Skizz and Impulse are fluent in English, Galactic, Angelic, and Demonic. But they both have very very heavy accents. Impulse slurs his words together and rolls ALL his R’s, Skizz basically almost never pronounces his consonants, just the vowels.
I wrote a Skizzpulse thing and this is the first bit.
Impulse snuggled closer to Skizz, humming happily to himself as he tucked his head under his husband’s chin. The wings on their backs prevented them from properly spooning, but this worked just as well. The soulbond between them sang in joy at their physical closeness. One of Skizz’s arms wrapped around Impulse’s torso and pulled the blanket higher over them. Impulse’s own arm wrapped around Skizz’s torso but under Skizz’s arm. Skizz made him feel safe. After everything they’d been through…Impulse shivered lightly and huddled closer. He felt Skizz’s frown.
“You okay, Dop?” Skizz whispered. Impulse nodded, careful to not hit Skizz’s jaw on his horns.
“Just glad you’re here.”
Skizz cooed, pulling Impulse in tighter.
The darkness wrapped them in a blanket. Nobody else could see them. Nobody else was here, on this world, with them. Safe. Alone. Wrapped in each other and thick warm blankets, bathed in the glow of Skizz’s golden halo and pure white wings, the glow dimmed with the angel’s sleepiness. Impulse couldn’t blame him. Skizz had been working the fields all day while Impulse was in the Nether. Of course he was bone tired. Impulse was tired too, but a different kind. Mentally tired from long hours of keeping a careful lookout and track of where his portal was, lest he become terribly lost.
They began to drift off, slowly, wrapped in warmth.
And then something twinged.
Impulse frowned, snuggling closer into Skizz. That twinge hadn’t come from their soulbond, and it hadn’t come from…another twinge made Impulse flinch violently. Worry shot through from Skizz’s side of the soulbond.
“Dop?” Skizz asked, now properly worried. “What’s wrong?”
Twinge!
Impulse yelped, his entire body spasming. He heard Skizz’s gentle hiss of pain, felt the ache in his jaw. Ah. He’d hit Skizz with his horns. “Sorry,” Impulse whispered.
“It’s okay, Dop. What’s going on?” Skizz said, pulling Impulse into a more upright hug. White wings, now glowing brighter, wrapped around Impulse in a safe little world of softness and white.
“I don’t-”
TWINGE!
Impulse wailed this time, the yanking in his magic outright painful. Skizz pulled him tight, his side of the soulbond screaming with worry and protectiveness.
The yank came again, and it pulled Impulse away from Skizz, onto his feet. A deep horror gnawed in his gut.
“Summoning,” he whispered. Skizz went still for a moment, before he grabbed Impulse and pulled him back onto the bed. The yank pulled, harder this time, and Skizz and the bedroom vanished from his sight for a split second, a glimpse of a circle of redstone, four very not-human people, and a nighttime field. Then Skizz and the bedroom were back, and Impulse blinked. “Skizz,” he gasped. “Skizz, I think they have my Name.”
“Shit,” Skizz cursed softly. The soulbond yelped from his holy power not being happy for the curse, but neither of them cared.
Yank!
The world blurred around Impulse, and he could feel the smoke rising from the redstone circle. One of the summoners, a young Netherborn with fire hair, squealed in delight. Not cruel delight, but delight nonetheless.
“-op!”
Impulse blinked the field away from his vision, and he could see Skizz again. “I’m here,” he whispered, gripping Skizz tighter.
“Thank hels,” Skizz breathed. “That’s a lot of power.” Impulse nodded.
“They’re not cruel, just…strong.”
Speaking of the summoners made the circle pull at him again, and he stumbled in place before a yank of holy magic pulled him back. Impulse sobbed at the holy light briefly curled around his magic core. Skizz soothed him with a hand stroking through his hair. “Sorry,” Skizz said. “I just need you for a little longer, Dop.”
Impulse isn’t sure anymore whether the darkness is from the night sky or the lack of lamps being turned on in the bedroom. He’s not sure whether the glow is from Skizz’s angelic features or the Netherborn summoner’s fire.
“What is it?” Impulse asks Skizz.
“Oh, you’re not quite here yet,” the summoner responds.
“I’ll find you,” Skizz promises, his voice serious in a way it almost never is, the vow of an angel echoing through their soulbond.
“Why’s it taking so long?” One of the other summoners scoffs.
“No telling,” the Netherborn said happily. “Just wait. Won’t be much longer.”
Skizz pressed a soft kiss to Impulse’s forehead. Their bond sang in love –
And then pulled, taut and strained, as Impulse was no longer in the bedroom.
He stumbled into the field. The Netherborn – able to see better now, Impulse realized he was a Blazeborn – smiled.
“What’s this about?” Impulse asked, putting one hand on his hip.
“We need your help,” the Blazeborn said matter-of-factly.
Typical.
“There’s a redstone problem,” the Blazeborn continued, offering a hand. “How about we make a deal?”
Sarandiel quietly agrees to following Impulse to his base, and accepts back the meager contents of his inventory. For the moment his tools- which include a diamond sword- will remain with Xisuma.
Impulse almost asks about the kelp.
Almost.
"Follow me," he says, and after equipping his elytra he takes off. He doesn't get to witness Sarandiel's own takeoff but Xisuma and Doc do. It's a thing of sturdy grace, fast and efficient. There's no faffing about, no adjusting, no minute twitches as there would be for either False or Grian- the two avian hermits on the server.
There is simply the wings, and a forward step that becomes a leap into a pump of the two larger sets, and silent as snow Sarandiel is following Impulse up into the sky.
"Doc." Xisuma says. "Are we making a mistake?"
"No." Doc says. "and neither is Impulse." a pause. "Of course it might take him flying into a mountainface to admit it."
Xisuma laughs, and sends out the message requesting a new meeting time, and that's that.
-
Sarandiel feels like his eyes are going to roll out of his head.
There's so much to see! So many beautiful, strange buildings, their details so precise even with the dying sunlight. He's been on crafting servers before, end to end metropolises and sculpted jungle tree cities, temples built into mountainsides and labs in the clouds.
None of them ever felt as- full? As this place.
Then Impulse banks, and begins to descend, and it is clear he is going to land in a- a city?
A half-finished city, devoid of life. A diorama, an artifice, a sculpture.
A story.
Sarandiel lands whisper soft and looks all round, then up at a further skyline. He frowns. "You didn't build that, did you?" He asks.
Impulse looks up. "No. Another hermit did."
"I thought so."
"Oh?" the demon asks, walking down the street. Sarandiel scurries to keep up.
"The shapes are different," he says, "and the colors. That's all the lights on. This is all the lights off."
The demon looks over his shoulder at the angel, brow furrowed. "you can tell?"
"Yes?" Sarandiel asks.
"Huh."
And that seems to be all that his new host will say about it.
Sarandiel is shown to a room over a record shop, as artificial as the city and yet endearing, strange. It feels like the proprietor was just there, and will be back shortly. Out for lunch, maybe.
"Get some sleep. There's food in that chest and I'll bring over more tomorrow morning," Impulse says. Sarandiel nods and Impulse nods back, heading out to his own bed and trying to quiet the misgivings rumbling in his head.
-
Sarandiel does try.
He tries so hard, wings in, wings out, turning on his stomach, on his back, curling around and around until finally he gives up and gets off the bed. He can't sleep here. Whenever he closes his eyes all he remembers is Ezekiel and Tarsiel, Pomiel collapsed like a rotten tree log.
Sarandiel goes to the window and looks at the city. What is the story? Why is this place so dark and the one over the hill so bright? Do they tell stories together, the people here?
Are there no wars in their stories?
Sarandiel drops his head to the windowsill with a soft sigh that is half-whimper. It would have been better if he'd died on impact. The back of his neck is throbbing and everything is too close.
It is when he wearily lifts his head and wonders if he should try the floor that he spots it in the far corner, only a few blocks away from the wall that seems to denote Impulse's territory. The base is obstructed, but the beam at the top...
Sarandiel hasn't seen many of them. Lesser beacons, he and his siblings call them. Pantomimes. Imitations. Pale echoes of what they can do, if that. To add insult to injury, they're made from something called a nether star, which is obtained by creating a monster made out of dead angels.
None of that matters, though. What matters is that lesser beacon is still a beacon. If he's not running it, maybe- he's so tired. He just wants to sleep.
Impulse is expecting me to be here when he gets back in the morning.
Will he come back at all?
He's supposed to look after me.
He could kill me if I disobey.
Okay, well. That would be the second time in- what, a week?
Sarandiel heads down the stairs.
-
When Impulse gets back to the little apartment he'd built above the record shop the next morning- an apartment he figured would never see the light of day- it's empty. The bed has clearly been slept in, the covers wrinkled and tossed about, but Third Circle Sarandiel is nowhere to be seen.
"Son of a-!" Impulse drops the food he'd brought and tears out of the apartment, looking around.
Great work, Impulse, single most dangerous Beacon Angel to ever be made and you left him alone to go get bread!
He rounds the corner of the latest apartment building. That's what it'll say on your tombstone. Here lies Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val Magnel Shaxha Nagnoth Vuidrr'dhrul Syn, who revolutionized warfare and got his dumb ass blown up because he forgot what a weapon looked like!
Damn it. Damn it, damn it, he doesn't see the angel anywhere on the Pixel Pulse lot. He's huge, he's got SIX WINGS, how hard can it be to- where is the beacon beam?
Where. is the beacon beam?!
Impulse runs, and when he runs he leaves behind burning acid footprints in the stone.
No. No, no, no, no, not Hermitcraft, not his people, not the House that took him in. Does he have enough acid in his gut to blow if he has to? It's been so long he doesn't think his reserve is still there but he can't let them get hurt not after they gave him home when home didn't want him anymore.
He finds Sarandiel, as he expected, on the beacon.
Only the angel is not using the beacon.
(of course he isn't, and Impulse will realize later that if Sarandiel HAD activated it himself then there would have been no time to worry about the other Hermits.)
The angel has sat, straddling the glass housing for the nether star, arms crossed atop it like some of the old angel statues.
He's blocking the beam but there's still light escaping through the gaps in his arms. His head is pillowed there, his top wings folded over, middle wings dropped to keep his legs warm, smallest wings folded down his lower back and rear.
Sarandiel is fast asleep.
Impulse stares at him, anger churning and mixing with the adrenaline that's coursing through him. He wants to shout, wants to goad the angel into doing something, anything, only- only Sarandiel looks peaceful.
Calm.
The constant frown and worry lines are gone, smoothed in rest.
Impulse doesn't need to do anything at all. Maybe it's his proximity, or maybe it's the angel's internal clock, but his eyes open- all of them, for a moment, lapis irises blinking at Impulse from his arms just a second before closing seamlessly. Sarandiel's halo, which had dimmed overnight, begins to lazily spin and brighten.
"Seven thousand years," Sarandiel slurs, rising back to conciousness, "and I finally figured out how to make one warm."
"Bed didn't suit?" Impulse asks tightly. Sarandiel sits up, stretches his arms and his wings.
"I'm sorry." He says, keeping his eyes down on the nether star under glass. "I tried, but."
He looks up at Impulse. "Old habits?" He offers.
Impulse looks from Sarandiel to the beacon. Unobstructed the beam rises into the sky as usual.
"That can't be comfortable." Impulse says.
"It's not." Sarandiel says. "it never has been." He pats the glass gently. "but this was- this was nice. I can hear them singing."
Impulse frowns. "Hear who singing?"
"The angels," Sarandiel says absently. "The ones whose bones you defeated to get this to work. Do you want to know their names?"
Impulse thinks of the wither that Gem and Grian had helped him construct, the two hour long fight.
Their names don't matter anymore.
Impulse says, "Sure."
"Raydiel, and Buriel, and Elaniel." Sarandiel says. "I didn't know them. They didn't know me. They sing so gently now. It's- it's nice to hear gentle things. When I was- well."
Sarandiel looks at him. "I promise I won't try and use it. May I sleep here? If it won't bother anyone?"
It isn't a plea. It's a request from a soldier of his commanding officer, with the understanding that if he is denied there is no asking again.
Impulse wants to say no.
Wants to tell Sarandiel to get the hell away from the equipment he uses to create his world, wants to explain to him no, no a bed shouldn't be uncomfortable to you, wants to say sorry and doesn't know what it is he'd be apologizing for, sorry you were made, maybe? Sorry that the top of a formation just like this is all you've ever known? Sorry that the thing you used to become my nightmare was nothing but a yoke that you don't even know how to cast off?
Instead he says, quietly, "For now, it's fine."
It's not.
It is so very not.
But Ovh'ugr'itrotl Iagrecnen Val Magnel Shaxha Nagnoth Vuidrr'dhrul Syn knows, despite what Doc might think, how to pick and choose his battles.
And this, he is realizing, is going to be a very long battle.
For those of you who keep up with my fan fics, hiya! I just wanted to say a quick thank you for all the support on When the dawn breaks, aaaaand, I made art for the upcoming chapter! The first part of the finale is up now, and the second part, which this drawing takes place in, should be finished sometime soon! <3 <3 <3
Small Scar/Impulse thing I wrote for demon au @stiffyck and I go insane about
All fluff!
Short drabble, around 500-600 words
"I like your tail and the way it forms a heart—" But his statement was cut off by Scar looking up, blinking in something akin to confusion.
"Wait wait—a heart?"
"—I like you, and I like how soft your hair is—" He smiled, running his hand through Scar’s hair.
"—And I like your horns, and I love your smile—" He continued on, pretty much bathing in the joy complimenting Scar gave him.
Scar groaned, covering his face with his hands, glowing a dark grey all around. His tail swished side to side behind him and Impulse found himself staring at it. He found himself staring at Scar too.
"And I like—" "Oh jeez, Impulse please shut up," Scar groaned into his hands, no true malice behind his words. Impulse laughed.
"But I'm not done yet tho!" He called out, receiving a whine in reply as Scar leaned over to hide his face in Impulse's shoulder.
The moon was high and the air smelled of pink. Flowers blooming and the world sleeping with a tint of laughter.
And Impulse wondered if Scar was truly glowing, or that he could simply not focus on anything else. Scar shined in ways Impulse didn't have words to describe. His chest felt warm and he couldn't help the slight tint of adoration.
So he took a breath in. He'd be as annoying as he could be.
"I like your tail and the way it forms a heart—" But his statement was cut off by Scar looking up, blinking in something akin to confusion.
"Wait wait—a heart?" He asks, suprise and confusion clear as day. And Impulse took note of the way his face had turned a dark shade of grey-ish red and the way it made his eyes stand out even more.
So Impulse smiled. "Yeah! Your tails form into a heart!" He chuckled.
He felt like he was bathing in a sunrise that he hadn't seen before. His chest felt warm and his cheeks hurt from smiling.
The room kept tasting of a soft pink and morning glow. They stayed up for too long.
Impulse found himself looking up to the sky and letting his thoughts run into words.
"At first I thought it was a random thing—but then I noticed you do it the most when you're around me." He rambled, face flushing the slightest bit.
And I think it's cute, was a sentence he didn't say just yet.
He looked over at Scar, who now held his own tail infront of him, staring. He looked focused, and so much more that Impulse didn't have the words for. But it was a sight he wished he could've looked at for hours and much more.
Scar took a breath. "I didn't know I could do that." He gasped out with wide eyes. "I never noticed."
And Impulse felt his face soften in ways it always would when he was near Scar. Adoration, is a word he would use.
The air smelled of pink and morning breeze. And Impulse was tired in the most pleasant ways.
His tail reached over and wrapped around Scar’s, just under the heart. Just enough to get Scar to look up at him.
"I like you," He smiled. I love you, he didn't say, and he's not sure he ever would.
He adored Scar in ways that wouldn't have fit the human definition of love. Human concept did not always fit them, and he wouldn't try to make them.
But Scar knew that. Because Scar liked him too.
And even through the way Scar groaned and covered his face at the words. Even through Impulse his laughter. Even through the pink air,
He felt it when Scar’s tails wrapped around his too, and he saw how Scar peaked at him between his fingers.
And the sun wasn't there, and the world slept soundly.
