An original adult-themed tale of monsters, of love, of need, and of sacrifice
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AmongHeroes ♤ LOST ♤
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☾ 𝔈𝔭𝔦𝔰𝔬𝔡𝔢 𝔒𝔫𝔢 - 𝔅𝔩𝔲𝔢 ℌ𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔰 ☽ |
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Candlelight burned low, the orbs of orange and amber pulsing like a god’s breath with the reverberation of steady drums. Holy men, dressed in the vestments of their station, lined the stone walls at the edge of that light. Their heads bowed beneath heavy hoods, hands tucked into the sleeves cinched at their belts. Only the chanting in the backs of their throats marked them as living—and not statues carved of gilt marble.
The room was oval. At its center stood a figure, imposing and still in the shifting glow. To his left, the drumming disciples kept their rhythm without falter. To his right, a retinue of armored guards stood with hands resting—too casually—upon the pommels of their swords.
Behind the figure, just off his left shoulder, stood a short woman whose wrinkled face was made all the more craggy by the long shadows cast in the candlelight. The robes she wore and the headdress upon her brow were gilded with fine filigree, looping into runes and curling floral iconography. Mirroring her to the figure’s right stood a tall, gaunt man, likewise adorned, though in his hands he bore an object shrouded in obsidian silk.
For the figure’s part, he kept his head bowed—though not in surrender. His strong chin and cutting jaw hovered a scant inch above the crest of his broad chest, as though the weight of his own restraint pressed it there.
“You are no longer to be Aedric, son of Lucan,” said the woman, her voice as cragged as her face.
At her words, Aedric lifted his azure eyes beneath the shelf of his brow, though his head did not follow. His scalp had been shaved for the ritual, but even the faint stubble there seemed to bristle at the sound of his name spoken for the last time.
Within his chest, something stirred—familiar, eager. A voice without words. A command without language.
Take her throat. End this.
His jaw flexed once. Then stilled by force.
“From thence forth, you shall be known only as ‘Guardian.’ It is your name, your title, your calling—your purpose,” the priestess intoned. “May you die having never been dishonored with your old self again.”
For a moment, the drums continued—three slow, deliberate beats that seemed to land somewhere deeper than the stone beneath their feet. Then they stopped.
Silence flooded the chamber. Thick. Immediate. Suffocating.
At that line, Aedric—Guardian—ground his teeth, burying the hate that clawed its way up the back of his throat. It did not fade. It did not weaken. It waited.
“Show in the royal family,” said the priestess.
At the command, two of the disciples moved to open the heavy wooden doors that had remained latched directly before Guardian, the priestess, and the priest. Greased hinges elicited no sound as the doors swung inward, revealing a corridor beyond brightly lit with ensconced torches. A retinue of royals greeted the gaze of Guardian. The man, obviously the king, stood almost a head shorter than Guardian. His features were handsome, but haggard and heavy. In this man’s face, Guardian saw a predator that had become prey—a monarch being crushed beneath the weight of his crown.
Next was the queen, standing dutifully beside her husband. She was dark and beautiful, but utterly tired. The torchlight was swallowed by the color of her whiskey eyes, their luster dimmed well before its time. In both the king and queen, Guardian saw trepidation, weariness, and distrust. Their eyes shifted about the chamber, taking in the ritual and its practitioners with begrudging resolve, before settling—almost in unison—upon him.
Neither held the gaze long.
The king’s eyes flicked first, drawn away by something over Guardian’s shoulder. The queen followed a heartbeat later, her posture straightening by rote instinct rather than conviction. A subtle shift passed through the retinue—small, practiced movements of deference. Heads bowed. Shoulders squared. Space was made without command.
And through that space, she came.
Isolde Valencrest did not hurry her steps, nor did she linger. Each footfall was measured, unhurried, possessed of a quiet certainty that required no announcement. The torchlight followed her in, catching upon the dark sheen of her hair and the pale line of her throat, where the pulse of her blood stirred just beneath the skin. Beneath the alabaster of her complexion, that lifeblood moved unseen—surely as red as the rouge of her full lips. Where her father had been worn and her mother dimmed, there was no such erosion in her—yet.
Guardian watched her approach without lifting his head. His eyes alone tracked her, pale and cutting beneath the shadow of his brow. There was no fear in her. No hesitation. Only a stillness that matched his own.
The priestess shifted beside him, drawing breath to speak—to instruct, to warn—but the words never came. Isolde passed the threshold of the chamber and did not look to the clergy, nor to the guards, nor even to her parents. Her attention settled upon Guardian as though the rest of the room had ceased to exist.
“You will keep your distance, Your Highness,” the priestess said at last, the command thinly veiled in reverence.
Seraphine did not so much as glance toward her. She continued forward.
The guards along the wall tensed, leather creaking beneath tightening hands. One of the drummers faltered—just a fraction—and found his rhythm again a beat too late.
Still she came on.
Guardian felt it then—not in the air, nor in the sound, but somewhere deeper. A pressure. A pull. Subtle, but insistent, as though something unseen had taken hold of the space between them and was drawing it closed.
She stopped within arm’s reach.
Too close.
Close enough that he could see the fine detail of her—the way the light caught in the gray-blue of her eyes, the slow, measured rise of her breath, the quiet warmth that seemed to radiate from her in defiance of the cold stone and ritual air. Close enough that he could scent her—not perfume, not artifice, but something clean… and something else beneath it. Something warm. Something alive.
The thing in his chest stirred.
Take her.
His jaw tightened. The muscle there jumped once.
Isolde studied him openly—not as courtiers did, measuring threat and calculating danger, but as one might regard a blade newly forged. Interested. Appraising.
“This is what you would bind to me,” she said, her voice low, even, entirely her own.
It was not a question.
Guardian did not answer. He did not move. But his eyes—those pale, cutting eyes—met hers fully for the first time and did not look away.
“Your Highness, please…” said the priest, his voice high and nervous, his throat bobbing as he held the silk-obscured object before him. “This is no mere man before you. He is vverevolf. Until the ritual is complete, he is hardly more than feral…”
Isolde cut her eyes to the priest, one brow arching like the curve of a drawn bow. She held his gaze long enough for his voice to falter and die before returning her attention to Guardian. When their eyes met once more, it was like two blue hells touching—one bright as sun upon open water, the other cold and cutting as midwinter steel.
“Feral, are you?” she asked softly. “Would you rip out my throat, vverevolf?”
Looking into her eyes—their cold beauty as unreadable as the scrit of ancients—Guardian felt his blood begin to thrum within his ears. His hands, crossed before him, clenched and unclenched in slow measure as the beast within him leaned toward her words, not recoiling, not resisting, but entertaining them. The shape of it. The heat of it. The taste of it. His jaw shifted once, tightening as the urge rose sharp and familiar.
For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, slowly and without haste, one side of his lip lifted—not into a smile, but into something barer. The pink of his tongue traced along the ivory edge of a sharpened canine, deliberate as the draw of a blade and just as quiet… and just as dangerous.
The king’s voice cut through the moment. “Enough of this! Daughter, this is not some carnival act. We are here out of necessity—fucking desperation, even!” At the king’s curse, the queen closed her eyes and placed a gentle hand upon her husband’s wrist. The monarch looked to her, his temples throbbing with strain, before turning back with a ragged breath. “Get on with it.”
The priestess inclined her head. “As His Majesty commands.” The drums resumed, slower now, deeper, each beat felt more than heard. The tall priest stepped forward and unveiled the object in his hands—a mask of dark metal, severe and angular, its surface drinking the light, its edges etched with sigils so fine they seemed to shift as the flames danced.
At the sight of it, something within Guardian tightened—not fear, but recognition.
The mask was raised. Pressed into place. Fastened.
The sigils dimmed.
The world shifted.
The pull came—not to flesh, but to something deeper, seizing the place where instinct coiled and hunger slept, forcing it inward, shaping it, binding it. The beast surged against it, furious, unyielding.
Break it.
His jaw locked.
“Guardian,” the priestess called. “You are bound to this woman, Her Royal Highness Isolde Valencrest. You are vowed to protect her at all costs, to live within the confines of the mask that veils you, freed only upon the cessation of the beating of your monstrous heart.”
“I do not submit,” he said. His voice came hard and thick from behind the iron of the cursed mask.
“You misunderstand,” she replied coldly. “You have already been given.”
Her hand fell.
The drums ceased.
And the bond took hold.
It came not as pain, but as certainty—a tether drawn where none had been, sinking deep, aligning, claiming. Guardian’s breath hitched once, sharp and involuntary. Across from him, Isolde stilled as something passed between them—unseen, unspoken, undeniable.
Recognition.
“It is done,” said the priestess.
The silence that followed was not the same as before.
This one lived.
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