We're happy to announce that our shop is now opening back up for leftovers!! It'll remain open for ONE MONTH!! From today, March 22th, 2026 until April 22th, 2026.
Look carefully at what's available because it's changed! We've sorted everything into various types of bundles in order to ensure the smoothest process for final fulfillment. As such, it is not possible to purchase individual items. These orders will be shipped out weekly as they come in. Additionally, the digital orders are also open again to raise more donation funds as well!
We're happy to announce that our shop is now opening back up for leftovers!! It'll remain open for ONE MONTH!! From today, March 22th, 2026 until April 22th, 2026.
Look carefully at what's available because it's changed! We've sorted everything into various types of bundles in order to ensure the smoothest process for final fulfillment. As such, it is not possible to purchase individual items. These orders will be shipped out weekly as they come in. Additionally, the digital orders are also open again to raise more donation funds as well!
We're happy to announce that our shop is now opening back up for leftovers!! It'll remain open for ONE MONTH!! From today, March 22th, 2026 until April 22th, 2026.
Look carefully at what's available because it's changed! We've sorted everything into various types of bundles in order to ensure the smoothest process for final fulfillment. As such, it is not possible to purchase individual items. These orders will be shipped out weekly as they come in. Additionally, the digital orders are also open again to raise more donation funds as well!
I’m so glad you opened leftover sales!! I thought the zine was closed for good, so when I saw you had leftovers open, I went and purchased a full bundle immediately!
Here's my part for the @dpfantasyzine "Phantasmal Nights" Zine
Unicorn Blood + Wings AU~
Wings are convinient for many things, esp when it rains and you need shelter from em
It's urban fantasy AU where Danny's parents hunts down mysthical creatures instead of just focusing on ghosts, and Danny accidentally drank a unicorn blood, end up half-dead, and tied his soul with Phantom, an old ghost who half-died centuries ago the same way. Now they both keeping each other alive and maybe survive high school
Phantom's wings are loosely based of bateleur eagle because they have black and white outer wings and the inside are white with black tips its really cool lookin (also old sketch of phantom w the wings here)
I can finally post my music for @bibliophilea's absolutely heart-breaking Madoka AU fic, Death Spiral, which was created for the @dpfantasyzine, Phantasmal Nights.
Programmatic pieces have a very special place in my heart. So naturally, this song follows the arc of the fic itself. The song mirrors the emotional journey Jazz takes throughout the fic as she tries, again and again, to save her brother from his fate.
It was an honor to get to participate in my first ever zine project, and as both a musician and a writer, no less! I really learned a lot about Cubase while working on this song.
Thanks to @lexosaurus for providing your expert feedback on the sound-mixing and mastering.
Cover art by the incredibly talented @zillychu
You can find this song through my bandcamp, where I go by Sondorous.
Written for Phantasmal Nights: A Danny Phantom Fantasy AU Zine, organized and created by @dpfantasyzine.
With music from @maebird-melody, and illustrations by @lilianade-comics, both embedded and linked! Thank you both, for creating such amazing work for this story!
Links to my other works for this zine:
Masterlist [[LINK SOON]]
03 - Beau and the Beast [[LINK SOON]]
04 - Tell Me Your Secrets [[LINK SOON]]
06 - Plant a Seed in Your Soul [[LINK SOON]]
10-11 - Birth of an Impossible Star [[LINK SOON]]
Summary: Jazz Fenton is spiraling through time to save her brother from death; but will she lose herself to despair in the process? A Madoka Magica AU.
CW: Death, Violence, Light Gore, Suicidal Ideation.
HxH Narrator Voice: Jazz is now drowning in an indescribable emptiness. [SICK GUITAR RIFF]
(Quick plug for a similar phic ideated and written by @kawaiijohn first! "Her Flame Burns Despite the Storm" is phenomenal!)
This version of the phic is a little chunkier than the version written for the zine! If you've read both, which do you prefer?
ao3 | ffn
Jazz Fenton marches through the witch’s lair. Shadows shift and swirl, ebbing and flowing just beyond the reach of her scythe. They had a truce.
The pinprick of betrayal pulls from Jazz’s heart, like a thread drawn taut—pulling her attention—and as she turns, the shadows billow away from her, forming a corridor of mist where before there had been only turbulent darkness.
And at the end of the corridor, Danny—bound and gagged by shadows, dangling like a slab of meat.
But his chest heaves. His eyes are bloodshot and aware.
He’s alive.
Jazz rushes forward—they don’t have time, now that she’s found him. “Danny, it’s going to be okay—I’ll get you down—”
Tears stain his cheeks. Jazz squashes her anger. They had a truce.
Then his eyes widen. He struggles against his bonds, cries muffled by the gag—
Jazz spins with her scythe, and the shadowy tendrils reaching for her fizzle in flashing blue sparks. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”
Liar.
The word pulses in her mind, and Jazz realizes her mistake. She twists toward her brother, blue power flooding her hand.
“Dann—”
Crack.
Danny’s body crumples to the ground—head lolling at an impossible angle.
The shadows swarm.
“Failure! Failure! Failure!”
“Your fault! Your fault! It’s always your fault!”
“You killed him! You did this! You keep doing this!”
“Monster. You’re a monster. And you know it.”
“What kind of sister are you?”
The thoughts reverberate—each her own voice, each promising a spiral that would destroy her—but imagine the sweet release—
And finally, the telltale claws slowly slide along her shoulders, creeping towards her neck.
There.
Jazz snaps her hand out—not too slow, but not too fast, either, still pulsing with blue power—the perfect pace and placement to grab Spectra by the neck.
The swarm disperses, revealing Spectra’s form: a shadow cut from Jazz’s figure, its substance clinging to the surrounding mist, its face leering down at Jazz.
Jazz glares. “I told you to leave my brother alone.”
“You never visit, and when I call you, this is the response I get? Pity.” Spectra’s dark claws linger on Jazz’s pulse.
“Danny is off limits!”
“And you know how bored I get. Eating the same misery again and again—it just gets stale, after a while.”
Jazz wills herself to remain stony and cool. She can’t show weakness to this witch—not again.
“I could do with some fresh teenage angst—”
Jazz unleashes a wave of blue energy, rapidly aging Spectra’s figure. Releasing the witch, she turns away.
Jazz stares at her brother’s corpse. The lair shimmers and fades like a mirage, leaving him cold and alone on the concrete floor of an empty warehouse.
Then she spins her scythe, slicing a tunnel through time. 367.
Jazz Fenton steps through the portal.
*~*~*
25.
It was an accident. That’s what the football team says when his friends find him stuffed in a gym locker with their dirty clothes, left to rot over the weekend. That’s what the school tells the paper. Jazz does not attend the memorial.
42.
Jazz fights the monsters at the lake for him. The ghosts, the witches, the cryptids—all of them. When the coast is clear, she finds him face down in the water anyways.
68.
A truck hits him.
*~*~*
Heat snaps against Jazz’s skin. She holds her brother close.
“Jazz, it hurts.” His voice crackles like the fire she’d pulled him from, like his broken skin rasping against her shirt.
“It’ll be alright, Danny—stay awake, you’ll be okay—”
She whips her head up, neck aching. “Help! Please, somebody, anybody, please!”
But she can’t see anyone past the flames and rubble.
Danny whimpers. “I—I don’t—”
“Shhh, it’s okay, it’s gonna be okay—Somebody, please! P-Please…” She swallows a sob. She has to be strong for Danny, he needs her, he needs help, he needs her to stay together and get them through this. She ignores the warmth soaking her clothes.
“Jazz…”
She looks at him, trying to smile. “It’s going to be okay, Danny, I promise.” It has to be okay. It has to.
Then he shudders, and she watches his head loll—feels him go limp in her arms.
“No, Danny, wake up, it’s okay, please wake up—no, no, no—”
The fire billows and reflects in the whites of her brother’s dead eyes.
Danny’s dead eyes.
Danny’s dead.
Jazz wails into her brother’s bloody chest.
*~*~*
89.
The A-Listers did it. His friends did it. Even some of the nerds did it. So why is it, when he tries to snowboard down the school steps on his backpack, he’s the one who cracks his head open on a block of ice?
111.
His best friend dared him. He eats five ecto-infused hotdogs before they kill him.
136.
Where did the black bear come from? Illinois doesn’t have black bears.
*~*~*
“Let’s get this over with. What do you want?”
Jazz crosses her arms as Spectra circles her, smoky form trailing in the darkness.
Spectra tuts. “Oh, don’t be so curt. Is that any way to treat a friend?”
“You’re not my friend.”
Spectra’s chuckle echoes through the lair, and Jazz suppresses a flinch when her cold voice caresses Jazz’s ear. “Oh honey, I’m the only friend you’ve got.”
Jazz turns to face Spectra—but she isn’t there. Of course. She glares at the darkness before her—it’s as much a part of Spectra as everything else here is.
“You killed my brother.” Her voice is sharp.
“And he’s alive now, right?” Spectra reappears in her periphery, just out of reach of her scythe—Jazz feels it in the tug on the emotion she’d let slip like chum in the water.
Jazz doesn’t let herself react, and Spectra lazily circles again. “He’s probably out watching a movie, or playing one of those silly little videogames with his silly little friends.”
“Get to the point.”
Spectra pouts. “You’re no fun.”
“This isn’t about fun.”
“No, of course not,” Spectra tuts. “It’s about your silly, childish, Sisyphean quest to avoid the inevitable.”
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” Jazz retorts.
“So you like watching your brother die over and over again?” Spectra grins. “Or perhaps there’s comfort in the pattern. The sweet relief that you can start over, once you’ve let the boulder slip and run the poor kid down.”
Jazz doesn’t know when she summoned her scythe, swinging it at the shadows where Spectra’s voice emanates—but there’s nothing there. Spectra’s cackles echo in her head.
“Touched a nerve, have I?” The voice swirls around her. “Or maybe a truth?”
“Nothing you say is true,” Jazz says, holding back the mist and shadows closing in.
“Oh Jasmine,” Spectra coos, her voice suddenly intimate, her claws caressing Jazz’s cheek and neck. “You’re the one who said it.”
Spectra’s words worm into her head—then split and divide and echo, morphing into Jazz’s voice, repeating and crying and cackling until all she can hear is “imagine Sisyphus happy” and “over and over and over and over and—”
Jazz slams her scythe into the ground. Blue lightning swirls around her, turning everything it touches to dust.
“I won’t let him die.” She breathes harshly. “I’ll go as far as it takes.”
Spectra smirks as she disintegrates.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
*~*~*
149.
A piano falls on him.
179.
The Fenton Family Ghost Assault Vehicle skids to a stop a foot from Jazz’s face. Her dad bounds from the front seat, completely oblivious. “Hey, Jazzipants! Did you see where that ghost went? I swear I was right on its tail!”
He doesn’t notice his son beneath the vehicle’s oversized tires. Jazz doesn’t tell him.
201.
Rubble from the latest ghost attack falls on him.
*~*~*
“I can help.”
The voice rings clear despite the fire and blood roaring in Jazz’s ears. She blinks tears from her eyes, clutching her brother’s body.
There—just a few feet from her, balancing on a bit of metal.
It’s not a cat, although it sits like one—paws together and bushy tail turned up, little triangle ears attentive. But it has two long, furry tendrils descending from its ears, a little gold loop around each, swaying gently in the harsh, hot wind. Its face looks like a stuffed animal, but its wide red eyes stare up at her, alive.
“What are you?” Jazz rasps.
“I am Kyubey.” Its mouth doesn’t move. “I have the power to grant wishes. You could use a wish right now.”
Jazz hugs her brother tighter to her chest. “You’re not a ghost.”
“Correct! I can help. If you form a contract with me and become a magia, I will grant you a wish. I sense the potential within you to become a powerful magia—your wish could unleash that potential!”
Kyubey hops down and approaches Jazz. She scampers back, dragging her brother’s body with her. “Don’t—don’t touch him!”
The creature stops, glancing down from Jazz to the corpse of her brother. “It’s a shame he died. He also had potential.”
Heart clenching, her vision goes cloudy. She buries her face in her brother’s chest.
“I’ll give you time to think about it.”
Sirens sound in the distance. Jazz jerks her head up.
The creature is gone.
*~*~*
223.
A girl he doesn’t know asks him to go to a ball he hasn’t heard of. Of course he says no. Why would he expect her to turn into a ghost dragon and swallow him whole?
247.
Amity Park has never had gators in the sewers. That’s a New York City myth.
When he falls down the manhole, she can only listen as the ghost gators rip him apart.
264.
A winter evening, she comes home late from the library, after fighting ghosts and witches. Making sure they can’t hurt anyone—let alone her little brother.
She finds him locked out, frozen and alone on the porch.
*~*~*
“Your hope is sickening.”
Jazz laughs and spins, flicking Spectra on the nose, blue power giving it wrinkles. She smirks at Spectra’s disgust and cartwheels away. “It wouldn’t kill you to be more hopeful.”
They both know this is a lie—witches are made of despair.
But this is the longest Jazz has kept Danny alive. Maybe this time she doesn’t have to reset the cycle. And if she can hope for a timeline where Danny doesn’t die a horrible death, she can hope for anything.
“I don’t know why you’re getting your hopes up.” Spectra pats the wrinkles from her nose. “He’s going to die anyway.”
“Not listening!” Jazz sings, slicing through the next attack.
Spectra grins and steps back into the shadows, letting her voice fill the void. “Honey, you don’t have to listen. You just have to look.”
The shadows and mist close in. Jazz twirls and blue light erupts from her, arcing around her, cutting through the lair’s cloying darkness.
Spectra’s voice rings out from everywhere all at once.
“You twist the web of time in knots every time you use your pretty little powers, Magical Girl. Look around you.”
And now Jazz can see it—how her powers have been pushing against time—not against a wall like she’d thought, but along intersecting lines and waves and curves—patterns carving themselves along every axis of space, changing along the arcs of her blue power—changing because of her power.
She tugs experimentally on the heart of her power—shaping it inwards and forwards, rather than just shoving it out—and the blue arcs wrap themselves through Spectra’s shadows, crackling as they shrink them down to nothing.
Spectra snorts. “Impressive. If you were a beginner.”
But Jazz can’t pay attention to Spectra—the patterns of time itself twist around each other—swirl through her—spin from her in paths that wind closer together, driving into a single, blue path that leads to—no, no, no—
“Ah, there it is! The recognition! The horror! The frustration! The crushing despair! There’s the Jasmine Fenton I know!” Spectra claps and cackles her glee, even as Jazz throws her scythe, even as it cuts the witch in half.
Black smoke spills from the wound, whispering in Jazz’s voice.
“You can’t stop it. You’re the reason he keeps dying.”
*~*~*
289.
He tries to help, and Jazz lets him. After all, it’s Johnny and Kitty—they’re harmless.
Then Kitty’s kiss makes him disappear.
305.
He wasn’t allergic to them before. The flowers in mom’s garden are strange and thorny, but the most they can do is prick fingers. He’s been avoiding the garden, though; it’s only after their mom sneaks blood blossoms into his lunch that she understands, too late, why.
333.
She isn’t surprised when the ghost of a bull shark gets him. Just disappointed. And so, so tired.
*~*~*
The smell of smoke and blood lingers in Jazz’s hair. It mingles with the sharp, cloying scent of antiseptic. She asks the nurse to open the window—just a crack, just to let the air flow a little.
She looks down at her hands—she doesn’t need to see the nurse smile sadly at her as he opens the window the full three inches.
The hospital machines and Fenton tech surrounding her beep and whine discordantly—out of time and tune with each other and with her whirring mind. She can’t sleep even if she wanted to.
It’s for the better. When she tried to sleep earlier, she could only see her brother’s dead eyes.
The ghost detectors don’t register Kyubey’s arrival. But Jazz feels its presence, sitting at the windowsill, its red eyes boring into her soul.
She hates the heart monitor’s beeping, and she tries to school her breathing. It’s just a physiological reaction to an understandable amount of stress and emotion. But she feels vulnerable.
“Have you thought about it?” Kyubey’s gentle voice cuts through the noise like a knife.
“What does ‘magia’ entail?” Jazz asks.
“It means you will become magical! A Magical Girl, with the power to fight the terrible creatures of darkness and despair—creatures known as witches!”
“And if I do this, will it save him? Save Danny?” Her voice is small. The heart monitor races.
“That depends on you, Jasmine Fenton. Your power to save your brother is as strong as your wish.”
“So how do I know this isn’t a scam? What’s the catch?” Jazz forces herself to stare into the creature’s red eyes. She’ll be damned if she just lets it manipulate her, just like that.
“Does it matter? You’ve already decided.”
Jazz blinks first. She takes a shuddering breath. Damned heart monitor. Damned Kyubey.
But, if there’s a chance she can save her brother, she guesses she’s damned, too.
*~*~*
358.
Human bodies shouldn’t be phased into walls. His torso is suspended in the corner of a building. His mouth and nose are full of brick.
371.
One moment, he’s walking next to her, on their way to school; the next, his body’s collapsed on the ground, a green, smoking hole in his head where the meteorite hit him.
402.
He’s hit by the Fenton Peeler.
It shouldn’t work—Fenton tech doesn’t hurt humans—but he screams, his skin cracking and peeling to reveal something dead, glowing, impossible—
But she knows it was only a matter of time.
He’s died horrifically more than enough. It was inevitable he’d form a ghost.
*~*~*
403.
“I was wondering when I’d see your pretty little face again.”
Jazz doesn’t say anything. She sits on a coil of mist and looks away from Spectra, tracing the way time eddies and flows below her.
“How’s your brother?” Spectra steps in front of Jazz. “He didn’t look well after your parents flayed him alive in front of you.”
Jazz feels her hands ball into fists—watches time ripple blue with her potential—and loosens her fingers. Lets the potential dissipate.
“Well.” Spectra chuckles. “That’s a loose term for the poor kid, isn’t it. Alive.”
She circles, running her claws along Jazz’s back—almost a caress, but Jazz knows they want to rend and tear. Maybe she should let them.
“It’s never going to end.” The words leave Jazz’s mouth before she can stop them.
“What is?” Spectra asks, hand on Jazz’s shoulder.
“This.” Jazz flings her hand out, and time eddies down darker and darker currents. “All of this. This cycling. This song and dance. And Danny—”
Her breath hitches and her heart aches, and she feels the prick of Spectra’s claws in her shoulder, siphoning energy from her despair.
“Danny dies. He keeps dying. No matter what I do—no, because of what I do.” Jazz buries her face in her hands. Her chest hurts. “Because of me.”
“Oh, honey.” Spectra’s voice drips with false sympathy. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Jazz groans. “Danny deserves better. He deserves a sister who can keep him safe—but I can’t—I’ve failed him. I keep failing him! I don’t want to become a witch, but if I keep going, he’ll keep dying—but what can I do? If I can’t protect him, what can I do?”
“Does it matter?” Spectra grips Jazz’s chin, tilting it up. Her eyes glow red, and her voice echoes around them in the turbulent darkness. “You’ve already decided.”
Jazz tries and fails to hold back a sob. Her chest burns.
“Leave her alone!”
Green light—green like ectoplasm, green like death—tears through the darkness, ripping Spectra away, and suddenly Jazz can breathe again. She collapses to the concrete—not mist not darkness but real, hard concrete—and recoils as cold hands grab her arms, flinching at the pain where Spectra’s claws had torn from her. Channeling power to her hand, she looks up and—
It’s Danny.
His hand bleeds green smoke, and his face shows fear and worry and all the things he shouldn’t show in a witch’s lair.
Her ears ring with the absence of Spectra’s voice, and it takes a moment to catch the words spilling from Danny’s lips.
“—hey! Jazz! I—it’s okay, Jazz, it—it’s gonna be okay, but we have to get out of here—”
“Danny.” The whisper leaves her lips unbidden. She lets her power dissipate.
“Yeah, Jazz! It’s me!” He smiles weakly. “It’s me. And we gotta get out of here.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Jazz, no one should be here—”
“No, you need to leave! I can’t—” her eyes blur. She imagines Danny’s dead eyes. “I can’t save you, and it’s all my fault—I failed you. I failed you! You deserve better than a monster for a sister—”
Danny hugs her. His fluffy hair gets in her face. His face buries itself in her neck.
She tentatively hugs him back—then clings to him like he’s the last bit of hope she has.
In a way, he is. When’s the last time she’s actually hugged her brother, and not his corpse?
“Jazz, it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
He mumbles into her shoulder, and she shifts to look him over. He’s covered in bruises and scrapes; his eyes are teary, dark with exhaustion. He offers a grin to her—one that barely reaches his eyes.
He’s alive.
He’ll die if he stays here.
“Danny, you—”
“I know, Jazz.”
Jazz freezes.
“I don’t know how long you’ve been trying to save me.” Danny huffs. “You’re dealing with all of this—just for me. I love you, Jazz, I love you so much, but… you’ve gotta stop.”
“I can’t stop, Danny—you’ll die if I do!” Jazz blinks tears from her eyes and looks away. “I need to save you—but it all ends in your death, and it’s my fault—I’m so sorry, Danny, it’s always my fault—”
“Hey.” Danny bends down to catch her eye. “Hey Jazz, just—come on, listen to me!”
Jazz looks up at him, eyes wide. He stares back with determination.
“None of this is your fault. You’re my sister, and you’re trying your best, but sometimes that isn’t enough! And that’s okay!”
“It’s not okay! If I don’t save you, you’ll die—”
“Then let me die!”
Danny’s breath echoes in the darkness.
Then Jazz hears a slow clap. Spectra emerges from the mist.
“Aw, what a touching reunion!” Spectra coos. “It’s too bad we have to end it.” She flexes her claws.
Danny grabs Jazz’s hand and squeezes. He gives her a gentle smile, full of love and life. “It’ll be okay, Jazz. I promise. This time, it’s my choice.”
Then he leaps into the air, and in a sweeping, blinding flash of green and white, he invites death itself into his very being. His hair turns blinding white, and his skin darkens and cracks like fire had kissed it. He shoots energy at Spectra, who screeches as the darkness surrounding her dissolves.
Danny’s eyes are green as death—yet still, somehow, alive. “Didn’t know I could do that, huh!” He grins cheekily.
Jazz chuckles and wipes the tears from her face. Dead, alive, or something in between, he’s still her little brother.
She stands, summoning her scythe. “Let’s finish this.”
Jazz unleashes the floodgates on her emotions. Her anger and frustration. Her sadness. Her despair. But also her love. Her happiness. Her hope. Her yearning for a future she could share with her brother, and her determination to grasp that future.
She opens her eyes to time, as well—letting the blue power flow through her, stronger than ever, powered by the emotions she’s unleashed. Before, she had refused to look beyond Danny’s death; but now that Danny has chosen his own fate, she can see the timelines open to endless possibilities.
“No!” Spectra screams, and the mist and darkness writhe. Jazz can feel Spectra’s emotions well up—her anger and hatred, her despair—but beneath that, her yearning: to fill herself with power, to break free of this warehouse and this world and time itself—but also to fill the void within her with something, someone, that could truly understand—
And her terror of it all being stripped away.
The shadows lunge. Danny blasts some of them away, and Jazz dodges the rest—not too slow, but not too fast, either—darting forward to take Danny’s hand.
Danny grins and grabs her, then spins in the air—his free hand blasting shadows to ash, her scythe slicing them to dust—until all that’s left is the shattered shadow of Spectra herself.
Danny goes to destroy Spectra, but Jazz grabs his arm.
“Wait.”
She approaches the weakened witch—a literal shadow of what Spectra once was, curling in on itself in its despair.
“I could have been like you,” Jazz says. “I came close. Too close.”
She crouches next to the shadow. “But then we’d both be drowning in our despair.”
The words pulse faintly in her mind. Like you. Despair.
Jazz reaches out her hands, blue with power, gently cupping the shadow as it churns. She stares at the remnants of Spectra, noting the contours of its shapes, the whirls of its emotions—then blows, gently, as if to blow out a candle—shaping her blue power along those contours and whirls, molding time itself to her own emotions—scattering the shadow into small, blue motes of dust that slowly fade to nothing.
Farewell.
After a moment, Jazz stands.
Danny stares at her. “What did you do?”
“I gave her what she wanted,” Jazz states.
The warehouse is empty except for the two of them, morning light shining through the broken windows to alight upon them.
No.
The light shines on Jazz—but it shines through Danny.
She can see through him, to the dusty floor below.
She reaches for Danny’s hand—but her hand goes through it as well.
He’s fading.
“Danny—Danny, no—”
Danny shushes her. His finger can’t touch her, but its aura is cold against her lips. “I won’t be gone forever—just for a bit. I promise.”
He floats upwards, gazing at something she can’t see. Dust floats through his grin.
“Go make friends, Jazz! Seriously, being a shut in isn’t good for you.”
Then Danny fades completely. Jazz is left alone on the warehouse floor.
But somehow, she doesn’t feel as lonely.
*~*~*
“I wish to undo what’s happened, to protect my brother.”
1.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
I can finally share my fic for the @dpfantasyzine, Phantasmal Nights! It was a real pleasure to participate in my first ever zine. The biggest challenge was keeping under the word count limit. This story had legs, and it wanted to run.
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Danny Phantom
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Clockwork & Danny Fenton, Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson
Characters: Danny Fenton, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Clockwork (Danny Phantom), Vlad Masters, Nocturn (Danny Phantom), Ember McLain, Frostbite (Danny Phantom)
Additional Tags: Seelie Court, Phantasmal Nights: A Danny Phantom Fantasy Zine, Fantasy AU, Transformation, Changelings
Summary:
Danny crossed the boundary, and the sun tilted in the heavens.
The atmosphere pulsed with sudden awareness.
The clearing before him was cast in shades of violet from a twilit sky. The branches above were laden with vivid blossoms, and a heavy aroma of fresh earth and flora filled the air.
It was unlike the one he’d left behind in almost every way.
At the clearing’s center, a man sat upon a stump. Hooded and red-eyed, he held a staff of twisted branches across his knees. “Ah. So it is time.” He locked eyes with Danny. “Welcome home, princeling.”
Danny lives on the edge of the forest. One day, he ventures a little too far inside.
Thank you to @paenling for drawing the wonderful insert art and to @scarletmotifs for the beautiful music!
Sooooo excited to share my fic for the @dpfantasyzine Phantasmal Nights! There is music and art to come, made by @bibliophilea and @ep-10 respectively. They are both INCREDIBLE and really brought this whole piece to life. I hope you enjoy reading!
Words: 2997
Read on [AO3]
****
“What. The hell. Did you. Do?”
Danny clenched his fists. When he exhaled, his breath was pure ice.
Even now, Vlad couldn’t help but drip his voice in sadistic egoism as he drooled out, “I assure you, my dear boy, I certainly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Shut up!” Danny’s voice echoed down the hall. He rounded on that fucking asshole, ectoplasm sparking on his fingertips. “Don’t play stupid with me! Where the hell are we?”
Vlad merely flicked a stone as if he were inspecting it for dust and tutted. “In case it hasn’t pierced through your abnormally thick skull, I was transported here too, little badger.” His eyes glinted red.
Danny backed down, if only slightly, and stared down the dim, branching stone hall before them. Behind, a wall blocked them in, and above, the stone continued seemingly forever, fading into darkness.
They didn’t seem to be on Earth, or even the Ghost Zone. Another dimension, perhaps? He tried to remember how they got here, but it was like his memory was covered with childish scribbles. What happened? Why were they here?
And where was here?
The hall rumbled.
“Oh my.” Vlad stood in front of what was now a new hallway forking into three paths. “This wasn’t like this before.”
The forked hallway vanished, replaced once more by the wall, and all Danny could feel was the prickles of cold, cracked rock seeping through the hazmat to invade his skin.
But…he shouldn’t feel cold, not like this.
As if to mock him, flowers sprouted between the rock around him. The buds opened—black, brown, filled with holes. Dead, all of them.
He scrambled back. “Where are we?”
“Now that is certainly a question.”
Danny peered down the hallway, which now continued straight into nothingness. And behind him, the wall had been replaced by a large stone door.
He hardly brushed a finger to it before it opened as if pulled back by a puppeteer’s strings.
The room beyond was cavernous—pitch black, save for a ball of white light in the middle. Danny stepped through, his footsteps echoing like laughter, and the hall disappeared, forcing Vlad inside with him.
“What the—” Vlad hissed.
Something crawled in Danny’s stomach. “Vlad?” Whispers glistened in the air, too faint for him to understand. “Do you hear that?”
“Whoever brought us here wishes for us to follow the light like some sort of moth.” Vlad turned, his palms glowing pink. “Unlike you, I’m not an imbecile.”
Vlad brought his hands up, and the light behind him pulsed in warning.
“Wait—don’t!”
Too late.
Just as Vlad released his power at the wall, the light expanded outward like a dying supernova, swallowing everything.
And then, Danny stopped existing.
Or, did he?
He had no body, no soul, no mind. Nothing. Everything was blank. But…
No, there was the light! If he found his hand, he could reach out and just…barely…touch…
“What are you?” a child’s voice whispered in his ear.
His feet made impact with white and gray tiled floor. He looked up—he had eyes again—to see a hospital room before him. The bed was empty, though a vase of pink and purple flowers sat on the side table next to it.
Muffled laughter sounded next door. Perhaps a family visiting their loved one. But Danny didn’t have that. He was alone, so alone, and it crushed his heart, squeezed his lungs, filled his body with an ache that couldn’t be solved by a few fucking flowers and why? Why was he so alone?
An explosion. The wall was now a crater, and drywall fell like hail from the sky.
Danny gasped and buckled over, the dusty hospital air filling his lungs. Beside him, Vlad—had he been there the whole time?—panted just as loud.
“It was a trick,” Vlad said, his eyes blazing. He raised his glowing hand above his head. “Nothing but a trick.”
He shot the ceiling.
The room crumbled, the floor split, and everything vaporized to dust.
They were back in the dark room, though it was no longer pitch black. Stone surrounded them in a hexagon with ornate, carved doors on every wall. In the middle, the white light flickered. Danny could almost hear whispers ring out from it.
“Vlad?”
Vlad ducked away from him. “Are you really so immature to let your emotions consume you like that? In enemy territory, no less.”
Danny frowned. Vlad’s voice sounded…shaky?
“Do you know what that was about?”
“No,” Vlad responded sharply, his sneer back in place. “And I suggest you forget it.”
Vlad turned to a door, his cape flipping behind him, and thrust it open. Danny followed, but as he glanced back, he saw the hospital room flicker in the air.
They stepped into another hall filled with shadows crawling and whispering unintelligible words. Rather than damp stone, the place smelled of…bleach?
What?
A gun whined from the shadows in a tone that raised the hairs on the back of Danny’s neck. Only certain guns sounded so delicate, so high-pitched.
His heart thudded. His eyes must have been playing tricks on him. There wasn’t any stone in sight. It was tile. Glossy, unadulterated white tile. And it devoured every inch of him.
Down the hall, whispers transformed into recognizable deep voices.
He was walking toward them.
But…no. His hands were cuffed behind his back and no, no, no!
Something slammed his torso. The shadows swallowed him whole.
“His death was peculiar, wasn’t it?” one of the Operatives asked.
“It was. But don’t worry, we’ll find out his secrets soon enough.”
No!
Red eyes rounded on him, cutting through the black air. Danny recognized them, but they didn’t make sense. Why was Plasmius in this cell with him? Plasmius couldn’t have gotten captured by the Guys in White too. If he did, then they were screwed, but no, he wouldn’t have. He wasn’t—he didn’t—
A scream tore through Danny’s throat, and now it was his turn to rip his hands from their cuffs and throw himself at the door with glowing fists. The door broke from its hinges, slamming into the wall behind it with a bang so violent, the tile fractured.
Danny hit the wall—the stone wall—but when he turned around, the cell was gone and only the hallway remained.
“Okay.” Danny tasted acrid words on his tongue. “I…don’t…I think someone’s messing with us.”
Vlad peered at him with an expression Danny couldn’t discern. “It would appear that way.”
“I think—no, I know that second room was for me. That was my memory. So, was the first one yours?”
Vlad tensed. Then, with PR-practiced control, he said, “I agree that someone is digging through our pasts. So now the question is, why?”
As if in response, the floor disappeared.
They landed in a large, circular lab with metal walls and purple-tinted flooring. Fuzzy music filled the room, jumping and repeating as if from a broken record. The air stung, and the source seemed to be a large glass tube with thick, green ectoplasm coating the bottom.
“Why are we in your lab?”
“It’s a memory, Daniel. Clearly.”
Vlad pointed, and then Danny saw him. A second Vlad, frozen in time, hunched over a computer displaying a green-coated DNA structure.
Danny crept forward, trying to read the text on the screen, but it was too fuzzy.
“What were you researching?”
“Your DNA structures, of course.”
Danny whipped around. “Huh?”
Vlad grinned, his teeth seeming sharper than usual. “Well, if you weren’t going to be my son, then I was going to have to make one of my own.”
“Wait.” The realization hit Danny. “You were trying to clone me?”
“You caught me!” Vlad held his hands up in surrender, but his smug expression belied any sincerity.
“You sick fuck.”
“Oh, now, don’t be like that! Rest assured, the clones didn’t last a full minute before melting.”
The flame of Danny’s ongoing fury toward Vlad reignited in his core. “When we get out of here, I’m going to end you.”
“Feel free to try!”
Danny wanted to snark back, but something splashed his nose. He looked up, and the room had turned into a melting oil painting. The walls wept, and the music faded into static. The floor wasted away, revealing another set of tiles underneath. And when Danny peered up, another lab stood in its wake.
This lab was smaller, darker—minus the portal. The brilliant, glowing portal that beckoned him forth.
Who was Danny to resist that siren call?
“Don’t you wanna know what’s waiting on the other side?” Sam’s voice echoed, and Danny did want to know what was there. Yes, he wanted to know so badly!
Sam wasn’t here now. But that was okay. The only thing he needed was the portal.
He stepped forward.
The portal hummed in agreement.
Someone grabbed at him, but he turned intangible and stepped forward again.
“Come to me,” the portal said. “Tell me your secrets.”
“Okay,” Danny whispered. “I’ll tell you my secrets.”
Then, something blocked his path. A man, a ghost. One with teal skin and red eyes. Danny tried to push the ghost aside, but it gripped his arm.
“Let me go.”
“No.” It grabbed his other arm and pinned him to the floor.
“Let me GO!”
“Snap out of it!”
“I have to go to the portal!” He thrashed. His knee made contact with the ghost who grunted, but otherwise didn’t let him go. “I NEED TO GO!”
Slap!
His cheek stung. He breathed hard, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.
“Something is tricking us, little badger! There is no portal!”
No, the ghost—Vlad was wrong. He needed to go into the portal. Why didn’t Vlad understand? He had to, and Vlad was trying to stop him.
“Focus! There's no portal! We’re in a labyrinth, Daniel!”
No, no, no…
They…
There was no…
There was no portal?
The air cracked above him.
No…portal…
Another snap. Then another.
They weren’t in his lab. They were in a labyrinth. Someone was messing with them, picking through their memories.
Crack.
“Who are you?” Danny called into the fractured ceiling; the pressure in his ears increased. “Who keeps whispering?”
A pebble fell from the ceiling, and then, like a spiderweb, thousands of cracks appeared in the air. When Danny exhaled next, the room shattered, pieces cascading like diamonds and falling into the dark depths of nothing.
With the room gone, all that remained were swirls of green ectoplasm and purple doors.
“Why have you brought us to the Ghost Zone?” Danny called out.
The whispers snickered in response.
“I think I may know why,” Vlad said, releasing Danny. “You really shouldn’t have been so obvious, Vecna.”
The laughter faded around them, and tatters of robes twinkled from the corners of his eyes.
“Vecna?”
“A death god.” Vlad’s eyes narrowed on the same dark, snaking robes that seemed to be growing more opaque with each second. “And a pathetic one at that.”
The laugh sounded again, this time from behind him. But when Danny whipped his head around, it followed. He turned again, the whispering laugh remained echoing behind his head.
It was maddening.
“What do you want from us?” Vlad demanded.
Danny blinked, and they were back in the GIW. The scene shifted in a timelapse of frozen white suits and glittering white tiles. An invisible hand pushed him through a door and Danny wanted to puke because he’d been in this room before, but the timelapse continued on. People moved in and out, green hitting the floor one moment and cleaned the next.
Danny refused to turn around.
“You don’t need to,” the whisper assured him. “Look at the computer screens.”
He couldn’t. He’d forgotten how to breathe.
For one horrible moment, Danny wanted to call out to Vlad for help. But then Vlad was beside him, squinting up at the screens that Danny was too cowardly to see.
“They’re studying it.”
“A ghost core’s energy,” Vlad muttered. And then, as if he could sense Danny’s cold terror—or perhaps he could see the way ice crystals were spreading from Danny’s feet—he added in a low whisper, “It’s no one we know.”
It’s not you, Danny translated, and he steeled himself to turn around, to see the unnamed green ghost splayed on the table with its vibrant core fully on display.
“They want to know your secrets.”
Danny shut his eyes.
Vlad scoffed. “They’re too simpleminded to figure it out.”
“But I’m not.”
The voice—Vecna’s voice—hit him like a metal pipe, and Danny snapped into awareness to see a desert of ash sand under a blood orange sky. Before him, a figure sat upon a throne made of bones.
Vecna’s black and red tattered robes hardly covered his gray skin, bones visible underneath. His black spiked collar surrounded a head of flesh and skull, too sharp teeth, and black pits with glowing red pupils for eyes.
Danny sucked in a breath. He’d met many strange ghosts, but nothing quite like this.
“Don’t be foolish.” Vecna’s voice ground into Danny’s skull like rocks. “You have secrets, secrets of how you cheated death, and me. Tell me, and I’ll bring you home. Refuse, and I’ll send you back to the labyrinth.”
“Quite the set of options,” Vlad responded in his signature smirk.
“Quite.”
The electric smell of a challenge permeated the air, and Danny tried to jump up, to fight, but he couldn’t. He was held in place by the same snake-like robes that made up Vecna’s gown.
But how? When?
Vecna’s eyes narrowed to slits as they rested on Danny. “Consider this a warning.”
“Let me go!”
“Tell me how you cheated death.”
“Why don’t you read through my memories and figure it out yourself!”
“He doesn’t mean it like that,” Vlad said, his eyes glinting. “Really, I don’t know what you expected bringing this boy here.”
Vecna’s piercing gaze shifted to Vlad.
“His teenage brain is simply too underdeveloped for the situation, you see.”
It really was amazing how Danny could go from almost wanting Vlad’s comfort to refraining from punching him into next year.
“Then you tell me.”
Vlad hummed, mockingly tapping his chin. “No.”
“I won’t ask again.”
“Yes, you will, because you’re desperate. So, so desperate. I can see it in your eyes.”
Vecna didn’t rise to the bait. “If you’re so perceptive, then you’ll do good to explain how you cheated me.”
“What do the legends say?” Vlad called out to the orange sky. “Oh, that’s right! Vecna, the god of the underworld, can only control those whose secrets he understands? But you don’t understand ours. How, when our hallway forked into life and death, we chose to walk down both paths. So you can’t control us, correct?”
The wind picked up around them. Still restrained, all Danny could do was listen to Vlad’s voice increase in both confidence and derision as he taunted the god.
“Poor Vecna! Such a powerful god, and yet two humans managed to beat you. How pathetic!”
Vecna rose, stepping a bony foot off his throne. “I see all. All your fears, your memories. And with all that power, how you two managed to cheat still eludes me.”
The pressure increased in Danny’s head. For a paralyzed moment, he realized that Vecna was trying to pry him open for answers that he didn’t even have.
“Stop!” Danny yelled. “Get out of my—”
“SILENCE!”
The air cracked like a whip, and Danny was left with robes squeezing his limbs, and his chest heaving for air.
“There are other creatures who can walk the line between death and the living, but their existence is planned. For two humans with no fae bloodline to trick the laws of life and death itself?” He raised his chin, continuing his slow steps forward. “It’s abominable. And it must end.”
“Oh?” Vlad’s chuckle was full of thorns. “And how do you think you’ll force me to reveal my secret?”
The wind whipped, and then Vecna was on top of Vlad with Danny pinned beside him. The pressure was agonizing, and to Danny’s disgust, he could feel skeleton hands emerging from the ground to claw at his body. A scream inched up his throat, only to be stopped by robes gagging him into silence.
“You will tell me how you managed to evade my call. You will—”
There was a flash. Then, the pressure and his restraints vanished into thin air. He tracked Vlad’s vicious eyes to Vecna, whose robes had been burned through.
There was a hole in his ribcage.
Where Vlad’s still-smoking palm had just shot him.
The illusion shattered, letting them fall through time and space itself until Danny and Vlad were standing in an alley somewhere in downtown Amity Park. Night surrounded them, and the ground was damp with faded rain.
Vlad was the first to turn back to human form, brushing the shoulders of his dry-cleaned suit. “What a waste of a perfectly good Friday evening.”
“What was that?” Danny asked.
Vlad rolled his eyes. “Little badger, weren’t you paying attention? Anyway, I’m going home. Hopefully your parents haven’t been looking for you. Although, your oaf of a father could hardly notice a nuclear explosion detonating if one slapped him in the face.”
“But won’t Vecna come back? I—you—he was trying to kill us, and you blasted a hole in his ribs! How the hell did you even do that?”
“It’s simple, really. Do I have to spell everything out for you? He is a god of death, and our existence takes the concept of death and spits right in its face. He cannot hurt us, Daniel, we’re too…confusing for him. And now he truly understands it.” Vlad chortled and began walking down the alley.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Go home, Daniel. Or, better yet, bring me with you. I’d love to visit your darling mother.”
And there was that disgust right where Danny had left it last. “Fuck off, Vlad.”
My piece for Phantasmal Nights, the @dpfantasyzine!
This is an AU I'm naming Phantasmal Quest after the zine. You may recognize it as the return of that AU I did for an Ectoberhaunt prompt in 2023!
My idea here is that the Ghost Zone has equal amounts of Neverland and Sherwood Forest inspiration, and Danny is simultaneously a Peter Pan and Robin Hood figure, and his Lost Boys/Merry Men are Ember, Youngblood, Poindexter, and Cujo.
Danielle is the protagonist who isekaied herself in order to bring Danny home after he fell into the Ghost Realm as a little kid. While there, she magically binds a certain dark warlord to act as her guide on her quest. (because I'm incapable of making an AU that doesn't include Dani and Vlad's dynamic <3)
Her quest then takes her all over the beautiful yet treacherous Ghost Realm as she searches for her brother while being hunted by the Ghost King and his Court.
Just as Stolen Sanguine's central theme is love and Girl Out of Time's is fate, Phantasmal Quest's is home.
Now that the zine has been out long enough I can share the fic I wrote for it publicly! You can read it on Ao3 (alongside two other fics in this AU) or below c:
“This is it, I’m dead. Beyond dead. Double dead.”
Ignoring how the other boy was doing his best to push his face through the table, Tucker only laughed. “Danny, you’re a demon. If you were dead, you’d be a ghost.”
“Weren't you bragging about being impossible to get rid of literally yesterday?” Sam added, grinning when Danny looked up just enough to glare at her. “Thought so.”
“For humans, sure! Not for my parents to get rid of!”
Tucker’s easygoing demeanor quickly slid away as he scooched closer for a hug. “What about your parents?”
“The ones that just left you trapped with that monster? For years?” Sam asked.
Danny gave a low groan, the tips of his pale fingers digging into his scalp. Literally, thanks to the unexpected claws in his human skin. “Yeah.”
Sam scowled, fingers curling into fists. “I could take ‘em.”
“No you couldn’t.” Tucker cut in. Danny’s parents were demons. They were two idiot teenagers that accidentally gave a demon not only part of their souls, but one of his own. Their best ploy was ‘beg Danny’s big scary sibling to bail them out’ in the grand scheme of things.
“I’d still try, you coward.”
“You shouldn’t. Then you’d just be dead.” Danny’s quiet mumble cut through their squabbling. “I don’t want that.”
Sam and Tucker shared a look. Danny was getting better at expressing their friendship, but he could still be standoffish. Like a ‘proper’ demon would be. Outright worrying for their safety he saved for actual danger. “What’s going on, anyway?”
“I don’t know! They never care about what I’m doing. They must have found out. They’re going to kill me. No, no, they’ll torture me for like five years, and kill you guys, and make me watch, and then they’ll kill me. Or worse.”
“Danny, you gotta breathe when you’re human.”
Spite made him want to refuse Sam's advice, but his lungs overpowered his foolish attempt. “Human bodies are stupid.”
“Smart enough to keep a demon from doing something idiotic to kill it.”
They were trying to make him feel better, obviously. Even though that was impossible. Didn’t they get how totally doomed he was? He groaned, letting his head flop on the table.
“If we’re not allowed to beat them up, how do we help? Since you’re not running off and getting killed on my watch,” Sam said.
“You can’t! There’s nothing, okay? I’m nothing, and they’re everything,” Danny snapped. “You were terrified of my sister, and she’s nothing compared to them! We’re little underlings, not like humans! We’re not all separate like you are!”
“I want to encourage you and stuff, but I guess you know more about demons than we do?” Tucker said, wincing when Sam glowered at him for ‘caving’ to Danny’s fears. “Why can’t we just summon you back? You have to answer, right?”
Danny groaned again, louder. Did he really have to explain everything? “You don’t seriously think two untrained humans can overpower summonings from millennia-old demons that literally created me.”
“Well, no, but—” Tucker’s protests died under Danny’s glare.
“Tucker just cares about you and wants to help. Don’t be catty about it,” Sam said, stepping between them. “Maybe demons let their friends suffer, but humans at least try to help. Even if we aren’t sure it’ll work.”
“I know that. If you do that this time, you'll just get killed!”
“Well, if you think of anything, we’re game to try it?”
Why didn’t they understand that his parents would kill them without even blinking? Denial? Some human need to just blather pointless sympathies? “If you summon me and nothing happens, don’t keep trying. I’ll respond when I can.”
Which would probably be never. That part wasn’t sticking though, so he decided to stop mentioning it.
“Why, does it hurt or something if you can’t come right away?”
Considering the low, constant tugging at the back of his neck? The clear, obvious sign he was being looked for and expected to show up? Which he was ignoring, by cheating with something no demon should ever have? “Something like that, yeah.”
If his parents weren’t so old and what Jazz called ‘temporally challenged’, ignoring their demands could have the human world suddenly enduring a hellish invasion. Which no one wanted. “I need to get going. Don’t do some stupid human thing.”
“You think everything is a ‘stupid human thing’.”
“And I’m right.” He didn’t give them a chance to argue, shifting into his body of shadows and vanishing as the infernal pull became too strong to resist.
–
A fretting, flaming sibling was not what he expected to see when he cracked open his green eyes. The massive feathered beast nearly torched the gold beams that supported the cavernous ceiling, her pacing crossing vast distances in seconds.
“What did you do?!” Jazz zeroed in on the blot of shadows against the tiles, her mane a roiling sea of flame as her many eyes stared at the curling darkness around him.
“Nothing? That’s sort of my thing,” Phantom couldn’t help but snap. The humans being dumb was one thing. His sister knew better! “Duh?”
Her fire dimmed to a flickering candle strength, but it didn’t keep Jazz from nudging his tiny body behind her massive talons in protection, as she often did when they were much, much younger. “I am just worried. They never seek to see both of us anymore.”
“Or me, at all. Ever.”
“Phantom.”
“What? Divine my truth, observer of all knowledge!”
Jazz rolled five eyes at his attempted snark. “When did those humans teach you that blustering is a good way to show you are upset?”
“It’s to show I’m not afraid.”
“Then I am ‘afraid’ that you are terrible at it, little brother.”
Phantom muttered under his breath, wriggling to get out from under her. That wouldn’t help with their parents. “So you didn’t rat me out?”
Her mane was no longer alight as she lowered her head, her face filling his field of view like a great blue moon. “I would never betray you.”
He could never admit some of his lingering terror was smoothed away with Jazz’s promise and warm feathers. Orange, from his father, was terrifying. From her though, it was safe. Even with her deadly claws, she’d never hurt even one of his bright white hairs when trying to comfort him.
“Have you been waiting long?” he asked.
That earned a musical chuckle as Jazz cuddled him close. “You need to define long. As humans tell time, perhaps?”
“Well I have two humans who get all out of sorts really fast, so yeah.”
“A week and a day. The throne and lounge remain spotless. No notes, either.”
“Wow, love being dragged down here when they aren’t even present. So courteous.” He spoke flippantly, but was already scanning every corner, his ears half lowered in case the rebuke was loud.
Nothing. So they really weren’t being observed at all?
“If we’re lucky, they just want to show off some new conquest. Or new siblings. Or they might bother to talk about that time you went ‘missing’, I suppose.” Jazz spoke more to herself than him, a habit she’d never managed to break.
“Pretty sure they swore off any more spawn after the last disaster.”
“You are not a disaster.”
Phantom bit one of her toes. She didn’t flinch, or really seem to notice. “You are being rude, though.”
“Pretty good proof I wasn’t what anyone wanted, though. Watch out! He might bore you to death with his inability to do anything! Such a good use of royal energy, that thing.”
“Just because they are not present does not mean you need to do their job for them.”
Getting scooped up and dumped on her back didn’t make him feel any less helpless and pathetic, but he just sighed. There wasn’t any reason for Jazz to keep lying to make him ‘feel better’ about being the most worthless creature ever spawned. She always insisted on it though. Like if some creature of knowledge and cunning kept stating it, kept believing it, it would force the universe to make it true. If only.
Part of him wanted to yank a good bit of hair out, a petty little action for a petty little creature. All his energy to do so was sucked right out of the room as one of the massive torches flickered once, twice, and then seemed to twist—visible and not. Then all the light was devoured by an unseen maw.
Phantom could only shrink and tremble as the room went pitch black. Jazz didn’t shake like he did, she wasn’t some cowardly infant, but he could feel her muscles tense under his shaky claws. Phantom flattened his ears and shut his eyes as the horrid crunch of stone against bone bellowed in the darkness from all sides, a flat heavy pounding following.
His parents were never subtle about approaching. They could just make a portal and slide through silently! He’d seen it! But no, they had to rip through realities one at a time, destroying as they went. To make a point. To remind everyone how strong they were. How no being could compare.
Though his eyes were squeezed shut, he could feel the darkness retracting, yanking his curling shadows away with it as he struggled to keep his body together. His tail twisted at the unexpected pain. Not many things could easily drag a darkness he was in away like that. Had it been an accident, or did they just forget he wasn’t made of much more than the absence of light?
“Children! So good to behold the both of you again!” Their father’s roar felt loud enough to crack great columns of marble in its wake. Phantom just tried to be even smaller as his ears burned.
Jazz stooped into a deep bow, grand talons splayed as her wings remained folded tightly, mostly obscuring Phantom from view. “Of course. We are honoured to take even some of your time.” Her voice was strong and confident, lacking even a trace of her prior worry when they’d still been alone. “For what reason did you summon us, and how may we serve?”
Jazz really did know all the right things to say. Sure, he knew he should be contributing too—but it was just easier to let her do it. Keeping his head down should count as being differential enough, probably.
“Stand. You do not need to be so formal with us, sweetheart!”
Phantom slowly cracked his eyes open, his mother’s kind tone settling some fears. Neither of them were starting out angry, so maybe they really didn’t know? The massive, serpent-like demon and his gaudy orange scales practically filled the room—even if the bulk of his father was settled on his mountainous lounge. Danny couldn’t look at him long; everywhere he looked was different. Some scales were caked with barnacles and the wear and tear of deep underseas, before suddenly becoming embossed with gold and jewels without any break in between, before flickering with the gleams of flame and magma. He was such a massive demon that he simply left parts of himself in different environments instead of altering his whole form to fit wherever he wished to be.
There was a reason the humans sometimes called him ‘Leviathan’. A world serpent. The end of days.
There was a reason Phantom was a complete embarrassment when that sort of power resided in just one parent. When his mother was just as fearsome, as subtle as his father was not, and he was still this useless.
“Well, I could not assume it was not a formal matter. You did not say why we were to come,” Jazz insisted, even as she stood back to her full height. A towering, impressive height—when their father didn’t make her look like a chicken in comparison.
“Neither of us is skilled in mind reading, either,” Phantom said, quietly. It was a reckless sort of comment—but surely they’d take it as him downplaying their abilities and not as the ‘sarcasm’ his human friends introduced him to.
“A long overdue occasion. Though a happy one, we admit.”
Phandom ducked at his mother’s voice, his eyes searching but unable to see her. It was easier to find her in the crevices in the world—a being watching and waiting. Slim, insectoid, and almost impossible to even stitch together in a real ‘form.’ Even trying to perceive his mother made his head pound and eyes itch.
“My dear sibling’s regained freedom, perhaps?” Jazz’s question was short and sharp, and made Phantom dig his claws in her fur. What was she doing?
“What do you mean?”
He stopped digging his claws in. Seriously?!
Jazz took that as permission to continue. “The unjust imprisonment he was suffering? At the hands of wicked Fae, that schemed to make him into one of their mindless fawning familiars?” She paused, just for a moment as her flames flickered a bit too brightly before dulling again. “The imprisonment I personally had to discover and thwart?”
There was no anger. No, instead the great orange beast laughed. “Oh! That! No, no. Nothing to do with that.”
“Why?” He shouldn’t have asked. In that little human heart of his, he knew exactly why.
“You are being unclear again, dear.” So gentle, so kind as he felt countless eyes peering between every gap in his shadowy form. He wanted to twist and squirm.
“I believe he means ‘why’ did you not deign to rescue him from Fae hands, or at least delegate the task to me.”
Phantom nodded, haltingly. He sure felt a lot like ‘Danny’ right now—but he couldn’t be that. Not right now, not here. They had every right to abandon him for his failure at existing.
“Why would we? He knows he should not have been where he was caught, and caused more tension with another family.”
He curled in tighter from the accusation, feeling the vague disdain the voice did not betray—but he could sense it from how his mother was looking at him. Jazz’s mane flared up again, and he couldn't let her do something stupid over him, of all things. “I am thankful you allowed my sibling to rescue me.”
“See! Even he understands! Really, the proper thing would have been to forbid you from going to the Fae’s land, but we can hardly be responsible for your silly, undirected actions.” The rumbling laugh of their father made the watching leer lessen, even if Jazz’s mane still simmered a little too high for her to be ‘calm.’
Jazz closed her eyes as her talons slowly stopped digging into shattered tile. “Well, not much has happened since that incident. What is the occasion?”
Right. What good thing could possibly have happened since then? He hadn’t done anything. Jazz probably did something impressive, but he didn’t get called for those things anymore. Sort of took away from the aura of achievement when a speck of a demon who hadn’t done anything worth recognizing in centuries was there.
“Did you not tell your sibling, little one?”
So it was him? They didn’t know about the human thing, right? They couldn’t. Surely. He tried to stop being so folded over himself, but loosening his curls betrayed how he was shaking. “Or, she forgot. She’s much busier than me!” Stalling for time, he could manage. Praising Jazz was pretty much all he was good for, even if it didn’t mean anything.
“True. This is overdue, after all.” Their father shifted into a more upright, regal position. Though, the more formal atmosphere just made Phantom more uneasy. “Our little embodiment of the void.”
“Of the vast nothing that awaits all things. The unknown emptiness that is everywhere, but nowhere.”
Oh. They never used that title anymore. He never ‘earned’ the right to be called what he’d been made of. He was nothing, alright. Just a very unimpressive, unthreatening nothing. They barely even bothered to call him Phantom, lately.
“We’re so proud you finally managed to trick a human out of their soul.”
He blinked. He didn’t actually do that. He stole two halves and sort of accidentally made one new one? That was his? Instead of correcting them, he nodded, forcing himself to relax. Of course he was worried over nothing! “Thank you. For remembering when I took so long to do so.”
“Of course we would, small one! Just as your sibling did—hm. How long ago was that now?”
“Too long ago to remember, I think.” Phantom didn’t need to hear exactly how defective he was.
“Congratulations, little brother.” Jazz’s voice was genuine, even though she already knew the truth of it.
“Now we would usually spend more time, but you are both old enough to not need the extra attention. We still wished to acknowledge it, and encourage further progress.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
The pressure in the room lessened in seconds as their parents exited with much less fanfare than their entrance.
It left behind fury in his little shadowy body. That he barely mattered, that the source of his terror was just a formality. He should be happy! In some ways he was, with the stress finally out of him. It just left too much space for this stupid, undeserved anger to move in. He said it himself: demon parents were not like human ones.
“At least my soul didn’t register as mine to them?”
“Thankfully. I had no idea what we would do if they actually noticed.”
He couldn’t help letting out a little laugh. Jazz was nuts to even think about trying to protect him if that happened. “I’d run.”
“Probably the wisest plan. I assume you’ll be headed back to those humans of yours?”
“Yeah.” He’d have to make sure not to be too obvious to Sam and Tucker how much more comfortable their world was becoming for him. They’d never let him live it down.
“Be safe.”
Though at least he did have someone on his side, down here.
My piece for @dpfantasyzine! It was such a fun project and I’m really happy that it was my first DP zine!
I was really ambitious with this piece, and ended up out of my comfort zone, but am quite happy with the results, especially with the minor story elements that I’ve alluded to.
While I think I could have drawn the trio a bit better, I am really happy with their outfits, which I spent a decent amount of time on despite this being a one off piece oops. Here’s the whole line up of designs which I ended up mashing together in the actual drawing.
My piece for the @dpfantasyzine !
There's a lot of things i'd do differently but I'm still proud of this, it actually looks better than I remembered haha!
Anyway, some magical AU where Valerie is Nic's apprentice. Featuring my human design for Technus and my alarming lack of knowledge of how robots are built. Yeeeah just stick a screwdriver in there, that'll do.
Phantasmal Nights @dpfantasyzine - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
