Re: Tied (3a/?)
anonymous
April 3 2011, 23:44:20 UTC
VI.
Arthur had a dilemma.
He could either help Alfred down, or leave him there. Both, at the moment, seemed like valid options. While the only physical damage he had sustained from the encounter was a small cut that he still couldn’t actually feel, he still felt like he had been attacked and violated.
Familiar bonds were not named by someone unaware of the roots and implications of the word. In addition to the link substantially enhancing the magical abilities of a witch or wizard due to the simple fact that there was more energy, and things went faster if two competent people worked on them, it also created an emotional bond, a sort of dependence. In rare cases, it even generated a telepathic link between partners. Thankfully, that hadn’t seemed to happen in this bond. More common was the development of a romantic relationship. Arthur hoped that his bond would be an exception. But a no-exceptions rule of familiar bonds was that the initiator held more power over the other.
Arthur hated not having control. He didn’t like to feel weak, which probably stemmed from the fact that he had been a very small child. Whenever he had spared a thought towards acquiring a familiar, he had always thought he would be the one in charge.
If Alfred gave him an order instead of making a request, Arthur would have to obey. And that way terrifying. Almost more so than the concept of being killed, and at least the familiar bond was a safeguard against that.
But an elemental who would seek someone out for the express purpose of forcing a familiar bond on them... Arthur shuddered, though it was a hardly visible motion under his cloak. He could live without a familiar. If he ran away right then, maybe Alfred wouldn’t be able to find him. Head back to Caesar, see if there was a way to break the bond without either person dying. It sounded like a plan.
Expect he couldn’t just leave Alfred stuck in a tree. There weren’t any branches near it that would support his weight, and the fall was painful even for someone who wasn’t sporting a knife wound. It was no longer dripping, as far as he could tell, but there was still a great deal of white fluid on the branch. It was the bond, he was sure. It had to be the bond making him give a damn about the stupid elemental.
He sheathed his knife, and tucked his wand back into his belt. Taking a few steps closer to the tree, he held out his arms to Alfred, who had been watching him silently the whole time. “Here. Jump, and I’ll catch you.”
Re: Tied (3b/?)
anonymous
April 3 2011, 23:51:19 UTC
VII.
Alfred gathered himself for a jump, then froze and laughed nervously. “I... are you sure you can catch me? Everyone says humans are fragile. I really seriously don’t want to squish you or something.” He seemed absolutely sincere, even going so far as to sit down. As if Arthur was going to make him jump somehow. That was rubbish, and Arthur had a strong urge to slam the heel of his hand against his forehead. So now the damned creature decided to care about what would and wouldn't be okay?
“Well, how do you expect me to get you down, then? I can’t climb the tree, the branches are too high for me to reach. Can’t you dangle with the rest of your vines, and then drop? And no matter what,” he added, feeling a little offended, “I will not ‘squish’. I’m not a doll, you know.”
When the elemental’s blue eyes brightened and that cheerful smile returned, Arthur’s heart gave a little twist. Hell. This was not fair. Stupid familiar, using his stupid magic to make him actually care and being all sneaky about it. He was sure it was magic, because Alfred’s aura had been getting steadily stronger. But it was different than anything else he had felt. Whereas the feeling he got from the magical energies of most practitioners inspired fear, Alfred’s inspired... awe. Like beholding a waterfall or a majestic wild creature. Untamed, but not inherently dangerous. More magic. More tricks. He had to keep his guard up.
“Okay, ready?” Without waiting for a response, Alfred looped his undamaged vines around the branch and swung at the only half-prepared wizard. Using his vines reduced the distance between ground and elemental, certainly, but the action had given him a lot of momentum. So when he collided with Arthur, they kept going, crashing into the forest floor. Their landing put them very, uncomfortably close. As in, with one atop the other. The wizard squirmed, trying to get free, but that only made things worse. The friction gave his body all the wrong ideas. So he froze, cheeks reddening, hoping that the elemental pressing against him wouldn't notice.
“Crap!” Alfred backed up quickly, falling over and landing on his rear in his haste to get away. “I didn’t mean to knock you over! Really! Oh man, are you okay? Where are you hurt? All I can do right now is numb stuff, I never tried to fix a person, but that’s got to be better than nothing, and we both know all about plants. So we can find something to help and jeeze I am really sorry like you wouldn’t believe!” Apparently he had taken the sudden halt of movement as a sign that Arthur was injured. Which was a relief, because had he known the truth... it would be utterly embarrassing.
Arthur decided to fall back on his favorite strategy, covering loss of dignity with insults. “I’m not hurt badly, you berk,” he muttered, standing up and brushing the dirt from his clothes. “I’ll be bruised, thanks to having a large monster barrel into me, but I can move.” He completely missed the hurt expression that flitted across Alfred’s face at the ‘monster’ comment. When he did look, there was only a smile there.
“That’s good. But, you know, it would be totally unheroic of me to let you try to get back to town. You might have broken something, or be bruised really bad. It’s going to get dark before you can make it back, and something that really does want to eat you might get you. Toss me something to wrap up my cuts, and I’ll take you to my place.”
Unheroic? What manner of strange elemental had he bonded to?
Re: Tied (3c/?)
anonymous
April 4 2011, 00:04:58 UTC
VIII.
White fabric looked very strange against purple vines, Arthur decided. Also, despite his new familiar’s (why did that phrase feel so right?) tendency to be dramatic, the cuts apparently were as bad as he had made them out to be, if not worse. The parts of the vines above the bandages weren’t moving at all, and Alfred had looped them over his arm so they wouldn’t drag on the ground. It was rather concerning. Silver shouldn’t do that to a magical creature. So why-?
The urge to smack himself in the forehead resurfaced. Of course. His knife was charmed to freeze the magic in whatever it cut. Useful for harvesting things, because it allowed plant cuttings to retain their properties and not lose their powers after being separated from the original plant, but it wouldn’t do anything good for Alfred. It would keep him from healing or doing whatever other magical things he used his vines for. Freezing magic was about the same as temporarily removing it. It was still there, but blocked up and inaccessible. The loss ached, even when there was no accompanying physical wound. And he had let Alfred go around with that kind of damage for at least a half-hour, simply because he was too stupid to remember the charm on his knife?
Arthur was a right idiot sometimes. “Oy, hold up there,” he called, and the elemental turned.
“Am I going too fast?” he asked, concern evident in every line of his face. “Seriously, just tell me, because while the last way you told me you had a problem was pretty effective, I don’t really want to be stabbed every time I do something wrong.”
“A-about that,” the wizard replied, feeling a surge of guilt at that reminder. Focus, focus. This was not a permanent bond. He was just going with Alfred because the elemental had been right about the time it would take to get back to civilization, “I think I can fix your vines. There’s a charm on my knife, see, and it might be keeping you from healing. Removing it would at least make your cuts hurt less.”
“Seriously? If you can do that, that’s awesome!” Alfred replied cheerfully, apparently nonplussed by the fact that Arthur had accidentally put a spell on him. “I mean, I can handle it if I need to, but I wouldn’t mind having them hurt. My magic’s not working on them, for some reason. I keep trying, but it doesn’t do much.”
So that was why there had been occasional surges of power from up ahead during the hike. Arthur hadn't known what to think about those, and had been getting more and more suspicious. Idiot. Idiot. “You could have said something,” Arthur said testily, taking his wand out. Removing the charm was something he did with every plant cutting. The magic needed to be free in order of for spell ingredients to have an effect. That charm wasn’t meant to be left on forever. “Here.” He took the injured vines in his hand and began to remove the cloth from one. He needed full contact for this spell.
Re: Tied (3d/?)
anonymous
April 4 2011, 00:08:45 UTC
CHARACTER LIMITS I WILL DESTROY YOU.
“Um, maybe you shouldn’t,” the elemental stammered nervously, but the first bandage was already off, and Arthur got a good look at what he had done. The knife had apparently sliced through about three-fourths of the vine’s width, and fluid still dripped sluggishly from the gash. It had never stopped bleeding, Arthur realized, but due to the coloration it had been impossible to see against the white bandages. And of course Alfred had insisted on doctoring his own wounds, so he had never seen how deep the cut went. The fluid was a different consistency than human blood, thick like tree sap, and thus had been lost at a fairly slow rate. But the charm wasn’t letting it heal. The whole vine was probably a magical construct itself, so the knife had done a great deal of damage. His guilt increased tenfold.
Muttering incantations, he traced his wand around the damaged area, trying to ignore how Alfred twitched every time he came too close to the edge of the cut. When he finished, there was a quick increase in the feeling of magic coming from Alfred, and small purple filaments began to stretch across the gash. They grew denser and denser, filling the gap until the vine was in one piece again. It was such an odd thing to see that Arthur nearly forgot to fix the second damaged vine. But he did, and this time he was more careful with where he put the wand.
Once his vines were both healed and whole, Alfred twitched them experimentally, and then turned a bright grin on Arthur. “Thanks! That feels a lot better.”
Arthur was grateful that Alfred turned and began to lead the way again, because he didn’t want anyone to see the undoubtedly stupid expression on his face. He had stabbed Alfred, mistrusted him, insulted him, and accidentally frozen the magic in his vines, and yet the elemental still said thank you...?
Tune in next time for more of Arthur's awkward flailing. You guys rock!
Re: Tied (3d/?)
anonymous
April 4 2011, 06:29:19 UTC
Love this, love this XD aw poor Alfred (although sneaky). I think it's kind of funny Alfred is acting like the uke when he's sort of the seme, and Arthur vice versa XD
Re: Tied (3d/?)
anonymous
April 5 2011, 23:16:44 UTC
Anon, your updates never fail to make me ridiculously happy. And you update so fast, too! ♥
So Alfred's taking Arthur back to "his place," huh? ;) I wonder what sort of place he lives in...I can't help but to imagine a treehouse of some sort. XD I love the way he worries about Arthur~...though I wonder how much of that is stemmed from worry about himself. XD
Poor Arthur (except not really since I requested this) being forced into the bond and whatnot. He's so cute and nervous and flustered and tsundere~ Makes me wanna hug him. :D My only critique on him would be that I think he'd be more preoccupied with wondering why Alfred bonded with him, regardless of if he's just planning to break the bond later. Speaking of which, I'm wondering just how well that will go. XD
Also, don't forget that you can have Alfred mess with vines besides those that are a part of him if you need to. Not saying it's necessary or needed or whatever, but just wanted to remind you in case you feel limited or anything. :) ♥
Loved when Arthur de-spelled (what are you talking about that is totally a real word-) Al's vines. ♥ Though, ah...was it just me, or did those vines seem a bit..."sensitive?" ;) *shot repeatedly*
Can't wait for your next update, anon! Keep up the awesome work! ♥
Arthur had a dilemma.
He could either help Alfred down, or leave him there. Both, at the moment, seemed like valid options. While the only physical damage he had sustained from the encounter was a small cut that he still couldn’t actually feel, he still felt like he had been attacked and violated.
Familiar bonds were not named by someone unaware of the roots and implications of the word. In addition to the link substantially enhancing the magical abilities of a witch or wizard due to the simple fact that there was more energy, and things went faster if two competent people worked on them, it also created an emotional bond, a sort of dependence. In rare cases, it even generated a telepathic link between partners. Thankfully, that hadn’t seemed to happen in this bond. More common was the development of a romantic relationship. Arthur hoped that his bond would be an exception. But a no-exceptions rule of familiar bonds was that the initiator held more power over the other.
Arthur hated not having control. He didn’t like to feel weak, which probably stemmed from the fact that he had been a very small child. Whenever he had spared a thought towards acquiring a familiar, he had always thought he would be the one in charge.
If Alfred gave him an order instead of making a request, Arthur would have to obey. And that way terrifying. Almost more so than the concept of being killed, and at least the familiar bond was a safeguard against that.
But an elemental who would seek someone out for the express purpose of forcing a familiar bond on them... Arthur shuddered, though it was a hardly visible motion under his cloak. He could live without a familiar. If he ran away right then, maybe Alfred wouldn’t be able to find him. Head back to Caesar, see if there was a way to break the bond without either person dying. It sounded like a plan.
Expect he couldn’t just leave Alfred stuck in a tree. There weren’t any branches near it that would support his weight, and the fall was painful even for someone who wasn’t sporting a knife wound. It was no longer dripping, as far as he could tell, but there was still a great deal of white fluid on the branch. It was the bond, he was sure. It had to be the bond making him give a damn about the stupid elemental.
He sheathed his knife, and tucked his wand back into his belt. Taking a few steps closer to the tree, he held out his arms to Alfred, who had been watching him silently the whole time. “Here. Jump, and I’ll catch you.”
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Alfred gathered himself for a jump, then froze and laughed nervously. “I... are you sure you can catch me? Everyone says humans are fragile. I really seriously don’t want to squish you or something.” He seemed absolutely sincere, even going so far as to sit down. As if Arthur was going to make him jump somehow. That was rubbish, and Arthur had a strong urge to slam the heel of his hand against his forehead. So now the damned creature decided to care about what would and wouldn't be okay?
“Well, how do you expect me to get you down, then? I can’t climb the tree, the branches are too high for me to reach. Can’t you dangle with the rest of your vines, and then drop? And no matter what,” he added, feeling a little offended, “I will not ‘squish’. I’m not a doll, you know.”
When the elemental’s blue eyes brightened and that cheerful smile returned, Arthur’s heart gave a little twist. Hell. This was not fair. Stupid familiar, using his stupid magic to make him actually care and being all sneaky about it. He was sure it was magic, because Alfred’s aura had been getting steadily stronger. But it was different than anything else he had felt. Whereas the feeling he got from the magical energies of most practitioners inspired fear, Alfred’s inspired... awe. Like beholding a waterfall or a majestic wild creature. Untamed, but not inherently dangerous. More magic. More tricks. He had to keep his guard up.
“Okay, ready?” Without waiting for a response, Alfred looped his undamaged vines around the branch and swung at the only half-prepared wizard. Using his vines reduced the distance between ground and elemental, certainly, but the action had given him a lot of momentum. So when he collided with Arthur, they kept going, crashing into the forest floor. Their landing put them very, uncomfortably close. As in, with one atop the other. The wizard squirmed, trying to get free, but that only made things worse. The friction gave his body all the wrong ideas. So he froze, cheeks reddening, hoping that the elemental pressing against him wouldn't notice.
“Crap!” Alfred backed up quickly, falling over and landing on his rear in his haste to get away. “I didn’t mean to knock you over! Really! Oh man, are you okay? Where are you hurt? All I can do right now is numb stuff, I never tried to fix a person, but that’s got to be better than nothing, and we both know all about plants. So we can find something to help and jeeze I am really sorry like you wouldn’t believe!” Apparently he had taken the sudden halt of movement as a sign that Arthur was injured. Which was a relief, because had he known the truth... it would be utterly embarrassing.
Arthur decided to fall back on his favorite strategy, covering loss of dignity with insults. “I’m not hurt badly, you berk,” he muttered, standing up and brushing the dirt from his clothes. “I’ll be bruised, thanks to having a large monster barrel into me, but I can move.” He completely missed the hurt expression that flitted across Alfred’s face at the ‘monster’ comment. When he did look, there was only a smile there.
“That’s good. But, you know, it would be totally unheroic of me to let you try to get back to town. You might have broken something, or be bruised really bad. It’s going to get dark before you can make it back, and something that really does want to eat you might get you. Toss me something to wrap up my cuts, and I’ll take you to my place.”
Unheroic? What manner of strange elemental had he bonded to?
Reply
White fabric looked very strange against purple vines, Arthur decided. Also, despite his new familiar’s (why did that phrase feel so right?) tendency to be dramatic, the cuts apparently were as bad as he had made them out to be, if not worse. The parts of the vines above the bandages weren’t moving at all, and Alfred had looped them over his arm so they wouldn’t drag on the ground. It was rather concerning. Silver shouldn’t do that to a magical creature. So why-?
The urge to smack himself in the forehead resurfaced. Of course. His knife was charmed to freeze the magic in whatever it cut. Useful for harvesting things, because it allowed plant cuttings to retain their properties and not lose their powers after being separated from the original plant, but it wouldn’t do anything good for Alfred. It would keep him from healing or doing whatever other magical things he used his vines for. Freezing magic was about the same as temporarily removing it. It was still there, but blocked up and inaccessible. The loss ached, even when there was no accompanying physical wound. And he had let Alfred go around with that kind of damage for at least a half-hour, simply because he was too stupid to remember the charm on his knife?
Arthur was a right idiot sometimes. “Oy, hold up there,” he called, and the elemental turned.
“Am I going too fast?” he asked, concern evident in every line of his face. “Seriously, just tell me, because while the last way you told me you had a problem was pretty effective, I don’t really want to be stabbed every time I do something wrong.”
“A-about that,” the wizard replied, feeling a surge of guilt at that reminder. Focus, focus. This was not a permanent bond. He was just going with Alfred because the elemental had been right about the time it would take to get back to civilization, “I think I can fix your vines. There’s a charm on my knife, see, and it might be keeping you from healing. Removing it would at least make your cuts hurt less.”
“Seriously? If you can do that, that’s awesome!” Alfred replied cheerfully, apparently nonplussed by the fact that Arthur had accidentally put a spell on him. “I mean, I can handle it if I need to, but I wouldn’t mind having them hurt. My magic’s not working on them, for some reason. I keep trying, but it doesn’t do much.”
So that was why there had been occasional surges of power from up ahead during the hike. Arthur hadn't known what to think about those, and had been getting more and more suspicious. Idiot. Idiot. “You could have said something,” Arthur said testily, taking his wand out. Removing the charm was something he did with every plant cutting. The magic needed to be free in order of for spell ingredients to have an effect. That charm wasn’t meant to be left on forever. “Here.” He took the injured vines in his hand and began to remove the cloth from one. He needed full contact for this spell.
Reply
“Um, maybe you shouldn’t,” the elemental stammered nervously, but the first bandage was already off, and Arthur got a good look at what he had done. The knife had apparently sliced through about three-fourths of the vine’s width, and fluid still dripped sluggishly from the gash. It had never stopped bleeding, Arthur realized, but due to the coloration it had been impossible to see against the white bandages. And of course Alfred had insisted on doctoring his own wounds, so he had never seen how deep the cut went. The fluid was a different consistency than human blood, thick like tree sap, and thus had been lost at a fairly slow rate. But the charm wasn’t letting it heal. The whole vine was probably a magical construct itself, so the knife had done a great deal of damage. His guilt increased tenfold.
Muttering incantations, he traced his wand around the damaged area, trying to ignore how Alfred twitched every time he came too close to the edge of the cut. When he finished, there was a quick increase in the feeling of magic coming from Alfred, and small purple filaments began to stretch across the gash. They grew denser and denser, filling the gap until the vine was in one piece again. It was such an odd thing to see that Arthur nearly forgot to fix the second damaged vine. But he did, and this time he was more careful with where he put the wand.
Once his vines were both healed and whole, Alfred twitched them experimentally, and then turned a bright grin on Arthur. “Thanks! That feels a lot better.”
Arthur was grateful that Alfred turned and began to lead the way again, because he didn’t want anyone to see the undoubtedly stupid expression on his face. He had stabbed Alfred, mistrusted him, insulted him, and accidentally frozen the magic in his vines, and yet the elemental still said thank you...?
Tune in next time for more of Arthur's awkward flailing. You guys rock!
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He needed full contact for this spell
YES PLEASE
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winning line of the century.
anon, i am stalking this fill. so so awesome ♥
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So Alfred's taking Arthur back to "his place," huh? ;) I wonder what sort of place he lives in...I can't help but to imagine a treehouse of some sort. XD I love the way he worries about Arthur~...though I wonder how much of that is stemmed from worry about himself. XD
Poor Arthur (except not really since I requested this) being forced into the bond and whatnot. He's so cute and nervous and flustered and tsundere~ Makes me wanna hug him. :D My only critique on him would be that I think he'd be more preoccupied with wondering why Alfred bonded with him, regardless of if he's just planning to break the bond later. Speaking of which, I'm wondering just how well that will go. XD
Also, don't forget that you can have Alfred mess with vines besides those that are a part of him if you need to. Not saying it's necessary or needed or whatever, but just wanted to remind you in case you feel limited or anything. :) ♥
Loved when Arthur de-spelled (what are you talking about that is totally a real word-) Al's vines. ♥ Though, ah...was it just me, or did those vines seem a bit..."sensitive?" ;) *shot repeatedly*
Can't wait for your next update, anon! Keep up the awesome work! ♥
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