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peachypinkygloss · 9 months

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Congratulations!!!! Your fics ara amazing, truly deserved.

For the game I thought about werefox!Tae and Shepherd daughter! OC or Shepherd! Oc 💭

thank you so much for the request, love 🫶🏻 love u, mwah 💋 xox

renard

You find an injured fox near the sheep pen and decide to save him.

pairing: werefox!taehyung x shepherd/human!reader

genre: hybrid au

warnings: mentions (no explicit description) of wounds and injuries on tae, tae really isn't well poor baby, maybe the start of a relationship 👀, little over 1k.

a.n.: i'm not super familiar with hybrids au, i still hope you like it! i'm not sure if that's what you meant by shepherd (had to google what it was 🥲), but i think it fits the scenario anyway ^^

This is part of my 2k milestone celebration! Here is the post for the drabble game if you want to participate and send in a request of yours! 🤍

♡・2k celebration masterlist・♡

You didn't expect anything to be caught in one of the many traps your dad's set up around the house and the sheep pen. He put them there so no wild animals could disturb the sheep, like wolves or lynxes.

Initially, you were just coming to check on the sheep, as you usually do in the evening. This time is different, though. As you walk along the enclosure, the area closest to the forest, you notice an orange ball of fur.

You squint your eyes, approaching step by step the animal laying on the ground. You gasp and cover your mouth with your hand when you recognize an adult red fox, breathing with so much difficulty.

You crouch down, the animal being too injured to acknowledge your presence, and see one of his paws caged under the sharp teeth of the trap. The fox is really in bad shape, his right ear has a slit and he has a few scratches on him, his fur stained in blood.

It looks like he's been in a fight, maybe defending himself from another predator, and unfortunately got caught in the trap. He's still alive, but you don't know for how long. You have to help him, there's no way you can let him suffer alone.

After struggling awhile with the trap, you've managed to free his paw. You got him in your arms, careful to not hurt him in any way, and went back to your house. Luckily, your dad isn't home, so he won't question you about the injured fox in your arms.

And anyway, you doubt he'd let you bring a wild animal in the house. Especially a fox, he doesn't particularly appreciate them.

In your room, you place him on your bed. You pet him gently, he seems to be sleeping, it'll be easier to heal his wounds that way. He's lucky you found him because you don't know how he'd have survived otherwise.

You wonder what happened to this poor fox. Could it'd been a hunter instead of another animal? Maybe, everything's possible. Nature is quite unpredictable and dangerous, even more when humans are a part of it.

You decide to go search for the med kit you remember to be in the bathroom. You've never been confronted to a situation like this before where you had to take care of a wild fox, but you'll do your best. It must not be so different from a human.

You have to disinfect, clean the wound and cover it with bandages. You hope stitches won't be needed because you're not very good with these. Your hands are really shaky right now, you wouldn't be able to be precise.

When you come back into your bedroom, the fox isn't there anymore. You start to panic, having no idea how he could have disappeared in such a bad condition. You check your closet, look under your bed, behind the door, in your drawers, but there's no sign of him.

You suddenly hear a loud noise from downstairs, sounding like dishes falling down on the floor. You don't think twice and rush to the kitchen, hoping to find the fox there.

As you step foot into the kitchen, your heart skips a beat at what you discover. There isn't a fox, but an unknown man, looking even more confused than you are. The blanket you had wrapped around the animal is covering his body and one of his legs is visibly injured, the exact same one the fox had his paw caught in the trap.

You look up at the man's face and you're met with scared eyes, staring back at you as if you were the stranger here. You don't understand at first, but as you look into his eyes, you come up with the craziest conclusion.

What if he is the fox?

Everything ties in. The blanket, the wounds, the pain and fear passing through his eyes.

"Are you... are you the..." you take a pause, the word kind of stuck in your throat. You're making a wild guess. As far as you know — or used to know — humans can't turn into foxes.

But there's so much you don't know about the world in general. Maybe the pain prevented him from transforming into his human form and that's why you stumbled upon him. It makes sense, but also doesn't.

"The fox I saved?" You finally say, stepping closer, which stresses him out and results in him backing away. You don't move closer, not wanting him to fear you, but you really don't know what to do.

While he backs away, his back hits the countertop and he winces at the contact, almost falling down, his sore legs unable to support his weight. You come to him in a hurry, catching him before his body brutally meets the kitchen's floor.

"Shh, it's okay, it's okay," you reassure, voice soft and gentle to not startle him. You let him sit on the floor, back against the cabinet. You kneel beside him and extend your arm to reach the med kit you'd let down while you were rushing toward him.

He whimpers, really sounding like a hurt animal who just doesn't know how to ask for help in any other way than yelping loudly. You open the kit and pick up what you need.

You choose to make him take the pain killers first, but he seems to not know how to swallow pills so you crush them into powder and put it into a glass of water for him to drink. Next, you disinfect the many cuts on his body and clean them correctly. You do the same for the major wound on his leg too and cover it with bandages.

You've finally treated every wound on his skin. You notice his eyes are closed and his bangs covering his forehead are damped in sweat. His head lolls back and forth, seemingly having a hard time enduring the pain he feels.

You can't help but stroke his cheek, feeling how burning hot his skin is. It makes him flutter his eyes open and your gazes connect immediately. He's no longer afraid of you, seeing you as someone safe, someone he can trust, you hope.

Your hand doesn't leave his cheek and you're surprised when he lays his own over yours. You don't move, you stay like this and look into each other's eyes like it's a way of communicating.

"Taehyung," he eventually breathes out and your eyes light up, understanding he just gave you his name.

You say yours back and he smiles, the last thing he does before falling asleep.

#🍑 [drabble game]#requests #bts fanfiction #bts fanfic #bts x reader #bts drabble #bts hybrid au #taehyung drabble #taehyung fanfiction #taehyung fanfic #taehyung x reader

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familyagrestefanblog · 9 months

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Something I find quite ironic in "Revelation" is the little detail that Lila as Hoaxer/Infox is a red Volpina

Which funnily means she is actually a Rena Rouge. Fox means "renard" in French but the d is not pronounced and the last r also only slightly, meaning Alya's hero name being Rena was always incredibly smart since that's very close to how you'd say it

And yet there was always the kinda weird thing that Rena Rouge isn't.. red:

She's orange. The only argument you can make is Alya's hair but the fox miraculous itself has a orange color.

Rena Rouge is such a cool sounding name so sure it gets a pass but unlike names like Chat Noir and Tigresse Pourpre - which may be very simplistic but, ey, they got the colors right - is kind of an odd choice in the French original.

Cause the thing is Juleka's hero name Tigresse Pourpre and the English translation Purple Tigress are.. not refering to the same color. Like, at all.

This is what the French color pourpre is, which is very obviously the color Juleka is actually wearing as hero:

Don't ask me why they translated it with purple. The only way to make sense out of it is through Juleka's civilian design but that has nothing to do with Tigresse?

Anyway, it's an english dub oddity but what's new? My point was that Rena Rouge being orange is and has always been something that simply had to be accepted bc orange is close enough so I find it even more amusing that it's LILA in "Revelation" who actually gets her fox design in red.

Making her an actual Rena Rouge.

#ml spoilers #ml revelation #ml hero designs #ml Infox #Rena Rouge #ml #miraculous #lila rossi #ml season 5 #tigresse pourpre #purple tigress

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thehipovercor · 5 months

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I lied, i drew Marty and Carpal again lol I'm sorry

I worked a lil with @shadowwing13 (owner of Carpal/Renard) and I decided I'd try writing some fiction for the first time in I have no idea when. Thanks, college, for obliterating my will to be fun :') Anyway it made me sappy and I drew the above of my blorbos

It's under the cut, yo

hi sorry to make you look at this lol

I woke up and the world was dark. I felt something surrounding me and the suffocation of a tight space; I panicked and lashed out. I don't know why. The barriers of the world tore by my hand and stars poured in all at once. They were cold.

Night in the pit of a valley. I didn't recognize the jutting stones until I had finished bursting forth and landing on my face. I don't know why my hands were wet. Ten digits, the one I had lost returned to me, stuck onto long palms; my left was marred by the same brilliant light that had blinded me for a time. Saint Paul didn't have claws but I did now. I checked over myself and couldn't muster any comment at the foreign skin I found myself in. Some kind of man-turned-animal. Whatever I was, I believe I deserved to be.

"Juliana?" ...but the question didn't come out. The shell I was in spoke for me, shrieking once. I let it cry out as I attempted to stand up, sick of the soil clinging to me. I stood not like the finely bred lapdogs I spoke with her about but as one of the strays that'd beg from me during lunch. I looked up and searched and in the moment I regretted not being kinder to the dogs. Behind me was a horrible something. It was black and purple and familiar and alien and it had held me for… I didn't know what day it was. I had spoken hideous things in the springtime and went for a walk to collect myself for her, but the air was crisp and the grass looked as though it were dying. It didn't feel like the end of the world. I trembled from both the chill and enormous weight of burden. An animal. Turned into an animal to better carry the weight of my sin. Ashamed as I was, I did feel stronger-- built for a task. I don't know how long I shivered there before finding the trail back home. I limped the entire path. No one else walked in that valley at night.

"Juliana?" I didn't let the body make any sound that time, although I wasn't sure if I actually spoke. I had navigated around the other houses and no one was awake at that time to catch me. My front door was locked. The broken window, however, was not. I climbed inside and landed unceremoniously. "Are you there? Hello? Hello!" I shouted but the body whined. No reply. Maybe that was preferable. The room I landed in was a bedroom no longer, instead being used for storage of some kind. None of the items were familiar, nothing we would have had in our possession. I cracked the door open and was met with someone else's home. I felt my skin prickle and my ears pin back. Pin back? Animal. Whomever lived here brought a mirror, I could see it, and the choice was obvious. Carefully, so quietly, I crept over and was met with the horned face of the devil staring back. Frills, horns, bulbous eyes of a similar fantastical orange the master painters used. Scars crackled across my right cheek. I was not an animal after all! I was lesser. I strained to not scream, I couldn't risk startling anyone awake to catch me. I slipped back outside until I could bolt to the wilderness to hide in the underbrush. Time didn't matter anymore, I ran and I ran until I slipped and fell back to the dirt. Less than a beast! I was the burden to bear! I cried and I howled until daylight reached through the canopy. I'm not sure if I was thankful no one came to check.

I frightened a few hunters over the next week as I darted out of their sights. I had learned the hard way that I was still vulnerable after a father instructed his son to aim for a sturdy tree, the boy missing and firing into the underbrush where I laid. I growled, low, and did not allow myself to be envious as the pair discussed how impressive the shot was despite missing. How I missed, already, the casual conversation between family. I waited until they left and had to pull the arrowhead out of my shoulder. There were worse places to be shot by a child. I bled the familiar purple of that soft thing I had fought out of days ago in the dark. The wound seemed to seal itself before I could tend to it. No animal did such a thing when hunted. I sat and thought, another thing no animal could do. I could think, I still felt emotion, yet I felt no urge to harm or kill. Everything settled into shame and guilt, a great vast guilt. Was I greater or less than an animal? On a bright and sunny day, birds over my head singing as though I did not scare them, I sat and wept again. I had to check if I was still worthy of being saved. I wouldn't find it if I hid again.

I took up a tree branch and walked part of the way. North. I didn't merely remember, I knew the way north. I may have been restricted to moving through the nights but I walked like a man. As the journey became subconscious I took more time to think and more time to practice speaking. The body I was in could not talk but, somehow, I willed myself to speak. I heard my voice echo once. "I LIVED." How disheartening it was to not feel my breath! Even stale air would have been a relief. Yet I heard it echo: "I LIVED." A voice with no air behind it. Perhaps I was thinking wishfully as the reality attempted to creep in yet again. I kept walking and relearning how to be myself but I felt the burden in my chest with every step. Physically I did not tire, barely dozing in the daytime between trips. I was a stumbling thing in the dark, leaning on a tree limb for security. I felt invincible. I felt vulnerable. I could bleed but not breathe. I did not yearn for a meal yet when thirst encroached I felt the ache in every pore of my skin. I drank from wells when I could and muttered thanks and apologies for stealing. I could wash my face. I almost felt better afterward. My heart remained heavy until I acknowledged it: I could feel it beat, slow yet with an unfamiliar intensity. A drum? Perhaps like a great drum -- when I allowed the grief to settle in I could hear my pulse and the more I tried to deny the noise I worried more and more and more and... It was a great number of times I had to stop and stand, hand clutching at my breast. I thought I would die. "I LIVED." And yet even if I had lived, something felt so deeply wrong.

I quickly learned that keeping all of my previous dignity was slower. I prayed for forgiveness as I stole some rope from a small settlement. If there were a way to repay them I would with interest. The branch would join me if I needed it: I tied it to my back and allowed myself to run like a dog. If I didn't tire, then perhaps it was a blessing for speed. The travel time reduced and I practiced talking during the dawn. I benefited from being both man and beast, yet wondered what he would think. I called upon the branch as I walked the old, sleepy roads of his village. Familiar. His studio was locked but I could more than easily reach his hidden key. I caught myself smiling wondering how he could possibly reach it himself. Surely if I boldly entered with my best manners, he would realize who I was more quickly.

No one was home; I do not believe anyone had been home recently. All around me, candles burnt to dripping stumps, the odor of rotting foodstuff, scattering mice, and-- It caught my eye. There was a piece of paper laying delicately, untouched apparently. Some type of letter, in French. "To the Journeyman Painter Renard, we..." it began. I wasn't aware I could still feel ill. A letter informing him of my death. I knew him, how sensitive he had always been. The correct summer sunset would bring him to his knees. I had seen him during the news of his nephew passing away, how he seemed to crumple for a child he had never met. How would he mourn for me? Did I matter to him in the same way he mattered to me? Surely he was alive, here, asleep in his bed. I'd appear and show how my practice of talking has progressed and tell him I'm alright. He would clean up and I would help him make a bowl of soup and... And I discovered he wasn't in his room. A painter would be in his workplace, of course. I didn't hesitate and the sound of the bottom of the branch hitting the floor was loud enough to warn anyone of a presence. "Renard?" This time I heard my voice reverberate off the wall. I was about to reach to swing the entry curtain away when my foot kicked something that I felt pierce skin. I paused and watched the small blade spin against the ground until it stopped at a wall. Dirty. Something dusted off the metal from the impact. My scratch no longer registered.

Moonlight streamed into the studio, the flecks of dust being the only movement. The same black thing I had emerged from sat in the center of the room, the violet glow interrupted in my view by lonely easels. All of the energy I had to make my speech dissipated. I don't know what I felt. Maybe I felt everything. I approached. I saw the canvases. I clutched the branch and fell and I wept. I let my shell weep too. Each canvas was a place we had been. I saw the river we had sat by as I taught my own son how to fish. I saw the birch he kept returning to so he could vent his troubles to me. I saw the bakery where he had watched me spill flour across the floor, laughing as he jumped to help me sweep before the bakers got to me. Landscapes, damaged by exposure. How long had he been gone? Scenes that had been lived in yet offered no figures. There I sat, in a scene as the only figure. I gripped the branch until my hands ached. It felt like my last hope was waiting for me to do something. How my hands ached.

The sound of movement snapped me out of a trance. It was daylight again. My legs were numb and the branch had divots from my fingers pressing firmly against it. Surely I would have noticed the mice. I blinked a few times and heard the sound again. Before me, I watched familiar panicking hands puncture out of the blackness. I mustered a dry voice. "Renard...?" The hands paused, the claws curling. I braced myself and stood up again by myself, leaning against the soft part. I helped them dig. I reached into the filth and pulled somebody out, dripping. Somebody reached out and pulled at my arms. I saw no horns, no frills, no orange eyes. No scarring on the face I recognized. Inhuman but so human.

"Renard?"

He blinked.

"My grief, Renard! It's me! It's me. Friend, look, it's me. I'm here. I promise it's me."

I placed him on his feet and took his head in my hands. I would have begun crying if I had any tears left. My heart was pounding. Perhaps he could hear the drum. "Renard, please! It's me! You're you! I lived! It's me, I lived! You're alive!"

He blinked again and made a sound like one of the birds from the wilderness. I kept repeating "it's me, I promise" as I allowed him to move his hands from my arms to wrap around my back. I picked the branch up from where I dropped it and wrapped my arms in turn.

"You're alive, I promise. I'm here."

#art #corda #digital art #original character #short fiction #unreality

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valmnera · 1 year

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[Image Description: Maria Renard, from Symphony of the Night is holding a green plant with leaves. She has green eyes, blonde hair, and fair skin. Her expression is a neutral smile, with pink blush marks on her cheeks. Maria is wearing a green outfit with gold sleeves and black shorts. The outfit has white ruffles around her chest, a light orange scarf tied around her waist, brown gloves that reach to her elbow, and white embroidery on the edges. She is also wearing white socks with green ribbons tied around the top, and light orange shoes with a white buckle and a dotted pattern. Her hair is in a ponytail, tied with a green ribbon. Her whole body can be seen. /. End ID]

Listening to Touhou 19′s ost gave me inspiration to draw this. I mean, Maria is also a blonde magic user, so why not draw her?

#castlevania #maria renard #zun style

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kari-go · 1 year

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Her✨

Panthera Noire, Scarabée Rouge, Renarde Orange, Tortue Verte, Essaime Jaune, Chrysalide Violette, Oiseau Bleu

There are two peacocks because one is with a fixed miraculous (normal skin) and the other is with a very broken miraculous (colored skin, no mask).

Part2, Part 3, Part 4

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books-of-the-great-leviathan · 1 year

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Chapter 25- Enzo

***

By sunrise, he found the place they'd burned Renard Irio's body.

It was no fit place for a Lapidaean burial. This was no grand cliffside overlooking the sea, no whitebrick dais and statue of the Triune weeping ashes, but rather a rocky spit of stones and sand. Inland, its crumbling flanks licked by the tide, a ruined tower clung to the shore: a single spire of crumbling rock and empty windows.

Some old watchtower, Enzo imagined, long-since abandoned as the oncoming sea and the inevitable collapse of the isle that bore it pulled it year by year into the waves. Whether it had been built by a Belmont king-by his father, his grandfather, perhaps- or whether it was far older, a relic of the Sundered Empire, Enzo couldn't tell. The spit bore little else to mark it save the orange flare of sunlight off the rocks, the mewling seabirds, and the blackened remains of the Sparrow's pyre.

Enzo moved in from the shoreline, boots crunching on the scree. He commanded his ghost soldiers to stay back, near the skiff; behind him, down the long, tense strings of his tethers, he felt the mass of energy and slithering pulse of the soldiers aboard the dreadnought. Its engines were low, their thrum banked, but it was impossible to escape, even here on this lonely spit. It vibrated through him, a second heartbeat more powerful than his own.

Pavaloir was far behind. He'd left it, smoking and silent, the survivors watching his departure from the ash. Let the seabirds squabble over it. He was done with the place.

He'd spilled the blood that needed spilling.

To what end, Acier? Isabella's last look to him lingered, haunted, haggard, her mouth open in a scream as she cried out for Irio, even as Enzo's command drove the knife into his side.

Adele's, too, though for a different reason. He'd seen an answer in her eyes, or thought he did. Maybe he was wrong.

Don't play foolish, Acier. You always saw too much for your own good.

He shuddered, the memory slicing through him, and the wind spun a cold breeze off the water. He held up his hands, his breath hissing between his teeth, his vision pounding white, and for a moment blood slicked them, fresh and raw.

He clenched his hands. Ghosts shifted, rustling in their rotting bodies. Silver flickered in the dark behind his eyes.

I control you.

The whispers filled him, as they always did.

I control you.

They quieted, but were, as ever, far from silent.

The pyre was little more than a cairn of stones, heaped to bear a body. Only ashes remained, and shards barely recognizable as burned bone. Enzo bent to pluck one up; he brushed his thumb over it, ash sifting away in the wind.

He stood at the pyre side for a long time, the sun rising around him, ghost tethers thrumming around him, a web of silver chains tight on his heart.

Ghosts were cast from their bodies at the taste of fire, but they could linger. Enzo's mother had, poor dead Alezia, whispering her secrets to him long after her death. What did Enzo have to say to Irio? That he was sorry? That he didn't have to die? The word of the Triune spoke of all lives as having a beginning, and an end, too, written out for them. A pathway, and an end to that pathway. A relief, Enzo thought, of a kind.

But it was cruel, too. The Triune had written out Irio's end, that it would come at Enzo's hand. In that way, they were complicit. But Enzo knew it was all wrong. He had no hand to blame for killing Ren other than his own.

Is it worth the cost, Enzo? Isabella might have said, once, her gray eyes dark, her hands cool on his. Is anything?

He settled to his knees in the sand. His eyes ached as he pressed them shut, brow furrowed, head bent.

Light unfurled from Enzo's skin. Ghostlight. He saw it through his closed eyes; he saw it in the veins of his eyelids. He reached out with his mind and found what he was looking for. The ghost was a clinging, frightened thing, like they all were after their life had left them and all they had was dead meat or charred bones. The silver light brightened, spinning, coalescing into the vague forms of limbs and clutching fingers, the echoes of distant cries.

It was no effort to take hold, to chain, to pull.

Enzo shuddered as the ghost skimmed over his senses. Memories blossomed and flashed behind his eyes, thick and fast and dense enough to drown in.

An island, far and to the south. The shimmer of mist rising from dark jungles.

Running down the broad pale arc of white sand beaches, the sea so blue it burned.

Bare callused feet gripping a tightrope, a shadow like a twin thrown down across the sand far below. Fortune cards fanned over a cloth embroidered with staring silver eyes.

Raucous music, the stench of saltpeter, fireworks like strange deep-sea creatures fizzling out across an ocean of stars.

A strange city all of sky-colored stone, gulls tilting around the tall narrow spires of towers flying serpent flags. A woman bleeding out in an alley, mud and blood and small hands clutching her as if pleading for her not to go, salt from tears crusting her blue lips.

Fear, then, and blinding pain. A knife in his side, twisting deeper. Cold, though not colder than his hands as Isabella gripped them, all feeling lost save the foolish desire to hang on, for her, for the nation he knew she could make good again, bright and beautiful and free of pain.

But the pain was everywhere. It was all around him, inside him, and so was the cold. It was too strong, stronger than him, stronger than anything.

His last thoughts were of the tide, and of his name, his real name, the one no one remembered but himself.

A name, kept and treasured.

A name, whispered for the last time.

"You were so loyal, Ren," Enzo murmured. "With all you knew, how did you keep holding onto that faith for so many years?"

There was no answer. Ghost soldiers couldn't speak, and neither could ghosts, not really. He felt them, felt their memories, experienced scraps of their strongest recollections like he was reliving them along with the dead. It was how he'd realized the truth behind his mother's death. He'd felt it along with her, over and over, until he understood.

That hadn't been the first time he'd relived a death with a ghost. A fisherman from his village had vanished during a storm, and weeks later his body had washed up, white and bloated, on the beach. His ghost had still ridden it; some ghosts did, refusing to let go until their bodies were no more than bones.

Enzo had fallen to his knees by the dead man, shouts clamoring after him, and felt the choking force of the wave that had swept him off his boat pound into his skull, again, again, until he couldn't tell if he was a boy kneeling on a beach or whether he was the fisherman drowning, the light crushed by the weight of the water, the salt burning his throat.

He'd released that ghost and felt the memories dissipate, like a sandcastle washed away by a gentle tide. The last sensation he'd gleaned was one of relief. No more pain, no more fear. He'd helped the dead fisherman, he knew that, and was proud of it.

Once, that simple pride had been enough.

Silver light glowed through Enzo's closed eyelids, illuminating their veins. He felt the new tension of his tether to Renard Irio's ghost, the control vibrating between them. He had only to think a command, and the ghost would do it.

"Where is Isabella?" Enzo said. "Where were you and Lapin planning on taking her?"

He commanded an answer, a ripple of force down the ghost's tether. Irio's ghost shuddered, as if in resistance, but it was a cobweb in a thunderstorm. Answer flooded back: a dinghy on a night sea, stars reflected across the waves. A ship, sails taut with wind. The Mistfox, Captain Azare's schooner, coursing away across Bellana's Arm. Land on the horizon, the scent of cedar and humid heat, a pale stone city, birdsong in the gardens.

"Valeris," Enzo murmured. "You were taking her back to Lapide."

Of course. It wasn't like Isabella to run and hide. And to what end? To launch an attack? Besiege Pavaloir? She would do it. She'd seen it in her eyes as much as he knew the same look in his own. She would win this war; she'd see Lapide stand above all else, even if it cost her everything she and the Belmont prince had dreamed of. Peace. More than that- balance. To live as allies. To forget the past. To forget.

There was no forgetting, not for long. Sofia Valere had tried, and he was living proof of her failure. Isabella wouldn't follow in her mother's footsteps. Enzo braced to command the ghost, but something was coming. More flickers, more memories. Whispers deep in the wending halls, breathed into being by their connection.

Far from home, Irio whispered. His eyes widened, blue light dancing in their depths. Stars on the sea. A falling bird. Ending-

Enzo broke the tether.

He felt the ghost flutter past him, brushing his cheek, light as wind, and then it was gone. Ren was gone, faded into the unknown. Enzo opened his eyes. The pyre was a pyre, the ashes crumbling in the wind. Already, the salt breeze had begun to clear it away. Soon it would be gone altogether.

He stood and tossed the shard of bone back onto the cairn of scorched rocks. As he did, a ripple passed through his tethers, a chord of alarm from his ghosts.

They'd sighted something.

Enzo looked up, eyes narrowed against the brilliant orange glow of the rising sun. It splintered across Bellana's Arm, turning the waves to flame. It was cut out sharp against them: a single triangular sail.

A small boat, coming toward him at speed.

Steady, he commanded his soldiers. He stepped forward, still squinting against the light, trying to get a look at the sailor. It wasn't until it cut closer, yawing a little against the waves, he saw who was at the helm.

"Triune," he whispered.

He started forward in mingled wonder and disbelief, then all at once broke into a run, charging headlong into the surf. It broke and hissed around his legs, soaking his fur-lined crimson overcoat, Daval's stolen regalia. He didn't care. He waded through the waves, reaching for the boat's bow to help haul it in, not letting go until its keel scraped rocks.

He breathed hard, throat stinging with salt, staring up at Adele as she stared in turn down at him. She was wrapped in a fishwife's shawl, coarse and woolen, her blue eyes bright under its fringe. Her face was windburnt, her hair falling from its braid. She clutched Marin to her side, the little boy as travel-worn as his mother, clinging to her hands like he might never let go.

"You...you came from Lapide?" Enzo panted.

She nodded, tense, pale. Something was wrong. She trembled as if struck with plague. "Adele-" Enzo began, but Marin cut over him, his voice a seabird gabble.

"My mother," he stammered. "Help my mama, please-"

"It's all right. It's all right-" Enzo began forward, reaching out, his own hands shaking. Adele's eyes fluttered; her brow creased, and all at once she crumpled. Enzo caught her before she struck the gunwale. Marin let out a cry of terror as Enzo pulled Adele into his arms, cradling her, stroking her black hair from her face, from her lips. His heart hammered; she was breathing, her eyes glassy slits under her lashes, but she was so pale, shaking, lips cracked and flecked with salt.

Enzo looked up at Marin, the boy standing there, wailing like an infant, snot slick down his upper lip.

"It's all right," Enzo repeated. He stroked Adele's hair, again and again. "What happened?"

"We...we sailed all night...all day..."

Sunstroke, then, or maybe pure exhaustion. Adele had ever been prone to sickness, to turns. Enzo lifted his eyes to the horizon. Had they come all the way from Lapide, all the way across Bellana's arm? Triune. Why? Why?

That didn't matter now. Enzo looked again to Marin. "Come with me. We have to get her out of the sunlight. It'll grow far hotter than this, and soon. And she needs water."

The boy's howls had fallen to sniffles. He stared at Enzo as if not daring to look down at his mother.

"You can help me," Enzo said, and smiled, as much as he could muster. "Help her. You look like you're good at helping her."

The boy didn't resist, didn't argue, but followed numbly as Enzo heaved Adele into his arms and strode away, across the spit. She was light as a cloud gull in his arms, one slim hand hanging from her shawl. Enzo clasped it, felt the cool press of her rings against his skin, then tucked it, gently, over her heart.

The dreadnought's engines thrummed through the scree. He glanced toward the vast shadowed mass of the vessel, then toward Marin, silent at his side.

"I don't want to go there," Marin whispered, not looking at him.

"We're not." Enzo nodded toward the watchtower. "We're going there. You have water?"

"A little..."

"Fetch it. Bring it." He was already moving toward its empty doorway, listing as the tower made its inexorable slide into the sea.

"Is...is she going to die?" Marin's voice was small, barely audible above the wind.

Enzo stopped in the tower's shadow and turned back. Marin stood with shoulders hunched and eyes huge, reflecting the sunrise, bright with tears.

"Not if I can help it," Enzo told him. "You've been so brave. Now you have to be again, just a little longer."

***

Moths skittered in the shadows of the ruined tower, its lower chambers full of the hiss and boom of oncoming waves, home to colonies of barnacles and glowing night-fish, spined and goggle-eyed, hiding in the deeper pools from the day. Enzo headed upward, clambering over fallen blocks of stone and the broken arms of a statue, so worn by tide and time it was no longer recognizable. Some presiding general, perhaps. A warlord from Estara's distant past. Little matter. He made for a good enough step.

The central stairway of the tower wound upward, a whorl like the inner structure of some vast seashell, spilling Enzo and Adele out into the upper chambers of the place. Arched windows stared out across the sea, low sills nearly a meter thick and spattered white from generations of seabirds; they mewled and tilted outside, hanging on the wind as if on strings. An ancient salt-faded banner flapped from rusted moorings, still bearing the remnants of the Estaran fellfox. The rest of the furniture was rotted away, but Enzo had Daval's regalia, lined with dense, soft fur. He arranged it on the flagstones as Marin pelted up the stairs, a canteen jouncing at his side.

"Good." Enzo knelt, letting Adele down on the mantle, smoothing her hair, once again, from her face. She still breathed, lashes fluttering, fingers twitching. "Take this." Enzo gave the boy a rag. "Dip it in the water. Feed it to her. Slowly. Yes, like that. Slower. Slower. Careful."

His voice had dropped to a whisper as he watched Marin do as he asked. Without question, without fear; or, if he was afraid, he'd hidden it well. His lip was still shiny with snot but his hands were steady, his little brow furrowed as he soaked a corner of the rag in the water, as he set it to his mother's cracked lips.

Triune, he was small. Shoulderblades like bird-bones. Were all children so small? Had he been that way, once, hunting for shells along the shoreline, submitting to his foster mother's comb as she tried in vain to untangle his salt-stiff curls?

But this wasn't himself as a boy, wasn't the child who dreamed of his dying mother, who dreamed of Falcii blades and hawk queens hunting. This was Marin, fatherless at Enzo's own hand, and he was frightened, even if he didn't show it.

He had to be. He was six years old.

"Marin," Enzo said, quietly.

The boy's eyes flicked to him.

"I'll do that." He held out a hand. "You go and rest. You've come such a long way."

"I don't want to go to sleep."

"You don't need to. Just rest." He nodded down at Adele. "Hold her hand, if you like."

Marin blinked, but did as he asked once again, handing over the water and rag, taking Adele's hand between his small own. He wore roughspun, like Adele; no Lapidaean finery for them. Enzo watched him as he fed Adele, as he felt her pulse, her too-hot forehead, as her heartbeat slowed, her breathing even, her skin cooling in the morning breeze. Gull-cry, reaching sunlight, golden as honey on the dark stone of the watchtower floor.

"She'll be all right," Enzo said at last.

Marin nodded. He didn't look up from his mother.

"Are you afraid of me?"

A flicker of blue eyes. Marin's brow furrowed deeper.

"Who are you?" the boy asked him, at last. "Mama says you...you can help us, but...but in the garden, you said..."

He trailed away. Enzo let out his breath and set down the water, then settled back, resting a forearm on his knee. Joints creaked and ached, sinews pulled tight like they already belonged to a dead thing. His ghost, bruising his bones. They said that in Lapide, as if a restless spirit could harm the flesh. Maybe they were right. He only knew the dead well, after all.

He lifted a hand, letting silver ghostlight spool and flicker under his skin. It shone, reflected, in Marin's eyes. "I killed your father."

"I know."

"Burned your city."

Marin nodded. "I saw."

Enzo lowered his hand, light fading. "Your father was my brother," he said, simply. "Like how Alois is your brother. And I betrayed him. To end the war."

"My father said Alois was weak."

"That he did."

"Was my father weak? Was that why he had to die?"

Enzo was silent for a moment. Then he shook his head. "No. No, I think he could have done anything he wanted, taken anything, given his way. Anything at all. The salt from the sea, the moons from the sky."

Marin's face squinched up. "You can't take the moons from the sky. They live up there so the cloud gulls can fly up and make nests on them. That's what my nurse says. No one can take the moons from the sky."

His tone was one of pure, unassailable authority, and Enzo couldn't help but grin. "Forgive me, Highness. Of course not. Now that would be ridiculous."

"Are you really my uncle?"

"I'm afraid so." Enzo clasped his hands and leaned forward. "Tell me, Marin. Salt from the sea, moons from the sky. Anything at all. What would you want?"

Marin blinked. He fidgeted a little with the fringe of Adele's shawl. "Anything?"

"Anything."

He lifted a shoulder and mumbled.

"What was that?"

"Wanna be a fisherman," Marin said, a little louder.

"A fisherman? Seriously?"

"Yes."

"Well." Enzo gave his head an impressed shake. "Can't say I expected that, but I can't fault you, either. You have lofty ambitions, my boy. To range the deepwater, to battle sea-orks and ice tortoises and the Deepmother herself for the choicest herring...not everyone can do that."

He glanced at Marin. The boy was almost smiling.

"And your mother?" Enzo asked, softer. "What does she want?"

Marin met his eyes.

"To see you," he said.

Enzo said nothing. He nodded, a little, then, slowly, slowly, he reached out. Across Adele, through the strengthening sunlight. He paused, and, just as slowly, he settled his hand on Marin's stiff, sun-warmed curls.

"Good lad," Enzo said, a rasp to his voice. He couldn't say more.

Tired lad, too. Despite his assertion to the contrary it wasn't long before he'd curled up alongside his mother, his face buried in the thick ruff of fur at the mantle's collar. Enzo dozed, too, lulled by the cries of the gulls, the crash of the waves echoing up through the empty tower. Amplified, tenfold, but distant, strange, washing through him in his half-asleep state, depths flickering with blue light.

When he woke, so had Adele.

She sat upright on the makeshift sickbed, holding her knees. Her hair fell in ragged tangles around her face. She was watching him. He couldn't tell for how long. The sunlight slanted through the window, dense and golden, sizzling on the flagstones.

"Adele." He pushed away from the wall, coming to her side.

"You looked peaceful, like that. Asleep."

"Even abominations have to sleep sometime."

"You're not-" Adele began, then stuttered, a little, and quieted. "Once," she went on, more slowly, "not so long ago, I wondered if I might catch you sleeping so I could cut your throat. My ladies and I discussed it. But I don't think I could have done it, even if I'd had the chance. I get squeamish even seeing brushfowl slaughtered."

"Well, despite what you might have heard, witchborn blood is just as red as brushfowl's." He knelt. "Are you all right?"

"I think so." She lifted a hand to her forehead, then touched her mouth. "You...took us here? From the boat?"

"Yes."

"Thank you."

Enzo nodded. "And you came from Lapide? Back across the Arm?"

"We did."

"Isabella Valere let you go?"

"No," Adele said. Her voice was soft, weary. "I fled, in the night-"

"Triune." He arched his brows, impressed again. "How'd you manage that?"

A faint smile touched her mouth. "My hairpins were worth a servant's wages for a year. I bribed the maid and a scullery-boy to play at being us." She squeezed Marin's shoulder, the boy still fast asleep. "I made it through the blockade-"

"The blockade."

"Valere's navy. She means to stop you before you can so much as cross the sea border. I sailed until I saw the smoke from Daval's dreadnought." She tilted her head, regarding him from under her lashes. "You leave quite the trail. Enzo."

"And that was quite the risk."

"I know. But there's nothing for me in Lapide, just as there's nothing for me in Pavaloir. I see that now." Her hand tightened around her son's shoulder. "There's nothing for either of us."

Enzo nodded. He reached for the scrimshaw charm at his throat and ran his thumb over the broken edge, worn from years upon years of handling. Worn down, but still broken. It always would be. Even if he got Isabella's half from her, the edges would never fit back together again.

Enzo remembered Isabella crouched on the ramparts, mad with grief, his magic flowing through her. She would have killed herself to kill him, he knew that. She would have impaled herself on his soldier's blades to get to him, would have torn herself apart to end him.

She wouldn't stop. She'd gather her navy, press an attack, turn the waters of Bellana's Arm red. She'd burn whoever sat on the obsidian throne, whether that was Marin or not. She'd see him destroyed if that was what it took.

And for what, Bell?

The question echoed through him, like the whispers of his ghosts.

And for what?

A ruin? The dead? Adele's eyes were on his, their color as vivid as the sunlit sea. She was alive. She remained.

So does Valeris, Enzo thought, and suppressed a shudder.

It's not too late.

Those were Isabella's desperate words, whispered through the bars of a prison cell. Another whisper that would not fade, that would never be silent.

"If you come with me, stay with me, it won't be safe for you," Enzo told Adele. "You know that. You know I have to do what I promised, all those years ago. I can't stop now. I wish I could. For...for you, for another way of living, but I can't. I can't."

"Can you protect him? Will you take us somewhere safe?"

Enzo lifted his head. She held his gaze, her eyes bright, but steady. He looked to Marin. A boy born to be king, a child born to become a conqueror, like Daval, like Etain Belmont, like those to come before and before. Another child given far too much to carry; another child born with a wound in his heart, cut there by those who sought to raise him to their holy light.

Bellana was truly all too cruel.

A boy, kneeling in the dark.

A boy wreathed by ghosts.

Had he ever had another choice? Had either of them? He had been that boy, scared in the dark, and then he was the monster that had put him there. And now his fear was Marin's, another wound cut into him by the dead.

"Can you?" Adele repeated. "Will you?"

"I can," Enzo said. "I will. I know just the place."

Adele nodded, running a palm over Marin's head. She licked her lips, and glanced past Enzo, toward the spill of light over the horizon, toward Bellana's Arm, and Lapide beyond.

She stirred. Enzo climbed to his feet with her as she stood. Slowly, gingerly, no land-legs; he held her hands, taking her weight, but she was stronger than before, and after a moment could walk on her own. She kept her hand clasped around his, her fingers laced with his.

"Sun's not so cruel yet, and I grew so fond of its warmth, when I was ill," she murmured. "Help me downstairs?"

Enzo nodded. "Always."

Together, slow, careful, they made it down the stairs, Enzo gripping her hand, then her shoulder, taking her one step at a time. The surf rushed, hissed, rising through the flanks and riven stones of the tower, finding its way in; it soaked Adele's hem as she stepped through the rush of seawater and onto sand, onto the tide of sunlight. The heat shimmered on the stones, but she was right. The day hadn't come in earnest yet.

"Here." She guided them both down to her skiff, still moored along the shore, and sat on the gunwale. Enzo sat alongside her. She hadn't let go of his hand.

"I was so ill for so long," she said, and laughed. "My mother thought I was gnawed on by salt-spirits, and made me stay indoors."

"And did that banish the spirits?"

"No. It's what made me love Daval, at first," Adele said.

Enzo lifted his eyebrows.

"Truly, I did," Adele insisted. "I was a child used to weaving in the dark, and he gave me gardens. Sunlight. Freedom, so I thought. As long as I gave him what he wanted most."

"Another son."

She nodded. "And I did. One, and never any more. He wanted more. A whole passel of Belmont children, to fill the Tower with little soldiers, to thwart the plague-pocked families who had to bury so many of their own. The families he'd grown up amidst."

Adele lifted a shoulder, a gnaw of learned shame passing over her face. "But no more children came. He said to me, once, late at night...he thought he might be cursed. All the misfortune on him, on Estara. Like he was Estara. I could have kept loving him but he didn't know himself, didn't see himself. He made his own curse. He was his own curse."

She looked up at Enzo. Her eyes were the same color as the sea, the same sunstruck blue, so vivid it didn't look real.

"I know what it is you're planning," she said quietly. "I know what it is you think you have to do."

"Do you?" Enzo said quietly.

Her brow furrowed, but she didn't look away, didn't let him go. She reached up to him, to his face. She caught a strand of his hair between her fingers.

"Cursed man," she murmured. "I know you too well."

Enzo heard her breath catch. She lifted her face, lifted it to his, kissed him. Softly, so softly, a brush of her mouth, her fingertips light on his cheek. She was crying- he tasted the salt. Her grip on his hand was so strong it hurt. A lash of her hair touched his cheek, and it stung, and he lifted his hand to her face, and the kiss hardened, desperate, edged in bitterness.

He caught the front of her shawl and pulled her toward him. His hand slid down the curve of her body, of her breast, her hip.

"Wait," she whispered, between kisses. "Wait-" She rucked up her skirt and he found the smooth heat of her leg, the softness of her inner thigh. Adele's hands lifted to the ties at his shirt, to his belt.

To him. Melting against him, drawing him in, and to her, and down.

The gulls called and circled, blinding scraps of white against the sky.

In the shadow of the boat, they were hidden from the worst of the heat. The sun climbed- a burning circle, reaching for the center point of the sky.

Bellana's light, Enzo thought, muzzy with exhaustion, somewhere amidst the rest. But they were in the shadows, and the light never reached them, never touched Adele's bare, warm skin, his own scarred body, the ghosts, for the moment, silent.

She lay alongside him, her body drawn against him; her hair tickled his chest as she breathed, in and out, slow and steady, the rhythm lulling him into calm. He couldn't look away from her, couldn't pull his eyes from her face, the faint glister of her skin in the shadows, the dusting of sand on her shoulder, her hip, the small of her back. Her lips were bruised. Her leg was thrown over his, her knee hooking around his, trapping him close.

Enzo's hand had settled on her waist, his thumb stroking down her ribcage. He thought she was asleep again, her eyelids blue, iridescent in the shadows, but as he watched her they opened, and settled on him.

"Adele," Enzo murmured.

He thought she almost smiled. Marin so took after her. She leaned in and kissed him again- slow, sweet- then pulled back, levering herself upright. She gathered her clothes, tossed over the gunwale, but didn't dress, not yet. She pulled her shawl around herself and rose to her feet. Enzo watched her walk to the shore and step ankle-deep into the surf. It reached and curled around her bare feet.

After a moment he pulled on trousers and joined her, facing the horizon with her.

"Come with us," she said.

"Adele," Enzo said again, more quietly. "Please..."

"You don't have to keep fighting."

Not enough, he wanted to tell her, even as he drew his arm around her shoulders, even as she leaned against him. Never enough. He had his own promises to remember, his own promises to keep. Resolve settled in him, that which had brought him here, had made him, had driven him for so many long years.

Heavy, hateful. A comfort like sleep to the drowning, and yet he would have nothing else. Not even her.

Abomination, the Witchhunter had choked in his face, even as he stood over her to deliver the fatal blow. She was right. He was a monster. But there would be so many more monsters after him if he did not see this done.

"I'm sorry," he said to her, his voice soft, nearly stolen by the wind.

Adele turned and studied him. He saw the understanding in her eyes, and the grief, soft and sharp. She was right. She knew him. She knew he couldn't stop. But he could help her, and maybe, when all was done, that was enough.

He lifted her hand and kissed her palm, clasping her fingers tight in his own, his pulse in them both. It was time to fulfill his promise.

It was time to sail on Lapide, and when he did, burn it down.

Like the rest.

"Cursed man," Adele told him, turning to him, folding herself into his arms. "I could have loved you."

#tales of the great leviathan #grave of the great leviathan #fantasy fiction #original fiction #serial novel #chapter 25

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