The Bog

Title: Amphisbaena
Fandom: Final Fantasy 4
Characters: Baigan. Appearances by Golbez, Scarmiglione, Cagnazzo, Kain
Rating: Mature
Length: ~6.6k words
Summary: Being a monster outside as well as inside has its ups and downs.
Notes: Hoo boy. Of all the fics nobody asked for, I think this is the least asked-for of all time. The story actually spun off a different fic that didn't work out (probably for the best given that it was kind of vile even for me) because I couldn't deal with Baigan's stupid snake arms. They suck so bad. In the game he's all like "Golbez has given me a great gift" and I am here to tell you: no he did not. Anyway, this has lots of extremely graphic gore and violence, body horror, non-explicitly-described rape; I hesitate to give this the guro tag given I don't think the gore in this is particularly eroticized, its mostly just gross.

The quote at the beginning is from Lucan's Pharsalia, a Latin epic poem about the conflict between Pompey and Caesar that knocked me on my ass when I read it in school and quickly became my favorite because it has some truly gnarly stuff in it. There's a lengthy sequence near the end consisting of Roman soldiers dying in graphic, horrifying detail to a variety of different deadly snakes, which in all honestly was probably the primary inspiration for this fic.

( At least a blatant seditious act would have given Baigan an excuse to break the Lord Commander's nose. )

I was working on this Unukalhai (FFXIV) fic a while back, but I ran out of steam for a variety of reasons. One was that the glimpses of the Thirteenth prior to becoming the Void that we've gotten in the game are like, JUST different enough from what I had in the story that I don't think it works anymore but not different enough to spark a new direction. The other was...I just could not for the life of me nail down Elidibus. Unukalhai obviously has mixed feelings about him and I could not figure out the right...balance? Something?

This was the only scene I actually liked upon poking at it again but I genuinely have no idea if it makes sense out of context as its own vignette. Elidibus retrieves Unukalhai from some kind of voidsent torture dungeon shortly after the Flood of Darkness; Unukalhai is unconscious for a while and Elidibus leaves him in that structure on the moon to recover; when he wakes up he's obviously fucking terrified. I think there was supposed to be a scene where he tries to flee and ends up getting caught by Emet-Selch and handed back to Elidibus that I never wrote, because obviously I wanted to get to the part where Unukalhai tries to graphically murder Elidibus.

( The Part Where Unukalhai Tries to Graphically Murder Elidibus (warning: graphic) )

Title: A Crystal Dimly Lit
Fandom: Final Fantasy 1
Characters: Red Mage, Fighter, White Mage, Monk, special guest appearance by Gigas Worm
Rating: Teen
Length: ~6.6k words
Summary: Four heroes, each bearing a crystal, come to Coneria, and it goes about as well as you'd expect.
Notes: I think this was an exchange fic, and the requester wanted a male white mage, so I just went ahead and made the rest of the party female. There are a zillion of these kinds of fics but I'm still kinda fond of the red mage's backstory here. And yeah I was scared of the Gigas Worm as a kid, IDK.

( Today the sun was hotter than usual -- it seemed to grow hotter every day, and there was precious little shade on the plains. )

Title: A Lesson for Monsters
Fandom: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Characters: Alucard, Olrox [gen]
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~2.2k words
Summary: Dracula's only son must learn to be a vampire before he learns to be human.
Notes: Written for Yuletide 2017, and since this roughly coincides with the release of the Netflix Castlevania cartoon I feel I should make it clear that this has nothing to do with it and is pretty firmly rooted in the game (one of my faves). It's about vampires, so there's some blood and murder and general gothic spookiness, but nothing too terribly more graphic than what you see in the game.

( Dracula left his castle shortly after his son, the dhampir child who would come to be known as Alucard, was born. )