Voltaic Refeeding

Voltaic Refeeding

Augusnippets day 3: thunderstorm | blizzard | heat wave

Word count: 499

Trigger warnings: mentions of eating, electric shock, burns, blood, fear of death

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Camlanns were born attuned to the elements. Magic wove them into being just as much as DNA, and they needed magic just as much as they needed food or air. This was easy, for some—if you were attuned to earth, wind, plants, water, physics, all you needed was to touch it to feed on the ambient magic, and you were set.

For Ruika, attuned to electricity, that was harder. Tal had told him that there were people thinking about using electricity to power lights and heat in a house, but for now, fire magic was used to bring fire, light magic to produce light. Outside of combat and nastier warding styles, no one had really incorporated electricity into their life, and Ruika did not want to get in the practice of getting beaten up by wards or people just to try and keep himself healthy.

So, when summer rolled around, the air turning souplike and clouds becoming dark with the promise of rain, Tal whipped out all his governmental real-time storm maps, Piri rented a mobile, and the three of them went storm-chasing.

Lightning was an excellent source of electricity for Ruika. Electricity naturally bent towards him, knowing he was a home for it, which was great when he was fighting lightning mages and even better when he wanted to get struck multiple times in one storm. The rest of the time, Piri and Tal set up warded spheres to catch lightning, to feed him for the rest of the year when storms were rarer. It really was the best way to keep his magic stores from withering and him dying of starvation!

It also, Ruika reflected, hand raised to the roiling sky and shaking, just could be really very dangerous.

His ears had ceased to hear anything but a high-pitched, screaming whine. He was somewhere between feeling nothing but tingling numbness and like he was about to explode, the telltale sign that he’d eaten a little too well, and like a starving person gorging themself, that was going to have some immediate, horrible consequences. Distantly, he knew he was burned all over to the point of burst, bleeding blisters, even if he couldn’t feel the blood trickling over his skin.

Somehow his arrhythmic, rabbit-quick heart found it in itself to leap in fear when his smearing vision managed to catch a flicker of light in the billowing darkness above. The three strikes in quick succession before had destroyed his ability to withstand any more voltage. If he got struck again—

The world went white.

He registered his vision jarring—had his knees given out? He couldn’t care, around the agonizing numbness, around the sight of a copper, spiky rod above him, now sizzling with the heat of catching lightning before he could. He saw a blur of red—candy-red, Piri-red. Oh, she’d put the lightning rod there.

And then any coherent thought was lost to the blinding torture of a brick-red, Tal-red blur picking him up and sweeping him away.

words to use in whump scenes (other than agony)

Blunt force

Ache

Throb

Dull

Pulse

Clench

Gasp

Crack

Beat

Slam

Crunch

Numb

Stabbing

Slice

Burn

Fire

Tear

Twist

Pry

Rip

Recoil

Cradle

Ooze

Pour

Gush

Shudder

Shaky

Gunshot

Crack

Pulse

Burrow

Blinding

Dull

Throb

Stretch

Spread

Cramp

Coil

Numb

Ache

Whipping

Slice

Crack

Tear

Rip

White-hot

Numb

Shock

Burn

Tazing

Shock

Burn

Fire

Jolt

Cramp

Paralyze

Tremble

Gasp

Douse

Stutter

Blinding

Broken/dislocated bones

Crunch

Crack

Slide

Tense

Freeze

Numb

Shock

Pull/push

Throb

Pulse

Spike

Try, Try Again

Augusnippets day 7: waterboarding | drowning | choking

Word count: 498

Trigger warnings: child abuse, depictions of drowning, symptoms like vomiting(?)

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Aristaeus only realizes that the hand in his hair has yanked him up when he’s choking on air for long, agonizing seconds. Water in his lungs, water in his stomach—all of it comes spluttering out, dragging pain behind it like yanking hooks along his esophagus. He heaves, and he is wretched—

“I remain convinced that you are not taking this seriously, morseling.”

—and he has failed. Again.

The hand in his hair tightens, just a bit; in response, all his breathing cuts off for a terrifying moment, before in a great rush, water floods out his mouth and nose, splattering into the river. The force of it makes him grasp at the shingle around him in weak, desperate movements, but when he can finally inhale, it comes clean, free of any damp rattle in his lungs, though it rasps in his abused throat. Teacher is merciful, even after his many failures.

“I am,” Aristaeus croaks, “I swear, I am.” His next words are practiced, and resonate with the scorching, acidic mass rooted deep into his chest: “This is within nature, so it is within mine.”

He cuts it off there, as he’s learned. Anything more sounds like begging to Teacher—the divine, even pale, reaching imitations like him, do not beg, as Teacher says.

“And yet,” Teacher says, “the lesson remains unlearned.”

Her hand in his hair pulls him back, back, back, and his breath shudders as the arch of his spine lets him meet Her eyes, pebbles for irises surrounded by mossy sclera. Her face is set in statuesque, forbidding disapproval, as always.

No mouth is needed to speak the tongue of the gods, only a will to be heard, and so Her lips remain sealed as She proclaims, “You will stay under for as long as it takes for you to learn how to breathe.”

The sentence nearly makes his hands fly up (to grasp at her hand and plead? To rip it from his head?); he stills them, and they hover somewhere above his knees. He knows She doesn’t mean what they’ve been doing so far. The notion makes him start trembling.

“Teacher, I am mortal. Prolonged drowning will kill me,” he says. She needs the reminder, occasionally—their existences are so far apart. Maybe ….

“It will not be drowning if you are breathing,” Teacher says, implacable. “I can expel water from your body in the river as easily as out of it. You will learn, splinterling, or you will stay.”

Aristaeus knows it’s coming. It doesn’t make the push forward into the water any less jarring, or the shingle wrapping around him to keep him under any less frightening. Her hand is still in his hair—he is trapped utterly in Her power, and it’s a cold comfort to know he won’t die, no matter how painful.

As he breathes in, tries to convert the water to magic he can sustain himself on, fails again, and starts to seize, he hopes he’ll learn Her lesson quickly.

Dialogue Prompts for Stoic Whumpee™️

“It’s not a big deal. They didn’t do much.”

“The scars are none of your concern. Don’t look at them if you don’t like them.”

“What happened? Nothing. Nothing worth complaining about.”

“Hey, hey, are you with me? It’s okay, take a deep breath. I know what to do— you’re going to be okay.”

“I don’t like short sleeves. And I don’t like your questions.”

“I didn’t flinch then and I didn’t flinch now—fuck—fine— when someone raises their hand close to my face, what do you think i’m going to do?”

“At one point, it was just me and the cliff. And the wind. Loud, that night. But—well, I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“I’ve said too much.”

“If I’ve learned one lesson, it’s that trust should be sparsely given. Remember that, my friend, next time you try to leave a knife in my ribs.”

“When we go in there, I’m going to act different. Yeah, it’s all bravado. We’re going to pretend we like the bastards, and then we’re going to rob them.”

“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You never did.”

Right, considering the current state of corporate politics on this site, and that it seems that only those affected seem to be actively speaking on the matter, it is up to I, the only fucking cishet on tumblr, to drag this out to a wider audience.

REBLOG IF YOUR ACCOUNT IS A TRANSFEM SAFE SPACE.

We need to show these higher ups how much we truly value them.

Whumpees being forced to call Whumpers 'sir' or 'master' is an all time classic, but what about Whumpers forcing Whumpees to call them by pet names, such as 'love' or 'darling'?