
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/12657009.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/F
  Fandom:
      Little_Witch_Academia, Destiny_(Video_Game)
  Relationship:
      Diana_Cavendish/Atsuko_"Akko"_Kagari
  Character:
      Diana_Cavendish, Savathun_(Destiny), Quria, Atsuko_"Akko"_Kagari,
      Original_Characters
  Additional Tags:
      What-If, Sexual_Violence, Like_holy_shit_sexual_violence, Be_careful_with
      part_2, Therapy, It's_like_hurt_comfort_but_for_the_reader
  Series:
      Part 2 of The_Great_Collapse
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-11-07 Chapters: 2/? Words: 2060
****** Blight Shards ******
by KriegsaffeNo9
Summary
     Set between The Shape of No Hope and hypothetically a follow-up to be
     done some time in the future, this is the time our heroes (and our
     villains) have to learn, recover, and feel.
     Accepting requests for topics, though as I'm writing fanfics as a
     sort of self-indulgence/post-original-fic relaxation, don't expect
     regular updates. If you liked The Shape Of No Hope, feel free to
     request what-ifs, characters you wanna check in on, ramifications for
     stuff that went down... all that good stuff.
***** I Talk to the Wind *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
       "Cover your face, but let your voice be heard." -- Elector's Mask
===============================================================================
 
"What do you feel comfortable talking about today?"
Diana crossed her hands under her chest. In spite of Akko's best efforts, she'd
lost weight. Eating was a chore, and dicey at that; she lacked Akko's
omnipresent sweet tooth, and eating practically anything else was rolling the
dice on her post-traumatic s tress disorder. Would she be able to eat this
salad without thinking about feasting on Beatrix Cavendish's warm, sap-blooded
brains? Could she chew something crunchy without thinking of chewing one of her
butlers' knucklebones? Could she sleep at all knowing that she was a cannibal
abomination still tainted by black magic?
"I don't think I'm comfortable talking about anything," Diana said, softly.
"Speak about something you're less-uncomfortable with, then," her therapist
said. "If it's too much, we'll move away. If it isn't, we'll ease in. Do you
feel me?"
Diana nodded.
"What's less uncomfortable for you to talk about? You don't need to bare any
serious secrets, any deep thoughts. Ease in. Dip your toes."
"I could talk about the Hive," Diana said.
"The Hive... not an inviting name. Not unless you're a beekeeper."
"They are not an inviting people." Diana regarded her hands. Her left hand in
particular was criss-crossed and pocked with scars where she had been sliced
and pierced by Thorn; a line of scars like track marks spiraled up her arm
where the healing spell had taken root. "They imprinted their holiest text on
my mind--the Books of Sorrow. They were educational... some of the passages
were even beautiful, in spite of what they were chronicling. Is that something
I should feel?"
"There's no shame in admitting an enemy's good points. A way with the written
word is always praiseworthy."
Diana mulled her thoughts. "They were survivors. A very, very long time ago...
the timeline is a little odd. I don't know how long their years were. They're
ancient, no matter how their years are reckoned... hundreds of thousands, at
the least. Millions, perhaps. Billions is not out of the question."
She took a deep breath. "They were once the Krill, fed upon by everything else
on their world. Their existence was threatened by a planetary cataclysm. Three
princesses of the Osmium Court sought to save their people from extinction.
They found the Worm Gods.
"The Worm Gods promised them power to save their people at a price. They became
Oryx, Savathun, and Xivu Arath, the first Hive, and their gods. The Hive grew
powerful, at the expense that they must always feed their worm."
"The worm," her psychologist said.
"In each Hive is a worm, an offspring of the Worm Gods. To survive, they must
inflict pain and death, and tithe some of the pain upwards to their rulers.
They are powerful, so powerful they can't inflict enough agony by themselves to
feed their worms. If they fail, their worms will devour them instead."
"So a pyramid scheme of agony. And the Taken... if I may ask..."
Diana closed her eyes. Traveler whimpered.
"Too soon?"
"I don't know."
"What do you want to talk about, Diana?"
Chapter End Notes
     The specific performance of "I Talk to the Wind" listened to in the
     writing of this... event: watch?v=FNvrhmSuiXQ
     At the request of a reader who wasn't clear on the Destiny thing! A
     bit of exposition about the Hive. Other topics I referenced: Light
     and Darkness, the Ahamkara, the Taken (of course), and Oryx himself,
     for anyone who wants Diana's take or to not have to do a wiki walk.
***** Closer to God *****
Chapter Summary
     What if Akko had been successfully Taken?
Chapter Notes
     This work contains violent black-magic rape as disgusting as the
     author was comfortable making it. If this is even slightly upsetting
     to you, it's a good idea to skip this chapter.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
  "Eternity is very close. Can you feel yourself slipping?" -- The Necrochasm
      "It's too much… Turn it off… Let me out!" -- RECORD-449-CHASM-6263
===============================================================================
 
Savathun asked of Quria: "What could have been the future if Earth was Taken
all those centuries ago?"
Quria thought, and simulated this:
===============================================================================
Croix witnessed the sheer volume of strange matter particles being thrown off
at the Cavendish estate.
She swore at her computer for its ongoing aneurysm and switched it off. She sat
in the dark of one screen for a few moments while it rebooted. It spat the same
nonsense at her. Must be something happening at the Cavendish estate--some damn
fool get-rich-quick scheme, probably. She sighed and set Wedinburgh to
"ignore."
Whatever the Cavendishes were up to, they could fuck it all up on their own
time.
===============================================================================
Akko's shrieks of agony echoed in the ballroom. The Thrall... perceived, if not
watched, as Diana bit her eye clear of her head, tenderly snipping the nerve
with her teeth. Diana lay on top of Akko; Akko lay nude, bleeding and contused
from an hour of exotic and grotesque abuses. It was more than Diana could bear.
She had taken brief breaks as the paroxysms of pleasure and seizure became too
violent for her to properly move, and Akko had taken those moments to lie still
and chant the Words of Arcturus to try and stir the Shiny Rod awake.
And now, she pressed Akko's eye against the roof of her mouth, feeling how soft
it was, how wet, and when it popped against her incisor and optic humours
filled her mouth, she had her sixth orgasm.
I am raping her eyes, she though, and had her seventh.
When she was done taking her pleasure, Akko lay blind and broken, her skin a
canvas of bruises and cuts and bites, raw meat and glistening bone. It was
beautiful. Her pain was art.
"Me'amorfie fosshus," Akko whispered. "Arie arera. Note orfei audy fretter...
federally..."
Diana kissed her mouth as she chanted spell after spell which would never cast.
The Shiny Rod, its stars dim, she pressed into Akko's hand. She stood over her
conquest, inestimably proud, seethingly horny. She would have an eternity to
hurt her more. Together, they would be perfect.
The darkness yawned wide and Akko let herself fall into it.
===============================================================================
       There is a knife for you. It is shaped like [your soul is mine].
       Take up the blade. Make yourself beautiful. Take your new shape.
===============================================================================
The blight shard broke, and Akko was here.
The Thrall hissed and withdrew into the shadows. Diana's heart, or the memory
of her heart, pulsed cold. Something wasn't right. She'd sent Akko to the Taken
King nude; here she was, clothed in her uniform, with a hat she hadn't been
wearing.
Akko's eyes were gone, as they should be. A singularity was beginning to burn
its way free; the blight was spreading across Akko's body. She stood upright.
In her hand she held the Shiny Rod, now matte black and un-blue, the stars
unblinking eyes. It lurched in Akko's grasp like a bound animal.
"Diana..." Akko said. Venom dribbled from between her lips.
"Atsuko. I'm here." She stepped forward. She reached for her beloved's face.
Akko grabbed her hand. "Diana. Diiiiiana..."
"...Atsuko...?"
"Tierasud aktiandat." The Shiny Rod burst into knots of flesh and bone and
arranged itself into a gruesome half-alive sword, serrated with teeth and
dripping with what stunk of stomach acid. The spell was in the same tongue as
the Words of Arcturus; Diana ran the words through her head.
"Those blessed with strength may feed with impunity on the helpless."
Akko seized Diana's throat and plunged the sword into her, effortlessly
penetrating her shields and into her womanhood. Diana's wail of pain was
trapped in her throat, strangulated by Akko's adamant grip.
"Diaaaaaannnaaaaa," Akko snarled as she thrust the blade into Diana, again,
again, again, again. "DIAAAAAAANAAAAAA!"
She threw Diana to the ground after some time. Not when she was done, oh no.
Akko stomped to the sobbing, violated Diana, crushing her belly, and spoke
another word: "Chidesh kumaga."
"Punish the strength of your lessers and take it for yourself."
The Rod ripped itself apart into an array of clinging, groping, fanged,
bleeding, mawed tentacles.
Diana crawled away. "You were supposed to be beautiful," she wanted to say. "We
were to rule together. We would have been perfect."
This she wanted to say.
What she said was: "Please don't hurt me. I love you."
Akko laughed. A tentacle sliced its way through Diana's cheek and burrowed down
her throat.
There was so much time until the eclipse, and Akko was intent on using every
second. And there were five more Words of Auryx to go.
===============================================================================
"What do you see, Nightmare of Oryx?"
"Pain," Akko said. "Death. Insanity. Death."
"And what do you see, Maw of Oryx?"
"A despair that will never end," Diana said. Her mouth was wet with old blood,
her belly filled with the brains of the mother of her mothers. Akko had
presented her with Beatrix Cavendish's severed head, and dutifully, as her
master demanded, she ate.
"Then give them their sorrow," Oryx said.
Akko bit down on Diana's eye, the juices trickling down her lips and chin. She
raised the Qliphothic Rod, and with Diana's boundless sorceries, invoked the
final Word of Auryx: "Aiat: Kzarakal Xunatara!"
"It is said: Snuff out all life until only the Perfect Shape remains."
A new sun dawned in the solar system. Oryx's Dreadnaught burst through like a
titanic carcass, more than three thousand miles long, an armada of Hive ships
dragged through the rupture in its wake.
Earth would never see another dawn.
===============================================================================
Earth died screaming. Ten million humans, ten thousand of them witches, would
fatten the ranks of the Taken. Swept clean of life, the planet was interred in
the World's Grave, and Oryx departed, the Maw of Oryx devouring paths through
the stars and the Nightmare of Oryx fueling the world-changing magics to hasten
their transit.
Below the surfaces of Venus and Mars, the Vex worked in silence. It was now and
would always be too late.
Bereft of life, the Traveler would never arrive to bless humankind; bereft of
hope, the Traveler would never be compelled to stand and fight; bereft of
anything that could feasibly oppose the Vault of Glass before it was ready to
rewrite reality, Atheon, Time's Conflux, continued its dark creation.
Centuries later, the Vault of Glass completed its vast computations, and the
Vex were written into the underlying physics of reality. Paracausal entities,
like Oryx, Xivu Arath, and Savathun herself would last just long enough to see
reality remade in the image of the Vex. Alone and without hope, in a final,
impossible battle, they would be overwhelmed by the final, perfect shape they
had enabled.
===============================================================================
Savathun clucked her tongue.
"A small failure on Earth circumvented a far worse failure. The Deep is cruel,
but the Deep smiles upon its champions." She ran her talons across the blight-
draped shell of Quria.
Diana Cavendish, Maw of Oryx, had stood in silence as Quria simulated a world
that could have been. At long last, she spoke. "This machine..." She daren't
finish her sentence. "Can it simulate Atsuko Kagari of Earth?"
"Did you not witness her, Maw of Oryx?"
"I did. But can..." She breathed out. "Can she be simulated... here?  For me?"
Savathun whispered, and Quria thought.
Akko, small, beautiful, perfect, blinked at Diana. "Hey... are you feeling
better?" Akko said. "You're not trying to bite me or anybody else. That's a
step in the right--" Akko noticed her surroundings. "--hey, wait a minute. What
the hell is that? What the hell is--"
She perceived Savathun. She spoke no more.
Diana placed her hand on Akko's shoulder. "We're safe now," she said. "The
Guardians don't know where I am... where we are. Akko, it's been... it's been
so long. I've done nothing but hurt. Please, Akko, stay with me. Love me. I can
promise I'll love you--"
Quria ceased simulating Akko, and Diana was alone again.
"Raise your wand in my name," Savathun said, "and I promise her to you."
Diana drew her thorned wand--a replacement for what she'd lost all those
nightless centuries ago--across her throat. "My blood spills for you, Savathun,
queen of witches, mother of poison. For love, I will bleed forever."
Savathun remembered her brother. How Diana reminded her of him, when he was
only Aurash, one of the Osmium King's princesses. Oryx had died at last, an
eternal death, removed from reality by the Light of the Traveler's Guardians.
He had died attempting to take revenge on the loss of his son, Crota. And here
she was, poised to take the Osmium Throne, to return the power of Taking to the
Hive, where it belonged, as Diana sought to return her own world to balance.
Reality, it seemed, was not just the struggle to be real, but the struggle to
set reality right. It refused to stay. And from time to time its victories
could not be snatched away.
"To sanctify your promise, I dub you Rose of Savathun. Together, let us make
this right," Savathun said. "For what we've lost."
Chapter End Notes
     That... yeah, that was rough, even being less explicit than I
     could've been. Written at the end of a bad, bad weekend, where I
     needed to work some shit out.
     Look up your favorite performance of "Closer," originally by Nine
     Inch Nails, for this one. Cliche, maybe, but...
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