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yet-another-heathen · 10 months

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Under the Cover of Night - III

1,506 words. Original Work: The Jackal of An-Nadr.

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Chapter Warning | environmental whump, desert whump, initial capture, ancient demonic pirates that are both beautiful and terrifying (in an "oh. I'm being hunted down by a predator" sort of way. my beloved fellow monsterfuckers, you're going to love this), defiant whumpee, existing foot injury, xenophobia, language and cultural barriers, veiled whumpee having their face forcibly exposed, suggestive taunting (non-explicit), kidnapping/rescue (you decide)

Author’s Notes | This chapter shows our first instance of Q̷͚́ŭ̸͇r̵̥͝u̴͚̍r̶̠̈́a̴̰̋q̶̹̀, the language of the ifrit, as seen through Nadi’s lens. If this causes any problems for my font-sensitive readers, please reach out and I will gladly send you a translated copy! And thank you so much to @secretwhumplair, whose incredible series, No Warrior, inspired this format of language barrier whump!

Taglist | @killtheprotagonist @secretwhumplair @ink-and-salt @kixngiggles @brutal-nemesis @thebewilderer @whumpvp @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @whimperwoods @shydragonrider @pizzasthengym @thecyrulik @ceph-the-writing-spook @mylifeisonthebookshelf @ohwhumpydays @redwingedwhump

When night came and the last of the light had sunk beyond the dunes, Nadeem inched his way out from the edge of the riverbed. A large fire burned at the heart of the ifrit camp, casting ripples of false warmth out across the water like embers. The ifrit had spent the dusk bathing in its flames, washing themselves in glittering cinders with all the eerie joy of dust bathing doves. It was more of a distraction than he could have hoped for, and he wouldn't let the chance get away from him.

He moved slowly, careful not to disturb the surface of the water lest someone see the reflection against the flames.

It was a slow crawl up the embankment as he kept to his hands and knees, clinging to the cover of the banthum grass. His thirst had been sated, but his body was still horribly weak. The climb wasn't an easy one, and his wet clothes clung to his limbs and made silence across the grass all the more difficult.

When he finally made it to the crest and slipped down the other side, he closed his eyes and let out a breath that felt like it had been stuck in his lungs for days.

The night over An-Nadr was moonless and dark, and the stars cast little light on the landscape around him. Shadows welled beneath the wild date palms, shifting with the movement of their fronds.

He gingerly made his way to his feet, ankle angry and swollen beneath his weight. Every step was a gamble to keep it from collapsing, and he forced himself not to think about what that would mean for his ability to survive out here. Especially if it got any worse.

He was careful to keep his head low, following the edges of the rock bed. He kept his hands spread to catch himself in case he stumbled.

He had no recollection of the path he’d taken into the trees, but he knew he’d eventually find sand the further he got from the water. He followed the lowest path he could between the outcrops of stone, moving silently between the dense patches of cover.

Ahead the grove thickened, creating a canopy of fronds under which the ground was beginning to soften. He headed for their shelter, eager for the promised safety that would calm the feeling of ant bites at his nape. Breaths clouded against the back side of his litham, the fabric keeping them silent from the world outside. He'd take the chance of stumbling into the shelter of coiled snakes and other wildlife over the chance of being seen.

The light of the stars was distant and faint through the leaves. Away from the familiar paths and eddies of his home, Nadeem's progress was slow through the dark.

No animal walked in steady, even tempos but men; and so he kept his pace faint and hesitant to disguise the sound of his footsteps through the littered clay. Often he stopped to listen and observe the shadows around him, picking the path least likely to catch on sticks and twigs. Behind him followed an uneven trail of single bloody footsteps, meandering back through the dark.

There was nothing he could do about it. He just had to hope that neither the ifrit, nor anything else, would find it. The shifting of the sand would cover it once he made it to the safety of the desert, and they would lose the trail there.

That was where his mind lingered as he watched through the leaves for the lighter gray of the dunes. And soon he caught glimpses of the open desert far beyond the trees. He slunk low between patches of cover, keeping the distant sound of the fire to his back.

His mind continued to race with thoughts of how to avoid being tracked, preoccupied with the beginning of a plan to circle to another part of the oasis. Then something pricked at the edge of his hearing.

He stopped in his tracks, straining to listen as ice flashed through his limbs.

For a long while the night answered him with nothing but the roar of crickets, stretching out the moment to eons. And then he heard it again—about thirty feet to his right, the sound of something in the dark. He lowered himself into the shelter of the surrounding bushes, crouching to listen.

Then he saw it. The blue-abalone reflection of eyes from the darkness. Like a hyena's, stalking him through the grass. But as he watched, they rose out of the darkness to a nearly impossible height. Fixed on him.

Then a twig snapped somewhere in the darkness right behind him, and Nadeem forgot how to breathe.

He whipped around, searching the blackness. His heart pounded as something in the shadows behind him moved, leaves shuddering against their branches.

A massive figure stepped from the shadows, melting into the starlight.

The ifrit towered above him and inclined its head. The glinting of eyes, the flash of teeth bared in a predatory smile. Something else moved behind it, emerging from the shade by its side.

—No.

Nadeem tried to run, not a single thought given to the pain in his ankle. He only made it a few steps before he collided headlong into another body.

Enormous hands grabbed him, breath leaving his lungs from the force of the impact. He gasped and struggled, trying to yank free as the monster locked all its hands around him.

He clawed and shoved, “No no no no, no—” falling from his lips. The ifrit from before, with the black sash across its chest, called something into the night.

With an effortless twist of a hand it pulled his head back, nearly lifting him off of his feet by the back of his turban. He gasped, staring with wide eyes up into its face.

“Let go of me,” he gasped, “Let—”

Dark eyes smiled down at him, teeth glinting.

He cut off into a tight whine as it reached up and took the cloth of his litham between its fingers, so close to his face that he felt the heat pouring off its skin.

"H̴͎̆e̶̙̅l̷̤̿l̷͓̍o̴̖͋,̸̨̕ ̷̭̀ḹ̸ȋ̶͈t̶̩̆t̶̼͑ĺ̴͓e̸̮͐ ̶͍̒j̷̮́a̷̢̍č̵͉k̶̬͆á̴͜l̸͔̔.̴̪̚"

The ifrit purred something in its rumbling language, leering down at him.

"S̸͎̅ọ̸̀ ̵̙̎g̶̣̋ō̸̺ȯ̴̲d̶̐ͅ ̶̪̀o̷̖̐f̴͍̓ ̵͈̍y̴͉͠o̷̱̿ư̴̦ ̴̲̇t̸͎͠ŏ̸̺ ̷̡͐f̵̛̲i̷̥̎n̸͕̿a̶̯̿ḷ̶́l̵͜͝y̸͂ͅ ̸̦͝j̶̣̃ō̵͕i̴͈̎n̶͇̔ ̶͙͘ű̸͓s̵͈̄.̶̟̓"

---

Ifyaa glanced up when the sound of struggling edged into the camp. Two of his fellow ifrit emerged from the shadows, followed by Yeezumon and the thrashing, clawing human he was dragging with him.

Every set of eyes fixed on the dirtblood as it cast wildly around the camp, dragging a bloody foot. Its clothes were muddy and torn. Yeezumon forced it to its knees.

From the other side of the fire, Adrsiae inclined her head.

"So we do have a visitor,” she mused.

It strained away in Yeezumon’s grip as she stood, the boy watching her through narrowed eyes. It flinched when she reached out and took its chin in her palm.

“You found it at the end of the blood trail?”

“Near there. The damn thing was playing clever: had it been only ten minutes sooner it probably would have slipped past us back out into the wastes,” Simntii, another member of the hunting party, muttered. She grunted softly as she knelt at the edge of her tent, adjusting the leg of her pants, “Gave us one hell of a fight on the way back.”

“Hm.”

It leveled the captain with a scathing glare when she turned it by the jaw, and then tugged down its face cloth to see its features in the light.

Dark eyes narrowed under thick, winged brows, the domed bridge of its nose crinkling with its snarl. Cracked lips and bared teeth, jaw lined with overgrown stubble.

It was rugged but...an undeniably pretty face. Her claws left indents in its cheeks as she turned it in the firelight, appraising.

Then she released it, and it gave a full-body shudder as she turned away.

She reclaimed her spot by the fire. “Yeezumon, you were the one who tracked it down?”

“I was.”

She leaned back, tearing into the soft flesh of a date, “Then it’s yours. Do with it as you wish.”

Their eyes didn’t leave the human, whose smell of fear was tangible in the air even as it glared back at her. Each of them nodded in deference to their captain, absently touching their thumbs to their temples.

“Careful Yeezumon,” one of them teased, flashing his canines in a mockery of the human’s bared teeth, “It looks like it wants to bite.”

A ripple of laughter broke through the camp.

“It's handsome, for a dirtblood,” another admitted.

Both Yeezumon and Ifyaa smiled, sharing eye contact across the camp. Then Yeezumon lifted its face, making it meet his eyes.

“So it is,” he grinned. “And we’ll put it to good use.”

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daybydayintheatmosphere · 2 months

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sometimes i think a bit to hard about nadeem and i

#the jackal of an nadr #nadeem el-azimi

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yet-another-heathen · 10 months

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Under the Cover of Day - II

899 words. Original Work: The Jackal of An-Nadr.

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Chapter Warning | environmental whump, desert whump, epic worldbuilding, hiding in an attempt to evade capture, ancient demonic pirates and the sandships they sail, being tracked down like a wounded animal (which, let's admit it. right now you may as well be)

Taglist | @killtheprotagonist @secretwhumplair @ink-and-salt @kixngiggles @brutal-nemesis @thebewilderer @whumpsical @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @whimperwoods @shydragonrider @pizzasthengym @thecyrulik @ceph-the-writing-spook @mylifeisonthebookshelf @ohwhumpydays @redwingedwhump

The sun was beating down on the water, glinting and blinding and sharp. Nadeem hadn't moved an inch from where he'd climbed down beneath the spines of the thicket, save to drape his waist sash over his head to disguise the yellow of his turban.

Strings of algae wormed between his toes like grass, flowing with eddies of water beneath the dappled light. Across the oasis, under the blue of their sail, the ifrit had set up camp.

Open tents spread out along a sandy stretch of embankment, while the women and men milled back and forth to the pond with buckets and canteens. Long, darkened limbs reached as far out as they could to collect water from the dryness of shore. Feet traced carefully around the water's edge, never touching the surface. Their voices rose and fell in a way that was even-tempoed and foreign.

Patrols had been venturing out into the oasis since dawn, groups of three or four disappearing into the underbrush only to emerge from some new part of the clearing. He’d counted twenty-two in all, with tall figures occasionally calling into the ship where he suspected there may be a handful more.

He watched the camp carefully, searching for any indicator of how long they’d stay. He knew the human caravans that traversed An-Nadr would sometimes linger for weeks at any oasis they found in the wastes. He had no idea what that would mean to the larger sandship.

So far they had unloaded very little save for their tents, and he was holding to the last of a prayer that meant they wouldn’t stay for long.

He’d seen enough wildlife that there had to be some kind of foragable plants, and if he was lucky—very lucky—it would be enough to get him though a few more weeks in hopes that another human caravan would pass through. If he could stay out of sight, he still had a chance.

There was only one problem.

Even under the stifling heat of the afternoon sun, the water that bubbled from the earth was so cold that his limbs had gone numb where they were buried in the sucking depths of the silt. With the night fast approaching, he knew he couldn’t stay where he was.

But there was nothing between him and the ifrit camp but open water.

So Nadeem did the only thing he could do. He planned. When night fell he would slip from the bank under the cover of darkness, where he could pick his way over the stones back out into the safety of the dunes. He knew the sand, heat-baked by day, would be enough to keep him warm. Having nearly drank his weight in water, he figured he could make it another night or two before he’d have to find a way back.

The desert bought him time. He just had to wait.

He wound his fingers through the roots buried in mud beneath him, and leaned his head back into a crook between branches. He watched the world through his lashes, biding his time as the wind sifted through the thorns.

---

Ifyaa had spent the morning unloading the ship, the sun beating down on him until his shoulders had begun to smolder in the heat. Wisps were still rising from his skin as he made his way through the camp, side-stepping bedrolls and limbs as he made his way toward his tent.

Several of the others had just returned from patrol. Among them he spotted his husband, trailing behind the rest. Yeezumon’s eyes were cast out over the oasis, scanning the trees as if he was expecting to see something move.

Ifyaa finished securing the side of the tent flap, then slipped between the other ifrit and made his way across the beach. Yeezumon didn’t glance back when he approached, but he automatically reached out for Ifyaa’s hand.

They brushed the tips of their fingers down each other’s palm, settling in at one another’s side.

“What is it?” he asked.

Yeezumon glanced at him, distracted. He passed something over, silent as Ifyaa took it and held it up to see. A jagged stone half as long as his finger, the pointed tip covered in red-brown blood.

“Hm. So I wasn’t seeing things,” he murmured. He turned it over in the light, then handed the stone back, “What’s it doing so far south?”

“I don’t know. I had my patrol check the horizon, but there’s been no sign of other ships.”

“...a stray? This far out?”

“I’m not sure.”

He sighed. Ifyaa slowly unwound his turban, stepping forward into the water. He felt Yeezumon tense as he waded out into the ankle deep silt, the sound of splashing turning eyes from the camp before they realized it was only him. He tugged his turban free, running fingers over the waves of his hair before stooping to run the fabric through the water.

“Well whatever it is,” he wrung the cloth, “I don’t fancy a mercy killing.” He scanned the edge of the pool. “Have you told Adrsiae?”

“She knows.”

Something in the tone of his husband’s voice made him glance back, and he found those dark eyes following him with just the barest trace of a smile.

“Habibi, how do you feel about taking on a new pet?”

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yet-another-heathen · 4 months

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would you ever write nadeem playing some kind of board game with the ifrit i just think it would be really funny if they introduced him to their traditional version of uno from their culture and he got really good at it and beat all their asses

He does exactly this! The night crew especially likes to play games with carved bones and dice. When they're just starting out, someone gifts Nadi a single coin so that he's able to bet. Before long, he's holding his own against people who have been playing these games for centuries. Your boy has a talent for strategy! Just not so much for luck.

#ask Wick #spot on Nemi #Nadeem el-Azimi

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yet-another-heathen · 10 months

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Active Series Masterpost

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The Jackal of An-Nadr - [X]

Set in 1,200 BCE. The Jackal of An-Nadr follows the capture of Nadeem, a date-farmer turned thief who was abandoned in the wastes of the desert when he tried to steal from the wrong ship.

Stranded and alone, he is found and enslaved by a crew of ifrit—towering demons that roam An-Nadr in ships that can sail the sand. Will he become a plaything of the creatures from his nightmares? Or is there something more for him waiting in the hands of his would-be captors?

Content | epic worldbuilding, defiant whumpee, environmental whump, monsterfucking, slavery, desert pirates, pre-historic fiction, LGBTQ+ fiction. Adult themes, with occasional NSFW content [including dub-con and non-con]

Cast | Nadeem, Yeezumon, Ifyaa, Adrsiae, Hidhialial

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Liliholm and Page - [X]

This series follows Wesley Page, a daring vigilante best known by his alias, Deimos. When he steals and exposes a massive library of blackmail owned by one of the city's worst villains, their entire criminal world goes on a manhunt to track him down. Captured and alone, Deimos is subjected to the revenge and torture of not just the man he stole from, but every villain whose crimes he exposed.

Does he have it in him to withstand their torture long enough to escape? And if so, will he still have the strength afterward to heal?

Content | sci-fi, cyberpunk setting, superpower whump, kidnapping, very brutal torture, gore, repeated noncon // PTSD, an old friend (who just happens to be the city's most powerful villain and a renowned psych professor) turned caretaker. LGBTQ+ fiction. Frequent NSFW content, almost exclusively noncon.

Luca and Garcia

An offshoot of Liliholm and Page. A dynamic duo of bastards that you absolutely hate to love.

Content | EXTREME GORE, VIOLENCE, whumper POV, all hurt no comfort, character death, incredibly brutal whump, painful healing, immortal whumper-turned-whumpee, agender protagonist, villains that are so human you want to strangle them yourself. Aro/Ace friendly!

Cast | Wesley Page, Henry Liliholm, Yalom, Luca, Garcia

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Writing Prompts

All my writing prompts are free to use and can be found under the tag #words of a heathen.

----------------------------

The Hare Trap Chronicles - [X]

This story is not one of mine, but one submitted to me in series by my beloved 🐇 Anon. Follow the story of Ignacy, a hedonistic young aristocrat-turned-vampire, and his many lifetimes of misadventure as he lives out his centuries as the 'black sheep' of his family's estate.

#ask Wick #The Jackal of An-Nadr #Liliholm and Page #Luca and Garcia #Henry Liliholm #Wesley Page #Luca #Garcia #Nadeem el-Azimi #Yeezumon #Ifyaa #words of a heathen

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yet-another-heathen · 10 months

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Alright everybody, Jackal update!

I have a newer and fuller version of Nadeem's story that I've been rewriting on the side, and it's finally time I published it! This doesn't include any entirely new chapters, but there is a lot of depth and story building that I have added into the current story that so many of you have told me you want to see.

So, today I'm going to be posting these rewritten chapters for the first time! My plan is to create a new master post for the updated versions, which will become my new pinned post at the end of the day.

I WILL NOT BE DELETING THE ORIGINAL VERSIONS OF THE STORY. The "Old Masterpost" will still be available, it will simply be unpinned from the top of my blog. The reason being is that some of my most beloved comments and interactions live in these original posts, and nothing in the world could convince me to get rid of those memories.

If ever you want a link back to the Old Masterpost, just let me know and I'll be happy to send them to you!

Note that there will be one or two chapters that I will keep as the original version for now—I'm still making my edits to those parts of the story and will weave them back in later once they are complete. But in general, you can expect to see a lot of bonus content especially in those first few chapters of Nadeem's story!

I hope you enjoy <3

#The Jackal of An-Nadr #story update #rewritten chapters #Nadeem el-Azimi #ask Wick #blog update

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yet-another-heathen · 10 months

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oooh, what is this a new big reveal?? Are we going to find out what a son of solomon is?

It's going to be a surprise! Only one person knows the secret, and he's keeping it under lock and key 👀 But I will tell you that it has to do with Nadi's identity, and plays a part in why he was stranded in the desert in the first place!

As for the Son of Solomon part, I actually plan to include an epigraph in this version that might shed a little more light on it. And if you still want more after you've had a chance to read the new version, I might make a separate post explaining the history of it in more detail <3 Just let me know!

#ask Wick #the Son of Solomon thing isnt a huge secret and I don't mind writing it out #today is just committed to answering asks amd formatting chapters for tumblr 😆#The Jackal of An-Nadr #Nadeem el-Azimi

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yet-another-heathen · 2 months

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Posting this here because Nadi's language learning came up tonight with @venusski

When Nadeem starts learning Qururaq, his own Qa'imrani accent stays thick. This is almost exactly what he sounds like to the crew when he speaks their language. And that's after he's already spent a year or two becoming fluent.

#The Jackal of An-Nadr #Nadeem el-Azimi #and yes before you ask #the entire crew finds it overwhelmingly endearing #especially the Husbands #gods I genuinely love this boy #and no his accent never gets any softer than this simply because I won't let it

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yet-another-heathen · 3 months

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nadeem ?

I laughed! So very, very him 💅

#thank you for this!!!#I love to see it #ask Wick #Nadeem el-Azimi

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yet-another-heathen · 9 months

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For my beloved henry: 12, 27, 38, and..3 (go to bed and nEVER WAKE UP HAHA)

And for Naddylicious: 18, 32, and B!

Oh boy. Putting this bad boy under a cut because it's a long one! Thank you Nemi <33

Henry:

How do they put themselves to bed at night (reading, singing, thinking?)

Most nights, Henry spends about an hour before bed bundled up and reading. He almost always ends up reading a little longer than he intended to, fighting off the heavy eyes until he finally has to put the book down before he drops it.

How do they deal with an itch found in a place they can’t quite reach?

Oh, this one is a very familiar frustration for him—the scar tissue around his arm acts up sometimes and will get insanely itchy, but because the nerves have been so heavily rewired it can be nearly impossible to figure out WHERE the scratch is coming from. Imagine if you got a mosquito bite but no matter how much you ran your hand over your skin, you can only find a spot CLOSE to where the bite actually is. And most of the places you end up trying to itch are on scar tissue, which itself feels awful to scratch at. It's endlessly frustrating. Henry will try to ignore them for a while, but he usually just gets shifty and then irritable and then finally has to go off to a bathroom somewhere to spend ten minutes searching for them.

More mundane itches, he'll just excuse himself to go handle.

What causes them to feel dread?

😈 Electricity. The sound of it crackling, the sight of sparks arcing through air. It gives him a very tangible kind of dread because he knows that if he gets shocked, it could very well stop his heart. And even if it doesn't kill him outright, a good shock means going to make sure that his ICD is still functional. And if not, that means yet another heart surgery in order to replace it.

Dogs are another one. Less dread and more 'you're gonna get to see him climb onto a table to get away from your Pomeranian' kind of antics.

What memory do they revisit the most often?

You know, this is a really really hard one for me to answer. Henry spends so much of his time planning for the future, and very rarely goes about living in the past. Unless it's something he's still carrying a lot of guilt over. And of those, you pretty much have your pick—most of the time it's over the kind of mistake that you can only see the other choices for in hindsight. How you'd wish you'd been more careful, that you'd known to ask, that you'd waited just one day more. The ones that really haunt him are the ones that got other people hurt. And unfortunately, of those he has quite a selection.

Nadi:

What embarrasses them?

Nudity. And unfortunately for Nadi, his definition of the word is MUCH different than the ifrits'. To him and his people, a grown man having his hair exposed to people other than family is horribly indecent. Having his face exposed to strangers before they've become acquainted is the same. And having any more of his body exposed than just his hands and feet?? It's so unthinkably humiliating that to be in as little clothing as the ifrit wear would make Nadeem want to curl up into a little ball and cry. He has no idea how the ifrit just. Do that. And he's so badly hoping they won't make him join them.

[Here's the fun part of having Nadi as a narrator though: this boy doesn't realize that to the rest of the world, he's the one who is such a traditionalist and prude that it borders on comedy. They entertain it because they think it's cute.]

Do they have a go-to story in conversation? Or a joke?

Not a specific joke, but he does have some pretty signature stories when he's around younger kids. Nadi earned himself a reputation around his village for being able to entertain all the children with his storytelling. It got to the point where parents who wanted to socialize during holidays knew exactly where to go leave their little ones; circled around a fire where Nadeem was already painting tales of travellers and magic. And the kids loved it because if they begged enough, then near the end of the night they could always talk him into one (1) scary story. And at those? Nadeem absolutely excelled. Sometimes it would be stories he adapted from real jinn encounters—a lot less bloody and terrifying than real life tales, but taking from the things that made them so unnerving. And he'd watch for when the kids were all holding their breaths in terror, then give a little jump scare. And then end the story on something silly, once the chorus of delighted screaming was over.

And for Nadi's final question, I've already got the answer for you here!

#these were all such good picks Nemi #I know I didn't have concrete answers for all of them but #it's fun to be thinking around them anyway #ask Wick #The Jackal of An-Nadr #Nadeem el-Azimi #Henry Liliholm #Liliholm and Page #and never wake up? pfft I dont know about that #but I WOULD take being stuck in that cozy sleepy 'just one more snooze button' fugue for eternity thank you very much

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yet-another-heathen · 9 months

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For Nadeem:

B) What inspired you to create them?

H) What trait do you admire most?

B) What inspired you to create them?

Nadeem's entire world came about when I was solo car camping one night. It was getting really cold outside, but I was bundled up in a soft bed with lots of blankets, just as snuggled down into them as could be. And the first glimpse I ever got of them was Nadeem sandwiched between the Husbands on a cold night, so content from the warmth that he could barely keep his eyes open. I think him getting a massage to get the knots out of his neck/shoulders was also part of it, because I very much remember him melting into a puddle in their hands. The next morning I wrote the very first draft of "Uarhaq's" story where he got dragged up onto the deck right after his capture. Part of that very first draft actually made it into Nadi's canon, where he's described as being dumped unceremoniously onto the deck and watches the shadow of the sail on the deck planks. I'm still so glad that the original seed is still visible in the rest of the story even though so much of it changed and grew on its own.

H) What trait do you admire most?

By FAR, it's Nadi's relentless and unyielding love for his family. He truly loves his parents and his sisters more than anything else in the world. And it's for them that he's surviving all of this, and will continue to fight to try to get home to them against impossible odds. Yes, he might have gotten flung into a world of danger and politics and so much more than he ever asked for. But before he is anything else—a thief, a Son of Solomon, a slave, a keystone—Nadeem is and always will be an oldest brother.

#thank you so much for the ask Anna!#these ones especially were so much fun to answer #ask Wick #Nadeem el-Azimi #The Jackal of An-Nadr

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yet-another-heathen · 10 months

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which chapters are you still working on editing? Just so I know when I get to them

I'm still working my way through the second half of Prying at Loose Fangs, where Yeezumon gets handsy with Nadi for the first time. That will honestly probably be the chapter that ends up getting the biggest revamp, since there's more I want to add to the moment when Yeez tries taking away Nadi's turban and the general fear he's feeling upon being taken aboard. I've also been considering splitting off the touchy exploring for a later chapter, sometime after he's had his foot cauterized and is being weaned off the eadh.

#we all love seeing Yeezumon get handsy with him #it might just work better for the flow of the story if it happens later on #theres also a big reveal that we're building up towards #and it would pair really well with that portion of what I've written #ask Wick #The Jackal of An-Nadr #Nadeem el-Azimi #Yeezumon #story update

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yet-another-heathen · 10 months

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Ooh, will we be getting any more of Nadeem's backstory in t he rewrite?

There is a little bit more of his backstory woven in there, but you're going to have to look for it! While I plan on writing more flashbacks for when he's with his family in future chapters, the rewritten chapters focus more on glimpses into the motivations and fears over why he reacts to his situation in the way that he does. And as we get further into the story and you do get more background, I'm hoping it will all pull together :)

#thank you for asking!!#I promise there will be plenty of his interactions with his sisters shown further down the road #and if you ever have specific questions or want me to go on a rant I'd love to answer inbox questions about it!!#The Jackal of An-Nadr #ask Wick #Nadeem el-Azimi #story update

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yet-another-heathen · 2 years

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Smile while you can, little thief.

I really hate how pretty this man is. [X]

@killtheprotagonist @secretwhumplair @ink-and-salt @kixngiggles @simplygrimly @brutal-nemesis @thebewilderer @whumpvp @scrabble-rouser @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @whimperwoods @shydragonrider @pizzasthengym @thecyrulik @ceph-the-writing-spook @mylifeisonthebookshelf

#Nadeem el-Azimi #The Jackal of An-Nadr #whumpee #whump art #my art #featuring a spoiler that some of you will already get <3 #no I will not clarify

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yet-another-heathen · 2 years

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Hello! Has there been any updates in the story of Nadi? The last I read was when he tried to attacked with the sword and lost.

As of now, that is the most recent update! There is one more chapter after the one you mentioned, but it's one I published earlier in the year. I'm planning for there to be at least two more chapters between Steps and The Pit Viper in order to flesh out more of what Nadi's first days with his captors are like!

#ask Wick #but hopefully you wont have long to wait!#the jackal of an-nadr #nadeem el-azimi

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yet-another-heathen · 10 months

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Rising to the West - I

2,576 words. The first re-penned chapter in my original series, The Jackal of An-Nadr.

For new readers, The Jackal is an ongoing whump series set in 1,200 BCE, where pre-Islamic fantasy meets the love of bloody sword fights, found family, and handsome men who long for nothing more than home. I am so excited for this unveiling, the love that you all have shown this series over the past several years means more to me than I could ever say. This is for you <3

- Masterpost -

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Chapter Warning | environmental whump, epic worldbuilding, demonic pirates and the massive sandships they sail, marooned in the middle of the desert with no hope of rescue, deadly levels of dehydration, very near-death experience, very brief allusion to noncon, prayer/fantasy religion, evading capture, foot injury

His name was Nadeem el-Azimi, and things had not gone according to plan.

He stumbled on the loose crest of the dune, barely able to blink his eyes open enough to right his path. His body swayed as he adjusted back onto course, aching with the effort it took to take those few extra steps. Sand cascaded down the face of the drift in steady intervals behind him, rushing toward the base like trickles of water.

Of all things, his mind kept circling and circling about how raw his feet felt. The loose, ever-shifting sand ground between his toes, and there was nothing he could do to make it stop.

The sun had set over the An-Nadr desert, and the temperature had plummeted with it. Nadeem pulled his waist sash tighter around his shoulders, clenching his jaw to keep it from clattering against the cold. The stars overhead were dying out one by one, but the warmth of dawn was hours away, even though the light would come sooner.

He kept walking. It only made it harder if he stopped.

In the distance, a low patch of scrub hugged the earth. The traders had taunted him with it when they marooned him amongst the sand. A sun-wrinkled face leered down at him as the others dumped him over the stanchion, the breath knocked from his lungs when he hit the ground. He struggled and gasped against his binds, while the men above him laughed.

“Three days to the east!” the old one said to him. The one whose filthy hands he could still feel roving over his body when he closed his eyes. He leaned over the rail and grinned as the other men tamed the mast behind him, the wind catching its girth and pulling it taut.

Nadeem thrashed and cursed through his gag, shouting desperately as the sandship began to move.

“Three days to the east you’ll find water,” he called back, “Better get going, little thief!”

And the shadow of the hull slid over his body, sunlight blinking between strips of rope. And then the white of the mast shrank beyond the waves, and the sandship had disappeared from sight.

It had taken him nearly half a day to struggle free of his bonds. By then he was utterly, entirely alone. For hundreds of miles in every direction, the only thing was sand.

That had been two and a half days ago. Anger had burned out into sorrow, then to hopelessness, then to a numbness that he couldn't shake. The leagues had passed underfoot slowly, pace worsening as his body had slowly begun to fail. Nadeem had never been a particularly stout man and, while he knew hunger like an old enemy, his body still was not made to endure the absence of water. Not like this. He rubbed mindlessly at the friction burns circling his wrists to try to distract himself from the endless drone of thirst.

Through the dark he could just barely begin making out the green against the washed-out blue of the surrounding sand, peeking between the dunes. He thought he could make out the shape of date trees, but he no longer trusted his eyes not to play tricks on him. They couldn’t be more than a few more hours away.

And as soon as he saw the oasis he knew he wasn’t going to make it.

And still he kept walking.

---

The first pearls of sunlight caught his shoulders, and he shuddered with relief. It wasn't enough, but with the night having long since sapped away his warmth, he’d take whatever he could get.

Those who crossed these deserts knew to travel after dusk once the savage temperatures had fallen, and to take shelter and sleep as much as they could through the long days when the heat would kill anything that moved. Any other day, he would have kept walking for another hour as the sun rose, then taken shelter behind one of the dunes to collapse until night fell again.

But not today. Today he could not afford to stop even for the dawn prayer. He knew it in the ache of his bones and the relentless throbbing of his head. He was dying. And if he stopped now, even for this, he wouldn't get back up.

He could not begin to describe how tempting the thought was. How loudly his body begged him to let him rest one last time, how shrilly his heart tried to convince him he had already done all he could. He could lay here and watch the colors of the sky change, feel the warmth wash over him. He could give himself one more sunrise. One more chance to watch the beauty of it all before it was gone.

His feet slowed to a stop, despite his commands. A slow breath, in and out through his nose. He reached up with puffy fingers to fumble with his face cloth, loosening it until the linen fell free.

Nadeem turned slowly back toward the glint of the sunrise, and closed his eyes. He had both won and lost his own bet. He had lived for one more day. He would take that victory, even if…even…

Keep moving, Nadeem. Those thoughts are going to kill you.

Today he would either make it to the oasis, or his body would be slowly being covered up and buried by the ever-creeping drifts that surrounded him. Those were the only two possibilities left, and it was getting harder and harder to believe that he had any hope of the former.

Control of his body was slipping, and apathy dulled his thoughts more and more with each passing breath. And still he mumbled out the soft, broken consonants of the prayer he had been clinging to, words repeated so many times in the last day that they had become nothing more than foreign sounds devoid of whatever had once made them words.

The comforting lines he had known since he was a child fell from him in a broken, confused tangle of what they were meant to be. He hoped the gods would still take the whisper for its intention rather than its delivery. He was fairly certain someone had once told him they would. That they knew.

He couldn't remember their face. He hoped it had been Hanona. She had always been right about such things.

Keep moving, Nadeem. You have to take one more step.

He whispered a quiet little apology to the air before him, reaching out as if to gently cling upon the fabric of someone’s robes. His fingers closed over nothing, and he let out a shaky little breath as he pulled the imagined cloth closer to the ache of his chest.

He swayed, felt the knot of dry tears in his throat. But he knew crying was beyond him now.

When eventually he realized that the strength to continue on was slipping for good, he summoned one last, Walk, Nadeem.

His foot answered him sluggishly, one barely-there step backwards. He cracked open his eyes.

And stopped.

Far in the distance, slipping along the razor’s edge between waves and sky, a pinprick of black was making its way across the sand.

A mirage. It had to be.

He stared at it in doubt, blinking to see if it would fade.

He watched it for what felt like a lifetime, so afraid that if he looked away it would be gone. But as the minutes passed and the shape grew closer, a fragile hope began to smolder in his chest.

A ship.

His head was swimming. The mast rose and dipped over a bank, light catching flecks of metal. But he could still make out the shape of the bow, cutting across the tops of the dunes.

He didn’t have the strength to cry out. He didn’t have the strength to move.

They were coming straight for the oasis, straight to him.

He couldn’t—he...he…

...he stopped.

The sandship rose to the top of another peak, sail catching the light of the sun beyond. For a moment everything was dark, then the cloth rippled and his heart ground to a stop.

The vibrant, cobalt blue sails of an Al Qururaqin cutter shone in the morning sun.

He stumbled backward, and ran.

The ground gave away beneath him as he bounded down the dark side of the dune, slipping and catching himself when he hit the bottom. His heart was pounding as he pressed his back into the side of it and began pulling armfuls of sand over his body.

He barely managed to cover his legs and the lower half of his chest, limbs burning with exertion. Black spots swam across his vision. His breaths came shallow and ragged through split lips. Still he clawed at the sand until he’d covered as much of himself as he could.

If the ship hadn’t already spotted him, the dunes gave him a chance of being passed unseen. If they had...

He held his breath, straining to keep his gasps under control.

And then he heard it. Someone singing loudly enough for their voice to carry. The unmistakable shuffing of wood, the sound of voices calling back and forth to one another.

It grew closer until someone gave a sharp shout, and the sound of the sail straining at its rigging changed. The sandship was close—far, far too close—and it was slowing to a stop.

Something heavy hit the ground and he shrank further back into the dune. Then another, then more.

Too late he realized his mistake. As he lay there straining to stay calm, there came the petrifying moment when he remembered the trail of footprints he’d left along the tops of the dunes. The ones that would lead them straight to him.

The sand gave him nowhere else to hide. If he stayed here, buried or not, they would find him. Casting around, he caught just the barest hint of green through the split in the dunes.

He didn’t have the strength. He knew he didn’t. But panic summoned every last shred of energy into his trembling legs, and before he could think he pushed to his feet and stumbled into a run.

His feet pounded against the earth. All his vision was a blur as he slid around the corner of a dune and up the channel between.

Dizziness swept over him, and he gasped and shook his head to try to clear it. He scaled the next dune on his hands and knees, sinking deep into the sand as he sprinted for the shelter of the brush.

He knew the moment they’d spotted his trail. Strange voices rose into the dawn behind him, and when he couldn’t resist the urge to look back he saw the sharp rise of a mast against the sky.

Vibrantly embroidered bolts of sailcloth whipped and curled in the breeze, the sun’s first strands of light striking it from behind and setting the fabric ablaze. The blue sails burned against the pale of the morning sky, and dread smothered his thoughts.

He didn’t see the shale until it was too late. Something sharp speared up through the bottom of his foot, and before he could catch himself he’d gone sprawling across the outcropping and into the dirt. He let out a low groan of pain as he blinked the darkness from his eyes.

He'd collapsed at the edge of the oasis. Behind him a jagged shard of rock pointed in the air, covered in blood.

He struggled to his feet and stumbled into the bank of shrubs, barely slowing as he made his way deeper into the growth. His ankle kept trying to give out beneath him, the thick litter of sticks and twigs jabbing into the wound. Slowing him down.

He bit back his voice as he clambered over the thickest piles of stone he could find, hoping to every single god he could name that they would help hide his footprints. The distant shouts were growing closer.

He stumbled over a ridge and found a thicket of shrubs, and realized that the glinting just beyond was water. He slid down the bank into the spring, wading out into the knee-high water that spread out between pools of algae.

He realized then that there was no cover. None but the branches of shrubs that overhung the basin, clinging to the overgrown shore.

Without even stopping to savor the feeling he never thought he’d have again, he fell to his knees in the water and ducked beneath their low branches. Spines ripped at his clothes as he crawled toward shore, as close as he could get to the place where the water met the earth underneath their leaves. He wormed his way deeper into the silt until his back was pressing against half-submerged trunks and the surface of the water reached his throat.

He forced his shivering body to still, schooling his breath in an attempt to hide the sound. As quickly as the ripples around him faded into the reeds the sound of snapping twigs approached.

On the shallow ridge, less than a hundred paces away, a dark figure broke through the trees.

Nadeem forgot how to breathe.

As a boy, bright-eyed and impatient, the Mothers had spun tales of Al Qururaqin caravans, moving from port to desert port. Tales of four-armed demons with ashen skin as dark as the mud at the bottom of the Parattu, swords gleaming in their hands. Of monsters who steal boys away from their ships, taking them away into the blackness of their holds.

Stories of the ifrit.

He never thought he'd be cornered by one.

Nadeem may have been scrawny, but he was no short man—by the time he was twelve he’d already stood a full head taller than his Maaman, as well as half the men in his town. This ifrit dwarfed him. It must have stood three heads taller than he did, with such strength coiled in its body that he felt sick with fear.

It scanned the water, a beautiful and broad face silhouetted by the rising of the sun. Thin wisps of smoke rose from its shoulders, disappearing into the air. One of its upper limbs rested at its hip, blackened fingers curling loosely around the hilt of a sword.

As its gaze swept out across the bank and over his hiding place, he could only pray that it didn't see the impressions his feet had left in the algae.

An entire lifetime passed as the ifrit searched the grove, scanning the silhouettes of trees. So many times Nadeem was certain he’d been spotted, and yet the figure came no closer.

Then it turned, cast one more look out over the water, and went back the way it had come.

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