#d20fic

[punishandenslavesuckers]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Kalina has a new toy.

She’s always aware of novel infections, but having hit a certain critical mass, Kalina doesn’t always pay them much mind, cutting in quickly to inspect a new facet in a kaleidoscope that’s been expanding for hundreds of years is a thing she does by reflex. What’s another nerve ending firing in the spiral galaxy of input around her?

But this infection flares hot in her awareness. A star igniting in the void. It drags her attention in like quick motion in the corner of her eye and—sudden as sinking her teeth into a mouse—Kalina finds herself embedded in a body bleeding to death on the floor of grubby flophouse. Said body is, despite the agony of doing so, shrugging off a set of shoulder holsters housing an arcane handgun and several clips of ammunition.

Which means her new toy is Solesian.

More accurately, a Solesian Secret Service agent. (If she’s clocked the gun model, correctly.)

Interesting.

Her new toy is also a goblin. Fang-folk. Young. Male. Moderately injured from some kind of fight which has him fetched up against the side of the bed, holding a section of his abdomen shut while the flesh across his right oblique slowly knits itself back together. Kalina questions the vector of transmission. How did he get infected alone in this room? She expands her awareness a little, using a living thing as an arcane sensor from which to snake her awareness. A mycological thing sending rhizoids out to see beyond her new toy—

Ah. There.

In a pile of hastily dumped equipment by the foot of the bed lies a battered and time-corroded healers kit, over 200 years old now, but recognizable to Kalina as the day Landrin finished it. The real Kalina, deep in the nightmare Forest, snorts. Wow. The fates do fuck about, don’t they? This young man half-dead on the floor of a filthy room in Fallinel might be the first in two centuries infected by, no shit, one of Landrin’s old tonics, stolen from the depths of Fallinel’s artifact storage.

When you’re hemorrhaging blood uncontrollably and your standard issue IFAK doesn’t have enough greater healing potions (Kalina can see the empty SSS-standard cartridges in a bandolier on the floor) an enterprising secret agent might, as a last resort, drink questionably expired health potions in a stolen elven artifact.

Fucking wild.

Kalina slides out of her new host; the majority of her awareness pools into the space beside him so she can manifest fully and really get a good look.

He’s small, obviously. Fang-folk are small-folk. She’d put him at four foot four with his spine straight at most. Details: Big gold-through-the-sclera eyes, sharp jawline. Freckles. He’s got a charming, barely-there dust of freckles in the cool green of his complexion. Dark emerald hair shaved close on the sides, long enough to curl on top. This near to him, Kalina can see, even curled in the fetal position, that her new toy is built so very lithe, so nicely proportioned through the shoulders cutting down to a narrow (grabbable) waist.

“Interesting,” she says to only herself.

Who are you, kid?

TBC on AO3

[punishandenslavesuckers]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Adaine Abernant trances.

Elven trance, though it is not precisely this, can be loosely described as the subconscious review of recent memories, a flow-state slipping one moment to another while the mind tidies up a bit. Between recollections of sushi lunch with Fig and chores with Kristen, Adaine finds herself laid gently in a recent memory, set softly among the trappings of a beach house. It’s sand on the carpets, a carnage of red plastic cups, and the first gold of sunrise striping the couch she’s curled on.

Ah. The LAN party with Fabian. That morning she woke up on the couch with Riz asleep in her arms and the scent of meadow grass in her nose and mouth.

She thinks, dreamily, of how Tracker once described the smell of a celestial. Riz wears his father’s divine equipment so often, it’s begun to live in his hair and neck like it’s native to him.

She thinks, fondly, a bit drunk still, tipping toward hung over, Riz smells like a bright summer day.

Adaine knows she will lie here, holding Riz for about ten minutes and marvel at being allowed to do so. Cuddling is largely reserved for her female housemates and giggly movie nights. The boys submit to being held exclusively on the road, in moments of high stress, or strange conjunctions of mood inconsistent as the winds and unpredictable as the future.

But this summer has been different somehow.

It’s been… lovely. Just good.

In her memory, Adaine squeezes Riz a little tighter. Like hugging a slightly bony pillow. She lingers in the details, the textures, her fingers catching on the cotton of his dress shirt, the silk of his waistcoat, the body heat beneath and how, somewhere, in the intersection of drunkness and closeness she feels something happy seep into the dark interior of her chest. Like sunshine through cracks in an old window and she hopes—

“This is really sweet.”

Adaine jerks her head up and stares, shocked, at Riz’s little pine marten familiar. It’s perched on the arm of the couch. Something’s gone wrong with its eyes and she knows then, with horror, that she’s not in a memory.

She’s in a vision.

“You know what happens next.” Riz’s familiar blinks at her. Bored. “Move it along.” 

Then Adaine feels the texture under her palms go wrong. The honey meadow smell goes metallic, souring as hot wetness wells from between her fingers like she’s clamping her hand over a wound, soaking through Riz’s shirt where she was squeezing him. There’s a scream buried in her throat as she turns her head to look. Adaine doesn’t want to look. (She must look). As Adaine gazes down at the carcass in her arms she thinks, dimly, how incredible it is that she can still recognize the twisted little pile as a person that she loves.

The details jump out at her: Part of Riz’s ribcage is torn open, his insides poured out over the couch in slick shreds.

Like something ripped him open while he was asleep in her arms and started eating. Like a cat tears open a mouse.

The thing that is not a pine marten says, “Oh, kiddo.” And as she starts to shriek, it says, “You don’t get to keep nice things.”

TBD on AO3