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Charles rattles the door of Hilarion’s basement level, then kicks it. Locked. Typical. “Wilson? You gonna let me out, mate?”

There’s a strange sound behind him, almost like giggling. Great. Derek must’ve stayed in here to laugh at him. Not a well thought-through prank, really. He turns around. Might as well play stupid. “Is that someone mucking about? Who is it?”

No response.

There’s a lot of tumped-over boxes of old dolls down here, for some reason, kinda creepy, really, he’d noticed them earlier. He starts back down the other way, towards where Derek was giggling. One of the doll’s heads rolls out into the middle of the hall. Must’ve fallen off the stack. He reaches down to pick it up, and it rolls away from his hand behind a box. He blinks after it for a second, then shrugs. So long as it’s out of the path and nobody’s tripping on it.

He gets to an intersection. There’s more giggling, from the left, in a direction where the light’s kinda green - maybe it’s an Exit sign? He starts to head that way when there’s a weird sound from behind him, and he turns around, and there’s a doll, standing a few feet away, half its face broken out.

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you got me. Very funny.”

More doll heads roll around the corner, towards the standing doll, and he’s not quite sure how his mates are pulling this off. “Right, I’ve got the joke. Whose idea was this? Is it Derek’s? Is it? Derek, is this you?”

More and more doll parts are rolling towards each other, and they’re starting to form a sort of mass, and the giggling’s getting very loud, and a kind of broken-porcelain tentacle reaches out towards him, and something grabs his hand -

“RUN!”

Charles is yanked off his feet and running down the hallway, something with a lot of porcelain legs chasing after him, and he’s being dragged by the hand, a boy’s running next to him and they’re holding hands and something in Charles settles into place even as the giggling gets deafening and the clatter of broken porcelain gets closer.

The boy pulls him into an elevator and a sort of porcelain pincer tries to follow them in and the boy pushes it back, and Charles’s brain finally kicks in enough for him to help shove it out the door, which struggles closed and sends them up. Some porcelain falls to the floor, and he picks it up. It looks pretty ordinary. Old ugly paint, probably full of lead, but shouldn’t be dangerous otherwise, definitely shouldn’t be trying to pincer him to death.

The boy does something to the elevator and it jolts to a stop.

As the doors open, Charles pulls himself together enough to talk - “Who are you, then? What was that thing down there? Some kind of demon?”

The boy gives him a rather haughty look as they speedwalk through the halls. “That was something rather worse than a demon. It is only able to remain on this plane thanks to a tethering rune-circle in the attic, so I am going to go up there and destroy the circle, and I might well be discorporated in the process, but don’t worry about me. No, you go back to the dorms. Go on. Go play cricket or banter with your mates. And don’t tell anyone about this, because if you do, you’ll get them killed.”

The boy steps through a door and slams it behind him, and Charles stands staring at it, deeply confused and with the strangest feeling that if he never sees this boy again something will go deeply wrong with the universe.

The door swings back open and the boy’s head pops back through. “I’m Edwin, by the way. What’s your name?”

“Charles.”

“Nice to meet you, Charles. Run for your life!”

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New aesthetic: Arctic hares when they're coat is only half done shedding and they look a little fucked up

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The more unfortunate cost of what I discussed in my last post is that I GRIEVE THE LOSS OF THE EXTENDED CUTS OF EDWIN AND CHARLES'S MEETING. Like what do you mean they cut out Edwin talking about his home life. What do you mean that we almost got to see Edwin choose a book to read with Charles. What do you mean there was more

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I bet you do!

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do genuinely find it fascinating how indeed.com is like the biggest job-hunting website out there and yet manages to be profoundly useless in every possible way

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hey gamers I’ve started watching star trek does anyone else see the romantic tension between captain kirk and mr. spock

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How is bnha anime of the decade...... they aren’t even anime of the hour of the minute of the second

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I thought perhaps this lantern would help. 🕯️

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major gaza update:

israel has unilaterally broken the ceasefire and is now attacking again.

air strikes have killed at least 20 people so far, several of them aid workers (accused of being disguised hamas agents by israel) edit: the death toll is quickly climbing through the triple digits

israel hasn’t issued a statement yet why it’s doing this now. edit: netanyahu issued a statement that it was due to "lack of progress" with ceasefire talks

it’s important to note that they refused to follow through on some ceasefire promises, such as talks of a permanent ceasefire and troop withdrawal. israel instead requested several hostages dead and alive from hamas, which hamas refused unless israel agreed to the talks. israel blocked all aid from entering around the start of march to pressure hamas into capitulating.

edit: hamas has 59 israeli hostages remaining, over half of which are assumed to be dead

donate directly if you can, please

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WIP, not sure if I should colour it. Still- I LOVE THESE DORKS 😂

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Charles and Edwin in the Dollhouse, part 3 of 3

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it'd be really cool if everyone put their money where their mouths are and went and saw the new fully 2d animated looney tunes movie that's in theaters RIGHT NOW instead of continuing to scream about the snow white and lilo and stitch remakes

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This is.....niche. Do period-appropriate chickens even still exist? Idk anything about chickens. I like the fancy ones.