Archive | December 2016

Testing

Dec6

First: Slaves, School
Previous: Getting to School

This time, it seemed normal to have the voice in his collar steer him down the hall, although Des was glad when the stairway appeared lit. The white-marble stairs curled upwards in a narrow spiral that would have been challenging to navigate in the dark; even in the light, the narrow treads were tricky.

Sun poured in through narrow windows, all of them either frosted, bubbly, or blue enough that they allowed no sight of the outside world. Desmond was a bit turned around, but he was fairly certain he was in the back of the Central Office; it was possible the windows would have looked at the Potentate’s Palace, which was forbidden, of course, or they could have simply overlooked an alley or a sewer, which would have been unpleasant.

(that is, assuming sewers were allowed near the Potentate’s Palace. They might not be. Des had heard Stories of that place — everyone had heard them. They were up there with Beyond the Edge of the Ocean fairy-tales and I Crossed the Mountains myths — and, of course, rumors about the Potentate. But presumably even the Potentate shat.)

He climbed stairs. The first floor was interesting; he studied the patterns of the windows and tried to imagine how they would look from the outside, if anyone was there to see them. The second floor was do-able, although the treads grew narrower and the windows were spaced further apart. The third and fourth floors were difficult. Des was not out of practice with exercise, but nowhere else in the city were there this many stairs. The windows were slits now, barely wide enough to let in any light.

::Here is the issue.:: The collar sounded, inasmuch as it had a tone of voice, a little subdued. ::You can stop at any time. Once you get to the fourth floor, you won’t be sent home. The further up you go, the harder it will be. Go up high enough, and it might kill you. Us. It might kill us.::

“You can be killed?” There was so much about what he’d just heard that Des wanted to question, but he started with that.

::I can be… ended. And I will be, if you die.::

“Does it hurt?”

::Dying? It hurts quite a lot, sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt at all.::

“Being ended, I mean. For you?” Did collars feel pain?

::Ah.:: The collar was quiet for a while. ::I do not know. Nobody has ever asked a collar what it feels like to be ended, or, if they have, I don’t have that information.::

“I’m sorry.” He slowed his pace for a few steps, focusing on exactly where his feet went. He hadn’t stopped yet; he was afraid if he did, that would be it. “You said I could stop any time.” The stairs were only wide enough now to hold his toes and the balls of his feet. The railing was slippery and, in some places, missing altogether.

::You can stop any time. But the further you climb, the better chances you have. We have.::

“Chances? Of?” There was a door on a very narrow landing. Even getting it open without knocking himself down the stairs would be tricky, and it had no handle. “Do the doors get harder, too?”

::The doors are… I believe they vary.:: The collar was quiet for a moment. Des contemplated the stairs in front of him. “Better chances?” he asked again.

::better chances.:: The collar seemed to be thinking, or maybe it was just being particularly cryptic. Des took a couple steps. The stairs had a slant to them, making it hard to keep his balance. He sighted up the stairs until he found the next landing and jogged it in one quick go.

The landing was slanted, too, but he could spread his feet and catch his breath. “Better… chances?” he panted.

::You – we – will be placed somewhere. That’s a given, once you’ve been called. But there are a lot of places we can be placed. Some of them are pleasant. Some of them offer opportunities for advancement. Some of them are pits.::

“Pits.” He studied the next stairway section. It looked normal. He didn’t trust that one bit. “Can you…. hrrm. Can you help me at all?”

::I can help, but you have to direct the help.::

“Okay, can you make pressure in mid air? Like the way that you fought back those blasts?”

::You fought those blasts; I merely directed it.::

“Okay, okay. So can you direct me?”

::Where do you want the pressure?::

“Behind me. At the small of my back.”

::All right. Put your hands behind your back, flat-palmed, and think about the force you want.::

Des spread his stance a little bit, trying to keep balance, and did as he was told. Slowly, he felt a warm pressure build up behind him. “Good. Thank you. Can I move my hands?”

::slowly::

“Slowly I can do.” He shifted his hands carefully back up in front of him and started up the next set of stairs. The moment he put his foot on the step, it shifted under him, twisting towards the center of the stairway and towards the next step.

That wasn’t so bad, but he had no faith that the next one wouldn’t go the other way and dump him backwards. He leaned a little bit on the pressure behind him, felt where it was, made sure he had his wind back, and ran.

The stairs shifted as he touched them, or sometimes before, left, right, up, down. Once he missed a step and had to lunge forward, scrabbling with both feet and both hands to stay on the stairs.

That showed him that the stairs he had his ::hands:: on did not move, which meant he took the rest of that flight on all fours, his hands giving him a stable base even if his feet were skidding.

::Clever:: It sounded as if his collar approved. ::How far do you want to go?::

“How far do you want me to go?” he countered. The stairs had moved from spirals to short flights, back and forth, back and forth. He couldn’t see any further ahead — maybe ten steps, and then a short landing — and the stairs in front of him looked shiny.

::As far as we can safely go. But I don’t know how far that is.::

“Well, then.” Desmond took a breath. “We go till I fall down, really fall, and then we finish that flight and take the next door.”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1212734.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1208510.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

December Patreon Theme Poll!

Dec4

Welcome to December! In the Northern Hemisphere, Winter is nearly here, and I think it might already be Summer in Australia.

And I have a Patreon! (Here: patreon.com/aldersprig) And each month I have a poll to determine what I’ll be writing about in that Patreon for the month.

The theme then opens up a prompt call for all Director-level donors (I made up some names. I’m still working on them). And then I start writing!

Don’t have a Dreamwidth account? Vote in the comments.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1207912.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Flight (more Chess/Black Knight AU)

Dec3

After Blond Bishop
~
Luke flew.

He didn’t want to do anything but fly for a few minutes, so that’s all he did, letting the wind carry him, letting the air hit his face, letting his wings do their own thinking and his body shift with the currents.

When he started to think again, he flew higher, making the work take all his attention. It had been a while since he’d gotten a good flight in. He should…

The thought hit him like a punch in the guts and he lost his glide for a moment. He flapped hard, caught himself, and found the thermal again, the panic momentarily overwhelming the sudden surge of guilt.

Once he was stabilized, he had no such protection. He should ask Cya if he could do this more often...

But he hadn’t asked, he’d just freaked out like an idiot and flapped off.

Which had a chance of seriously pissing off his Keeper, not to mention irritating his boss.

He snarled at the wind. He didn’t want a boss. He didn’t want a Keeper. He certainly didn’t want these kids with centuries less experience less than him and erratic behavior patterns bordering on insanity to be in charge with him. He didn’t want… he didn’t want…

He stalled out, his wings stilling, his whole body stilling and, just as quickly, twitched and moved again, correcting for the wind. Mid-air was not the place to be having existential crises, not unless he wanted to find out exactly how much damage his body could survive.

A treacherous voice in the back of his head wondered if Cya would rush to his side, if Mike would be there in a heartbeat, if anyone would care.

“Don’t be stupid,” he snarled at himself. He wasn’t her lover; he wasn’t her paramour. He sure as hell wasn’t any of that for Mike. And there was no reason anyone ought to be rushing anywhere, although, he considered, Will would probably show up just to yell at him. Yell at him and not let him die. Will was like that.

He was being stupid. He was being stupid, and he was being a stupid Kept which, he was beginning to realize, was an entirely different animal from normal stupidity. He ought to go back and, it seemed, he wasn’t doing anything of the sort. He twitched his wings in the currents and moved up higher still.

He became aware that someone was following him about half an hour out from the army camp. He shifted and twisted until he could get a good look at them: an elf, with wings. A long, lean woman with strawberry blonde hair and improbably pointed ears… and improbably pointed wings. She was pacing him with ease, and she was wearing the uniform of Leo’s army.

A flier, and he hadn’t met her. Luke stamped down a surge of anger and flapped hard, pulling himself higher in the air, moving faster.

She kept up. He kept flying, higher, faster, pushing himself until even his supernatural lungs burned, and she was right behind him. He dove down a couple hundred feet – and she paced him.

Leo’s army was nothing if not loyal, Luke had to admit, loyal, devoted, and obedient. He found an outcropping big enough for both of them and landed, doing his best not to show how hard he was panting.

She circled twice, talking into her radio, before she landed as well.

“Sir.” Her voice was neutral.

“Miss.” She had the insignia for Captain; “Captain. I’d say you don’t have to follow me, but you do, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you have any other orders?”

“Of course, sir.”

Luke snorted. “C… sa’Doomsday would love you.”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice was carefully neutral.

“I’m not… I’m not running away.” He shifted, wings folding in a bit. He didn’t like the concept. He didn’t like using that phrase. He wasn’t some recalcitrant slave…

…except, fuck, he was.

“Yes, sir.” It sounded as if she meant “no, sir.”

“My Keeper’s not only a Finder, she employs a teleporter and she controls most of this part of the country. Err, world.” Was this woman even old enough to remember when the US had existed? “Even if I weren’t Kept, I couldn’t run away from her. And the Keeping bond doesn’t really allow for escape.“

She smirked at him. “True, sir.”

His wings twitched. Oh, it had been a while since he’d really given himself a workout. “I just mean… I just needed to fly.” He sounded pretty pitiful. “I needed to feel the wind.”

The captain’s wings stretched towards the air behind her. “I know the feeling. You worried the General, sir.”

“Yeah, well,” he muttered, but he knew he was being both childish and unwise.

But the captain raised her elfin eyebrows at him, and he felt like he ought to continue. “…Not like it’s not mutual,” he admitted.

“You were his Mentor, sir?”

“Why do you keep calling me sir, Captain? Pretty sure you outrank the civilian — Kept — adviser.”

“You were the General’s Mentor, sir.” Her expression suggested that should explain it.

He sighed. There were worse things to be honored for, he supposed. Like all those Students he’d had that hadn’t made it. “All right. Just… Call me Luke, okay? I don’t feel like much of a ‘sir’ right now.”

“Can do. Call me Gwen, sir… Luke.”

“Got it, Gwen.” He spread his wings and leaned against a rock outcropping. “I’m being an idiot,” he confided, because Mike was a long way away, but this girl had something Mikelike about her nose and chin, if he squinted.

“Bolting probably wasn’t the brightest thing,” she allowed. She was smirking at him. Somehow, that made Luke feel better.

“Yeah. I. Uh.” He tugged on his collar uncomfortably. “This is, uh. New.”

“Keeps you young, right?” she joked. At least, he hoped she was joking. “New experiences?”

“Hunh.” He kicked the rock behind him a little while that rattled around in his brain. “Haven’t done ‘new’ in a while.”

“Don’t show at all or anything.” She leaned back against her own rock, mirroring him. “You’re not antsy and twitchy about everything you don’t understand, you’re not glowering at all the kids and their weird ways, let’s see, you’re not complaining about the old times –“

“That was only once!”

“And you’re not doing that thing where you could clearly do it better if only the stupid kids would listen to you.”

Luke huffed. “That’s not…”

“No. That’s ’cause you’re collared and your boss is sleeping with your Keeper.” She smirked at the way his wings twitched. “You know it’s true.”

“I’m not some idiot child who gets whipped this way and that by the collar,” he grumbled. “And I am not jealous of a girl young enough to be my great-great-great-grandchild.”

“She’s also old enough to be my great-great-great-grandmother. What’s that have to do with anything?” She raised her eyebrows. “Immortal fae. Age pretty much stops mattering after the first hundred years, doesn’t it?”

“She’s in love with Leo!” he bellowed.

“Well, yeah. And you’re Kept by her.” She patted his shoulder with a smirk. “You’ll get used to it eventually.”

He growled at her. “I’m not some lovesick child.”

“Tch, sir, you’re repeating yourself. We both know you’re not lovesick, an idiot, or a child. What you are, however, is Kept. And since you’re not a child or an idiot… maybe you ought to come to terms with it?”

Luke growled and pressed his wings against the rock behind him. “Why don’t…” He stopped himself and growled again instead. “Fuck.”

“Nobody said it would be easy.” Her smile was not particularly friendly. “We flying on, or are we flying back?”

Luke turned and punched the rock. His snarl seemed to echo the surge of guilt, fuck, was he not even allowed to be angry? “Flying back,” he snarled. “I’m going to have to face this shit eventually.”

But nothing said he had to do so in good grace.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1207598.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Blonde Bishop

Dec2

After Phase II and after [personal profile] inventrix‘ Chain of Command
Landing Page: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1202628.html

The Bishop is Mike. I’m not sure why.

Mike would laugh at him.

Mike probably was laughing at him, or, at least, he would be if any of Luke’s letters got through. Cloverleaf claimed to have a postal system, but you never knew, and Luke was old enough to have outlived several other mail delivery set-ups.

Some part of him thought, perhaps, that all the wiggle room in time when Cya sent him on errands was some sort of trap. She was the unapologetic dictator of an ever-expanding Empire; it wouldn’t be beyond her to have his mail intercepted so she could read it.

He could have just asked permission. Some part of him rebelled against the idea. He was a prisoner of war. He’d made a mistake… and been rewarded and punished in the same swoop. That’s what this was. Punishment for attacking Leo, a cover for his freedom from his oaths to Regine. And it seemed Cya had decided it would also be instructional.

It suited his impressions of her that she multi-tasked even this.

He touched his left wing-claw thoughtfully. The jewelry had been… Interesting. Wearing it in public had been strange, this weird combination of shame and pride — for the thirty seconds it had lasted.

Leo had been far less ambiguous in his reactions, returning him to sender like…

like…

shit

Like Luke’d sent students back to their Keepers when they’d shown up for PE with a collar too punitive, too difficult to actually do PE in, or with jewelry locked on.

Shit. Well, if he ever actually went back to teaching, he could make some changes there. Regine had hobbled him way too much.

Mike would laugh at him… and then probably have a list. Mike’d had a list quite a few times over the last couple decades.

Mike was going to spend a lot of time laughing at him. Luke shifted his wings and tried not to feel too stupid or too angry about that.

Or about the rest.

There had been the mess with the wing-jewelry. Luke hadn’t exactly liked the jewelry, but when he looked at the shame and pride – or, rather, when he thought about Mike laughing at him about it – what he came up with is Cya is saying I’m hers. Like the collar. But… more.

He should have anticipated it would cause problems. He had been more tied up in how he thought about it, and the disjointed feelings of having been bound and touched and somehow ending up feeling like he’d done something more intimate than sex.

And then Leo had sent him back.

Luke’s wings twitched again. That had been… humiliating. The look on Cya’s face, that had been something else. She wasn’t angry, she wasn’t sad. She shut down. Luke had found very quickly that he didn’t like it when she shut down.

And she’d politely asked for General Leofric’s time at his earliest convenience.
Luke had winced, because the two of them were snipping at each other too politely, too remotely. This was going to go badly. It was going to drag on, to become something awful.

…And now Leo was wandering around with obvious bite marks on his neck and chest, and, from the way he was moving, quite a few more bruises and scrapes over the rest of him. He hid it well, but he’d gotten torn into last night and wasn’t bothering to heal it.

Or had been ordered not to heal it.

Cya had not been pleased when Luke had been returned to her. It certainly hadn’t been the first time she’d been displeased with her general.

“If you think I’m pissed at you, Luca, you might imagine how angry I am at Leo.”

Exactly how pissed was she this time?

Luke paced, because he didn’t have anything to do at the moment, and because if he looked at Leo again, he was going to explode. Mike wasn’t going to laugh at him. Mike was going to be rolling on the floor, doubled over with laughter. Guffawing. Chortling. They were going to have to make up new words to explain the laughter.

Did she send me here all decked out just to piss off her paramour? ‘Cause it certainly worked like that, and Cya has plans for everything. That’s what everyone kept telling him, at least.

It had been bad enough to think about being decked out because she wanted everyone to know he was her Hawk, to jess as she saw fit.

It was a hundred times worse if she’d just done it to piss of Leo. He wanted to punch something. He didn’t have anything to punch. He certainly couldn’t haul off and punch Leo. That had landed him here in the first place.

“If you think I’m pissed at you, Luca, you might imagine how angry I am at Leo.”

Leo might be moving like he was hiding bruises, but he wasn’t acting like he’d just been chastised. Then he turned in exactly the right way, and Luke could see the teeth marks delicately embedded in Leo’s earlobe.

Those weren’t marks of abuse.

He was an idiot.

She hadn’t been mad at Leo at all.

Luke flapped his wings once, twice, and took to the air in a cloud of dust.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1207055.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Now open for commissions!

Dec1

It’s the Holiday Season, ripe with family events, what-do-I-get-for-whom, and, in the north, Snow!

In honor of that, I’m opening up four 500-word commission slots for $10 each.

Want something continued? Awesome.
Want to see something with a character we haven’t seen in a while, or a background character? Cool, cool.
Want me to explore something strange and unusual? We can talk!
No fanfic, please.
Want to buy up multiple slots? Feel free!

1.Rix
2.
3.
4.
5.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1206749.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable