To celebrate going into 2019 the squad has been given secret santa-like assignments, and I got the wonderful @rrrawrf-writes !!!!! Here are three of her amazing stories visualised as book covers:
Mercury Independent:
Mercury Independent, a private security company full of superpowered agents, will do nearly anything for money - and for anyone. While they navigate a complicated world of contracts and jobs for and against heroes, villains, various governments, and your next-door neighbor, MI agents run into all sorts of people - a mind-linked spec ops military team, an ex-thief just released from prison, but still fighting for his safety from old enemies, and a perpetually exhausted federal agent who can’t decide if he likes MI, or wants to arrest the lot of them. And Eli, the lead agent for Mercury Independent’s central branch, won’t stop adopting people.
Under Pressure
Keo K’lohei has just been released from prison. Now he just wants a quiet life working on his car and spending time with his friends and family - but an old associate from his smuggling past blackmails Keo into taking just one more package across the border.
That package happens to be Prince Tarquin. And he thinks visiting an enemy country with Keo in tow is a great idea.
Rank 9
In the city of Merit, status is based on citizens’ ability to pass the yearly exams, which sorts each person over the age of 15 into ranks appropriate for their abilities and intelligence. Rank 9, the lowest, is home to Wyatt and Riley, a brother and sister who are depending on Riley to pass her first yearly exam. While she studies, Wyatt works long hours in the factories to afford her medicine and better food, but he can only get them through a dangerous loan shark who holds a personal grudge.
In the meantime, the infrastructure of the lower ranks begins to crumble, and unrest simmers among Merit’s low-ranked labor force, eventually sweeping Wyatt and Riley both up in a desperate bid for class equality.
Please check out these stories they’re so fab and intriguing. Happy New Year Lisaaaaaaaa I hope you like them!!!!
the prompt that @rrrawrf-writes gave me. here’s the char fill for you, which is also a study in how you fuck up present tense, give up, and then rally (sorta?) :p
a continuation of this; milt belongs to rrrawrf!
Your heart is a weapon.
Char barely the remembers the argument -- there’d been a lot, in the first days of Milt’s forced sobriety. She knows he’d said it as an angry rebuttal to her own cold rationalization of something or other.
Mostly Char remembers her disbelief. The furrow in her brow, the tight curled mass in her ribcage that shot up into her throat and made her voice crack horribly when she snapped, “Really?”
“I don’t know,” Milt had admitted, conciliatory all of the sudden.
Maybe he’d had a vision, or maybe he’d recognized some other sign that Char was one wrong word away from bursting into tears. She’d been doing that a lot lately, enough to know how wrong Milt was. The heart wasn’t a weapon. It was a chink in the armor, a crack. Once upon a time, Char had slipped through such an opening herself, falling away without Milt ever noticing.
“I think I heard someone say it before,” Milt had muttered gruffly, and Char suspected he knew exactly who he was quoting. But he hadn’t said, and she hadn’t asked; it was just another argument, after all, one she knew Milt didn’t even believe.
Now she’s starting to understand.
When she first woke up, after the drugged coffee, Char tried to carve the panic out of her chest by giving it to the hungry vestige of Winter’s power, the constant void inside of her that wanted to eat everything else up.
But Char knew if she gave in too far, she’d lose her own motivation to act. All the reasons she cared enough to throw red herrings into Milt’s sight, to use Jackie and Alex to lure Winter to the local hospital’s closed-for-the-weekend research labs, to break into the lab herself -- she’d lose all of that, if she let herself be completely emotionless.
It had been hard to push away the lingering influences of Winter’s power, especially when fighting herself free meant risking panic. Risking the constricting, frozen sensation that made it hard to breathe, that made it hard to think of anything other than Milt drained away under Winter’s hand until he was nothing but an empty shell, almost like when he drank too much, but infinitely worse.
No, Char thought fiercely, the word caught between her clenched teeth and tasting of a new kind of determination. I won’t let that happen.
She cared too much to let that happen. She would not panic, or freeze, or lose her courage.
My heart is a weapon.
Milt hadn’t meant it, but with Winter trapped in the medical chair, Char thinks it might really be true.
Tian -- Tian whom Char has put into danger, because she apparently can’t stop doing that -- stands off to the side, eyes closed in concentration. He’s concealing them from everything: psychics and Milt’s sight, Jas’s nose, the building’s security camera, and Winter’s sense of their emotions. With Tian’s power, it’s like they don’t even exist, not even in mirrors. Only the naked eye can see them.
Winter’s are narrowed in anger, but his expression is still flat and cold and unworried, despite his inability to move anything but his fingers under the straps.
Char preps the needle. She chose this lab because it has the chemicals she needs, and with Tian on her side, it’s easier to do everything here on-site. In the ideal plan, the one where Milt didn’t drug her, Char would be in a different city and a different lab, with a different chemical cocktail and enough time to prepare that she wouldn’t have needed Tian. This plan relies on him; Char can’t let that distract her.
My heart is a weapon. Brightly determined, beating calm focus through her. Char is doing this to protect what she has left, and she isn’t going to waste time. She doesn’t ask Winter if he has any last words.
Winter talks anyway. She should have gagged him.
“I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell you that Rafael is alive,” he says.
Char stops. A colder feeling than even the panic creeps into her spine.
Dread. It locks her into place but leaves her mind free to race through all the possibilities (too many, all plausible), to calculate the likelihood that Winter is telling the truth now (this is exactly his style), and to kick herself for not seeing it before (maybe it’s a family trait).
“Aren’t you going to ask me where he is?” Winter asks.
“You’re lying,” Char says, brittle and afraid.
“I could be lying,” Winter says blandly. “I could be bluffing when I tell you that if you kill me, Rafael will die -- for real, this time, and before you can find him. His body parts will be sent to you one by one, each piece a new data point in the graph of your failure.”
Winter smiles. “So, Miss Parker. Am I lying?”
Char puts the syringe down.
My heart is a weapon, Char thinks, and now she knows how true it is. Her heart is a weapon -- but the hilt is in Winter’s hand, and he’s using it to cut her from the inside out.
“Tian,” Char says. “Get out of here. Don’t let anyone see you. Don’t tell anyone what happened.”
Introducing: Monstrous Monstrous follows the story of Delphinium Dalca, a semi-immortal young woman cursed to fall in love with numerous monsters and villains throughout her life. Monstrous is my secondary work-in-progress and the only WIP I’m developing publicly on Tumblr. The version released in parts on Tumblr is the first arc of the first draft of Monstrous— not the full, official, and edited final draft of the entire novel. Monstrous is directly related to my main work-in-progress, the Arcane Elements Cycle. They are set in the same universe and the two stories begin in the exact same location. However, Monstrous is written as if it were a story that the characters of Arcane Elements would be familiar with and would have read as a novel in their world. (I feel obligated to warn you that the portion of Monstrous released on Tumblr will leave off on a cliffhanger, as I must reserve the majority of the story for the formally published version. Read at the risk of your own heart.)
[This is entirely @rrrawrf-writes‘ fault, because we can’t create minor character without them becoming fully-fleshed and adorable. So have some relatively unimportant backstory for two unimportant characters that I adore. Boar is @rrrawrf-writes‘, and Jyyr is mine. This is from my Wolf at the Gates universe/her Bannerworld universe, because there are no rules here. Content warnings for wartime violence.]
Jyyr never wanted to be a soldier.
He had made that abundantly clear when the group of 'recruiters' first found him in Rivercrest. He had told them exactly where they could stick their letters from the crown. Cordell may have been at war, and maybe they were seeking mages to help, and maybe a metal mage would have been extremely helpful to their efforts against Eola, but he didn't care. He was a craftsman. He bent metal to make sconces and horseshoes and jewelry, and he offered to craft them swords and arrowheads, but that wasn't enough. They wanted him in battle. And he couldn't bend away a rope noose, or a casual threat against his family that made their swords rattle in their scabbards.
So Jyyr Darbinyan went to report for duty. A leather set of armor left something to be desired, as did the military-issue weaponry, but that didn't bother him as much as it bothered him to see the others suited in it. He could turn away arrowheads, bend swords, curve knives back on their owners, but the men around him, they--
They felt like fodder for the earth.
"You know, if you keep making that face, it might get stuck that way."
Jyyr blinked out of his reverie, looking over to a grinning young man. About his same age, he was at least half a head taller, and easily twice as broad, built the same way a brick wall might be if it enjoyed eating hearty dinners a bit too much. He stuck out a hand. "You're the new recruit, right? You can call me Boar."
"Your family had a sense of how big you'd grow up to be, then?" Jyyr asked, finally quirking a smile, and taking his hand.
"Nah, but the military did. Everyone calls me Boar."
"You're missing the tusks," he said, pointing at his lips. "I'm Jyyr. Darbinyan," he added, still getting used to being addressed by his surname. There were too many of his siblings in Rivercrest to ever keep them all straight by surnames alone, and the town had been small enough that everyone knew each other. That was the only good part about getting pulled away into this--this mess of a war.
"You're a mage too?" Boar asked, looking him up and down. "Fire?" he guessed after a moment.
Jyyr shook his head, and pulled a few bronze coins out of his pouch. They flipped obediently into the air, then stretched until they became two elongated strips of metal, and hovered near the other man's mouth to give the impression of tusks. "Metal," he corrected. "What about you? Earth?"
"Wind," he said with another grin, a gust of air sending the stretched coins spinning back into Jyyr's palm. "What, don't I look the part? I've never met a metal mage before," he added, sounding too enthusiastic about it for Jyyr's liking. "Where did they dig you up?"
"Too far from here," Jyyr said quietly, leaning back against a tree to watch the camp. They had been set up for three days, and slowly but surely more and more men gathered together, forming their companies, checking weapons, stitching armor, passing orders, and shaking hands. Jyyr had avoided them as much as he could, getting his assignment and staying out of the way. He did his duties, and not a stitch more. "And getting further by the day, it seems like." He frowned, bending the coins back into shape, and tucking them into his pouch again. He slumped down. "What about you?"
"Oh, gods, not that far. Aelford, though my wife would probably like me further away," he admitted with a crooked smile, and finally sat down beside Jyyr, bumping his shoulder fondly. "You got that patch for your company, right? That means you'll be with me. We'll be in the same mage corp. Guess you'll be stuck with me for awhile."
Despite himself, Jyyr felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. "I suppose it could be worse," he said at last, and leaned his shoulder against Boar's, sagging his weight against him to see if the other man would so much as budge. He didn't. "Have you been enlisted long?"
"Long enough to have gone through all the training and been marched all around, not long enough to see battle yet." At last, his cheeriness faded. "Though with Eola pressing this close, I imagine it won't be much longer. I heard the Sergeant talking about moving in the morning." He straightened his back, and slung his arm around Jyyr, nearly knocking the breath from him. "But, that'll mean we can end this war all the quicker, huh? My wife has already been writing me letters telling me I'd better be back in time for my daughter's birthday, or she'll kill me herself."
"How old is your daughter?" Jyyr asked, once he had gasped in breath again..
"Almost one. So we've got two months to make the Eolans beg for peace. Should be easy, shouldn't it?"
---
Should be easy.
Jyyr leaned back on his heels, pulling on his horse's reins as hard as he could to help the animal slog out of the bank of mud. He pulled at the iron of her shoes, and the animal snorted protest, finally wallowing free and onto the bank, standing shivering beside a half dozen other cavalry they had already pulled out. It had been a clever little trap, and though it did no more than slow them down, they were certainly slowed severely.
"Two more to go," Boar called, standing waist-deep in the mud and stroking the neck of a gray mare whose eyes kept rolling, her withers shaking. "We're never going to catch up to the rest of them at this rate."
"Less talking and more pushing, Mercer," the Sergeant called, wrapping the reins around her wrist to brace herself. "Darbinyan, give her a lift too, won't you?"
"Sir, if the horses will be too tired to bear us, maybe you could have Boar carry us all there?" Jyyr suggested, sitting in the mud to concentrate his magic, half-lifting the saddle as the three of them heaved at the terrified horse, trying to get her free from the pit.
"With the wind, or my back?" Boar asked, nearly getting kicked in the head as the horse lurched free, and immediately whinnied and tried to bolt. A few other soldiers caught her before she could get far off the path, soothing as best they could.
"I was thinking your back," Jyyr said, letting out an exhausted breath. "It's broad enough for at least two of us."
"Less talking," the Sergeant said again, in a manner that suggested she'd had to tell them too many times already. "Let's get them out of the mud, and then we'll meet the rest of the corp. Last one--don't get kicked, Mercer.”
"But sir, I think she was just trying to make him more attractive," Jyyr protested, moving over to the last horse and stroking the stallion's nose. Unlike the other horses, he was waiting calmly, ears flicked back in annoyance.
"Darbinyan, I'll have you gagged for the rest of the campaign. I don't need your mouth to use your magic." But the Sergeant couldn't help her weary smile, and stood back to let the two mages push and pull and coax the stallion free. "There's a stream just on the other side of the bank there. All of you, get cleaned up so you don't embarrass me. Eolans won't get frightened by a few mud beasts."
"They should," Boar muttered, leaning against Jyyr as he headed for the water, nearly knocking him over. "They're the ones that covered that mess so we'd ride right into it. Hours wasted. Shouldn't have split up to cut around."
"Yeah, well, you wanna tell Captain Tiorre that?" Jyyr pointed out, shoving him away and stifling a yawn. "If there is a battle waiting for us, we're not going to have any energy left to cast. All I want to do is sleep it off."
"That makes two of us," he agreed, splashing into the shallow creek; the water barely came to his knees, but it was enough to wash most of the sticky mud off. "I'm still sick from magicsbane, and that was nearly a week ago. I swear I've barely been able to eat."
"You ate two plates last night," Jyyr reminded him, splashing his face when he bent down to wash it off.
Boar responded by kicking up a gust of wind against the surface of the water, soaking Jyyr with a quick spray. “Like I said, I’ve hardly eaten anything.”
Despite himself, Jyyr laughed. He sat down on the bank, shaking water from his hands and brushing his sopping hair out of his eyes. “Three coppers says when we finally get to the border, there’s not even a battle left for us to fight.”
Boar offered him a hand up. “It’s a bet.”
---
“You owe me three coppers.”
The stink of blood and burnt flesh permeated the camp, even though they had spread their bedrolls as far from the last battle as they dared, nervous guards keeping an eye on the ranks of Eolan soldiers that camped on the rise, the smoke from their cook fires promising enough men left alive to still cause trouble. The earth was still damp from the recent rain, and the chill soaked through their blankets too quickly. Jyyr’s hands shook as he held a clean cloth against the gash on Boar’s head, serving as extra help for the overwhelmed medics only because he was one of the few not injured. He fought exhaustion like he had never known before, and every time he blinked all he could see was the electric shock of metal coming at them again and again. Swords, arrows, axes, halberds, charging calvarymen that found their horses tripping and sent squealing to the ground as Jyyr twisted the metal horseshoes to one side before their riders could plunge into the ranks. With every pulse of his heartbeat, he could hear screaming, cursing, shouts and prayers and the cries of the dying on the ground that was too wet to soak up any more blood.
“Jyyr.” Boar squeezed his arm, looking up to him. “You hear me?”
“Stop moving,” the medic scolded.
Jyyr startled. He moved his hands back when the medic batted at them, and gave Boar a listless smile. “I didn’t, sorry.”
“I said, you owe me three coppers.”
“Talking counts as moving,” the medic said, wrapping a cloth around his head, securing a poultice against the wound. “If that starts bleeding again, you call for me and I’ll seal it up properly. Right now we’re saving magic for the mortally wounded.”
Jyyr nodded numbly, and once the medic moved on, his shoulders sagged. He still held Boar’s head against his thigh, and raked his fingers carefully through the other man’s hair, brushing it away from his face.
“You’re shaking,” Boar said quietly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m not injured.”
“That’s not what I asked.” Ignoring the throbbing headache that protested the movement, Boar propped himself up on one arm. “Lay down with me, because if I sit up the medics will come howling down on me.”
Jyyr shook his head, watching the light fading on the horizon, sinking behind the Eolan camp and silhouetting the soldiers like looming demons. The sunset caught glimmers of swords being cleaned, arrowheads wrapped on fresh shafts, dipped in magicsbane or wrapped in oil-soaked rags. Horses chomped at their bits, their eyes flashing like fire against the flame of color streaking along the hill.
“Hey.” A gust of wind knocked against Jyyr’s back, then curled around him like a blanket, exerting gentle pressure until he finally gave in and sank down on the bedroll beside Boar.
“Sorry,” Jyyr murmured, pressing his face against the other man’s shoulder. It did nothing to drown out the smell of death, or the ringing in his ears, but at least he was no longer staring at the red sunset that blazed like a foretelling of doom.
Boar shifted enough to put his arm around Jyyr, pulling him against his side and easing back against the rolled blanket that served as a makeshift pillow for his aching head. “You have no reason to be sorry. I’m the one that should be begging for forgiveness. It’s my daughter’s birthday. My wife’s gonna kill me.”
Jyyr spread one hand on his chest, using the pulse of his heartbeat as a focus, anything to pull himself out of screaming, swirling battle. “I’ll make her something for you to send back with a letter,” he promised, his own voice sounding hollow and far away, like it was just another echo of memory. “I used to make little metal animals for my younger cousins.”
“I bet she’d like that,” he agreed, closing his eyes at last.
“I’ll make it in the morning,” he promised. By then, maybe he would have enough magic for it, and maybe they could get it in a parcel before the next charge of battle, before maybe neither of them would ever have a chance to send a letter again, before they fell on the already-flooded earth, added to the bodies on the pyres, for the war that never seemed to stop--
“You’ll have time to do it later,” Boar interrupted, and traced a soothing pattern on Jyyr’s back with his broad hand. “Go to sleep. We’ll have time.”
---
They had time.
When the morning broke with another blaze of red and a promise of more rain in the purple clouds rolling in, the Eolan camp had doubled in size, and quietly they packed camp, and retreated.
“We’re going to regroup with another unit,” the Sergeant told them with a confidence that didn’t quite seem to reach her eyes. The side of her face was pink from newly-healed wounds, a ragged gash that should have had her cheek flayed from eye to jaw, but Jyyr supposed the medics had deemed her important enough for magical intervention. Or at least near enough to death. “This isn’t a retreat.”
“Feels like one,” Boar murmured, leaning close to Jyyr so that only he could hear.
Jyyr nodded numbly. Both of them were walking; they had lost enough horses in battle that the only ones riding were those too injured to walk. Even the officers had dismounted. By midday, the skies opened up again.
It rained on and off for two weeks.
The other units they met with were just as haggard. They pushed back deeper. Towns emptied ahead of their retreat, or boarded themselves in their houses, watching the soldiers with hollow eyes. The border moved again; the folk that lived along it were too used to it. They paid their taxes to either king with the same dry disinterest. Jyyr thought about boarding himself in with them. Boar cracked jokes about anything that came to mind, trying to goad the rest of the company into a marching tune to lift the drudgery.
By the end of the month, even his teasing came strained.
"We're close to home," he whispered to Jyyr as they broke camp. Even early in the morning, the summer heat was oppressive. Boar's I'm sweating like a pig jokes had long since ceased to make Jyyr smile. Now, Boar had no smile, either. "I never thought the battles would come--would come so close to Aelford."
"Will they let you send a letter home?"
He shook his head, rolling his blankets tighter. "All correspondence has been suspended. Sergeant already warned me not to send a wind message either, or she’ll hang me by my heels. But they’ll--they’ll hear if the city is going to be attacked. My wife has relatives in the country, and they can stay with them until all of this--” The wind kicked at his feet, his magic breaking free with his emotions, even if his face stayed tight.
Jyyr took his arm. “If you want to go to them,” he said quietly, “I’ll help you get away.”
“You’re offering to commit treason for me?” Boar asked with a smile that didn’t stick. “They’d hang us both for desertion if we were caught. You can’t bend a noose.”
“So I’ve been told,” he muttered.
“And my wife wouldn’t get any of my pay if I deserted,” he added, shouldering his pack at last. “She’ll be--they’ll be fine.” He gripped the straps of his pack. “We’ll beat the Eolans back, and they’ll never get close enough.”
Jyyr wiped sweat from his brow, the humidity hanging in the air like an unanswered question. “We will,” he agreed. If they ever stopped retreating.
---
The battle seemed to stretch on for hours.
Though the ground had hardened in the summer drought, soon it became slick with sweat and blood, and the air choked with smoke and screaming. Jyyr felt the ground heave and twitch under the direction of one of the earth mages, and to his right he could just see the vicious swirl of wind that promised Boar was trying to use the last of the dust as a blinding whirl into the Eolan’s eyes.
He had to get to him. He had to make sure the big oaf got home to his wife and child. Back to the home that was so close, it made Boar reckless in defense of his land. Jyyr tripped over a body, throwing up his hands when a soldier with an axe and hand-shield came barreling towards him. The shield split in half with a terrible screech of metal, and the axe stopped mid-swing, using the same momentum to impale itself into its owner’s skull instead. Blood sprayed over Jyyr’s face. He told himself it was sweat. A medic crouched over a soldier holding her own intestines and crying for her mother. Jyyr stepped around them both, pulling a wayward arrow off-course so it buried in the dirt beside the medic instead of in his back. Swearing, his dark hair slick against his forehead, pulled up enough to show the tattoo on the back of his neck, the medic never looked up.
The wind howled like a shrieking banshee. Jyyr broke into a run, stumbling over fallen weapons and soldiers alike. He hardly saw the battle, putting up his magic like a wall around him. Swords turned before they hit his skin, spears snapped just under their heads, crossbow bolts spun away harmlessly to the slick earth. Boar grappled with a soldier at least his width, but taller and clearly more well-rested, one that buried a knife into Boar’s shoulder. He yelled, and the wind immediately died, a promise of magicsbane coating the blade.
Jyyr picked up a fallen dagger without ever touching the hilt, and sent it flying into the offending soldier’s neck. “Fall back,” he called to Boar, putting himself between the man and the Eolan line. Arrows hissed towards them, turning at the last minute to go flying back into the ranks. Six men fell screaming, and anger pounded in Jyyr’s chest. He heard the Eolans call to each other, heard their whistles that signaled a new threat, a new target, and he squared himself in front of Boar.
“I can still fight,” Boar insisted, putting a hand on Jyyr’s back.
“Fall back to the line, damn you!”
Three soldiers charged forward. Jyyr sent the first one flying backwards by the metal buckles on his belt, and he hit the dirt breathless. The second one shrieked as her own knife twisted into her stomach. The third carried two broken halves of a wooden staff.
“Jyyr!”
The world slowed, narrowed, brightened. Sweat and blood ran down his face, and Boar’s hand on his back gave way. He hit the dirt, and the blaze of sunlight, hazed with death and smoke, blinded him.
So did the broken staff, impaled into his right eye.
The world flickered in and out.
Boar, moving over him, screaming rage and death at the other soldier. A blurry face over him. Dragged a few feet on his back, then lifted by strong arms. Heat. Blackness. Horns calling retreat; he wasn't sure which side. A jarring pain pulling him awake with a shriek, vile medicine forced down his throat.
Blackness. Quiet. Waking with a sense that there should be pain, but only numbness in its place. He took a careful breath. He cracked open his eye, and saw the top of a medical tent. His body burned, sweat slick against the bandages that wrapped his head. To his right, he heard someone whimpering, praying in a fevered tone that matched the heat in his body. The tent smelled like death. Or maybe that was him.
“Don’t move,” a voice snapped when Jyyr tried to lift his hand. The medic came over and put a hand on his chest. “You’re barely alive. Don’t move.”
Barely alive. He was alive. The other patient cried out, and the medic left him. Jyyr lifted his hand to touch the bandages on his face. His face hollowed in his eye socket, and though he couldn’t feel the pain, he was acutely aware that it was missing. He burned. From the inside out, he burned.
“You weren’t supposed to be a fire mage.”
Time had passed. He was barely aware of it, but his body had a new ache. He turned his head enough to see Boar, and felt the pain ease back into numbness. He couldn’t get his vision to focus, but he could make out the shape of his friend, the frown between his eyes. He could feel Boar’s hands around his, the heat from his hands. Or maybe that was the heat still rolling off of Jyyr.
“Hi.”
“Hi?” Boar repeated. His out-of-focus lips smiled. He leaned closer. “That’s it? Fuck, I thought you were dead.”
“Not dead.” Jyyr extracted one hand with effort, and groped around for a moment at his waist. He swore, quietly. “My bag?”
“It’s down here.” Boar fumbled for a moment, then pressed it into Jyyr’s hand. “What do you need?”
His vision burned, his chest ached, and he reached blindly inside of the bag. After a few agonizing moments, he pulled free what he was searching for, and reached for Boar’s hand. He pressed a small item wrapped in soft cloth into his palm.
Remade from the scraps of battle--slivers from broken blades, snapped arrowheads, and thrown horseshoes--a metal griffin arched in Boar's hand, ball joints on its wings and legs allowing it to move. Boar caught his breath.
"For your daughter." Jyyr's mouth was dry. He closed his eye. He felt Boar's massive hand squeeze his.
"She's gonna go crazy over it. I hope you're ready for her to latch onto your leg when you meet her."
"I'll need that hug." His voice stretched thin. Blackness pulsed in his head. Boar’s hand tightened on his. He burned.
Wagon wheels creaked beneath him. Somebody moaned on his other side. Horses snorted. Humidity hung in the air like a promise. He burned. Someone else gave a stifled whimper of pain. It might have been him. A hand touched his face, and with it came a whisper of cooling wind. The wind soothed over his brow, fluttered the edges of his bandages, and spoke in his ear.
“You’re going home, Jyyr. And when this war is over I’ll--we’ll--” The breeze sighed. The sun burned. A medic yelled at a soldier nearby. The wind slid through his hair. “I’ll give you those three coppers I owe you. My wife will cook us dinner. My kid will sit in your lap. Go home for me, too. I’ll see you at the end of this war.” The cart lurched forward. The wind shivered, and, thinner, repeated--
a continuation of this and this by me and @rrrawrf-writes
<3 sorry for keeping you waiting so long!
“Well,” Saray said, perched on the edge of the couch, birdlike and curious. “Are you going to open it?”
Rafael frowned at the small package in his hands. It had all the markings of a Taobao package, but Rafael’s account had been frozen and he didn’t have time to argue with customer service yet. This package can’t possibly be his, but it was addressed very clearly to him, in neat (and kind of cute) characters.
“It looks bright,” Saray said. “Maybe a little urgent, but eager too. You know who it’s from, don’t you?”
He did.
It was Charlotte — but was it Charlotte, or Charlotte-and-Winter? Rafael felt bad for suspecting, but what else could he do?
“I thought she’d either call in the first few months since I moved, or never,” Rafael said, slowly. He picked up the scissors and started cutting the tape away. “It must be important if she’s reaching out.” Charlotte didn’t do casual greetings.
Saray smiled at him encouragingly. “Well, whatever it is,” she said. “I’ll help you with the clean-up. You can count on — oh god, is that the newest one?”
Rafael looked down at the phone in its case — which looked real, much like his Taobao package — and smiled. This was Charlotte, all right, telling him she was reaching out in real time.
“It must be,” he decided.
“That came out yesterday,” Saray gasped, and Rafael stared.
Quickly, he got the phone out of its case. The moment he turned it on, it was clear that Charlotte had tinkered with it already — instead of taking him through set-up procedures, the phone simply prompted him with Password? in a neat white serif on a black background.
Rafael felt like he could relax, a little. This was comfortable, familiar — the password was a sentence, complete with punctuation, that was nearly impossible for a brute-force decoder to figure out. It was easy for Rafael to remember though, since it was more or less a litany of all the revenge Charlotte wished to visit upon Winter’s person in some brighter future (her words). (Rafael’s half of the the password depicted an actual brighter future, which had turned out to be very different from his reality.)
“What are you doing, typing a novel?” Saray asked a moment later.
“Sort of,” Rafael answered wryly. He smiled when the phone accepted his password.
Relax, was the first thing it said. I’m already gone. You might want to sit down -- this is going to be long.
Saray insisted on accompanying him, which Rafael really should have suspected. Saray was like a butterfly, capable of alighting and taking off again in the blink of an eye. So that’s how they both ended up standing on the stoop of a small but neat-is house in a neighborhood full of mostly the same. Rafael let Saray ring the doorbell, because she was so excited to be in a place that was so American.
“It is very sad however,” Saray said pensively. She was peering at the house, trying to see what she could learn from its aura, when the door opened.
Saray gasped.
“Hello?” a man said, staring down at them. He was maybe a shade or two darker than Rafael, with a shaved head and an single earring. He was wearing a suit too, and he looked understandably confused.
Saray laughed. Rafael shot her a disapproving look.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m here, um. You’re Agent Javier, right? My friend Charlotte sent me here.” Rafael said it all as fast as he could, before Agent Javier could shut the door in their faces. He was relieved when the agent actually seemed to listen to him.
He stared too, saying nothing even when it was clear Rafael had said all he wanted to.
Then the agent stepped back, opening the door a little wider. Rafael and Saray shared a look; Saray seemed a little dazed, but she nodded.
Rafael went in first. In complete silence, all three of them headed to the kitchen. Agent Javier lead the way, and Sara was left to close the door behind them. In the kitchen, Agent Javier silently gestured for them to sit at the table, and then he got them both a glass of cold water from the Brita filter. Saray’s attention jumped from Agent Javier to the Brita filter.
Instead of sitting with them, Agent Javier started moving around the kitchen, pulling various things from the cabinets and the fridge. Rafael wondered how long he had been living in the house.
“So,” Saray said eventually. She held her glass of water in her hands to warm it up. “Got some interesting vibes in this place.” In Cantonese, Saray added in a low voice, “This house is very depressed, and I am not convinced this man is real.”
“Fascinating,” Agent Javier said blandly, and that kind of ended the conversation before Rafael could say anything back to Saray.
They sat for a little longer in silence, Saray and Rafael communicating through emphatic looks while Agent Javier continued chopping and mixing and folding. When he finally slid a pan into the oven and sat down at the table from Rafael, Rafael was ready to spill.
Agent Javier didn’t even have to say anything.
“Charlotte and I were friends, back when…” Rafael trailed off meaningfully, hoping Agent Javier would fill in the blank for himself. Rafael hadn’t really told Saray about that part of his past. “And she sent me a package, and told me to find you.”
Javier glanced at Saray.
“She’s my friend who decided to come along,” Rafael introduced her. “She doesn’t know Charlotte. Charlotte just said she wanted me to work on a project for her. She gave me instructions on how to set it up, and she said most of the components I need I can find in her — father’s -- house.”
Agent Javier nodded. “What kind of project?”
Rafael paused for a minute. The plan Charlotte had outlined for him, along with all its alternatives and the resources she could and couldn’t provide him, had been extensive. It reminded Rafael of the escape plan she had written for him and hidden on a thumb drive in his sock drawer, years ago, except this was far more complex.
“Agent Javier, sir, uh,” Rafael said, hesitant. “I have Charlotte’s blueprints for how to kill an immortal man. She says he’s been kind of a problem.”
Javier stared at Rafael, and then at Saray (who was watching him with open suspicion now).
“You should eat first,” he eventually said. “I’m making enchiladas.”
“winn almost didn’t take the offered handshake, but then he noticed the nice watch the guy wore. it disappeared into winn’s pockets in two seconds, along with both rings eli wore on his right hand. 'winn yale.’” (x)
