(forgive me.)

Arthalia took a steadying breath. In through her nose. Out through her mouth. She wiped her sweaty hands on a mottled brown cloth she was sure had once been white. Once dry, she held her hands up to eye level to check for shakiness and didn’t like what she found. She balled her hands into fists.

A whimper called her attention back to the man chained to the dungeon wall behind her.

She turned sharply, eyes as grey as the steel daggers on the table beside her and just as sharp.

She forced herself to smile. A vicious, sharp toothed smile.

“Ah, Quincy. You’re awake.”

Thr man stirred, rattling his chains. He was older than she remembered, his dark hair now flecked with streaks of silver. The lines around his eyes deeper. Still handsome, still charismatic, but her stomach turned at the sight of him. A chill seized her that had nothing to do with the short silk dress she wore, nor the drafty dungeon they were in.

“A-amanda? Amelia? A…Artemis?” The bastard didn’t even remember her name. Years she spent devoted to him, years under his spell, under his sweaty lean body—

Arthalia felt sick. She shoved it down. Too deep now.

“Arthalia. My name is Arthalia, you maggot.”

He looked at her wide eyed, as though just now realizing this was not a mistake and she was not here to help.

“I— i don’t understand?” He put on his best sympathetic face. It had the opposite effect. “I thought we were friends, Arte-thalia.”

Arthalia laughed hollowly. A hysterical sound that strangled with sobs. “You don’t understand, no. You hurt me. Over and over and over. You took advantage of me, mind and body. You raped me, and then when you tired of using me, you cast me out. You isolated me and manipulated me and Light knows how many others before and after me, but you’re done. You are done hurting people, Quincy Adams.”

At first, the man called Quincy looked confused; in denial. But when her tone only hardened…he crumpled.

“Arthalia, you have to believe me. I didn’t know you didn’t like it. I thought you were into it! You always came for me.”

Arthalia’s eyes flashed gold. “NO. No, I didn’t, and even if I did, that didn’t make it okay. I couldn’t— fuck you. I’m wasting my breath.” she turned.

Evidently he thought she was leaving him there, as if this were a real prison. As if he were to serve his time and leave.

“No, no, no— Arthalia, please, let me go. I have a wife, a son now, they need me —“

When the dragon turned back around, she held a dagger in her hand. Her heart beat so loud she thought he must hear it.

Q looked momentarily relieved, as though that dagger might pick his locks— but the expression on her freckled face changed his mind. He began to beg.

An old book, bound with skin, sat upon that table. Arthalia flipped it open— she had bookmarks. Several.

Arthalia clicked her tongue, looking up from the foul tome.

“Still clothed. Mm.” She strode over to Q, doing her best to hide her shaking hands by clutching that dagger. The dragon sliced her captive’s shirt open, nicking the flesh beneath, and yanked his pants down. They were soiled— at some point, he had pissed himself. The pants fell around his ankles, which were chained to the ground. He shivered, exposed to the chill air of the dungeon.

“Arthalia, please, let me go, you’re not like this…”

Her eyes snapped up to his. She just pressed her dagger to his throat. “Shut up.”

This elicited another whimper from the man.

Arthalia hardened her heart.

She withdrew the dagger from his throat, leaving a line of blood in its stead.

The flesh tome told her where to cut. How deep, how long, to prolong his suffering. The first few cuts were sloppy, they varied in depth— it was difficult, cutting an unarmed man. More difficult than she anticipated. Especially when he screamed and jerked around. Arthalia hid her winces from him as best as she could, trying to replace them with a scowl, but she knew she couldn’t take much more of this. Ironic, that torture was painful for the torturer too. Or maybe Archelaos was right and she simply wasn’t built for this.

She abandoned the methods of the book and resolved to finish what she’d started. She wasn’t trying to get information out of him, so keeping him alive for a long time wasn’t a concern to her. Surely by now the dinner guests had heard his desperate cries, anyway. Not that any of them would save him, she knew, but she’d rather not be observed anyway.

She seized Q’s cock in her fist — too hard for pleasure — and extended her talons into his soft flesh. His scream was lost under her own as she brought the dagger down on that hateful part, severing the organ from his body.

Arthalia held it up for the rapist to see, his blood pouring down her arm, giving the appearance of a red evening glove to match her dress.

She mashed his severed penis in his tear-streaked face, then threw it on the ground at his chained feet.

“I’ve had enough.”

She turned from him, shaking drops of blood from her talons. Exchanging her dagger for a sword, she gave him the mercy she’d often wished for herself, if it could be called mercy at this point.

The blood sprayed across her new dress, creating bloody freckles overtop of her normal ones. A parody of her beauty.

She didn’t make it to the bucket before she retched, but her night wasn’t over. She waved a hand crackling with arcane over her body and cleared away the mess. A glass of water waited for her beside the torturer’s guide. She drank the water and tucked the evil book under her arm and rearranged her face into that mask of confidence.

She was almost to the door of the chamber before she paused. How could she forget!

Quincy’s head lay bloody on the stone floor. She seized it by the hair, matted with blood and gore.

“Goodbye, Q,” she sighed.

Remember to protect your lycan from fleas and ticks

Solidarity bonus:

This sunset was one the old wyrm had seen at least a thousand times. Proformu laid in the sand and the water on the coast, basking in the fading light. Part of him laid in nostalgia, recalling how many other nights he’d spent like this. This would be the eighteenth night he had first considered taking on another dragonsworn.

As usual, he knew he valued his chosen’s freedom over their fealty. He did not think the last had understood that. He hoped this one would. It was a topic he would approach delicately, in any case, and certainly not one he would bring up in the immediate future. Their relationship required a tad more depth, in his opinion, before something so heavy was placed into it. 

Though… Proformu recalled that his prospective charge’s first action upon reaching safety was to embrace him. It was a sweet thing, feeling the man’s head rest on his hip and his spiky hair under his hand. He found he liked the way that fit. 

The man’s tenacity was another draw. The only thing Proformu could call it was impressive. An entire year he’d spent searching, an entire year of being on his own in a way that no one around him would understand. He couldn’t imagine the toll the journey had taken on him. 

There lay yet another reason for wanting the man as one of his sworn. He wanted to remedy whatever pain the misadventure had inflicted, soothe aches that only the pair of them understood. Truthfully, Proformu believed this to be the largest reason. For all his size and occasional brutality, the wyrm was a gentle soul, and he wanted dearly for the chance to offer that gentleness to others. Especially those as deserving as this one. 

i. 

Sinvyrin stood in front of a tall mirror and found himself surprised at what he saw there. There were years where he would catch his reflection and find someone who he didn't know; a paranoid caricature of a person with a jagged smile and dead eyes that never stopped watching. He grew into that reflection until it became real, as familiar as a second skin, but now the person he saw was different. 

Sin saw a man in a slim cut gray suit that nipped at his waist and a tie around his throat the color of blood. It was a man who was calm in a way that was dangerous, whose smile was tempered, but still sharp; he was less carefully curated and more confident. 

He barely recognized himself. 

“So what's the occasion?” The tailor asked as she finished taking measurements for adjustments, marking faint lines in chalk of where to pull in a hem or adjust a taper. 

“Oh, nothing yet,” Sin replied with a note of amusement, though his eyes stayed rapt on his image in the mirror. 

The tailor only laughed. “Then you better find an occasion, huh?” 

Soon, Sin thought, and touched his pocket where an unfamiliar weight had begun to settle. Soon. 

What a sight. The young cleric curled into a tight ball on the blanket-laden loveseat squeezing the life out of a colorful, plush bee who didn’t really seem to mind all that much. Most of the choked-up sobbing and incoherent babbling had ceased as she tired herself out.

The jester watched from the other end of the loveseat. On one hand, the sound of her own voice distressed and crying was a little unnerving. On the other, her shadows seethed in the presence of such ripe emotion. Only a few weeks ago she would have reveled in this, contributed to it even. But something had changed in their relationship.

At first, it had been Angie’s willingness and excitement to learn. To grasp new magics eagerly and delve into any task placed before her. It filled Adola’s chest with pride. She made this. In some roundabout way, Angie was her creation. A little legacy she had abandoned, only for it to grow and continue on without her. She got to relive the joys of learning vicariously through the cleric.

She couldn’t help but see Angie as family of some sort. Really, she desperately wanted family. Something she had found and lost several times already. To say what their exact relationship was…was hard. Adola wanted to settle on ‘teacher and student’, but there was something deeper than that. They were on many levels the same person.

Adola slowly scooted her way across the loveseat, jingling a little in excess to assure the cleric knew she was getting closer. She reached purple gloved hand out, offering it to her distressed ward.

The cleric’s voice wavered, but managed to produce something like words. “Don’t touch-” She stopped when the hand arrived near instead of grasping at her. After wiping away some tears the cleric took hold of it, squeezing tightly. “It was right… There’s something wrong with me.” 

“Go on.” Adola’s voice rung gently. Curiosity overcame care. In what ways has this fucked Angie up? “I already know everything about you. Tell me what it said.”

“It..it said I was weak.” She choked on the words briefly, pausing to blow her nose into a tissue before continuing, slightly more composed. “I’m a hollow facsimile of a stronger thing. It talked about..you. I think. It called you ‘The Thing I Was’. It knew I wasn’t a whole person. It told me that it was going to kill you.. Or you would die, and I would be free of your sins.”

Adola let out a little sigh. “That’s a very uncharitable way to refer to our circumstances.” A finger tapped against her heavy mask. “It was just pulling from Leshii’s memories. It didn’t know anything special or new. It just picked up on things that *anyone* would have felt insecure and afraid of.”

“It said you were instrumental to its rise.” The words spilled from the cleric’s mouth. A rebuttal in favor of fear and paranoia.

But fear and paranoia were Adola’s domain. Fear, paranoia, the unknown, the depths, dreams. It didn’t get to her. “I may have. Address did a great deal to try to escape from me. Undoubtedly Leshii made some poor choices along the way as well.” She let out a little sigh. She wasn’t helping… “Angie, when I was you. ..At this point. I stood no chance against something like that either. The Admiral poisoned me with darkness, and that was my introduction to the shadow. Life-long fears were cemented into me, plucking at my mind constantly for years. But, we can overcome that.” Angie let out a startled noise as the elven jester yanked her by her hand, pulling her into a tight hug. She let out a wheeze of discomfort, but at the very least she felt…safe. 

Adola’s grip loosened a little bit. A comforting embrace. With herself? How awkward. “In the face of something immortal, what do we have?” She offered no chance for response. “Willpower. We possess the ability to defy the world around us. To bend it to our whim. We have our own will and our own volition. It is bound, forced to serve its master for eternity. It envies us for what it will never have. Freedom. The god it serves is dead or defeated and bound. And without that? It has no purpose. These are its death throes. A desperate final attempt to make itself relevant. Where it is static, we **will** grow. And we can grow together. With the people we trust.”

The cleric didn’t look up at her. But Adola could hear that the cleric’s sobbing has come to a stop, and feel her racing heartbeat had quieted to a gentle thump. She waited for a moment… Before realizing Angie had finally tired herself out and slipped off to sleep.