axe and ye shall receive

Damien

and every demon wants his pound of flesh
but i like to keep some things to myself

The mud here wasn’t like Halo’s.

There, it froze and cracked. Here, it breathed. It oozed up through the roots, slow and deliberate, thick with the smell of rain and rot. Every night he went to sleep still hearing it shift in the dark — the sound of the world remembering itself.

He’d been in the Greatwood for days now, helping where he could. Clearing paths, hauling branches, cutting new channels for the runoff before it drowned the low ground. He’d lost his axe the first day — swallowed by a pit of memory mud so deep it nearly took his arm too. No pulling it free, no use swearing about it. The forest kept what it wanted.

When he’d passed Frey’s shrine near the floating river, he hadn’t stopped. But the place stuck in his mind — red water hanging in the air, the little statue that changed its face each time he looked. Something about it had felt familiar, even if he had never been to this one before.

He came back now, boots heavy, coat spattered, Aria padding at his heel. The snow leopard moved quietly, her fur dappled gold in the sunlight that sifted through the canopy. She found a stone perch near the edge of the water, watching the currents with wide-eyed fascination.

“Stay close,” he murmured. She didn’t answer, but he felt her amusement in the back of his mind, bright and feline.

The shrine sat beside the river — or below it, really — where the crimson water drifted ten feet off the ground, looping endlessly through the air. He stopped to watch it for a moment, too. The sound of the rushing water was soothing.

He reached into his pocket and took out a small carving: a hare, rough-cut from a branch of Halo pine. He’d made it the night before, sitting under an overhang while the rain came down. It wasn’t perfect — the grain had split along the hind leg — but the shape was there. Quick, alert, somehow a bit noble-looking. Something Frey might appreciate for what it was: made by hand, made to last.

He set it down upon the shrine, careful not to put it in danger of the mud.

“Didn’t think I’d be back to one of these so soon,” he started. His voice didn’t carry far, just enough for the trees to hear. And his tone lacked the polish of ritual prayer. Instead, he almost sounded like he could've been speaking to an old friend. “Seems like you’ve got your hands full with Flowerbirth. And mud full of memories... Things that won’t stay buried.”

"I’ve got my share of rot. Things I’ve tried to bury. But if you can make this place bloom again out of all that—” He hesitated, shaking his head at himself. What am I even saying? “Maybe there’s hope for the rest of us. Maybe there's hope.. for me.." He sighed. He wasn't sure if it counted as a prayer, but he still hoped Frey was listening. Or maybe he hoped they weren't. "I guess we’re all built out of what came before us.”

He stopped, the sound of dripping leaves filling the silence that followed. One corner of his mouth lifted up then, and he tilted his head to the side, "Say.. you haven't seen my axe around here, have you, Frey?"

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Accepted receive +20 and roll with advantage at all shrines. Include this at the bottom of all shrine posts.

[Halo] Regional Score bonus: +13 in all shrine visits, drops, PQ+s, KQs, etc. (You must post this at the bottom of any post where a +13 should be included). Residents cannot be cursed at shrines in this region.

Can I use my rolls and if no success, redeem the level 3 reward for an item god-quest? Frey, if you please <3

The rain doesn’t stop when Frey arrives. It parts.

Steam lifts in hazy spirals from the red river overhead, rising like incense from a body too warm to stay sleeping. For a breathless instant the world stills; not in reverence, but in anticipation. As though the forest already knows that something wild has stepped beneath its boughs.

Frey does not appear with thunder. They do not need to.

They arrive in the space between the hush and the heartbeat. Naked, of course—wholly, brazenly, gloriously so. Their skin seems to shimmer where the filtered light touches it, their form shifting subtly in the eye like something glimpsed in a dream: not fixed, not static, but tailored. Sharpened to suit. Made of everything Damien would most desire in a lover, whether he realises it or not. Hips, shoulders, lips, curves or hard lines; all fluid, all deliberate. Every inch of them is alive with invitation.

And with them comes need. Not theirs. His.

It bleeds in slowly, like colour in water—a low, humming tension that curls around Damien’s spine and sinks teeth into his pulse. The heat of it pools low and thick, undeniable. Not cruel. Just… inescapable. The air smells richer now. Wetter. Like something breathing open.

Frey barely glances at the carved hare. Their mouth curls, not in appreciation, but in something far more animal, something unimpressed. "Cute," they murmur, with the kind of tone usually reserved for things one outgrows. "But I prefer gifts with a little more life in them."

Their gaze finds Damien then, sharp and hungry behind the amusement. And when he asks about his axe, they tilt their head like a predator deciding whether to pounce. "Which one?" Frey asks, voice low and honey-warm, eyes dragging languidly downward to his groin. A brow lifts, deliberately. "The one you swing, or the one you play with?" Their grin, when it comes, is slow and knowing. 

---

Damien rolled high enough on his own!

FREY

Damien

and every demon wants his pound of flesh
but i like to keep some things to myself

The rain didn’t stop, but it changed.

It moved around them, slow and deliberate, beading on his lashes before it ever dared touch Frey. The heat hit next—low in his spine, crawling forward like fire under bark. For a heartbeat he forgot how to breathe.

He’d heard what Remi had said about this side of them. He’d thought he understood.
He hadn’t.

They weren’t one thing. The eye couldn’t pin them down; they changed with the light, fluid as the river overhead. For a heartbeat he thought he saw a woman—hips, shoulders, warmth—and then it was gone, the lines blurred into something leaner, broader, backlit by the shifting red glow. Frey was every shape the world could take when it wasn’t bound by rules.

It wasn’t their physique that struck him first, though—it was the heat. The sense of something vital. Their skin looked like it should burn to touch, the way sunlight burns through ice. They looked alive in a way he’d never been.

And gods, they were looking at him.

The air between them hummed. He couldn’t tell if it was the storm or his pulse. He found himself swallowing against a dry throat, steadying his stance like he was facing down a wild creature that might bolt—or pounce.

When they looked at the carving and called it cute, something in him folded quiet. The hare suddenly looked smaller than it had a moment ago, just a bit of wood with the wrong kind of life carved out of it. His thumb twitched once against his palm, the ghost of a habit he’d never lost—measuring where he’d gone wrong, how to fix it.

“Yeah,” he said, voice low. “I suppose it is.”

He studied the little figure a second longer before lifting his gaze back to them. Frey’s eyes caught him and held him the way heat holds smoke; there was nowhere else to go.

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” he went on. “It’s what I know. Wood. Bone. Guess that’s my problem.” A faint, self-deprecating breath escaped him—half laugh, half exhale. “Everything I touch ends up still.”

The admission hung there a moment. He shifted his weight, steadying himself against the pull in the air.

“But I could do better,” he said after a moment, “if you’d show me what you want.” The words surprised even him. "I mean, or tell me. You can just—tell me. If you want.” Heat flushed across his cheeks, the embarrassment sharp and sudden.

Frey’s grin was sharp as a blade’s reflection. The heat between them pulsed, and he had to remind himself to keep his hands where they were. Aria’s presence pressed at the back of his mind, alert and amused. From where she perched, she purred, smug.

He dragged in a slow breath, forcing the world back into focus—the red river looping above, the smell of rain on fresh earth. His voice came steadier after that. “As for the other axe…” He nodded once, dry humor edging in like relief. “I lost it in the mud. I was hoping to make another—one that comes back on its own, maybe.”

He tilted his head slightly, a ghost of a grin finding its way through. “Seems I’ve got a habit of losing things I mean to keep.”

He let the words settle, still looking to meet their eyes. The rain hissed softly where it met the earth, and the heat in the air tasted of life.