Feel Like Making a Deal with the Devil?

Affiliated with AskStoryKidsHQ. Where do you think you're gonna go? There's nowhere to hide inside a bad dream. Daughter of Bill Cipher. (Written by Destini).

[askstorykids-hq]

Welcome to the idyllic town of Addersfield, located on History Island in Auradon, home of Illedale University.

Students here are children of some rather famous faces. And some have made fame in their own right, like King Ben or the Lady Mal. We’re proud to boast a diverse student culture and a rich history–

[–and that’s enough of THAT broadcast! Is this thing on? Hello? Can you hear me?

Good. I’ll warn ya right now, everybody– if you thought Auradon Prep was wild, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Illedale is bigger, meaner, and with the past not so distant to us, tensions can run pretty high around here.

‘Course, you probably know the story by now. When preparing for his coronation, King Ben declared his first royal proclamation to allow over 4 VKs from the Isle of the Lost to come to the city. After a whole showdown about good and evil, the four integrated into Auradon society pretty well, and then after drama at Cotillion, Mowgli rallied the Auradon people to fight for the disbandment of the Isle, sending the villains to rehab and their kids to Auradon Prep.

Catching you up since graduation, pretty much all of us ended up moving to Addersfield for higher education in Auradon’s system– cuz man, I gotta tell ya, it’s a lot better in Auradon than it is anywhere else. Well, ‘cept for all the evil takeovers, I guess.

But not everyone’s cut out for college itself. The nice thing about Addersfield is that it’s all a pretty tight-knit community based around the school itself. More of a college township, as it were. So some of AP’s graduates moved to town to work with a crowd they know well.

I can’t stay much longer, but don’t let the stuffy advertising fool ya about this place, folks! We’re a lot more than what the surface wants to pretend. I’d drop your application while you can if I were in your shoes! This is P. Warner, sending you right back to your regularly scheduled programming!]

–and enroll in your future today at Illedale University, where the story starts anew.

[timcisdcad]

pxnes-dxughter​:

Lyra smiled softly, nodding again. “Hopefully. I’m not gonna tell my dad about this. He might get mad.”

Marella nods understandingly, wide-eyed. “Totally makes sense, and y’know what? I won’t tell my dad, either. Solidarity. It’ll be a fun little surprise for them when things are better!!”

Yeah. No. First thing she’s telling him next time she sees him.

[timcisdcad]

pxnes-dxughter​:

Lyra started to think about it, then nodded a tiny bit.

“I’ll accept your friendship, Marella.” She smiled a bit. “I’m sorry for the way that I’ve acted towards you.”

Marella smiles, lighting up. “Awwww! Lyra, this is gonna be such a fantastic thing for both of us! Water under the bridge, really, I honestly hardly even noticed, I was just happy knowing you were all right from a distance but this is gonna be so much better! Finally closing ancient wounds and healing some bad blood, you and me, we’re gonna be the best team!”

[timcisdcad]

pxnes-dxughter​:

“I-Hmm.” Lyra sorta leaned back during the hug, then listened to Marella.

“You…do care about me that much, huh?” Lyra smiled a tiny bit. “Don’t worry, at least nothing really bad happened. Glad yours was okay, though.”

“Oh, Lyra, buggie, of course I do!” Marella smiles, squeezing her shoulders. “Oh, I don’t know WHAT I would’ve done if you’d been hurt! I just don’t! I know we don’t spend a lot of time together but I would ever-so-love for us to be great friends and I wanna look out for you!”

[timcisdcad]

pxnes-dxughter​:

“I’m never trusting people with yellow eyes ever again. At least Adam was cool and woke me up.”

“O-M-GOODNESS! Lyra, you’re okay!!” Marella hugs the girl tightly before she can register or back up, squishing her in tight for a minute and pulling back. “Gosh, I was just so worried! I’m a lucid dreamer so nightmares don’t have much effect but I guess since the only way someone could wake up on their own was to face their nightmares I was stuck asleep and I was just worried sick!! Oh I’m oh so glad you’re okay! I am!”

She smiles, an almost sickening sweet thing, pulling back. “Wow, it sounds so awful. I’m so glad you got woken up. I can’t imagine.” She shudders slightly.

[timcisdcad]

“Ohmygosh, that was so freaky, wasn’t it?” Marella blows a bubble with her gum, popping it and continuing to chew. “I mean, I thought Auradon was s’posed to be safer than that. Or something. And gosh, I just feel so awful for everyone!! I mean, I know I couldn’t do much to help given it was me, too, but still, being trapped in nightmares like that-- no one really deserves that, y’know?”

[timcisdcad]

untxld-stxries​:

Celena tilted her head, watching the fairy. Hmm… familiar. Familiar, somehow. Was this one of those peasants Tayen knew, before Celena had been able to make herself known? Maybe. Maybe maybe maybe. She didn’t like maybe.

She giggled softly, biting her lip, watching the torture. This was some of her best work, and she hadn’t even gone in to make it personal. But it was perfect.

Marella cocks her head at Celena, reminding her silently that they run the risk of waking her if she’s made aware of their presence in her dream, then looks back at the fairy. Little Drama Queen. She thinks it’s suiting of the other.

After all, names had power, even one like Victoria Raven Adlon’s, and Blackbird even more so. She couldn’t use either one. And she was a... performance talent, was it?

Being in someone’s head like this was beyond helpful for a demon like her, but she says none of this to Celena. She didn’t ask... and Marella’s not telling.

Victoria sobs, screaming, visibly flinching hearing her father cry out. “DADDY! NO, NO, NO, PLEASE, PLEASE LEAVE HIM, PLEASE, IT WAS ME!”

[timcisdcad]

untxld-stxries​:

Celena grumbled, flexing her fingers. Hmm… from a distance, from a distance. She could deal with that. Though she was less than pleased about the chance of her waking up…

She twitched again. “I want to see her suffering.”

Marella smirks, blinking her eyes into slits. “Then let’s go.”

Reaching up, she gently presses a hand to the side of Celena’s head, taking them both under abruptly and stepping straight into the nightmare in question.

The dark-haired fairy screeches, sobbing, fighting against her restraints. Her wings were open, revealing scarring on her right wing, and her screaming almost drowns out the agonized screaming onstage, where her father is being ripped apart.

“PLEASE! IT WASN’T HIM! LISTEN TO ME, IT’S ME, IT WAS ME! I’M BLACKBIRD! PLEASE!”

[timcisdcad]

untxld-stxries​:

Celena giggled a little more, rocking back and forth on her feet, twitching again. That name. That name that name that name. It drove her mad. More mad than she already was. Angry angry angry angry ANGRY ANGRY ANGRY-!

“Where?” was all she asked. Because this… this she wanted to see for herself. Blackbird, in Auradon, and under her spell? Oh, she’d kill for the chance to see that.

Marella shakes her head. “Don’t know. I can walk through dreams without being anywhere near someone. I stumbled upon her same as the others I wandered through. Would you like to see? There’s only one rule, for your sake more than mine.”

She crosses her arms. “You can’t interact with the sleeping subject. If you do, you increase the chance that she’ll realize it’s a dream and she’ll wake up. And I have a feeling you don’t wanna do that.”

[timcisdcad]

untxld-stxries​:

Celena twitched. “What did you say?”

That pesky little moth. Blackbird. Blackbird! Oh, she’d have their head, she would, she would. Tricky tricky Blackbird. Never caught, never seen, never known. Never never never.

She giggled madly, her eyes glittering with rage. “Where… did you hear that?”

Precisely what she’d believed. The name did have significance.

“Oh, it was a silly thing, just out of someone’s nightmare, she seemed to have dreamt up you were torturing her father for information and she was screaming that it was her, she was Blackbird, but you couldn’t hear her. Poor thing looked pretty broken from that.”

[timcisdcad]

untxld-stxries​:

Celena was wandering, looking around at all her victims, relishing the moment. It was beautiful. Every single one of them. She couldn’t be happier about anything she’d ever done.

Well, except torture Clarion.

She turned to Marella, her eyes flickering orange-purple for a moment. “Oh? And what did you find, Marellie?”

Marella giggles. “Well, I was curious, wanted to see how things were going from the inside, so I hopped a few nightmares... and I found someone I have a feeling you might know about, from the way she spoke anyways. Did you have to deal with some pesky little issue involving a... Blackbird refugee operation?”

She raises an eyebrow slightly, curious to see how Celena responds to the question, curious to see if the girl overestimated her importance... or if she really was as big of a deal in Pixie Hollow as she’d apparently thought.

[timcisdcad]

Closed Starter: Why Do All the Monsters Come Out at Night?

It’s fun being a dream demon during something like this, Marella’s decided. Waltzing through nightmare after nightmare, discovering exactly how so many students’ psyches would break completely if she wanted to play with reality like her dad...

It’s always useful information to have. So when she wakes herself up, she takes notes, notes, so many notes about everyone and everything. How some kids were afraid of themselves, how some were afraid of Auradon not existing, how some were afraid of losing loved ones. All good bargaining chips.

But she has something far more interesting that she’d learned from one girl’s nightmare in particular that she had a feeling she should share. So Marella closes her notebook and tucks it back away where she always hides it, between her mattress and her headboard, and goes out carefully, practically tiptoeing around sleeping students.

For a minute, she swears she hears little footsteps, but she brushes the sound off quickly and keeps walking, leaving the noise far behind and looking for Celena.

“Oh, goodie, I was thinking I’d never find you,” she giggles. “I learned something you might find interesting.”

@untxld-stxries​

[timcisdcad]

Open Starter: Poor Little Hellraiser

Marella sighs in frustration around her sucker, popping it out of her mouth slowly. “I really don’t get it. I swear I’m doing everything right, the way Fairy Godmother’s teaching it in Remedial Goodness and it’s STILL like no one trusts me! I didn’t even do anything, it makes NO sense and I for one am so sick of it! Am I never gonna be... well, good enough?!”

Sighing in frustration, she puts her sucker back in her mouth and pouts a bit, crossing her arms.

[timcisdcad]

😴 - Celena!

Marella hums softly as she looks around, the starry mindscape she’s always loved to play around in when she first falls asleep. But there are eyes on her.

Eyes, plural. Not daddy, though he’s here, too. He wisely stays quiet. Marella turns to see the other girl, cocking her head. “Hello, there. Who are you, and how did you get here?”

Nobody’s supposed to get into her dreams. She’ll have to work on that. “You’re very good, to be here.”

[timcisdcad]

untxld-stxries​:

Celena bobbed her head back and forth, watching the little lights as Marella spoke. She giggled and smiled. Simple enough terms. She could handle those.

She reached out and shook Marella’s hand. “We do.”

Marella smiles as they shake on it. Perfect. “Sounds ideal to me. Get out of my head now. I don’t like these games.”

She abruptly opens the hole and shoves the fairy back out of her mind, closing it right back up, though slowly lighting up the room again with a very simple shape made of stars. A triangle with an eye.

“How’d I do?”

“I couldn’t have done it better myself, firecracker,” her father’s voice answers, and that eye winks at her. She knows the difference between a wink and a blink with her father, and that was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a wink.

[timcisdcad]

😴 - Celena!

Marella hums softly as she looks around, the starry mindscape she’s always loved to play around in when she first falls asleep. But there are eyes on her.

Eyes, plural. Not daddy, though he’s here, too. He wisely stays quiet. Marella turns to see the other girl, cocking her head. “Hello, there. Who are you, and how did you get here?”

Nobody’s supposed to get into her dreams. She’ll have to work on that. “You’re very good, to be here.”

[timcisdcad]

untxld-stxries​:

“Well, lucky for you, you’re in a prime position to ask for anything you want,” Celena sighed. She shrugged again, turning to face Marella but still circling her. “You have the advantage of the first offer in this negotiation.”

Her eyes never left the girl, not even so she could blink. Marella. A unique name. Marella Cipher, no doubt. She’d heard whispers while Tayen was awake, thinking Celena was asleep. The Ciphers weren’t to be trusted. But this was a very… very advantageous alliance, if she could secure it.

“Ooh, aren’t we feeling generous?” Maybe because you know you’re playing games in the wrong girl’s head.

Marella straightens up a bit and closes her eyes a moment, focusing her powers to try something else. She pulls the strings a bit, the lights and colors around them changing as she works through it, connecting the dots of it all. Smirking, she opens her eyes again.

“Fine. How’s about this, Celena-- I only have two entire stipulations. They apply if you succeed or if you fail. The first, you keep my name and role in this out of it entirely, to anyone, to everyone. No matter if they work with you or against you, you tell no one of my part in this. The second, is that you’ll owe me in the future. I’m sure I’ll need a pretty big favor to come out of doing all this, with wherever I go from here. It’d be nice to know I have someone I can call on with what comes up. Just the simple favor-for-favor return. Of equivalent size.”

Smiling, she offers her hand. Here, now, with a deal on the table, her hand, no, her arm, seems to outline with a glowing magical... pink, fire. Huh, she’d expected blue. Well, no matter. “Do we have a deal?”

[timcisdcad]

😴 - Celena!

Marella hums softly as she looks around, the starry mindscape she’s always loved to play around in when she first falls asleep. But there are eyes on her.

Eyes, plural. Not daddy, though he’s here, too. He wisely stays quiet. Marella turns to see the other girl, cocking her head. “Hello, there. Who are you, and how did you get here?”

Nobody’s supposed to get into her dreams. She’ll have to work on that. “You’re very good, to be here.”

[timcisdcad]

untxld-stxries​:

Celena smirked, watching the lights go out. Interesting. Very interesting. A lucid, then. She’d never encountered one before. This was new. And she didn’t like new. Especially when new could challenge her… Unless…

She giggled. “Hmm… how, I wonder? Stringing them up by their toes? Tying them up and making them watch their loved ones be tortured with waking nightmares until they break?” She giggled madly, sighing wistfully. “Or maybe that’s simply how I like to deal with them…”

“In any case,” Celena said, continuing on, “I think we could benefit each other, Marella. You see… I have a plan. A wonderful plan for reforming Auradon.” Her eyes twinkled, but it wasn’t with anything good. “Lovely, lovely chaos. And I think you’d quite enjoy it.”

Marella smirks. “Oh, I think I know how to go far more twisted than you could even imagine, fairy.” Yes, she’d picked that one up already. “It’s cute that you think that’s twisted.”

She raises an eyebrow a bit as Celena talks about her plans. This could prove fun... or stupid. “Yeah? And what’s in it for me? Just the funsies of it? Don’t think so. I’ve seen bigger than you try and fail. Not interested in getting implicated in this one, I’m supposed to be winning trust, not losing it.”

[timcisdcad]

😴 - Celena!

Marella hums softly as she looks around, the starry mindscape she’s always loved to play around in when she first falls asleep. But there are eyes on her.

Eyes, plural. Not daddy, though he’s here, too. He wisely stays quiet. Marella turns to see the other girl, cocking her head. “Hello, there. Who are you, and how did you get here?”

Nobody’s supposed to get into her dreams. She’ll have to work on that. “You’re very good, to be here.”

[timcisdcad]

untxld-stxries​:

Celena looked around. So many thoughts. And a very interesting mind already. Normally she was able to track down something to twist, something to turn into a nightmare, almost immediately; the slumbering mind was always defenseless, easy to crack open.

But not this one.

The fairy smiled, eyes dark and empty. “Who am I? Well, that really of the question of the night, isn’t it?” She looked around more, slowly walking around. “Oh, I know I’m very good. I’ve been doing this a long, long time, you see. Getting into dreams. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

She raised an eyebrow at the other girl, giggling softly. “A lot of practice.” She returned her gaze to the area around them. “My name is Celena. And you, my friend…” She looked back at her, her smile wider. “You’re very interesting to me.”

Marella’s quick to lock things down. She doesn’t like people poking into her mind. Around them, what had previously appeared as a starry field around them that they’d both floated in dims as more and more lights go out. Closing off paths, closing her thoughts off, leaving the intruder with her and nowhere else to turn.

“Hello, Celena. I’m Marella. I try to keep things exciting,” the half-demon smirks a bit. “Though, I don’t care much for uninvited guests. I have very, very fun ideas of how to take care of something like that.”