Thank you all so much for participating this Azris Week - we added over 50 fics to the Azris tag in just the past seven days! Some of you delivered with a work on each day, and some of you posted TWO, you beasts.
Stay tuned for the winner of the Hype Bat Challenge...
Summary: “A boon,” Eris murmurs, and Azriel’s nails pause. They are still against Eris’s stomach, still threats that make Eris’s blood sing. “I would ask a boon of you.”
Written for @azrisweek 2026, Day 4: Dark and Stormy Night.
Notes: Happy Azris Week!! I have been having a hell of a time getting ye olde braine to cooperate, but it suddenly kicked into gear in the last week and I was able to finish this weird little guy. Mild content warning for organ harvesting. (Is it consensual? Yes. Is it sane? Mmm, you decide.)
Title is from The Old Religion by Florence and the Machine. Special thanks to @jules-writes-stories, @yams-77, and @secret-third-thing for looking this over for me.
Eris frames the moon between his hands. It is astonishing how bright it is tonight: he imagines he can pick out the eyebrows of the Man in the Moon. As always, the Man looks surprised. Maybe he is shocked at the company Eris keeps.
“A telescope would work better.”
Azriel’s voice is quiet, velvety, the way it always is. Expectant, too, because they both have been waiting for a clear night and a bright moon for nearly a season.
This was originally meant for Day 3 (creature), but it is currently day 4 (dark and stormy night). While there are no stormy nights prevalent as of yet in this fic, I would argue Azris' collective mental states are the stormiest nights of all.
Thank you to @mistandmemories for dropping this entire idea that I have not been able to stop thinking about since. You're a genius and your mind is a wondrous place.
I'm very excited to write this and participate in my first Azris Week! It's been less than a year since I've joined this side of the internet and I've loved it very, very much. Thank you to all the people who've welcomed me and made this fandom a place that I love to hide away in!
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LAPDOG
LINK: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86459301
SUMMARY (cw: mention of pet death in the summary) :
Azriel stops. There lies a puppy the size of his palm, wiggling in the dirt. The smoke from its dying mother wraps the poor creature in a blanket of ash. The mother closes her eyes, and the remaining smoke billowing off of her fades into nothingness.
Through it all: Naiya, his shadows repeat, chorusing joyously. Naiya!
He takes a moment to whisper a quiet prayer for the felled hound. Then, he scoops up the infant, its eyes scrunched shut.
Or: All the ways in which an action has consequences. And: Two very guarded males are brought together by a happy puppy.
Chapter 1/10: 3.3k
SNIPPET UNDER THE CUT:
Azriel’s feet press, soft and steady, against the giving earth of Autumn.
There’s a nice breeze going – a welcome reprieve from the biting cold of the mountains of Night. Sun shines on his back, absorbed by the black of his leathers and heating his skin. If he cranes his ear past the ever-present humming of his shadows, he can even hear the gentle splashing of a lake on shore.
It’s a wonder, he thinks, that a place so idyllic can breed some of the worst fucking people he’s ever met.
There! His shadows insist, interrupting him with their song. They dart across the floor like children, skittering to their destination. He dares not cross Them, so of course he leaves it be.
Where does Your mind take you? He asks back – ili mansi vikra? – but his feet already move behind them. Their senses invade his entirety.
Following patiently, watching the light hit the trees hit the ground from about fifty different angles, from every one of his eyes, he thinks he smells a little bit of smoke.
Naiya, the shadows sing at him. Naiya.
Before Azriel can process why They insist on discussing dogs when there might be an active fire, he hears a bark himself, then a sort of pained yowl. The scent of smoke bites at his nose.
His feet carry him to a birthing hound, in visible pain, sloughing smoke off her back like a snake shedding skin.
Azriel stops. There lies a puppy the size of his palm, wiggling in the dirt. The smoke from its dying mother wraps the poor creature in a blanket of ash. The mother closes her eyes, and the remaining smoke billowing off of her fades into nothingness.
Through it all: Naiya, his shadows repeat, chorusing joyously. Naiya!
He takes a moment to whisper a quiet prayer for the felled hound, and for the magic she homed. Finishing his mutterings, he scoops up the infant, its eyes scrunched shut. A little maneuvering and – it’s a girl.
The shadows crow in delight, rushing in at once, peeking down at the little creature. Their joy smothers Azriel and he has to bite against the feelings, the whole force of Them. Then, as fickle as the rain and as changing as the tides, They demand alterations. The love cuts off immediately; it turns into warning.
Azriel focuses hard to try and split his attention once more, to spread his fracturing being across the shadows and the hounds and the dying and the earth. He hears the thud of footsteps, and concentrates until he smells the fire magic of Autumn.
It is Eris, Son of Autumn, who rushes into the square, feet slamming against the leafy dirt in his hurry. His eyes catch sight of his smokehound, dead on the floor, and only a flicker of grief lasts in his eyes before it is smothered out by rage.
He whirls on Azriel. “You.”
Azriel looks at Eris for a moment, and he sees, from a shadow behind him, a tinge of red beginning to seep through the Heir’s back. His hair, unraveled, matted – not perfectly combed as usual. Cracks on his cuticles. He must’ve just gotten out, Azriel realizes, from a conversation with Beron. Torturous in both a metaphorical and physical sense.
“She was dead when I arrived,” Azriel says, and it’s as much of a condolence as he can muster, being caught how he is. “I’m unsure why.”
Eris’s face scrunches up in fury, and it would be comical if it wasn’t so sad.
He almost looks like the wounded parakeet that his shadows were taken with in Summer, squawking and injured, lashing out with talons too dull to achieve much. “It’s obvious why she died,” Eris spits out. “Smokehounds are blessed by the Mother for their magic. It elongates their lifespan to the hundreds. But magic is finite.” The explanation comes out somehow both bitter and distracted. In fact, the Son of Autumn is not looking at him at all, his eyes instead busy searching for remnants of smoke that no longer exist.
Azriel understands, and thinks clarifying aloud would be a mercy. “The smoke transfers to the infant after birth as the magic cannot sustain two. The mother dies as age catches up to her at once.” It is this truth told to air that breaks the redhead free from his compulsive searching, and amber eyes find him again.
Eris sneers. “The mother or the father. But Lethe’s mate died already, in the war.” He snaps, once. “This is irrelevant. Where is the pup? What have you done with them?”
Azriel holds his palm out, lifting it up from his shadows, baring the curled up pup within it. “She’s safe,” he says, flatly. “Regardless of what you no doubt think of me, I wouldn’t slaughter a puppy.”
There’s a brief sort of silence before despair hits Eris’s face all at once. It’s a far cry from the relief Azriel expected to see written on his face. “What,” he grits out, “have you done?”
Eris rushes forward, and Azriel instinctively shields the small animal from him. The heir looks almost sick at the action.
“I didn’t do anything,” is what Azriel says in his own defense. “I picked it up. It’s unharmed.”
“It’s imprinted to you, you Illyrian bastard.” Eris snaps, incensed, and Azriel stops in his tracks. “Congratulations, shadowsinger. You’ve damned this child to a life bonded to you. ”
Blood sprouts new flowers beneath his tunic, staining the embroidery red. And silence is all Azriel has to offer, his shadows dancing in the air beside him: victorious.
Eris stares at him. “Not a word in response, shadowsinger?”
With no choices beyond the obvious or obscenely cruel, the spy elects neither and begins to spout nonsense.
“I’ll take it to Night, then,” he offers, knowing as he says it how empty the suggestion is. He can’t take care of any hound – he barely suffers through caring for himself. Dependent on him for survival, the pup would be lucky if it lasted the week.
“You will, will you?” Eris taunts, viciously. “It’ll die before it leaves Autumn’s borders. It’s too young and its magic too weak.”
Azriel purses his lips. “Then I’ll leave the pup here.”
“Are you slow? It will die without you.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. Eris’s shadow sings to Azriel and it’s more like a verse – tense, anxious. Rigid, like the male himself. Cowardice and avarice is all that he finds.
“Then I’ll visit. Periodically. Once a month.”
Eris scrunched his nose. “Give her to me. Now.”
Azriel does, obediently dropping the little puppy in Eris’s waiting hands. Eris examines it, and seems almost distraught when the puppy mewls out for Azriel instead.
Azriel’s shadows wail in kind, thrashing unhappily at his feet and wriggling in his ears until his head pulses painfully. But he can not acquiesce to Their whims anymore. Rhysand will have his return.
He winnows out of the clearing, his shadows screeching, singing, chanting oppressively in his ear. He leaves a piece of his soul behind when he departs.
A compilation of little vignettes of pranks over time. Not a parody, but this is not a serious fic. No angst or smut, just a few ideas I jotted down over the year that never made it into one-shots.
For Azris Week 2026 - Day 1: Contact
He'd never admit it publicly, but Azriel started it. No one talks about how boring fieldwork is, especially when the High Lord of Night, father of your chosen brother, sends you to the Autumn Court with instructions to discover Beron's latest scheme… and not to come back until you know it.
Read the rest on AO3:
6.2k words, 6 chapters, Teen and Up
My usual Azris tags: Let me know if you want on or off the tag list!
“There will never be anything like you again. Not for me.”
The words were spoken like a promise, but the threat lurking in each sound was a noose around Eris’s neck. They had never been so careless but as secrecy strangled them, their longing only tightened the knots.
Inevitability was at their core,their love and their loss.
Holla at ya boi if you want on or off the Azris tag train:
the whole point though the whole point of neris is that deep down they are eldest siblings who cant stop gathering sheep up like dogs. Which is why Eris can’t stop loving his soldiers as much as he loves himself, which is why Briallyn can use them to get to him without lifting a finger, because he can’t abandon his men who need to believe they are fighting for something real, because he desperately needs to believe that the thing he’s fighting for is real. Which is why Nesta would have stood at the pass of enalius for any young woman with a bruise in her who wanted something bad enough to risk her life for it. Nesta didn’t want to fight originally and im not sure that Eris does deep down either but the point is if being a general or a Valkyrie is the language you use to tell people who need you that they aren’t alone then they’ll speak it. They’ll speak it over and over and over
OMG look! It's club rat Azriel and definitely NOT a mostly naked Azriel hiding from this app's purity team!
Whatever you do, DON'T go looking for a different version over HERE ON AO3.
WAIT! Know before you go! There are two versions, one of them is bloody and chained and torn up a little. IT'S NOT THAT BAD... but it could be to you, so look with caution.
If you look at him and don’t leave a nice comment I will actually cry.
Also, special thanks to all the Azris stories I’ve been listening to while painting this!
Holla at ya boi if you want on or off the Azris tag train:
People in a fandom who don’t post art/fics, but who reblog/like/follow/otherwise support artists and creators, my beloveds
If artists are the backbone of a fandom, then you all are the muscles. Connecting everyone and everything. Spreading fun and whimsy. That’s real neat, I think
when i forget to log into ao3 and i have to click proceed to see an adult fic, i actually get a kick out of it. like i am an old timey queen and my bard is apologetic: “gentle lady, dicks doth touch in this next ballad. would you prefer another?” and i give him a gesture of command like, “nay, you may proceed, minstrel. bring forth the tale of dicks”
He can't act soft, he can't act nice, he can't be seen as weak or having a weakness. All the little things he does is because he can't afford to end up getting tortured by Beron.
I think Eris is working hard to reach out to his people, and training to stage a coup. Eris has to kill his father, and the more often he gets torture, the more that sets him back. Eris needs the strength to kill Beron.
So no I don't think Eris is a bad guy, hes a victim of being related to Beron by blood.
Not only that if he fails, Eris is not the only one whos in danger. HIS MOTHER, HIS BROTHERS, THE AUTUMN COURT FAE ARE IN DANGER.
One wrong move and every single person could die. He will die. But only after Beron tortures his brothers and mother in front of him.
Let's not forget he never killed Luciens lover. Eris didn't help Mor because if he did, she's bound to the court, and would suffer the same fate as the rest of the Vanserra family.
I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL, I REFUSE TO BE DRAGGED OFF OF IT
also why tf is there so many important female figures that just remain nameless??? wtf????
