Almost Drabbles

Roleplaying and Games
281

“What in skies’ name is that.”
Nidhii, who’d rolled up her pants to swing her legs in the cool river, looks over, at whoever was on the bridge. They were standing right where the sun was in the sky, and Nidhii holds up a hand to shield her eyes.
She hadn’t heard them approaching. She squints.
Arrossa was leaning over, her immaculate dark hair waving in the winds, as she tucks some stray strands behind her ear.
Nidhii’s immediate response is to ignore her, since she wasn’t one of the aunties or her mom. Then Nidhii forces on a smile. “Hi.”
“Your neck.” Arrossa says, looking like she’d rather be anywhere but there at the moment.
Nidhii’s fingers go to her neck, and they come away glowing a faint purple. A shiver goes up her spine.
“That’s nothing,” Nidhii says picking up her scarf from where she’d left it in the grass. She gingerly wraps it around her neck. Whatever that was, she’d look at it later, when Arrossa wasn’t around. “Umm, are you out on a walk?”
Arrossa doesn’t respond for a few moments, then, “Nidhii, dear, if you’re trying to attract everyone’s attention, there must be less desperate ways.”
Nidhii feels a flare of anger at that, frustration that anyone would assume she was putting herself through any of this on purpose. “Maybe you should mind your own business, Rose.”
“I would love to, darling, but you make it very difficult. Don’t you agree it’s a little pathetic that you resort to the Mai just to put on these needless little shows of yours?”
Nidhii sighs, pulling her legs out of the water. “Can you get lost?”
“I’d mind my words, if I were you.”
Nidhii doesn’t respond to that, and when she looks up, Arrossa is looking down the river, at the flowing water. Nidhii decides to ignore her, and lays back in the grass, fingers worming under her scarf. Still glowing purple. She sighs, covering her eyes with the crook of her elbow, to shield them from the sun.

to this day, i still have no idea what nidhii is going through. i’m as baffled as anyone finding her doing anything weird. :joy:

next!
hurried

1 Like
282

Lyra floats, foot barely brushing over the smooth granite floors as she heads down the hallways, flipping through her sister’s notebook.
Lyra had stolen it some time ago last week, and forgot about it until she found the thing in her backpack that morning. And what would Aquilla’s notebook be filled with, other than boring class notes? With interspersed doodles slipped in between, all over the place.
Lyra closes the notebook, dropping it in the trash on her way.
She had a test to worry about that afternoon, after all. She yawns, just as the bell rings, and the pace of the students around her become more hurried. Lyra decides she should head to class quickly, too, and speeds up.

next!
foundation

1 Like
283

“You know what happened? What they say about the day when Toranna came to Tallen’s aid?”

I shook my head, hoping this man knew the answers to my most burning questions… What happened that day? I’d heard the story thousands of times. Tallen was his father’s least favorite son, and his father made him hold uo the world. For millennia, he managed, successfully, to support the whole world on his shoulders, but he was only one man. After so long… The weight was too much, and he couldn’t do it alone anymore. He almost dropped us, all of us… But his little sister came and helped him. She caught the world when he dropped it, and now they share the weight…

But nobody every tells us what happened when Tallen dropped the world… What it was like for all of us living in it. It must have been… Terrifying, in the very least.

He shrugged. “In the days before, Tallen was our world’s only foundation, the only thing holding us out of the void which consumed our motherworlds. When Tallen stumbled, the whole world shook. Our foundation shook, the sun went out as our descent began. Toranna saved us, and that foundation shifted. Instead of only Tallen, we now had both he and Toranna. The two have managed thus far… But we fear the day the world’s weight is too much for two, because their brothers and sisters are not so understanding…”

I put my head down. Perhaps I had never really believed the myths, not completely, at any rate. If Toranna was a Goddess who saved the world, why was I named after her? To compare me to a Goddess, if that Goddess really existed, that felt like blasphemy.

But the threat of falling into the Void… The idea of the sun going out, of falling into a realm of constant darkness… It terrified me in a way no threat on my life ever had. It scared me in a way I can’t quite describe, can’t quite quantify. Myths came from somewhere, and our myths named thousands of worlds which were consumed by the Void.

I didn’t want to learn what truth these myths were based in, and-

Just then, the banquet hall’s foundation shifted, and the lights flickered off.

A little piece of lore from my WIP :blush:

Raise

2 Likes
284

“I’m going to raise the bar for authors everywhere and get a raise as well,” the best author of all time said.
She set her pen to the paper, ready to write the groundbreaking make or break scene everyone would remember from her novel.

Joe Schmoe seeped quickly down the street like a waterfall made of his desire to reach the party in time.
But when he arrived, the lights were out like a sleeping crow after a particularly good haul from the trash can.
Tears expoloded out of Joe’s eyes.
“Nooooooooooo,” he said in the same tone of voice as a tree on any particular day.
That is, he didn’t actually say it, he kind of oozed it.
“Hey, I waited for you,” the sour voice of his girlfriend snarled like a hand saving a dying hero from death by poisonous fumes.
“Yessssssssss,” Joe hissed like a snake telling you about their day, that is he didn’t actually say anything.
Joe took his girlfriend’s hand, which felt like a pillow just after being sweated on by a tired elephant, and they danced like the blades of a slowing down fan.

“This will make my readers cry. They’ll remember it for years to come,” the best author ever said, pumping a fist like…
She wasn’t so creative when it came to descriptions about her own life. She reserved that genius for the page and came off perfectly normal in real life.

Next: Grip

1 Like
285

Get a grip, I tell myself, holding my head in my hands, trying to calm the waves of fear washing out reason and pretense, which is my only defense.
I can’t think.
There’s so much at stake for me and I can’t be around people and just act normal. How can I ever be the same when I know I’m not who I thought I was?
“Emery?” Kanin’s round face pokes around the side of the building and another surge of panic sends my heart into a frantic beat.
“Coming,” I say, my voice shaking.
“Are you really okay?” he says.
This isn’t the first time he’s asked me today.
“I’m great, fine, I just-” but my words stop as my frozen thoughts can’t think of an excuse.
Terror dries up any inspiration except the inspiration for fear. He’ll guess what I’ve learned, they all will, and then I’ll- I don’t know what will be happen. They’ll hate me. They’ll kill me. They’ll-
Kanin grabs my hand.
“Come on, we’re supposed to be with the others,” he says helplessly, still not sure what to do, still not guessing.
He doesn’t guess. None of them do. And I start to realize that pretending for my entire life isn’t out of the question.
My thoughts start moving, lies rise into my mind, and I learn the magic to hide.
But I’m still terrified.

why did some of that rhyme?? that wasn’t intentional XD

Next: Tales

1 Like
286

XD

Neil’s grip on Raju tightens, and the cat turns his head up to look at the boy.
“He’s just a cat, mother. What could could a cat possibly do?”
“That thing is filthy. You don’t even know where it’s from-- who knows what kinds of diseases it’s carrying. Get it out of here.” She says, disdain dripping from her tone. “It’s distracting you from your studies.”
“I’ll take it to Frey after lunch.”
Raju wiggles in his arms, trying to get free, and though the boy startles, he keeps his grip on the cat.
His mother levels him an unimpressed gaze. “Neil, I didn’t raise you to speak back to your mother. If I tell you to get rid of the cat, I expect you to listen to me. Now let that thing out the window, or I’ll call someone to take it from you by force. You’re making this more difficult than it has to be.”
Neil’s breaths slowly quicken, in a building panic that the cat would get away, and then he wouldn’t get to ask why it knows what it does-- why it could talk in the first place, why–
Raju springs out of his arms, batting him away with a push. Neil’s mother shrieks, startled as she tries to grab her son. Neil protests as the cat skitters on the wooden floors, then turns and bounds towards the window. With a graceful leap, it jumps onto his chair, then his desk, and is out the open window.
“Good heavens,” his mother mutters, her grip on his shoulder tight, as she catches her breath. “I thought it was going to attack us.”
Neil, on the other hand, was on the verge of tears, vowing revenge on the cat.

i wrote this for grip but didn’t finish it until now jfoweijfow
so the next one would still be:

next!
Tales

1 Like
287
Summary

You’ve told me tales of a far off land
where random strangers lend a hand
you’ve thought of yourself as monster or man
yet you never appear on demand

You’re a slippery creature I can’t quite see
bathed in a light that I can’t quite know
you’re a loveable creature more than any I see
yet my love won’t go where you go

when you vanish
so random,
my heart won’t echo your voice
when you’re not here,
seems like we have no choice-

but to split, dear
we’ll make up the emptiness now, here
and smile when your loss isn’t feared

Next: good intentions

288

“I know you had good intentions dear but you should really keep your mouth shut next time. I know, I know, you think things will go well if you just say the right thing,” she pokes my nose with her pointer finger, “but let’s be real, you won’t. You think you’re so smart and if only the rest of us saw that we’d all agree with you,” she leans forward into my personal space, “but have you ever considered that we’re the smart ones?”
I don’t even feel angry. This is just how she is and it doesn’t matter what I say here, because she could think I’m the literal devil and no one important would care.
“Have you ever considered,” I say, leaning forward and poking her nose with mine in a mockery of her gestures that I expect to go right over her head, “that I never had good intentions to begin with?”

Next: Sketchbook

289

Tora gripped the Sword, standing defensively between the kid and Carman’s goons. Damnit- She’d been one of those goons a month ago. She didn’t really know what she was holding, it felt a bit awkward in her hands, but that’s because it was… Growing? The sword’s size had changed significantly since she’d picked it up. She balked for a moment, but then one of the goons attacked her.

The dance began.

In practice, it felt a lot less like a dance than the tales made it seem. Steel clashed, and it didn’t take long for the whole place to reek of sweat and other unpleasantries.

Tora zipped between her attackers, poofing in and out of existence. Before long, the smell of blood had permeated the fray. One by one, they fell, and in the end, Tora and the kid were the only two still standing. She looked down at the sword in her hands, with its flat straight side and sharp edge… She’d picked it up with good intentions, but it had brought her back to this. She couldn’t be trusted with a weapon.

Tora clenched her jaw and stabbed the sword into the ground, swearing, again, that she’d never touch one again, and looked each of her latest victims in their vacant, dead eyes. She blinked hard, trying to memorize each of their faces.

When she got the kid to safety, she’d add them to her sketchbook, add them to the sea of faces to keep her up at night, to the list of lives she’d taken.

She could never repay them for their deaths, but at least she could remember their faces.

I started this for grip but ultimately just ended up fitting all the prompts in because I just now finished.

Next: Vacant

1 Like
290

XD :open_mouth:
good job incorporating them!

“I’m happy. I’m happy to be here with you, Estella,” I said, putting my hand on hers, hoping to feel something in return.
She smiles back, but there’s something vacant behind it, as if she’s fading behind a glass wall in her own head.
I know that feeling.
“Before I met you, there was no one and nothing.”
I don’t want to say more about my family. Surely I don’t need to? It’s enough that we’re here now.
“Estella, talk to me.”
I need you.
“My little brother probably misses me,” she says, and I know what she’s hinting, but I can’t accept it.
I clench my fingers in the skirts of my ruined dress, picking up dried mud from the places we’ve been staying. Picking up a thread of fabric that just came off from the torn edge for some reason, the dress shredding over time despite all my efforts to keep it together.
“I’d miss you,” I whisper, and she hears me but continues anyway.
“I miss him.”
Suddenly she stands up,
suddenly way taller than me,
suddenly far away as I’m sitting at her feet.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and by the time I’ve scrambled to my feet she’s far away anyway.

Next: False Prophecy

1 Like
291

“It’s not up to me to protect them,” I say, wanting to cry and laugh at the pressure, “it can’t be me.”
“…I think it is you.”
“The prophetess gave a false prophecy. Who’s to say the rest of it was true?”
He just looks at me steadily.
“I won’t lift a finger to protect them, after what they did to me. They’ll be fine. They’ve been find this entire time.”
“There are children up there. If these people really bring the Cloud down, they’ll all die. The ones who convinced the others not to kill you could die as well.”
They’re the last people I want to protect. I don’t want to be a good person. They don’t deserve that from me, after the things they said about me, constantly telling me I was evil.
But in this small moment, I can see the branching futures as well.
I can see that I’ll regret it forever if I let this happen when I could have saved them.
I breathe out slowly.
Carefully, I mold the light around my features with Dark Magic, creating a human who looks nothing like me.
Kanin watches me patiently, and I remember what he said.
I’m so glad he’s my friend.
I would tell him, but from the small smile he gives me, he already knows.

trying to figure out an ending for my story by writing flash fiction about it XD

Next: Stars

2 Likes
292

The chilly breeze seemed to seep right through the texture of his oversized jacket.
Lux rubs his hands over his arms, trying to bring back some of his body heat. Caden bumps against him, laughing, and Lux shoves him off. Wynn was sitting across the table from him, looking similarly miserable, which gave Lux some kind of satisfaction, though when his brother catches his eyes, Wynn looks away, grabbing Max’s arm for conversation.
Under the night sky, with fairy lights strung over their heads, the laughter of the others surrounding him, Lux reaches for another piece of meat from the sizzling grill on the table, picking it up with a pair of tongs and depositing it onto his paper plate, which sags under the weight of the food and oil. Lux looks up at the stars sprawling across the sky, trying to find a bit of comfort in imagining he was sitting there alone, instead of with all the people he was with.
Kiana and Caden look drunk on love, giggling at nonsensical things and whispering no-doubt stupid nothings to each other like they were sharing precious secrets. Max and the Haden and Gregory were playing some type of game, sitting in a half-circle with crossed legs and flushed cheeks, laughing heartily and joking loudly, jostling each other. Pallavi and Vianne were pestering some older kids about some dare.
Wynn had Lily on his lap by now, the little girl trying to feed him some hot peppers as Wynn grins, trying to resist.
Lily pouts, then looks over at Lux.
“Hey,” she waves, holding out the pepper to him over the table. “You wanna taste this?”
Lux, who took this as a personal challenge, reaches over and takes it out of her hands, pops it in his mouth, biting in. The pepper was cold by now from the night air, and the spicy juices explode over his tongue and sear through his throat.
“I love it,” he says, as he bites into the piece of meat on his plate to try to wash down the taste before tears could spring to his eyes.
Lilly giggles, clapping her hands, looking delighted. “Another one, another one!”
She holds out another one to him, and Lux looks at the pepper wide-eyed, trying to figure out the right way to refuse her.
Lilly smiles at him knowingly, and before he can think it through, Lux takes that pepper, too, and bites into it.
“Woahhh, Lux, you’re so cool!” Lilly cheers, as Wynn turns, hiding his laugher in the crook of his elbow, even in the dim lighting having seen the panic in Lux’s eyes when Lily had offered him the second pepper.
“Lilly, be nice,” Wynn says, knowing the kid loved teasing Lux.
“But he’s so fun,” Lilly says. “Waaay more than you!”
“If you’re trying to get me to eat the peppers, that won’t work on me.”

next!
fiddle

1 Like
293

I fiddle with my camera, smiling at you in the hopes you’ll smile back but too full of butterflies to request that you smile.
You look back and for the life of me I can’t read your expression.
Click.
I glance at the photo, not long enough to really see it.
“Uh, looks good. Let’s keep going.”
I wanted to make good memories with you today but instead I’ll have this awkward picture of you not smiling.
“…Was my mouth open in the picture?” you ask ten minutes later.
“Huh? The picture? Oh, uh… we can get another one if you want.”
And you could try to pose more.
You rest one elbow awkwardly on the railing behind you, shoulders stiff and eyes wide as if you’re not prepared for this despite having asked for it.
Click.
I look at this one, having learned my lesson from last time.
It looks terrible. You look like you really wanna get out of here.
“How is it?” you ask.
“Uh… it’s fine,” I say, not wanting to make this unpleasant for you.
“Cool,” you say, your voice managing to shake in that short word, eyes on the traffic behind and far to the right of me.
I think we should cut this short.
I desperately cast around for an excuse. I’m not doing anything today and made time for this so…
A family emergency?
I seriously consider the idea for a moment before deciding that I don’t want to lie. Things like that can come back to bite you and make the situation even more awkward.
I guess I have to do this the honest way.
I take a deep breath and force words through the cloud of butterflies inhabiting my belly and chest and throat.
“Look, uh… if you’re, uncomfortable, or not enjoying today, we can uh, cut this short and call it a day.”
“Oh. I… sorry, if I haven’t been good company. Uh, sorry,” you say, playing with your hair as if desperate for anything to focus on but me.
“No, no. I mean yeah. I mean it’s my problem. I mean my fault. My fault I didn’t, uh, ask you.”
I can read your expression now, you look confused.
“If you were uncomfortable or didn’t want to take photos. I kind of pressured you into it. Sorry.”
“No, that’s not it!” you wave your hands around, “I just thought the photos might not be good and… uh… yeah, maybe now isn’t the time for photos. But you didn’t pressure me, I should have said.”
The air feels clearer.
“Alright, I’ll delete them and we can maybe take them later on when it’s a better time. If you wanna meet up again?”
Maybe I shouldn’t ask you here. It’s too much pressure, you’ll be forced to lie, even if you say yes I won’t be able to tell if you-
“Yeah! I mean… yeah,” you glance at me through my hair, finally meeting my eyes and connecting with me.

Next: Foil

1 Like
294

“I’m going to foil all your pans, evil guy,” I say, strolling into the demon lord’s lair.
He rolls his eyes.
“I am like, so not in the mood. Can we make a rain date, dear?”
He’s looking at his talons, not at me, and sinking into his fluffy white and gold throne.
“I wish you’d look at me and not your talons. Granted they’re great. Fine, what’s the date?”
“Thursday seems fine,” he says.
“That’s not gonna do, I’m doing fundraising for the puppy orphanage with my girlfriend.”
“Fine, you can start now and I’ll join you in a bit. The pans are in the kitchen. That’s across from the prison in case you forgot since last time, you bird brain.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking a moment to preen my silver feathers before fluttering to the kitchen.

Next: Grief

1 Like
295

As the metal hunk of doom sinks slowly into the ocean waves, now in the size of several pieces, large, medium, small and every size in between, watery hands preen the vessel for objects to pillage. The seelie with their curiosity for all things human had found the vehicle’s rude entrance into the ocean waters to be an unexpected source of entertainment on an otherwise boring day.
The woman emerges from the car’s depths, now in a terrible shape, the boy slung over her shoulder, unconscious. She bares her teeth at the seelie, waving around an iron stick she’d picked off the car, even as it burns her fingers and sears her vision with pain. The seelie back off, and she kicks towards the surface.
When she breaks the waves, the sun is blinding, and shore seemed too far away.
She’s not sure what she’d done to suffer all this grief, she should’ve thrown the boy out window when she had the chance.

next!
allow

1 Like
296

Okay, sure, maybe if she’d been a little kinder to Alex over the years-- maybe if she hadn’t reacted quite the way she had at the Tuscars incident, or in an any number of things, she wouldn’t have half the guards at the palace chasing her right then.
The alleys were dark, and she was injured, possibly poisoned if her darkening vision spoke to anything. When she runs right into a solid body, she swings her knife without another thought in her mind, until she hears a startled screech, and her gaze focuses on the boy in front of her, who was in the process of now diving for her knife, if the intense train of his eyes on the weapon was anything to go by.
He lunges for it, and with a trick of the hand, she slips the weapon back into her sleeve, turns out of reach.
“Get out of the way,” she gasps, looking over her shoulder. She couldn’t see them, but the thunder of approaching footsteps and barked orders were hard to miss.
“You just stabbed me,” he says, as if scandalized by the audacity.
She shoves him out of the way and clambers over the various stacked items probably placed outdoor for garbage along the narrow alleyways, stumbling right into a wall.
Dead end?
Dead end.
Shoot.
She turns the other way again, fingers skating the grime along the walls.
“Can I help you?” The boy asks, now seemingly amused, or maybe she’s just out of it and is imagining the mocking tone.
She narrows her eyes at him, draws an unsteady breath, “I thought I stabbed you. Not bleeding out yet?”
“To be honest, it was more of a ‘scrape,’ but yes, I am bleeding out, thank you for your concern.”
Clearly, he had no idea what he’d been dragged into.
She shakes her head, “Get behind me. There’s no time.”
“No time for what–”
“There! I found the girl!”
She wants, quite honestly, to cry, preferably in a similar dark alleyway, but without all the people around.
“Get behind me, you moron,” she says, grabbing the boy’s arm and putting herself between the idiot and the oncoming guards. “Get us out of here if you can.”
“There is no ‘us.’” Is what she hears from the ungrateful brat, though she hadn’t expected much from him in the first place.
Her fingers fumble over the sheath at her side, and she draws her sword, just as the first guard attempts to ram his mace right into her face. She staggers slightly, turns her blade, holding the flat edge of her blade up to block the blow.
There was a second in which she gave in to the comforting thought of death. She’s sure her brothers would avenge her well.
The man swings again, and she ducks this time, glad the alleyway at least restricted how many guards could safely swing at her at a time.
“Oh, heavens,” she hears the boy behind her mutter, the shuffle of his footsteps as he tries to back away. “Who are you people?”
She finds that funny, she finds all of it quite funny, but her sense of humor always becomes strange when death seems a whisper away. She slams into the alley wall as the man swings at her again, a gaggle of guards behind him clamoring to be heard as they shout for him to finish her off. It sounded like one of those underground fighting rings all of a sudden.
Someone hits her over the head with something, and that almost knocks her cleanly out, but she rams her sword into someone as the world hushes into dull ricocheting rings around her skull. She draws a breath, swings her fist into someone’s jaw. Well, she hopes it was their jaw. She spits at them for good measure.
That earns a roar, and the guards are all yelling again.
She blinks the black spots in her vision away, because she wasn’t going to allow herself to succumb to the numbness spreading up from her fingertips–drats, so she has been poisoned-- quite yet.
Her legacy would not end as a nameless mercenary in a dark alleyway.

next
eat

1 Like
297

It’s looking pretty grim, though, she has to admit.
Amidst it all, she hears the scrabble of movement behind her, and she backs up into a wall, looking up. The boy from earlier is deftly pulling himself up the side of the building, climbing the bricks like a new species of monkey, and the sight disrupts her thoughts for a moment, as she allows herself to curse this unknown boy for being such a traitor.
So much for trying to protect him from harm.
A guard clips her on her shoulder, and she just goes down from there, the last of her consciousness fading in and out as she struggles and kicks to keep her hold on her sword. They disarm her and press her against the wall, she feels them bind her wrists as she screams every curse word she knows, most of it stuff she’d heard from Jay over the years, and all of it no doubt material that would earn her a cuff on the ear from Ur.
“You shouldn’t be treating a girl like that,” is the only thing she hears over the gravel of the guard’s voices, no doubt from the boy earlier, and someone shouts to, ‘Get the boy, too,’ until someone else says it’s none of their business and they lug her over a guard’s shoulder like a sack of moldy potatoes.
She struggles as best as she can, looks up to see the pale moonlight bouncing off the boy now sitting on the parapets of the building above, lounging there as if he couldn’t be more above the rabble below him if he tried. She raises her hands to make a rude gesture at him, though she unfortunately doesn’t get to see his reaction as the guard who sees her clobbers her on the head.
“Ow,” She growls. “Eat dirt, you–”
“That’s enough of out you,” another one says, as a coarse bag is slipped over her head, even as she continues to yell out less and less creative insults-- it’s not like these idiots deserved her best quips, though she felt she had to do something to hide her utter humiliation.

next
justice

1 Like
298
Summary

Justice.
Should you pay for what you’ve done? Be locked away forever? Have each of the same things happen to you?
I see you laugh through the glass of the window, the sound muffled, the sight muffled by the glint off the glass between you and me.
It could never be enough.
My heart writhes inside my chest. Dark thorned vines have taken hold of my heart, but they can never be released, the pain can only be dulled by the joy of hurting you like you’ve hurt us.
Letting go would hurt more, the vines digging in, screaming at me that I have to uphold justice, I can’t just… let this go.
It’s unthinkable.
And yet there’s no way to make anything better. You’re not capable of understanding, and nobody is on our side.
Destroying more will spread these thorns to more hearts, eating more of the world I share with these monsters.
I’ll never forgive you.
I turn around and walk away.

Next: Ribcage

299

Robin frowns at the obscene gesture the girl makes at him, glad he’d made it out of there and the guards hadn’t wished to pursue him. Goodness, the things that happen when you decide to leave the house for once. He should’ve just stayed in his study, or amused himself in the library. Maybe tried taking an interest in his sister’s tea obsession.
He sticks his tongue out at the girl, wobbling slightly as he stands, balancing on top the narrow wall. He should tell Marlow about this later. Maybe embellish a little bit, how he’d narrowly escaped the chasing guards and met a beast of a girl who’d tried mugging him in a dingy alleyway. He even had a scrape on his shoulder to prove it, he’s sure he can say the bleeding had originally been much worse. It wasn’t like there were any witnesses who’d check.
He smiles slightly. He was better at this than he’d thought he’d be. Maybe he should leave the house more often.
Obviously, if he could handle himself in this situation, there’s little he couldn’t handle all on his own.
There was movement on the wall, and he flinches with a startled yelp, almost losing his footing as a mangy cat slithers between his feet and down the roof. He shudders in the chill breeze, wondering what kinds of diseases the animal might’ve been carrying, and decides it’s high time he head back home. He’s had enough adventure for the day.
As soon as he figures out how to get down from this roof.
He inches down the wall a bit, spotting a rusting metal pipe down the way. He eases himself over the wall and searches for footholds until he finds one, and climbs back down into the dark alleyway, where waiting hands wrap around his mouth and Robin feels a sense of danger light his whole body.
His body does what he’s been taught to do by his teachers, movements he’s been forced to practice countless times if ever he had to fight for his life. He elbows them in the gut and twists away, but there’s more than one person, and someone has a knife.
He knows this, because they hold it at his throat.
“I’ll ask this once, and you’re gonna answer me if you don’t wanna know how it feels like to have your throat slashed open. Who are you working for?”
Robin’s mind spins with the possibilities of what that could mean, and instead of spitting out, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ and ‘You smell filthy, get away from me,’ he says, “I work for Prince Hagar.”
There’s the reaction he’d been looking for, the second’s shock at the sound of the Crown Prince’s name. He uses the wall to kick back into his attacker, and his head rams into their skull. Someone grabs his shoulder and he struggles, uselessly.
“Stop, Liam, car! Now!”
“No–” Robin protests, as they manhandle him away.
His heart sinks in his ribcage, having a brief flashback to the girl getting dragged away.
“The Prince won’t let you off easy for this!” He threatens, though he’s never met the Prince outside a couple of balls he’s attended over the years, “He’ll have all your heads rolling!”

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Summary

A child who always played rough, got dirty, hurt any of us who didn’t get out of his way, and was excused for everything, because he was the oldest and Father’s favorite.
A child who, now grown, still has the entitlement of a child.
And I have to grant him even more power.
I let my disgust show on my face as the door is shut behind us and it’s just me and him in the dungeon.
I wish I could kill him.
But undoubtably, if I did that, the king would fire me and perhaps do worse. Dark magic can’t fight off every soldier he has.
An overpowered manchild would be the least of my problems.
So I channel Dark Energy into myself, hoping it hears me, that killing or destroying him would be the worst thing.
The air darkens and the energy crackles like lightening, and I enjoy the fear in his eyes.
Give him what he wants. Otherwise, I will die. You can tell that I don’t want to die, can’t you? Please listen to me, Darkness.
I can feel it listening, yet I can feel its own personality as it arcs toward him.
The darkness writhes along his skin, shrouding him from view like a massive waterfall.
Is this what it looked like when I used it on myself?
It seems even more uncontrollable, overpoweringly curious, dangerous, from third person.
After a few minutes, the air lightens and sparks dance away across the floor.
He’s much bigger.
Fear trickles down my spine, but I keep a blank face as I look at the creature in front of me.
What is it with Dark Magic’s obsession with demon pig-rats? Or is it my obsession?
He looks like a human even more mashed together with a demon pig-rat than I am, except bigger and more muscular than any human I’ve met.
“What did you turn me into?” he snarls, looking at his massive hairy, clawed hands.
Fear freezes me to the spot. Familiar fear, of being way smaller than someone prone to violence. Except this time, he’s angry. And even though I can use Dark Magic now, it won’t gather nearly quick enough to save me.
“I turned you into an animal which dominates all others in the wild. Combined with the intelligence, cunning, and opposable thumbs of a human. You’ll be unstoppable,” lies combined with truths tumble out of my mouth, the fear sounding like excitement.
“You turned me into an animal? I don’t want to be a filthy animal! You gave me a rat tail! To mock me! Well-”
“A tail which will improve your balance and make you the fastest and most nimble fighter in all the land. It’s magnificent! You’re magnificent!” I say, as though I’m overflowing with happy excitment, as though my palms aren’t icy and sweating, as though my heartbeat isn’t beating through my chest, as though my skin isn’t breaking into a cold sweat all over.
“Come with me, we’ll show everyone the ultimate soldier,” I hold out a hand to him, knowing the only way out of this is to convince him not to kill me.
He slaps it away.
“You’re daft! You think it’s good that everyone looks like a filthy demi-human just like you!”
But instead of wrapping his massive hands around my neck, he shoves me roughly aside and opens the door instead, slamming it behind him.
I sag to the floor, hyperventillating and trying to get my breath under control.

next: consequences

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