#prompt30

The elezen in full Ishgardian knight regalia slams back first into the sandstone wall of the arena, his head snapping back after for it’s own secondary impact. A weak sound leaves the bloodied man as he slumps down into the sands defeated and unconscious, with cheers erupting from the crowds above. His opponent drives her greatsword into the sand to start pulling her helm loose, shaking out her hair with a massive grin. Tucking the helm under one arm she puts herself through the effort to heft the massive blade back up above her head one handed for her audience.

“BREM - VEE - DA! BREM - VEE - DA! BREM - VEE - DA!”

The rush of hearing her own name carried on countless voices never failed to stoke the sea wolf’s ego, and before even bothering to find a healer or claim her prize she had to look up to the stands. As she did, the chanting seemed to grow more harmonious, and her eye traveling over the faces something seemed off. Her adoring fans all seemed to have the same face, and the chorus of voices starts to ring more clearly as the same voice multiplied out through all the figures around her. 

A hand on the roegadyn’s shoulder has her whip around, helm dropped so she could pull her sword to the ready as another copy of that woman in a guard’s uniform stares at her smiling, eventually joining in with the chant.

@doubi-ixi​ @thethistlegirl​ @linariouswrites​

Cool dragon under the cut

Now where did that come from?

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Rin’s fingers shook. He focused and steadied them. He wove a trap as he shivered in the cold. He pressed a hand into the wound in his hip. His leg felt dead. He shook his hand of the blood and wiped the rest of it on the ropes of the trap. He had to get rid of his pursuers if he was going to have the time he needed to get out of these woods alive. Running wasn’t an option. Not with his hip.

Rin backed off and hid in a clump of bushes, and waited. His hip pulsed with pain. He ignored it. He’d find herbs for it later. 

There were the sounds of his pursuers. He waited. They would find him. They were tracking him by aura. The men came out of the bushes, close together. They came across the clearing, expecting to find Rin passed out from blood loss. They thought this was going to be easy.

Rin watched as they stepped forward into the trap. It went off perfectly, dragging all of them up into the air and dangling them there as they shouted. It took a couple of tries before Rin managed to get on his feet. He walked out into the clearing with a severe limp. He reached up, leg shaking under him as he confiscated weapons and tools. He threw them far into the forest and then turned, ignoring their shouts, ignoring the fear and victory he felt, ignoring the pain. He limped off into the woods to find somewhere safe. 

He traveled for half the day. He didn’t take a break. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get up if he sat down. He found a patch of aura eater moss. It blocked off auras from people’s senses and was often used to hide important magical things. His leg gave out there as his brain made it clear he would be safe here. He curled up in the moss and licked the moisture from the plants. He was cold and tired. He pressed a hand into his wound again and just laid there, shivering. He couldn’t decide if it was better or worse than forcing himself to continue forward. 

He sighed and dug into the moss, scraping dirt onto his legs to find warmth. He closed his eyes and told himself he shouldn’t sleep. But he was tired and he hurt and he felt that if he slept, he would feel much better when he woke. He wanted to get rid of the headache at least. Before Rin gave in to sleep, he reached out and found some plants with minor helpful properties and broke them up and then packed his wound with them. He wasn’t bleeding anymore and his healing abilities would make sure he woke up again. Problem was he was probably going to have an infection of some kind when he got home and to a real hospital. That was going to suck.

Rin closed his eyes, and allowed himself to sleep.

A scowl remained painted over the Sea Wolf’s features as she walked along the outside of the hull. It was a wonder they’d even got the ship home, let alone survived two Garlean gunships in the first place. Good men and good cargo had both been left to fall to the ground or simply turn into a fine, bloody mist after a direct hit from the magitek cannons turned upon them. Her own arm was still bound in a sling, likely about the only thing still holding her shoulder in it’s socket. No one had made it home entirely untouched from that particular trek, and it showed on the handful of faces still around trying to prep the ship for the repair crew.

“Cap’n? Ye ain’t said much since we got ‘er inta home port. What’re we gonna do?”

The twist of anger doesn’t leave Brem’s features in time for her to set her eye upon the young man standing next to her. She didn’t hold any blame for the situation on her First Mate, but there were far too memories that had come rushing back from the Cutlass Fury. Eventually though she takes in one long, slow breath and exhales before seeing to answering the miqo’te’s question. “We see to payin’ out for healin’ and the injuries what can’t be. And to the families of those that didn’t make it. I should have enough set back to pay the crew their shares of what we should have got home with. She’s my ship, my coin’ll go to fixin’ her.”

CW: Violence, gore, weird shit, general grossness -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wind of her opponent’s swing sends waves through the hair not already matted to her face from sweat, embedding his axe in the sands next to the sea wolf’s foot. A window had just flung itself open for her, and she wasn’t about to miss it. One long, worn down primal shout rushes from her lips as she charges shoulder first into the armored man’s chest, knocking him from his weapon and on to the flat of his back. With the roaring crowd cheering her on, she plants her boot onto his breastplate and raises one of her hooked cleavers up high. The bloodlust of the crowd was infectious, and even the Gamemaster seemed to be leading a chant that filled the forefront of her mind.

“FINISH HIM! FINISH HIM! FINISH HIM!”

The point at the peak of one of her massive blades comes driving down like a pick, driving through the other fighter’s helm right between the eyes and sinking in like it’d been driven through loose dirt instead of steel, bone, and flesh. Blood ran like a river out of the back of his skull and through the thin visor as the entire arena erupted in cheers. Though she’s plenty vain enough to bask in the moment of triumph, something immediately set to nagging her even as the fuzzy words of her championship victory played at the edge of her awareness. With her boot still holding the bulk of his form in place, she violently rips her blade from the remnants of his head and then reaches down to pull his helm free to look her opponent in what was left of his face.

Staring blankly back up at the sea wolf was a familiar face, though not one she’d ever faced in the arena before. Where her blade should have left a bleeding gash, there was an old bullet hole, and most of the backside of his head was missing. Neither wound looked fresh, discolored with the draining of blood and set in notes of rot battered her senses. The man’s jaw hung slack, with the the torn root of where his tongue used to be hanging in plain view. Even as horror rushed in and sent her reeling away from the corpse, the audience and Gamemaster continued raining praise down upon her. Words like hero and champion continued to batter her mind as she stared at the half decayed body.

A violent jolt runs through the armored body, and then another. The movement worked it’s way to being focused on the opening on the back of the tongueless man’s head until finally a pair of jet black, pointed limbs push through. After digging into the sand there’s a roll from whatever hidden joint was still inside, shaking more of their length loose and pulling the wound further apart for more of the limbs to start pulling free. The body itself goes into violent flailing as it’s shaken around the arena to the sounds of a still joyous crowd, the motions matching a spider pulling out of an old skin while molting as more and more of the slime coated beast within pulls free. By the time the arachnid beast finally shakes off his split open frame the beast was standing more than triple Brem’s height and a dozen times as massive, somehow having been hid in the much smaller form before. 

In her terror she bolted to the nearest member the guard, screaming out for help in wild, wordless panic. The man only laughs and points her towards the Gamemaster, who’s holding a long blade of dark purple metal unlike anything she’d ever seen before. “What’s wrong, Champion? Do you not wish to receive your Boon? You deserve it!” A grin far too wide for his features stretches over his lips as he takes the hilt of the blade into one hand and stretches the other arm out. Though she tries to focus on the behemoth of a spider scuttling around the arena, and all of it’s empty eyes staying locked on her, it was if she was frozen watching the blood sport ringleader instead. The tip of the ceremonial dark blade sinks into his opposite wrist under his own power, though instead of the jet of blood that should come with it there’s a slow oozing of tar-thick black ooze, causing the skin it runs along to sizzle and the sand it falls on to blacken into glass. The carving works up the length of his arm, splitting the flesh open until he’s reached the inner bend of his elbow, letting ever more of the dark fluid run out. Pushing out of the sickly ichor is a pair of writhing limbs not unlike those sending the giant monster around the arena, jerking against the opening to claw their way to the sand and start hauling itself out of the laughing man’s body. “It’s not like you have a choice anyway!”

Even as the words leave his lips, a pressure builds against the back of the pale woman’s skull, starting as pulses and building to hard slams against the bone from inside. Her hands fly to the sides of her head as she collapses into the sands, acting if she were going to somehow quell things by squeezing her head tighter. Agonized, nearly breathless cries rock the giant as bone began to crumble and a pair of dark, slime coated points drive out of the back of her head. From that point the split out, dragging along her scalp to drip it open to make way for it’s exit, leaving her to do anything but scream ...

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Sitting in what  his family had jokingly started to call his ‘office’, a pair of sturdy crates outside the back of the restaurant, Abylnpfef was looking through his ledgers now that the far end of harvest season had passed. The big day always costs them, but as long as he stocked up properly going into Starlight they’d more than make it back. He never much enjoyed all the ledger work, but the one other person he’d trusted to hand it off to had stopped handling them even before she went and made herself a recluse to the family. Still, judging by the shouts coming out of the door to the kitchen next to him, it was better to be wrestling a book than the battle his daughters were having with children stuck on dish duty.

Breaking away from the book for a few minutes, the elder sea wolf fishes out a cigar and a match, lighting it up and taking a few good huffs to get it burning properly. His wife hated the habit, and when she found them stashed she’d give them as ‘gifts’ to favorite customers, but he usually managed to get a few a month to enjoy for himself before they vanished. A quiet celebration of rare windows of solitude, and a reminder of days properly misspent along the shores to the South in his youth. The man’s eyes fall closed and he sets his feet up on the other crate, sinking into that window of nostalgia and simple bliss.

In that relaxed state, he didn’t pay any mind to the rustle of leaves and stone or the footsteps that were causing them, at least not until there was a far more pronounced sound of heel landing upon the wood of their rear landing. He doesn’t even bother looking up, instead just fishing the cigar from his lips to speak. “Sorry friend, if you’re here for a meal we’ve closed up for the night. And you’d do far better comin’ in the front than back here. We might be able to make you a sandwich outta some left overs if you’re starvin’ though.”

A smile sets over the guest’s lips, if nothing else to mask the nerves trying so hard to get her to bolt away before he’s paying proper attention. There’s just enough heartbeats of silence for it to lilt towards being awkward, the furrowing of the man’s brow serving as a clear warning of that. In the end, the words fall softly from her lips, tossing herself into sticking things out.

“are you sure you’re okay? you can overheat or get lightheaded and pass out or you can just come back feeling ten times more like shit and you’ll be even mor-”

“y/n, i’ll be fine, i promise,” michael interrupted, covering your mouth with his hand. he laughed. “i wouldn’t be going out there if i didn’t think i was okay to do so.”

you rolled your eyes, pushing his hand away from your mouth. “yes you would,” you argued, knowing that michael would do whatever he could to not disappoint his fans. “and you weren’t even allowed to speak an hour ago, do you really think you should jump around and sing?”

“baby, listen to me, okay?” he asked, ignoring the voice calling that they had five minutes. his hands slid down your arms, lacing his fingers with yours. “i’ll be fine, i promise. if i thought there was a possibility of me passing out or something, i wouldn’t go out there because i knew you’d be a mess.”

“fine,” you caved, squeezing his hands. “but i swear; if you die or anything like that, i’ll kill you,” you threatened not-so-threateningly.

he chuckled, leaning forward to press his lips to your forehead. “i know you will,” he murmured. his hands squeezed yours one last time before leaving you, adjusting the snapback on his head. “i’ll try not to push it and as soon as it’s over, i’ll let you force that nasty ass cold medicine down my throat.”

open prompt: What do you think happened to the other kids in the cul-de-sac? After high school? College? What are they doing now?

10 year reunion.