oh my god, did I really never post the Halmarut/Azem plantfucking fic?? probably because I was just fuckin around figuring out various elements of Amaurotian life but now it's a foundational element of The Lore, so... enjoy.
The funny thing about Akadaemia Anyder is that, on paper, everything that happens there is sanctioned and aboveboard. Azem drifts through the briny expanse that is the Words of Mitron, a few of its ichthyologists testing a rather wriggly concept that, as Azem watches, snatches up one of the researchers in a fat tentacle and squeezes before another one viciously jabs it in its semi-solid mass with a prod. Shocked into sopor, the concept relaxes, and the researcher falls to the floor in a heap. Some nervous giggling can be heard.
Sanctioned and aboveboard. All in the name of research. And if anything truly threatened, then Pandaemonium awaits.
Azem continues on, not bothering to find out if the researcher gets back up. Ey pass from one simulated biome into the next -- the Words of Halmarut, eir destination. From saltspray into jungle, into flora that loom twice as tall as the tallest Amaurotine, into rot-sweet scents and a humidity that weighs down Azem's robes and makes em feel drugged. Mitron may be a bit of a freewheeler but it is the Arbiter whose creations give the average Amaurotine the most pause.
Azem drops eir hood and presses on, wishing desperately to be out of the robes altogether. Not yet. Ey pass a luridly-coloured fungal concept that almost makes em stop, but ey keep focus. Deep in the heart of the Words would be Halmarut emself, sequestered in eir dark plant-choked personal sanctuary, covered in Anisopterae or whatever eir pet passion happened to be this time.
Azem slips into the central office, the stinging plants on either side of the ivied door rearing and then retreating when they recognise eir pheromonal signature. It is labyrinthine here, hardly any recognisable furniture and certainly no logical floorplan, a big room that manages to feel oppressively small by virtue of the great shadowing leaves and thick twining vines.
A small gasping sound somewhere nearby, and Azem follows it, practiced in this search for eir friend. It is a fond little game ey play, hunting for the other in strange landscapes, finding em engrossed in some botanical wonder, eir sweet face suffused with delight as ey turn to greet--
Hm, Azem thinks, coming upon eir friend now, engrossed in some botanical wonder, eir sweet face suffused with concentration as ey guide it inside em.
This is... new.
"Okay... okay," Halmarut mutters, adjusting eir precarious half-knelt position. Careful as ey are, the plant ey are testing pops out of em, and ey scoff in frustration. And then ey notice Azem's feet, and eir gaze shoots up to Azem's face.
"Isis," Azem smiles, shrugging off eir robe, the light shift ey wore underneath a much better match for the humidity of the room.
"Osiris," Halmarut shoots back, more annoyed at being interrupted than embarrassed at what was being interrupted.
Thusly named, the two friends regard each other cautiously, Osiris pointedly dropping her gaze to behold the conveniently-shaped concept bobbing between Isis's legs, Isis rolling her eyes and dropping back to her haunches.
"This, if you must know, is Awapuhi. It is not my concept, not originally -- I found it on our sojourn to that one island, when you were on that mission for Emmerololth? Thought I would test its applications--"
"And how is that going?"
"I would just love to find out, but some boor barged in and disrupted the process, so I suppose I will have to start over!" Isis pushes herself to her feet and hunts for a rag to wipe her hands, giving Osiris plenty of opportunity to admire her friend's unclothed body, so much like her own. They were unique in Amaurot -- heavier, thicker, rounded in places where many others were slim. Amaurotine androgyny -- lean, angular, more andro than gyny -- had become a gold standard of appearance and breeding, and Isis and Osiris's bodies were seen as exotic, foreign. Alien. Little wonder neither of them spent much time in Amaurot.
"I have a Heliamphora," Isis speaks up suddenly, as Osiris curiously approaches the Awapuhi. "I haven't been in the mood to test that one, but... since you're here..."
"What, exactly, is your thesis here?" Osiris asks, amusement again colouring her tone.
"Don't you start laughing at me. You know full well what my thesis is."
"Presenting your findings to the Convocation later, are we?" The wickedness in the look Osiris shoots in Isis's direction is palpable. Isis flushes, making a rude gesture in response.
"Aw, too bad. I think Hermes would be--"
"Do you want to stick your lovely cock into Heliamphora for me or not?" Isis interrupts baldly, picking up the potted concept and shoving it at Osiris with a stern look that Osiris finds very fetching.
It proceeds as if they had done this many times before -- and, in a sense, they had. Osiris had always been happy to assist Isis with her work, no matter how messy or potentially-dangerous it was. To be in the presence of Isis's passion and intensity, to be shoulder-to-shoulder with her oldest friend as they made discoveries that only they understood the depth of, to plunge her hands into dark soil and feel the tendrils of roots and hyphae reaching back, connecting them both to each other and to the star... their intimacy had always been absolute and shameless. It is nothing to set up these two plants in front of each other, to disrobe and fluff themselves, to kneel and position themselves...
"Wait. This doesn't hurt the concepts, does it?"
Isis rolls her eyes. "Always thinking of the concepts, you." Her voice is thinner, as if she is having trouble breathing. Osiris is suddenly very aware of them both. Isis's forehead dappled with sweat, the scent of her nethers mingling with the strangely-sweet scent of the Awapahi, which is beginning to ooze something as she rubs it against her entrance. Osiris's skin prickling with heat as she coaxes her cock from its sheath, its tip resting against the lurid red lip of the Heliamphora. They lock eyes.
"Ooh," Isis gasps, eyes widening. "It's... so silky. The secretion. Viscous, but not sticky. And the ridges... ooh..."
Osiris swallows audibly, her cock jumping in her hand. Oh, she had not been prepared for this.
"Tell me," Isis bites out, bearing down on the Awapuhi until it's all but disappeared inside her. "Tell me about Heliamphora..."
Right. Osiris forces her gaze back to herself, back to the deep vessel before her. She angles the plant and pushes in, but all she can think about is Isis and the impossibly wet sounds Awapuhi makes as she guides it in and out of her.
"It's a bit... big, for me," Osiris murmurs, and Isis replies, "then squeeze it," and Osiris takes the tube-shaped concept and squeezes it tight around her.
"Leaves not as rough as I expected. Hairy, but not prickly. No secretions, yet..."
"Ooh. Oh, stars." Isis is barely listening, eyes almost closed. She slips Awapuhi out of her, rubs it against the cockhead peeking from its sheath, nearly swoons. "So wet... so fragrant..."
Osiris looks back down at Heliamphora, feeling envious.
"Osiris. Look at me." Isis draws Osiris's gaze back, to her parted lips and her tousled hair, to her one hand working Awapuhi in and out of her while her other hand covered in fragrant secretions caresses her mostly-sheathed cock. Dizzy with desire, Osiris thrusts desperately into Heliamphora, her cunt aching for Isis's slicked fingers.
"Come here," Isis pleads, leaning forward, and Osiris leans towards her, her hand pumping with growing insistence. Their lips meet hungrily, Osiris pulling Isis's bottom lip with impudent teeth before crushing her mouth with her own, moaning. The plants are in the way. All Osiris wants is to knock them aside and palm Isis's nethers and feel that mingled wetness and plant secretion, thrust into it with hand or cock, whichever, plunge deep into her dearest friend and be enveloped in sweet humid warmth. Delirious with this vision, Osiris groans, shudders, squeezing Heliamphora in a deathgrip around her spasming cock.
Isis tumbles off the edge shortly after her, her squeal muffled by Osiris's mouth.
"Oh, stars. Oh. Oh, stars..." Isis sounds woozy, and Osiris feels similarly. She releases Heliamphora and slides to the floor on her side, aching, spent, but still wanting.
"I think... I think another test may be in order," Isis finally says. "The Isis-Osiris concept."
"Rigorous... rigorous testing required," Osiris adds weakly, reaching for her.
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From the moment Marazhai knew himself, he knew noise, and clamour, and agony. He knew the grinding of the gears that powered Commorragh and the wailing of the victims that powered its denizens. He knew the blinding electricity of nerve pain and the endless rolling pulse of bruises and the throb of his blood bursting from his rent flesh. Every corner, every alley, every room in the Dark City was packed to capacity with sensory information, with chaotically layered sound, with shadows tangible in their intensity, with the potential for new and novel suffering. This was Marazhai's cradle. It would come to be his theater, and his role was assured.
The Rogue Trader's voidship was not much different, particularly in its depths. Engines, chanting, barking of orders. Brash bulkhead lights, blood- and oil-stained corridors, smell of overheated plasteel, hum of the Gellar field. The magos's clicking, whirring mechadendrites. The psyker's incessant babbling and murmuring and whispering. The heady miasma of blood that surrounded the spinner. The Warp, pressing, pressing, pressing. He was shielded from it by the Rogue Trader's inconceivable protection, but it pressed nevertheless, probing, questing, ever hungry, ever patient.
Noise, and clamour, and agony. And then, with one instinctive psychic push from the Interrogator's harried mind… silence.
Not purposeful silence -- not the silence of a cold shoulder, or of a pause before a shockwave hits, or of forced deprivation. Marazhai Aezyrraesh fell away from his cacophonous body, the cacophonous cosmos, and sank slowly into quietude. The knowledge of the boundaries of his form dissipated. The letters of his name drifted apart from each other. Anger, released. Restlessness, lost. Fear… forgotten. Marazhai, forgotten. Lost. Released.
Was this the Warp, or something deeper than it?
Was this the death mon-keigh experienced? Or… beasts?
It did not matter. The sharp, manic mind that would have asked these questions was naught
but a small spark
dying
in the infinite
silence.
Silence.
And then
a small
spark.
A mind, that knows space and dimension; knows it is far, far away, in a void. A mind, that knows it was once a body, of boundary and form. Where? There, whence a voice comes trickling in like a rivulet of blood? A voice? Words… words it knows. A plea that compels it… her… him. The spark grows. It is light, light like no other. It is light and it is coming into being.
Marazhai knows himself, and all is noise, and clamour, and agony. But he is remembering silence, and light, and to be here again amidst all that which once defined him, that now blinds and deafens and wounds him is enough to make him…
"Strange. Didn't know drukhari could cry."
"Be quiet, Interrogator, and concentrate. You are here to fix what you've broken, and nothing more." The voice, the plea that compelled him. Cousin. Asuryani. Yrliet.
Her long fingers, ghosting his hairline, an intimacy that is not earned but for which he yearns regardless. The realisation steals the breath that has just returned to his lungs. This is not me. I am not this. What is happening?
"Stillness. You have known something many of us, even amongst the Asuryani, will never know. You are a new thing now. Do not fight it."
What am I, that does not fight? That weeps in the presence of agony? I would rather be devoured by She Who Thirsts than be this! Kill me. Kill me!
"Stop…" Marazhai rasps, trying to push Heinrix away, to interrupt the biomancer's healing, to--
"No. You stop. If you wish death, you will have to take it for yourself. Far out of sight of the Lord Captain, I imagine."
Lord Captain. Rogue Trader Noah Kingfisher von Valancius. A flash of confused pain in Marazhai's ribcage. It was him Marazhai was trying to escape, when he goaded the already-stressed Heinrix into attacking him. A flash of awareness in Marazhai's newly-wired mind. No. Not him. It was Marazhai that Marazhai was trying to escape, the new thing he had already been becoming, the new thing that Rogue Trader Noah Kingfisher von Valancius was coaxing forth into being.
It is too much. To think like this is to no longer be Marazhai, Aezyrraesh, Reaver, Tempest, drukhari.
"What have you done to me?" But the question could have been asked of anyone, of anything. Of the drukhari, of the aeldari before them. Of Commorragh. Of the Warp. Of Heinrix. Of Yrliet. Of the infinite void. Of Noah. Of Marazhai.
"I cannot -- gasp -- live like this."
Yrliet, who would soon use her knowing to build an ideological foundation for him, upon which he would build an inner world, quirks the corners of her eyes in something like amusement. "Irrelevant. You will learn."
"So… Anansi… you ready? To… you know. See the Alienage?" Alistair's voice is tentative, shy about the sensitivity of the subject, but earnest. Always earnest, Alistair, even in his jesting. Anansi suppresses a chuckle, but before he can clarify what amused him -- before Alistair is wounded -- Morrigan is ready with a comeback.
"Yes, Anansi, are you ready? Being, you know…" She drops her voice to a quavering whisper. "One of those… surely you must--"
"Maker's sack, Morrigan, do you ever--" Alistair bites off the rest of his sentence, squeezing his eyes shut and appearing to struggle for composure. Morrigan smirks and settles back in her seat, having done her wicked deed for the hour.
"I will say, 'Maker's sack' is a good one. You've spent all the standard oaths on me many times over, I'm happy to see you getting creative."
Anansi has long since stopped trying to intercede between them. It is like ritual, now -- Alistair is clumsy but kind, Morrigan teases him for it, Alistair clearly wants to strangle her with her own scarf. Neither of them has ever cornered Anansi and begged to be kept away from the other. It is a dance -- not one Anansi would ever be able to follow the steps of with any grace, but both of them seemed to be doing just fine.
"Thank you for asking after my comfort, Alistair." Anansi tucks an errant strand of straw-blond hair behind Alistair's ear, tracing his stubbled jawline with gentle fingers as he brings his hand back down. Alistair's shoulders unbunch and he blushes. Anansi doesn't have to be facing Morrigan to know she's rolled her eyes, nor does he have to be clairvoyant to know she would later pointedly perform the same gesture on Anansi before grasping his chin and kissing him hard enough to bruise. Mockery is Morrigan's way, but there is flattery in it for the chosen few, if one has eyes to see. "I am anxious, to be sure. Anora has painted a grim picture. But I am well-accustomed to horror."
"Well, sure, but…"
"You think it is worse, that it happens to… 'my kin'?" Anansi tosses back his thick raven hair, revealing pointed ears, but these ears are adorned with bone charms, much like his neck and his wrists: a witch's fetishes. A Chasind witch's fetishes. "I am not elven, Ali, my love. I am of the Wilds."
"Barely," mutters Morrigan, who has never forgiven Anansi for being dragged off to the Circle.
"I know little of elven culture, city or Dalish. When I walk into that place, they will see pointed ears, yes. But they will not see kin."
Alistair nods, teeth worrying at the inside of his lip as he considers. "I am Fereldan, but… not. To me, I am Avvar. But people insist on seeing a Fereldan, when they look at me." He blinks, refocusing on Anansi. "But that's the opposite of what you're saying, isn't it. Sorry. May have misunderstood."
Anansi's smile is soft, appreciative. "I think you understand just fine."
--
When Anansi walks into that place, that place with its structures sagging with disrepair and its peoples sagging with despair, that place with its defiant garlands and tapestries made with hands desperately trying to recall arts lost, that place lousy with plague -- not just sickness, but the crawling presence of the Tevinter Imperium -- he feels a queer sickness descend upon him like a smothering shroud. His vision doubles, trebles, then snaps back. He sways on his feet, and Alistair, used to this, steadies him with a hand.
"All right?" the other Warden asks, quietly.
"No," Anansi sighs, "but it matters not." He scans the landscape, his eyes continually catching on coughing beggars and wilting gardens and wailing children. "There must be a... a leader of sorts around. Let's--"
He'd stepped forward, intent on finding someone to question, but in an instant the alienage goes grey in his vision, and he knows he is gone. He rides the wave of vertigo, swallowing the rolling nausea, softening his eyes as colours and shapes shift and recede and expand. Acute and aching sensation of being stretched like soft candy as he is pulled up and out and sideways, away from his body, into the Archdemon's dream. Were the darkspawn here, too? Was this their plague? No… he senses Urthemiel's psychic intercedence has another cause.
Steadied in the Fade-shift, he looks up. The thick, gnarled tree at the center of the Alienage stands stark against the blackened sky, thrumming with energy, electric with it.
< Burn. Burn. Burn! >
Urthemiel's capacity for eloquence is variable, and it seems today he is too riled to bother with clarity.
< Took our ichor. Grew tree from it. Grew in power. Hungry hearts, hungry elvhen hearts. >
Anansi looks upon the alienage's tree with new eyes. Yes. The power, though greatly dimmed with the passage of time and the ravages of neglect, is still there. Stolen, warped, reforged.
He can feel the Archdemon's psyche surging, as if it is standing up, preparing to fly. A blast of heat at Anansi's back, dragon breath, dragon rancor. The tree is engulfed in flames, and Urthemiel sinks its great teeth into it, ripping, ripping. Nothing will ever quell Urthemiel's rage, nurtured over ages, but this… this would at least bring a savage pleasure.
"-- wouldn't smell all that great, either!" Anansi swallows against another heave of his stomach as he is wrenched back into his body, the tail end of whatever retort Alistair was delivering to Morrigan clanging like dented bells in his ears. Alistair, sensing Anansi's return, flinches guiltily and looks down at the head he is cradling in his lap. "Ah, love, you're back."
Anansi's gut aches, and he misses Sten and their delicately brewed root tea terribly. Maybe he would leave all this to the senior Warden and run off to the forest where the Qunari, misliking human cities, had gone on a personal investigation. Maybe he would leave it all. Take Sten and head south, to… the Wilds, the Wilds that were now overrun with darkspawn, the fens and marshes and swamps festering with Blight, and his people…
"Anansi?" Morrigan queries from behind her scarf, wrapped around her face against the sour smells of the alienage. "What ails you?"
He then feels the tears trickling unheeded from his eyes, and the weariness that weighs him down as he struggles to sit up. Some elves had crept close to them, wary but curious. He shakes off the malaise. "I'm just tired. Unfathomably. It matters not. We have a job to do."
Later, Morrigan would wreathe him in silk-soft magics and let him weep, let his exhaustion and his grief flow out of him like the Blight that would soon flow out of Urthemiel's ravaged body at his command. Later, Alistair would bring him sweets and some up-charged but admittedly amusing trinket from Wonders of Thedas and squeeze him tight against his big, warm body until the tension shudders out of him and is replaced with desire's sweet ache. Later still, Tevinter would be purged from Denerim's alienage and a tired but hardy Hahren Valendrian would offer Anansi a boon, and Anansi will ask only to visit with the tree -- the vhenadahl -- awhile. He is not elf. He is not dragon. And yet, he is. It is being elf and being dragon that have brought him here, to this place: core threads of the multiplicitous fabric of his existence. When he approaches the vhenadahl, he knows it to be kin.
Urthemiel's eyes are strange, not like a dragon's eyes at all, Anansi Surana thinks, but what knows he of a dragon's eyes? He has only expectations -- slitted, serpentine, keen; the Archdemon's eyes, however, are like aberrations in the fabric of the world -- shuddering, swirling, mad.
< Razikale sends you. You will say this is so. >
Somewhere in time, a mage -- no, not yet or ever a mage, not by their rules -- a witch who was once an apprentice of the Fereldan Circle of Magi has swallowed an unpleasantly viscous potion at the behest of a beautiful Grey Warden. And wasn't that the real reason? more than the exhortations of Anansi's multiplicitous soul or the desire for a plausible mantle to wrap around his fugitive self, he undertakes this Joining because Duncan is gruffly kind and ruggedly beautiful and there is no harm in following this Grey Warden path for a time, is there? If it doesn't serve, then he may discard it. Much as he did the Circle.
Somewhere aside of time, as the body that the trickster god Razikale engineered expands to accept the Blight's transformation, the witch who calls said body his own is pinned under Urthemiel's harrowing gaze. Anansi arranges his thoughts in answer to the question framed by the dragon's declarative speech.
"It is so."
The darkspawn blood does not kill. According to Duncan, it finds purchase in the weaknesses of a conscript's body, and what happens from there is a roll of the dice. Some conscripts' brains burst. Others, their hearts. Some seem fine at first, only to collapse days later due to a cascade of small failures in their organs' functioning. And some… of course, some see what they see and go mad, quickly and completely. "Those," Duncan says, quietly but firmly, "I kill."
He doesn't soften it -- "it's better for them. To live that way is no life." -- but he sits with it, letting those words hang, letting them be felt in their entirety. It is simply what he does.
Somewhere aside of time, Urthemiel is keening. Anansi feels its rage, joy, sorrow, relief, all at once.
< You will fall, as we fall. My siblings, dead. Not sleeping. Dead. I, Urthemiel, dead. >
Somewhere in time, but not the time Anansi ever knew, the corpses of dread gods litter an infinite tundra.
Somewhere in time, but not the time Anansi knows yet, corruption flows out of Urthemiel in sludgy rivers.
"It is as it should be."
< Foolish Razikale. Dark heart. Dark and murderous heart. >
"All gods must die. You knew this."
< You know nothing of gods. Razikale lies. Dark and murderous heart. >
"Regardless, I come for you. There will be no more Blight. There will be no more corrupt and murderous world-wyrms. Razikale is you, is all of you. Your doom reflected. Your cowardice mocked. Your death, which I bring to you, will be death and not death. And you will thank me for it, for the breaking of the world's twisted order, for only then can we begin anew."
< Come then, and die with us, little worldbreaker. >
"I have to kill the Archdemon," Anansi slurs as he comes around, back to his dragon-engineered body, back to his dragon-haunted world.
"Yes. That's the plan," comes Duncan's wry response.
The witch blinks, gags, heaves. He struggles to sit up. "I have to break the world."
Duncan's brow furrows. "What?"
"I have to kill the Archdemon. I have to…" Anansi gulps the water Duncan hands him, retches, drinks more. "I have to save the world."
"Hm. I could have sworn you said…" Duncan tries to ignore the chill that trickles down his spine. "Well. Never mind that. Let's just focus on the Archdemon for now, eh, Grey Warden?"
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hey
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She has never been good at locking doors -- something about having grown up in tents and yurts, perhaps -- but most Eorzeans knocked at closed doors, so it has rarely been an issue. Rarely.
"We're down to the last bottle of arak and Lyse seems determined to empty it before sunrise, so I brought you--" Haurchefant is already talking as he walks through the cabin door and only Dayir's little oh! of surprise stops him. Frozen in place, she watches him take in the scene before him, his expression progressing smoothly from stunned to speculative to amused (yet still speculative).
Oh, what a sight she must appear! Knelt on the bed, robe loosely tied and slipping off one shoulder, the end of a cylindrical pillow peeking out from between her thighs. One hand on the mattress, stabilising her, the other shoved down beneath the robe at the point where groin met pillow. Her hair unfettered and tumbling, a fair amount of it tangled about her horns, her startled-doe eyes peeking out from between snow-white locks. For a moment, there is no sound but the creaking of the ship and the ceaseless roar of the sea.
"Oh-ho," Haurchefant murmurs after a beat, pleased as punch. "Did you leave that door open on purpose?"
"Most Eorzeans knock first," Dayir retorts haughtily, but the tremulous quality of her voice ruins her opportunity to take the high ground. Haurchefant doesn't miss it, and his cheeky grin spreads.
"Fortunately for me, I was raised by wolves," he says breezily as he perches in a nearby chair, the cup of arak he'd brought her still dangling from his fingers. "Thinking of me, perhaps?"
Dayir sighs ruefully, settling back on her haunches. "Would that I was." She taps the pillow between her legs. "But I saw this and thought of…" She winces. "Hauchefant, you have to promise not to judge me."
He laughs, but sobers some at the pleading expression on her face. "My love, you could tell me you were thinking of… of Nidhogg and I would still not judge you. You know this."
"Oh, that doesn't count. We are both too enamoured of our dear dragoon for that to be the strangest of concepts," Dayir replies pointedly, and they both laugh then, wickedly.
"It's only… I know he is terrible. He struck down our allies, our friends, without a thought! He would have done the same to me, I'm sure. But… something else happened, that awful day in Rhalgr's Reach. When he saw me. When we saw each other…"
"Oh, surely not, Dayir! Him?" Haurchefant's brows furrow, his eyes darting as he processes. "Surely not!"
"Oh, I'm sorry, Haurchefant, but you know me! You know me well! I can no more ignore this than I can… than I can cease breath!" The memory of locking eyes with the crown prince of Garlemald across a landscape dyed red with the blood of her allies and friends haunts her, but more than that, it stirs her. She had seen something, a glimmer of something, in that impassive gaze. And perhaps he had seen something in her, too, because he'd left. He'd flinched, imperceptibly, he'd sheathed his sword, and he'd departed as swiftly as he'd arrived. It'd seemed an utterly random choice to the others, but…
"Why did the pillow remind you of him?" Haurchefant's question snaps her back to the present, and then confuses her. He seemed to have recovered himself, and some of the old humour is glittering in his eyes again. "You think he's that big, then?"
This drops her jaw for a second, disarming her. "Gods, no-- No! But he is so formidable, and his… his thighs…"
"Ah, the great Primal-Queller, the hallowed Saviour of Ishgard, rutting against the leg of Garlemald's least finest like a drooling hound…"
"Haurchefant!"
"I jest, my love." Wickedness has suffused his expression entire, his gaze locked somewhere near the center of her. He licks his lips, leans forward. "And I have so rudely interrupted you. Please… continue."
The intensity of his gaze is warming her, quickening her. Haurchefant Greystone, avid worshipper of her body and its endless capacity for delight, who thinks nothing of diving deep into indulgence when it is offered to him, who is curious and ravenous and wholly without shame. They had been perfect for each other from the beginning, and here, now, she is again reminded of why.
"Give me that," she commands, gesturing to the cup almost-forgotten in his hand.
He approaches, leans close. She can scent the heat and hunger rising off him, the heady excitement of restraining himself. It makes her indescribably hot for him; her hips flex, her muscles loose and liquid as she undulates against the pillow. He tips her chin up and she obediently parts her lips. He pours the liquorice-flavoured spirit into her mouth, slowly, with practised ease -- giving her time to swallow, not spilling a drop. His breath is quick against her forehead and his free hand twitches towards his swelling groin, but he does not lose focus, not even when she begins to grind in earnest, her hand massaging her cocksheath in tight circles, the pressure of both her cockhead and cunt tight against the pillow making her dizzy with sensation.
The arak spent, he steps back, never taking his eyes off her, his cheeks bright with colour. She tries to watch him in return but her eyes keep rolling back, waves of liquid warmth radiating from her core so quickly now that she can barely remain upright. She leans forward, bracing against the mattress, her hips rolling, her hair tumbling. "Haurche… please. Please…"
She is so close she can hardly stand it, and here is Haurchefant, wicked Haurchefant, replying with such insouciant innocence, "Please, what?"
Dayir turns her face up to him, lips parted and slick with spit and spirits, and Haurchefant can keep up the ruse no longer. He lunges forward, shoves his hands into her hair and his tongue into her mouth, and groans in pleasure. Every time she's come for him, it's been like this, with his mouth tight against hers and his fingers pressing against that oh-so-sensitive spot under her horns, his deep-throated sounds spilling into her. Today is no different -- a muffled scream, her hand clawing desperately at him, catching in his shirt, tearing it, her body tensing like a lute string pulled too tight before collapsing in a progression of shudders that Haurchefant feels in every cell in his body.
"Good girl," he whispers raggedly against her cheek as she trembles in his embrace, almost sobbing in relief, "good girl."
"What if it does happen?" Dayir asks, later, as he is drawing her bath. "What if, against all odds, against everyone's wishes, Zenos yae Galvus… and I…"
Haurchefant rocks back on his heels next to the tub, trailing his fingers lazily in the water, and considers.
"I think there is something irreparably broken about that man. But I saw what Ysayle did for you. I see what you do for Estinien. My home is beginning to heal from a thousand years of agony and death because of you. Every day I am so grateful to wake up and see how you will once again completely upend everything I know about life.
"I imagine no one else has ever and will ever regard Zenos the way you do -- as someone you could love. And that is what makes you singular. That is what makes you powerful. That is what makes you the saviour of our star. So… we shall see what we shall see. For now… a bath, a drink, and us. Together. Against all odds."
A pain more brilliant than anything I'd ever known lances through me, and it is almost a relief to feel so viscerally what I had only before felt intuitively -- that Norvrandt's Light is devouring me.
I am powerless to grit my teeth and bear this pain. I can only collapse, bonelessly and artlessly, my mouth stretched open in a soundless wail as my breath is ripped from me. I feel it grinding at me, drilling through me, crushing me into dust. I will become but motes in a blinding ray of Light. All that I am... sublimated...
It gets easier as time goes on, yes, of course it does. I am in Amh Araeng when next the convulsing pain hits, and I fall to the burning sands and I welcome it. The Light is changing me, and I welcome it. Ah, glorious flood, wash away the falsehoods, wash away the agonies, grant me peace.
I am ready for this all to end. I know I must bear this, for no one else can -- no one, save for Ishan, whom I have left behind. My heart aches for him. My heart simply aches, all the time. I feel the Light drawing fault lines in my organs, in my flesh, sundering me, cracks of pure white-gold space invading my memories, disrupting my thoughts. I will be speaking with Alphinaud or Haurchefant and without warning my mind will sink into a white void, my words trailing off, my eyes going blank. I can feel it but I am powerless to stop it. It is not like the Echo -- there is no communion here. This is not a joining, this is an erasure.
I am being erased. I am being erased and it is good. It is folly to resist. An invasion this is not -- it is a gift, one that only I can receive; a grace that only I can hold. Others would be destroyed by this Light. I am being sublimated. The Light that suffuses me will bring this fragmented world into union. When the time comes, I will reap what has been sown. I will bring such Light to Norvrandt, such brilliant divine Light, and Norvrandt will be saved from the vagaries of Darkness. I will thrust this holy sword deep into the children of this Star, and they will know no more pain, no more struggle, no more will. Only Light.
Blessed be Light, this wretched Light, I cannot hold it, I cannot. I am not enough. This unending agony, so encompassing, and no one else feels it, no one knows, no one can bear it with me. I am failing, and the Ascian laughs, but I am not angry with him. He has been eroded by unending agony that no one else feels for ten thousand years.
Oh, Light. My despair only accelerates your advance.
There is nowhere to go but down, deep, into the Tempest.
May I remain long enough to bring Emet-Selch unto his rest.
-
"I know I'm late. You can yell at me later. I promise.
Tataru sends her love. Tsuyu sends her... well, you know. Her her-ness. I watered your plants before I left.
Get up. I know it hurts. Hang on a bit longer. I've put it together in my head, you know. I think I get it. The Light is a gift of sublimation, given to you, but not meant for you.
You have a date with an Ascian, right? Get up. I'm with you. Your Ishan is with you. Let's go."
-
The Light is a gift of sublimation, given to me, but not meant for me.
Ten thousand years of unending agony...
Ah, Hades. There you are. I saved this for you.
Wash away the falsehoods. Wash away the agonies. Grant him peace.
🥀 Has your OC ever been hurt by someone they love? Ever been betrayed? Abused? Attacked? Give me the angst! (if you’d like, write a short drabble about it!) (source)
It was fine, at first. Or, it seemed fine. They buried Gideon (once called "of the Grave", now returned to it, as was always intended) where he'd dropped, not even ten miles outside of Vegas, and they kept walking towards the rising sun.
They were quiet, those days. Gabriel ranged away from the path to hunt game, but he did not crow in victory when his arrows found their mark, as he once did. He simply stood and stared at the kill, sometimes for so long that the buzzards would cry their impatience and the flies would contemplate settling in for the long haul.
Ulysses… well, Ulysses just walked.
They slept in the heat of the day, backs to each other, and ate in silence in the long shadows of late afternoon, and then they'd walk. They could have stopped at a ranch, done some work, taken a couple of mules, and hoofed it that way to the next ranch, trading steeds every few dozen miles. They could have, but the savage gnawing in the pits of their bodies compelled them to walk, even as it ached, even as the exhaustion made shambling ghosts of them.
It was fine. Or, it seemed fine.
And then Gabriel made the mistake of speaking.
