Ok so I saw this post by @pleasancies and holy cow?? I love it?? So here, have the biggest whumpee and the tiniest caretaker (she said and then immediately whumped them the other way around a little bit, but like... just wait for it, it’s there):
Venk’s entire body was on edge, thrumming with adrenaline. This was the worst part of being a scout, or maybe the best. Whatever was crashing around out here in the woods was big, and for a while earlier, at least, it had been getting closer to camp. He needed to get to it, get information, and get back in time for everyone to get ready, or to run.
He darted between trees, staying in the shadows where the moonlight didn’t reach, light and silent on his feet, and with a firm grip on his spear that only mostly made him feel safer.
When he saw the thing, it took him a minute to work out what it was.
It was a foot, on the end of a leg, attached to a hip, and then to a body he could barely see, it was so high up. The foot, wrapped in an enormous roll of cloth, swung through the air and then landed on its tiptoes. It was a giant. And it was sneaking.
He wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.
For about a minute and a half, he scrambled alongside the giant’s slow, careful steps that crunched branches underfoot and nearly shook the ground, realizing as he did so that the giant was moving parallel to the camp, keeping a distance instead of coming closer.
Then, Venk got distracted, too absorbed in watching the enormous feet swinging overhead to spot the wasp’s nest in the ground until his own foot was in it.
He yelped at the first stings, too surprised to keep it in, and the giant seemed startled, too, the feet leaping backward away from the noise and coming down hard enough to shake the ground and make the wasps even angrier.
Venk pulled his foot out of the nest and scrambled instinctively up a large rock nearby to get away, cursing vociferously when the wasps flew up with him, continuing to sting.
An enormous hand reached down and grabbed Venk by the back of his ratty leather armor, lifting him up toward the giant’s face.
“Oh no,” the giant boomed, clearly trying to whisper to him.
Venk was still being stung, but that was suddenly much less important. He growled, baring his teeth, and brandished his spear in the direction of the face. “Put me down! Put me down, or I’ll put your eye out!”
“Oh! Ouch! There’s uhhh - there’s stingy things down there. Let me - uh - uh - over here.”
The giant held him at arm’s reach, took several long, hurried strides toward a nearby clearing, definitely shaking the ground this time, and set Venk back down on top of another large rock, about 400 feet from where they’d started.
Venk brandished his spear again and was surprised to see the giant shrinking away from him, one arm up in front of his face as if to protect himself from something.
Venk turned quickly to look behind himself, but saw no one. He looked back at the giant, raising his spear higher again. “Stay back!” he ordered, “What are you doing here?”
The giant had grey, stony skin, and was both thinner and narrower than most giants Venk had seen before - though, he supposed, he’d only ever seen the other ones at a distance, so perhaps he just didn’t know how to judge.
“Please don’t hurt me!” the giant said, “The master says I have to get into those ruins over there,” his huge hand pointed in the direction of Venk’s camp, and the ruins behind it they were supposed to explore in the morning. “He sent me to bring something back for him, but then I saw your camp, and I - I promise I was trying to go around!”
“What kind of something?” Venk asked, curious in spite of himself.
“It’s, um - it’s some kind of sphere, I think. It’s very magic. He said I’d know it because it was very magic and if I wanted to be sure not to disappoint him, I could just bring everything that seems magic. I - I don’t mean to - to - it’s -”
The giant’s voice started faltering, and his shoulders shrunk inward, his enormous arms coming up around his middle as he hugged himself, wilting visibly in front of Venk’s eyes.
The goblin glanced back over his shoulder one more time, verifying that it was really just the two of them, and then sighed, lowering his spear.
As frightened as the giant seemed to be of him, there was no way he could do any real damage. Not when he knew he was knee-high to the giant at best, with a spear the giant could have perhaps held as a pencil, but not as a spear.
“Can you come down here so I can talk to you?” he asked, putting the spear down and raising his empty hands. “I promise not to stab your eyes out. Just don’t grab me again.”
“Oh!” The giant’s eyes widened, and then it was falling to its knees next to his rock, so fast that the stone underneath Venk shook a little.
Even on his knees, the giant loomed over Venk and his two-foot rock, but he seemed to realize it pretty quickly and fell backward onto his butt with another shuddering crash. Then he pulled in on himself again, as if he were trying to be as small as possible, which didn’t actually do much to put him at Venk’s height, but did make Venk feel a confused tangle of emotions.
Now that he was closer to the giant’s head, he could see a huge, nasty-looking collar around his neck, black leather studded through with small metal lightning bolt shapes. Above and below the collar radiated several overlapping sets of electrical scars, like the giant had been struck by lightning a dozen times. He winced sympathetically.
“Alright,” Venk said, trying not to squander the giant’s apparent intimidation before he figured out he could probably crush Venk between his palms in a single motion. “It seems like maybe this is a time when we ought to just make a deal. That sound good?”
“I - I don’t think I can. I have to give the master what he wants.” The giant was - shaking? He pulled even farther in on himself, bringing his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. Venk couldn’t see the collar anymore, but he could see scars crisscrossing the giant’s shins.
“Why?” Venk asked, “What kind of master have you got, that you’re that scared?”
The giant shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t, if he found out I told his name -” he looked half-panicked, his breathing getting quicker, “I can’t!”
Venk held his hands up in front of him, trying to calm the giant down. “Whoa! Hey, no. No names. You don’t tell me your master’s name, I won’t tell you my clan’s name, everybody’s happy. I’m guessing he’s some kind of mage or demon or devil or something, if he wants his name safe?”
The giant nodded, but didn’t indicate which one.
“What’s he want the orb for, anyway?”
The giant shrugged one huge shoulder.
“See, that’s gonna be kind of a problem. My clan’s got this whole thing with the orb. We’re camped there to go find it, ‘cause we’ve got this whole underground war going with a bunch of kobolds and it’s supposed to get us a dragon on our side or something, and even if I was going to let you go around past our camp, which I’m not sure the others would be thrilled about, I get the feeling our shaman’s gonna say we’ve gotta kill you before we let you take the orb.”
Venk adjusted his stance as he was talking, ready to leap backward off the rock and away from a blow if he needed to, but instead the giant wailed.
“Whoa, hey!” Venk said, patting at the air between them as if it would help, “Hey, calm down, you’ve gotta be quiet, there’s worse around here than wasps.”
The giant was weeping, and that was - huh. That was something else, too.
“I d-don’t wanna die!” he blubbered.
Venk took a deep breath, trying to calm himself before he spoke again. “Hey, buddy, it’s alright. I didn’t say we would kill you, just that I figure that’s what the shaman would say. Maybe we take the orb, we do whatever magical mumbo-jumbo gets us a dragon long enough for it to tell those kobolds to fuck off and give us our caves back, and then we let you have it. I’m just saying we gotta be clever about it, is all.”
The giant shook his head fiercely. “No, my master will know. My master will know I wasted time. I shouldn’t even have gone around I - I don’t want to kill anyone, but I have to make it back, I -” he reached up around his neck, wrapping his hand over the collar, “I have to make it back with what he wants, I - I have to please him.”
Venk felt a stab of something through his heart and sighed again, sliding carefully off the rock and landing on his less swollen foot. He was an idiot, and he was about to die for it, but at least none of the rest of the clan was around to see it. They’d probably assume he’d done something heroic when they found the pulpy mess of his body out here. Probably.
He stepped up to the giant’s side and patted his huge ankle. “Hey, it’s alright. It’s alright, I don’t want you to kill anyone, either. You gotta calm down. We can figure this out.”
We can figure this out. As if he even knew what “this” was. The giant’s sobs grew a little softer, though. Venk patted his ankle again. “There, there.”
“I shouldn’t have talked to you,” the giant said miserably, starting to pull himself together, “Master always says it’s my own fault things are so awful and upsetting, ‘cause I don’t kill people fast enough. And now I’ll be sad even if I do kill you fast enough, which I don’t even want to do.”
Venk looked up at the huge figure. This close, he could tell that the scars along the giant’s shins were burn scars, like he’d been standing in fire. The lightning scars on his chest and face weren’t really visible at this angle, but there were a couple of small but deep bruises dotting his ribs, black against the stony grey of the rest of the his skin.
“Ok, buddy,” he said, making a decision even as he spoke. “Let’s take a step back. Let’s take a step back from the orb. What’s up with you and that master? He got anything on you, or is it just that collar up there?”
The giant shook his head and said nothing.
“I won’t tell. Not a soul. Just between you and me. I just need to know what I’m dealing with here. Gotta get all the options on the table, you know? And then once we’ve looked at the table, it’s all between you and me still, alright?”
“It - it’s mostly the collar,” the giant said, voice so faint it actually came across as a whisper this time.
“Well, then we’ll get it off you, and then you don’t have to kill anybody. How’s that sound?”
The giant shook his head again, vehemently, wrapping his hands around the collar again. “No! It’s locked. It’s locked, and it’s got traps! It’ll shock me and it’ll shock you, and then he’ll know, and then -” Venk could hear the giant starting to cry again, “And then he’ll know!”
Venk breathed deeply again, trying to center himself. “Ok. Ok. That’s - good to have on the table. You’re gonna be ok, buddy.” He patted the giant’s ankle again.
As the giant continued to sniffle and snort and try to get ahold of himself, Venk breathed deeply and tried to think. How serious was he? How dumb was this? He bit his lip and kept patting the giant’s ankle, weighing the dangers to himself, the giant, and the clan.
Finally, he stepped forward and leapt up to tug at the giant’s sleeve. “Hey, buddy. One more idea, ok? One more idea. We’re gonna take another step back. I’ve got this amulet,” he lifted it out from under the collar of his armor, “And it dispells one spell a day. Only the best of our scouts have ‘em, so you’re lucky it was me that found you, but they’re made to get us out of a tricky spot. If I turn the spell off and pick the lock myself, are you gonna get hurt? Or just me?”
“But what if he finds out?” the quiet hiss was still louder than a whisper, but Venk appreciated the attempt.
“Then you tell him I did it. You tell him a tree fell on you and I came across you before you could get out from under and I thought maybe if I took off that collar I could be your master, only then it zapped me and I died and you’re still a good boy following directions, or whatever.”
“What if it does kill you?”
“Then you tell my clan to get back underground before your master gets here, and you go on forward to the ruins like you were going to anyway. I’ll write a note for them.”
The giant shook his head. “I can’t escape.”
Venk looked around and, finding no body part particularly convenient for grabbing, leapt up to tug at the giant’s sleeve again. “Give me your hand.”
The hand that came to rest on the ground beside him was too big to hold, but he wrapped his hands seriously around the giant’s thumb, trying not to think too much about babies and their hands, just now. “I promise, I can do this. And if I can’t, you weren’t gonna get away before, either. But if I can, then you can get away when you couldn’t before. That’s worth a try, right?”
The giant bit his lip, but didn’t immediately say no.
“What’s your name, friend?” Venk asked, “Mine’s Venk. I can promise you by name, if you want.”
This time, the giant’s eyes widened. “F-Falgh, Sir.”
Sir. Huh. “Falgh, I promise, if you let me try to take that collar off, I’ll be as careful as I can and I’ll give you the best shot I know how to give. Ok?”
Falgh closed his eyes, but then nodded, once, quickly.
Venk took a deep breath and nodded back. “Alright. Let’s try it. Bend forward so I can stand on the top of your back and get at that latch.”
Clambering up a living being was an odd feeling, even one that was lying on its stomach, but Falgh helped, clearly trying to flatten his back as much as he could under Venk’s feet.
The amulet flashed with a soft light and a pleasant heat, and then Venk set to work with a set of thieves tools, wishing he had more practice on things that weren’t manacles.
Then the lock clicked audibly, and both their bodies tensed immediately, but nothing happened.
“There we go,” Venk whispered, “I think I’ve got it. Let me try to open it.” The mechanism that closed the collar was more clamp than buckle, clearly designed for medium-sized hands, which sent a little half-shiver through Venk’s spine to think about. Falgh wasn’t medium-sized, either.
He held his breath as he pried open the clasp, and then - the collar fell free.
He almost fell over as Falgh let out a great, heaving sigh of relief, tension draining from his muscles. “Whoa!”
The giant froze again. “Sorry.”
Venk bent down and patted the giant’s back, beside where he was standing, “It’s ok, bud. I get it.” He wasn’t sure he did, but it seemed like the thing to say.
Falgh nodded, seriously, which also jarred Venk a little bit, and he hurried to scramble back off the giant’s back.
As he settled back onto the ground by the giant’s face, Falgh looked at him with big, soft grey eyes, and whispered, “Are you my master now? Or was that just for pretend, if it didn’t work?”
One answer to that question was clearly more interesting than the other, but he knew he could never give it, even as it crossed his mind.
He placed a small hand on Falgh’s huge cheek. “It was just for pretend, Falgh. I don’t mind if you come with me, though. I’m sure you’d be a great help in the ruins. Or you can go somewhere and hide. I’d understand that, too.”
Falgh’s eyes were dark, serious as they gazed into his own. “Are you sure you wouldn’t mind? I’m -” his eyes darted away, “I’m not convenient. Or sneaky. Or very good at things”
Venk raised an eyebrow. “Think you’d be good at carrying me back to camp? My one foot’s pretty bad. Dunno how much you feel wasp stings, but I feel ‘em kind of a lot, just now.”
Falgh’s eyes widened, darting back to Venk’s face. “Oh! Yeah, I can do that! If you want.” He bit his lip. “Will the - will the shaman still want to kill me?”
Venk smiled, patting Falgh’s cheek again. “Not if you’re with me, buddy. Not if you’re with me.”
I headcanon that a lot of Gelfling clans generally have poly relationships as the norm (especially Vapra and Grottan) but not Stonewood. Obviously Ordon is canonically married to Shoni (who I love with my entire goddamn heart btw,) but he has an attraction to skekVar that he's uncomfortable with, and tries really hard to ignore because he's in a monogamous relationship. This leads to some friction when Ordon joins the castle guard and becomes closer with skekVar, and also doesn't get to see his wife as much. Ordon's only been captain for an unum when things come to a head. SkekVar has been reeling him in closer and closer this whole time, and by the time that skekVar comes onto him Ordon feels almost a sense of duty to please skekVar, even though it goes against what he's committed himself to. At least, that's how he rationalizes it to himself. Ordon has a tremendous sense of loyalty towards the Skeksis, skekVar in particular, and it's easier to pretend that he makes poor choices motivated by that, rather than accept that having an affair with skekVar is probably what he would have done anyway.
Plot: your muse caught the attention of the SIA, but not before catching the attention of someone even less friendly. Valentin is here to potentially rescue and recruit your muse. Or maybe just shoot them.
Valentin isn’t a recruiter. It’s not the job they hired him for and it’s not one they would typically ask him to do. But this job is a little more complex. It doesn’t just require a recruiter, but also a retrievalist. It’s still not his job, but it is one they have asked him to do before. And while he may not be a lap dog, he can still go fetch. And, should the asset be deemed… uncooperative, this may be a job that requires things to get a little more messy. Now, that, certainly, is Valentin’s job.
So now he’s here, breaking into someone else’s facility and doing everything in his power to ensure he doesn’t get caught and thrown into a cell alongside his target. He makes it where he’s going without raising any alarm bells and looks at the other, studying them closely.
“If you would like to get out of here, I have a job offer for you.”
Modern Cult AU for Rhain
(aka the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad AU)
Ifanna Driscoll is a smart woman. An old woman. Far more than she looks. She’s got plenty of power, but she’s always been looking for more. There’s power in having a following. Power in being a leader. In a literal sense and in a magical one.
She’d never tried the coven thing before. She’d been married once, long ago, to another witch. And that was the closest she’d ever come. They’d shared their power and had been stronger for it. But he died and she moved on, keeping to herself.
She’s not sure what pushed her to start a coven now. Only that it felt like the right time. So she went for it, deciding to see what she could make of it. And it was easy, because she’s old, and powerful, and charming. Her cult coven drew a wide variety of supernatural beings and it’s been... nice. Enlightening. She’s having fun with it and she feels stronger for having them all around.
Of course, dark magic gets very particular with the things it asks for. The blood of the innocent being a common request. But she couldn’t very well use her followers in that. Few of them were innocent themselves and none willing to harm their children who were. She didn’t have to ask to know that.
So she sought to adopt one herself and happened to find something even better-- a 7th son of a 7th son. Enter Rhain, the unlucky soul to fit that requirement. And maybe he reminded her of someone she’d known, long before any of her current endeavors. An unlucky fate for the boy, indeed.
He was 12 and he’d been in the foster system for 3 years. Long enough to know trouble when he saw it. Long enough to hope she wasn’t going to take him home. But this is not a happy story and he was the one she left with that day.
They told her he was a problem child. Prone to running away, fighting with other kids. She’d smiled sweetly and said she could handle it, that he just needed the right encouragement. He was smart and she could work with smart, even if he was trouble.
He was quick to learn not to cross her, but she was quick to make sure he wouldn’t cause too much trouble. She spelled him as soon as they were in the car-- the first, but not the last time he’d ever seen magic used. He can’t talk badly about her, which was a smart spell to cast, though perhaps the one he resents the most. Such a simple bit of freewill gone from his grasp. And it was only the start of her use of magic on him and her use of him for magic.
The rest of the cult look at them and see a kind soul who took in a lost child, a boy who learned to love his adoptive mother, who does everything she asks. But it’s only because he has no choice and he knows it. She doesn’t need magic to compel that from him. He’s seen what she does to those who cross her and he knows how important her reputation is to her right now, so he listens. He keeps his head down, for the most part. Tries to act friendly when he can’t. And if, beneath it all, his blood boils with rage? Well, she’s the only one who seems to notice.
“Oh good, you got to wash up,” Maurice noted once Kyung met back with him, and Saal. “... The incubi gave you trouble, didn’t they?”
“Kind of, I kicked them out of the bathing chamber before I used it, so it wasn’t the worst thing,” She shrugged with a sigh. “Also, sorry that it took me a moment to get back here, I got kinda lost on the way. I guess it’s not that bad though, I got more souvenirs that the others requested, so that works for me.”
“Good. It’ll definitely be better once you get to Limbo, then it’s just a straight shot up to the land of the living,” He replied before handing Saal over to Kyung. “Here, the little guy missed ya. Now, if you’ve got everything you needed from this place, let’s-”
Before Maurice could blink, a flash of red whooshed right in front of him before Kyung had suddenly disappeared from where she was standing.
“What the f*$%-? Hey!” Maurice roared, his massive wings fanning out to pursuit what had snatched up Kyung; Saal, however, had to grab onto the larger demon’s leg in order to tag along due to his lack of wings.
The hallways echoed with clear yells of protest from Kyung as Maurice flew swiftly through the maze of corners and turns, following the sound of her voice until he saw that another incubus had caught her.
“I said...”
“LET GO!!”
After her struggle, Kyung managed to turn the tables on the demon trying to kidnap her. With a twist, she managed to wrestle and steer the incubus into the corridor walls, and eventually crash onto the floor where both of them went tumbling. With Kyung now free, Saal rushed over to help her while Maurice immediately picked up the incubus by their throat, snarling furiously through a cage of sharp teeth.
“M-Maurice, hey! Wh-wh-what’s the problem?” The incubus stammered, coughing as Maurice’s grip squeezed tighter around their neck.
Rather than just state the reason why he was so livid, Maurice opened his jaws to let out a guttural roar right in the incubus’ face until their face drained of color; then, Maurice simply dropped them to the floor, and leered at them as they scampered off with their tail between their legs. Once the coast was clear, and he calmed down, Maurice went to Kyung’s side to assist her.
“Well, that was an unpleasant bit of business...” She muttered while shakily getting up to her feet, holding one side of her face before revealing a bleeding gash on her forehead. “Let’s just go before I decide to blow up this entire goddamn place.”
“Okay, so, I know you all are just doing your jobs... If that job really is to stand around in the bathing chamber for whoever the f*$%, but I’m going to politely ask you gentlemen to please leave me to bathe in peace,” Kyung requested, speaking with purpose as she faced the bathing chambers with incubi in them once again.
Her request was met with silence, and a bit of confusion from the incubi. This made her frown a bit in unamusement, but she seemed patient still.
“I’ll ask again. Could you all kindly leave so that I can bathe by myself. I don’t need help, and I really don’t want anyone else in here.”
This time, they snickered and muttered to each other before they continued to stare at her.
“Oh, but dear little maiden, do you not know what we are? We are incubi, we were made to fulfill the fantasies of women like you.~”
Kyung glowered at the incubus who patronized her, now she was getting annoyed. “Okay, I’m putting my foot down. Either you all get the f*$% outta here by yourselves, or from my foot to your a$$es, or I’ll just walk around this layer covered in the gross rain water from the third layer.”
“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a feisty one... Come now, darling. You look tense. Why not let us pamper you?~”
Kyung’s expression turns stoic, as she takes a moment to assess the advancing incubi. Inhaling sharply through her nose, she calmly cricked her neck, and then cracked her knuckles.
A few minutes later...
The chamber doors are shut firmly, outside of them are many incubi scattered around the floors of the corridor. All of them bruised, beaten, and shaken up. Others, however, still seem undeterred. Meanwhile, a disgruntled Kyung bathes angrily... Still wearing her torn clothes, and washing around her shackles.
“Now this is what I call, Sin City,” Kyung commented as they wandered through pathways of crimson corridors, illuminated by dimmed candlelight.
It certainly wasn’t a city, but more like a colossal domain filled with large demons that whipped the souls of those who were sentenced there; incubi, and succubi lurking in the shadows while assessing both Kyung, and Maurice. Being more recognized in this layer, the succubi had no problem approaching the male demon, flirtatiously greeting him while trying to coerce him.
“I have no time for distractions,” Maurice grumbled irritably.
“Oh come now, Maurice,” One of the surrounding succubi purred. “You’re always such a killjoy when you’re here. Why not have some fun?~”
“I’m here strictly on business, we need to pass through to get this mortal home.”
The succubus glanced over to Kyung as she tried wiping away what little black rain Saal had on him, the demoness giving Kyung a look of disgust before flying away in a huff. While Maurice found himself being approached by a few succubi, Kyung wasn’t all that aware that she was beginning to get some rather intent gazes from the incubi around them. She was a soul still teeming with energy, on top of that, they all knew that she wasn’t from this layer of Hell.
I am a victim of cocsa as well as being a rape survivor of 9 years. The people who assaulted me were all family. I have a boyfriend who knows this and even though I constantly tell him that sex makes me feel gross and I dont get the deep emotional meaning of it he says he understands, but he makes me feel like shit. I feel like if I dont sleep with him he'll cheat on me. He always makes the topic about how he feels like I just dont like having sex with him. I dont know how to make him understand
I personally feel that your boyfriend sounds like he’s being gross and coercive in the way he goes about discussing sex with you.
If he truly understood that sex makes you feel gross, then he should respect that.
Making the conversation about himself instead of about you and your feelings is a big red flag. It sounds incredibly invalidating for you, and I absolutely see how you might be discouraged at his so-called “support”.
If you try to talk about it with him again— ask him to say nothing and simply listen. Tell him how important it is that he truly hears your words and takes them to heart. Tell him how you feel when he needles you about it the way he does, when he turns your trauma into his inconvenience. Tell him it hurts you when he does this.
How you are feeling is completely valid. Your emotions are yours to have and to feel. And if it makes you feel gross when he pulls shit like this, you have every right in the world to feel that way and to express that.
