#the max

Cloudward Ho Icons

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Part 1, Part 2

TW: Violence, blood, mild body horror

As an obligatory reminder, this story stems from a prompt that was given to both me and @the-modern-typewriter! She made an amazing novella out of it on her patreon!! I hope you'll enjoy my version as well :) Sorry it's taken me...literally a year to make a third part.

The gunfire was so deafening that it almost covered the screaming. Almost.

Before they’d even crossed the threshold to the outside, the shots were head-splitting enough to send Eloise scrambling to cover her ears. All she could see from their current vantage point was a sliver of the courtyard framed by blue sky. 

It was too friendly a blue, too ordinary and ideal, for such an ugly day.

Someone pushed past them out into the open, wielding fists of fireballs and a battle cry. In moments, they dropped to the ground. The fire snuffed itself out as blood spilled from the hole in his head.

Whimpering, Eloise backed away from the space in the outermost wall where someone had blown open an exit, all jagged edges and crumbling concrete. It resembled a too-wide jaw; a yawning mouth cracked open and baring its teeth.

Her mind flashed to Frenzy’s mouth, stretched impossibly until it tore, and shuddered.

A hand caught the back of her neck, gently enough. Eloise still jumped. Artisan made a soothing sound. “You can do this.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

She was already shaking her head, murmuring something incoherent and horrified.

“Eloise.” 

His voice, calm as it was, snatched up her attention like the crack of a whip. She stared up at him in what she could only imagine was some terrible parody of a doe-eyed fawn bathed in blinding headlights.

Artisan’s hand rose from her neck to cup the side of her jaw. Given what those hands could do, it shouldn’t have been so grounding; so reassuring. 

He held her gaze. “You’re going to get us past the guns alive. And I’m going to protect you. Hey-” A gentle stroke of the cheek dragged her wandering eyes back up to his. Haunting. Beautiful. Eyes of endless depths she’d caught watching her read to him on many occasions. “You can do this. Take a deep breath.”

Eloise heaved in a clumsy breath that gusted out of her in the same second. Artisan’s lips twitched upward.

“Slowly. Match me.” Still cradling her cheek, Artisan demonstrated an exaggerated deep breath, then another. Eloise copied him as best as she could manage until she felt a little lighter. “Good.”

Eloise swallowed. “What if my power fails?”

“It won’t.” Artisan took a step closer, and it stole her breath all over again. “Close your eyes.”

Eloise gawked. “Wh-”

“Eloise.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, hugging her arms around her torso.

When he spoke again, his voice was a quiet thing, low and soft yet resonant still with all the power of, well, one of the greatest supervillains alive.

“When you are reading a book,” he said, “everything else around you slips away. You lose yourself in a world of inked pages, and nothing else exists. I’ve watched you pore over chapter after chapter, reading aloud on autopilot. Sometimes you forget that I am even in the room with you. And I’m me.”

“I-”

“Go to that place now. Focus only on your ability. We are going to walk out that door, and you’re going to camouflage our presence. They’ll look past us. We’ll walk away safely. Picture it.”

She did. Eloise allowed herself to imagine wrapping the two of them in enough influence to trick others’ eyes into skipping over them, seeing them as ordinary and belonging as the bugs in the grass. She pictured safety and steaming showers and warm blankets on her worn-but-still comfy mattress. She thought of home and books in her thrifted armchair; of pages that smell antique and crisp and make just the right sound when you turn them. 

Eloise opened her eyes. The fear still buzzed in her chest, but the world felt less like it was about to collapse.

Artisan gave a slight nod at whatever he saw on her face. “Good girl. Let’s go.”

In what felt both like an instant and an eternity, they were outside. Artisan kept a hand on Eloise’s shoulder to steady her forward, murmuring encouragements and instructions beside her.

Eloise tried to narrow her focus to just the two of them, willing the landscape to swallow them up into imperceivable specks of dust. They took two strides, three.

There were bodies everywhere.

Villains, even guards clamoring for escape, were mowed down. Snipers lined the roof, the watchtowers… A glance around revealed more on every side. They continued to creep forward with bated breath, dodging carnage with every new step.

Eloise’s toe caught on the leg of a corpse, and she squeaked, jerking away. 

Artisan grabbed her arm, pulling her close again. She could feel the perception barrier around them flickering. 

“Relax. Focus.” He said it like it was nothing. Like they weren’t staring down a firing squad, navigating a labyrinth of corpses and blood. “Close your eyes for me.”

The thought of being blind in the belly of so much danger made an embarrassing sound catch in her throat. 

“You’re distracted by what you see,” Artisan continued. “Close your eyes. Focus all of your attention on masking us. I will guide you. Eloise- I will protect you if you help me. I need your help.”

I need your help. 

The plea was simple, a disguise of its own, but it settled between her ribs all the same. Her eyes pressed closed. She concentrated on blending in. On protecting them both.

They were moving again. Artisan’s hands on her arms led her forward, weaving through the devastation with surprising grace. Despite his smooth guidance, she felt clumsy and staggering. If she tripped over another body… Her stomach squeezed.

Someone screamed. Eloise’s gaze snapped to them as she found herself clinging to Artisan’s side. The source of the shouting dropped to his knees, hands behind his head–a security guard from inside–leaking red from his side. “Please, it’s Mallard! It’s Mallard! I work here, I’m on your side! Please, help me, help–”

He dropped like a stone. Blood trickled down his forehead.

Eloise choked on words that wouldn’t come. The world seemed to tilt, fuzzy at the edges.

“Eloise-” Artisan’s voice seemed very far away.

She was only distantly aware of more gunfire as Artisan pushed in front of her.

Artisan hissed through his teeth, clutching his chest. He staggered back a step, a jarring contrast to his usual bird-like elegance. Eloise stared, horrified. 

“Cover us, cover us now,” he said, his tone bleeding with urgency.

“Are you-”

“Now, Eloise!”

His tone spiked fresh fear up her spine, and Eloise closed her eyes, covering her ears as she pictured the two of them fading into the landscape with the same ease as a smudge in a watercolor painting. The veil slid thinly into place, fragile, like stretched skin. Eloise trembled with effort.

At the same time, Artisan jerked her to the side as another barrage of bullets chased them.

Eloise squealed, bearing down on her focus as if sinking her teeth in.

“I’m trying!” she snapped, just in case it wasn’t obvious. Just in case the effort mattered at all.

“You can do more than you think you can,” Artisan said. “I can feel it in you. You can do more than affect just us. You can affect them. You can change what they see; how they see us. Reach out in your mind. Change their perception.”

She imagined her power stretching in all directions, each line a stream in a spider’s web. She tapped gently at the windows of each guard’s mind and left a new idea there, coaxing them to forget what they’d seen. To move past it. To completely disregard the villain and his volunteer accomplice.

The shooting slowed, then stopped. The concentration left her dizzy and wobbling, sinking her to her knees on the ground.

She only opened her eyes when Artisan scooped her into his arms.

“Don’t stop,” he murmured, walking on with her, “You’re doing beautifully.”

She stared at the hole in his chest, jumpsuit soaked through with blood. “You’re hurt- You should be dead.” Dumbly, too boldly, she pressed a hand over the wound. She’d blame the fatigue.

“Dead?” He clicked his tongue. “Not so easily done.”

She could feel the skin and muscle beneath her hand shifting, warping, weaving back together. Relief flooded her. “Oh.”

“Oh.” Artisan was smiling again. “Don’t lose your focus. We’re nearly there. You might not want to look.”

As they neared the final gate, the guards began to drop one by one. Eyes glazed over, necks twisted and wrenched out of place. Moving as if puppeteered, the last one standing buzzed open the gate, finally leaning into the fence’s barbed wire to cut through his own throat. The blood gurgling out was quiet as he, too, fell to the ground with a soft thud.

Eloise really wished she’d looked away. Her insides heaved.

The strain of keeping them unnoticed tugged at her every nerve ending with a plea for relief. She’d never pushed herself so hard before. Her vision hazed in a dark vignette.

“You didn’t have to kill them,” she said softly, closing her eyes. Her head felt cracked in two. “I wish you hadn’t.”

Just a little farther and she could let go…

Artisan stroked back her hair, carrying her through the open gate out into freedom. His voice was something silken and velvet, something wicked and monstrous. She could feel the smile there. “Oh, sweetheart, but I wanted to.”

She finally blacked out.