#<- i made that up based on the greek god i gave you lol

[mer-acle]

Sorry for being within your inbox so much

BUT

I just remembered Ares and Aphrodite have four kids. Eros, Phobos, Deimos, and Harmonia.

And because of this I raise you the idea of Babysitter Aunt Athena. Very specifically in the context of Epic ofc

Ares: hey can you babysit the twins for me and Dite? We have stuff to do today

Athena: …. Why me? Why not uhh… I don’t know, your GODDESS OF CHILDBIRTH SISTER?? SHE SEEMS MORE EQUIPPED TO CARE FOR KIDS THAN ME!

Ares: `Leithyia’s busy too, plus the twins like you

Athena: This is the same thing you said when you used to make me babysit Eros 😒

Ares: Eileithyia very busy goddess!! And Eros did like you! You’re still his favorite aunt to this day

Athena: Uh huh… fine.

Ares: Thanks!

Athena: ugh why do I do this…

(She does it because she likes being an aunt actually. But don’t tell her that, she doesn’t wanna admit that.)

Also I completely made up the birth order lmao. Purely based on my own thoughts because Greek Mythology doesn’t give birth orders for stuff like that I fear (or at least none of my research gave me any definitive order)

(dw about it I love this actually 😊)

Ah fixed birth orders are overrated lmao at least to the Greeks... I made one up for the main 12 once and just run with it lol

This is so cute. Auntie Athena is the best 😭🥰 the gods of fear will either run wild in the arena or calmly make pottery there is no in-between

[hollisxwrites]

heyy

i was wondering if u could write a percy jackson x reader ??

flowers in your hair

(percy jackson x child of apollo reader)

thank you for the request today guys! please keep requesting, i'll keep writing (lol)! thank you for all the love on "as long as i'm with you, hero"! again, please keep requesting, i'm loving doing these! see my introduction and who i write for here!

tv! percy jackson x child of apollo! reader (I think the reader remains gender neutral throughout the fic)!

i do not own this gif or the song!

word count: 2.7k

warnings: mr. d is kinda an asshole, kinda a mention of violence, a few swear words, some slight angst and jealousy, percy is a sweetheart, a few mentions of the l word 🤯 (love), making out, possible innuendos, idk how to write warnings.

summary: based on the lumineers song flowers in your hair. percy and the reader fall in love over time spent together in camp halfblood, but they refuse to admit it in order to keep their precious friendship, until one day the reader finally cracks. this is on the longer side! sorry!

I was twelve years old when I first came to Camp Halfblood. I was scared, cold, and completely alone, running from a horrific monster that was something out of my worst nightmares. The cold pellets of rain showered over me as I ran, until suddenly, the monster wasn’t chasing me anymore, the rain stopped, and I was in the middle of a clearing, staring directly up at a house, a big, sky-blue house. It was beautiful, to say the least. Close to the house was what looked like a... volleyball court? Down the path a little, I could make out the shape of smaller houses built with Greek architecture. I was intrigued, but also frightened. Had I come across some cult? My hair was drenched and I’m sure my shirt was see-through due to the peltering rain, but when I thought about it, the rain had stopped when I got within feet of the house. Curious (and desperate for someone's help), I walked up to the door of the big blue house and knocked on it. Minutes seemed to tick by until suddenly, the door burst open and a man, about middle age, holding a set of poker cards, came to the doorway.  

“What the hell do you want kid? Can’t you see I’m busy? You know Campers aren’t allowed out past nine P.M. Now I would suggest you get back to your cabin before I kick your...” 

Suddenly, the scary man was pushed aside by an even scarier man, a man with a horse bottom-half and a man-top half. I blinked once, twice, three times, and the man was still a horse. “Mr. D! This is not one of our campers! I told you to be kind.” The horse-man said to who I guess was Mr. D. “Come on in, young one. It looks like you may be a new camper.” 

Mr. D took me into the house and gave me a change of clothes, black pants and an almost nauseating orange colored shirt that said ‘Camp Halfblood’ on it. I was still interested in finding out what this was all about, but I was even more worried about my safety. These random scary men were taking me into their house in the middle of the woods after being chased by a scary monster.  What else could go wrong? I was gestured to sit by the fireplace, and the horse-man explained everything to me. I was in disbelief. The gods of the Greek myths are real? I was only able to access this camp because I was one and I was in danger? My mother slept with a Greek god? My life, at this very moment, was altered forever. It finally made sense why my mother hated me. I was, not only, the result of her ‘dumb teenager decisions’, but I also was the result of her being with a god?  

The horse-man, who I found out was named Chiron, after explaining everything to me, took me to one of the cabins I had noticed earlier, and he told me it was Herme’s cabin, which is where I would stay until my godly parent claimed me.  

When I entered the cabin, most of the kids were asleep, because it was gods know what time of night, except two boys, one with dark curly hair and a scar running down is face who I assumed to be at least sixteen, and one with the prettiest blonde curls and green eyes that I have ever seen who seemed to be about my age. The boys were sitting on a window seat looking out to another large, Greek looking structure, discussing something that seemed to trouble the younger boy. Chiron called the two boys over, and they came to meet me. Chiron introduced the older boy as Luke Castellan, Herme’s cabin counselor, and the younger as Percy Jackson, another new camper who has only been here for a day. Percy and Luke shook my hand, and Chiron left them to help me navigate the cabin and find somewhere to sleep.  

“Nice to meet you, {reader}. It’s not every day we get a new camper, but when we do, I am always excited to meet them!” Luke Castellan said. He scared me a little, with his scar, and his height. His overall demeanor was slightly frightening, but I liked him all the same. He seemed to be welcoming and kind enough.  

I smiled at him, trying not to catch the eye of Percy, who seemed to be looking at me a lot. “Nice to meet you too.” I said in a monotone voice. I didn’t realize how tired I was until this moment. “I’m sorry, I’m so tired, getting chased down by a monster and finding out I’m some god hybrid thing that sends demons out to get me all within two hours. Where am I supposed to sleep?” 

Percy giggled. “I know how you feel. I watched my mom get killed by the minotaur last night, and here I am, not able to sleep cause of the nightmares. I should get some sleep too.” 

Luke glanced around the cabin. “I’m not sure where you’re going to sleep. All the cots are occupied, unless you want to sleep on the beanbag chairs over there.” He pointed to the pile of frumpy beanbag chairs in the corner of the cabin.  

“No, no. They can take my bed. I doubt I’m going to sleep anyways, y’know, nightmares and all.” Percy chimed in, probably noticing my disparity to sleeping on an uncomfortable looking beanbag chair.  

I shook my head. “No way. You were here before me. It’s okay, I can take the beanbags, you take your space. I hope my dad claims me before too long, so I can take a couple nights.”  

“I’m not letting you; you look too tired.” Percy said, in a voice that sounded almost threatening. “We can switch out if we’re both here for a while. I mean...if you want to.”  

I smiled at the boy. He seemed kinder than anyone else I knew, even though that wasn’t saying much. I didn’t know many people. I did take Percy’s bed that night, and that developed our friendship that would eventually become the most invaluable thing in my life. I sat with Percy at every meal, he showed me around the camp to the best of his ability, and we decided to train together, as we were both new outcasts to the camp. Even after he was chosen to go to the Poseidon cabin through the game capture the flag, and I was chosen by father to go to the Apollo cabin, our bond only grew closer, and we still managed to find time in our busy schedules to spend time with each other. 

One day, several months later, in these rare moments we were both free, I was lying on the ground in the strawberry fields that became my favorite part of the camp with Percy. We had a long day of training and decided to bask in the warmth of the camp, savoring the warm late summer days. I was picking dandelions out of the strawberries and weaving them together the way I used to do with my older sister. I was slowly making a crown out the buds, and it was turning out quite beautiful. It kept my easily distracted mind focused on what Percy was saying. He was going off on some tangent about Grover and his disloyalty to the camp and to Mr. D, something that Percy found alarming, as he was worried about his best friend’s safety.  

“I’m just glad I have you, {reader}. You really have been a good...friend all these months at camp.” Percy said, grinning at me through the strawberry bushes.  

My eyes twinkled when mine met his, and I placed the now completed dandelion crown in his blond curls that drew me to him the moment we met. “I’m glad I have you too, Perc. You made me feel a little less crazy.” 

He smiled at me, the dandelion crown slipping down his face. “You’ll always be in my heart.” He blushed a little, as we are not usually this compassionate for each other. 

“So will you!” I said, moving to put the flower crown back on the crown of his head. My fingers tingled under the small touch to his face, but I didn’t realize that it was love, at the time, at least I didn’t realize it was romantic love. That’s something I know too well now.  

... 

Five years later, Percy and I have not grown farther apart with age, we’ve grown closer. He saved the world, and I was always by his side through everything. He only grew more beautiful with age, too, his hair growing a little longer, eyes getting a little darker, scars from battles littered his arms, legs, and chest. He was always attractive to me, but now, it was even more so. He had also grown more physically affectionate towards me, brushing my hands with his, leaning on my shoulder during campfires, and even going as far to giving me kisses on the cheek when I saw him first thing in the morning and late at night when we left for the day. Sometimes, he snuck into my cabin or I into his if we had nightmares just so we could be with each other. His smell of sea salt and something else I couldn’t quite name (probably the blue candy that he ate daily), and it always comforted me during hard nights.  

All of this to say, though, we were just BFFs. Best platonic bros. Nothing more, nothing less. I loved him, I had realized over the years, loved him a little too much it was unbearable sometimes, but he was rumored to be with other people all the time, even though I knew he wasn’t. He would tell me, right? Right? He spent pretty much every waking minute with me and every minute asleep most of the time, too, so I would know. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t jealous of every person he came across. I loved him, and he was my sea boy, and I was his sunshine.  

That’s why, when we found ourselves in a very similar predicament to what we did all those years ago, during our first couple months at camp, I made a very risky move. 

I was sitting, face angled up to the sunlight, weaving a dandelion crown in my trembling hands. Percy had grown, so the flower crowns I made him now were twice the size of the ones I made him all those years ago. I delicately made a pattern with the dandelions again, and I looked up at Percy from time to time to nod or make a comment on whatever he had to say, but it was mostly silent, him humming and picking at the ground below us, and me, weaving my crown. 

Percy paused his picking at the ground and looked at me. I could feel his gaze on my face, and it made my cheeks heat up. I prayed to the gods that he thought it was just from the sun. “Do you remember when we did this, what, five years ago now? I would say we’ve grown a little, and we know more than we did then.”  

“What do you know now that you didn’t then?” I said, eyes not leaving the project in my hands.  

I assumed he shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess I know more about the gods, about the world, about you.” 

Laughing, I finally tore my eyes away from the completed crown and I moved to place it on Percy’s head, settling it gently in his curls, careful not to mess up my handiwork. I let my fingers linger longer on his face than I did last time. “You know more about me, sea boy?” I asked him teasingly, finally meeting his eye that hasn’t left my face this entire time. 

“I guess I do, I mean, I feel like I do. I feel like I’ve barely spent a minute away from you since that day.” He leaned into my hand that was placing feather-like touches on his face. “I mean, I know that your favorite color is yellow, you love the same music I do, and you hate when I call you sunshine.” 

“You do know me, don’t you, Perc?” My hands dropped away from his face, and he pouted at the loss of contact even though our legs were centimeters from touching. I could feel electricity buzzing on my skin where our limbs were about to meet. That was something I always felt when I was close to him.  I always assumed, back then, that his love language was physical touch, and so he was just being a good friend by how affectionate he was to me. How delusional I was. 

“I sure do.” He flipped his body so that he was no longer facing me, instead he laid himself down on my lap. My hands instinctively went to his pretty hair, making sure to be mindful of his crown. “Y’know, I think I love you, {reader}.” 

My heart, in this moment skipped a beat, but then shattered at the same time. He loved me, but in a friendly way. “You don’t mean that, Perc. At least, you don’t mean that the way I want you to.” 

His head shot up from my lap, nearly slinging his flower crown from his head, and he turned back to face me at an alarmingly quick rate. “What do you mean, the way you want me to?” His hands met mine that were laying in my lap. He interlaced our fingers, and my entire body felt alive. 

I blushed and looked back up to the boy I have loved since we were pre-teens. “I love you, Perc, but I love you, like in a romantic way. I hope it’s not too late, cause you’re so damn attractive. You have always been to me, always will be. I think I’ve just been scared. I value you so much as a friend that I didn’t want to lose you.” I refused to look up from our intertwined hands, embarrassed and saddened by my confession. I was half expecting Percy to scoff and walk away, kicking pebbles up at me.  

Instead, he unclasped our hands and pulled my face up to look at him, his eyes shining in a way that I’ve never seen them shine before, his face glowing with a humongous grin. “I never thought you’d say that. You know that I have loved you all this time, too?”  

My heart skipped several beats this time. I’m not kidding; I was about to go into cardiac arrest. “Are you kidding? You’re pranking me right now.” I hid my burning face on his shoulder.  

His laugh vibrated underneath me, making me giggle, too. “I guess we’re both idiots.” 

I hesitantly pulled my face off his shoulder and asked him the scariest question I have ever asked someone. “Can I kiss you?” 

Our faces were inches apart when he whispered, “I thought you’d never ask.” The kiss was everything I could have ever asked for. At first it was gentle and loving, our noses bumping into each other, until eventually my hands found his hair and his found my waist. It was warm, and passionate, and everything I could’ve dreamt of. 

He slowly pulled away from me, both of us panting, foreheads touching. “That was...perfect.” 

I smiled. “Just like you, sea boy.” 

His face met my neck now, and he pressed warm kisses to my exposed skin, his hair tickling my jawline. I squirmed under him, trying to suppress a groan. He lifted his head up, his eyes met mine. I thought he never had looked better. The flower crown I made him was lopsided now, diagonal across his head, his lips were red and bitten, his face was perfectly flushed, and his pupils were blown out. “How did I get so lucky?” He said to me. 

“I am asking myself the same damn thing.” I smiled, keeping eye contact with him. He connected our lips once again, and that’s when I knew I was a goner. I had been all those years ago, but we have grown a lot since then. Percy being in my eyes and in my heart all the time harbored the feeling that I have been carrying, and now I get to express. 

Years from now, I hope he still gets to be in my heart, and I in his. 

[pepsiboyy]

idk if you take fic requests! but maybe a fic based off of Greek God by Conan Gray. like Matt or Chris pretend they don’t like yn where they’re around their sport (whatever sport, you choose!) friends. they all have a really high ego and are cocky. but there’s a tension between M/C and yn bc they used to be friends until M/C got popular but yn didn’t so now they’re not friends cuz M/C let his popularity status get to him. but they sometimes speak on the down low (M/C doesn’t wanna be seen talking to yn) they’re families are family friends which is why they’re technically forced to still talk every once in a while. but eventually the tension gets too intense, and well, M/C can’t handle it anymore and it ends up turning into a childhood friends to enemies to lovers type story 🤭 ALSO, YN STANDS HER GROUND AND DOESNT LET M/C GET HER THAT EASILY, SHES NOT JUST GONNA FALL FOR HIM INSTANTLY CUZ HE FINALLY STARTS PAYING ATTENTION TO HER!! thanks!!

GREEK GOD.

pairing: chris sturniolo x fem!reader summary: just read the request :p warnings: cursing, mentioned of alcohol, being drunk, use of y/n lol, angst (resolved sorta) a/n: THANK U SO MUCH FOR THIS REQUEST!!! i hope it's what you were looking for, i spent a lot of time trying to make this work :") thank you so much for the request!!

i stood at the edge of the ice rink, my hands clasping together with high hopes.

i came to cheer on matt and chris, with nick seated beside me as he scrolled through instagram and snacked on some chips that he brought.

nick was my best friend, without a doubt. i told him everything. matt was one of my comfort friends. someone i didn't talk to as often as nick, but enough to where i feel fully comfortable talking to him about whatever may happen. chris, on the other hand...

chris was chris.

it was hard to describe the dynamic the two of us shared.

chris and i actually used to be closer than me and nick, or anyone, honestly.

he would pick me up when i fell, give me some of his snacks and even a sip of his pepsi if i wanted. he would reassure me when i felt low, and even put me in my place if he knew i was out of line.

before we knew it, high school rolled around. freshman year was relatively normal, sophomore year too.

junior year he started making newer friends, but he also had a different lunch period from the rest of us. i'd only really see him when matt gave me rides home.

senior year rolled around, and chris was a changed person. ever since he made it to the varsity hockey team with his new friends, he changed. he claims it's because we "grew apart" but we didn't. he goes out of his way to make me look bad in front of his friends, or even act like he has no idea who i am. it kind of made me feel stupid.

matt being on varsity with him didn't help his case at all, either.

so, when i came to watch them play, nick would sit with me and i would cheer on them both, even if chris pretended to hate me.

so, here i am. standing at the edge of the rink with nick, who was now standing beside me as we watched the two we knew and loved. matt effortlessly weaving past a defender, sending the puck flying towards chris, who sent it into the goal and made it.

the sound of skates cutting through ice was sharp in my ears, and the bright arena lights cast a glow over everyone while each and every cheer echoed in the cold air.

i remember when we all used to skate together freshman year here, the arena empty and our arms all linked together because i couldn't skate for the life of me, on matter how bad i tried.

those days felt like a lifetime ago now.

you had all grown a lot since then.

apart, apparently.

"hey, y/n, what are you doin' here?" a boy from the team questioned, skating to the glass with a cocky grin. "came to see the champ?" he asked, referring to chris.

i rolled my eyes and crossed my arms, allowing my eyes to trail elsewhere. "just here to support my friends." i mumbled.

chris glanced over, his expression neutral, but there was a flicker of something in his eyes - guilt, maybe, or recognition of the unspoken tension between them. before i could look away, he turned back to his friends, laughing at some joke i couldn't hear.

i sighed and took a seat beside nick again, letting out a soft hum as i did. the familiar sting of hurt and anger was beginning to get to me.

the memory of chris and i being inseparable, chris changing, chris making fun of me to his friends, all of it. it hurt. popularity inflated his ego, and i always refused to be an admirer in his little fan club.

after the game, i found myself lingering near the exit of the rink. i typically waited for the crowd to die and the traffic to slow down before leaving. it was too busy for me.

the locker room door swung open, and out poured the hockey team that was riding out the high of their win. chris was among them, laughing loudly and tossing his hockey stick over his shoulder. we met eyes for a moment, and his smile seemed to falter. until he leaned to a friend of his and nudged them, mumbling something to make them both laugh.

"hey, y/n!" chris called out. "didn't think you'd stick around here. still obsessed with me or what?"

i stared at chris with a deadpanned expression. "stop getting me to stroke your ego, christopher." i bit back, trying to keep my voice steady.

this shit was annoying, really.

chris's friends snickered, and he shrugged it off, turning away as if i were nothing more than an afterthought to him. "whatever. let's get out of here."

the group moved past me, their laughter seeming to echo in the hallway. i felt a lump form in my throat, but i refused to let anyone see me get upset over something to miniscule.

i knew this version of chris was a facade, but that didn't really make it hurt any less. the boy i once loved and cared for deeply was now buried under layers of arrogance and bravado, and i wasn't about to let him off the hook so easily.

the crowd began to die down, so i gathered myself and pushed out of the door, making my way towards my car.

as i walked towards the car, i saw chris again, this time with his brothers as they leaned against their minivan and talked about the game together.

for a moment, chris looked up, and our eyes met. there was a flicker of something in his gaze - regret, maybe, or a silent apology - but it vanished as quickly as it appeared.

he mumbled something to his brothers before he kicked off and made his way towards me.

"need a ride home? matt can take you." his tone was casual, but strained.

i stared at chris for a moment in disbelief, before quickly shaking my head and sighing. "no thanks. i can manage."

chris opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it, looking away. the silence between us stretched, and it filled with all the things left unsaid.

and with that, i turned on my heel and began walking home.

saturday. the days where the sturniolo household invited me for dinner were so much fun, genuinely. they were an amazing family. and chris typically acted normal around her when she was invited over.

i pulled into the driveway of their home, smiling softly to myself as i turned the music down. i pulled down the mirror and fixed my hand, humming to myself before taking my keys.

i was wearing something pretty cozy, just a crewneck and some bleached jeans and converse. they were like my second family, no need to get fancy.

i knocked on the door, where matt answered and pulled me into a hug of greeting. "hi, y/n," he breathed and smiled softly before leading me further into their home, where i was met with nick, marylou, their mother, and jimmy, their father.

"where's chris?" i questioned, the words falling from my lips faster than i could stop them.

nick exchanged a look with matt before he shrugged. "not sure, he just said he was going to some hockey party for their win last night."

i scoffed and nodded, taking a seat in my usual spot between nick and marylou.

the empty chair across from me was honestly quite intimidating. more than it would have been if chris were there.

chris was always the one with crazy stories and conversation topics.

we sat in a comfortable silence, though, which i'm sure nick and matt enjoyed as they listen to chris every day of their lives.

"you're still goin' to their hockey games and cheerin' em on?"

marylou questioned, and i turned to her and smiled. "yeah, they're really great, actually." i smiled softly, and marylou nodded.

"i know chris has been on a bit of an ego train, i hope he's still been kind to you guys." jimmy mumbled softly.

i swallowed and rubbed the back of my head. "yeah, he's been great, actually." i lied.

nick and matt stared at me, but decided not to question it before continuing their meal.

but then my phone began to ring, and everyone's attention shifted to me.

"i'm so sorry," i quickly mumbled as i removed it from my pocket and immediately felt every bit of air in my lungs leave.

why is chris calling me?

i rose to my feet and held up a finger, chuckling nervously. "i'm gonna take this," i mumbled quickly.

i made my way down the hall and to the front room. "hello?" i questioned softly.

"y/n/n," chris slurred on the other end. "i- i'm at a party, and.." he trailed off before giggling to himself, "i might.. need a ride home," he mumbled.

i sighed, rubbing my temple in annoyance. "where are you?"

chris mumbled an address, hardly coherent. "can you... can you come get me? please?"

i sighed to myself. "why can't you get matt or nick or something?"

"they'll get pissed," he stated, a little clearer than the rest of his sentences. "i don't want them to worry about me." chris struggled to get the word worry out of his system, making me crack a slight smile.

"fine," i stated as i fixed myself, "stay put. i'll be there soon."

i hung up the phone and made my way back to the dining room, where everyone collectively turned to me.

"everything alright?" nick asked, and i quickly nodded.

"everything's good, i do have to go, though. i'm so sorry you guys. i'll make it up to you?" i smiled. "i just, um.. have to run."

they all exchanged looks before nodding and bidding me farewell, nick walking me out.

i sat in my car and typed the address into my phone, rubbing my forehead.

i didn't enjoy parties. they were loud, sweaty, gross and full of annoying ass kids. usually.

and as i pulled up, it was just that. a typical high school party scene - loud music, teenagers spilling out onto the lawn, and the faint smell of alcohol and weed in the air. i found chris on the footsteps, his head buried in his hands. i quickly made my way towards him after parking and kneeled down in front of him.

"come on, let's get you home." i said, helping him to his feet.

chris leaned on my heavily as we made our way to my car. i buckled him in and got into the driver's sear, the tension between us palpable in the confined space. as i drove, chris mumbled some incoherent words, his head lolling against the window.

"y/n," he suddenly said, his voice clearer but thick with emotion. "i'm sorry."

i glanced at him, eyebrows raised. "for what?"

"for everything," he continued, his eyes half-closed. "for being an ass. for ignoring you. for... for all of it."

i took a deep breath as i felt a mixture of sadness and anger bubbling within me. i gripped the steering wheel tighter, unsure of how to respond. "you're drunk, chris. you don't know what you're saying."

"no," chris insisted, reaching out and touching my arm. "i do, i've been a jerk. i miss you. i miss us."

i pulled into my own driveway, knowing chris wouldn't want to see his family like this. i would just take his phone and send them a text saying he was with a friend tonight or something.

i turned off the engine and took a deep breath. "let's get you inside."

chris stumbled out of the car, leaning on me for support the whole way to the door. i fished for my keys and unlocked the door, quickly guiding him to my living room couch.

as i laid a blanket over him, he grabbed my hand as his eyes locked with mine.

"i still care about you, y/n. i always have."

my heart pounded, but i forced a laugh, trying to deflect the intensity of the moment. "sleep it off, chris. we'll talk in the morning, okay?"

i brushed a few loose strands from his forehead and stood up, turning off the light and going to my room. my mind raced with conflicting emotions.

part of me wanted to believe his drunken confession, but another part of me was still so angry. still hurt by the way he had treated me. as i laid in bed and stared at my ceiling, i couldn't shake the feeling that things between us were far from over. and that this was just the beginning of a much more complicated story.

the sizzling of the bacon on the oven was comforting, in a way. i had an airpod in, playing some softer, but upbeat music to get me up and going for the long, long day ahead.

i turned my head upon hearing some shuffling in the kitchen, meeting eyes with chris. "morning," he mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

"morning," i replied, placing a plate of food with bacon, eggs and sausage onto the counter in front of him. "eat up. you'll feel better."

he sat down and started eating, occasionally glancing at me as i cleaned up the kitchen. after a few minutes of awkward silence, he looked at me. "look, about last night.."

i crossed my arms and leaned against the counter. "what about it?"

chris looked down at his plate, poking at his eggs. "i meant what i said, you know. but i was drunk, and.. and maybe it didn't come out right-"

"maybe?" i questioned, my voice sharp. "you've been treating me like i don't exist for months, chris. one drunken apology doesn't fix that."

he winced at my words, but nodded. "i know, i've been an idiot. i got caught up in... everything. the team, the popularity. but that's no excuse."

"no, it's not." i stated, my anger beginning to bubble to the surface. "you think you can just waltz back into my life with a half-assed apology and everything will be fine? it doesn't work that way." i spat.

chris stood up, stepping closer. "i'm not asking for everything to be fine overnight. i'm asking for a chance to make things right."

i shook my hear, my eyes flashing with frustration. "do you even realize how much you hurt me? how it felt to be ignored, to be treated like i was nothing?"

"i do now," he said quietly. "and i'm sorry. truly. i want to make it up to you, if you'd let me."

i looked up at him, searching his eyes for any sign of insincerity. he seemed genuine, his usual bravado stripped away, leaving only the boy she used to know.

"i don't know if i can trust you," i admitted, my voice softer now.

chris reached out and took my hand in his. "i get that. and i will do whatever it takes to earn your trust back."

he pulled me into a tight hug, where i gently hugged his waist and took in his scent.

i missed this.

"just one date. give me a chance?" chris mumbled, the smile audible in his tone.

i hesitated, my mind racing. part of me wanted to say no, to protect myself from his bullshit. but another part of me remembered all of the good times.

"one date," i finally stated, my voice firm. "but this doesn't mean i'm just forgiving you, chris. you have a lot to prove."

he nodded quickly, his lips curving into a smile. "i promise i won't let you down."

i pulled away from his embrace and smiled at him before turning to the sink and doing the dishes. "you better now."

as i did the dishes, i felt a glimmer of hope mixed with lingering doubt. chris had a long way to go to earn the trust i had for him back, but for the first time in months, she felt like maybe, just maybe, things could change.

[jeannereames]

In "Dancing With The Lion", you seem to say that Alexander was not handsome. But when I searched about Alexander's appearance on Google, I found that almost everywhere he was described as a handsome man. He was even called extremely handsome in a couple of articles. I have seen the copy of Alexander's bust originally made by Lysippus. It's said that Lysippus made the bust during Alexander's lifetime & Alexander looked like that. The bust doesn't look bad. Why do you then think that Alexander wasn't good looking enough? By the way, I loved the guy who seemed to represent Alexander on the cover page of "Dancing With The Lion". Alexander might very well look like that :-)

First, a comment on my description and why I made it, then some background on the history.

What Hephaistion thinks to himself is actually, “Only a flatterer would call him handsome.” He doesn’t say he’s ugly or plain. He’s just normal looking. I made that choice partly for historical reasons, but also because I wanted to humanize him. Same reason I gave him acne. 😉 I don’t see him as unattractive, I just don’t see him as especially handsome. (A link to the novels, for anybody looking, with the new covers.)

I would caution about taking seriously much that you find via a Google search. It’s kinda a dumpster fire, honestly, unless you know exactly what you’re looking for.* Always check who wrote an article. How did they learn the information they relate? That’s part of why I cite things here, even if I don’t load y’all up with citations the way I would in a scholarly article. But I want readers to be able to chase down references for themselves, even as, in our post-expert era, I also want readers to trust that I know where to look in the first place—what’s reliable.

Although it’s now 30+ years old, probably the best book on Alexander’s appearance is Andrew Stewart’s Faces of Power: Alexander’s Image and Hellenistic Politics (1993). I know it’s expensive (LOTS and lots of picture plates inside), but because it’s been out a minute, you can probably find it used, or in a library.

So, let’s look at the history. There are several things going on here:

The ancient Greeks conflated wealth, class, intelligence, and beauty with heroic status. So Achilles is beautiful but Thersites is malformed and ugly. This motif rolled over onto historical individuals, and the Greeks purposely practiced “idealizing” in their sculpture, especially of anybody presented as heroic. There’s quite a lot written on Greek idealizing, but again, beware a simple Google search; I just tried to find something useful and gave up by the time I was on page 6; the best thing was an article in the NYT, behind a paywall. I’d suggest grabbing an art history textbook, especially a specialized one, like Shiela Dillon’s.

The Alexander head on the Akropolis (which was used to find the model for the cover of Becoming) is a perfect example of Classical-era idealization. We’d call it Photoshopped. 😉 Yes, it’s recognizably Alexander, but his face is made to match the canon of Greek ephebic beauty. (The publisher liked it. ha)

Add to this the divinization of Alexander and its impact on his sculptures across time. See Stewart mentioned above for a great description of how his Successors molded his image for their own purposes. Generally speaking, his hair gets longer and flowier, his eyes get larger, and his face get softened until he looks feminized. The sculpture below, from the Capitoline Museum, is a great example. It’s Alexander as Helios (the sun god), a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original, and that original is speculatively dated to sometime in the late 200s or early 100s BCE, based on style.

We in the modern world are inclined to these same assumptions. We got it from them! I’ve noticed that most sketches (especially AI pictures) of Alexander on the internet turn him pretty. One (below, yes with 6 fingers) has him looking suspiciously like Henry Cavill! LOL

There have been some better attempts to use AI to render him, based on ancient statuary, but most use statues I’m less fond of. Yet the one that uses the Azara Herm is, I think, pretty close. I agree with Stewart that the Azara Herm is as near to a likeness as is out there; see Stewart’s discussion as to why. I believe it’s the bust you’re referring to in the ask. Below with link to Royalty Now, who made it. I want to be sure she gets credit. I bought myself a copy of this one. She did two reconstructions, but I don’t care for the other because of the statue used. Royalty Now may have airbrushed him a bit (he lacks scars, for instance—highly unlikely in a soldier), but at least in basic facial structure, it’s good. Note the long face. If a long face with sharper features is more accepted today—largely thanks to what photographs well—the Greek ideal was a rounder face, like the Akropolis head above.

So the real Alexander wasn’t an ugly man, no, but if you passed him on the street, you probably wouldn’t stop and stare. Unless he wanted you to. It was his CHARISMA that people noted, not his physical appearance.

That, I also tried to note in the novels. At one point, Aristotle remarks to himself that Hephaistion might have the looks, but Alexander would always be the one to draw eyes. 😊

------------------------------------------

* For instance, my educational website on Hephaistion appears pages and pages and pages down from the top on Google … even though it’s written by one of the two leading world experts on him (Sabine Müller is the other). Ergo, you have to wade through a lot of stuff put out by sites that know how to rank themselves higher before you get to the actual specialist. Once upon a time, btw, it popped up higher, but pay-to-play has changed search engines.

[askneftis-sam]

Q: “how did you come up with the nickname Iris for Neftis? And did Sam always know Neftis’ true name?” Iris is the name Sam gave the spirit in her millennium pendant after learning she had no memories nor name. It’s a name Iris treasured with all her being.

Sam: Thanks to my dad, since he loves mythology (he's an archaeologist in his spare time after all) I've always been in touch with ancient Gods stories. After I met the spirit of the Millennium Pendant I felt like she was some kind of messenger like the Greek Goddess Iris c: that's why I chose that name. And no, I didn't know her name was Neftis, that's why I gave her a name!

As for the name Neftis… Pegasus created the Phoenix card based on one of Sam's drawings that resembled a tablet that depicted both the phoenix and the blue eyes white dragon surrounding the Millennium rod and Millenium pendant. That tablet was made in honor to the two monsters that helped the nameless pharaoh, and as history was “recorded”, the phoenix was referenced as a “phoenix of Neftis”, meaning it belonged to Neftis. But Pegasus had no idea that was the name of a person so he attributed it to the goddess Nephthys when the hieroglyphics were translated and named the phoenix “Sacred phoenix of Nephthys”. So… you can imagine Sam’s total annoyance in the memory world arc when she learns it WAS Neftis’ name lol. I tried my best inventing that tablet with the phoenix and blue eyes lmao sorry if it’s messy, also of course I’m bullshitting the inscriptions so don’t be harsh on me. 😂 I had very little time to finish this.

And oh well, also she resembles the card Iris, the Earthmother -u-

[thebindingofpillo]

What's your favorite character mod (can be for AB+ or Rep, RIP alphabirth)? Are there any that you feel would fit in your au and if so which one(s) and why?

My faves are Samael and Mei. They're on my list of "If I delete these assume I've been hacked" mods

Honestly I don’t know T.T I only play on console and I’ve never tried any of the mods. I do have tboi on my pc but the brick struggles enough with the base game already and I don’t want it to explode lmao. I could try with my partner’s pc sometimes, but to be honest, I’m not very good at the game in general (and I haven’t played in literal years), so I think I wouldn’t really have fun with any of the mods. Fiend Folio seems interesting, but it’s too difficult for baby me, and I already hate melee characters so Samael wouldn’t be my first pick. My personal favourite character mod is Andromeda, but only because I like the design and the story i could build with it. Did you know that Andromeda is the wife of Perseus in Greek mythology? Now you do. I took that idea and ran with it and thus Perseus was born (and his askblog that’s NOT DEAD I PROMISE T.T)

As for what mods might appear in the story… I don’t know! When I first started coming up with concepts Samael had a decently big role in it. He was supposed to be the angel of death (before I gave that role to one of my OCs, Azrael) and his part in the story got shuffled around so now it’s actually Eden’s. He’s just kinda there now, I’m sorry skfjhskh maybe I’ll have him make a cameo sometimes.

Other than that there’s the Epiphany mod, but only Tarnished Judas has found a way into the story so far (link, link, link) and it’s here because I liked the idea of Judas fighting back against Belial’s possession and using his powers against him to save his loved ones.

Edith (does she count as a mod?) also exists in my universe I guess, but she’s literally a pillar of salt. For all intents and purposes she’s dead, but her soul is still trapped in the salt and can’t go to heaven yet. Thankfully God also put her into a deep sleep so she wouldn’t go completely mad, having to spend all eternity waiting for the Apocalypse. Have a link.

Rebekah does exist in my universe, but I made the OC waaaay before I knew a mod existed with the same name. I had an inside joke with a friend that Mod Rebekah was just a fangirl who was obsessed with Isaac and his comics, but it was a bit dumb and it never got past the joke stage lol. I’m not going to have a yandere in my story for now.

I guess also Fiend from Fiend Folio could technically exist in my AU? He’d be just a regular demon, so he’s probably kicking around in Hell right now. I don’t really know what he might do in the story, probably not much, but I’m keeping him in mind as a wild card I could always use.

Sorry this wasn’t the answer you were hoping for T.T I know literally nothing about character mods aside from the bigger ones, and I’ve never played anything that wasn’t the base game. Have these as an apology.

[bluesylveon2]

Hello! I have read your work and just fell in love with it! You feel the characters so well that I'm even jealous, hehe. Congratulations on 500 subscribers and I look forward to your creative development and further <3 I hope requests are open for people like me) /this is my first request, I'm a little worried/ May I ask you about Idia+Reader? Where Idia and the reader are very good friends and always tease each other and are not afraid in terms of each other, but they do not understand the feeling of "love" until they are told about it directly. Thanks and sorry for the trouble! Good luck to you <3

Hi and thank you!! I am so sorry for the wait! Don't worry about it being your first request. I made it in the same world as the royal au I have. I tried to get everything you asked but I got most of it! I hope that you enjoy it though. Btw this is long lol

Summary: Watch the love story of Idia Shroud and Yuu Ceres

Note: royal au, childhood friends to lovers, OC's (Alcides is twst Hercules, Demetra, Fira), both Idia and Yuu are implied to be demigods or are related to the Greek gods/goddesses, fluff, some angst, mentions of Ortho's backstory, some tech, and slightly based on Hades and Persephone

Warning: not beta read and possible ooc characters

Word Count: 3.8k

Masterlist: here, Series Masterlist: here

Idia and Yuu age 5

A young boy with pale skin and flaming blue hair wandered through the forest following a shiny light. He had noticed it float by while his father was busy at an annual conference hosted by the Ceres family. Curious about the light and bored from doing nothing, the boy decided to follow it.

"Hey! Wait for me!" The boy called out. The light continued moving farther and farther. His breathing started becoming heavier the more he ran. Suddenly, the light stopped, stood next to a tree, and gave Idia an expected look. Idia ran until he got a glimpse of what the light was. "A fairy.." He said breathlessly. Idia had heard of fairies from his mother and how they can come in many shapes and sizes. This fairy was small and emitted bright light. Nothing like the famous prince from Briar Valley the boy had heard about. 

"Who are you? How do you know my friend?" A new voice asked.

"AH!" Idia screamed and found a girl sitting behind the tree the fairy stood by. The girl wore a dress, and her eyes were red from crying. 

"I'm Idia. I saw this fairy fly by, and I followed it. What's your name?"

The girl smiled sadly. "Yuu Ceres." The girl turned to the fairy. "Thank you, Fira." She then turned to Idia. "I think she was looking for someone to cheer me up."

Idia sat down next to the girl. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her. "What happened?" he asked with curiosity. 

"My mom. She is always so overprotective and expects a lot from me. She won't let me have fun."

"Why don't you just tell her or run away?"

"Because she won't let me leave. Even if I did, I don't know who to turn to since everything I hear about the outside world is through books." Fira frowned and said something, although all Idia could hear were bells. "Yes, I have you and the other fairies, but I can't go to your world with you."

Idia hummed in thought until he got a lightbulb. "I know! My dad wants me to come with him to these meetings. Why don't we meet again and play the next time I come?"

"Really?! Do you mean it?"

Idia nodded shyly. "Yeah."

Yuu grinned and pulled Idia in for a hug. "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

Idia blushed before slowly hugging Yuu back. Little did the two kids know that this moment set the foundation for the precious friendship between Idia and Yuu. Their friendship would last for a lifetime. 

Idia and Yuu age 6

"Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten! Ready or not, here I come!" A 4-year-old Ortho giggled. Meanwhile, Yuu and Idia were hiding closely together behind a giant boulder. 

"Hehe, he is not going to find us now." Yuu laughed as she watched the boy go in the opposite direction from their hiding spot. Her eyes were so focused on Ortho that she did not notice Idia's hair turning slightly pink. 

"Maybe, but he will find us if you keep laughing like that."

Yuu stuck her tongue out playfully at Idia. "Please. We'll be fine."

Idia checked the area before turning to Yuu. "We should split up so Ortho would have difficulty finding us." The boy moved to stand up but was stopped by Yuu grabbing his hand.

"Wait! We should go together!"

"But it is better for us to divide and not stick to one spot."

Yuu slowly let go of Idia and sighed. "I just don't want you to leave me." She looked up at Idia's yellow eyes. "You are my best friend. If we go down, we can go down together."

Idia lightly blushed, and he looked away from Yuu's adorable eyes. How dare his crush be so cute. "I-"

"I FOUND YOU, BIG BRO AND BIG SIS!"

"AHH!" Idia and Yuu immediately clung to each other and screamed.

"Let's run for it!" Yuu exclaimed.

"I agree." Idia nodded, and the two made a run for it. 

All three children ran through the forest without a care in the world. Their innocent laughter filled the air, unaware of the change about to occur.

Idia and Yuu age 10

Yuu sat humming a tune in her designated tree. She was waiting for her best friend, Idia, to return for their annual meet-up. Yuu thought that their first meeting five years ago was not out of luck. She finally felt something similar to freedom by spending time with the Shroud brothers. Her mother was not constantly eyeing her or strict teachers nagging about her mistakes. Yuu could finally be around people besides her fairy friends who did not care about these things.

"I'm so excited, Fira. I can show Idia how my magic has been improving." Yuu smiled as she conjured a tiny daisy from the ground. Fira's bell voice made Yuu laugh. "What? I want to show off my magic."

Fira rolled her eyes.

"Fine. I mostly want to see him. I like seeing his hair be pink when he thinks I don't notice." Yuu giggled while she eyed the flower. "I wonder what it means…" Fira's voice jingled, causing Yuu to look at her in shock. "You think he likes me? There's no way he does, Fira. He only sees me as a friend." 

Yuu traced her fingers along the grass, causing more flowers to grow. It was something to pass the time as she waited. She just had to be patient and wait. 

Minutes passed.

Hours passed.

Finally, the sun was setting. 

Yuu sat there waiting on Idia, only for him to not appear. Fira watched her friend in pity as she left stood up to leave. 

"It's okay. Things happen. Maybe he will come tomorrow?" Yuu said with hope as she walked back home. The girl felt an unsettling weight on her chest with each step. 

Yuu let her feet guide her, and soon enough, she was at the long dinner table eating with her mother and the conference attendants. Usually, this is where she would return to her quiet self but speak to Idia with a code they made up. 

The girl scanned the crowd until she spotted a familiar mop of blue fire hair, only to find one from Idia's father. Despite that, Yuu felt hope that he would return tomorrow. She made a promise to return to their spot to wait for him.

Only to find out he never did, even after the conference ended. 

Idia never returned for years; it was like he was never there. 

Yuu felt the uncertain feeling grow as the years progressed. It was after many years that she realized what it was: heartbreak.

Idia and Yuu age 18

Yuu lay on a sofa reading a book in peace. It was one of the rare moments when her mother was on a trip for days, leaving Yuu to her own devices. Yuu was reading a story about a faraway city in a desert when she heard a knock on the door. She listened to the butler open it and some talking nearby. It was an unfamiliar voice that Yuu was not used to, so she ignored it instead. The girl continued reading until she heard footsteps heading her way.

"My Lady, you have a guest. His name is Idia Shroud."

Yuu dropped her book and turned to the butler. There, standing next to him, was her old childhood friend. He now grew very tall, wore a grey outfit, had long flame-blue hair almost touching the floor, and had a nervous look. His yellow eyes looked at anything but Yuu. 

"Thank you, Mecon. You can go now. I want to speak to him privately." 

Mecon bowed and stepped out, leaving Yuu and Idia alone to sit silently. Yuu had a neutral look while Idia continued to look at the walls. Yuu took a few steps towards Idia and stopped in front of him.

"Hi."

"Why?" Yuu's hands curled up in fists, and she took a deep breath to fight the urge to punch him. "Why did you disappear and not tell me anything?"

"Yuu, I-"

"Let me finish," Yuu responded sharply and glared daggers at Idia. "You left me for years and suddenly showed up just like that? I thought that we were friends?"

 "I know sorry is not going to fix this, but I had a reason." Idia looked away and sighed. "There was an accident at the Isle of Woe, and Ortho did not make it."

Yuu felt her anger mostly drain away, and shock took its place. "I'm so sorry."

"It's alright. The accident caused me to lock myself in my room because I wanted to help rebuild my brother." A small smile graced Idia's face, and he turned to Yuu. "You should see him now. He has become a technomatic humanoid and can now make his own decisions. I can bring him for you if you want."

"So Ortho is now a robot?"

"Initially, but now he has advanced so much that he is more human-like. He did that all on his own." Idia shifted his weight before he spoke again. "Yuu, I know neglecting you was not the right thing to do. However, I know Ortho misses you, and I-" Idia stopped himself. "want to fix our friendship."

Yuu looked at Idia in confusion, but she did not question him. "You know that may take a while.”

Idia looked at Yuu with confidence. "I am willing to take the risk."

---

"WHY DID I SAY THAT?" Idia cried the moment he entered his room. Meanwhile, Ortho closed his book and looked at his brother in curiosity.

"How did your meeting go with Big Sister?" Ortho could recall meeting the girl from his old memories and still referred to her with that nickname despite never meeting her. There was a reason the previous Ortho called Yuu that, and Idia never figured it out. 

"Well, she got mad at me, as she should, and then I made a mistake."

"What did you do?"

Idia sighed and looked at his brother. "I did not tell her I missed her and said I wanted to fix our friendship instead. How lame of me for not admitting it!"

Ortho set his book aside and floated to his brother. "That is still a good start! An important step to a healthy romantic relationship is friendship."

"ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP? Where did that come from?"

Ortho only giggled. "Big Brother, my old memories show you always blushed around Yuu. That means that you like her!"

"Ortho, I was a kid at the time. It was basically puppy love. Besides, she did not like me that way."

"Your heart rate is increasing."

"Because I am being a laughing stock right now!"

Ortho sighed. "There is nothing wrong with having feelings. Your research notes always included Yuu one way or another."

Idia looked at Ortho quizzingly. "You looked at my notes?"

"So you should focus on being her friend and then see where it goes. It could help rekindle your relationship."

Idia sighed. His friendship with Yuu was practically at level 2 and not level 100 after many years had passed. It would be hard, but he needed to work to save it. 

Idia and Yuu age 24

A few years passed since idia and Yuu reunited, and they rekindled most of what they had lost. Both had changed in their own unique ways. In fact, Yuu thought that Idia's shy personality was adorable. Gone were the annual visits. Instead, Idia made an effort (shocking, right) to send in a drone that looked like a bird with a hologram attached so they could keep tabs on one another. 

Yuu was surprised by the number of inventions Idia made during their time apart. He always continued to surprise her at each visit. His latest one was currently a surprise for Yuu. 

"Where are you taking me, Ortho?" Yuu asked. She was currently being led somewhere by Ortho, floating behind her with his hands on her shoulders. A cloth was tied around Yuu's eyes, so she could not see anything. 

"It's a surprise from Big Brother!" Ortho said gleefully, causing Yuu to giggle. Seeing how her friend had grown ever since they first met was nice. Both Yuu and Ortho continued walking until Ortho stopped putting pressure on Yuu. "Okay, we're here." The boy said and proceeded to remove the blindfold. 

Yuu squinted her eyes as bright light entered her vision. She blinked until her eyes became adjusted to her surroundings. She was in the middle of a field, with trees lining up the border, and in front of her was no other than Idia standing next to an odd-looking contraption. 

"What's that?" Yuu asked, pointing to the machine next to her friend. 

Idia's eyes widened, and he twiddled his fingers together. "It's your birthday gift." He replied shyly, pink covering the tips of his hair. 

Yuu examined the machine. "Really? What does it do?"

"Just watch." Idia pressed a button, causing a dome to project from the machine and appear around the field. The machine spilled out various seeds, scattering them amongst the grass. Once it was settled, Idia's hands glowed. Yuu watched as he murmured a spell, causing a variety of flowers to grow. Light fairies appeared like fireflies and flew to each flower, illuminating each one in multitudes of colors. Meanwhile, Ortho flew around like Yuu's fairy friends.  

Yuu's mouth opened in shock as she inspected a few. "Are these marigolds?" She pointed at another nearby, "And is this a snowdrop?" She turned to her friend in amazement. "How did you do this? These two should not grow in the same season."

Idia looked away from Yuu. "Well, it was not hard. This dome creates a greenhouse effect, so you can grow various flowers here. They also stay alive longer." He slowly turned to Yuu. "Do you like it?"

Yuu felt touched for the first time in her life. She felt her heart grow light and tears form in her eyes. "Idia," She wiped the tears out of her eyes. "I love it. This is the best thing you could have ever given me."

"I know how much you love flowers."

"And I cannot thank you enough." Yuu suddenly hugged Idia and rested her head on his racing heart, causing him to let out a small eep. "Thank you, Idia. I love it."

Ortho and the other fairies watched as Idia's hair became pink, and he slowly hugged Yuu back. The two looked like lovers stuck in their own little world. 

"They are definitely in love."

The fairies jingling voices agreed.

---

Two individuals lay in their beds that night, deep in thought. 

"Fira?" "Ortho?"

"What is it?" both replied in their own ways. 

"What is this feeling I'm experiencing? My heart keeps racing when I think of Yuu/Idia. I want to see her/him smile and be around her/him all the time."

"Oh, Yuu/Idia, you are just in love."

A blush filled their faces, and they smiled gleefully. They felt warm in their chest at the thought of the respective crush. It felt nice, like a flame infamous in the Shroud family. 

Both the fairies and Ortho knew what they needed to do. 

---

"Mother, I need to talk to you," Yuu said, entering her mother's study.

Demetra set her wine glass down and looked at her daughter. "What is it?"

Yuu took a deep breath and confidently walked up to her mother. "It is about my marriage. I found someone I am interested in."

Demetra raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Who is the lucky suitor?"

"Idia Shroud."

Suddenly, as soon as the name left Yuu's mouth, the room felt icy. Yuu questioned whether or not her mother had an affinity for ice for that brief second. 

"What?"

"I said that the man I want to marry is Idia Shroud."

"No."

"But mother!"

"No, Yuu," Demetra said, standing up. "The Shrouds are nothing for troublemakers. They deserved their punishment after they rebelled against the Jupiter family."

"But he did nothing, Mother! That was all in the past!" Yuu exclaimed. Her eyes burned in fury as she recalled her dear friend's shy personality. 

Demetra scoffed and shook her head. "Their family does nothing more than play with monsters. I heard that Shroud, whom you love so much, even turned his brother into one after an accident. I've seen your loved one's father shy away ever since."

Ortho's face comes to mind, how he still smiled despite not being the original Ortho. "Don't you dare say that about Ortho! Idia loves him as a brother!" Yuu said with tears in her eyes. 

"Or what? The family is cursed, and if you run to him, you will suffer too. You will be stuck on an island surrounded by monsters." Demetra remained indifferent as she watched her daughter cry. "Yuu, I am doing this for your own good."

"Doing what? I love him!"

Demetra tsked. "You need to get over your puppy love. Besides, I found someone suitable for you."

Yuu froze and looked at her mother. "What do you mean?"

Demetra smiled, the first good emotion during the whole conversation. "I spoke to the head of the Jupiter family, and he agreed that you are to be arranged to marry Alcides Jupiter. He is smart,  handsome, and in line to take over his family. A perfect match for you."

Yuu felt her world collapse as she herself fell to her knees. She knew of Alcides, but she could not imagine being tied down to him because of her mother's doing. She wanted the freedom to go out and see the world outside the little bubble she had been stuck in for 24 years. Sure, she might be stuck on the Island of Woe, but she would have more access to the outside world than she was now. 

Demetra kneeled down and patted Yuu's shoulder. "You will get to meet him next week. Trust me, Yuu. Everything will work out in the end. As they say, mother knows best." She walked out of the room, leaving Yuu by herself. 

Yuu wiped her eyes with her hands. Her eyes wandered to the walls and their flower designs around her. She felt like the walls constricted her and trapped her in a glorified cage. Yuu's eyes caught on an orange light floating in a window. She looked at the light with determination. 

She needed to get out now. 

---

A few days later, at night, Yuu made her move. Packing only a few necessities, Yuu opened her window to find her fairy friends around her. 

"Do you have everything you need?" Ortho asked as he floated to Yuu's window. 

"Yeah, I made sure to" Yuu turned to Ortho, who was wearing a black suit and had a robotic dog beside him. "Ortho? What are you doing here?'

Ortho giggled. "Your friends reached out to me and told me your situation, and I am here to bring you to the Island of Woe." Fira nodded and spoke something that came out like bells. "Fira also wants to come along too."

"But what about your friends? Won't you miss them?" Yuu asked, and her friend smiled. Her bell voice made a sound that sounded something like reassurance. As if she was telling Yuu that she would be okay with it. 

"Alright, I will let you tag along." Yuu smiled as Fira flew to her shoulder. 

"Now that is settled, let's head out before sunrise." Ortho motioned to the robot dog. "Yuu, you will ride Cerberus 1 while I fly us out. I'll make sure to use my magic to cover our tracks."

Yuu nodded and took one last look at her room. That room was full of memories since her childhood. The walls had seen Yuu grow with her mother and late father, cry over strict lessons, and talk to her fairy friends about Idia. Yuu felt a heavy sensation in her chest and turned to Ortho. 

"What about my mom? She would know I went to you to the Island."

"My parents and my grandmother will vouch for us. Don't worry; we will ensure you get the freedom you deserve."

Yuu nodded and hopped on Cerberus. "So long, Mother."

---

"Psst. Big Brother. Wake up."

Idia groaned and turned away from Ortho. "Five more minutes."

"You have to wake up! I have a surprise for you."

"Can't it wait?"

A female voice laughed, causing Idia to wake up instantly. "You want me to wait?" 

Idia threw his blanket off and sat up. Yuu's amused face filled his vision, causing Idia to blush at his embarrassing predicament. "Yuu? When did you come here?"

Yuu laughed. "An hour ago. Ortho gave me a tour of this place and led me here. Thank goodness he was with me, or I would have been lost. I must get used to this place if I plan to stay here long."

"What do you mean?"

"My mother wanted me to marry Alcides since I uhh," she turned to Ortho. "Can you step outside while I explain the next part to your brother?" 

 Ortho smiled, and Idia noticed something in his eyes like his brother kept secret. "Alright. I will show Fira around some more." Said fire fairy magically appeared and followed Ortho out the door. 

Yuu took a deep breath now that she was alone. "My mother told me about the arranged marriage because I-" She looked into Idia's eyes. "Said that I was in love with you."

Idia.exe froze. His body stiffened, his heartbeat increased, and his hair turned pink. "W-WHAT? Are you sure?"

Yuu nodded. "Yes, I am sure." She sat down next to Idia. "You have been my friend for a long time, Idia; even after you shut yourself out, we connected like nothing happened. I want to be by your side doing more than hiding out in a forest. Of course, if you will allow me."

Idia felt as if he was going to burst. "But what about that Alcides guy?"

"I don't know him, but I know you more. My mother could throw many guys at me to marry, but it would not sway anything. I would still choose you." Yuu said, intertwining one of her hands with Idia's.

Idia felt elated despite the very obvious blush on his face. Luckily, Yuu ignored it and rested her head on his shoulder. "That was the cheesiest thing I have ever heard." Idia laughed and squeezed Yuu's hand.

Yuu squeezed back in response, and a smile graced her face. "Yes, but you never said you didn't like it."

"I don't."

A/N:

Demetra is inspired by Demeter in Greek mythology and Fira is based on the fire fairies in twst.

Ceres is Demeter's Roman name.

Yes this part of the royal au, but I hc that the Island of Woe is more advanced in technology than the whole world.

Disclaimer: I do not own Twisted Wonderland and its characters. Those belong to Aniplex, Walt Disney Japan, and Yana Toboso.

©: This story belongs to bluesylveon2 2020-23. DO NOT modify, republish, or plagiarize my work.

[itsjaywalkers]

Hi! If you had to assign Ancient Greek myths (or myths of another kind) to each of your fic couples, which ones would you choose? (Very curious what you would choose for Jegulus vs pandalily vs bartylily etc.)

hi nonnie!! sorry it took me a few days to get back to u, but u sent such a good and interesting question i had to . properly think it over before i gave you a reply!! i even discussed it a bit with my best friend, even tho her knowledge on the topic of the marauders is limited to what i've told her + the couple of fics i've convinced her to read lol

anyways !! i used to be a mythology nerd so this ask genuinely made me swoon !! thank u for sending it and encouraging me to rant about both my fav ships AND greek myths <3

for jegulus i feel like it's a bit obvious.. they're so orpheus and eurydice coded.. to me.. it's all about devotion and being incapable to accept a lost love or move on and yet not being able to save the other person, or bring them back, bc it's been doomed since the start. but it was still beautiful while it lasted, and any of them looking back is proof that the love was there in the first place, and that it mattered!!

i could also see them as pygmalion and galatea (shout out to my beloved mil !!) bc i feel like their dynamic, especially in a canon context, is a lot about . them idealising each other in a way . about loving each other bc of what they represent . regulus has james in a pedestal, he sees him as this beacon of good and kindness and he loves him because of that. always from a certain distance, knowing it's bound to end at some point bc he's rotten and he isn't allowed to taint something as perfect as james. not like he'd want to, anyway. and james !! he sees regulus as something beautiful but broken that he's meant to fix. he thinks that if he treats him well and loves him right, reg will change and will choose him exactly like sirius did. he thinks he can mold him in what james thinks is the best version of him, bring out the good he's sure hides somewhere deep inside of reg. ultimately, they're both wrong, and are basing their love in what's simply an ideal etc etc

for pandalily.. they're the amazons <3 powerful warrior women who rejected and rebelled against a men-dominated society <3

they're also very scylla and charybdis coded to me.. two terrifying monsters in the mediterranean sea.. ships being forced to navigate between the two creatures and it almost always ending in tragedy.. their relationship + love is very . monstruous and twisted, in the best way, because they embrace each other's ugly sides and encourage them. they love each other not in spite of them, but because of them. they love violently and intensely, and what might seem grotesque and dangerous and plain wrong from an outsider's perspective it just . works for them . they're happy in that chaos and destruction <3

i could also see them as alcyone and ceyx, mostly in the sense of being this arrogant couple who dares to compare themselves to the gods and ends up being punished for it, because i feel that's very accurate to the version of pandalily i have in my head. also alcyone killing herself after ceyx died, ready to follow him anywhere, even to the afterlife??? that's pandalily. they wouldn't be that . upset or devastated about it i don't think, but the point is that if one of them dies, the other is killing themselves right after, no questions asked

as for bartylily.. it can only be hades and persephone to me.. persephone being demeter's precious sweet daughter and hades being the king of the underworld, always an outsider even around the gods. her having so many suitors but hades being the most persisting one.. softening around her and being utterly fascinated by her freshness and her beauty.. resorting to kidnapping her bc he knew her mother would never approve of their union.. persephone eating from the pomegranate and ending up bound to the underworld.. her being the emobodiment of spring but also becoming the queen of the underworld.. idk i feel like the duality is very . lily . (or at least it's very my lily) and this being such a controversial myth, with so many ppl arguing about if persephone truly ended up falling for hades or if the time she spends down there with him is always against her will, if she was tricked into eating the pomegranate seeds by her husband or if she did so willingly, etc etc, it all fits bartylily incredibly well!! i'm also personally very fond of the story so that's always a bonus

[ultravioart]

"But one might wonder how Juno aquired such abilities, and why she has such a sense of awe and adventure with her quirky personality."

"Well I can tell you! (proceeds to explain Juno has an anxiety disorder)"

Okay, that doesn't answer the question at all?? Lol.

I hope we get info on Mars technology (is it a new energy? Or is it just different tech?) and why IS Juno doing all this? is Juno Mars' last hope? Or is Mars station so sheltered and rule strict that earth seems like scary chaos? Or does Juno just have... anxiety. The way this is presented, it feels like they made Juno have an anxiety disorder to feel 'relatable' without giving us story to make it feel like an authentic representation of a condition... feels hollow, token. Maybe that person did try to say more about the lore but couldn't so that part is a retake? Idk. Very odd.

On a positive note, I thought the hover explanation was cute, being that she works like old retro alien invasion shooters, hopping up and down rows. I also feel like her blaster does fit what they aimed for, more so medical as well as fitting the retro scifi single blaster look.

Mythic discussion below:

But... a 30 minute meeting being 5 minutes? If they had said "Oh Reyes is into fashion(Halloween event confirmed he makes his own costumes, is into design) and the bejeweled tombs matched with 'judging souls in the afterlife' fit Reaper's 'grim reaper' theme, so that's why we chose this mythic for Reaper," I would have been like "oh, okay."

But they litterally went "oh anubis is the god of death? Reaper lol."

Mind you, they messed up Hades as Pharah in greek mythos bp because they gave Hades a red and black firey volcanic color scheme (that's Hephaestus, not Hades) like a Christian 'gates to hell' type deal. That's not what Greek mythos Hades is at ALL. Hades is rivers (like water!!!) of souls, and the spiritual underworld, not the Christian hellfire. Cerberus theme instead of Hades maybe could fit the Helix guard aspect for Pharah, but a FLYING character for the god of the underworld??? Hades Pharah is what you get without doing any research. (And don't get me started on the ship nonsense with that skin. Persephone is the story of a mother losing her child to death stealing her away, and it explains a mother's mourning as the cause for winter. It's not really meant to be romantic, it's tragic with a touch of kidnapping/marriage drama for sport, as Greek mythos does lol. Greek mythos isn't always litteral, it's often metaphor.)

This instant pick of Reaper to me shows the team chose it for shallow reasons, and probably did little to no research on Egyptian mythology. Atleast they got the psychopomp (entities that escort souls) aspect correct, kinda. Both the Grim Reaper and Anubis escort souls, but Anubis judges them to determine if they can enter the afterlife. I mean sure, Reaper is out to inflict his sense of justice (kinda Anubis like to be the judgement?), I could see that. But why wasn't it explained...

I would have loved to see an Osiris Ramattra skin instead (Osiris is connected to Anubis in how the worshipping changed) or 'Anubis' or even Set skin. Would have fit better for the character, made more sense for a Tank to get a mythic. I KNOW Ramattra just got a skin, but come on. Ramattra was originally going to be the embodiment of the Anubis ai(or simply codenamed Anubis) as a hero based on a Pharaoh themed PVE boss that uses sand powers and resurrection of mobs. Then they turned that into nanites and made it into Ramattra (also lifted off of an ow oc from Argentinian fans called Voltikko most likely).

ANYWAYS this is a PR mess, really shows they don't know the community. (Not to mention clash+new maps in comp day 1 when people haven't been able to practice???)

Venture, the omnic archeologist character, was used in promo vids to advertise the new Anubis clash map, yet Venture gets no skins or emotes?

Ramattra, created by the anubis ai, gets no skins or emotes? And you can't say 'oh but Ramattra got stuff already--" SO DID Reinhardt! And he's seemingly getting ANOTHER collab skin right after the Optimus Prime and Mythic Weapon!

The people in charge need to understand promising one theme and delivering disjointed bp themes hurts the hype cycle and makes people stop caring about the new seasons. If you can't guess what might come bc ANYTHING unrelated could, there is no hype and it creates disappointment for what could have been... it's makes it look blatantly like a souless cashgrab skin factory at that point lol. How can you promise Egyptian mythology theme and have random unrelated heroes and skins (Genji, Kiriko) on the cover page? The Greek mythos bp was better than this.

Atleast Ana is getting a mythic weapon, ig.

Looking at the other skins, I was suprised to see Polar Reinhardt and Polar Brigitte. It gives me hope future Egyptian skins are just out of order right now (like null sector Zenyatta).

[neopuff]

Since you recently finished watching it, how would you improve class of titans?

WELL I think the show suffered really badly from having to stick to the status quo. Things couldn't significantly or noticably change til the end of the series which really doesn't work for a show like this - like, I'm still confused about what happened with Cronus in the middle of season 2. They captured him but then no they didn't and he's out? I felt like I'd missed an episode or two somewhere lol

So overall writing a coherent story for the show to follow would've been nice. Also more consistency on how the Gods are portrayed. I liked Theresa's anger in the finale but it came out of nowhere, it would've been really easy to build up to it. Everytime they have to fight a gods battle because of a terrible thing the gods did in the past, they should be upset about it, y'know? Who wants to fight someone else's battles.

Also I love that they had fun with the gods but I'm disappointed that they gave Zeus and Hera a cutesy romantic moment near the end. In the Christmas ep maybe? Anyway Hera should hate his cheating ass it's funnier for me

Cronus is a fun villain but what made me like him so much at the beginning was that he was charming and polite lol later on in the show he got meaner and maybe that's intentional but it just felt like they lost track of his personality

(which reminds me - the ep where everyone except Neil got amnesia? Probably the best ep of S2. I would've made that a double ep and continued the amnesia shenanigans for an excessively long time)

I would also redesign a lot of characters. Whoever did the character designs for this show seems to think all the Greek gods and their descendents have red hair. Like. There's less than 10 dark haired characters in the show, and I'm including every side character. That's stupid. The obsession with making everyone redheads or blondes is annoying.

Romance-wise, I think Jay and Theresa are fine but they could've had some more fun stories. I also sometimes felt like they were already dating and sometimes it seemed like she just had a one sided crush on him?

Archie and Atlanta were a nightmare ship for me. Everything I hate in a ship thrown together into a ball of bad writing. In the first ep where they talk about his crush, I 100% thought it was gonna stay one sided and Atlanta would be Without A Man since that's how shows portrayed lesbians back then lol (one of the characters said something like 'i don't think any guy has a chance with Atlanta' so I was hoping it'd be like the lesbian from Fred's Head) but noooo. Goddddddd they were so painful to watch. I would've gotten rid of that 'romance' and let Atlanta be gay (also Neil, though based on his midas touch ep I think it's possible that the writers were headed that way).

Archie as a whole needed an attitude adjustment. At first he was interesting and then they just had him get in fights with everyone on the team. Like...why is he in conflict with every single character? Maybe there should be an ep exploring his anger issues instead of making fun of his fear of water all the time. I think he suffered from Status Quo stuff cuz he could've been an interesting character. Nothing wrong with the angry guy who doesn’t trust anyone but his characterization was so inconsistent it was hard to keep up

That being said, a lot of the characters were inconsistent. Neil and Jay were the most consistent (except for Neil randomly bullying Odie in that S2 ep with the sphinx, i don’t remember Neil being a huge awful bully in any other ep?) but everyone else would occasionally just be all over the place. I think this is definitely due to the Status Quo problem...most of the problems in the show can be tied to the inability to develop your characters properly. 

Also back to character designs: there's no reason why Odie had to be the only character of color in the main cast. We're going back thousands of years and you're telling me only one of these kids ancestors ever had a baby with someone who wasn't white? Bad. Dumb. Also it's lame that none of the kids were Greek immigrants imo I know Jays mom is but why couldn't Jay be an immigrant too? Give him a lil accent and have him be fluent in Greek. Obv it’s not necessary but I think it would've been nice.

Okay I'm getting off track but that covers a lot of stuff I'd change. I really did enjoy S1 of the show and I felt like it had a lot of promise but then it just fell off the wagon. S2 had a lot of episodes that I struggled to get through 😔

Oh also Cassie! I would've introduced her earlier and had her be recurring cuz she could've been fun

[sarah-cam]

Love how you’re a PJO fan! For your tsitp cabin assignment, I’ve always thought that Jeremiah’s godly parent would be Hermes, since he dressed up as Hermes for Susannah’s painting in s1. There’s also how Hermes is the messenger god and I think the writers made Jeremiah dress up as him to foreshadow how he’s always eavesdropping on conversations in s2 and how he has the most information on Belly and Conrad’s real feelings about each other (ie. Conrad’s love confession and Belly’s POV on the breakup). Jeremiah chooses to withhold this information and only becomes the messenger once revealing this info benefits him.

I can see why you gave Dionysus/Mr. D to Jeremiah, since he becomes a frat bro, but I think Hermes makes more sense as it works with Jeremiah’s character and how he creates conflict. I also saw in the tags that you could see Jeremiah as a Hephaestus kid, but I personally don’t agree as Hephaestus kids are pretty handy, while Jeremiah can’t even fix a tire. (And frankly, I don’t want Jeremiah to be a Hephaestus kid as throughout Riodan’s series, the cabin 9 kids are pretty great and Jeremiah doesn’t deserve to be in their cohorts. I’m an unbiased party since I’m an Apollo kid, so this is just the truth lol).

honestly it has been so long since i read the percy jackson books so most of my recent memory comes from the show 😂 i was obsessed with them and greek mythology though it was like middle school

i mostly based my choices on the traits associated with the god rather than the "job" or skills, but that makes sense!! dionysus is charismatic and fun but also bitter and unforgiving, which i feel jere has shown to be multiple times. i also said a blend with hephaestus because charasmatic/friendly but also bitter and jealous, again TOTALLY jere traits lmaooo but definitely makes sense when looking at being handy/hardworking. as for hermes, that definitely makes sense!! i just looked at it more again as traits versus job/role

[betty-bourgeoisie]

I hope I’m not being a complete dunce, but paganism briefly came up in a conversation with a friend of mine and I was hoping you could explain it to me 😅 (I’m not Christian). I understand that it can be a sort of Christian branch(?) but I’ve also heard it being used to describe like- non Christian related religions.

And honestly, though I’ve grown up in the United States, and a few teachers when I was younger brought it up quite a lot to (grew up in the Bible Belt lol), I never really figured out what it was?

Is it a broad term or a specific term? I understand if you can’t answer or but do you recommend any sources to read about pagans? Where pagans came from and all that? Sorry if this is super random, but I’m not sure who else I can ask-

This is a complicated question because "Pagan" or more accurately "Neo-Pagan" is a very broad umbrella term, and the answers to "what is it", "where does it come from", and "what's a good source on it" really varies depending on what type of Paganism you're talking about.

Here is the working definition I usually give people: Paganism is a general term for religions that have multiple gods/goddesses and believe in magic. These religions are usually based in the worship of nature.

So for an easy example - Hellenism or Hellenic Paganism is a set of religious traditions that fall under the umbrella category of Paganism. It refers to people who worship ancient greek deities like Zeus and Hestia. The greek pantheon is mostly made up of deities that represent aspects of the natural world and daily human life, making it a nature based practice. Some Hellenic pagans will use spells (think candles and tarot cards type spells, not harry potter type spells) and participate in rituals as part of their worship.

But like I said this is very much a working definition, and if you really wanted to get into the weeds on it I'm sure I could find examples of spiritual groups that contradicted each part of the definition I gave and still consider themselves to fall under the Pagan umbrella. And that doesn't even begin to get into the significant number of spiritual practices that technically do fit under this definition but whose practitioners would absolutely never call themselves Pagan.

"Pagan" can also be used as a personal identifier for folks who subscribe more broadly to the even harder-to-define umbrella of "Pagan beliefs" but don't belong to a more specific spiritual tradition so 🤷‍♀️ Idk.

If you ask 100 different Pagans this question you will get 100 different answers. I guess if you want a general rule of thumb, anyone who worships ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Norse, or Celtic deities can probably be assumed to identify under the Pagan umbrella, but like, you should even take that with a grain of salt tbh.

If you want to see other people's perspectives Patheos does have a whole Paganism section where you can at least get a feel for the kinds of topics and ideas that might regularly come up in Pagan religious space.

[koifishanonymous]

🪄

i am very curious about this :3

I KNEW I COULD COUNT ON YOU LET ME GET MY PLAYLIST

uh a little content warning i get pretty personal and existential with some of these so

no particular order

1. love, me normally by will wood

''I was nothing before, so I couldn’t have asked to be born // I'll be nothing again, so what am I between now and then? // Is there nothing to fear? Cause shit's getting weird // So to God who made this man, you better have one hell of a plan // And I'd rather be normal, yes, so normal // I suggest that we keep this informal // 'Cause a normal human being wouldn't need, no // To pretend to be normal, to be normal // Well, I guess that's the least that I owe ya // To be normal in a way I could never be // C’mon, c’mon, yeah, I said c’mon, yeah // C’mon, c’mon, yeah, I said c’mon, yeah

C’mon, c’mon, and love me normally"

basically the whole ending to the this song perfectly encapsulate both mmy mental state and my feelings towards love. like this song is the closest thing i have to an explanation. also just the way its sung, desperately and angrily almost just makes me explode

2. i / me / myself by will wood

"I am quantum physics // My witness brings me into existence // I wish I could be a girl, and that way // You'd wish I could be your girlfriend, boyfriend // Am I pretty enough to love back // No not yet // I wish I could be a girl, and really // I'd prefer it if you would use I, Me, Myself // Am I pretty enough, am I pretty enough // To fucking die // Little old me in a big world // Well I would give you my whole world // Little old me in a big world //I wish // All identities are equally invalid // Don't you think that there's a chance that you could live without it? "

basically the same as love me normally, but for my gender! i scream these lyrics because i wish I was as simple as just being a girl but i'm not and i would rather we lived without the pressure to know who you are, or even be only one things at a time

3. black out days by phantogram

"if I could paint the sky // well all the stars would shine a bloody red"

i dont know how to describe the meaning of this other than that is i had eldritch being powere, i would do this

4. achilles come down by gangs of youth

"You want the acclaim, the mother of mothers (it's not worth it, Achilles) // More poignant than fame or the taste of another (don't listen, Achilles) // But be real and just jump, you dense motherfucker (you're worth more, Achilles) // You will not be more than a rat in the gutter (so much more than a rat)// You want my opinion, my opinion you've got (no one asked your opinion) // You asked for my counsel, I gave you my thoughts (no one asked for your thoughts) // Be done with this now and jump off the roof (be done with this now and get off the roof) // Can you hear me, Achilles? I'm talking to you // I'm talking to you"

i relate to achilles a huge deal and to her this song for the first time, was like both patroclus and agamennon were whispering to me. this bit especially broke me

5. iris by the goo goo dolls

"and I don't want the world to see me // cause I don't think that they'd understand"

pretty straight forward, I've tried to open up to so many people and ive only pushed back and made to hear their problems, so I genuinely don't think they understand. good reason to not show mysef, but also because i dont know myself

6. art is dead by bo burnham

"I am an artist, please God forgive me // I am an artist, please don't revere me // I am an artist, please don't respect me // I am an artist, you're free to correct me // A self-centered artist // Self-obsessed artist // I am an artist // I am an artist // But I'm just a kid // I'm just a kid // I'm just a kid, kid // And maybe I'll grow out of it"

i really like creating things, and usually jm not even good at it and I cant help but feels thatbeing an artists has lost all meanibg. people only seem to make art with some sort of end goal and i want to be able to make without the pressure of having a job or school or every other problem in the world

7. sweet hibiscus tea

"And I'm not your protagonist // I'm not even my own"

i can 100% tell you that this is not my body, i am not me. i want to be the main character so bad but i know i'm not

8. people watching by conan gray

"I wanna feel all that love and emotion // Be that attached to the person I'm holding"

i struggle with developing close connections with anyone, i hide nyself and only create a facade you cannot get close to because its a curtain with nothing behind it

9. cardigan by taylor swift

"And when you are young, they assume you know nothing"

this is lyric hits hard because whatever i say gets dismissed, blamed on hormones, or childishness or some other teen "problem"

that all hahah i went a little overboard, and somehow still have more

[rotten-dan]

dan i hope you dont freaking mind my telling you via ask bc if discovered they expanded the chara limits here and not replies so this way gives me more room to Speak. so anyways... ive said different... because ive believe... that the moment an interpretation of character exists concretely in the world, a new version of that character is created and is inherently a separate guy. because once the person takes that character theyre imparting their own self into that character because their perception of that character will always be different from that of the originals creators... even if you tried your hardest to be the most faithful that you can be to the source can you truly confidently say that your vision of the character is the same as the creators? when you are obviously a separate and different person from them? you will never be them. so what think happens is that we you make that interpretation exist, you sort of make it your own. you get a bit of ownership for That Instance, for That Version of that same character. you know how ppl can say "oh i love your wayne" (for example) because they like how you wrote them? my stance is kinda based on that. a My City Now sort of stance. yes that character is based on what already exists. but do they exist in the same place? no i thinks its a parallel sort of existence... yes theyre tied together by features and name. but isnt that new version sort of independent? well actually. this part is very debatable. how independent/dependent an interpretation is from the og. probably! it varies! on artistic license! and how fleshed out that new version is made.

im gonna talk about some interesting cases of character interpretations. obviously a big one would be fandom interpretation. fan created content of the same character. im gonna use your slu//ttysa/n/s example lol and spin it so i can argue that hes a different character lol. when that much deviance happens i think its fair that this is different guy. sure maybe personality wise and other things may match up, but dont the differences make him... different? not the same? would tob/y fo/x look him and go "yeah thats my guy". i dont know im not tob/y f/ox. BUT IF I WERE HIM AND THAT HAPPENED TO MY CHARACTER ID BE LIKE "THAT NOT MY FUCKING GUY......" and even if the difference werent so drastic maybe the creator would still go ehhhh thats not Quite right.... nonetheless that creator denouncing a version of a character wouldnt stop it from existing no? they still exist as a character with a different existence from the original. they simply have ties

other interesting examples include sher/lo//ck hol/mes, ba/tm/an, spid//erm/an, comic book heroes in general really, drama adaptations of chinese novels wheres theres significant changes due to censorship (im thinking of fairly specific example but i dont know how familiar you are with that fandom and also i know cn drama adaptations actually experience this frequently so im being general here), mythical characters like greek gods and sun wukong (the last character is very relevant to me bc of monki/e kid and hes actually the main reason i started thinking so hard about this). these are all characters that have seen MANY different interpretations

starting from she/rlock. this freaking guy. so many different versions. man. heres two versions i wanna pick out of this dude along with the original. dan you know dgs/great ac/e att/orney she/rlock? how hes such a HUGE HIMBO? hes a drastic divergence from the original. now take b/b//c sher/lock (which i have not seen but were on tumblr. we all know the guy unfortunately.) and set him down next to the other two. whats your answer? i feel like theyre different characters entirely. their source material gave them a whole new life that.... you dont need the og material tbh to see and understand their characters. and the two interpretations are connected to the original but! they arent connected to each other at all. theyre at the very least. different characters from each other

now comic book heros are a fucking doozy. bc the nature of these fucking characters are a fucking MESS. theres an original version for all of them..... but.... comic book heroes live a weird sort of Collective/Collaborative existence. theres so many comics written by so many people about the same freaking guy and yet so many of them are recognized all to be canon by the publisher. for the record i havent read any. nor have i watched the movies. but i know of their nature. and its freaking weird. (actually on second thought i Did watch some of the cartoons as a kid.... WHY ARE THERE SO MANY ADAPTATIONS OF THESE GUYS....) the general public also recognize these characters in this sort of iconic way. sup/erman is always superma/n. everybody knows spide/rman. BUT. ARE THEY THE SAME SAME? THEY ALL EACH HAVE THEIR OWN UNIQUE VERSION OF THE CANON.....bbbuuuut. but but. this is one of The Most dubious examples of same or different characters. bc many people will think yeah theyre the same guy. but is the tob/ey mag/uire parker same as to/m h/olland parker same as spid/erverse parker same as whatever random issue of s/pide/rman parker? i personally would say. no. but some ppl would disagree

ACTUALLY NO WAIT THE TMNT TURTLES ARE ORIGINALLY COMIC BOOK CHARACTER AND THE ROTTMNT TURTLES ARE ABSOLUTELY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS FROM EVERY OTHER ITERATION OF THEMSELVES AND YOU LITERALLY COULD NOT CHANGE MY MIND. I AM ADAMANT ABOUT THIS ONE. IM RIGHT

cn dramas...... i wont get too into it. im not chinese, i just watched a handful of dramas. but what sometimes happens is that sometimes is that significant story and character changes will happen. to abide to restrictions. not just homophobia, stuff like possession is apparently restricted too (source: chinese friend, this is only reason i know some stuff). now i wont talk about the nature of that biz. its not my place. but it is interesting tho. im gonna step back and talk more generally about what happens to the identity of characters that undergo significant changes to their story through an adaptation. because its not unique to cn media. it happens all the time everywhere. a big example would be ho/wls mo/ving castle i think. these characters.... are meant to Be the same characters..... but are they... really? still? despite these changes. this one is also a complicated example. relationship between a novel and adaptation. and the characters within. WHAT. makes. a character. that character. their story? their personality? their appearance? their motivations? their drive? their name? their identity? all of that together makes that character who they are. so what happens if you change pieces of them. my friend says this is a different application of ship of theseus and i agree. but also i think is more than taking a ship and replacing a piece of it. because again i believe the new version of that character exists parallel to the original. to me i see it as a ctrl+c, ctrl+v, and edit. its a copy paste with tweaks. because the original is still untouched. it cant truly Be touched except by the original creator. so again my conclusion here is different

actually im gonna speak from an personal-experience-while-reading-fanfic standpoint.... i guess.... what believe what makes a character that character depends on their essence. because even within their own original story literally any part of them is subject to change. but that doesnt stop them from being them. but What is Essence tho...? i licherally could not tell you. its entirely subjective. this entire discussion is subjective. its just... a feeling... and i guess if another version of that character had that same essense i might argue that my answer would be "same" actually... but essence is hard to capture and depending on what is done to that character by another person, that essence Will Change. because i think its different when a character changes within their own narrative vs when a character is changed by someone else. its a different kind of change....

mythical legends thoooooo. again these characters exist kinda in a similar way to comic heroes how their existence is kinda like a monolith in the public consciousness but on a much bigger, grander, and older scale. greek gods. i know you dont like them lol. but you know they exist. and you know how ppl have taken them and created their own narratives with them. big examples being hade/s and per/cy jac/kson. in these cases i think their source stories are more significant. their legends. mythical figures have this different sort of quality to them than modern day characters. in fact. can you call them characters sometimes? is god a character? now this is a hot water subject. but i think it can be said if these figures werent characters before.... they were/are/can be Made into characters. and thats their presence in modern day media i think. theyre new characters that are birthed from their own myths into a new story thats inspired by them. i think thats kinda rad

ok now im gonna get more self indulgent talk about su/n wuk/ong if you dont freaking mind. bc this is the dude who spurred this debate in my head in the first place. hes an example of a mythical figure whos absolutely a character. a character who also has many representations of himself across media. FUCKING GOKU IS SU/N WU/KONG...... but id say go/ku is safe bet to claim as a different character from su/n wukon/g. just fucking look at this freaking guy. needs no discussion. but s/un wuk/ong in my funky little lego show is an INTERESTING example of....... same but different.... because with the nature of the show. the show isnt an adaptation of journey to the west, su/n wukon/gs original story. no its inspired by it. its chronologically takes place After jttw. in fact it goes to establish that This is The sun wuko/ng. the myth and legend himself. theres mentions of his legacy. other characters from that story are in that story also but theres new characters that are Representations of some old character while not being them themselves. sorry if this is confusing? im gonna stick to sun wuk/ong. what im saying is. the character su/n wuk/ong is intended to be the same guy in his myths. buuut. if you look closely.... some parts of the story of his myths within the show is actually different. YOU HAVENT SEEN THE SHOW SO THERE NO POINT POINTING OUT WHAT IM SPECIFICALLY TALKING ABOUT (BUT IT REVOLVES AROUND A DIFFERENT CHARACTER FROM JTTW BUT PART OF SU/N W/UKONGS STORY)..... but anyways if this guy who meant to be the same but actually has a slightly different myth within the show is it truly the same guy still? my head is gonna explode. i wanna say no bc thats my stance but its difficult to say it confidently tho. i do wanna say hes a good character tho. i think they do do a good job depicting him as the character he meant to be. while simultaneously making him a character unique to the show. i love this guy. lego mo/nki/e ki/d is a good show.

FUCK. DAN. THIS IS STRAIGHT UP AN ESSAY. I KNOW I WARNED YOU BUT IM SORRY ABOUT THE LENGTH OF THIS. IS THIS EVEN ABLE TO SEND??? i hope i put enough slashes for you bc. theres so many characters. oh man. DAN IVE HAD SO MANY THOUGHTS............. thanks for letting fucking go off hgjruitgjkxfgk. oh my god. i care about characters so fucking much. CHARACTERS MAN.

ok JOkES ASIDE YOU HAVE A LONG AND VERY GOOD POINT JEM, KINDA FUCKED ME UP NOT GONNA LIE BCUZ LIKE I MENTIONED I LOVE WRITIN IN CHARACTER ITS ALL TRUE

what else is there for me to add except that this should be a youtube essay with funny graphics that lasts like 1 hour or so

i like how passionate you are while writin

[chongoblog]

Zero Time Dilemma Review/Ramble

Okay, so if you’ve been following me, you know that I’ve gotten into the Zero Escape series, famous for 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward, streaming both games. I recently took the time to experience the last game, Zero Time Dilemma by watching cutscenes rather than playing it proper mostly because A) I heard it was REALLY dark and didnt want to risk it on Twitch and B) I wanted to experience it more freely like while I’m at work.

After experiencing it. I have......feelings about it. And because there’s MASSIVE spoilers involved, I’m making it its own post under the ReadMore below.

tl;dr LOADS of bullshit, flawed execution, and stupid decisions, but still REALLY enjoyed it

Okay so a LOT of this is going to be complaining, and like I said in the tl;dr I still legit enjoyed this game, so I’m gonna make this a compliment sandwich by saying something nice now, loading up on complaints, then ending with more compliments. Carlos is good. So is Sean. Sigma being voiced by Matthew Mercer actually makes him more interesting imo. I REALLY like Phi’s new design and the way they build on the initial concepts brought up in VLR more accurately portray the ideas that started all the way back in 999, that being the idea of taking thoughts across timelines, just like the player. From the beginning, the theme/gimmick was always “what if your character remembered information when you savescummed?” In 999 that began as flashes of information, and in VLR the characters’ consciousness actually time traveled at the very end. ZTD now uses the idea of the consciousness traveling across time and space and RUNS with it. I also think that Delta has a cool design.

I’ll be nice again later, but now for the things I Did Not Like.

Emo Moody Junpei makes sense from a writing standpoint, but that doesn’t mean I have to like him. Maybe I just got spoiled since Evan Wilson did a spectacular job with his deliveries in 999 and in ZTD it seems like his soul got sucked out. Not the fault of the delivery as much as it is the writing. Eric is bad, and I feel like that statement isn’t controversial. I don’t think anyone likes Eric, and if you do, then sorry for shitting on him so much, but god I just don’t like him. And the abusive childhood thing doesn’t give me a drop of sympathy, but then again I’ve always hated the writing trick that “this person is shitty and pathetic but it’s because abuse!” (see also Mikan). Diane is boring (sorry).

But I fuuuuuckin HATE Mira. I hate Mira so much. Like, at first I thought she’d be alright, yeah she’s definitely The Boob Character™, but I liked Lotus well enough and Alice grew on me significantly, so I don’t see why Mira won’t. Then she’s like “surprise I’m a serial killer”. Now if they just made her a serial killer, it would be kinda boring so I’m glad they TRIED something new. I just think the result was bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad. Like....”hmm I never felt any emotions so when my mom told me they were kept in hearts I just ripped em out of people :)” is some garbage I’d write in middle school when I felt especially edgy. Also yeah seems p ableist. I won’t go too deeper into Mira, since she’s a sociopath and I don’t know enough about the actual disorder to put a candle to the real thing, but....bleh.

I won’t touch on THIS aspect for too long because I’m aware that it had barely any budget and it wouldn’t have happened without a kickstarter (don’t know the details), but the animation is just....so stiff. It really takes away from the dramatic impact some scenes are meant to have. But even IF the animation wasn’t stiff, I still am not a big fan of the darker and moodier direction it went. Although that’s moreso down to personal preference. Final note about the presentation (which is by far the game’s weakest aspect) is that I noticed multiple points in the sound mixing got to nearly Sonic Adventure 2 levels of being unable to understand what people were saying.

Alright. Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Let’s talk about Delta. This is going to make up a MAJORITY of this post so strap in.

Delta is a meme. There’s no other way to say it briefly. He’s just such a huge fucking meme. Almost everything about him, from his plan to his “complex” motives to his backstory to his powers. I mentioned liking his design, but fuck it. That’s a meme now too. Delta is the stupidest part of the game, and as much as I kind of love it, I also need to complain about it.

First let’s talk about Delta’s plan (because it starts with the nicest part of this segment). His motives are “complex” which is actually greek for “he’s probably either a liar, an idiot, or both”. I said there was nice things, so I’ll start with those. The very ending’s “ah ah ah. I never killed any of you in this timeline. If you arrested someone for crimes of another history, there would be criminals everywhere” was something I actually legitimately enjoyed. Yeah, intent was still there and he’s still a bastard (plus there was kidnapping and non-consensual drugging involved so kind of a stupid take), but I still thought it was a fun attempt. And also the “I had to make sure I was born” thing is a mindfuck, and I love those. Basically the first retort is “well I’m alive, right? So I don’t need to make sure I was born with powers because I WAS born with powers, which means it happened in another universe. So I don’t have to.” Only to then realize that we’re just in the universe where he DID do that but then the only justification is “someone had to” right? Wrong. Let’s talk about the rest of his “complex” motives

So I give a pass to “I had to make sure I was born”, but now we see why he had to do this whole deal and what he declares at the end of the game. That there’s some religious fanatic who intends to blow up the world and completely end humanity. And he released Radical-6 in the VLR timeline hoping that it would kill the terroris only killing 4 billion people instead of 6 billion people. In the timeline at the end of ZTD, he says that they had used this experience to hone the skills of the Shifters that way they could use their newly honed take down the religious fanatic WITHOUT Radical-6 and save the world.

What?

Now......before I tear into this.....I have ONE nice thing to say. The “unleash radical 6 and kill 4 billion vs let a terrorist end humanity” gambit IS cleverly foreshadowed with the radical 6 decision game with Q Team. But also wouldn’t that have made, like 1800 times more narrative sense to give that decision game to team D who KNOWS the impact of radical 6, or team C who he explains this plan to later on? Damn, even my nice thing was backhanded. Alright let’s REALLY tear into it.

FIRST of all, this is the exact same plot of Virtue’s Last Reward. Only difference is that somehow Akane and Junpei are just as skilled at this technique as Sigma and Phi despite the latter going to do Moon Training (granted the moon training was also to give them enough of a jump to go back 45 years). Speaking of Virtue’s Last Reward, this game also reveals that Delta is Brother, the leader of Free the Soul. A group of religious fanatics. So I wouldn’t be especially shocked if the religious fanatic is working with Free the Soul. But for the sake of this argument, let’s just say they aren’t with FtS. How in the Flavor-Blasted FUCK does he know this? Did somebody Shift back from that timeline and then just get Mind hacked (and we’ll fUCKING talk about Mind Hacking dont you worry)? How would that be the only piece of information known about the end of the god damn world? And if there IS more, then why the fuck wouldn’t you tell them the information? How does he know that it’s inevitable when apparently a god damn snail can unleash Radical-6?

I call bullshit on the “religious fanatic” thing. Wanna know why? Because at this point, Delta had already founded Free The Soul. He started this shit in 1938. At this point in time, he and the rest of the Free the Soul had already kidnapped Alice’s dad to create clones of his dead brother. He was pushing for a new world order and then in the VLR timeline, tried to PREVENT this whole thing from happening by sending Dio to the Moon. So if he actually gave a shit about “honing their abilities” then why would he do everything in his power to stop it? There is ONE out that there can be, but it’s something not even HINTED at (and I’ll talk about this later), but I think that "religious fanatic” is a big ol’ lie that he made up to try and save face when he was faced with a consequence, but even that explanation makes no sense since he’s like “lol shoot me if u wanna I wont mind hack you”

And let’s talk about mind hacking. Let’s fucking talk about Mind Hacking. Adding Mind Hacking was stupid, completely pointless, out of left field, and actively makes Delta a worse character. For those that don’t know, Mind Hacking is an ability that only Delta has (and I guess the player character technically but that’s a whole meta thing from VLR that doesn’t get followed up on) where you can read people’s minds and also fuckin control them. Why? Why was this necessary, ZTD? You wanna know what I thought was really neat? When I saw that different timelines produced different X-Codes. I thought “oh shit, I know this is Game Stuff, but the sheer foresight of the villain to do that? That’s some Moriarty shit.” It would require some insane explanations, but we’ve had enough sci-fi that we could imagine with enough advanced tech, you could set up systems that could use conditionals to give certain responses based on certain outcomes. Like if someone dies after the decontamination room button is pressed, then the central computer outputs a different X-Code than if it’s after the initial vote. Just make up a new tech that accounts for Shifting (plus the QUANTUM COMPUTER you have RIGHT THERE) and you could make a villain with so much calculated foresight that he’s just a god damn genius. But no. Mind hacking. None of that interesting stuff, just “lol I read ur mind idiot”. No outwitting anyone, just “lol get mindhacked eric u scrub bang bang”.

Honest to god, honest to FUCKING god, do you want to know how cool the final cutscene would have made Delta look if he walked out and just KNEW what happened in another timeline because of his plans. Like everyone recognizes him as Delta and he just goes “ohoho I see you had a fun time in my other timeline” using that deduction alone. But nah, he’s just like “yo I just mindhacked y’all, nice experience y’all had” I hate mind hacking so much. There’s no part of his plan where he NEEDED to mind hack in order to succeed that could have been written without mind hacking.

Now there’s a bit of a missed opportunity here that could both make mind hacking relevant, made his motive not shit, and also maybe even developed him into a SUPER interesting character! I know this is a bit fanfic-y, but hear me out. Make Delta a VICTIM of the stable time loop/bootstrap paradox. For those who don’t know, the bootstrap paradox is when time travel makes certain events happen seemingly out of thin air since they are their own cause. Basically it’s this clip from Milo Murphy. This is something that seems like it’s KINDA there in the subtext, but if they actually dove into it, they could have a GOLD mine.

What if we keep the mindhacking, and before he even MAKES Free the Soul, he mindhacks someone who experienced the events of the “religious fanatic”. But not just anyone. An experienced SHIFTer who made it their goal to stop this religious fanatic. After hundreds of attempts, they still fail. Delta sees this and determines it to be inevitable. So he’s having fun, cursed by the knowledge of an inevitable apocalypse. Then he meets Akane, Phi, Sigma, or Junpei after they had undergone the events of VLR and ZTD. He learns that particular timeline. A bleak future, yes, but one single future where humanity is alive. He sees two futures, one in which all of humanity dies, and one where he is the leader of a religious cult that wipes out 4 Billion People with a deadly pandemic. And the idea of being that person disgusts him. He despises it. But he’s completely resigned to fate. He knows that things must go precisely as he’s seen at the price of humanity, too frightened by such a burden to even take a toe off of the predetermined pathway. His motive is that he’s so tightly bound to fate and so afraid to let it slip that he has no choice but to commit the atrocities, despising himself for it every step of the way, but considering it better than the inevitable alternative. It would give a purpose for the mindhacking powers, it would give him a solid motive, and it would make the ending SO much stronger, showing the contrast between a group of SHIFTers confident that they can change fate and the man who is completely resigned to his own. Fuck, I might steal this character concept because I REALLY think this idea would work to make an interesting villain!

Like I mentioned, this is KINDA there in subtext (with him quite frequently saying “life truly is unfair”) and this could be an interpretation of the character, but if ZTD had explored that theme, then holy hell what an interesting character Delta would be.

But even WITH this fix, holy hell, this plan is stupid. Because guess what, dingus. You just created like 30 new timelines that all end in annihilation.

He coulda said ONE line about “even if there is only one history that ends nicely, that is solace enough”, that might have been dark, but still powerful. You know, add some depth. But instead, he’s just like “hmm hmm shoot me”

And the Q Twist? I’m honestly not as mad at it as I should be. On one hand, it does that cute thing where there are little bits of foreshadowing so when you rewatch it, you notice little bits like shadows and stuff, but on the other hand, there are PLENTY of points where either the camera just straight up lies to you and doesn’t show him when he should be there or Delta’s just been fuckin SHMOOVIN on his wheelchair around the room constantly to stay out of the camera and everyone’s just been kinda chill with it. Maybe if they had been more careful with the camera it could have delivered a TOUCH better. Like, even if the shots are a bit off, that’s noticeable enough to be part of the hint, no? I don’t have as much to say about this, mostly because this post is getting long as fuck so I’m gonna wrap it up so I can move on with my life for a bit.

So even with ALL OF THAT, I still enjoyed playing the game. That’s right, compliment sandwich time. The three wards all being one ward was a really neat reveal. The fact that you can shoot Delta in one scene is creative with its replay value. I’m glad they touched on the philosophical idea of what happens to the people who made it out from the coin flip only to get SHIFTed into the exploding lab, and exploring that idea was fun. I absolutely lost my mind at the idea of the gun to sigmas head had a random chance of firing and then seeing it elaborated on in the dice scene directly after it. Gab is a good boy.

Cant wait to play AI

[pomegranates-and-blood]

νοσταλγία (Prologue)

(Gif credit to @honestsycrets​)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader (eventual)

Summary: This is a retelling/romantization of the Greek myth of Persephone’s abduction with Ivar as Hades and you as Persephone. The Reader character is a Greek/Byzantine woman, follower of the Greek Pantheon/Religion, and a devoted follower of Persephone. This takes place after 5A, but the universe of this is a little changed in relation with the series, of course. Thank you for giving it a chance, hope you enjoy!

Word Count: Like 7k, I’m sorry

Warnings: As usual, mentions and descriptions of blood, death, torture, injury and people being burnt alive. Mentions or allusions to rape. If there’s anything else I didn’t mention, please let me know. Fair warning that the Reader Character may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but please give her a chance.

A/N: So, in this universe, bc fuck Michael Hirst, Sigurd is alive (tho Ivar did throw the axe) but married and away, Bjorn is still somewhere sunny, and Dublin was founded in Saxon land by Hvitty, Ivar and Ubbe, but it is the latter the one in control, prompting Ivar to eventually return to Kattegat and take the throne form Lagertha (she is alive just like in the show, only Bjorn is not here -I like to think he would understand his brothers wanting to avenge Aslaug?- and Floki departed bc he didn’t want to have to choose between supporting the kid he raised and an old friend), leaving him as King, Ubbe as ruler of Dublin, Hvitserk in Kattegat for now like in the show, Bjorn getting a tan in the Mediterranean, and Sigurd alive and happy cause goddammit killing him was a stupid choice. Sorry and btw this isn’t my creation, this is based on some exchanges I saw on reddit and a lil bit of me lol)

The warrior hesitates before letting you enter the tent, but you do so quietly and without a word, like it is expected out of you, and the men discussing war take no notice of you as you slip into a seat and watch them discuss.

Narses, still in the armor of a Byzantine Strategus despite his back having been turned to the Empire for a long time, turns to look at you as you enter. He doesn’t say a word, but in his green eyes there’s a plea for you not to speak, one that you must obey with gritted teeth and bitten tongue.

He understands, and there’s relief in Narses’ eyes.

Your friend. Your confidante.

Your fool.

His lips are pressed into a thin line, his hands supporting most of his weight as he leans on the war table.

“Our numbers are strong enough to hold until support from Strepshire arrives.” The Christian you recognize as Leofric -a bishop? Cleric? You have no idea anymore- speaks, his voice not much unlike the sound of the Byzantine soldiers’ armor plates rustling together as they march down the streets, burning idols and slaying the poor fools that believed the Gods would save them.

“If we retreat, we can-…” Narses argues, but is quickly interrupted.

“You belong to us!” Leofric barks, and you startle at the sudden aggression, “You have made a deal, Greeks. You must honor it.”

“I am aware. I am also aware you Saxons would sacrifice everything for your revenge.” Narses scoffs back, interrupting the Saxon and your train of thought at the same time.

“You want the same, boy. Is it not why you insist on gaining our support?” Stithulf, the leader, states, leaning back on his chair and resting his hands on the back of his head.

His posture screams of arrogance, his young age of a boy with too much power, his scars of a monster eager to fight.

You could use someone like him leading your army. You have seen too many of the so-called soldiers in your home bend the knee to a false Emperor. Maybe you need a monster on your side, someone with the same thirst for blood Greece left you with, someone willing and able to bring the Gods down from the very Olympus for retribution.

And as he leans back he catches sight of you, his expression tightens into a scowl, and you discard the remote possibility.

Not only is he a Christian, the same brand of men that burned your home, your mother, and years later you as well; but he looks upon you like all you are to do is be one of more of virginal maidens for his strange pantheon.

“What is the witch doing here?” He asks out loud, and you swallow down the words you want to say, but still holding his gaze.

“She is to be my wife, I trust her advice.” Narses sentences, sending you a glance that you return with a grateful one of your own.

“I didn’t know you Greeks were ruled over by your women.”

“Greek women are the only ones to birth real men.” You quip before you can stop yourself, reminded with the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia of when your father told you those exact words.

“Is that what your Goddess tells you, Heathen?”

Even the cadence of Leofric’s voice is enough to get you to twist your lip as you turn your gaze to him, but he remains stoic, a quiet sort of anger bubbling behind his eyes. You could swear a small smile tugs at his lips, as if he truly believes a simple word is enough to silence you.

The loud interruption of Narses’ fists colliding with the table stops his mocking, and the man’s eyes shift to his Byzantine ally within a moment.

“Do not call her that.”

“It is not an insu-…” You start, but your friend turns to you once again, begging you in silence to keep quiet. Biting down a sigh, you lean back in your chair and return your eyes to the map.

A long way from home, setting tents alongside Christians, and shutting your mouth because a man told you to. For all the visions and counsel the Gods have sent you through the years, a word of what was to become of your integrity would have been appreciated.

The sound of the curtains of the tent flapping open and closed makes you lift your gaze from the map, and you see Stithulf’s retrieving back.

Narses sighs, not looking at you when he concedes, both to inform you and the rest of the Saxons and Arab mercenaries in the room,

“We will hold.”

A cold hand grips your heart and the names of the Goddesses you seek for guidance and comfort are at the tip of your tongue, shaped by your lips but never spoken.

The Christians leave you two alone, and you walk to the soldier hunched over the war table. Your native Greek feels like a soft song evoking nostalgia as it dances past your lips:

“You cannot…”

“Please, my love.”

Anger bubbles within you, and you stand up straighter as you meet his eyes, “Narses, the Varangians will overpower us, you know we lost too many already, the support from Ivar the Boneless’ incoming army will crush us, you know h-…”

“This is a matter of war, love, let me handle it.” Narses interrupts, to which you frown.

“I know of war Narses! And I know this is a foolish move!”

“Do you know how to lift a sword?” He retorts, a challenge in his voice that does not go unnoticed.

“I…” You clench your teeth, looking up at him with narrowed eyes. “I do not need to fight to…”

He laughs bitterly, interrupting you, “Are you hearing your own words?”

“Are you hearing yours? The Varangian King has a crown made of bones and blood, Narses, don’t be foolish. Athena rejoices when he wages war, his army carries her favor.” You spit out your words, trying to make him understand. Narses remains impassive, though, eyes on the map and jaw clenched tight.

“You cannot argue of battle if you have never-…”

You interrupt him with a scoff, pointing an accusing finger at him even when he doesn’t meet your eyes, “I do not need to know how to kill to know the Varangians will swallow you whole. And you’ll drag our people with you.”

At your last words, his head snaps up, eyes facing yours with ferocity and more than old anger, “What choice do I have, huh? We will freeze or starve come winter, we need to move for Eleusis soon!”

“Our people…” You start, but he interrupts you again.

“Our people chose to follow me, and they will.”

“They followed me, they believe in me,” You correct without hesitation, teeth bared, “You followed me, Narses, and I let you, because you promised me an army.”

For a second he hesitates, takes you in with what seem to be new eyes. He seems to have forgotten there’s more than a meek priestess to the woman he followed from Attica. He seems to forget the bloodied hands and hungry smile that greeted him when you gave him the choice to be at your side.

“And I followed you because I love you, because I believe in you!” He exclaims, making shame and regret churn at your insides. You deviate your eyes from his, gritting your teeth.

“I begged you not to force our people to fight against these Norsemen, and you didn’t listen,” You grit out after a few breaths, anger returning to your voice, “Where was your love, your trust, when you chose to ally with these…Christians?”

He takes one of your hands in his, and the touch feels cold.

“You must trust me with this,” He intreats, warm eyes looking for something in your own you don’t think he can find. “Can you trust me?” A small pause, and you taste your own regrets in your mouth, “Love me?”

You press your lips into a line, and because you cannot say anything else, because the lie has gone on for too long and you might as well offer a truth before you entreat your soul to Hades, you whisper,

“Once, I could have.”

But he shakes his head, fervent and certain as he finds your eyes again,

“I promised you Attica, and it will be yours.”

But his words are empty. You do not care for that kingdom if the people that you love are not alive and prospering in it.

“Pray to the Gods you are killed by the Varangians, old friend. I will sacrifice you to Hades myself if you dare return alive from the place you are condemning my people to die on.” You sentence, unable to keep from showing the curl of disgust in your lip, the ancient pain in your eyes.

Narses walks closer to you, eyes searching yours and hands on your shoulders. You clench your jaw. He is gentle, he always is. Gentle, but so were the men that held you as their brothers in arms dragged your mother out of that temple.

You take a step back, but Narses speaks still, ignoring your discomfort,

“These Christians care not for their God, they just want Ivar the Boneless and his brothers. We give them to Stithulf, and they will march for Eleusis with us.”

You shake your head as you watch him believe his own lies.

“Even if we succeed, you are exchanging one master for another, Narses.” The words are your farewell as you turn your back to him and walk towards the entrance of the tent.

____

You walk into your tent and are greeted with a language these Saxons want to have you killed for speaking. The tongue of savages, of barbarians, of Vikings.

“Did they threaten to burn you yet?” Sieghild asks, and you can hear the smile in her voice even if her back is turned to you as she tends to the fire.

“Narses and Stithulf command us to remain,” You confess instead, voice breaking, “Kattegat’s army will be here in a day’s time to aid Dublin’s, but we will not retreat.”

The gasp she lets out forces you to shut your eyes tight in hope of keeping the tears at bay.

You both remain silent for a few instants, and you let yourself fall to the log she brought as a seat. Taking a seat next to you, she places a motherly hand on your knee, squeezing lightly until you look back up at her.

Blueish ink traces ancient marks on the skin of her face, and she moves a lock of your hair away from your face, the rattling sounds of her bracelets and trinkets reaching your ears and filling you with a sense of nostalgia you have difficulty explaining.

“If we must, we will die. Resisting, like your mother and I taught you.”

“This is not the war I will die fighting on!” You yell back, closing your hands into fists as they start shaking. “I will not see my people die fighting a cause not their own, Sieghild. I can’t.”

She takes your head in her hands gently, and, pressing cold lips to your forehead, she gives you the comfort only a mother can.

“Even if we die tomorrow, the Gods are with us. They have been close to you since your birth. You will understand soon.”

“I will certainly see Hades soon.” You smile bitterly, but Sieghild doesn’t falter.

“Then challenge his throne.” She states, and the feral, hungry, look in her eyes makes you think she is not speaking of your God.

You do not even believe in the same Gods, and yet Sieghild remains at your side, you at hers, since she found a crying child clutching a wooden carving of Persephone.

“They want me to give them up, but I won’t.” You argue stubbornly, as the red-haired woman cleans your face with a warm wet cloth. She smiles.

“Arguing about Gods is a matter for adults, little one,” She silences your next argument with a single finger, inked and painted like her face and arms. “They cannot make you believe in their God.”

“But…Mother’s altar, th-they…”

“Those are merely worldly things. The Christians fight with fire what Logi and Glöð themselves have created.”

“Who?”

She chuckles, fingers going through your hair and places a finger on your chest.

“Your faith, your legacy, remain here.”

And at dawn, when the men sound the horns and ready for a battle they must know will be lost, you whisper a prayer to Athena and Enyo, your heart griped tight by the cruel mistresses of Fate.

Even all the tales travelers and mercenaries told you about the army of Kattegat, the sheer strength, the flawless tactics, the barbarian-like warriors; none of that prepared you for the display of forces, however small considering his actual army, Ivar the Boneless has displayed before you.

You catch a glimpse of Narses and Stithulf approaching the King, you hear faintly of the Viking’s taunts.

“Narses is a fool.” You bite out, anger poisoning your voice even as tears clogging your throat make the words wobble.

“A Byzantine Strategus doesn’t fall without a fight, girl. Do not grant my countrymen their victory just yet.”

Even if you hide it as you lower your face, a surge of pride for the foolish warrior that followed you to the ends of the world makes a small smile blossom in your face.

“Do I hear you admitting us soft citizens stand a chance against your brutes, mother?” You mock with a smile, even as you discuss the imminent danger that the Norse men represent to you and your people. Maybe it’s because of the way Sieghild, with all her harshness and tough lessons, comforts you even facing death itself. Maybe it’s the Gods that have guided you your whole life embracing you as you near your descent to Hades.

She laughs, raspy and warm, as always. “I’m saying your boy may give the sons of Ragnar an entertainment.”

A crow flies overhead, cawing loudly and taking your gaze away from the soldiers ahead and into the sky. Something within you, something primal and asleep seems to follow its path in the skies with more than just your eyes.

“Odin is watching. History will be made today.” Sieghild whispers behind you, but you cannot take your gaze away from the black feathers as you answer.

“Apollo sends us an omen. The Gods do not favor us.”

She laughs quietly, shaking her head as she rests a heavy hand on your shoulder

“Your Goddess surely revels in this, dear. The spilled blood of those who will be to arrive at her kingdom waters her flowers, after all."

Flashes of a life before chaos blossom behind your closed eyes, images of a life under the spring sun, of fertility festivals and your mother’s warm laughter as she honors the Daughter of Nature.

And for a second, with the warmth of nostalgia encompassing you, you want to argue that Persephone looks after life; but when your eyes open and all you see is war and cold, you realize maybe she wasn’t the one captured.

Maybe she was not a stolen maiden, but a bloodthirsty usurper.

“May she rejoice, then, and be merciful when we reach her Kingdom.” You whisper.

The war cries reach your ears before you can even see the warriors attack, but soon chaos follows the chariot, that marches not with the set pace of Apollo’s, but free and leaving chaos and death at its wake.

With a heavy weight on your stomach, you hold your place as the battle begins, the injured and dying falling back to the area you look after with Greek soldiers at your back, granting a safe haven for the fallen, either to give them another chance to fight or a merciful end.

_____

It’s been days and the Saxons still push for victory, despite the losses. And, despite their losses and bloodshed, the Vikings push ruthlessly for death.

The camp of healers you have set by the entrance of the woods is so filled with the stench of blood and death that you fear you will never be able to smell a flower again. The warriors come and go, the drachmas in their eyes or in their hands. Your heart dies a little with every familiar face you send off to Hades.

You are working on pressing down with the poultice of herbs to stop a soldier from bleeding from the wound on his back when you hear, past the yells and death and fighting, your name.

You would know that voice anywhere, and you leave the safety of the healing camp to follow the hoarse call.

Narses’ figure stumbles and crawls as he tries reaching you, and, not caring for battle, you run the space separating you. Your knees dig painfully into the earth as you kneel at his side, but the pain in your heart drowns it all.

“No, no, no,” You sob, shaking fingers tracing his bloodied cheeks as he gasps in pain in your arms. His eyes are focused on you, and you cannot deny him the answer of yours, even if battle still goes on around you. With another broken gasp, you whisper, “You fool, you fool.”

Galla calls your name from somewhere at your side, and you turn blind attention to her, murmuring to have people take him to the healers’ tent. She agrees, and you start to pull away from your childhood friend.

Narses opens his mouth to speak, but only blood pours out. You silence him with trembling fingers against his lips, granting the kiss you cannot. Your heart begs you to do something, anything, to keep him alive, to take away his pain, to…to…

But all you do is remain kneeling on the ground, and you cannot take your eyes off his shield. Splattered with blood and mud, left behind a few feet away from you, on the cold and unrelenting earth.

Your mother’s last words to your father, you remember them as if it were yesterday, as if you could still see the warmth in her gaze, the hardened adoration in his. Her delicate hands offering him the shield with Sparta’s symbol on it as he prepared to storm Macedonia, her words a murmur that meant come back to us, my love even when her sentence was other.

Return home with it, or on it.

With it, or on it. With it, or on it. With it, or on it.

But Narses never returned home, none of you ever did. He never returned home, he didn’t die for your home, he died for…for…

You hear hurried footsteps coming towards you, the feeling of having Varangian eyes on you makes you turn just in time to see the warrior approaching. You grab Narses’ shield from the ground, moving as fast as you can to guard your back and block the Viking’s strike with the metal shield.

It is sheer anger and grief, nothing more than the desire to hurt back, that pushes you to take an arrow from the quiver at your back and drive it through the warrior’s knee with your bloodied hand.

He falters, stumbling away from you, but you don’t let go, holding on tightly to the shaft of the arrow and inflicting as much pain as you can. When he finally hits the ground with his back, you crawl over him, sitting on his stomach and bashing his face with the shield.

With your weight upon him, his axe cannot find a home in your skin and instead meets the shield. Over and over, metal meets metal. With a growl, the Viking lets go of it and grabs your hair, pulling roughly and forcing your blows in his face to stop.

You let go of the shield, and your eyes focus on the skies above for a moment before you find the strength to fight.

A yell leaves your lips, and your hungry teeth find the tender skin at the inside of his arm, forcing him to let go of your hair. Blood fills your mouth and almost makes you gag. You spit the flesh from your mouth and with a snarl you drive another arrow through his eye.

He screams as your whole weight leans on the arrow, making sure the projectile you use as a spear kills fast. Your hands keep slipping from the shaft as the blood you have tried to keep from spilling and the blood you have spilled wets your hands.

When he finally stops moving, you know you should feel nothing but emptiness and dread.

Looking with frantic eyes for Narses and Galla, you find him being carried by two of his soldiers back to the tent. You should follow, but you cannot bring yourself to do so.

You look down at your dress. Red, the color of a bride’s veil, stained with the blood of the man you just killed. Your ears ring, your eyes cloud with tears as you realize what you have done, and you scurry away from the corpse as if your breath cannot get into your chest because of your proximity to him…to it.

You know what you should feel, you know what a Priestess, a woman, ought to feel at the sight of death, you know. But dread and horror are not the only things you feel. A part of you is satiated, like a snake curling satisfied and vindicated after injecting its poison; you taste the blood and feel alive.

When you lift your gaze to the battle again, you catch the eyes of the Varangian King. You know who he is, you have heard the tales and even without the chariot he sits on you would still recognize the eyes of the man that rules over Kattegat.

Ivar the Boneless.

He looks at you for a few moments, and you fear he is to call for his men or kill you himself, but he doesn’t. A slow, cruel, ruthless smile starts curving at his bloodthirsty lips, and when he regards you, you feel he can see through your eyes and into whatever it is that made you kill that man.

He lifts his arm not on the reins, bloodied axe held in his hand and slowly, with the same terrifying grin still on his lips, the King points towards you and grants you a curt bow of his head. If it’s a recognition of your kill, a promise to kill you himself, or something else, you cannot know.

You scurry back to the woods, fearing an axe to your back that never comes.

____

Whatever advantage the Christians were so sure to have quickly dissolves like mist, and within days the Vikings push forward with no regard for the lines your people or your unwanted masters wanted to protect.

There’s three injured men under your care when you hear the warning that a group of enemies is coming your way. A quick glance towards Galla, the childhood friend that followed you from Eleusis into this cold hell lets her know what to do.

Her dark eyes fill with understanding before you can even utter a word.

“Lift them up, we are retreating.” She barks at the other soldiers, bow held tightly in her hand betraying her fear, her pain. The men accompanying her hesitate, looking at you for a second before turning to her.

“I may not be able to fight like a Strategus, but I can distract them enough for you to run.”

“Our people…” One of them starts, but you interrupt with a shake of your head, reaching forward with a courage you do not believe to truly possess and take his sword from its holster.

“Our people live on in you,” You promise, and even as your voice wavers you still try not to show how fear grips at your throat or how unbalanced you are with the new weight in your hands. Galla’s eyes lock with yours, and you give her a nod, “Go.”

I pray you find Sieghild on your way out of this slaughter.

“You better make it out alive.” She threatens in good will, and you find yourself smiling. Just before she is to take off with the others, you call out.

“Galla,” You hesitate, feeling like asking to deploy this would be an acceptance of your death. Still, you take a deep breath and say, “Once the dust settles, send some of your people to Thebes, Constantinople and Sparta.”

“What for?” She asks, but in her tone you can hear she understands your words: she is to protect your people, she is to lead them. Because you will not be alive to do so.

“You’ll need spies. When the time comes, you’ll know what to do with them.” You sentence, and after a moment of hesitation you hear the girl’s footsteps fading behind you.

Galla’s hoarse yells in Greek to call your people to retreat become the rhythm at which you let loose arrows to find the Viking warriors. You tell yourself it’s just like hunting deer, you tell yourself it is not men and women you kill. Brothers, sisters, friends, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters.

You tell yourself it is just like hunting, but the tears clogging at your throat and making pain and rage accompany your moves as you let the arrows loose show you that you don’t believe your own lies.

It doesn’t matter how fast you move, how efficient your shots are, there will always be more of them. And you know this, and fear has a cold grip on your heart, even as you continue trying to take out any straggler that chases after the retreating Greeks.

So, the bodies dropping and the injured yells bring the attention to you, and you buy Galla and the others as much time as you have arrows and legs to run on.

Running helps when the Vikings can be distracted by something else, but after you took down some of his countrymen, this warrior seems to only have eyes for you. You scramble to lift the sword you took from your warrior before they took off, and, cornered as you are, you are forced to face the offending Viking.

The Viking strikes first, but you block his attack with the sword. The blunt force of his swing makes it so that the axe stops just shy of the intended blow to your head, opening a deep cut on your forehead as it is slowed by the sword.

Wincing past the pain you hold your ground, facing the hungry gaze of the warrior with your own, although you are forced to close one of your eyes as the blood from the cut in your forehead starts dripping down your face.

The man’s attack has failed, but he smirks, though, before wrenching the weapon from your hands with a twist of his axe.

You can do nothing but stumble back, you Goddess’ name on your lips as you face him with wide eyes.

He mutters something in his own language before discarding your sword and moving to strike again. This time you are defenseless, and can only step back and try and dodge his continuous blows with increasing panic.

Blood, probably his own and his enemy’s, stains his mouth, his face, his hands. He still smiles, and you wonder if bloodthirst becomes more literal than what Sieghild explained in her tales of her people.

His movements stop suddenly, though, and he falls limply to the ground, a small axe protruding from the back of his head.

“I told you you’d need to know how to fight, little one,” Sieghild boasts as she approaches you. The axe leaving the dead man’s skull makes a horrible sound, but she’s not bothered by it, choosing instead to say, “Even you Greeks must see the advantage of fighting like a Viking.”

An arrow in his knee, you feel the iron piercing the muscle, the bone, the tendons. The edge of the shield breaking the bones in his face, the sound it makes. Screams of pain, that you silence with another arrow in the eye.

The King’s hungry smile when he spared you.

You shake your head, returning your thoughts back to the moment, and regard the woman in front of you with a smile.

“Galla told me you chose to stay behind.” She states, and years knowing her let you know of the reprimand shining past the gruff tone. Her hand, bloodied as it is, reaches for the cut in your forehead, inspecting it with the eyes of someone that saw countless wounds and fought in countless wars.

“I wanted to distract the warriors from the path they took.” You offer in explanation.

“For someone so…small you sure take a lot of risks, my child.” She sighs. You’re about to answer when the thrumming of the ground underneath your feet stops you. Sieghild’s movements stop, your breath dies in your lungs.

Bees swarming. You remember an Arab merchant telling you about Varangian armies, and he spoke of chaos and deadliness and bloodthirst. And as you watch the Varangians flank the battlefield, archers at the ready, warriors beating their shields, while the King that crossed the sea to assist his brother commands them to hold with a single gesture; you cannot help but think why didn’t the merchant talk about the grace of it all, the beauty in the blood.

“That boy carries his father’s cleverness with him. And his mother’s favor.” Sieghild mutters in the strange calm that settles as Ivar the Boneless and his brothers taunt Stithulf, dare him to continue the fight and face certain death or retreat.

“You knew that before.”

“So did you. You tried to warn Narses against facing him, little one.” She says, and the name makes a pit of guilt and grief form in your heart.

“Maybe my warnings are the reason he is dead now.” You bite out, voice quivering and eyes burning.

The shieldmaiden turns to you, lips parted and eyes wide. You offer her a nod and a tight-lipped smile, a small sign that it is okay, that…that it is Fate.

You promised Narses you’d kill him yourself for sending your people to die, and grief and pain do not stray you from that resolve. He sentenced your people to die at the hands of these Varangians, it is only right he leads them to the Underworld.

It doesn’t help the pit of pain and absence and fear and cold that forms at your chest, but…but it makes it easier to burden.

Murmured words in Norse startle you out of your thoughts, and you find Sieghild’s eyes still on you, expression still stunned and in a mix of awe and terror.

“When the last of the chains of nostalgia fades away even as she clutches it in her arms.”

“What did you say, mother?” You ask, taking a small step closer and looking into her eyes searching for any answer.

But the shieldmaiden is quick to put on a smile on her face,

“You told me before you had no interest in what Lady Freyja has to tell me, little one.” She mocks, but there’s a shadow in her expression, a strange darkness looming behind her eyes.

A familiar one.

“You are the one that taught me-…”

“I taught you to be your own woman!” The Varangian roars, and for the first time you realize exactly the kind of fire the women from her homeland have, that made them capable and free. “I taught my daughter better than this!”

“What choice do I have? We need the support from Narses’ army, we need someone to lead the men into battle the way I know will grant us victory!”

Two long strides, and the tall and imposing shieldmaiden is standing before you, a mix of reluctant softness and angry stoicism in her inked face.

“You fight. You fight against the notions these men have about you, you fight against that boy that only listens to what you have to say when you promise him love in exchange,” Her green eyes burn into yours, “You fight, little one. That’s what I taught you to do, what you were born to do.”

“Narses is a good man, mother. I will not fight him.” You reply, as calmly as you can even as your chest caves under a strange pressure, as evenly as you can even if the words leaving your lips taste like lies.

“You wouldn’t give your love without a fight though, minn dóttir.” Her hand grasps at your chin, and there’s a strange storm in her gaze, “I won’t lose my daughter to that boy’s whims.”

“I am not lost to any man.”

Her lips curve into a smile, a little savage, a little Viking.

“I know. You are my daughter, after all.”

“He was a good man, mother.” You offer quietly, and even if the binds to Narses, the binds you set on yourself and your mother hated the most, are gone, there’s still the same dark desperation, that same stubbornness you saw in her eyes that day you told her about your choice to marry him.

“Not good enough,” Is all she replies, and her eyes focus somewhere past the two of you, on the center of the battlefield where everything seems to have stopped. Sieghild sighs, “And your Gods and mine know that, little one. Your Mistress may have touched your soul, but Freyja lays claim to your heart.”

With your eyes on the thick of battle, you watch Stithulf and his trusted men lay down their weapons, and slowly retreat. You have been defeated.

____

“I told you only death would follow,” You say, your back against the foot of a table as you sit on the cold ground, your bloodied hands in your lap, motionless. You allow yourself a small laugh, manic and broken as it is, “You fought for so long, sacrificed so much, and you couldn’t even make the Varangian King bleed.”

You followed the Saxons back to their decadent city, and now sit past their walls awaiting the death that will follow. The city may have held for long enough that the Saxons could secure an escape, back when your people were with them and they didn’t have more corpses than soldiers.

But now, now it is just a matter of time before the Varangians return to finish it all.

Stithulf turns to you, cold fury shining past his gaze, but you hold his stare. The man walks over to you, armor rustling and making a sound that rings in the ears that have heard nothing but war for so long now.

He bends down to be at your level, face close to yours and lips set on a snarl.

“You ordered your people to pull back.” He accuses, but you shrug in response.

The pretense of what a good little fucking woman you ought to be to make these fools content with their idea of supremacy is long gone from your mind. You will die without masks, and if it means earning a few deserved hits from these Saxons for not shutting your mouth, then so be it.

“It was never our war, Christian.”

“Where have they gone to!?” He asks, ignoring your words. His fascination with how the Greek forces work shines through his bloodthirst and anger as he regards you. You know the reason why he went to Narses for an allegiance in the first place is because of the tactics, the fighting style, of your people; and you know he longed to make them a part of his own army.

But you will leave your own under the boot of a Christian the day Persephone calls for your soul to become one of her Furies.

“You will never find them.” You promise through a tired and battle-worn smile, morbidly delighting yourself in the way he seems to grow more enraged.

“How are you so certain?”

“The Varangians, Vikings, will find us first. They will kill us all, and you know this.” You sentence, standing up. You cannot help it when your eyes fixate themselves on the drying blood staining your hands.

You wish you could say most of it was Christian, or even Varangian.

But no, the blood of Greeks stains your hands. The blood of thousands, even if only less than eight hundred died today.

“And why are you so certain?”

“If you had retreated before that King came from across the sea-…”

“Narses told us your mother is Viking, how are we certain you did not plan this, plan to betray us?” One of his trusted men speaks out, limping from his place by the war table. You watch the deep and bloodied gash in his thigh, wondering why that old man survives being incapacitated while in battle but Narses is to fall.

You shake your head mutely before offering him a hollow chuckle.

“Me betraying you would imply I ever faked loyalty for you, or pretended to care for your survival.”

“You live, witch. Any sane man would question why.”

“You think…what? That I have helped any of the sons of Ragnar defeat you?” You let out a small laugh. “No, I did not. I will not let you blame me for your own weakness.”

You move to leave the tent, but Stithulf’s hand wraps around your arm. His voice is low when he speaks.

“If you tell your soldiers to fight with us, I can-…”

“I am not Narses, you cannot fool me with empty promises,” You interrupt, wrenching your arm from his grasp. Less than two hundred Greek warriors still remain in this city, and the Saxon wants still for every last drop of their blood. “The Greeks that remain here will not die quietly, but do not fool yourself into thinking you can ever command them.”

He stalks even closer, looming over you with enraged factions, and you cannot help the pang of fear that the murderous intent in his eyes sends through you.

His sword leaving its holster startles the room of men into silence, and you feel their attention set on the two of you. The blade finds a home right under your chin, piercing mildly at the soft skin.

Your breath quickens in fear, and when you swallow past your dry throat you feel the tip of the sword inflicting sharp pain in your neck.

Stithulf smiles darkly, “I could kill you now and leave them leaderless, heathen.”

But you refuse to let him see the fear in your eyes, instead promising, “Make me a martyr and you will not survive the night, Christian. The Greeks will kill and die for me.”

Even as you leave the tent behind, you hear the heavy footsteps of the Saxon behind you. A call of your name, and you stop. Not your title -Anassa, Hiereiai-, not an insult -heathen, pagan-, not your lineage -Daughter of Athens, Daughter of Sparta-. Your name.

“If you wanted to kill me you would have done so in front of your men.” You state without turning around, and the Christian reaches your side with his sword holstered.

“I don’t want to kill you,” He insists, shaking his head, “But I should do it regardless. You are a smart woman, which makes you dangerous.”

Not even a muzzle would keep your next words from leaving your lips, “Dangerous? Is a man dangerous for being knowledgeable?”

“If he has nothing to lose, like you, yes.”

“What are you saying, Stithulf?”

The Saxon sighs, an act of regret and humanity you don’t believe for a moment.

“I’m saying you should know that you have forced my hand, Greek, that I had every intention to have you wage war alongside us, had you chosen to do so.

_____

Hi, I’m kinda amazed you got this far down lol, but thank you so much for reading! This is one of the first projects in a while that I am really loving to write, and I hope you like it!

Please let me know what you think, I am one needy fuck when it comes to feedback :)