Archive | January 29, 2012

“Are We Killing This One?” More of the Story of Addergoole Post-Apoc (@inventrix @cluudle)

Jan29

Warnings on this snippet: Implied abuse, implied rape, death threats, mind control.

In the series with:
Separation Anxiety (LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (LJ)
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ)
Kept du Jour (LJ) in the Boom!/RP timeline. I believe this is part three of four four of five five of MANY.

She had never, Cya noted dispassionately, seen someone fight so hard against her mind control. Well, there had been Pelinore, but that had been physical Workings against the car. She’d learned, after him. Panlong, in the back seat, was barely moving, trembling with the effort.

She glanced over at Yoshi, to find him looking at their captive thoughtfully. “I think he thinks I want revenge,” he told Cya, rather flatly.

That stopped Pan dead. “Revenge? Yoshi, what? I didn’t…”

“Except when Tethys sent me to you,” Yoshi answered sharply. “Then you sure as hell did.”

Cya felt her claws digging into the steering wheel. Shit. If she didn’t kill this kid, she was going to have to Keep him to keep Yoshi’s father, her crew, or both, from killing him. “Yoshi,” she interrupted slowly, “are we killing this one?”

“What?” the boy yelped, trying very, VERY hard to move now. “Okay, okay, Keep me. I can handle being under the collar again, but come on, Yoshi. You never said no. I thought…” He slumped against the back seat.

Her son sighed. “No, Mom. I mean, I want to poke him with a stick a bit. Maybe kick him a few times. He’s kinda naive, but Tethys had him good and brainwashed. He doesn’t deserve to die for being stupid.”

“I thought…” Pan repeated woefully.

“Tethys,” Yoshi bit off tersely, “did not encourage complaint. Or bad moods. Or the concept of saying ‘no’ to anything. You were under her collar, Pan. You should have known what it was like.”

The boy couldn’t slump any lower, but he was trying. “You seemed so happy,” he muttered. “I was never that happy when I was under her collar.”

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Digging in the History, a continuation of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call (@inventrix)

Jan29

For The [personal profile] inventrix‘s commissioned prompt, a continuation of Scrounging for History (LJ), Part 1 of… probably 7.5

Fae Apoc has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

“Let’s explore a little before we get the whole company,” Dor urged. “Maybe not a lot, but let’s at least tell them what we’re looking at.”

“Besides,” Amalie added, then paused, hummed for a moment, and said again, her voice a half-octave lower and more reasonable sounding, “besides, Karida, maybe there are food supplies here, if it’s a settlement?”

Their logic was sound, and the older members of the company wouldn’t accuse Dor of being flighty, a dreamer, the way they liked to with Karida. “All right,” she agreed. “I think we can look a little bit further before we go back. But if we run into anything dangerous…”

“We know the drill, Kara.” Dor rolled his eyes, and followed her around the corner of the building. “Do you think anyone’s still living there? Or anything?”

“We’ve never seen a city this intact. It’s hard to tell.” That was the safe answer. Inside, she was trying not to bounce up and down: a city! We found a real city! And there’s a real sky-trapper, two of them! This will be The Story! This will be My Story! Reluctantly, as Amalie hummed behind her, she amended Our Story.

The next building had the bottom parts of its walls intact, as well as a full foundation, and part of a floor. Karida spent a moment staring at it, at the sheered-off nature of the structure, tracing the line down. “There really were dragons,” she murmured, “or something huge. They knocked off,” she drew a line in the air with her hand.

Amalie hummed again. “The monster’s claw was cutting still…”

“…through the years and through the houses?” Dor offered.

“Doesn’t scan right. The monster’s claw had cut through time, through… cut through years, through the city’s long-shed tears.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Dor complained. Karida, who did not sing, kept quiet. Amalie would get the song right.

It was up to her to get the now of it proper, so they had a song to sing and a throat to sing it with. She stepped into the basement, carefully dancing down the stairs. In smaller settlements, they had found food – but they had also found monsters, demons, feral humans, and sometimes just corpses. Lots of people, she thought, hadn’t made it out in time. Centuries later, they were still entombed, rotting slowly away in their homes.

“It must have been horrible,” Amalie whispered. “When the monsters flew.”

“They still fly,” Dor countered. “They just aren’t as many.”

“I’ve never seen one.”

“With luck,” Karida interrupted, “you never will. They’re not nice things.” She was stretching her senses ahead of her, feeling out the space. There were three rooms down here, some old metal things, a small puddle of water and… “Dor,” she warned.

He nodded, and gestured Amalie back to look-out position, before drawing his two wakizashi and following Karida down the stairs. “Do you know?” he asked tersely.

“Not yet.” Her senses told her life, and general size, but that was it. Something the size of a human could be a bear, or a monster, or a person. She stepped into the dark, holding her staff in front of her.

Continued in: Delving in History (LJ)

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Tea With /Her/, further continued, a story of Tir na Cali for the Giraffe Call (@dahob)

Jan29

For @daHob’s prompt, in continuation of:
Tea with HER (beginning) (LJ)
Tea with HER (continuation) (LJ)
Tea with HER (continuation 2) (LJ)

Tir na Cali has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

I really wanted to send him back.

I was in no mood to play. I had been mourning my mother for a week, for three years before that bracing for her death, and I was exhausted and staring at the Barony that was now mine, trying to figure out what I was doing with my life.

“Go home,” I told him, not really meaning it.

He quailed, swallowed, and said, in a voice that squeaked with nerves, “Forgive me, Baroness Treanna, but Her Ladyship told me to inform you that if I was to returned, it would be by your hand, or she would consider me a runaway.” He gulped. “I really don’t want that, ma’am.”

I looked him over. His accent was East-coast, southern from the sounds of it. He had freckles and a fading tan; he’d been kept indoors for a while, maybe a few months, but he had to be fairly new to California. I admit, I was both distracted and intrigued.

I unhooked his leash from the doorknob. “What’s your name?”

“Ja – I mean, whatever you wish it to be.” He was clearly terrified, and trying to stick to a script. Not broken, not really. He didn’t know how he was supposed to act, just what he’d been told to say.

“I’ll think on it. For now, I’ll call you boy.” I wanted to tweak him, to see if he still had any pride. To see how far I could push him. Petty, but I wasn’t in a good mood.

He swallowed, glaring at me for a split second before he looked back down at the ground. “Yes, mistress. Whatever you want.”

“Come on, then, boy. I’ll show you where you’ll be staying, and you can call the Countess’s secretary and schedule an appointment for me.”

He swallowed, even as he followed me – it was that or drag his heels and fight the leash; his hands were cuffed behind his back. “Call? Mistress?”

I rolled my eyes. He was certainly no Michael, rough, raw, and untrained.

Certainly no… I sat down, hard, tugging on his leash and pulling him down on top of my in the process. That bitch. She had done this on purpose. To show me what Michael must have thought.

“Mistress?” he squeaked uncomfortably. He was going to take a lot of training. A lot of attention. I smiled slowly. Just like the Ice Queen to teach me a lesson and give me a pleasant distraction from my grief in one package.

“I’ll teach you,” I told him.

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