Absent Faces (Dresden Files/Warframe)

[RichardWhereat]

He won't. Or, I hope he won't.

 

[RoninSword]

If he didn't, Bob would end up in the hands of someone on the White Council. And then who knows what chaos happens.

Besides, Harry is crazy enough to head back to Creation regardless. He has things he would consider unfinished, the least of which is , imo, telling Charity her daughter is alive, even if she can't ever come home.

 

[NemoMarx]

Its origin was a hulking cannon, an alien thing that reminded me of bone and eyes despite featuring neither, that had burst from one of the Lotus' arms.

Click to shrink...

One of the sentient arm cannons? Of course she'd have them natively, so that makes sense.

 

[jwolfe_beta]

Well that tears it. There is no rational way in heck Dresden and Mouse (he was there and not attacking the Outsiders) will be able to stay in the DF-verse after this. Come to think of it even Murphy might be on the chopping block considering her long-time association with Dresden and her interactions with him during this case.

Most I can see happening is Lotus and Dresden explaining to the Carpenter's what's happened to Molly and giving her a chance to say goodbye. And the only reason they manage even this is the Grandmaster Tenno explaining in no uncertain terms that if there is even the slightest twitch by the angels, fae, wizards etc toward their mother, newest sister and operative, the Gates and Wall are going bye-bye.

 

[Vadrigos]

Alternatively, he could flee with the Lotus.

Click to shrink...

It's increasingly looking like he'll have to...we're so far down the rabbit hole we're covered in droppings.

 

[Anzer'ke]

---

There was no portal. Not even a gesture.

We were one place, then a step later we were somewhere else. Forget how she did it, I didn't even know what she used to do it.

What I did know was that, wherever we'd come to, it wasn't a place for me to be.

Everywhere I looked the world blurred and shifted. A gore slicked battlefield one blink, a sequence of ragged trenches the next. Image after image, each one breaking apart beneath my attention. Revealing the slightest glimpses of...something, something I could not grasp.

All united by themes of war. Of a line drawn in sand, and defended with as much blood as it took.

More blood then I'd ever wanted to see. Even just on the outermost edges of the terrain where we had arrived.

Deeper in I could see fortifications. Built as much of magic and will as anything physical, they thickened to a solid mass on the approach to-

I felt my brain flinch from the sight. A ragged hole into that damn blackness. That watchful abyss staring back at us from a tear in the world itself. Surrounded by the remnants of a seal so mighty that its ruin dwarfed any magic I'd ever encountered. The White Council's Hidden Halls in Edinburgh, stronghold of Wizards for generations, couldn't compare to even a fraction of their might.

Yet they'd been torn asunder.

I trembled to imagine what had done it. Then I remembered I already knew that answer.

Ahead of us, the Lotus walked with a calm sort of haste. Moving fast enough to force us to jog, without ever breaking into one herself. She seemed no more than she ever had, powerful but not the kind of monster that could do such damage.

"Things are seldom what they seem, my host." Lash murmured in my ear.

The Lotus turned slightly, enough that I might have met her gaze if she had eyes to gaze into. "A compliment Cephalon? Or a condemnation?"

She must have gotten used to being heard by more than just me, because Lash didn't hesitate to shoot back, "Shouldn't you already know?"

My client, or whatever she was now that the job was done, actually smiled at that, just a little. "Perhaps. In any case, we must depart now, while the opposing force remains occupied with the realm exposed by Cerelis' sacrifice."

"Mother..." Leia's voice whispered, subdued, and heavy with pain.

"Fear not my child, she will not be forgotten." For some reason I felt her attention lingering on me as she said it, like she was staring at my forehead. Then the moment passed and a far more important thought hit me. A thought I'd been putting off for at least a day, possibly much longer given how time could slip away in the Nevernever.

The others started walking, and I stayed where I was. Chewing on words but unable to speak.

I had to go with them.

I couldn't go with them.

If I stayed...even if the Council didn't already know, Mab had seen me in the company of the Outsiders, garbed in what was obviously their style. Judging by the amount of the blood spilled around us that belonged to faeries of winter, I was pretty sure she'd have something to say about that. Even forgetting the insult that the Lotus had dealt her to erase my debt, or the maiming, or the humiliation of it.

In short, Mab was going to make me wish I was dead if I hung around. If not, then the Council would cut my head off for practically tap dancing over the Seventh Law, up to and including having an actual Outsider for an apprentice.

There was the problem though. Molly was alive. Somebody needed to tell her family the good news, even if it was followed with all kinds of horrible fine print

That was only the beginning of the loose ends I'd be leaving behind. The things I'd left undone for so long, always assuming there'd be another day to deal with them. Thomas' strange behaviour and my fears that he had fallen into old habits. The lingering grudge I'd held for Ebenezar's hypocrisy, festering between us. All the things I hadn't said to Michael in the time I'd been avoiding him. Murphy…

Suddenly I was aware of it all. Like a sucking wound in my chest. An aching hollow part of me, that I couldn't hope to fill, and couldn't bear to abandon.

I'd left so many things undone. I hadn't even made arrangements for my obligations: the sword I'd been entrusted with by a Knight of the Cross; Bob, with all his power available to anyone who picked him up now I was gone; Even Mister, my grouchy monster of a cat, would need someone to look after him.

Well, maybe that last one was me worrying about nothing. Mister would probably just start eating the local dogs when he got hungry.

I had fallen behind, the group turning to look back to where I stood, Mouse still keeping to my side.

They should have been angry, yelling at me to hurry up, but instead both the Lotus and Leia looked at me with understanding. The weight of it only weighing on me even more.

Then something else pressed down on me, a ripple of force hitting me hard enough to force me to my knees.

Dimly I was aware of the Lotus passing Molly to Leia. Of the Tenno shaking her head, unwilling to abandon the mother that was gliding across the shifting ground towards me. Dimly because I was already focused on what was behind me, even before I turned and saw it.

Saw her.

Her very shape was testament to her name, the central spires of her structure forming an outline that was not a copy of the flower, but a reflection of its very essence. Calling forth a fragmentary memory of her soul, and the change she had willingly submitted to. I could see how she had shifted from what she once was, see the lingering elements of what she had been in what she was.

Not that the current shape was any less alien than the memory. A vast creature of distant metals and inhuman craft. She dwarfed any building I'd ever seen. A city sized construct of arching line, blurring with the eddies of Outside that washed out from her.

Despite the pain of looking at her. Despite the primal terror of seeing something so huge and yet alive. I couldn't deny her beauty, as bizarre as it was to behold.

It was so captivating that it took me a moment to see past it, to see that she was falling.

The currents of energy creeping in from Outside were pouring from wounds. Rents and tears torn in her structure. The delicate lines of her form torn and twisted around each one.

Even as she descended, even as she crashed into the ground with such an impact that I was thrown to the ground entirely, the Lotus was still fighting. Firing everything from lasers and missiles to things I couldn't even begin to understand. A solid wall of fury and fire that met a barrier of such power as to eclipse even her.

Power in more forms than I could hope to count. Forming a wall of symbols from the common sigils of the White God and the Faerie, to crawling things that I was glad to know nothing about.

All the Lotus' efforts could not pierce it. Could not stop it from creeping closer to her, and after her, us.

For all her talk of using Ythyl as a distraction, the Lotus' true strategy was plain.

A sacrifice. Her life for the chance for us to escape.

And all the while I'd been bemoaning my own losses, the chances I'd pissed away and wanted back.

I didn't have my staff, or much of anything really.

My gun was useless in the face of the firepower that had already failed.

My armour was damaged, and wouldn't have stood up to that kind of power even at its freshest.

I was drained, and injured, and Mouse was no better. R2 was able to muster a defiant beep and no more. While Lash settled into place at the back of my mind, a grim acceptance extended to me.

I felt Leia step into place at my side, but it was Molly whose voice I heard, distorted as it was becoming.

"She's...she's a good guy, right Harry?"

I should have told them to run. That maybe they'd make it to the Gates, to whatever safety that rent in reality offered for their kind. Instead I nodded, and smiled with pride when Molly finished the thought for me.

"Can't leave her behind then."

There was absolutely nothing we could do. It was stupid and reckless and insane...and we were doing it anyway.

For whatever reason, that was enough to make some elements of the wall approaching the fallen Outsider hesitate. Symbols dimming and growing in what was probably just my poor battered brain's best attempt at interpreting a divine alliance of things that could blink me out of existence with hardly a thought.

Things that were quick to reach a new agreement, and begin to move once more.

Which was when things got really crazy.

​

---

​

 

[13th Bee]

@Anzer'ke, please do keep in mind that the poll will be biased due to where it is conducted. The location where it is being taken is filtering it to people already interested in the story (and thus more likely to be interested in a sequel) and the settings it involves (and thus more likely to be interested in Dresden Files and/or Warframe stories).

 

[Anzer'ke]

---

Just like the Lotus' pursuers, I felt them before I saw them. A wave of unreality washed over us and when I turned to face its source…

Watching them move was already enough to know what they were. Like Leia, they blurred and vanished, reappearing elsewhere upon the battlefield. Each one was clad as she was, their soul burrowed deep within a faceless golem, and the sight of those golems took my breath away.

I saw common patterns, types or models or whatever, but that was where similarity ended. Unity appeared only in snatches of shared symbols, a tattered flag hanging from every shoulder in a group, or a patch of colour repeated on every chest. Beyond those, they were a riot of countless different styles. Each and every one decorated like a statue had decided to walk out of an art gallery.

A gallery that stretched out of sight in both directions, and was still spreading. More of them poured from the portal with every passing moment, until there had to be hundreds of thousands of them. Millions even.

And then. They came.

As if stepping into our world from a place beyond the stars. Tenno began to appear, like as to their massed siblings, and nothing like them.

I saw a mob of the golems enter the world in perfect sync, a child made of light floating at their centre. The sight of her seared like I was staring at the sun, then I looked away and could not remember her face.

I saw a shape that was at once vaguely humanoid and an endless explosion. Limitless fury focused and contained and screaming in my bones to be unleashed.

I saw a child, this one clad in the essence of the golems. A Blade in his hand, Implacability in his every step, and dozens of other concepts refined into his many tools.

I saw a desert that walked and spread and embraced her brothers and sisters.

I saw a rent in reality, shaped as a child and standing alone.

I saw another, this one trailed by golems that moved with the same bestial grace I'd seen when I fought Leia's on its own.

I saw gods, or slayers of gods, stepping into a world that quivered at their entrance. Even the distant and Outside-touched place in which we stood began to break down from their presence. The lifeless sand breaking down to nothing, while the great void from which they had stepped began to creep slowly wider.

Their attention was like a physical thing. A thousand lances crawling across my skin until they found approval and turned their weight to the force arrayed on the opposite side of my defiant little group. The force that had never stopped drawing closer to the Lotus' true form.

The thought that they projected came in countless voices and a million wordings, but a single thought all the same. Weapons rose in defence of their mother, from the bigger brothers and sisters of my new sidearm, to things that tore at Creation with their presence alone. The army stepped forward in perfect silence, and a psychic roar.

A line was drawn.

Yet the forces of my world were not cowed. Not by the horde and not by the godslayers that stood in their midst. From where I was standing I, feeble mortal that I am, had to give the advantage to the Tenno, but whether or not they agreed I could feel the forces of Creation rejecting any notion of surrender. A pulse of affirmation that resonated down in my soul, a call to arms so potent that I almost turned and drew my gun.

But that was insanity.

At my side Leia had pulled her monster of a sword out of whatever weird techno-crevice she kept it in, her stance low and ready to join the coming charge.

But that was wrong.

Behind me the invaders were ready to strike. Coordinated by a psychic volume so great that I could feel the edges of it playing across my own thoughts. Filled with mystifying codes and an eagerness tempered with ancient wisdom. Though my nature screamed in rejection of them, I could see beyond that instinct. I could feel the weariness that so many of them held for bloodshed, and I could feel the readiness to put it aside for the sake of family.

For a mother, for their sisters, new and old.

But that wasn't what I was standing for.

Mouse and Molly stood with me, my definitely-not-a-normal-dog and my Outsider apprentice, united in common purpose. That was what I stood my ground for, what Lash had accepted our likely doom for.

I could see the clash playing out in my imagination. The slaughter that would engulf either side.

Against the might I saw, no immortality would hold. Ancient beings would be snuffed out, and more would be lost with their passing than I could even begin to grasp. Yet that wouldn't be the worst of it.

The Lotus' descriptions of her world had not been peaceful. Her Tenno kept order there, and if the war with the Red Court had taught me anything it was that even the time they had taken to come here meant terrible deeds were going unopposed in their homeland. The permanent loss of so many...

My world was no more ready to endure the bloodshed. No matter how varied the forces that had come to do battle, I knew that it would be those of the light that suffered the brunt of casualties. I could already see the rampage that would spill across the Earth as so much evil found itself without a force to counter it. Worse, I could imagine the results of the more familiar breed of Outsider coming upon us while we reeled from the deaths of gods and spirits...

Peace was our only option.

A peace that neither side could imagine.

Creation could not, should not, see the Outside as anything but a hostile and alien place. There was no space in that thought for Outsiders of a better nature. No thought of backing down or running in fear for their own existences.

The Outsiders could not, would not, abandon their family. There would be no retreat until they were recovered. No matter how many deaths they had to endure along the way. No matter how many of their number met more permanent fates.

So it was a damn good thing I hadn't gone home to yell at my brother.

"Hey!" I shouted, the sound reminding me just how very very small I was compared to the place I was and the armies arrayed to either side of me. "Can't we talk about this?!"

Attention stabbed into me, from Outsider and Creation alike, and the feeling of being a pinned bug brought me far closer to pissing myself than I'd be comfortable admitting, if a host of gods weren't capable of seeing right through any facade I threw up.

So I didn't bother trying to hide my fear, or my grief, my anger, my pettiness or my horniness or any other ugly part of me. I stood as firm as I could, and made a sacrifice of my own.

"I, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, invite you to examine my thoughts and memories. Have a look at my soul if you want." Lash was coiling up into a ball at the back of my mind, and I very much wanted to join her. Failing that, I would have loved to take back my Name and revoke the awful vulnerability I'd just handed out like halloween candy. Instead I roared defiance one last time, "What's wrong Mcfly? Chicken?"

Then I started screaming.

There aren't any words for what it was like.

The best I can do is this. Imagine a buffet, with thousands of people all gathered around a whole roast pig. Except they don't want to eat it, just examine every fibre of it, like a barbarian horde of health inspectors. Like most barbarian hordes, the majority of them aren't too concerned with putting the pig back together when they're done looking at it.

Now imagine you're the pig.

Now add a few extra dimensions, and instead of your flesh it's your mind and soul that are being flayed for information.

Oh, and add to that a horde of ninjas who keep intervening to keep some extra interesting bits from being seen. Some of them being quite happy to destroy those bits, or hide them, or whatever it takes to keep them secret that doesn't involve just putting them back into you.

I think I was glowing.

I know I was screaming.

Lash vanished somewhere almost immediately, but a few eternities later I caught a mental glimpse of her sheltered in the midst of the Tenno, so that was one bright spot amidst the infinite agony that I was drowning in.

Eventually it stopped. By which point I was flat on the ground, drooling and barely aware of my own body. My mind resembling a late stage dementia patient, while my soul had been spread out like the world's tiniest hotel butter pat on a very dry piece of toast.

I remembered something I'd been trying to do, but not what it was, or why I'd been trying to do it.

"GO." Spoke a chorus like the end of the world. Not that I could find what that word meant any more. "DO NOT RETURN." Was met with similar lack of comprehension.

I busied myself blowing bubbles, which was pretty fun, and staring at the pretty lady with the metal in her face who was crying at me.

Then something picked me up. Something blue and purple, and hurting. Something gentle.

Something a lot like a warmth I didn't remember. Arms I had never known wrapped around me, reached inside me, and began to piece me back together. A presence I had longed for since the moment I was born, it cradled me. Comforted me.

Distantly, with just enough of me put back together to remember what a hand was, I felt something licking my hand and giggled happily about it.

Then the something moved, and I looked around with eyes I was just getting used to again.

They watched me like statues. A big hall of them, stretching on and on and on as she walked. Yes, that's what she was doing. Walking. Walking and carrying me.

Ahead I could see something black, something that scared me, but she was all around me. Soothing my pain and ignoring her own. So I gritted my teeth, a thing I had but wasn't quite sure what for yet, and buried my face in her chest.

It was a nice chest.

Nice enough to distract me from the dark place looming at my back, just one more step away.

"Rest now Harry, and do not fear. You will be yourself again by the time we arrive."

Arrive where? I wanted to ask, maybe her, or maybe the statues that had closed in around us., one of them holding the metal face girl, while another held a furry thing I loved and a scaly thing that was beeping at me.

Then she stepped forward and-Hey there Kiddo

to be continued...​

 

[RoninSword]

Harry just gave his full name out to pretty much everyone. Hope something can be done about that.

 

[skaianDestiny]

buried my face in her chest.

It was a nice chest.

Click to shrink...

Even when his mind and soul were flayed into little ribbons Harry's still a fucking horndog.

Spoiler: image

Not that I blame him.

 

[Sarpedan]

---

Hey there Kiddo

​

Click to shrink...

3 little words that, in the right context, are fucking terrifying
as is what they imply

 

[shade argost]

3 little words that, in the right context, are fucking terrifying
as is what they imply

Click to shrink...

Probably got Manny's attention with the stunt he pulled when getting Molly and then this happened which made his mind pliable enough for Manny to make him a Tenno.

 

[Railyn]

Harry just gave his full name out to pretty much everyone. Hope something can be done about that.

Click to shrink...

I mean, it's not like it really matters anyway. Thou Shalt Not Open the Outer Gates, remember?

 

[Aureate]

Hey there Kiddo

Click to shrink...

Spoiler

oh hi thar dad

More to the point, I swear Space Dad is stalking me. I've had him 3 times in the past week. Like, I understand about parental concern and everything but this seems kind of excessive?

Also I do have to say that the Lotus is pretty well endowed and given his track record with MILFs and attractive women in general, Harry's response is really not surprising. It is indeed a nice chest.

 

[Midon]

HBCD, Mediator, Wizard, Human.
Would it look weird if we included a PhD in "surviving everything". Or perhaps "surviving being Harry Dresden."

 

[JadeKaiser]

It was a nice chest.

Click to shrink...

Gotta focus on the important things, yep. They're worth some pretty intense focus, after all.

Don't pay attention to the way your mind and soul most closely resemble that formaldehyde-soaked frog after most of us dissected it in about 7th grade or so. Don't worry about how you've just handed out your full true name to almost literally all of existence, and a decent chunk of another existence entirely. Don't worry about how that doesn't even matter anymore because of how you're about to finish turning into an Outsider yourself, and how you're being carried forever from your home universe and leaving behind all kinds of unfinished business that you would probably be executed before you could get to it anyways.

None of that matters, because Space Mom has the bestest rack.

In any case, I see that Lash now has her own body by means of voidhax and abuse of the half-broken state of local reality at the time. Or something. And Harry has a sufficiently traumatic "birth" as a tenno to match the others, just like Molly! How wonderful!

 

[Anzer'ke]

Maternal Instincts​

Prologue:


Silence woke her.

Cobbled together from the wreckage of three separate relays, her bazaar constantly clanked and whirred and groaned and ground together. A discordant song that demanded constant attention, a steady stream of maintenance and expense.

Not that she minded. Maroo would take her girl's greedy cries over the meditative hum of the Tin Suits' hidden stations any cycle. It was a far more human kind of tune, infinitely better suited for a mere mortal like her.

But when that song stopped, Maroo knew something was up.

She rose from her bed -fine sheets and a layer of cheap padding thrown over some of her flatter pieces of loot- and let her eyes dart across the surveillance feeds. An eclectic mix of holographic images and rugged screens and far stranger displays that took up an entire wall of her quarters; They showed nothing more than the usual activity for this time of night, and a lesser thief might have taken that as a cue to go back to battling her insomnia.

A lesser thief would have died in a gutter on Venus. Maroo had made it a lot further than that.

So she pulled her Lex out from under the stuffed Kubrow she used as a pillow, then popped the mag seal across Mr Fluffles' belly and relieved him of several grenades. Then she ran a check on each of her escape pods and the station's external sensors, eyes never straying from the displays for more than an instant.

Something about what she was seeing wasn't right, but the more she watched the less she felt like she had any idea what it was. Until she started counting suits.

The kind of visitors that came to her little hideaway were almost always the kind to spring for personalised suits. Whether for fine-tuned performance in high stress situations, or just to look cool, it wasn't just the tin suits who liked to be pretty. A fact that was handy for when a hard working appropriator of property needed to keep track of people in less than ideal lighting and a whole range of different display qualities.

Counting suits working wonders, and counting suits told her that the night crowd was steadily dispersing out into the outer arms of the station. The central areas gradually becoming barren, despite the lack of anything so blatant as a door locked when it shouldn't be.

How it was being done, Maroo did not know.

Why it was being done, Maroo did not know.

But who was doing it? Maroo definitely knew that.

Too subtle for the Grineer, too gentle for Corpus, and far too sophisticated for any of her lesser enemies. This kind of thing was Cephalon work, but with a threat to it that was just subtle enough to pretend it wasn't being made.

Meaning Mama Sentient was coming to pay a visit.

Maroo restored Mr Fluffles to his customary status as a medical miracle, gestating a belly full of explosives. They'd be exactly zero help against the monster coming to pay her a visit. As for her beloved Lex, companion in the thousand or so scraps she'd gotten into since her last beloved Lex had been tossed to aid an escape...she shrugged and locked it to her hip.

"Gotta be ready to pop myself." She muttered, barely able to muster a laugh at the 'joke'. Not with the memory of her last close encounter with the Lotus already rising up to wrap around her brain stem and pump terror into her bloodstream.

Bravery had always come easy to Maroo. Recklessness was the only hope she'd had, so she'd embraced it. Right up to the cycle she found herself on her back in that Void damned prefab corridor, blasting her final defiance at the myth that had come to life, come for her. The Weave upload had washed over her and...and…

Her hands were trembling, violent and sudden and in open defiance of half the augments she'd gotten in the course of her career. Bile rising in her throat should have been another near impossibility, but she still had to clamp a shaking hand over her lips and stagger to the finely appointed bathroom that her augments normally discounted her from needing.

Vomit vanished into the light of the waste recovery pool, a few globules splattering across the edge and calling the cleaner bots to their busy little lives. Maroo ignored them, reaching down to cup sterile fluid and clean herself with rough haste. Like she could scrub away the memory of that place. Of that immense mind looming over her, reaching into her, stripping her of her secrets with gentle inevitability.

It hadn't hurt. It hadn't been the mind shattering torture she'd always figured as the fate of those captured by the Board's boogeymen.

It had been so much worse than that.

Sixteen standard solar cycles since then. It was a heartbeat. A span too short to dull the memory naturally, and Maroo would die before she poisoned her mind with neurostims. She'd seen where that could lead a girl.

So instead, she rolled her neck until her stomach settled, then snatched up one of her many many hidden blades, and drove it deep into the meat of her thigh.

Nothing focused the mind quite like pain. At least, nothing she had handy.

With the throbbing penetration to wash away her memories, Maroo set about getting ready for a meeting with the mother of all tin suits.

Her checklist went something like:

Yank out the knife and let her augs take care of it slowly.

Tear off her sweat soaked shirt sleeves and go for a full decontamination cycle instead of just blasting the cleanser at herself for a few beats. Water temperature pushed right to the edge of burning her.

Check out the latest addition to her scars, admiring the complement they made for her amazing body. Sculpted by equal parts surgical modification and stubborn effort.

Force a grin in the mirror. Keep forcing it until it stuck and then practice until it stopped looking so ghastly.

Get dressed.

And finally, change her mind about the grenades and toss the whole lot in her Weave node, primed to deploy on a hundredth of a beat fuse if any other Weave system tried to interface with her.

The Lex would be too slow if she needed it for that, and Maroo would sooner go home and take up her mom's old profession then go back to that place. It wasn't like the grenades would actually hurt a Sentient, so she didn't even have to feel bad about blowing up the tin suits' mom.

She had to laugh though. Even now it was funny to think how many people still dismissed the information as Grineer propaganda. After all, who would believe that that the Orokin's not-so-tame demons were following the lead of a monster straight out of her mom's most cautionary bedtime stories? That the system's beacon of kindness and mercy was one of the abominations that crushed her distant ancestors.

Assuming that her mom hadn't been making up a nice story about the event that had spawned little Maroo, and that the Board weren't full of shit when they claimed direct descent from the Orokin elite.

With a last glance at the displays, and a nod when she saw the central bazaar looming empty, Maroo left her quarters. Pausing only to mutter a quick prayer to her mom's shrine. Whatever corner of the Void the woman's oro had found its way to, Maroo hoped she was watching her little girl.

Staring down a Sentient was definitely a worthy addition to her legend.

---

A/N: So there's the prologue of Maternal Instincts, might not be what you expected but there's a reason I wanted to start with an external perspective of the Lotus. The next chapter would be 'First Faith' and feature the PoV of everyone's favourite lush of a wolf.

Not posting a thread for it just yet. Since it's already getting posted to two threads as it is.​

 

[shade argost]

@Anzer'ke, I thinking that the title for the continuation of Absent Faces should be Distant Places, it fits what has happened.

 

[Vadrigos]

Lush of a wolf?

UNCLE DARVO!?!? IS THAT YOU!?

 

[shade argost]

Lush of a wolf?

UNCLE DARVO!?!? IS THAT YOU!?

Click to shrink...

Amaterasu is both a lush and a perv as well as a great big ham.

 

[Anzer'ke]

Gentle Blade​

Preview:


Charity knew she was dreaming.

It was a familiar dream, a scene her sleeping mind had showed her a hundred times, and would probably show her a million more. She recognised it at the first sight of pink and blue hair. Roughly dyed strands framing a face that was part Michael, and part her, and entirely her daughter's.

Just like every other time she'd seen it in her dreams, Charity savoured the sight of her daughter's face. The only time she could see her daughter as she had been, instead of staring into photographs of a younger girl and trying to find the woman that she had been growing into. Even if it meant driving the stab of guilt even deeper into her guts.

Molly had been beautiful. Perfect. Her little girl, face streaked with thick makeup ruined by her tears, piercings gleaming in a dozen places, and still smiling that same tremulous little smile. As unsure and hopeful as she had been when a fat fisted toddler handed Charity her very best drawing. As fragile as the girl, right on the cusp of womanhood, who had shown her mother an unexpected gift, vanishing and reappearing and never for a moment deserving…

She embraced the guilt. It was just, right, and proper. A mother who drove away her daughter for her own insecurities had no business searching for forgiveness, but Molly's hopeful little smile had offered it all the same.

Then it happened. She knew it would happen. She knew what came next in the dream, had known from the very first time she dreamt it.

Yet Charity still screamed. Still begged and pleaded and ached to throw herself to the ground to better accomplish the task...or at least avoid the sight that was coming.

It was a dream though. Just a dream, where she couldn't move, couldn't speak. All she could do was watch.

Watch the smile fall from her daughter's face.

Watch fear open her little girl's mouth, to free a scream that would never come.

Watch the jolt…and pick out, with perfect clarity, the moment that life faded from Molly's eyes.

Blood washed across Charity's body. Hot horror clinging to her skin, tainting her.

Molly's body fell away, crumpling to the floor as a dim and distant corner of Charity's mind screamed that it hadn't happened this way. She'd been knocked out when Molly died. She hadn't seen it happen.

But the words could not reach her. Reality had no hold on Charity Carpenter. Not when her daughters severed head hung in the air before her, hollow gaze fixed on her mother.

The mother that abandoned her.

The mother that failed her.

The mother that let her d-

​

---

Charity did not wake with a scream.

Just a sigh. Exhausted and sad, a breath away from weeping. She didn't allow herself the release of tears. She couldn't.

Harry was in his cot at the foot of the bed, sleeping peacefully, and she couldn't wake him. Though an absurd urge to do just that struck her when she patted Michael's side of the bed, finding it cold and empty and far too familiar for that.

Loneliness had lost its unfamiliar sting, but that didn't mean it had stopped hurting. It didn't make her long any less for a warm body against her, whether her husband's or one of her children, Charity longed for the comfort of her family.

A comfort she denied herself as coldly as she had the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that.

Her children were mourning their sister just as much as she was, Hope still woke herself up crying some nights, and Amanda would go off the moment she saw tears. As for Alicia and Matthew, her third and fourth children were both trying so hard to put a brave face on it all.

And Daniel…

Charity closed her eyes and put that problem aside. Out of them all, it was perhaps the only one that could truly wait until morning. In the meantime she had a task to attend to. A task that had her rising, plucking the baby monitor's receiver up from her nightstand, and creeping out into the hall.

The various doors to her children's rooms called to her, but she was a mother. It was her task, her duty, to comfort and protect her children. Not to seek comfort from them.

She'd already let her inner struggles poison her relationship with one of her children. A sin for which she could not imagine being forgiven, if she had ever wanted to be. Charity had no intention of making the same mistake twice. So she walked on past the doors, stopping only to listen at each one and reassure herself that the various Carpenter children were sleeping peacefully.

Soon enough she came to the stairs, and despite everything she felt a smile tweak the sad edges of her face. Michael's creaky masterpiece had been one of the first things he replaced when they moved in so many years ago, and each of his updates since had maintained the same pattern of creaks, though born out of skill rather than the inexperience that first created them.

There was a very specific sequence of steps that would get someone up and down without alerting everyone in the house, and...only Michael and her knew it now…

Her mirth slain, Charity picked her way down to the downstairs hallway and turned to enter the living room. Of course it was empty, clean and as tidy as it ever got with so many children to spill their toys over every inch of the place, but she hadn't expected to find Michael there.

Instead she headed for the basement door that he had hidden in the wood panelling of the walls, twisting a recessed handle and entering a far homier basement staircase than the barebones concrete and wood of most households. These steps not releasing a single sound as she descended into Michael's den.

Here, as she had every time she descended in recent months, Charity was struck by the transformation.

Once it had been a combination of the typical manly cave and something out of a middle earth comic book. Half leather armchairs and a pool table, half training mats and knightly accoutrements. With her workshop too distant, and the garage too accessible by the children, it had been here that Michael always stored his armour, his weapons, and the sword.

A part of Charity that she had kept mostly buried since becoming a mother, a side that she knew a certain vanished Wizard would have been shocked by, had always loved the wall of medieval weapons. Partially because of her pride as a smith, but mostly because it resembled one of her favourite album covers and she'd never been sure if Michael had built it that way on purpose or not.

Either way, it was gone now.

The walls had been stripped of weaponry, her lovingly crafted armoury piled in a corner instead, and in its place had grown a dense network of information. Like something out of a conspiracy film, her husband had even made use of different colours of string to denote connections between data points.

As meticulous and factually grounded as it all was, Charity had never been able to argue against it with any real strength. It was enough to make her long for her Michael's courageous idiot of a best friend, because the Wizard would surely have been able to mock Michael's wall of information in a way she simply couldn't bring herself to.

Just like she couldn't bring herself to look at a certain armchair. Not yet.

Instead she crossed the room to the pile of weapons and armour. Finding it neat and well kept and even freshly oiled. Charity still couldn't help the pang of resentment, of anger at how he was treating her gifts to him. Irrational as it was, when he was still caring for them as diligently as ever, more so even, now that he wasn't being called away and leaving the task to her for the duration.

A thought that called her attention assuredly to the bare concrete that had once been covered by training mats, the part of the room where she and Michael had danced together so many times, in so many ways.

Instead her eyes found concrete, with an ugly patch of far newer material at the centre. Michael's promise to blend the colours having slipped another day. Leaving it abundantly clear where he had gone at the floor with sledgehammer and pickaxe for the better part of two days, locking himself in the den while she had held her children and struggled through the organisation of a closed casket funeral.

The patch was a reminder of those days. Of what had been left beneath the weight of them, just as he had left something beneath the weight of fresh concrete.

It hurt to look at it. It hurt so much that she found the strength to look at her husband, escaping one pain for another.

The scattered paperwork he had buried himself in for most of the previous evening did not hold her attention long. The flourishing of his business ever since he had put down the sword did not bring Charity any particular feeling, for good or for ill.

Instead she looked straight to the rough beginnings of a beard that her husband had left unshaven for the third day running. Then to the shirt and sweatpants that failed to hide how his build was shifting, growing heavier, towards a state that most men his age would have considered incredibly healthy. Most.

Finally, with nothing left to distract her, Charity looked to the bottle still clutched loosely in his sleeping hand. The neck was hidden by his hand, the glass too dark to see whether it was empty or full, but when she peered closely, so closely her breath played across the fine hair at the back of his hand, Charity could see the seal at the top of the bottle of whiskey.

Unbroken.

She did not sigh. The kind of sigh she wanted to release would have woken him for sure, and Michael was already suffering enough without the kind of guilt he'd feel at being found in such a state.

Unbelievable Catholic that he was, her husband didn't need any more guilt, no matter how a tiny spiteful part of Charity wanted to add to his burdens.

She was the one who deserved to be punished. Not him.

They'd both abandoned their family, but he'd at least had a good reason for it, and he'd thought she would take care of them in his absence. That was what she was meant to do.

She was the failure. Selfish unworthy creature that she was, it was a wonder he hadn't cast her out already. She'd half expected him to: in the days after Molly's death; in the drive home from the funeral; in the early hours of morning after they'd finally gotten a houseful of weeping black clad children to go to sleep, when he'd asked her to meet him downstairs to talk about something important.

Charity had almost expected him to hit her. Perhaps she had wanted him to.

Instead he had embraced her, as good a man as he had ever been, and no less forgiving of all her many flaws.

Instead he had shown her where he had buried the sword, and began to speak of things that she couldn't argue with. Couldn't find her voice to deny.

Of guilt.

Of duty.

Of failure.

And of revenge…

​

---

​

 

[RoninSword]

And the White God will likely never be able to arrange a series of coincidences that gets the sword out of the concrete for who knows how long.

 

[Leafy503]

I wonder.... could Harry even send a message back? Even if he did it would mean death for anyone associated.

 

[Sarpedan]

And the White God will likely never be able to arrange a series of coincidences that gets the sword out of the concrete for who knows how long.

Click to shrink...

just wait for some soggy bint to hand it off to someone to make them king, even if that is no basis for a functional government

 

[RoninSword]

I wonder.... could Harry even send a message back? Even if he did it would mean death for anyone associated.

Click to shrink...

\he could always try to physically approach the Outer Gates in the hope that Rashid is there and willing to listen to him.