For Friendly Anon’s commissioned prompt, after Up Shit Creek (LJ), Shit Keeps Coming (LJ), and Shit, Fan (LJ)

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

He knew how to use the sword. He’d been practicing since he was old enough to hold one, and with a wooden sword not all that different from this one – except his had been pine and then apple-wood, not, as he hoped this one was, rowan.

Knowing how to hold the thing probably saved his life, or at least his virtue. These creatures were nasty, violent, and far rougher and stronger than anything Pyry had ever seen, much less fought.

Desirée, on the other hand, was an astonishing fighter. If he hadn’t been busy ducking punches and swinging balls of thorns, Pyry would have been amazed. She ducked and wove and jumped, using the walls, the ceiling, the bar, and the floor all as landing surfaces, taking one troll’s head clean off with a long swing of a sickle-like blade and injuring the second one on the back swing. She was doing all right for herself until the third guy grabbed the chain of her weapon and yanked.

Pyry manged to avoid getting hit by her by tucking under the table, but it looked as if she was stunned. The rhino-like troll in front, the one whose arm she’d banged up, was going straight for her. He was going to hurt her. He was going to mess up Des’ lovely skin.

Pyry didn’t think, he charged, head down, sword held in a guard position. He plunged forward as fast as he could, determined to gore the troll before he got to Des.

His horn went into the thing’s chest as the creature grabbed his sword arm, wrenching his wrist and slamming his hand against the wall. But the horn was already in, piercing the thing’s heart. Pyry tossed his head, sending the horn deeper, and thought about piles of shit and piles of hay.

The man screamed. Screamed, screamed, and screamed some more. He grabbed Pyry, trying to dislodge him, but the horn appeared stuck, and his hands skidded off of Pyry’s skin.

He couldn’t see anything but the creature’s stinking shirt, but that began to smolder and smoke, and his forehead was getting uncomfortably warm. The thing kept slapping ineffectually at Pyry, kept swearing, kept screaming, backing up until he ran into something, then scrambling up onto the bar, pulling Pyry with him.

His screams slowed, turned into whimpers, and then from whimpers into tiny moans. “Gods,” he muttered, “thirteen fled gods. Save me. Save me…. shit.”

With a pop, Pyry’s horn pulled out, and he fell to the floor. His arm was broken, but he hauled his sword back into block position anyway.

He could have saved himself the trouble. Des and her opponent had both stopped, staring at the troll on the counter.

At the man on the counter, much smaller, much paler, swimming in his clothes, who had fallen into a position of prayer and was whispering over and over again “i’ll do better, I’ll do better. I’ll be good. I’ll follow the Law, Gods, please don’t forsake me.”

Pyry felt his mouth curl into a feral grin as he turned towards the blue one. “Your turn.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/319035.html. You can comment here or there.

For Friendly Anon’s commissioned prompt, second half of the story, after Up Shit Creek (LJ) and Shit Keeps Coming (LJ)

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

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

The redheaded stripper launched herself at him from the stage. This was… not what Pyry was expecting. Sure, he was a generous tipper, and always tried to be a gentleman, but…

“Eee, you’re adorable. Bo Duke, what did you DO to yourself?” She straddled his lap, putting his face directly between her lamé-clad breasts, and stroked his horn.

His. Horn.

He didn’t whip his head up, because he didn’t want to poke her in anything important or expensive, but he did, slowly, look up into her face. It was a long way and a lot of freckles up to her stunning green eyes, but he made the voyage heroically. “Desirée?” he managed.

“Des, get back on stage,” the manager hollered.

“Oh, come on, Ted, there’s three people in the bar and one of them’s asleep. Besides, Bo paid me for the lap dance, didn’t you, Bo,” she grinned.

“Of course I did, Des.” He tucked the folded fifty in the side of her g-string. “Des, I thought…”

“Oh, yes,” she grinned at him. “We were talking about what you did to yourself. I didn’t know you were fae, you lovely man. What made you decide to some in with your Mask dropped after all this time?”

“I, uh.” Pyry squirmed. “Just Changed.”

“Just.” She pursed her lips. “Well, that’s interesting.”

“Yeah…?” He had a sinking feeling he’d suddenly lost his favorite dancer. He suppressed the urge to slide another fifty in her g-string, and, instead, asked merely, “you like it?”

“It’s lovely.” She petted his horn gently. “It feels good, like getting a shower.”

“It should,” he admitted dryly. “It can turn anything cleaner.”

“That’s a pretty impressive power, Bo.” She kissed the base of his horn and wiggled pointedly on his lap. “Do you have a Mentor and all that?”

“Uh…” He squirmed more. “My mother’s looking for someone.”

“Hunh.” She pressed his face into her chest as she made thinking noises. “I know someone. I know a couple someones. Who’s your mother?”

“Argh,” he complained against the freckled curves. “I’m not eight.”

“No,” she laughed, “you’re not. But there’s a way these things go, and, well, I don’t think you want me as your Mentor.”

“You?” he coughed. “I… don’t think I’d be able to focus on my studies.”

“Oh, nonsense, you…” whatever she was going to say was drowned out by the slamming of doors as three… trolls, they had to be trolls, Pyry hadn’t know such people really existed… stomped into the bar. “Shit, Nedetakaei. Stay behind me, Bo.”

“Oh, not from you, too,” he grumbled. “I’m. Not. A. Kid.” The tall stripper was already off of her barstool, though, and chanting under her breath.

“Fine, then, try not to get killed.” She tossed him a short wooden sword as it appeared in her hand, and… jumped. Landing upside-down on the ceiling.

“Nice.” He didn’t have time to appreciated it more than that, though; the trolls were going straight for him.

“Horn,” the blue one laughed. “That’ll be fun. Come on, pretty boy, you can be our new pet if you’re good.”

Pyry felt a smile stretching his lips. He was finally going to get to fight monsters! “Maybe I can take you home for my sister to play with,” he quipped… and the fight was on.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/305775.html. You can comment here or there.

For Friendly Anon’s commissioned prompt, half of the story, after Up Shit Creek (LJ)

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

Pyry found being their mother’s fair-haired boy – literally; all his hair had turned from sandy to golden-blonde when he Changed – nearly as uncomfortable as he’d found being the family’s whipping boy, and twice as strange.

His newfound power was, at the very least, a mixed blessing: he could turn any sort of used or rotten food back into fresh food, but that meant he spent a lot of time around shit, and his mother was suddenly bringing back the concept of the outhouse.

The human members of the family hadn’t been too happy with being guinea pigs for his new power, testing the food he horned, but they’d done it (what choice did they have? No more than he did), and it appeared that what he poked was, indeed, nutritious and healthful, and fine to eat, as long as you didn’t think about where it had been an hour ago. Pyry wasn’t entirely sure that it ought to work but so far, it seemed like it was.

Worse than spending even more time around shit, worse than the weird way the family was treating him, was his mother’s sudden insistence on finding him both a Mentor (which he was a bit old for) and, as if it was an immediate need now-now-now, a mate.

Yet even worse – if there could be an even worse, and there seemed to be a never-ending list of them – was that his mother, Svad, and Abasta still refused to let him go monster-hunting with the family. Indeed, despite his age, they seemed determined to treat him like some newly-fledged change-child. It was maddening, humiliating, and just about unbearable.

The advantage was, if there was one, that until they got him a Mentor, they didn’t know what to do with him, and the family, large as it was, only made so much manure. Pyry slipped out of the house between bouts of horn-poking, determined that he was going to do something, anything, other than sit around turning shit into apples.

He made it into the city with no problems. Of course, he’d driven into the city a thousand times before with no issue, but considering the way the family was reacting, they expected him to get abducted, murdered, and then raped every time he left the property. For his horn. Which nine-tenths of the population couldn’t see and would never be able to.

He had some money in his pocket, the family credit card in his wallet, and a chip on his shoulder when he reached the city. He parked the truck near his favorite bar, the one with the redheaded dancer on Wednesday nights, wished he had a hat that covered the horn on his forehead, and headed in for a few drinks.

As with his whole life these days, the moment he relaxed, everything went to feces in a bucket.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/305128.html. You can comment here or there.