneath the weight of it, but now that the spell has begun to weaken he can feel the distant echo of lost memories.
He cannot always remember that he is enspelled, that this monstrous form is the result of the greatest cruelty, twisting him into something obscene and other. Yet now in the twilight years of magic it has faded enough that he can wrest his mind from the spell’s clutches for whole days before inevitably slipping back under its hold. He does not know which is worse, those knife sharp hours of knowing he is enspelled, or the haze that descends and he no longer recognizes his body as the prison it has become.
With the spell losing it’s hold his body has begun to take back it’s true shape. His mind still lingers in the trap of the spell’s making, false memories and vile instincts rolling over him at a moment’s notice, but his body has at last begun to reflect the truth. Caught in-between he is forced to linger in the wild, feral places where man and monster fear to tread. Better to fight tooth and nail in the darkest wilds than warn those who crafted the spell that their pet was close to freedom.
And he is so close. The spell has begun to give way in stops and starts, and it is only in the wild places of the world that he can conceal the festering magic that has begun to emanate from him in a near invisible shimmer. The butterflies alone would mark him as magic-touched. They are drawn to it like moth to a flame and he is never free of them now. Every new flicker of dark wings is a promise that soon he will be free.
He dreams of what he will do when the last shreds of the spell finally give way. He cannot help but smile, sharp and furious and hungry for vengeance. So he waits, patiently haunting the feral edges of the world while the spell gradually unravels thread by thread, and when it does….
A dragon will once again rain fire from the sky.
Vasha does not fight when she is forced to her knees before the throne. She hisses in pain when her knees hit the marble floor and only just catches herself before her face can follow. The manacles around her wrists were removed but the ache lingers, the skin raw and aching. With one last bone bruising squeeze to her shoulder the guard who had forced her down releases his hold and takes a step back. Vasha ignores him, only having eyes for the man seated on the throne.
“So one of the Old Blood yet lives.” The king’s fingers tap against the armrest of his throne, soft taps that seem to break through the heavy silence that had descended in the audience chamber once she was brought forward. “Now what am I to do with you?”
There is a faint murmur of surprise and dismay amongst the gathered nobles. Vasha can smell the acrid stench of their fear as the king’s words spread, stones casting ripples into the water. No one is foolish enough to try and leave, not with their king watching, waiting for the first sign of treachery. They fear him and the power he has gathered here, in this dark mountain with a heart of ancient power. Like moths to a flame they cannot resist the draw, and can only pray they are not taken by the flames.
She laughs. It is soft at first. Everything aches, from her eyes to her toes, and here she is slumped before her greatest enemy. Beaten and alone, her allies too far to reach her in time, her greatest secret given life in only a few words. She is cursed, her blood heavy with the power that had once ruled this realm before treachery brought down an empire. Everything she has endured, everything she has lost, to end up here on her knees with blood in her teeth and her enemy victorious.
The king’s eyes narrow and he makes a short gesture. Her only warning is the creak of armor behind her and then pain explodes across her back as haft of a heavy spear is slammed into her back. She ends up sprawled across the cold marble floors with their delicate mosaics detailing the fall of the Old Blood, the Black Empress herself thrown down from her dark mountain and all her blood with her, from her eldest son to the babe still learning to walk.
Her hand covers the image of the infant moments before the sword comes down and Vasha continues to laugh even as pain leaves her breath coming short. She doesn’t fight when she is hauld back up and this time the king is staring her down with dark, furious eyes.
“Do you find your death that amusing?” The king leans forward on his throne, a gilded thing of polished wood and gold inlay. “Do you wish to join the rest of your kind that badly?”
“They are afraid of you,” Vasha says once she has the breath. “Everyone is afraid of you. They whisper of your cruelty and your lust for blood. They play court to you in the hopes that you will spare them or in the hopes they might feed your wrath with their enemies.” There is a shift amongst the nobility at her words, and she turns to smile at them. “Three hundred years ago your ancestors rose up against the Black Empress and the power she wielded, but look at you all now. Serving this wretch who has found power and thinks he knows how to wield it.”
The king’s face has grown dark with fury and his eyes sweep the assembled court long enough to ensure the flurry of whispers die before he looks back to Vasha. He smiles down at her, a sharp slash that reveals the pointed teeth and too red lips. “Do you think to convince them to turn on me? I am not a fool, not like her. They know what will happen if I am not here to hold the Mountain.”
Again, Vasha laughs and when the guard once again brings the butt of his spear down on her lower back, this time she will not yield to the pain. She stays upright and when she can draw breath she looks up at him with her own sharp smile. “You do not hold the Mountain.”
Confusion flits amongst the nobles, but she is staring at the king and his narrow face and she smiles when she sees it, the fear. “You are king but you are not Master. You have the Blood, that is true. But you don’t have enough. Not enough to hold the Mountain in truth. Instead you have forced it to sleep.”
Where only moments before the king had stared at her with dark fury, now the fear is growing. It blooms across his face in a slow awareness that is truly glorious. “I am the King,” he says and Vasha smiles with her teeth covered in blood. “You are pretender.”
It is the work of a moment to [reach] and it is just like she remembers, the pulsing heart of power that lies in the center of the mountain. The warp and weft of her realm, the shadow to every step she took within it’s borders. It had screamed in power and shaking earth the day she had been cast down, when her blood had soaked the earth and the air filled with the cries of her children. With her dying breath she had crafted one last working, and in its grief the Mountain had reached back and caught her soul before it too could pass on.
Even forced into slumber it had guarded what remained of her life until one was born who could carry the burden of her memories, and her purpose. Until she could return and once more claim her place as Black Empress of the Mountain.
Vasha gets to her feet as the very mountain trembles, a giant waking from its slumber. The assembled nobles cry out as there is a crack, and the king tumbles forward, his gilded throne split into two. Where it once stood the marble floor begins to tremble, and steadily a shape begins to rise up out of stone that has gone soft and malleable. A new throne born of stone and power gradually takes shape and eventually hardens with one last shifting crack.
It is stark lines and stone that shines like black glass beneath the spirit lights that adorn the high sconces. Ragged and aching, Vasha climbs the steps and stands before the dark throne before turning. She surveys the nobles in their silken finery and the palpable cloud of fear that covers them, as well as the frozen pretender who even now gets to his feet as if he has the right. One glance from her and the stone softens beneath his feet until he sinks up to his knees. His shout of outrage is cut off when she lets the full weight of her fury touch the air. The very air hums with it, and she imagines she can hear the click of his teeth as he shuts his mouth.
Vasha looks once more to the men and women who controlled the realm with their money and their connections, all of them descendents of traitors. “You were afraid of him,” she says, smiling down at where the king was trapped in stone. She turns to smile at them and takes a deep breath and lets it out as the Mountain reaches for her. The great doors of the hall grind shut and as they slowly realize that they are well and truly trapped, Vasha sits on her throne.
“I will show you what true fear looks like.”
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carisma_senseidancing_serpent
