Where There Is Light There Is Shadow

Yeah now that I've wrote it out, I don't see Haiiz getting a real story, just being a background character in another story. Well, Zaen would probably be the one actually involved, but Haiiz would be mentioned. Yesss.


Haiiz lives in a world where the peoples are separated into races by certain animal traits each different races possesses. The Avid race have wings on their backs like birds, patches of feathers, scaled hands and feet, each one can sing beautifully(or according to their avian), and their heights may vary slightly according to the bird that the individual represents. Felids have arms similar to the forelegs of felines as well as tails and eyes with slit pupils. Canid traits are similar, except their legs reflect the hindlegs of canines and they manifest their ears instead of their tails. And so on and so forth.
I have no idea what Haiiz's plot is or whether he's just a person with a life story. Maybe the story isn't even about him. Maybe it's about Therazaen, or Zaen, the turkey-vulture bodyguard to the Lord of the Flesheater Avids who meets with the Meister of Long-Wings to broker a much-needed peace.
What I do know about Haiiz is that he is a Raven, obviously. Ravens are on the verge of being Flesheaters but defected to the Long-Wing empire a hundred years ago during the last Avid War after the Long-Wings planted a poison activated on death on their soldiers, which spread like wildfire through Flesheater ranks when they fed on the fallen. Ravens have now been categorized into the same class as Small-Flyers, for the smaller seed-eaters and bug-eaters and etc, like sparrows, pigeons, larks, etc. Non-carnivorous birds. Ravens, however, are treated with special contempt for their lineage. Haiiz, despite being altogether a sweet, mild-tempered individual who has never tasted flesh in his life and actually tries to be a good servant to the Long-Wings(unlike most of his kindred) is no exception.
Haiiz's life first gets interesting when he enters a relationship with Fletcher Lynge, a woman that is half golden eagle, half phoenix. He is first drawn to her by her ability to produce flame from her flesh and cover herself in it, witnessing this ability during one of her training sessions when he's passing by. Being a pyro, Haiiz becomes immediately enchanted. Fletcher is a bastard whose father will not even acknowledge as his child despite knowing full well that she is. Fletcher grew up in a very abusive environment among peers that hated her for her impure blood and with a mother who often took out her frustrations on her. Rather than resist this sort of life, Fletcher has come to reflect it. When she discovers Haiiz's attraction for her and then the source of it, Fletcher effectively seduces him through fire and lust. Though at first she merely seems "intense" Fletcher quickly becomes violently abusive towards Haiiz, threatening to beat him to death if he tells anyone or tries to leave her. When he fails to restrain himself long enough for Fletcher to climax during intercourse she will take him to the "discipline room" which is a room in the Long-Wing palace for punishing servants and slaves alike. She will chain him to the wall and beat him with her belt for almost an hour each time, both his back and, if he doesn't submit to being chained quickly enough, the front of his torso.
This relationship endures for a long time to the point that Haiiz practically develops something like Stockholm syndrome. What begins as a desire to please in order to avoid pain develops into a need for Fletcher's approval. If she insults his appearance, he starves himself and struggles to improve his physique. If she punishes him for whatever failure during sex he encourages her to enact whatever sick fetish is next on the list in order to appease her. Fletcher occasionally uses her fire to practically hypnotise him into arousal and then has whatever way with him she wants.
During this time the Flesheaters pay a visit to broker peace in a long-lasting off-and-on war. The reason for this is because there are whispers among shamans of an approaching war between the very gods, and the Lord of Flesheaters feels it prudent to garner alliances while he can. His faithful bodyguard of ten years is a young turkey vulture that goes by Zaen. Zaen is fast, efficient, and deadly. She possesses the raw power of a raptor, the merciless pessimism of a creature whose diet benefits with the outbreak of war, and chilling speed and precision. On top of that, Zaen is more than turkey vulture--she is also a child of Calcitrax, the shadow of Mardus, the Avid god(a roc). Calcitrax, despite being known as the "shadow" of their god is an actual flesh-and-blood individual that has sired more than his fair share of bastard children. Zaen is one of them and insidiously powerful in shadow things.
Fletcher learns the hard way that the power of a legend does not even come close to the power of a god when Zaen sees her about to lay into Haiiz and prevents it. Fletcher, not aware of Zaen's lineage, throws a punch. When her fist stops dead in midair, caught in Zaen's iron grip, Fletcher flames up and tries to intimidate the vulture--to no avail. Zaen's own power crawls out and covers Fletcher's arm like a black sickness, choking and absorbing the flame, almost killing Fletcher before Zaen's Lord stops her.
From then on things begin to change. As Zaen's Lord struggles with ambassadorial things Zaen struggles to protect Haiiz thought she doesn't understand why. She puts it down to a lingering sense of kinship between her and the boy of the "traitor race." Zaen ignores the fact that she's never felt a smattering of kinship for any individual, not even members of her own family.
As they sprout a friendship and then something deeper, Zaen finally convinces Haiiz to break it off completely with Fletcher, convincing him she will protect him--which she does. She finally lays her mark on him in a stable's tack room, inscribing her clan symbol on his chest with her claw surrounded by a collection of other symbols. When Haiiz confronts Fletcher, she attempts to incinerate him, only to discover that Haiiz's symbols were more than marks of possession. She also allotted to Haiiz a very small amount of her power, weaving a protection spell into his very skin. When that defense is activated it almost kills Fletcher--but the magic can only do as much as the ward wills it, and so Fletcher again lives. After that, though, she leaves him alone, aside from spreading insidious rumours about his integrity as a sexual partner and insulting him loudly whenever he's in range.
With Zaen Haiiz begins to heal. Zaen is, as a girlfriend, by no means "mild"--but she does not lose control of herself and hurt Haiiz like Fletcher would. She is gentle and caressing most of the time, but also ferocious and aggressive when she can tell he's feeling energetic. Haiiz's main problems with Zaen are convincing her to just /talk/--for the most part she likes just spending their time together in silence, as Zaen tends to be socially clueless and is afraid of making an idiot of herself in front of him. When Haiiz finally gets some balls and starts demanding she talk or he'll go find himself another phoenix--at least THEY're more chatty(actually they brag ALL THE TIME, srsly)--it's the kick in the arse Zaen needs and she begins to slowly open up some more. After that Haiiz's biggest worries are whether she'll come back from the battlefield--in the end, peace negotiations do break down and he defects back to the Flesheaters when the Lord's company leaves to return to their own territory. Zaen is at her Lord's side almost twenty four seven to the extent Haiiz begins harbouring ridiculous suspicions she's cheating on him with the empire's sovereign. He knows this is ridiculous, but can't help himself. He still struggles with intense insecurities after what he went through with Fletcher and will occasionally starve himself again when Zaen isn't immediately "embracing" when she returns from a long campaign, either because of exhaustion or she just needs space to get the battlefield out of her head. If this sort of thing goes on too long Haiiz will become ravenous for her attention, terrified of the possibility of her wanting to leave him.
As time passes, Zaen begins to realize the depth of Haiiz's mental issues and does her best to become more sociable with him. She even starts accepting her Lord's invitations to his lavish parties(as a guest, not a bodyguard) just to make Haiiz spend time with people outside of their home(she marries him when they get back to the empire). She encourages Haiiz to develop friendships so that he'll have company while she's gone(though she discovers herself becoming jealous when he wants to indulge too much in friendships while she's there, and she'll become insanely possessive if he spends too much time with lady friends.) Their relationship tends to be a caricature of Beauty and the Beast, the one monstrous, withdrawn, and scarred, the other beautiful, helpless, and just as scarred. It's amusing to watch them develop their relationship and try to figure out how to make each other more normal as they are concerned with the other's life being healthy while being largely oblivious to their own issues. While they definitely struggle in communication most of the time, what they lack in elocution they make up for in just the way they treat each other--gently loving and immensely forgiving of the other's mistakes(after long periods of sulking about them.) Both are adorably jealous about each other and incredibly possessive.
Ohey I can put this in that world with the giant whales and rocs and the, the, blood totems. Yeah. Put this in thar. So they aren't some kind of animal avatars, they're just blood totems. Yesss.
I want to nom Haiiz. He's too precious.

Sleep Apnea

Or however you spell it.
I don't have it.
My mom does.
She says she has to wear this contraption tonight to see if it helps her sleep better. So she won't hear anything.


...So many nighttime shenanigans are now possible.


So remember the days when you were a kid and yer parents would be all 'TIME FER BED NAO' and you'd be all 'YOU'LL HAVE TO DRAG ME THERE' so they'd grab you by yer wrists and drag you, just fer fun? And you'd be giggling the whole way?

Our dog just did that.
Because she's a weirdo.

Don't worry, we were very careful with her. We aren't cruel to animals in our household, unless you count not giving them food when they beg for it and taking breaks from playing to get your breath back.
All of our animals are crazy.
I don't know why this happens to us.

Dragons 'n things

Concept I mentioned to Mek last night. I finished the chapter of Dollface I was working on, so took a break and jotted it down.
Now to feed the dogs and then myself.
Enjoie.

In 1967, a breakthrough was made in multidimensional technology. A team of scientists from around the world brought together on a remote island in the Atlantic to breach the theoretical "other side" of the fabric of existence was successful in their attempts. They opened a very small hole, no wider than a pencil, in the universe. In /their/ universe.
However, the science was not as simple as tearing a hole, which this league of brilliant men and women failed to comprehend. The fabric of the universe is not really like fabric at all. It's like dominoes, rows and rows of dominoes balanced perfectly on their ends, stretching away into eternity in a higher-contrived order of existence.
When these scientists poked a hole, they poked a domino, and set off a cataclysmic chain reaction.
The hole grew, and grew, and grew. For days on end it gradually expanded in diameter, until it sliced the island neatly in half and continued to the rest of the world. Somewhat fortunately, after it breached a perimeter of twenty miles around, its perfectly circular shape shattered, so that our world was not completely halved and destroyed. The hole fragmented and the wall between our world and their world collapsed, disintegrated, evaporated, dissipated, whichever you like to call it.
The scientists had predicted that our worlds existed in something closer than parallel, that is, they formulated a principle they called symmetrical overlay. Our worlds were not merely reflected and mirrored, but occupied roughly the exact same place in the universe. Luckily for us, it is not exactly the same, or the results could have been even worse--our planets merely seem to share a half of themselves with each other. This meant that our worlds did not collide, like a meteorite with another, but, over several months, /fused/.
The results were devastating and horrifying. Massive geographical upheaval, so extensive and catalclysmic it is not worth attempting to describe in words. The most major events were that our magnetic poles clashed and turned the planets' magnetic fields into something akin to a massive, tangled ball of string, continents snapped, sunk, and were remade, our North Pole became a scene out of a prehistoric documentary, full of volcanoes and molten lava, and the Halo was formed.
Our atmospheres do not mix. This was something we discovered relatively early on. While gases of similar constitution normally intermix, our atmospheres seem to repel each other. While we crossed over to their side and they over to ours with little difficulty and certainly no major issues, thus implying their atmosphere constitutes of gases akin to our oxygen and nitrogen, the gas particles themselves refuse to occupy the same spaces. Instead, there is now a faintly yellowish haze where they meet, a vague glow, if you will, that completely encircles where Earth ends and Yrth begins.
The Halo is created only by the gas particles themselves, and nothing else. Nonetheless, the transformations are associated with the Halo, probably because it marks the exact division between our planets.
It didn't happen at first, and we speculate this is because while their world was still settling back into order--and it has, miraculously, returned to almost its exact state of existence prior to the event, with hardly any geographical changes--the--I hesitate to say "magic"--forces at work there were too unsettled themselves to affect us in a way they would have normally.
If "normal" is a word that can be associated with Yrth in any way.
It started with the third ambassadorial visit. Our world does not change the people of theirs in any way--no "magic" I suppose--but their world is so thickly integrated with it in every fiber that we can not help but be affected.
We are still not sure what factors affect the outcome of the transformation. Some speculate that the human body is distorted to reflect their "true self". There are many theories, though that is the most popular. However, there are also many that simply change into one of Yrth's many races, such as the ehllvs, the delvers, the goblins, the dragons--the list goes on. Yet again some also argue that some of the changes are simply so completely incredible and fantastical that they could not possibly bear any relevance to the individual's mind or personality. Personally, I would speculate that this other planet, this Yrth, finding us to be living beings lacking its vital energy, like a rush of water coming across a hole in the ground, instinctively fills us with its energy immediately upon our crossing its border. As our bodies are overwhelmed with this energy, our forms become much more malleable, like clay. Yrth seeks to shape us according to what it knows, to what it recognizes as acceptable life, and so many become shaped according to what races already exist in it. However, some bodies simply do not handle the energy or Yrth's attempts well, and in this case the outcome is random, a conglomeration of traits--and in this state, who knows--perhaps personality is powerful enough to have an affect on the outcome.
All we know for sure is that every human, regardless any age, gender, ethnicity, and whathaveyou, that crosses the Halo is changed. There is no reversing this change, no way to undo it that we have yet discovered. And it is not a great concern, as most of our people avoid the Halo like the plague. Humans, since the beginning of time, have feared what they do not understand.
/

Yet there are some individuals that embrace the change, such as Allen Strauss. For most of her life she has been afflicted with fibromyalgia, an enduring, constant pain that affects her entire body. Allen has gotten by until now with her pills, taking each day at a time, enduring.
Allen was born after the clash and its aftershock. She has grown up in a world of fear and unknown. Yet Allen does not know what the world was like before. She has never known what it is to be completely safe. Perhaps that is why she has so little regard for danger.
Allen views the Halo not as a danger, but as a possibility. They say every human that has ever crossed it has changed. Most avoid it now, but some still go--the desperate. Fugitives, the suicidal, those inflicted with incurable disease. And those that have crossed--cancer patients, the manic depressive, mentally unstable--they've changed for the better. Most have been cured. Most have been set free of their pains.
Despite her parents' insistence, Allen is going to go. She's never felt at home in her own skin, she's never felt at home among her own kind--humans, that is--why shouldn't she at least try to fix it?

Allen crosses and becomes a dragon. This means she is capable of shapeshifting, so she's able to switch back and forth between scaly shape and what she views as her human body v 2.0. While Yrth is even bigger than Earth, and there is plenty of room for dragons, Allen knows her life will be easier if she joins one of the dragon civilizations. So she does. The mountain country of...uh. Jagar. Yeah, that sounds good. So she goes there and learns a lot about dragons, while hiding the truth about her past. She takes the name Aratharn and goes by "Tharn." While in Jagar she learns a lot about her kind. Dragons classify themselves according to build. There's peasants, middle class, and royalty. Royalty have very long, slim, delicate builds with frills, whippy tails, and bright colours. Basically they're very pretty. They also live the longest of the dragon races and are called "Ahaguin" which means "elegant." Middle class are normally proportioned dragons, average bodies, average height, average build, that sort of thing. However, as dragons grow and mature, their bodies are actually affected by their personalities. Mind over matter is a theory in Earth, but on Yrth, it's one of their laws of physics. Middle class is the most maleable race and has the most potential for change over the period of their lifetime. They're called Garhuilin, "like clay." Then there's lower class, the "peasants" who are saddled with most of the heavy physical labour. Their bodies are short, their backs slope down so their hind legs are noticeably shorter than the front, and their snouts are short--a typically nickname for them is "stub" while their traditional name is "Graguahil" or "like the animal". They are most similar to the dragon's primitive ancestors and are thus considered to be primitive themselves, like actual pack animals.
Allen wanders around for a while, hunting when she needs food as she tries to figure out what she wants to do with herself. As she learns more about the military, she discovers she really wants to learn to fight and even use magic, if possible. So she signs up to be a soldier. The palace is where you see enslaved stubs the most, so she's uncomfortable with that, but she tries to do her part by being nice to them.
But Allen soon discovers she needs to know more about her new world and culture if she really wants to fit in and convince them she's a real dragon--Allen doesn't know what they'll do if they find out she used to be a human, but she suspects it won't be a happy ending.
Allen has noticed for a while now a certain dragon called Essaglix--he's one of the palace scholars. She finds him very attractive--he has a pale creamy white colouring covered in deep mahogany flecks, but she's noticed his lower lip is black, like stubs. However, a stub could never reach such a high position, so she's curious about him. She asks around and discovers he's a halfbreed, born of middle class and peasantry. He's also a maned dragon, which is extremely rare, so everyone knows he's the bastard son of Mortiari, one of the top generals in the army. Glix prefers to stay in humanoid form most of the time because he's ashamed of his dragon body's "mismatched" traits.
Hoping to find a common ground with him--that being "questionable" heritage--Tharn approaches Glix alone in the palace library, tells him what she is, and asks him to teach her more about Yrth. He reluctantly agrees, and in exchange, Tharn will share with him everything she can think of about Earth. Tharn visits him every day after that for lessons on Yrth, and they become close friends.

More doodlebops

Doodley things. Some JulianxLyre, some mer people because mer people rawk, a chaeshr burdy, a Jormungandar, a cat boy cause I have a fetish...some random dingo thing you guys know from "They Kill You Sideways" and a comic blurb involving Kandi and the dingo-lady.
I don't know why they'd be staying in the same hotel next door to each other like bffs or something. Something about dingo-lady says possibly a bounty hunter with a supernatural friend that travels the world with a circus making costumes for the players. Kandi, just, I dunno. I really don't.
You have to click to go to the full thing.



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FINE, KATTERS

JUST
FINE

CLICKONIT TO GO TO THE ACTUAL IMAGE, K


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Psychic things

Okay, quick rundown on how psychics work in this universe.

People have animal totems. They "bond" or whatever with this animal when they're young, usually before puberty. Pyschics are people that magic screwed with. They're born with some animal traits of their totem as well as mentally-controlled abilities, and never have an actually physically manifested animal totem. They basically are their own totem. In the past, these psychics were once worshiped as children of the gods. Today, they are widely mistrusted and mistreated. It's not possible for a normal, non-psychic human not to have a totem. It simply isn't. Which is why Gabe is such an oddity, because she's seventeen and still has no totem.

So there's this agency made to study psychics and "help them better integrate with the average human population" but it's become corrupted as time passed and now psychics are little more than labrats being developed for military purposes. They were once drafted when found, but psychic rights activists put a stop to this. Now families mostly "donate" any unwanted psychic children to the military in exchange for hefty tax benefits. However, outside of psychics that actually grow up in loving families, those are considered the lucky ones. Pyschics are bought and sold as pets in some third-world countries, or weapons, and often as sex fetish toys in any given country. At least in the military, they're usually fed everyday and generally don't have to worry about being raped.
I guess there was a war or something. Anyways. After whatever happened had happened, some corrupt dealing was revealed in the agency and it was dissolved. People ran, most were captured, some got away. The psychics belonging to the agency were dumped into the population.
"Nobody sat down and wrote out a step-by-step process detailing how this would go. The activists wanted the psychics free, now they're free. They wanted the psychic kids placed in homes--well, they're in homes now. Beyond that, it's not our problem. Let the public figure it out from here."
Needless to say, the vast majority of the psychics, kids and adults alike, are screwed up, as many suffered abusive childhoods and all have a long history of being experimented on. At best, they're twitchy. At worst, they're downright dangerously unstable. Nonetheless, no one can lock any of them up, or the activists start screaming bloody murder.
In this chaos, a family moves to the city and a young woman starts attending a high school with some very interesting students.

Also, ignore the wolfhound bit in there. I changed it.

Aidry, Hans, and Felix.
Aidry: Red-panda totem. Traditional mind-reader, but very powerful. His abilities include the general thought-reading thing, but he can also delve into memories, manipulate perception and memories to an extent, zombify up to two to three people at a time, and read traces of thoughts left on objects. However, like all psychics, he can not read a dead body without risking being sucked into the void himself. Graveyards are a source of intense unease for him. Aidry has no specific weapons specialty, as he was considered the strategic aspect of their team, but he can handle a wide variety of weaponry effectively and likes to keep some small weapons on hand.
Aidry never had a biological family that he remembers. He was a troubled foster kid with a knack fer boosting keypad cars and by reading the memories of the codes that their owners left on them, and cheating at poker with money stakes--he was strong enough even then to mask himself and appear as a normal human, so he got away with it. He finally got busted and left beaten almost to death in an alley. The agency came fer him when an old lady went to take her trash to the apartment complex dumpster and found him lying there, then called. Aidry is gaining more and more control over his ability, so his negation collar is on lower settings, and sometimes he doesn't even need to wear it--"need" being the key word. He can't have total mental silence without it, but he can keep other peoples' voices in his head down to a manageable volume for short periods of time on his own. He tends to dislike most people as people often say one thing when they mean something else or outright lie, and the inconsistencies frustrate and annoy him. He also sometimes mistakes peoples' thoughts for their actual voices, so he might respond to something they were going to say, or not going to say, before they even say it. Aidry actually enjoys company when their words and thoughts are reasonably consistent, and he's naturally an averagely social kind of person, so when he does this kind of thing it embarasses him. He's also the most normal of the three when it comes to relationships. He's prejudiced against a lot of pretty girls because the majority are concerned with looks, and it annoys him to hear them constantly thinking about it(he very rarely sets the collar high enough to completely block out thoughts, as total mind-silence unsettles him)so he tends to go for the plainer or more modest girls. All the same, because of his experiences with the agency, he simply hits a point where he can't relate to them, and he never wants to talk about the agency, so they can't try to relate back. And things fall apart. Nonetheless, he keeps trying. He enjoys philosophy, finds religion interesting on account of the powerful effect it has on the mind, and wears trench coats a lot. Because you can hide a lot of weaponry in a trench coat.
Hans: Striped hyena totem. Hans is a very powerful telekinetic, but has a lot of trouble controlling it. This is because his ability is connected to his emotions--but not in the cliche' anime sense. When he was young, he controlled the telekinesis by forcing it to the back of his mind. After being abandoned by his mom and enduring experiments at the agency for years, he did the same thing with his emotions. Now, to access his ability, he must reach into the same place as all of his fear, pain, and insecurities. Releasing one triggers a flood of the other. He prefers to avoid both. His specialty is heavy artillery, such as machine guns and rocket-launchers. He's able to manipulate the path of the missiles for extremely accurate shooting, but that's the only "delicate" operation he can perform with his telekinesis.
Hans was part of his original family until his mom took him to the subway station, said she'd dropped their tickets, went to find them, and never came back. Hans waited and waited for her until the station security called the agency and they came to pick him up. Hans fought back, believing his mom was coming back for him, and they tranqued him. They had to show him security footage of them bringing the woman in and having her sign legal release forms for him before he would believe she was gone and stop throwing crap all over the place. Hans is now a misogynist and incapable of trusting women, doesn't like being near them, and especially hates being touched by them. Because his ability has so much potential to become dangerous so fast if he gets out of control, Hans must almost constantly wear the negation collar set at its highest level. This results in mental fog, occasional disorientation, vertigo, frequent headaches, and when his ability is needed, using it can cause something like mental whiplash. It tends to release in small erratic explosions of energy when the collar is turned off, so he's very volatile and dangerous. Hans is afraid of trusting and hurting those he really cares about. This prevents him from reaching out. He is quiet, withdrawn, and often bitter against women. Generally the cliche' brooding bishounen. Except he doesn't really care much for literature. No, after his experiences at the agency, Hans just constantly needs knives on his person somewhere or he gets jittery. Being an extremely powerful telekinetic, jittery is not something we want. He also likes nice shoes and ties. However, he's indifferent concerning the rest of his attire. This occasionally results in some peculiar wardrobe combinations.
Felix: "Sidhe" cat totem. Precognitive. His ability, on the general psychic scale, is not impressive, possibly even below average--for psychics in general. However, precogs are rare, to the extent that the agency will take whatever they can get. His specialty was the sniper rifle and chemicals. After being forced into submission most of his life, Felix found his first successful homemade bomb to be a very gratifying rush of power, so to this day he remains a pyro.
Felix was sold to a brothel by his mother's pimp, who had a thing for breeding psychics for sick pervs with fetishes--among normal humans the mutation is random, but among psychics it's almost garaunteed that one offspring at least will be psychics. Felix was abused by mostly fetishists until around ten years old, when one of the clients, a drug dealer, was arrested in his home while Felix was there to be used. Felix was discovered by the case's lead detective on the scene and she turned him over to the agency. In his screwed up mind resulting from extensive childhood abuse, he desired an intimate relationship with her, seeing her as his knight in shining armour. She's about thirty-four now and he's seventeen. He still feels a lingering desire to be with her and has developed an attraction for women like her--masculine, commanding, tall, ruthless. He also tends to pick the wrong women based on that criteria and often ends up in abusive relationships. Felix enjoys gory manga, gory old movies, and tends to dress like a Hot Topic postergirl.
Yes. Postergirl. That is not a typo.

Ugh. I can't come up with a name fer the girl they befriend. Sam? That's kinda lame.
Gabe?
I like Gabe. I like Gabe very much. We'll got with Gabe
HAHA SOME PEOPLE NAME THEIR KID GADAR
THAT IS SO CRUEL
But yes. Gabe.
Anyways.
Gabe: She's supposedly yer average human, but for some reason she has no totem, when most humans have found their totems before puberty. Gabe feels that she doesn't really have any special talent and she doesn't care. She aspires to be a librarian, or give one of those horse-drawn carriage rides, because she greatly enjoys carriages. Gabe is remarkably unremarkable, but she doesn't mind it. She's very straightforward and says what's on her mind, so Aidry enjoys her. She's doesn't act feminine, like most women, at all, and has an uncle with an old sword collection she grew up fascinated with, so she and Hans actually get along pretty well. And she's masculine and knows how to take charge of a situation, though she'd rather not, and at the same time is "adorably" shy about intimate matters, so Felix has a crush on her.
Gabe has an uncanny ability to read people that has Aidry suspicious that she's more than she seems, more than she even knows. She also has strange dreams of being a wildcat of some kind, which he is privy to on one occasion when the boys spend the night at her house. Gabe also wrestles with primitively violent thoughts that she attempts to keep hidden, and does a good job of, even around Aidry. She's haunted by a strange disconnection from her own body and often spaces out. Her thoughts are very feline, so she feels most comfortable around Felix, even more so than average humans. She also likes feminine men like him, so they get pretty close.
Guh I'm still not sure about what happens and why. For whatever reason, the agency has collected and trained psychics of all ages...I guess they were planning a coup of some type. They were foiled, and psychic rights activists insisted that the psychic children be placed in foster homes. Felix's detective friend, who's stayed in touch with him, pulled some strings with friends she had in Child Services, and managed to get the three of them placed in the same area going to the same school. Gabe is a new student, and shy after a lifetime of people being weird about her lack of a totem--she can practically -feel- what they're thinking when they look at her. Her uncanny accuracy in guessing their thoughts is another thing that feeds Aidry's suspicions about her. She's also able to connect with him and the other two very easily. It's easy for him to bridge to her thoughts despite the collar, it's easy(well, easier) for her to reach Hans and calm him down during the times when he randomly blanks out and stares off into space, and she's incredibly vivid in Felix's visions of the future, something that usually only happens with other psychics. They all end up forming a deep attachment to her.
Gabe first meets them when she's walking home from school. She overhears violence behind the school and follows the sound. She finds Hans knocked out on the ground, Aidry held immobile, and Felix being beaten. She calls the cops, very loudly, so that the punks can hear, and steps in as best she can. Gabe is by no means an amazing fighter, but Aidry manages to wriggle a hand free, grab her forehead, and flash-transfer a bunch of fighting techniques. She doesn't know really what to do with them, so he manages to turn his collar to the lowest setting and zombify her. Gabe is tall for a woman and reasonably strong, so he's able to use her to keep some of the thugs busy long enough that they can't stay any longer or they risk getting caught by the cops.
When the cops do show up, they basically just look things over and tell Hans, Aidry adnd Felix to go home and don't even take up a proper report about the incident. Gabe is flabbergasted until they point out that they're psychics, duh--nobody really likes them very much right now. She's still pissed and insists they go to a hospital. They point out they probably aren't going to get much help there either, for the same reason. Aidry assures her they're fine, that they've stitched themselves up after worse, and meanwhile in the back of his head is thinking she took the whole getting zombied thing pretty well.
Gabe continues insisting, and ends up driving them home when they find their tires slashed in the parking lot. Both on Aidry's car and Hans's motorcycle. Which is pretty pissifying.
During the ride, adrenaline drains and Gabe becomes aware of some nasty bruises. However, she's not the kind of person to mention it. So when she takes things a step further and wants to help them patch Felix up once they get back to Aidry's (foster family's) home, Aidry doesn't stop her, and they later turn the tables and treat her some too. She protests avidly, until Aidry threatens to zombify her again and make her sit still, dammit, and she imagines what she'd look like as a zombie, and starts laughing, and Aidry chuckles too, seeing it in her head, and everybody loosens up some more.
Aidry apologizes for the whole zombifying thing, but Gabe's actually pretty understanding, even grateful--she's glad she was able to help, and she's glad he did what was necessary to make that possible. Which Aidry finds pretty weird, but it turns out Gabe's just that way. She secretly is uncomfortable about the whole thing, but she doesn't think about it and ends up befriending Aidry, so she trusts him and it ceases to be an issue.
Things get awkward for a bit when Felix asks her where her familiar is. Hell, they're psychic, they're gonna figure it out anyway, so she just explains, and they all let it go and politely avoid the subject afterwards.
Aidry's foster family never signed up for psychic kid care, so like a lot of foster...ers...they just kind of had him thrust on them. They're nice people, they're just, well, pretty much scared of him, so he tries to be nice to them. Having two other psychic friends hanging around looking like they were just in a fight(Aidry actually escaped most of the violence)makes them all very uneasy, so when they all get home (the mom has a book club, the dad usually picks their kid up from school, they meet and hang out in the park, and then come home for dinner) Aidry hustles his buddies(and Gabe) out the door.
So yeah I guess stuff happens. Felix is attracted to her and so sits next to her at lunch. Aidry finds her interesting, so he sits there too. Hans isn't going to sit without them, so he reluctantly joins.
And now there's this big empty space where the plot should be, and all I know for sure is at the end, these things happen:
the agency pulls some crap and someone has to
no, how about one of the agency's scientists. Yeah, some of the agency's people escaped the raid and set up shop illegally somewhere and started kidnapping psychics off the streets. Let's go with Aidry getting kidnapped. (During this time Hans is even more unstable, and Felix shows his genuine insecurities for the first time, and maybe seeks comfort from Gabe. Like..."comfort.") Gabe's dreams are getting more and more vivid and she's beginning to understand them. The detective working the psychic disappearances is the same detective that took down the drug guy Felix was found with. She transferred to psychic investigations after that. She also ended up adopting a little psychic girl, a lemur-totem, who she met when she visited Felix at the agency. She got to adopt her for real after the agency was taken down. The girl's name is Maxi. She's unstable like a lot of the psychic kids, but she's trying.
OH YEAH I WAS GONNA THE WOLFHOUND AND HANS AND yeah. Gotta REMEMBER that.
Anyways.
This woman figures out where the agency-rats are holing up is and plans a raid. Felix sees it happening in the future. He and Hans start preparing to pop in on the detective's party, and Gabe walks in while they're setting up weaponry to take with them. She insists on going with, being involved somehow, and gets assigned the glorious duty of getaway driver. (Hans and Felix aren't sure they're actually need one, but it's the only way to pacify Gabe.)
However, when they get there things go awry involving Gabe. Felix blows up a wall to get him and Hans in, and Gabe is suddenly overtaken by the source of her dreams. She gets zombified and walks in like in a sleepwalker.
While Felix and Hans are shooting it up to get to Aidry, Gabe is pulled down to deeper levels in the building and finds a lab set up to take care of a very peculiar specimen.
It's a saber-toothed tiger, and it's her fraternal twin sister she never knew she had.
This animal is the source of the dreams Gabe has had for most of her life, along with her primal instincts and intensely feline personality. Somehow while they were developing in the womb, the mutation was unevenly distributed. While most psychics only have a few animal traits of their totems, most of Gabe's sister's body was affected, and she's almost completely animal. However, her mind is still human and she also received most of the psychic ability. Gabe got just enough of the psychic mutation that she has no physical familiar and is able to uncannily read people as well as predict outcomes, lingering traces of the precog and mindreading abilities she would have had otherwise.
Gabe's sister is dying. She was injected a few minutes ago with a fatal dose of morphine, as the agency finally decided they'd gotten all they could and wanted to move on to the final stages of experimentatino--dissection and direct cerebral analysis. Before she dies, though, she wants to transfer everything--her power--to Gabe. Gabe's brain is formed like a pyschic's, she has the tank to hold the fuel, she just never had anything in it before. Torn up by grief for a sibling she never even had the chance to know, but was still connected to, Gabe accepts.
Due to some well-placed explosions, the whole place starts crumbling. The boys and the douchebag in charge of everything, who they managed to corner, end up falling into the basement right as Gabe's sister starts the transfer.
When it's finished, Gabe possesses the traditional animal traits--ears, tail, fur in some places, claws, fangs, some differences in bone structure, increased muscle mass, little things like that--of the sabretoothed tiger. And she has some badass power.
She wants to kill the agency director, but instead uses the incredible psychic ability she just got to link him to all the minds of every psychic in the city and floods him with their memories. When it's over, he's consumed with madness, and Gabe is on the brink of it--all this power and none of the lifelong skills developed to control it. The only way Aidry can think to save her is to get her as far from the city full of minds as possible. So the boys throw Gabe in the car and drive, drive, drive.
When Gabe wakes up she's in a safehouse in the nearby mountains, a few hundred miles from the city. The safehouse was set up by the boys when they first got out of the agency, in case the activists' demands were overturned and psychics started getting shipped back to the agency. They're badass so they can do things like that.
I guess stuff happens after that, like Aidry starts teaching Gabe how to control stuff and she and Felix would have to hook up.
I'm also figuring that back when Felix and Hans were searching for Aidry in the building, they split up briefly. Hans ran into this albino Great Dane psychic who was capable of shapeshifting between both a fully human and fully totem form, because she'd hyper-developed her telekinesis to the point she was able to manipulate her actual molecular structure. She gives him some kind of predictably vague, mysterious message. He can't stop thinking about her and resolves to find her. SO yeah. Stuff.
Now I just have to find that plot. Maybe I'll check under the bed.

Fix'ns.

Katters of course had to kick my butt fer using the cliche faux boyfriend/girlfriend seduction ploy that ends up becoming real love thing, so I fixed it.
GAWSH.

Garis isn't instructed to seduce Els. He runs into her while she's meeting a contact at a brothel and one of Sacco's brothel employees' common habits is to wear glamours to appear more expensive. He wears an Atlantic Lionfish. He goes up to her at the bar with the intention of getting money out of her, but she keeps refusing him(on account of having business on hand). Later when she's leaving she spies Garis having a bit of trouble with a past customer--rather, the customer's having trouble with him. Sacco's boys and girls have a tendency to get their clients very drunk and then take more money than was agreed upon, and Garis's client is pretty pissed about missing an extra couple hundred monies.
(Also, Els's dogfish is now a giant salamander, because they rock like a hurricane.)
When the client's about to put some smackdown on Garis, Els intervenes. Since Els can't really fight very well, much less hold her own against four other bigger, meaner deeps mers, she gets pretty beat up while Garis zips off as fast as he can.
However, even he has a little conscience, and he ends up returning and hiding, waiting until the thugs are done and then swimming over to see if she's still alive.
He takes her to a doctor friend, since there aren't really any effective hospitals in the darker parts of Outlantis, and Els wakes up resting in someone's unpleasantly smelling bed. She takes note of the stitching and bandaging and that she's not in as much pain as she should be.
Garis's doctor friend tells her to go home and rest for the next few days, and Garis goes with her to make sure she gets home all right, since she has no idea how to get there from the doctor's.
Almost getting her skull beat in has given Els a little perspective on life, so she what-the-hell's it and asks Garis out point-blank on her front doorstep. Surprisingly, he agrees.
He's basically setting her up to get money out of her, and when Els says "take it slow" he figures she means the more civilized "third date = sex" thing, which isn't something most deeper city mers waste time on. So he figgers he'll play along and go on a couple dates, have a little fun, and then gank her cash when they do it on the third. When they get to the third date and surprise, no sex, Garis goes home assuming he's going to cut his losses and avoid her, but for some reason, when she calls, he says yes to another date. And another. Until they're going out regularly, and hanging out like a boyfriend and girlfriend, and he realizes he's not letting her down gradually because she's nice, he's getting involved. Because he likes her. He really, really does.
Meanwhile, Sacco's having her boys/girls etc keeping an eye on him. Because he happens to be one of her favourite whores. She has them look into Els some and finds out who she is. And epiphany! She can use Els to summon the leviathin. And if Els refuses, she can use Garis and threaten to kill him if she doesn't.
The main issue is that Garis has a friend with benefits who's very possessive about those benefits and who he hangs out with in his spare time. This mer, Shiv, is one of the people Garis gives discounts to just because the sex is good. She's pissed that he's spending time with another mer, in an actual relationship, presumably not charging this individual anything. So she gets herself on detail to keep an eye on him. She also makes things difficult for him when he's away from Els, dropping in onn him when he's home alone, forcing him into bed to remind him who he belongs to--or rather that he doesn't exclusively belong to any one person. When Garis slips up one of these times and says Els's name, she beats him up some and leaves him there. He avoids Els until the more visible bruises are gone, but she can sense something is wrong. However, she never really finds out about it until much later.
And then at the end what happens is that Sacco does use Garis against Els, and Els starts to summon the leviathin, but then instead summons the hippocampus. Her power begins to run away with her, overloading her body, so to release it she grabs ahold of every animal within a hundred miles and summons them too, and then gives off a few small explosions to blow off a little more steam. In the chaos Sacco gets the hell outta there(and is eaten by the baby Jormungandar), but after Els releases Garis and they're breaking outta there, Shiv grabs him and drags him down a hallway. Els turns to see this just as massive chunks of rubble collapse, blocking her off from him. She starts trying to find a way around it. As he struggles to get away, Shiv rips the glamour charm off and effectively destroys it. Without it to pretty him up, Garis is too afraid to face Els as himself--but when he gets away from Shiv and sees Els about to be crushed by falling rubble, he zips out and shoves her outta the way. Without speaking, Garis wordlessly grabs her by the wrist and shows her the way out. He doesn't say anything or tell her who he is, and when they've gotten out he pulls a houdini, too ashamed to face her.
Els starts to figger out her way home, followed by the baby Jormungandar, despite her efforts to dissuade it. In its simple-minded larval stage, it's a lot like a puppy and has become very attached to her. She's confronted by SMAM, who sensed her seals being busted through by the gush of power. And etc, etc, they want to recruit her, etc etc.
At the epilogue, Els is visiting a brothel, the name of which was given to her by Shiv--who was taken from the rubble by SMAM for interrogation. She asks for Garis, who was fired now that he has no glamour to make him pretty, but a friend of his tells her where to find him. So Els keeps looking until she finds him.
I'm not sure how to wrap that ending up after that but I like it.

Words 'n things

Because Katters insists, I'm posting some mer word-doodles here.
Okay, so when I have a story idea, I basically write it out as a plot summary first, like you'd find on the back of a book. And then I elaborate. A lot. And ramble. Which is how I figger things out.
Keep in mind that this contains, in essence, the entire story, raw and all, so there are spoilers aplenty. Read at yer own risk, Katters, because this is a story I wish to develop further someday. Into an actual story.

Elswhere Wayward is a slightly below-average supernatural detective...merwoman. She inhabits the city of Outlantis, one of the larger cities, one of the dirtier, and not particularly renowned for anything. Times are hard, and business is slow, but she's got a dogfish to feed, so when Els gets what seems to be a small job with a big payout, even if it sounds dangerous, she takes it. It puts her on the trail of one of the most powerful crime lords in Outlantis, and dredges up secrets from her past that Els would much rather be forgotten.

Els is a small time supernatural detective that wanted to be a supernatural confrontationalist, but her family's banishment from the Society of Morally Applied Magic ended any chance at a career she would have had as a young child, when the enforcers of SMAM burst in through her household's front door and methodically hunted down her family members, her included. They either then killed those who resisted or sealed their powers with a violent, painful ritual. Els possesses the marks on her body of that seal, though they remain hidden, for the most part, under her clothes. Since that day, Els has had to content herself with tracking down those that use magic immorally through the tiny shred of sixth sense she still has and then watch while the real confrontationalists take over. It's not a happy life, but it's the only one she can maintain some semblance of sanity in. At least she gets the thrill of the hunt, if not the actual victory.
Then comes this job. It's offered her by one particular SMAM operative, someone offering her the chance to get in SMAM's good graces, maybe even get started on the path to redemption in their eyes. It's a small job at first glance and Els can't pass it up. All she has to do is find out who's behind a string of small-time thefts in local jewelry stores, someone who has an eye for antiques with ancient runes inscribed on them. Outlantis is an old city, so runes are everywhere. Certainly not hard to come by, especially since no one understands them anymore--they're ultimately useless, so there's not much point caring. But nonetheless, SMAM has taken an interest, and the runes are the only consistency.
Els goes through the jewelry stores herself first, of course, to check things out. Not much to be found, though she picks out a present for her mother's birthday. She always did like topaz. And Els gets a weird buzz off another piece of jewelry--one with runes on it. One the thief missed.
...And in the back of the store, someone notices and slips out. They were in on the job, and they report directly to Saccopharynx(gulper eel's scientific name), one of Outlantis's biggest crime lords around, and a deeps lurker to boot. See, Outlantis is a huge city built into a massive oceanic canyon. Up near the top it climbs a continental shelf to a brilliant reef of nobles and other wealthies. Outlantis stretches from the brightest of the ocean down to the darkest, and there are vicious prejudices dividing each group of mers found in each zone. Saccopharynx's fins reach all over the city like tentacles, and she rules her brood with an iron fist. Her plan is to summon the leviathan and capture it in order to secure the coveted position of Architeuthis(scientific name for squid, or giant squid, basically the ultimate crimelord), which is currently held by Vainfernalis(vampire squid, Vampuroteuthis infernalis), a vampire squid mer. When Saccopharynx hears of Els, and the fact that she was able to sense the runes' energy, she suspects that Els is one of the few surviving members of the Lustralis family, a clan known for its powerful summoning magics. Thus she chooses one of her best brothel employees and endows him with a special charm that hides his deeps lurker appearance--hideous to the suntouched dwellers--and gives him the image of a fire angel mer, (atlantic lionfish), or Volitan. Far from rare, but widely considered to be one of the most beautiful mers in the sea. She gives him a simple mission--seduce Els, gain her trust, and then bring her to Sacco so that the mer can use her powers to summon the leviathin.
Meanwhile, Els is minding her own business, looking up runes in the library--she has a hunch this is her best lead. She reads articles and in one of them the mer interviewed is cited as an employee at the local museum. Els goes there to find out more, and the man tells her of the fractured knowledge he has gathered about the runes. They were used to inspell objects with magical energy without the necessity of a constant current of magic, which is what mechanisms in all cities today run on--if they aren't plugged in, they don't work. Loss of the runes set mer technology back decades, and rediscovering it could open up leaps and bounds into the future. But one of their most popular uses was in summoning.
Els decides to cross reference and hits up some old friends. They don't want to be seen with her, a condemned, convicted traitor to SMAM(even though she was a child at the time) but she pleads and threatens her way across a few thresholds. These are professional summoners she's checking in with. She wants to check up on the old mer's knowledge. The info checks out, and now Els realizes she's not sure what to do next.
She decides to look into organizations interested in summoning. She hits up a few companies, nothing really solid, and she's lingering, brooding, at a bar, when a beautiful Volitan shimmers up and settles on the stool next to her. Els can hardly believe he's talking to her--no one ever talks to her. They either know her past or they just don't notice her. Lustrali are plain, silver-grey fish, not special, unremarkable. They also closely resemble about a dozen other kinds of mer. They only thing Els's family had going for them was their summoning abilities.
But this Volitan is interested in her, it seems. So Els plays the field, checks him out, asks him out, and they start dating. One night Els mentions she's having trouble on the case and he brings this to Sacco. Sacco instructs him to bring Els to the old ruins to maybe spark a clue for her. He does so, and Els doesn't want to go, because the buzzing there is strange and unsettling to her. The Volitan/bulbfin mer does not know anything about Els's family history--he was instructed sharply not to ask questions. But it gets Els thinking about the case, and she realizes it's time to stop playing around. She needs to start digging, for real.
So she starts dipping into her supernatural contacts. A few psychics, ghosts, some undines, and finally, she is told to ask a nearby Jorumungandar. It's dangerous, and guarded by a small horde of vicious apocolypse zealots. Els has to sneak in after lights out in the city, travelling deep into the deeps. Her visit is successful, as the Jormungandar is serviced by a massive school of "maintenance" fish that keep it clean of fungus, algae and parasites while it lies coiled in a cavern too big for it to escape. In exchange for not eating them, they clean its body and keep it informed. The Jormungandar has heard whispers of the leviathan--a massive beast said to serve its summoner with ultimate loyalty. The last living leviathin died a decade ago, but it is said that its memory is preserved in the runes that once summoned it--this was the great danger of the runes, which the Jormungandar is old enough to remember. The runes stored and remembered too much, and there came a time when they simply overloaded and self-destructed--this was the demise of the ancient cities of the past. The runes themselves survived, as they did not actually destroy themselves, merely released in smattering explosions all the little bits and pieces of spells they remembered at once, and half-formed spells are the dangerous. The pieces of spells collided, clashed, and created massive catastrophes. Someone is digging up the leviathin, trying to find the runes that once summoned it. Someone wants to bring death back from the grave. The Jormungandar does not want this--it is one of the few beasts Jormungandars once feared, one of the few beasts massive enough to be able to prey on them. The massive serpent tells Els of someone who knows much of the leviathin, the kind of person someone wanting to know about it would go to--the kind of person who might remember who's been asking about the leviathin recently. That person is a hippocampus--in ancient times before the leviathins were tamed, hippocampi were the powerful guardians of the mers, the gargoyles on their castles, if you will. The hippocampi is old and possibly the last of its kind. It does not look kindly on strangers. The Jormungandar tells Els where to find it.
/"How do you know you can trust me with this information?" she asked, half-curious, half-wary.
"You are ssssssssmaalllllll," it breathed. "The hippocampus issssssss greeeeeeaaaat. Yoooou arrrre nooo threeeeaaat. There issssss nothinnnnnggg to loooose."
The Jormunganadar was the only one who was comforted by this./
This is all the information that Els manages to get out of it before its zealots attack her. Els manages to escape, but is set upon by muggers on her way home, and doesn't have the strength to fight them off. She takes a bad beating and returns to her home in poor condition, hoping for a quiet, uneventful evening of bandaging and sleep. But then the Volitan shows up, and demands to know what happened. He helps her bandage up--is surprisingly good at it--and they end up making out and going to bed together, though there is no sex.
Sometime late in the night he gets up and goes to the bathroom, removing the glamour as soon as he's inside and the door is closed. Wearing the glamour too long results in bad headaches and possible slight brain hemorrhaging or however you spell that.
/
"What am I doing?" he asked himself, staring in the mirror.
This was a simple job. Seduce the silver-scaled woman that regularly sulked at the bar in Manchester's. Seduction deals usually took under a week, and he always was screwing them by the third date at the latest. But no, she wanted to take things slow. She wanted to insidiously worm her way into his heart...
He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut and opening them again. This was a simple job. He wasn't supposed to be doing things like...this. Like getting actually concerned. Like snuggling up to her in bed without even having sex first like it was the most natural thing in the world.
That thought brought to mind the long, sleek solidity of her body, the neat, streamlined shapes of her fins, her soft, even breathing, the serene, sometimes even childishly peaceful look on her face in sleep. It was a contrast to the constantly subtly pondering look she always had, like there was a problem in her life she was always thinking about. She always looked so thoughtful. The way she stared off into space sometimes, like she was figuring out how to fix the world...then look at him and smile in embarassment, like she knew it wasn't her responsibility, but just couldn't help herself.
It made him flush and tingle. Garis groaned quietly and ran a hand through his crests, tugging at the edges of the fore in frustration. This wasn't supposed to happen. He wasn't supposed to start...caring like this. What was it about her? She wasn't any different from any other--
But no. No, that wasn't true. Because she was, wasn't she? In the past, seduction had been all physical, with him--that had always worked. Els wasn't like that. She took more than physical attraction, even if that was a definite part of it. She wanted to talk, ask questions, learn things about him. She was a wary type, cautious, so at first it had just been necessary to oblige, if unexpected. But now...he wanted her to know him. All of him. Because Garis could sense that Els was falling for him. And he...he was...
He was a snaggle-toothed black-eyed eel that glowed in the dark.
Garis sank slowly to the floor, covering his face in his hands, feeling the salt of his tears scrape against his fingers as it trickled from his eyes. He bit down hard on his lip to keep himself quiet as he shook gently for a few minutes.
Eventually he straightened up and rubbed the salt away where it had begun to crust slightly on the corners of his eyelids. He looked despairingly at his true reflection one last time before slipping the beads back on over his head--
And he was beautiful again. Shimmering, glamorous, gloriously frilled like an angelic butterfly. And Garis was no longer sure which image of him--the loathesome deeps creature or the heavenly, ghostly beauty--he hated more.
Garis turned off the light and slipped back out of the bathroom. Els, he was sure, would be the type to notice if his warmth was missing too long from her side.
He slid back into bed with her, and in that moment, he realized something.
It didn't matter if he'd fallen for Els, did it? Because in the end, he'd still succeeded. She trusted him. Now, he could begin baiting her to Saccopharynx. And after the leviathin was summoned, and Saccopharynx didn't need Els anymore, they could just leave the city. With a whole leviathin on hand to deal with, Sacco was unlikely to really notice one member of her many brothels missing, right? And besides, fresh stock was coming in all the time. He'd be easily replaced by the time Sacco noticed, if ever. And then he and Els...
Well, so he'd have to wear the beads forever. But so what? The headaches were few and far between, not unbearable, and a small price to pay. Maybe he hated the false shimmering loveliness, but Els loved him, so that, too, was tolerable. They could be happy. Everything could work out.
He'd never have to sell himself again.
And suddenly the thought of being with anyone but Els was repulsive. And while this thought in itself was glaringly foremost in his mind, there was also a vague curiosity swimming around it. Interesting. He'd never cared about selling himself before. It had just been a way to get by. And hell, money for sex--it didn't get much better, did it?
Spending time with Els, though, listening to her talk about love, when they did talk about it...she viewed it as something more. To her, it was some kind of sacred covenant, only to be shared with your dearest love. And the way she looked at him when she said that, Garis could tell she wanted to share it with him. Betraying that level of love was incredibly horrible.
Els shifted and murmured softly in her sleep, brow creasing. Garis ran a hand gently over her body, feeling the faint protrusions of the scars wrapping around her arms and back and chest. He still wanted to know what they were--they haunted her, somehow. But his touch calmed her, and Garis wrapped his arm around her torso, snug under her breasts, drawing himself close, burying his face in her back and breathing her in. She smelled like wild water. How did she always manage to smell like wild water? And that faint buzz, like nearby the site of a dispute between electric eels. The smell of magic.
Els's hip fins flexed and fell gently across his waist, and she sighed quietly, her gill fans narrowing in further relaxation. His presence calmed her. He put her at peace. Aware of her constant state of restlessness, Garis knew this was one of the greatest gifts someone could give her.
No, there was nothing wrong with loving Els. Everything would work out. It had to. That was what happened in fairy tales.
And Els was nothing if not his knight in shining armour./
Els goes to the hippocampus to find out more about the leviathin and summoning it. She learns some of her family history, a dark part no one knew, and the truth about her family's humiliation and sealing. She understands that they were involved in some dark things, and she now knows who was responsible for bringing that darkness to light. She also knows the one who headed the banishment/sealing operation, a cruel justice that exacts the deepest punishments from even the most innocent.
Els returns home, head spinning, to find that Garis has made dinner. She's about to sit down when she's suddenly accosted by agony--her seal-scars flexing hideously on her skin, moving, writhing like worms set on fire. Els screams and thrashes, Garis is terrified, but she knows it will pass. It does, and she refuses to explain to Garis. The next day she goes to the SMAM agent to demand an explanation. He informs her that it is a punishment for no progress. Els points out that wasn't part of the deal, and, amused, he requests he show her where the terms of the deal were writ--except they weren't. Els didn't get it in writing. Els tells him what she knows, and he's satisfied, but he also tells her that's enough, she's done enough. Els asks about her redemption. He dismisses her with hardly an encouraging reply on the subject. Els realizes that he may not honour their agreement to put in a good word. This pisses her off. Els comes home and rants about SMAM and how they're stupid and stuff. Garis gives it a day and comes to her with the offer to meet Saccopharynx. He doesn't tell her who it is, though, so Els unwittingly agrees--Garis passes it off as someone he just overheard talking about the leviathin.
Turns out Garis's master is tired of waiting too. On their way to meeting Saccopharynx, Els and Garis are met by some of her thugs. They club Els over the head, knocking her out.
/
The last thing Els heard was Garis's enraged protest:
"No! Stop! She said she wouldn't get hurt!"
/
When Els awakes, she's in a nicely furnished room, and is then brought before Saccopharynx, who offers her the deal. While Els is thinking it over, Garis bursts in.
/
"Els!"
Elsewhere whirled just in time to see Garis bursting in, wriggling furiously and slipping past Saccopharynx's guards at the doorway. He crossed the room in a flash, uncannily fast for a lionfish. He collided with Els, wrapping his arms around her. "Thank Poseidon you're all right. I'm so sorry Els--" He pulled away and climbed water with a flick of his tail, twisting his way around her head, slipping his hands through her crests, stroking her head. "Did they hurt you? They weren't supposed to, it wasn't supposed to happen like that--" Els grabbed him by the waist and pulled him back down to eye level.
"What are you talking about?" she said in the harmlessly curious, quiet voice she used when she was really getting very suspicious.
"Els, I was going to explain everything," he said quickly. "Please, I'm sorry, okay? I was going to tell you--"
"So tell me now."
"I'll do that and save everyone some time," Saccopharynx growled irritably. "He's one of my brothel boys. I sent him out to bring you to me. Now give me your answer."
Els was staring at Garis as he stared at Saccopharynx in disbelief.
"You're a...what?" Her voice sounded like she'd been slammed in the gut. Garis turned an expression on her akin to panic.
"It's not like that," he said, stumbling over his words. "I mean, it was--I, I was just supposed to get you to trust me, but it's not like that anymore, Els, please just let me explain--"
Els drifted away with a subtle flick of her hiplength. She was staring at him, her face a war between puzzlement and calculation. Garis could see her flipping through her memories like a photo album, analyzing everything over again, studying everything, picking apart every word he'd said, every action he'd committed. She was beginning to see.
"Els..." he said weakly, reaching for her.
"You're a...a prostitute?" It was difficult to say the polite term.
"I..." He wanted to say no, but Sacco was right there. And he couldn't lie to Els anymore. "...Yes," he whispered. "I...it's different, now, Els..."
"What else?" Everything was blank now. Els had retreated into herself, all emotion had been shut off. It was how she handled terrifying situations. And this--realizing how hideously she'd erred in judgment--that, to Els, was terrifying. "Is there anything else you've lied about?"
Sacco sighed impatiently and flicked her tail at a nearby handservant, gesturing to Garis's glamour charm. With a nod, they flicked forward and ripped the beads away from Garis's neck.
"That should about cover it," Saccopharynx said impatiently as Garis's lovely Volitan form melted away to reveal his true body.
Els stared at him in shock. Gone was the brilliant colouring, the fire-flecked moon white flanks, the ghostly beauty of the long, glorious fan-fins, the slim, delicate shape. It was all replaced by dull brown colouring that mottled to a darker shade down his back, a thick, sinister, blocky eel's shape, and chillingly predatory bulbs glowing with a soft, yellow light tipped his headcrests. His eyes were an unearthly solid black, like all deeps creatures, and his fins were reduced to streamlined, thick, mostly transparent continuous forms, one on each forearm, and one long fin that began below his navel and traveled down his underside to the tip of his tail where it continued back up his spine, ending somewhere around his middle back. Their edges undulated in gentle curves, each outward curve was punctuated with a solid circle of more softly glowing yellow. He was a bulblure. A shadow-tempter. The eeldemon that lured hapless innocents from the known tunnels of the giant sponge forests with the soft light of its bulbs and devoured them in the darkness.
"Els," he whispered, his gaze pleading, but all she could see were the jagged needles of teeth that flickered behind his lips when he spoke. Without another word, she turned away.
"I need time...to think," she said quietly to Saccopharynx. "Summoning the leviathin...with my seals, it could kill me."
"I have brought mages to see to your seals," Saccopharynx said quickly, leaning forward on her throne, eyes gleaming wickedly.
"Their chance of success is close to none," Els said detachedly. "My life is at risk. I need a day to think, or my answer is no."
Saccopharynx thought it over irritably, tapping her long, vicious claws on the arms of her throne. On one hand, she was being negotiated. Sacco hated being negotiated; it gave her an appearance of weakness. On the other, if she killed the Lutalis now, that would set her plans back weeks, perhaps months. Besides, if the Lutalis still said no, she could just kill her at the end of the day.
"One day," Sacco agreed stiffly. "You will remain here while you...ponder."
"Is there a library? Libraries help me think." Els was incredibly passive and calm now, folding her hands neatly behind her back. Garis stared at her, quaking.
"Els?" he said softly.
Saccopharynx was surprised, but shrugged and motioned a servant over.
"Take her to the bibliothequis," she said with a flick of her hand. The servant nodded obediently and swam past Els, directing her to follow with a quiet, polite tone. Els nodded and did so.
"Els?" Garis said again, louder, as she did. "Els, wait, please--" He went to follow her, but Sacco hissed.
"You."
Garis froze and turned to look at her fearfully, salt surfacing in his eyes.
"Were you not listening? The Lutalis needs time to think. Leave her in peace. Better yet, little eeldemon, return to your brothel." Sacco flicked a claw at a guard. "Make sure he gets there."
"No, wait, please," Garis begged. "Please, just let me talk to her--"
"Why would I need you to do that? You've served your purpose. Out. Now."
"Please!" Garis howled as he was forcefully dragged through the doors, despite his thrashing. "Please, I did what you asked, I must deserve some kind of favour--" The doors slammed shut on his voice.
Saccopharynx chuckled and shook her head at the thought of owing any kind of favour to a whore.
/
In the library, Els is just thinking she's going to decide to agree to Saccopharynx's plan when she sees the skull of a hippocampus crowning the massive doorway and remembers what she learned of it. And Els realizes her redemption is important to her, in her own mind, even if she means nothing to SMAM. She realizes she can not go through with Saccopharynx's plan. She also realizes she will not easily escape.
Some how she needs to find the agent locked up. I expect they try to summon help, and Els is the one that senses it. She leaves the library and finds her way down to the dungeons. Sacco has ordered that she be left alone, so no one bothers her. Els finds the agent and they plot an escape. She makes a deal, though--her seals must be revoked, or she will be unable to bust them out.
Els waits out the day like planned to give Sacco her answer. Sacco's chamber is full of beasties she likes to intimidate guests with. Els and the agent agreed to revoke the seals at a certain time. With her eye on the clock, Els keeps Sacco busy until the right moment. When her seals are revoked, it's agony at first, but then Els rebounds and summons all the beasties to her aid. They bust out their chains and start attacking peoples. Els sends them down to the dungeon to free the agent. Meanwhile, she's also summoned the hippocampus, reasoning with it that if it kills Saccopharynx, that should send a message to anyone that wants to try summoning a leviathin again in future.
Stuff happens. Els gets to Saccopharynx before she can escape and demands to know where Garis is. They engage in a vicious hand-to-hand battle, primitive merstyle. One of the beasties, a baby Jormungandar, busts out and starts trashing the place. It rips the roof off of Sacco's main palace where Els and the gulper are fighting. Els takes over its minds and makes it eat Sacco moments before the gulper's about to impale her with a lance. And that takes care of that. It's seen as a shadow rising over Sacco, and then a massive shadow falls across even that. The hippocampus has arrived to finish the destruction. Els and the agent ride the Jormungandar out of there at the hippocampus sets to busting things up. Els drops the agent off somewhere in the upper city and ends up holing up in a system of nearby caverns. She does it just to recuperate at first and think things over, but as a few weeks pass and she realizes that with her new Jormungandar friend's help she can survive in wild water, Els is thinking of making the transition permanent. Besides, there's the chance of getting sealed again if she tries to just walk back into Outlantis.
But things aren't over. Not yet. The agent comes to her and it turns out that SMAM wants to recruit her. They've been getting into runes secretly and it turns out Sacco wasn't the only one beginning to rediscover their secrets. SMAM has realized they'd better get ahead of the game before the wrong people do, so they're beginning to hunt down runes themselves. Since Els pretty much single-handedly toppled a massive tyrant, they figger it's a good move to have her on their side.
Els makes a deal. They don't seal her. Ever again. She picks her own partner(which is a necessity) and she gets to keep the Jormungandar. There's some unhappiness about that, but they agree.
/
Els leaned back against the monster and watched the sun dip into the sea at the end of the world.
Interesting how much things had changed. Questions answered, but the answers had raised new questions. The seals gone--the pain, gone. Freedom. The world was her oyster now. Els knew that she could reach out and take anything she wanted.
But the only thing she could think of was a certain body resting next to hers, and ghoulish black eyes smiling at her.
"I swear, it's as if my life complicates itself on purpose."
The Jormungandar whuffed in agreement and slowly slid its eyes shut in sleep.