Hi there, you can call me Vicky or Val. I'm in my early 20s and go by she/her pronouns. I love monsters and writing about them! Feel free to spam like and reblog my posts. ᓚᘏᗢ ᶻ z ᶻ z Z
The eyes of the man in question fix on your mother, who shrinks into herself at the coldness of his gaze. Lord Thalor owns most of the land in your town, and he's not a man to be trifled with. One look from him can quiet even the surliest of characters, much less your timid mother. She tucks her shawl tighter around her frame and falls silent.
"I saw it too."
Your too-loud voice echoes in the large hall. It's the first time you've been in his presence, but when his eyes fall on you, they hold a glimmer of recognition.
"You must be the one who was fighting in the market yesterday. I could hear your voice halfway across town."
The reminder makes your blood boil all over again.
"And?" You demand, placing your hands on your hips. "Must I remain silent when others sabotage my livelihood?"
Your mother pinches your arm. You rub the spot blindly but refuse to back down. There are many rumors about Lord Thalor. Some stories say he was so ruthless in his time on the battlefield that his own army feared him. Others claim that he used black magic to strike down his enemies. No matter the truth, the king had gifted him land and the title of a lord, putting him in a position of power in your small town.
Lord Thalor stares back calmly, idly stroking the black cat in his arms. He and the cat share the same cunning green eyes.
"I saw the dragon as well. It was as big as a house! Surely we can't be mistaken about such a sight," you argue.
"If I say there was no dragon, then so it will be," Lord Thalor says.
"Then, in the case that it should attack our town, I hope it goes for your home first," you snipe.
You bid the Lord a good day, bow angrily, and drag your poor mother out. She scolds you all the way home, but you're preoccupied with thinking about the massive reptile you'd seen in the treeline earlier that morning. How could such a large thing disappear in the blink of an eye? Life carries on after the incident, because no one else seems to believe you either. If your mother hadn't also caught a glimpse of it, you might have begun to believe that you'd been seeing things.
Several weeks later, you're stacking firewood in the backyard when you hear a terrible crash in the trees. You look up just in time to see the tip of a black wing dip below the trees. There. You're so excited to prove your memory right that you forget it is a dragon you're running straight towards. You fight through the bushes and stumble over roots till you reach a clearing, freshly made by something large and heavy snapping trees in half. The air is thick with the scent of sap and mulch. There is no dragon in sight, though, just a pile of leafy branches.
You hear someone groan somewhere in there. You heave a particularly large branch out of the way and crouch down to see a man naked as the day he was born, sprawled in the debris. There's an arrow lodged in his chest, causing each breath to come out as a wet rasp. His cheeks, neck, and arms are covered in black scales, and dragon horns jut from his scalp. You hold your breath as you reach out and brush leaves away from his face.
"Lord Thalor?!"
The man in question scowls up at you. "Do you ever stop shouting?"
"So you're the dragon! No wonder you weren't the least bit surprised!"
He drags himself up a little, propping his back against a tree trunk.
"You must tell no one of this."
"I could be persuaded with some coin," you say amiably.
He stares at you. "And where will I get that in this state?"
You shrug. "Your ring will do."
"Absolutely not! Do you know how valuable–"
You pluck it off his finger. He sits up sharply, smoke billowing from his lips.
"You dare to steal from me in broad daylight–"
You push his mouth shut with a finger on his jaw.
"If you give me the ring I'll even help you take out that arrow," you say.
"Ridiculous," he mutters, but he slumps back with a wince. "Very well."
He says this through his teeth. You resolve to yank the arrow out and run for it. Surely he wouldn't be so daring as to chase you around in this state. You're even nice enough to leave your coat for him.
There's an endangered harpy at the rescue center called Ash. Due to a malformed wing, he has grown up around humans and is relatively tame. Mating season is approaching; he wants to start a family. However, his breed is so rare that none of the rescue centers around the country has a mate for him. This has made him very unhappy, and he spends most of his time practicing his mating call and gathering feathers to build nests that will never be used. The only time he's distracted somewhat is when you sit in his exhibit with him. Then he'll usually perch close by, preen himself, and fall asleep.
One day, your rescue center gets a very special admission: an orphaned baby harpy. She's a feral ball of fluffy feathers and attitude, snapping at you when you attempt to feed her. You're the one who suggests introducing her to your resident harpy. It's a huge risk because harpies aren't known for adopting and are more likely to attack orphaned young than care for them. You're enlisted for the task, seeing as Ash tolerates you the most. You step into his exhibit with the screaming little bundle, and Ash reacts with suspicion and alarm, his feathers lifting in a defensive display. He stays on his perch high above for nearly ten minutes, eyeing you doubtfully.
When he finally swoops down, he doesn't just find a lower branch. He lands on the ground in front of you with a thump. He's just as tall as you are, piercing eyes level with yours. That's somewhat terrifying. He leans down for a closer look at what you're holding, and you're not even sure he gets a good look at it. All he sees is feathers and something small, and he lets out a hoot of joy and snatches the bundle right out of your arms.
Even the baby harpy is surprised, letting out a peep of alarm as she's carried some thirty feet high and placed in a nest. Her small squeaks of alarm quiet down almost immediately, turning into chirps of contentment as her new father tucks her against his warm body. You stand there, watching happily until your neck starts to ache. Finally, a success story.
warnings; mdni/18+; handjob (gn), knight x royal trope, power imbalance (technically), assassination plot, implied the king is a tyrant, infidelity (reader is married)
Please reblog and share your thoughts with me!! Also, if you want more of this, check find a/n at the bottom!
Upon seeing the knight for the first time, all but the blood red cloak he wore across one shoulder of his heavily armored body was unremarkable to you. He was not the first to walk the length of the burgundy carpet in the audience chamber to kneel at the steps of your father's throne, swearing fealty; he would certainly not be the last to do so.
This knight, however, did not stop at the bottom of your father's throne. Instead, he continued past it without once acknowledging the man arrayed in jewels and gold and enrobed in fine fabrics and leather and power, and stopped where you stood in the shadows, away from prying eyes. All nobility in the court observed in mystified awe as the knight pressed a gauntlet fist to his breastplate, gently grasped your fingers, and knelt at your feet.
As it turned out, he was a collaborative gift from your father and a new alchemist's guild that had set down roots in the city. The product of limitless financial prowess and unbridled research endeavors, which would likely now be funded ad infinitum, as your father's absolute delight and marvel of the knight was unmistakable.
You hadn't understood the reason for his fascination until the knight, still having said nothing of his new oath, looked up into your eyes. No face of a man gazed up at you, only impenetrable blackness surrounding two glowing pink orbs inside the helmet where his eyes should've been. You had expected a weathered but handsome man with eyes the shade of warm honey, or brown, or blue, or just something human.
To sate your curiosity and confusion, you took your fingers away from the knight and lifted the helmet straight up off his head. It was heavy in your hands, yet not enough to unbalance you until you looked inside the armor and saw nothing. There was also nothing inside the helmet. Both were empty.
You gasped and dropped the helmet, eliciting a joyous yelp of laughter from your father and others in his court (who mimicked him).
"What in God's name are you?" you asked on a winded breath.
The knight, unperturbed, retrieved his helmet and replaced it, then bowed to you once more as if to continue emphasizing that he was there for you. Only you.
He was not capable of giving you an answer, but your father was: "He is to be your protection in these coming dark days. I pray that you will not need him. But, it has come to my attention that one of my very own court harbors unforgivable malice towards me and mine. Just this morning, the taster perished after eating the breakfast porridge meant for me. They will be coming for you, too, my precious one."
Whispers in the audience chamber erupted into hysterics that reverberated all around and penetrated your skull. It was an unnecessary act to bring an assassination attempt to light in such a public manner, but your father knew no subtlety, nor did he know kindness in his punishments. Quartering would be a mercy in comparison to what else he would do.
"He is to stay with you, always," said your father, without a trace of humor.
In the distant corner of the audience chamber, covered by a shroud of dark and unnoticed in the uproar, your husband and cousin scowled at the man sitting on his throne of tyranny.
With the knight always only a few paces behind you at any given time, the days lapsed into months; one season seamlessly melding into another. The assassination attempts continued undaunted, and the bodies of tasters were kept in the cellar, frozen on ice, in the hopes of being able to extract information on the poison being used. Perhaps most interesting was that none of the attempts had been directly on you.
"My father is a hated man, Galiger," you told the knight walking in your shadow. It was springtime now, cool in the mornings, the air always full of dense mist and dew on tree leaves. You liked to flick the droplets off with your fingers. "I… you mustn't say anything, but I don't blame the hatred. He commits abominable acts in the name of God. He says God wants war with the Solyites because they're heathens, but is that true? Is that the will of God, or the will of man, Galiger?"
Galiger was incapable of speech, but the soul infused into the armor had once belonged to a faithful knight from another time. He would carefully absorb your every word spoken and take it as his own gospel. Nothing else mattered to him; the world at large was full of trivialities and hatred, none of which directly impacted you because you were sheltered behind walls of stone and metal, and him.
"I don't think my father is long for this world," you confessed, shivering in the morning breeze and thick mist. You tried to diffuse your anxiety by plucking tree leaves and tearing them in your hands. "Once he dies, then what? Mother is dead. I am the only heir, aside from my cousin. My husband is pushing me to prepare for ascension, but I don't want it. I don't want… I don't want to die. My father has made enemies of the world, Galiger."
You startled when his heavy red cloak was draped across your shoulders, his hands lingering on your body. Perhaps it was your insurmountable loneliness; the long nights alone in your chambers while your husband philandered the castle and city for his fill, or simply the pressure of an unknowable future, but you threw yourself into Galiger's cold armor and leaned against him.
He would not push you away; that would've been an offensive act, but you hadn't expected his arms to surround you in a reciprocating embrace. You hadn't thought that he could feel much of anything at all, even with his soul intact.
Enough nights had passed of you divulging your most sinful secret thoughts and desires to him because you believed that he was only an enchanted suit of armor. At no point had it occurred to you that, perhaps, a soul could still belong to a man and that that soul was still the man he had once been while he was alive. Devoted to a fault. Kind. Loving, even.
These revelations made your body burn, gave deeper meaning to the way Galiger held you close in his arms. If he had been an ordinary man, you were certain he would've tried to kiss you, and you wouldn't have been able to find it in yourself to deny him. You had told him once that you sometimes liked to pretend there was flesh and a cock inside his armor, and rough skin to touch you with.
You couldn't believe your own foolish bravery.
Even later that night, while in the bath, your recent past haunted you. Galiger was guarding the room just beyond the white linens hanging from the ceiling. They created a lovely, opaque curtain of privacy that billowed like ladies' party gowns when a breeze trickled into the room.
Ordinarily, knights would never be given the privilege of watching over their liege as they bathed, but, like you, the alchemists and your father had underestimated the human soul and assumed him to be just a suit of armor.
"My husband never touches me anymore. I have not shared a bed with him in over a year. I think that he is in love with my cousin. Interesting, isn't it?" This was said aloud to the room. No voice returned confirmation to you, only the clamor of his armor increasing the closer he got to your linen curtains. "It's okay. You can look at me. I want you to look at me. Please."
Whether as a man or a knight, he obeyed and brushed the curtain aside with one of his arms. You were submerged up to your chest in a wooden bathing vessel. A sickly-sweet floral aroma wafted around the enclosed space in a thick haze that made your head feel a little heavy.
"Touch me, Galiger. I'm… so alone," you said, lifting one of your legs over the rim of the bathtub. "You can do anything to me, and I'll take it. If… if that is your desire as well, of course." Unlike your father, you found no comfort in taking things that did not belong to you, nor what did not want to belong to you.
But Galiger has always been yours. He had been made for you. He wanted you as well.
He placed his leathery hand on the leg you left out for him and caressed your skin as he followed the obvious path up the length of your body to your core. There, he went no further and focused on your face despite how provocatively revealed to him you were in this moment. Your displeasure could not be disguised, even as he touched your face with the palm side of his gauntlet. The sharpened fingertips of steel gently grazed your skin. His leather-clad thumb came to rest across your lips, touching them. He memorized their shape and how you wrapped your hot tongue around his false appendage, mindful of the way his armor protruded.
Maybe even living armor could experience arousal, because he trailed his other hand down the expanse of your body to grope your chest, anywhere else he could grab before plunging into the water and laying the first strokes on you. The abruptness of his touch made you jolt, hands fast to grapple the edges of the tub.
You let out a sigh that quivered from both excitement and relief. His strokes began to smooth out, grew into long, languid motions that you could follow by thrusting your hips in time with his hand. As he worked you up, you tried to imagine what it would be like to have his cock inside of you, what that would look like. Maybe he'd be a normal length with enough girth to spread you wide open. Maybe he'd have just the right amount of curve to hit you where you need it the most.
Maybe, when he fucked you, it was unlike how he would behave while in armor. While he donned his persona and protected you by day, by night, he would be a fervent lover and take you with wild, hard, greedy thrusts that made the room spin around you. He would always moan when he came, and finish on your body because neither of you could take the risk.
It was a delicious fantasy that sent you over the edge. Hard. You had to bite around a wad of white linen to keep your moans quiet as Galiger's hand worked you into a searing orgasm. It was a spectacular light behind your eyes, like the night sky brightening with explosive fire before settling back into darkness.
You held onto his wrist as he stroked you through it, and then slowed once you were no longer writhing against his hand and your moans had slowed, evened into deep breaths.
He took his hand away from your core, but let it linger on your leg hanging off the edge of the bathtub still. You allowed him this as you were satisfied, not thinking that you would ever face qualms of his touching you after this. That was when you sat upright in the bath and grabbed the helmet off his shoulders.
You sank back into the lukewarm water, smiling at the glowing pink orbs staring back at you, and kissed the cold metal visor.
a/n: sorry to the anon whose friend wanted swordplay, it wasn't going to fit in with this particular version of the prompt.
if y'all want more of this, you've got three options:
1) a larger one shot of this specific prompt
2) you're the alchemist who brings the armor to life, except now the knight is loyal to you. possibly swordplay here
3) we go a yandere route where the living armor basically goes off the rails
This was delightful to read. The building conflict of the father's careless acts, the knight as the silent protector, the uncaring husband 🤌 All very delicious aspects that can be built into even more!
Option 1 & 3 would work seamlessly as a continuation of this piece, but I'm tempted by option 2 in support of that anon ask and for the swordplay, of course. 👀
video description: looping animated art in an art nouveau inspired style.
It shows a nude woman standing in a keyhole shaped frame. Behind their head is a large snowflake.
The woman bends down and picks up snow like a piece of cloth, while raising she turns, so now she is with her back to the viewer, then turns again with the cloth around her shoulders. The cloth is almost transparent and floor long.
The wind picks up and blows her hair and the cloth forward, then the cloth seems to disintegrate and turn into snow flakes starting at the bottom till she is again completly nude. end video description
I’m so shy asking this buuut…. Can we get more about hades?
Eeeekkk. I'm finally getting to writing more about our favorite murder fish!
Today is a health checkup day, something Hades has to get tranquilized for, because he can't be handled otherwise. Sometimes you're on standby in the clinic, draping him with wet towels to make sure he doesn't dry out as the specialists weigh him, draw blood, and squirt medication past his unwilling jaws. Today, though, you've been assigned to cleaning his tank.
You've drained the whole thing and you're on your hands and knees scrubbing at algae stains when someone calls down into the tank, "Are you almost done? Hades is ready to be brought back."
"Already?" You look up. "I'm only halfway done, but I guess you can put him on the clean half. He's still under, right?"
"Yep. He'll be asleep for another hour, minimum."
That's fine. You carry on, scrubbing a little faster now because you'd rather not share a tank with him. You hear them return with Hades and lower him with the elevator, a platform that can move up and down on the inner wall of the tank. You glance over your shoulder to see Hades is a burrito of wet towel and fins that stand alert even while he's unconscious. He even growls a little in his sleep like the menace he is, as if he can sense someone is close by.
You resume cleaning, using a power wash hose and a manual scrub brush for stubborn spots. About five minutes later, you feel like you're being watched. You turn again and find Hades less than five feet away, a trail of towels left in his wake. He's conscious, but not fully alert, otherwise he'd probably have taken a chomp out of you already. Your stomach sinks, and then you remember you're not supposed to show fear. You take a deep breath.
"How am I not surprised?" You crouch down. "Then again, you used to be tranquilized all the time back in the fighting ring. Of course tranquilizers don't work that well on you anymore."
He opens his mouth slowly and takes a bite of the air with all the sleepy confidence he can muster. You can't help but laugh teasingly.
"Oh, you missed."
His slitted pupils focus on you and he leans in, about to try again. You flick him on the nose.
"If you eat me, who else is going to clean your tank?"
He pulls back from your touch, looking aggravated and completely out of his depth. You can't help but feel a little bad for him.
"Okay, I won't tease you anymore. Look, you're drying out." You turn the hose to him, wetting him down.
You're concerned that the water pressure might be a little too harsh, but then you catch a sound over the spatter of the water. Are you imagining things, or is he purring? Well, it's not exactly a purr. It's more like a continuous stream of clicks and hums. You startle when he moves suddenly, but it's only because he wants to get a better angle, closing his eyes when the water sprays against his tail. He squeaks too. It's an orca-like sound that normally wouldn't sound cutesy, but coming from him, it does.
The minute you accidentally say "Aw!" you know you're in trouble. His eyes snap open, and he seems to come back to himself. He judges the distance between you and decides you're standing way too close. He hisses like a demonic lizard, flaring out his fins to their full extent, snapping his teeth as a reminder that he could bite you; he's just choosing not to.
"No need to tell me twice!" You say and head for the ladder, taking the cleaning supplies and damp towels with you. "Enjoy your clean tank!"
He growls in response. You wait a few more minutes to make sure the tranquilizers have completely worn off before you turn on the water pump to refill his tank. He continues to act all high and mighty, but when he thinks you're not looking, he swishes around lazily, brushing his hand along the wall of his tank and admiring how clean it is.
A watercolor painting of a swimmer encoutering some sapphic mermaids, edited slightly for tumblr. (The titty-out version is over on my bluesky at juliedillon.bsky.social )