Panel 1: Inside the cottage. Laudna is carefully piecing together shards of colored glass with magic to fill the broken window panes, creating a stained-glass effect that falls across her face.
Panel 2: Outside in the meadow, Imogen is stuffing a straw tick with fresh dried prairie grass. Her arms are bare and freckled in the afternoon sun.
Panel 3: Evening. Laudna is on the roof, repairing the missing boards. The dead tree that had been leaning against the roof is lying on the ground in several lightning-struck pieces, which Imogen is now (with some difficulty) splitting into firewood.
Panel 4: By the stove Imogen takes a bath in the washtub, in which she just fits, enjoying the hot water from their new kettle. Wrapped in a towel nearby, Laudna is brushing Pâté with a toothbrush.
Panel 5: They go to sleep, nestled close together in the sweet-smelling softness of their new bed, safe, warm, and happy.
probably an unpopular opinion: I know they discussed this a while ago so it wasn't unexpected, and I love that so many people are excited about the return of VM, but I can't help but be a little bitter that we are cutting away from BH yet again...
The party split, crownkeepers, downfall, and now VM... I just wish there was more BH in the BH campaign. It feels like we had so little time to explore the C3 characters fully what with the Predathos clock constantly ticking down, and with this being the "endgame", it seems like there won't be a chance to rectify that.
Maybe I'm just sad because there's probably only a handful of episodes of C3 left and it seems like a a good chunk of them won't even have BH in it, depending on how many episodes they spend as VM and as M9. I'm just not ready to let go of BH yet I guess :(
"alternate" YOU GOT IT BOSS. BEAST MASTER RANGER LAUDNA AU REAL-
[content warnings: body horror, reference to matilda's beating/hanging, animal death]
Matilda wakes up to something licking her face. At least, she thinks that's what it is -- it could be a snake crawling over her cheekbone. But it's wet. Snakes aren't wet. People assume that snakes are wet and slimy, but they're actually very dry, and when they shed their old scales it comes off as a clean husk, and when she opens her eyes she sees one of the Whitestone wolves and screams.
Or, well, tries to scream. Her throat isn't working. When she reaches up and touches her neck she finds not skin but a canyon, and she decides to stop touching her neck. Instead she looks at the wolf.
It's one of the new wolves, the ones that came when the sun went away. It has three eyes like white lanterns in its skull. Its mouth wraps all the way around its head; it is packed densely with jagged yellow teeth.
When the wolf notices Matilda looking at it, it wags its tail shyly.
The wolves of Whitestone don't really do that. Mostly they stay to the woods outside of Whitestone, and if you try to run away the wolves catch you and break your legs and drag you back to the castle, where you're never heard from again. The wolves don't come into town. The wolves don't lick people's faces. The wolves definitely don't wag their tails -- she doesn't even know if they usually have tails. But this one does. It's wet and silky-pink, like a ribbon that's been stapled to the wolf's rump.
It doesn't look like it's in any particular hurry to break Matilda's legs and drag her back up to the castle. Also, she was just in the castle -- is she not still in the castle?
She looks down. Her body is crumpled on wet cobblestones. She's been given a rope necklace to wear. Hm. She doesn't remember that one. She remembers the costume she's wearing, Lord and Lady Briarwood...they gave it...
A wet pink tongue slaps at Matilda's arm. She blinks. She looks at the wolf. The wolf has sat down next to her; its tail is still wagging. It watches her with hopeful expectation, and then licks her arm again.
Well. Right. Matilda's neighbors had dogs, before they ate them. She lifts one of her hands and pets the wolf.
The wolf's wagging tail is a ribbon dance, swooping and swirling; it noses into her hand, it does full-body wriggles of pleasure. Matilda can't help the wheezy attempt at a laugh that escapes her throat. Good boy, she mouths. Good boy. Or girl. Do you have a gender? I'm not going to check! She lifts her other arm (her arms hurt) (actually, her whole body hurts!) and engages in full-body skritches. Judging by the noises the wolf makes about this, it either enjoys it or is about to cough up a lupine hairball.
In the distance, there's an explosion. A rattling hum, a flare of white light. Matilda looks: the castle, it's coming from the castle. Castle Whitestone. Where she -- but she can't think about it, or the wolf will try to lick her again. So she just won't think about it.
What will she do? Stand up. Walk home. Her parents were probably expecting her hours ago. She has to light the fire, she has to sweep. She has to tell her mother that she was wrong about Lord and Lady Briarwood: they don't care that she's an archer, they won't put her aim to use. Stupid to think that they would. They must have a thousand sharpshooters, each prettier and more clever than the last.
That's fine. Matilda has changed her mind. She doesn't want the castle, she doesn't want a new bow or a grand hunt or a way to be useful. Actually, she doesn't want to be useful to the Briarwoods at all.
So she stands up. Because that's the first step, standing up. She almost doesn't manage it -- her legs aren't cooperating (she thinks most of her bones are broken). But the wolf noses its head under her to be the world's largest, wettest cane. Good wolf, she mouths at it, with a vague wheeze. Good indeterminately-gendered wolf.
And then she's standing. Behind her, she hears the creaking of the Sun Tree. Don't look up! Don't look up! Just walk away from it. Go home. She has to light the fire. She has to...
The wolf doesn't leave her side. Matilda finds herself clutching a squishing wet handful of its fur, to balance herself as she limps away from her death.
Imogen has never been chased by an angry mob before; her brain keeps almost processing it and then making a hard pivot and running in the opposite direction. For example: that stranger, Laudna, her mind doesn't hurt to touch. For another example: that stranger, Laudna, is holding Imogen's hand. They're running away from Gelvaan -- Imogen's home, or what was supposed to be Imogen's home -- and into the valley and the mob behind Imogen hurts her head and Laudna doesn't and she's holding Imogen's hand.
"First time," Laudna gasps as they go, "being chased -- by an -- angry mob?"
"Yeah?"
"Thankfully! I'm an expert!"
"I'm out of magic," Imogen says, the words tumbling out of her breathless and terrified. "I can't -- when they -- I mean, if they--"
"How do you feel about heights?"
"What?"
Oh, gods, the mob is gaining on them. Surely they wouldn't...Imogen has lived there her whole life, she -- they know -- but they'd...Laudna. They would. For Laudna. And Imogen -- they stopped loving her, they stopped wanting her, she's just a thing that's in the way of the stampeding herd--
"Heights!" Laudna gasps. "I can get us out! I...oh, fuck it, we'll -- whoo, what a workout -- stay close to the ground." And she puts the fingers of her free hand into her mouth and lets out an ear-splitting whistle.
The end of the sound is sharply cut off, because someone throws a rock at Laudna's head; it hits, before Imogen can...well, what could she do. Try to catch it? Use her powers, but they tell her, and she, and Laudna, and she won't let go of Laudna's hand they can't make her let go of Laudna's hand. She won't do it. The first mind that sounds like music.
"Hold on!" Laudna says.
I couldn't do anything else. That's what Imogen is going to say, before seventeen thousand tons of wet meat and bone slam into her at mach speed.
So instead of that, she says "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" She yells and yells and yells before the wind chokes the words out of her mouth. The wind? It isn't windy, it's...
Oh. She's up in the sky. She isn't on the ground anymore, she's in the sky. That's probably why Laudna asked her about heights.
She and Laudna are sitting on some big carcass, which is flying them away from the mob with two wings that Imogen simply refuses to look at. Next to her, Laudna is perched sidesaddle (it looks like their ride is growing her a seatbelt? a flesh seatbelt? so that's another thing to not look at); she has pulled the longbow from her back and nocked an arrow, pointed down.
For a moment, she doesn't look like the woman Imogen saw in the market: the shy little thing with the hammer in her hair and the quiver of arrows tied together with red yarn. She looks like a falcon on the edge of a dive; she looks like the arrow she has ready, steel-tipped and leaking some dark black smoke. Her eyes are just the same. Steel, black, cold.
"Laudna?" Imogen says.
The predator startles and retreats; Laudna looks at Imogen with wide eyes. "Oh," she says. "Shit. Right, right, don't -- well, sometimes they throw rocks at me, and I have to try and shoot them out of the air. I don't mind getting hit with rocks, but Tibia's quite sensitive."
Their ride makes a wet, thrashing sound. Imogen still refuses to look at its wings.
Laudna gasps. "Right!" she says. "I have to introduce you to Tibia! Tibby, darling, this is Imogen."
Tibia's head is a wet pink mass, decorated incongruously with a red bow; from under the ribbon, a white eye emerges to regard Imogen. It blinks once and then burrows back into the flesh. Is Imogen going to throw up? No, but that might just be because she's in shock.
"Hi, Tibby," she says. Her voice is faint and thin.
"She's a good girl," Laudna says. She lowers the bow, slides the arrow back into the quiver, flips the bow onto her back. "She's a very good girl. We crossed the ocean together, that was an adventure, I'll tell you -- oh, I mean. Well. Um. I. Um--"
Laudna buries her hands in what would be a wolf's ruff; they sink in, and she starts nervously squishing them around while staring at them, rapt, like they're the most fascinating thing in the world.
"Thank you for saving me," Laudna says to her hands. "You haven't...no one's ever tried to defend me before."
The meat burps.
"Besides Tibia. But she was a little late."
It growls.
"Yes, yes, I know, you got there eventually. Anyways!" Laudna brightens, whips around to Imogen with a cheery smile. Her mind sounds like a grand piano being thrown down a staircase. "Where should we drop you off? I'm sorry about all of that, it usually isn't -- well, I mean, it is, but -- usually we're the only casualties. There isn't...collateral. And now you're collateral! And you probably won't ever be able to go back there, that's what we've found, you can't go home again! But Tibby and I can drop you off somewhere down there. Name a place! As long as it's not Whitestone, haha!"
This is a lot to process, so Imogen blinks twice and then makes the mistake of looking down. Oops!
She whips her head back up to stare at Laudna. Laudna is very pretty, so it's not hard to stare at her. Don't look at those wet pink wings, don't look at the thing -- Tibia -- don't look down, at all that empty sky. Just look at Laudna. It's easy. Her eyes are so bright, her teeth are so sharp.
"Where are you going?" Imogen says.
"Oh, I don't know. Nowhere. Everywhere. So, like I said, we can drop you off--"
"Or you could take me with you."
What?
Did she mean that? Imogen turns the words over and over in her brain: yes, she meant it. She meant it. She can't go home again -- isn't that what Laudna just told her? So where else is there for her to go? Nowhere, everywhere. Which is just the place Laudna is going.
From behind Imogen, there's the sound of something slicing very quickly through the air; Imogen looks over her shoulder to see...is that a tongue? on its ass? No, it's a tail, it's definitely a tail. Tongues don't go there. They don't go there and she isn't going to think about it; she looks back to Laudna.
Laudna's eyes are huge -- surprise has thrown them open like windows, enough to see the whites all the way around. "Really? With...with us?"
"If there's room."
"Oh, there's definitely -- Tibia can -- oh, she's incredible, you'll love her, very capable. Just like you, actually. Back there, that was -- really? You want to? You can. You're welcome. But are you sure? You could go back down. I'm sure you could find a thousand places that would love you."
"So I'll find them with you."
Laudna makes a shy, embarrassed warble of a sound. "Oh, stop. But I mean. If you insist. Sure! Why not!"
Tibia gurgles wetly. After a moment, something cold and wet touches Imogen's hip: the creature is making her a seatbelt.
ok so. idk what happened here but it’s gay & bloody. enjoy!
//
the chatter blurred around her. she couldn’t bring herself to care, to pay attention. she was bored. she’s been bored for what feels like centuries, every second of her life a year and every year a fucking boring one. gods. what she wouldn’t give for something interesting to happen at one of these events. what she wouldn’t give for—
‘presenting her honourable lord temult.’
her.
laudna’s eyes caught on her hair first. it was practically loose around her shoulders—she hadn’t bothered to braid it, even, and everyone gasped and tittered like the little fucking fools they were and bent their heads together, idiot birds, to chatter about decorum and whatever else inane thing that stirred the puddles of their mind but laudna, oh, she couldn’t turn away. her hair, you see. it lay in lazy curls across the bare skin of her shoulders and it entranced her.
was it true that it could be blamed on decorum? on the difference of culture? in a group somewhere to her right, laudna could hear one of her lady’s needling laughs—poison tipped—and a snide comment on marquet, what passed for a lady there. laudna would deal with her. she would eat her alive and relish it. later.
the other option—more dangerous. this lord, this temult, had arranged herself on purpose. to tease from anyone who glanced her way the thought, the fervent desire, to see her in their bed the next morning. to see the sun kiss those sun-kissed shoulders, to count her freckles, to see the natural tousle of her curls against shoulders, bedsheets. did she smell of lavender? or was the likeness in colour alone?
laudna had to know.
her entourage squealed—idiots—when she stirred.
‘my lady,’ aurelia gasped, eyes prey wide. her hand flung to her chest in shock; laudna let her eyes dip to the red line of her necklace, the red line of her gown. the pale line of her throat. of the three, her throat and the rabbit-quick pulse bounding just beneath the skin, was the more enchanting. ‘you startled me!’
laudna arched a brow. she turned away, searching for the lord in her hall—the way was filled with dancing bodies, musicians, ivory-clad wait staff but every now and again she caught a glimpse of purple hair. she tracked her through the hall. temult’s path was slow and winding, as if she had all the time in the world.
did she know she ought to greet her host? that it was the first and only vital task of the evening? hunger licked behind her teeth, over the bonerasp of her jaw.
‘tell me,’ she purred, curling a hand around aurelia’s wrist, ‘what do you know of my guest?’
‘your…guest?’
the girl didn’t know who laudna meant. fool! another one for the pile. she knew well the slice of laudna’s displeasure and rushed to make herself useful, pressing up onto her toes in soft useless slippers. temult was wearing boots. she hadn’t more than glanced at her outfit—attention caught in the net of her hair, the gleam of her eyes—but she had seen that.
‘you mean the newcomer! yes? the - lord temult?’ aurelia leapt on the flicker of her interest, breadcrumb of a lure, and bobbed her head. ‘yes! i know of her! she hasn’t been here long—is staying in the city.’
‘the city? she is not a guest of one of my court?’
‘no, my lady.’
laudna stroked a pale thumb across aurelia’s wrist, her winsome pulse. ‘good. what else?’
‘i- i- oh, my lady, she’s frightfully dull. she never goes out and never invites anyone in. she has a small staff, no more than five, and they won’t say a word. ignatius thinks she’s some kind of charlatan—‘
‘ignatius is an idiot,’ laudna scolded.
‘yes, my lady. it is as you say.’
a pout touched laudna’s lips. ‘i don’t ever want to hear his name again,’ she said. behind her, pate scribbled down the decree. ‘and if he insists on coming to my parties, he must wear a mask. a different one each time.’ the pen nib scratched against the paper, and he murmured under his breath that it was done.
aurelia trembled so sweetly. when laudna finally let her go, she would flutter off and let everyone know—her whims were final, fantastic. there’s nothing fair at all about our fair lady.
laudna shivered in delight. it had been so very long since she’d played with the birds; she felt like a cat, stretching after a nice long nap. how had this temult done this to her? she felt…awake. alert.
‘what else?’ she asked, and dragged her thumb down that pulse again. the sharp point of her nail came to rest wear it was thinnest; with waking came such hunger.
aurelia stammered. ‘m-my lady, she does nothing. i have nothing more to tell you. she declined every invitation from every house.’
a rush of heat.
every house but mine.
laudna’s fangs pushed and pressed and slid free from her gums in a gush of blood and lust. with a groan, she lifted aurelia’s wrist to her mouth—spared a moment for the memory of the girl’s mother who had begged her not to feast on her, who hadn’t known how very sweet it was to break a promise—and sunk her teeth into soft soft flesh.
the first touch of blood was glorious. she was so thirsty—how long had she been waiting there? hunger bubbled in her throat, a laugh, a groan, and she was so so gentle she was a dutiful lady she was a kind lady to pull her teeth from broken skin, there, gentle, no tearing, and laved her tongue across the wound, swept each gush of red into her mouth, suckled at it until aurelia made a noise like she was going to faint. shock and hurt had drained her skin to white, and pleasure returned the pinkest flush to her cheeks. her eyes two dark dark bowls for feasting.
laudna licked her wrist one last time, then her fingers as she let the girl go. an attendant kept her on her feet.
‘food and wine for lady aurelia. medical attention if she should need it.’
the attendant bowed. laudna assumed they dragged her out, or called for another to help but she didn’t bother to wait and watch. she turned away—temult, where was she—and felt her veins alight to see her at the edge of the crowd that had stopped to watch her feed.
what was she? witch? warlock? laudna was hungry again. the blood she had drained from that girl curdled to ash on her tongue, tasteless, at a look from this stranger—she had to speak with her, had to know her, taste her.
‘lord temult.’
she stepped forward neatly with a nod. her dress was…fine. three seasons out of fashion, and a coarseness to the fabric that even a human—was she?—could feel. but what did that matter? it was nothing it meant nothing. it was just another skin around the power crackling inside. the lord was a storm, prowling through her dance hall.
‘lady br—‘
‘laudna,’ she interrupted, extending a hand for the lord to kiss. she didn’t bow, she didn’t curtsey, she sounded as though she barely cared for the honorific. enchanting. laudna wanted to sink her teeth into that neck and drink from her until she begged her, lady lady lady please.
something told her it would be easy.
there was blood on her hand. lord temult didn’t flinch. she stepped closer, took her bloody hand. hers was gloved and the realisation resonated, loud, in her chest. a wolf howl, lonely, lonely, calling.
lord temult’s eyes flickered down to the blood and to somewhere behind. lightning—real lightning!—licked behind her eyes. gorgeous, gorgeous, phenomenally dangerous. Laudna’s breath caught; the storm pressed in on all sides like a mighty hand.
was she showing off? it was a funny little game if she was. maybe she wanted laudna to beg for her. my lord? she would say it if this stranger asked. but no, her eyes flickered again—behind laudna, and who could possibly have captured her lord’s attention? laudna twisted, followed her gaze to—aurelia?
oh.
jealousy.
laudna pressed her hand harder into temult’s hold. shivered when a gloved thumb pinned her in place, helpless little butterfly.
‘kiss my hand,’ laudna said.
‘what?’
‘you’re new to this land. you don’t know our customs. that much is…’ laudna let her eyes trail the bare shoulders. her bare neck. her loose, lovely hair. ‘obvious.’
irritation was lovely on temult’s face. the mulish set of her chin begged for someone to grasp it, flay it, drain the marrow and defiance out of her. what a pretty thought.
‘i am the lady of the castle,’ she continued. ‘you must kiss my hand.’
temult glanced down at it, blood spattered up to the wrist. her eyelids fluttered—there, laudna had been right, she knew it—and she bent her head. pressed a branding kiss against her knuckles. heat burned, seared into her skin. when she lifted her head, laudna saw it—the red lash of a burn, already welting. how bold! how miraculously stupid! how exciting!
‘do you feast on all your ladies?’ temult asked, tone burned dry. her eyes dragged across laudna’s face, lingering on her mouth, her chin.
she wondered how much red she had wasted; she’d never been particularly neat.
‘only the ones who have pleased me.’
‘and what of lord’s?’
‘not yet. but one has recently…caught my attention.’
temult smirked. ‘i thank you for your invitation,’ she said. the words tasted rote, quickly learned. ‘it is most gladly received.’
‘i thank you for your attendance. the moon would not be a more welcome guest.’ behind her, pate gasped. he scribbled in his book.
temult did not know the formalities. what did words matter to a storm? what did castles matter? they didn’t, not at all. but for whatever reason, she had accepted the invitation and kissed laudna’s hand. and stared hard at the blood flaking her chin as though she wished fiercely it were gone. or that it were her own.
‘any other customs i should know about?’
laudna smiled. wide. ‘oh yes. you must stay with me all night. you must dance with me.’
temult rolled her shoulders. they were still holding hands. laudna let the slight move draw her closer; she felt like a feather in those violent winds. she would go anywhere, as far as temult wished. let her be flung into the deepest sea!
‘i can manage a dance or two.’
‘marvellous.’ more demands cluttered her tongue. she had to follow her to her throne. had to let laudna peel back the skin on her throat—what were those scars? gorgeous! a map just for her!—and let her feast, drink. the thought of her, what she would taste like, filled her mind. laudna could think of little else. except,
‘you must tell me your name,’ she whispered as temult let herself be pulled out onto the floor. ‘you must, you must.’
what was this creature? heat beneath her skin, red in her scars, her veins. white power behind her eyes.
a smile curled her lips. what would they look like, coated in blood? laudna groaned at the thought of her blood on these lips. oh what a creature she could become…
‘imogen,’ she said.
‘imogen. imogen, yes. yes.’
‘i think it’s about time you showed me—yeah,’ she cut herself off with a gasp, as laudna pressed her head to the side, dragged her hand down the column of her throat. ‘oh gods, yep.’
‘you wanted to be in her place.’
‘fuck. the second i saw it happen.’
laudna laughed. dipped her head. ‘gorgeous. gorgeous creature.’
power, powerful arms curled around her. they were not dancing. they merely stood on the dance floor as the music struck up and glimmering couples spun around them. laudna’s lords and ladies were good for something. to be pretty. to be obedient. imogen was not those things.
‘are you here for long?’ laudna whispered.
‘only til the solstice.’
‘and then gone.’ oh longing, that wolf-toothed howl.
imogen stepped closer still. the warmth of her neck, so close. the thump of her heart. powerful.
laudna’s teeth pushed from her gums. it hurt so sweetly, a tiny nip they were so sharp and then the hungry press as her fangs dropped and—oh oh power and lightning and the burn of it was right it was good she had never tasted blood before not like this, a curse on every other ugly creature she had drunk from, worthless worthless things they were maggots they were ash they were nothing compared to this, to her. my lord, my lord! how imogen hissed as her fangs sunk in, butter soft and smooth, how her blood rushed and rushed how it filled her mouth like it was begging to be drunk, how imogen begged to be drunk, her words cloying and sweet and starting to slur at the edges, rasped smooth, how she clung to launda’s shoulders, how she shuddered in her arms, oh what a dance it was.
laudna drank until imogen’s knees buckled. when her girl, her storm, her love sank to the floor laudna followed, the wine red of her gown pouring over imogen’s legs, her practical boots.
‘hell of a first kiss,’ imogen drawled, as an attendant pressed a cloth into laudna’s hands and laudna pressed it, in turn, to the side of that perfect neck.
germansingergirl
baratheonpilled
annaxmalina
areudirty
2087
pixelskylines
