#|| disturbances in the force || { promos }

[holllandtrash]

6 to 1 | lando norris (part 8)

pairing: lando norris x leclerc!reader part 8 in the 6 to 1 series (read part 1 here)

exhausting is the word of the day. your fears are replaced by anxiety and there's only person in the world who can seem to make those feelings dissipate. lando had previously made it clear that he has no intentions to go anywhere, but does that statement still stand?

word count: 6.8k tags/warnings: some angst, poorly translated french and italian spotify playlist for this fic here

You swung open the door to Lando’s flat in the heart of London and disarmed the security system. He hadn’t been here for a few days and honestly, you didn’t intend on coming back here either. The plan was to go straight to Monaco from Silverstone tomorrow morning, that was why you brought everything with you to the hotel.

Now you had nothing except the clothes on your back, your phone and whatever managed to fit in your purse, which wasn’t much. 

You had left straight from the race, before the race even started, calling up the same driver that Lando had booked for you this weekend and you asked him to take you here, to Lando’s. 

Arthur had been texting you updates throughout the race, but you eventually turned your phone on do not disturb. You didn't care about the outcome, you didn’t care that Charles was let down yet again by Ferrari’s stupid pit stop strategy, you didn’t care about any of it.

And the drive from Silverstone to London was long. By the time you arrived at the flat, you knew the race had to be over, or at least close to it. 

But you didn’t turn on the tv to catch the end of it. Instead you headed straight to the ensuite and stripped yourself of the clothes that were still partly damp and you stepped into the shower. 

You stayed in there until your skin started to prune. When you reached for the soap you remembered that nothing in here belonged to you, everything of yours was packed away and you had no choice but to grab Lando’s. 

The scent of his body wash shouldn’t have been as comforting as it was, but at this point you had gotten so used to it, used to him.

When you stepped out of the shower you had very limited options. Either sit in the towel until your clothes had finished their run through the washer and dryer, or roam through Lando’s closet to find something to put on. 

It was a no brainer. 

The Quadrant jumper fell to your thighs, he always wore his sweaters a few sizes too big, he said he liked the baggy look. As for bottoms, he didn’t have a huge selection so you opted for a pair of basketball shorts and tied the strings up as tight as they would go to keep them from falling.

You looked at yourself in the mirror and knew that Lando would have a heart attack if he saw you. He always wanted you to wear his merch, and not for a promo shoot, not for an ad, but because that was how you showed your support. 

When you picked up your phone you saw you had a few missed calls, all from Arthur. You knew he was concerned, you didn’t tell him, or anyone, where you were going. You just sent him a text asking him to bring your suitcases with him back to Monaco tomorrow. 

And then you turned your phone off and curled up on the couch. You grabbed the blanket that had been draped over the back of it and pulled it on top of you. There was no reason for you to be as tired as you were, but it was the anxiety that was eating you alive.

You didn’t know what to say to Charles when you saw him next. 

You had no idea if Lando was even going to be coming back here now that the race was over. And if he did, would he give you the time of day or would he just ask you to leave?

You were terrified to look up the outcome of today’s race, terrified of the possibility of everything you said to Charles potentially backfiring. 

You ran through every possible scenario in your head until your brain went into shut-down mode and practically forced you asleep before you could cause a stress induced heart attack. 

There was a good chance you would have slept through the night had you not heard the chime of the alarm system going off, indicating that the front door to the flat had been opened. You stirred awake, rubbing your eyes as you sat up, glancing at the clock under the TV that read 23:18 in bright red numbers.

You didn’t let yourself think about how late it was though. In fact, you felt a jolt of energy rush through you when you turned your head and met the tired eyes of Lando. 

He didn’t look confused to see you. But he also didn’t look happy. He looked about as exhausted as you felt. You wondered how his race went, if you had somehow managed to get into his head too and ultimately fucked up his performance like you might have with your brothers.

Lando dropped his bag down on the floor next to his feet but he stayed standing by the door. You turned on the couch, sitting up on your knees to look at him. If seeing you in his Quadrant hoodie gave him any sense of comfort, he didn’t show it. 

He dragged his hand through his curls, an obvious sign of distress. He probably didn’t know how to feel seeing you. You could understand the conflicting emotions.

He finally decided on something to say, something that didn’t give you any sort of hint as to how the rest of the conversation would go.

“I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this, but you know you don’t live here, right?” 

“I know.”

“Okay,” Lando nodded, glancing around his flat.

 It was in nearly pristine condition, you made sure to clean before you left on Saturday. The only thing that stood out was the empty vase sitting on top of the dining room table. There were no longer any daisies in there, but you couldn’t bring yourself to put the vase away. 

He looked at you again, his jaw tense as he swallowed, “So why are you here?”

The answer was simple, “I didn’t want to go anywhere else.”

You stood up from the couch and Lando let his eyes rake over your body. If this were any other day, Lando would be making some sort of smart-ass comment about you wearing his merch. He’d probably roll his eyes and make a big deal about you using his products, anything to tease you, to get even a sliver of a smile out of you. 

But he stayed by the door. Was that for his own reassurance? Maybe he felt better knowing he could open it up if this got too difficult and slide out in the late London air. Wandering the streets of the city in the middle of the night might have seemed like a safer option than wherever this conversation was going to lead. 

Lando had said everything he needed to say. He had made it clear that he wanted you, that the ball was quite literally in your court now. Whatever you said, however you chose to act around him, would set up the precedent for your relationship moving forward. 

So when you reached for his hand, Lando felt a weight lift off his shoulders. 

“I didn’t want to go anywhere else,” you repeated, ensuring that he was really hearing you. You could have gone anywhere, Charles told you to take the plane but you were pulled back to Lando’s flat in London. 

That car ride gave you the chance to think about what happened. You could understand now why you froze in front of him in his driver's room, why you couldn’t tell him you made up your mind. 

It was such a rash decision, everything that happened, happened in such a short period of time. Finding out that Charles knew about Pierre and you, dropping bombshell after bombshell on your brother, deciding to put yourself first, something you never did. This series of events was fueled by adrenaline and you were hoping Lando would match your energy after running through the paddock to him, but instead he forced you to slow down. 

He could see your enthusiasm, why else would you have shown up at McLaren? But he didn’t want to be a spur of the moment choice. He wanted you to choose him because you meant it with every bone in your body. Not just today but tomorrow and the next day and every day after that. 

Running through the rain to confess your feelings was a beautiful gesture, but what good was a gesture if you couldn’t follow through with its intent? If there was a risk you would take it all back once the dust had settled? Lando couldn't take that risk.

But you being here now, in his home, waiting for him to show up without even knowing if he would…this wasn’t a gesture. There was a deeper purpose. You wanted to show Lando that you weren't going anywhere. 

Adrenaline aside, you were here. 

Lando crashed his lips to yours, his fingers holding your jaw to keep your face tilted upwards. Your hand trailed upwards to tangle your fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck as you kissed him back. 

It was like nothing else mattered, just you and him. You could feel his smile grow against your lips. There was less urgency as you kissed compared to past times, just the desire to be present in this moment. His mouth moved against yours and you just knew this was the right choice. This was where you were supposed to be. With him.

You were breathless as Lando pulled away, leaning his forehead against yours. He took hold of one of the strings of your hoodie, his hoodie, and twirled it around his finger before using to pull you closer once again, attaching his lips to yours for another kiss, and then another and then another until you had to pull away because your cheeks were hurting so much from trying to contain your smile.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner,” you told him. As much as you wanted to escape from reality and be happy in this bubble you created, there were still a few things you needed to get off your chest. 

“I don’t even care,” Lando shook his head. “You’re here now, that’s all that matters.”

“No Lando, I really am sorry,” your expression fell as your eyes found his. “You’ve made your intentions clear this whole time and I just led you on like it was some stupid game and I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Well to be fair, it was a game at first,” Lando chuckled. “And I’m still determined to move up your driver ranking, I reckon it’ll be a bit easier now.”

Carlos’ face flashed through your mind and Lando must have noticed the way you momentarily tensed. Standing right in front of you, it was almost impossible for him to miss the way your eyes glossed over. 

“What?” He asked, trying to make a joke of it. “You don’t think you’ll ever like me more than Carlos?”

“No that’s not-” this was not something you thought through. “I need to talk to you about Carlos.”

Now Lando was nervous. You had never expressed any interest in chatting about Carlos before, in fact you shut down the topic of the Ferrari driver a number of times. 

“What about him?”

“Um…” a sharp inhale passed through your lips. “I just- well it’s just that-” this was like ripping off a bandage, you just had to say it and be done. “Okay I kind of maybe sort of might have-” oh you were stalling. You took a breath and forced yourself to finish. “...kissed…Carlos…”

This was certainly not what Lando was expecting to hear.

“You kind of-maybe-sort of-might have kissed Carlos?” Lando repeated you word for word. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means I definitely kissed Carlos,” you clarified. 

Lando rolled his eyes and he started to turn around but you grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him back. You weren’t going to let this turn into a fight, not when things just started to get good.

“It was to prove a point!” You explained.

“To prove a point?” Lando raised his voice slightly, not enough to alarm you but enough for you to know that you really had to be careful with your words. “What point, exactly? That half the drivers on the grid are in love with you? This is common knowledge, Y/N you didn’t need to kiss Carlos!”

You were physically taken aback by that statement, “Wait, what?” 

Lando paused, eyebrows pinched together, “That’s not- that’s not why you kissed him?”

“No but we’re going to circle back to that,” you told him, pushing his words to the back of your mind for now. “I needed to prove a point to Charles. He needed to understand that what I do, who I interact with, shouldn’t matter. He should be able to race without worrying about me or what I’m doing.”

“Or who you’re doing,” Lando muttered and because you stood only inches apart, your best move was to hit the side of his arm to get the message across. 

“I didn’t sleep with Carlos,” your tone demanded his attention and Lando’s eyes widened as he immediately regretted letting those words slip out. “But I told Charles I slept with Pierre. I told him I liked you and then I kissed Carlos as well because he needed to get it through his head that my life is my life and he shouldn’t have control over it just because he races with you guys.”

That was the short version of it all. You knew eventually you’d have to explain word for word what Charles said but you were hoping right now Lando would understand enough so you could move past it.

Lando needed a second to process everything. The silence between you wasn’t deafening but it wasn’t reassuring either. 

“You did and said all of that today?” He asked.

“Yeah, before I ran through the rain to talk to you.”

“Oh,” Lando nodded slowly. “Oh, so right before the race start announcement?”

“I mean, I guess so.”

Lando knew something you didn’t. That was the only reason he was asking these clarifying questions, trying to piece the timeline together.

“You didn’t watch the race, did you?” Lando then asked, but he already knew the answer. 

“No, why?”

“You didn’t see where Charles ended up?”

“No, why?” You repeated, louder this time. All you knew was he was given a poor strategy that didn’t work out in his favour. “What happened to him?”

“He-” Lando looked guilty, like he didn’t want to be the one to break the bad news to you, even if what happened had nothing to do with him. “He DNF’d, Y/N. On lap like 46 I think, pretty close to the end.”

Your heart sank in your chest. Of course part of you felt responsible without even knowing what the cause was. Even if it was a hydraulics issue, even if it was the furthest thing from driver error, part of you felt at fault for his retirement. 

What if everything you said and did really did get into Charles’ head? What if it messed him up for the race? Threw him off his game even the slightest bit?

“You’re spiralling.”

You didn’t even have to say anything for Lando to recognise what was currently going through your head. He grabbed your shoulders and dipped his head a few inches to be at your level. 

“He’s fine,” Lando said, rushing to get that out. “He’s not injured, nothing bad happened. It was a mix between poor strategy and driver error but it wasn’t your fault.”

“This is exactly what he warned me about. I got in his head, Lando.” You tensed, wanting Lando to drop his hands from you. Physical touch wasn’t something that helped you in times of distress. “Charles is going to blame me, he’s just going to use this against me- why the fuck did I say all of that to him right before a race?”

“Because it needed to be said,” Lando scoffed, finding the reasoning that you were unable to. “Granted, kissing Carlos maybe wasn’t-” you shot him an icy look and he instantly shut up. Lando changed the direction of the conversation. "Just sit down, okay? There's no sense in worrying about it tonight. The race is over and you're not even in the same city as him."

Lando nudged you towards the couch and he was smart to grab your phone from the coffee table before you could do anything rash like call Charles and apologise. Did you owe him an apology? 

It would be so easy for him to blame you. 

And part you felt like you needed to take that blame. 

Lando sat down next to you in the corner of the couch, pulling you into his side. His hand ran up and down along your arm as your head rested against his chest. It was comforting, feeling each breath he took beneath your cheek, hearing his steady heartbeat in comparison to yours nearly beating out of your own chest.

“Do you think I’m a bad sister?” You asked, looking up at him through your eyelashes. 

“God no,” Lando’s lack of hesitation should have helped put you at ease, but it didn’t. “If Charles blames you for what happened, he’s the shitty sibling.”

You weren’t even sure if he had tried to get ahold of you at all. After the few texts you exchanged with Arthur, you stopped looking at your phone. And now Lando had it and he probably had no intentions of giving it back before the night was over. 

He knew you would want to call Charles. He knew Charles would inevitably guilt you into taking responsibility for what happened. He knew a face to face conversation would be smarter than trying to work out your problems over a phone call.

So Lando hatched up a plan to bring you back to Monaco. Neither of you could stay in his flat in London forever and with two weeks until the next race, the smartest thing to do was return to Monte Carlo. There, you could talk to Charles. You both could. Lando could explain that he had nothing but good intentions with his sister and you could draw the line with Charles so that the conversations you had over the last few days wouldn’t have to happen again.

It didn’t take long for you to fall asleep curled up next to Lando. With his fingers tracing shapes aimlessly over the sleeve of the jumper and with how exhausting the last 24 hours have been, you finally felt a sense of security with him, one you hadn’t felt before. 

Lando waited until he knew you were fast asleep, getting flashbacks to that night he picked you up from the wedding, before he reached for his phone that was tucked away in his pocket. He was so careful not to disturb you, even typing with just his left thumb to keep his right arm tightly bwrapped around you. 

He sent a quick message to his assistant, asking him to book a flight for the two of you for tomorrow. When he got the confirmation that everything would be taken care of, Lando dropped his phone onto the side table and carefully stood up from the couch, using his other arm to scoop you up and carry you to the bedroom down the hall. 

You stirred in his arms, having woken up slightly but you kept your eyes closed until you felt yourself being placed on the mattress. Your head hit the pillow and Lando carefully brushed a few strands of hair out of your face. 

Now it was your turn to be brought back to that first night.

“Can you stay?”

You were sober this time, but Lando still had to take a second to process whether or not he heard you correctly as he stood next to the bed. When your eyes fluttered open to look up at his looming figure, you lazily reached for his hand.

And Lando couldn’t think of a good enough reason to say no. 

Why would he spend the night on the couch again? There was no requirement anymore. There wasn’t that prominent need to be careful around you anymore, not when you both made your feelings perfectly clear. 

So he nodded. A tired smile curled up on your lips before Lando gave your hand an affirming squeeze. He excused himself to get ready for bed but when he walked out of the bathroom a few minutes later, you were thankful that sleep hadn’t completely taken over you again.

You were awake enough to watch as he pulled his t-shirt off and tossed it in the corner of the room. His sweatpants hung low on his hips and the second he crawled into bed next to you, you turned on your side to face him. 

The lights may have been off but you could see everything you needed to. And even if you couldn’t, you could feel. You placed the palm of your hand against his hard chest before sliding it up to rest around his shoulder. Lando gripped the underside of your thigh and pulled it on top of his legs. Both of you were already well aware of how perfectly your bodies moulded together.

“What if I get used to sleeping like this?” Your quiet voice filled the bedroom. The question held as much fear as it did hope. Lando knew you had never been in a relationship before, he knew that something as simple as sharing a bed was unchartered waters.

His fingers spread out over your leg and his deep chuckle sent a shiver down your back. He turned his head on the pillow to look at you.

“Then it’s a good thing we both live in Monaco.”

He had a point. It would be easy enough to see each other between races if you were both back home. It was annoying, really, that you were already thinking about that. Thinking about how long it would take to make yourself at home at his place and vice versa. About whose flat you would spend more time at, probably his. All of these different scenarios filled your head.

You recognized the way the corner of his lips curled upwards and you didn’t need to be a mind reader to know he was thinking of the exact same things. And maybe you were both getting ahead of yourselves, this was still so new, but you were ready to dive in head first. You didn’t want to let your fears stop you from being happy.

You leaned forward and pressed your lips to his. He kissed you back but there was some hesitancy on his part and you noticed it.

“What?” You asked, propping yourself up a bit. 

Lando opened his mouth, only to promptly close it. And you weren’t someone who let things go easily so you nudged his shoulder and repeated yourself.

“What, Lando?”

Whatever he wanted to say, seemed to cause him physical discomfort but he tried to play it off like it didn’t.

“It’s nothing, really,” Lando told you. You counted in your head, waiting to see how long it would take until he followed that sentence with a ‘but’.

Three. Three seconds.

“But I just-” Lando sucked in a quick breath. “If I’m being honest, I don’t like that you kissed Carlos.”

If there was any doubt before, you were certainly awake now.

“That’s what you’re thinking about?”

“Well you can’t blame me for thinking about it!” He exclaimed with a chuckle. It was clear he wasn’t angry about it, but it was something that wasn’t sitting right with him. “He’s one of my best mates and you always said there was nothing going on between you two.”

“There isn’t,” you rolled your eyes. “There never has been.”

“But you kissed him.”

“To prove a point to Charles,” that ultimately backfired, but still. “Carlos just so happened to be there, if it was any other driver I would have done the exact same thing.”

“I don’t think that makes me feel any better.”

“Well what do you want me to say, Lando?” You asked, trying your hardest to not sound annoyed at this topic. You genuinely didn’t want this to turn into an argument, but you could understand where he was coming from. You just weren’t sure if he understood where you were coming from.

And then a cocky little smirk appeared on his face, “Well, you could say I’m above him on your driver ranking.”

That’s what he was waiting for. An opportunity to slide that in.

He wasn’t actually concerned like he led you to believe. You pushed on his chest and laid back down as he laughed. Lando tried to hold you against him but you turned on your other side, facing away from him.

“You’re so fucking annoying.”

“I know,” he continued to laugh, still wrapping his arms around you and shuffling closer so your back was pressed against his chest. You purposely tensed in his arms, wanting him to know you were unimpressed with him.

But then Lando kissed the side of your neck softly and it was almost embarrassing how you instantly found yourself relaxing, and leaning into his touch. 

You didn’t realise until right now, though, how thankful you were that Lando’s playful interactions weren’t going anywhere. Your entire friendship was built on a foundation of jokes and eye rolls and purposely trying to get on each other's nerves, in the most respectful way possible. 

And that wasn’t going to change. You might respond to each other’s teases a little differently now, but ultimately, the thing that brought you two together seemed to be the glue that was going to keep you together. 

“You still need to work for it, Norris,” you told him, referring to moving up in the placement of favourite drivers. If you were being honest with yourself, he probably didn’t have to work that hard, but now that the dynamic between you two had shifted, you were dying to know what he would come up with this time.

——————

Lando sprung the flight on you as soon as you woke up and it seemed to be not up for discussion. You couldn’t hide away in his London flat forever. Plus, all of your belongings were with Arthur, so you had no choice but to go home.

Lando and you agreed to keep some distance at the airport. He was easily recognizable, especially in London, but you weren’t and you wanted it to stay that way for at least a little while. The last thing you needed were photos of the two of you to surface before you had a chance to talk to your brother.

Really you just had to keep your hands to yourself until you were comfortably seated on the private plane his assistant had booked for today. It blew your mind how easy it was for him to request and receive a jet and a pilot, but you weren’t about to complain. Not having to worry about prying eyes or cell phones throughout the duration of the fight was like a breath of fresh air. 

Once the plane had taken off, he asked if you wanted to join the mile high club. Granted, he wasn’t being serious but you promptly switched seats to sit across the aisle from him instead and put your airpods in.

“Is that a no?” Lando asked before you could turn your music on.

“It’s a no right now,” you answered. His cheeks turned a bright shade of red and you rolled your eyes at his immature tendencies. 

You kept your head down and started to read on your phone, but out of the corner of your eye you could see him shifting uncomfortably in his seat. When you did finally lift your head, you watched as Lando peeled off his jumper and placed it in his lap. Automatically your eyes dropped and your eyebrows raised when you realised what he was trying to hide.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” You asked, stifling your laughter. “You’re hard?”

“I’m only human,” Lando shrugged innocently. 

With your elbow on the armrest, you dropped your chin to your hand and sighed, “Lando, I’m not having sex with you for the first time on a plane.”

“But the way you say that makes it seem like it could happen,” he pointed out, clearly playing this up even though it was only making his situation worse. 

“You have the mind of an eighteen year-old frat boy, do you realise that?”

“Or maybe you’re just really hot and also, I’m really into you.”

You glanced down at your apparel. You were still choosing to wear Lando’s clothes because it was a lot easier to throw that on this morning than have to wait for a load of laundry to finish so you could wear the clothes you wore yesterday. Lando didn’t seem to mind either. You walked out of his closet wearing one of his shirts and he responded by kissing you, muttering something about he much preferred this than a DR3 item.

But you didn’t feel hot. His clothes were baggy on you, you hadn’t showered yet today and any makeup that you had on was the result of not washing your face properly before you passed out, which you’d probably be paying the price for tomorrow. 

Lando didn’t see what you saw though. He looked at you from across the aisle and thought, no, knew, you were the most beautiful girl he would ever lay eyes on. To him, he didn’t care what you were wearing.

And if anything, you wearing his clothes made you ten times hotter.

However you didn’t want to feed into his thoughts. You had enough will power for the two of you.

“Keep it in your pants, Norris.”

He muttered something under his breath that you didn’t quite catch but you could assume it was another comment about joining the mile high club. 

He got up after a while to use the bathroom, or at least that’s what you thought when out of the corner of your eye you saw him toss his hoodie aside and stand up from the chair. 

You didn’t expect him to walk directly to where you sat and take your face in his hands before leaning down and kissing you. You sat up straighter, completely abandoning your phone as you craned your neck upwards, wanting to kiss him back with as much passion as he was giving you.  

Lando’s hand trailed down the slightest bit, grabbing hold of your jaw before he pulled away.

“What was that for?” You asked, unable to stop yourself from smiling. You could get used to this, Lando kissing you whenever he felt like it. 

“No reason,” he shrugged, which was probably the best reason. 

Your smile only grew as he kissed the top of your head, letting his hand run down your arm as he walked off, making sure to give your fingers a squeeze before he made his way towards the back of the airplane.

It was safe to say you were smitten, and horribly so.

When Lando returned from the bathroom he sat down next to you, and you were fine with that on the condition he stop it with the mile high club jokes. Not because they were annoying, but because if he didn’t stop giving you that devious look and charming grin, you could be coerced into meeting him in the bathroom.

And you really didn’t want that. 

Well, you did. But not for your first time. And Lando knew this. 

He could wait, you both could. In the meantime, though, Lando let his hands wander when you draped your legs over his lap. What started as a very innocent hand placement on your thigh slowly turned into his fingers creeping upwards, tickling your bare skin and causing very visible goosebumps.

His thumb dipped below the very loose material of the shorts you wore and your eyes shot up, warning him with a glare. The last thing you needed was for him to tease you while you were 35,000 feet up in the air.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His smirk said otherwise.

He kept his hand on you for the duration of the flight. You held your breath any time his fingers trailed up your leg. Lando’s touch was soft and you just knew it was a major contrast to what he wished he could have been doing. You saw the veins along the back of his hand, you knew just how much strength he had in his wrists alone. 

But he respected what you asked. He didn’t cross any sort of line, even if he was dying to.

So you just suffered, basically, for the entire flight. Because Lando wasn’t going to take his hands off of you but he also wasn’t going to do anything that would ease your suffering. 

It wasn’t until the plane landed in Nice did he lift his arms up to stretch, an all too innocent smile perched upon his face. You rolled your eyes but before you could get up, Lando pulled your face to his to kiss you once more in the privacy of the jet. 

There was intent behind it. His lips moved against yours in a way that told you these last few hours of subtly teasing you on the plane wasn’t for nothing. 

You were still smitten, but now you knew he was most certainly going to be the death of you.

He had the decency to tone it down once you both stepped off the plane and headed towards the car that was waiting on the tarmac. Lando gave the driver your address, and you raised your eyebrows at him.

“You have it memorised?”

He chuckled, “Is that- is that a bad thing?”

“You’ve been to my place once.”

Lando simply shrugged his shoulders and opened the door for you. He waited until you had your seatbelt on to shut it and climb in through the other side. 

“You happy to be home?” He asked you quietly, trying to gauge how you would answer. You had been in the UK for weeks now that it was genuinely starting to feel like home. 

“I’m happy that we’re both here,” you answered because it was as honest as you could be. Was Monaco really where you wanted to be right now? No. Ideally you would still be in London with Lando. But you couldn’t run from Charles forever. You had to talk to him eventually.

Lando placed his hand on your leg when you saw you pulling out your phone to call Charles after putting it off for what seemed like forever when in reality it had been less than 24 hours since you last spoke. 

The dial tone seemed to go on for an eternity. And just when you thought he was going to pick up, you reached his voicemail instead. You looked at Lando, who calmly reminded you that he might be busy and that you have another brother who was also still in Silverstone. 

Arthur picked up instantly. 

“Have you heard from Charles?” You asked, not even bothering with a ‘hey, how’s it going’. You wanted to get right to the point.

“Uh, yeah I think he’s on a plane to Italy. Pretty sure he’s spending a few days in Maranello.” Arthur recalled. “He didn’t tell you?”

You dropped your forehead to your hand and sighed, “No, obviously not or I wouldn’t be calling you. When will he be home?”

“I think Saturday?” Arthur genuinely had no idea and as frustrated as you were that you couldn’t talk to Charles face to face, you couldn’t take it out on Arthur. “Are you in monaco?”

“Sto tornando a casa,” I’m on my way home. You glanced at Lando who now had his eyebrows pinched together as you switched from English to Italian. You put your hand on top of his and gave it a squeeze, an assurance that you were not talking about him in a different language. 

Arthur and you chatted for a bit more, he told you he’d be home by tomorrow night and that he’d bring your luggage with him. He then mentioned something about getting together with your mother Saturday evening, something that you really couldn’t say no to. It was rare that all four of her kids were all in Monaco at the same time, so when you were, you had to take advantage of it.

“Je serai là pour le dîner,” I’ll be there for dinner. You looked at Lando again, who had stayed quiet for the entirety of your conversation with Arthur. He couldn’t keep up with you switching from English to Italian to French anyway.

He wasn’t looking at you, though. With his free hand, he was scrolling through some pictures on his phone. More specifically, the ones from the Quadrant shoot last week. He kept swiping back and forth between two of them. 

One, where he was so obviously looking at you instead of the camera as you stood in front of the car, you were turned away from the camera to showcase the design on the back of the shirt. He was supposed to be looking at the camera, but he wasn’t. You remembered telling him to stop looking at you because the longer he looked at you the more your cheeks hurt from trying to contain your smile.

And then the other photo was one you weren’t even aware had been taken, you hadn’t seen it yet. Lando was facing the camera and you were slightly behind him, watching as he did his best model impersonation. 

But you were really looking at him. In a way where you would have been embarrassed if he had caught you staring for too long. If he had turned around and noticed you, you would have averted your gaze immediately, but you couldn’t help it. You were enamoured with him. You didn’t want to pull your eyes off of him. Even if you didn’t want to admit it then, you knew now that you were really starting to fall for him. 

Who plans a surprise photoshoot for you to model his own brand? 

Lando does, apparently. 

He was the same guy who made sure there were fresh daisies in a vase when you walked into his flat. The same guy who picked you up without question when you were too intoxicated to even stand up straight. The same guy who had been looking at you the way you looked at him this whole time and you had no idea. 

Lando opened up the Instagram app on his phone right as Arthur repeated your name a few times, wondering if he had lost you in the last few seconds. 

“Sorry, sorry,” you said. 

He started talking about dinner again, and you cut him off before you could change your mind. 

“Puis-je apporter un invité?” Can I bring a guest?

Arthur paused, “You mean Lando?”

He took your silence as a yes.

“Do you really think that’s smart?” Arthur asked. “Don’t you want to talk to Charles first before bringing Lando to dinner? Are you two even dating? What if-”

“You’re asking too many questions,” you interjected. Beside you, Lando chuckled. He turned his hand over to interlock your fingers together. He had no idea what Arthur was saying, but it didn’t matter, Lando would always be on your side.

“If you want to bring him, don’t give Charles a heads up. Otherwise he might not show.”

You snickered, “You think I should blindside him?”

“I didn’t use that word.”

“You basically did.”

Arthur sighed into the receiver, not wanting to be more involved in whatever decision you were going to make, “I’ll let you know when I’m home. Talk to you later, yeah?”

“Yeah, have a safe flight,” you said and then hung up. As soon as you did, you rested your head on Lando’s shoulder. Without skipping a beat, he turned and kissed the top of your head. 

You looked at your hands, still connected on your lap. 

Your stomach twisted just thinking about what might happen if you really did invite Lando to the dinner. You never came out and explicitly said you would, hence why you asked Arthur in French as opposed to a language Lando would understand. 

That way you could still change your mind. 

Not because you didn’t want to bring Lando around your family, your family already knew who he was, but because you needed to really think about if his presence would be helpful or if it would cause a deeper divide between you and Charles. 

landonorris

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landonorris part time gamer part time model

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ynleclerc don't you also drive fast cars?

landonorris only sometimes, not enough to put it on the resume

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siinz55 still waiting to hear what charles thinks about this

part 9 here | masterlist here

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[yiga-hellhole]

TFTK CHAPTER 20: ENDURING RESOLVE

Ganondorf has gone into hiding. His two most loyal servants guard the desert in his stead. Hyrule approaches, knowing not what kind of death awaits them, deep beneath the sands. Zant tests out his blade.

FINALLY DONE! sooo sorry my beloved tumblr readerbase. this update has been available on ao3 for a little over a week now, but i had to steam through a pretty bad art block to get this promo image done exactly how i liked it. so without further ado, here it is!! i have a real doozy for you all today! again, thanks so much to @bulgariansumo and @orfeoarte for betareading the chapter! there's a couple secret languages in this chapter again... thanks very much to @unironicallycringe for helping me with figuring out Akkadian. as for the translations, well... you go puzzle it out!

content warnings this chapter for: graphic violence, animal death, medical gore, domestic violence/physical abuse (for lack of a better term)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15

ao3 mirror

They rose before the sun had even fully set, thieving their love-nest of its purpose hours too early. Any preparations they could do, save donning arms and armor, would have been too late in this final moment before battle, but they had to be ready to defend themselves at any moment. The air was tense, dead-silent so as not to alert any potential enemy scouts. But in that deep silence, every nervous sigh, every jingle of chainmail, grated the ears from miles away. 

So sat Zant in his chambers, eyelids still thick and heavy with sleep, but nonetheless perched at the edge of his bed, gazing out into the night sky. Ghirahim lied where he’d left him, sunken into his pillows and layers of sheets. In this companionable silence, there was as much to be said, as there was a lack of words to convey them. Indecision to what topic could suit the last hours before this all-out battle, they spoke of nothing at all. Yet there was deep understanding in it, a bond between them that only needed a glance of the eye to be conveyed. 

Pacing anxiously was unnecessary. Ghirahim lay comfortable; to him, nothing enriched the soul like battle, and he was ready to rise every minute of the day. No need for armor, for food, for a minute to come to his senses. He could jump up the second the warning horns blared.

Thus, he dozed, his eyes on the tense Twili beside him until they wandered to the portrait above him. When had he moved it above his bed, he wondered? To think a man so reserved could be so vain. The gold of its canvas glittered in the weak light, egging on the stars in the sky beyond with its own splendor. Ghirahim felt a smile creep up on him and his eyes drew to a close.

He didn’t quite keep track of how long he lay there simply sifting through the favorite contents of his core, before that line of thought was interrupted, and a warm static forced itself through his mental imagery. It started deep in his chest, washing over his every extremity in waves. His skin tingled, his breath hitched. A contented sigh dragged out from him and joined the warm air in the room. This feeling, how long ago it was since he last felt it. It could only be…

Sat on the carpet beside the window was Zant, the Demon Scimitar before him. Moonlight could not hope to pierce the deep black of their blade; their masterpiece was a shadow among shadows. A vibrant teal glow pulsed throughout the veins in its fuller, like light beneath the ocean waves. That glow slowly grew richer, occasionally interrupted by the stroke of a cloth across the blade. 

Ghirahim shuddered. There was the source of that odd feeling, that sent shivers up his back and caused his face and stomach to flush an embarrassing red. Soon Zant caught him staring at him past the mound of sheets and met his eyes – glowing, giving him no choice but to witness them – with a smile.

“Pardon me. Did I disturb you?”

“Disturb is a strong word,” Ghirahim said, unable to suppress a shuddering groan. From fingerguard to its point, the cloth rubbed away every speck of dust and smudge of oil.

The sound that escaped him piqued Zant’s interest immediately. Eyes that should pay attention to the razor-sharp edge of their sword widened at him. “You can feel this?”

Taps of powder against the blade. Puff, puff, little clouds of white dissipating in the gentle breeze. “To some degree, yes.”

Bright, amber eyes narrowed. “What is it like?”

Adjusting comfortably, Ghirahim sank back into the sheets, hiding half of his face. He stared him down no lesser, though. “There is hardly any equal to this feeling, Zant,” he hummed, pleased by the sensation of gentle polishing. “But if I had to describe it… Something akin to having my hair brushed, or hands stroking my back, I suppose.”

Zant’s eyes turned to the sword, now carrying a certain spark. He beheld it in a different light. “I see. How fortunate to know.”

Ghirahim shifted, curling himself in the mass of sheets to get a better look at his machinations, but without abandoning the glow of their joint warmth. Their companionable silence returned, the quiet room filled only with the whisper of cloth against metal, and the gentle churning of his core. Warmth buzzed through him in waves, like fingers with long nails tapping and tracing the features deep in his chest. That so-abstract sensation turned ever warmer, more squeezing, when that familiar smell of cloves arose, and Zant turned to oiling the blade. Ghirahim cocked his head, watching intently. “Tending to it again? So soon?”

Zant only glanced at him before returning to his focus. “Our sword is in its infancy, Ghirahim. It has to be nourished in its first year.”

“You’ve done your homework,” Ghirahim smirked.

“You hardly gave me any choice, Ghirahim-hasir,” Zant smirked right back.

Another honorific! He laughed fondly, ever-so-amused by Zant’s habit of slipping into mother tongue. “That one is new! What nonsense are you up to, this time?”

“No more than usual,” Zant hummed, a touch of cheer in his voice. “Now get back under the covers and leave me to do my bidding. We must be in top shape before dawn, you and I,” he crooned, stroking the cloth down their blade in emphasis.

Ghirahim smiled, sighed, and complied.

That morning, Hyrule conquered the southern settlements in a matter of minutes. The market streets the pair had grown so familiar with, committed to memory through the smells of spices, pastries, and smoked meat alone, decimated at once. Not that they’d made it particularly difficult for their adversaries; a minimal amount of monstrous troops were stationed there. This was their bait. A little trick tucked in falsely heightened morale, to fool the Hyruleans into thinking them weaker than they were. Besides, the locals stationed within sight would surely be healthily enraged by the sight of their beloved settlement being torn to the ground. Zant had planned for a bloody start.

The two of them were thoroughly locked away in the North. The Gerudo Temple Complex was a dark and swirling thing, a monumental goliath of sandstone and brick, its dimly lit corridors designed to trap anyone outside the clergy in the bowels. Deep within, it hid the Coliseum. A holy ground to desert peoples, later desecrated by Hyrule and turned into an executioner’s oubliette. Better known as, ‘The Arbiter’s Grounds’. Since its reclamation by the Gerudo (according to Zant, one of the few good things brought on by shattering the Mirror of Twilight), Hyrule was to never touch it again. The labyrinth would guard it for as long as it stood.

In other words, it was the ideal place to watch the battle unfold from afar. Their intel detected signs of three commanders: Link, the Goddess’ favored hero; Lana, still missing her counterpart; and an unfamiliar Sheikah warrior. Knowing the Hyruleans, they likely had more tricks up their sleeves. They needed caution above all. 

Zant was eerily silent for most of their stay, retreating within his helmet. Had Ghirahim not known any better, he would have suspected him of sleeping on the job again. On the contrary, the Twili could not have been more alert. The ace up their sleeve was heaving and buzzing restlessly deep underground below their feet. The Twilit Bloat, Queen Mother of Zant’s favorite pets, spent days spewing forth countless Shadow Insects, which he’d hidden away in every nook and cranny he thought would make a decent vantage point. They were acting as his eyes in the field and to keep track of them all required his utmost concentration. 

Until at long last Zant withdrew from meditation, the segments of his helmet squeaking as he straightened himself and turned toward his co-lieutenant. 

“They are inching closer to the oases. While they busy themselves there, now is the best time to start our preparations,” he said, beckoning him with a wave of his hand as he made his way through the keep.

Ghirahim, glad to finally have something to do, grinned. “You mean to set up the… Shadow puppets, you mentioned, yes?”

“I have told you of my plan,” Zant agreed, scaling the steps to the decrepit altar at the center of the Coliseum. His visor rolled up to reveal a grin. “But not yet of its execution. It should be most familiar to you, however,” he turned, his hand outstretched and palm facing the skies.

Ghirahim smirked and followed, taking his hand to have him lead him further up the steps. An arm curled around his waist, and he rested his on Zant’s shoulder in return. “How courteous of you, Twilight King. Won’t prancing about distract you from your own casting, though?”

Zant smiled in turn. With a small pull at his waist, they quickly sank into a rhythm, waltzing under the sunbeams that peeked through the stone walls. “We must enact our spell in utter synchronicity, Ghirahim-ili. This is the best way.”

A pulse coursed through him. Diamonds rose from their footprints, flickering with signs of their blooming magic. The beating of their feet and chiming of his core accompanied their dance like a dozen tambourines. Through their joined hands, sparks of power crossed into one another, melting together until the pictures in their minds became clear as day, a single being.

“I shall be the source, and you, my conduit. My power is yours to steer, puppeteer of mine,” Zant’s words echoed, but Ghirahim couldn’t be sure if they came from his lips, or snuck into his mind without his notice. How cheeky. 

And soon, that power manifested into being. Rising from the shadows, Ghirahim’s second pair of eyes came into view – or rather, he came into its view. A second Ghirahim took shape, its features growing more defined by the second. Terrible vertigo struck him, causing a temporary lapse in his steps. There was a disconnect, a duplication of his sight, but no identical one. He could see through his own body but through his double’s, too. His core swirled as he looked himself in the eye, standing in the sand with its muted colors and stiff stance.

“It’s easier if you close your eyes,” Zant whispered with a low croon, “try not to think. Let me lead you, my Blade.”

Easier said than done, he’d say, did it not make such a drastic difference. Ridding himself of his second-sight made it all the easier to at least gather his bearings without the spinning surroundings there to distract him. But reaching this double somatically remained a challenge. It was like trying to steer a phantom limb. The tether was weak, but undeniably there, and getting it to move was akin to timidly pressing the keys on an old harpsichord. All the while this buffoon requested him to dance.

But that was the trick, wasn’t it? Channeling their magic? He was no stranger to their bodies becoming one, in many senses of the term. It wasn’t just his own magic he had to focus on, but the force linking its fingers with it, too. 

Synchronicity. The picture through the eyes of his double became vibrant and clear as day.

His double twitched its fingers until they were veritably his, then took a stumbling step. Then another. Then more, stably, rolling its shoulders and bouncing on its heels. The shuffling of dancing feet was soon nothing but background noise, far removed from where his mind settled. Housed in this spectral clone, Ghirahim grinned, braced his fingers, and snapped.

The desert heat felt like room temperature. Or rather, like nothing at all, in this doubly-false skin. Having teleported himself, he stood a ways from the Southern Oasis, surveying his surroundings. Friend nor foe had spotted him yet, concealed as he was by the heat shaking the sights of their surroundings, but they’d have no choice than to witness him soon. He sprinted across the desert, intending to snicker to himself, only to find not a sound passed his lips. 

A gap in their illusion. How embarrassing it would have been! What if he had attempted to taunt their foe, only to be caught missing his voice? He quickly suppressed the urge to scold Zant for failing to inform him of this flaw. To cause dissonance between his two selves would collapse their plans like a house of cards. Which, obviously, he couldn’t afford, as he was already perched on the walls of the Oasis Keep, staring right into fiery red eyes that pierced into him with malice. 

The Sheikah man would be his first opponent.

His perch high up above did nothing to deter this stranger whatsoever. A long dagger whistled through the air just past Ghirahim’s ear, missing him only thanks to his own last-minute dodge. Ghirahim hadn’t yet the chance to righten himself before his adversary took a running start and leapt against the corner wall, kicking himself off to clamber up and meet him at eye level. It hadn’t even taken him five seconds to get to him. 

This was going to be interesting. Ghirahim knew he couldn’t lose his composure so early in the battle, but a warrior so quick and nimble made the stars dance in his core. The Sheikah was upon him in a split second, a long knife in each hand, eyes red and full of death. His strikes were lightning-fast and precise, but not fast enough to break past Ghirahim. This man was an entirely different territory from that white-haired dog. Where Impa combined her tremendous speed with heavy blows, her replacement depended entirely on the fleetness of his feet. And it carried him well. The two of them danced across the walls, locking blades like a pair of cats fighting atop a fence.

But, truthfully, Ghirahim was only humoring him. Against another human, the slashes of the Sheikah’s knives would have been lethal. But to Ghirahim, razor edges struck his sword with gentle taps at most. He had to put this boy in his place. Hilt in both hands, he boldly raised his blade to bait him with an opening – swung down quickly, to bait a crossing of knives, and catch his sword in between. 

The Sheikah were a near-ageless folk, living potentially centuries longer than Hylians, if they so chose. This very moment, the Sheikah proved his youth, his inexperience, despite his prodigal martial skill. He acted exactly as Ghirahim predicted. 

Now locked, Ghirahim shot him a grin, before pushing his bulk into his sword and tossing him sideways. The Sheikah shouted in surprise, stumbled. With the assistance of a showy flip and roll, he dropped off the wall and down into the dirt, quickly righting himself in fear of being ambushed.

Not a second too late! Ghirahim leaped for him, point of his sword aimed for the heart. Or, rather, aimed for the dirt, as the Sheikah darted away quickly. The pair exchanged blows, barraged each other with throwing knives, but their mutual bulk and speed resulted in nothing more than superficial injuries. 

Ghirahim couldn’t outspeed him. So, he’d just have to surprise him, instead. With only a small chime to announce his departure, Ghirahim disappeared into diamonds and landed himself square in the Sheikah’s way. The boy gasped in surprise, only barely managing to stumble out the way of the obsidian sword that flew toward him in a pitch-black streak. Now, all bets were on discombobulating his foe. The Sheikah was forced to face him more carefully, locked in a fierce combat. For every escape, every attempt at sprinting away for another trick, he was punished by the phantom that appeared in his shadow and threatened to rend him to pieces. 

Dark blue Sheikah armor tore to show flashes of skin and bleeding gashes, staining a deeper red every second. But Ghirahim found himself not as unscathed as he’d normally be – this puppet was fragile, meaning even the small enchantments on this warrior’s knives could hurt him. It wasn’t the same pain as he’d feel on his surface when injured. This was a magical, conjured pain, manifesting as a headache and stuttering of his core. But, injuries or not, he was winning. The Sheikah was slowing, growing into an easier target for his thrusts and merciless cleavings with every pace. And there he darted off again, some desperate manner of escaping! Of stalling time! Blood hung in the air, its particles catching delectably on his lolling tongue. He chased its source hungrily, wishing so it was his true self instead who would get to kill this wretched little thing, a mere pup in comparison to his superior. Ghirahim ached to run him through with this blade! Just a few more paces, another leap –

There was a track in the sand. In the corner of his eye, he spotted another. The Sheikah stopped at the joining of lines, readying something curved and golden.

The harp. The harp! His eyes shot to the Sheikah, who grinned at him with a squint, fingers at the ready over his blasted holy implement. Ghirahim looked back to the ground, where he now spotted an outline… And himself spot in the middle of it. An ominous hum, a faded glow, resonant below him as fingertips tensed the strings. Ghirahim turned to flee, but a second too late. With a mockingly cheerful tune, the magic glyph was activated, and a blinding field of light magic launched him out the gates of the Oasis Keep.

He skidded to a halt, clouds of sand trailing his heels as they coursed through. In his concealment, he was fortunate to find his first flaw; a black patch, crackling on the surface of his puppet. Their illusion was falling apart. 

Now is the time to flee. 

They thought it simultaneously, with Ghirahim immediately annoyed by Zant’s meddling. 

Shielded by this cloud of sand, he turned tail and fled. Soon enough, fleeted feet dashed through the sand a little ways behind him.

Just like he wanted! Bloodlust made blind! 

The next phase of their plan was imminent. He had to cross the sands to get to the cliffs, where he could funnel this little songbird into its cage. This seemed easier said and done, because the Sheikah’s tendency to make pot-shots at the enemy made it increasingly more difficult to conceal the black cracks left on his surface. He kicked up as much sand as he could in his sprint to keep himself shielded from prying eyes.

It was a mad chase. In short bursts, his adversary seemed to be faster than him, leading him to blink around to get away from the scatter of needles flying his way. A haphazard, zigzagging trail of metal pins traced their trajectory. Yet, the Sheikah seemed to be letting him escape, at least a little bit. Did he hope he was fleeing to some kind of hideout, and lead him straight there? Oh, if only he knew!

It was a good thing he didn’t. They crossed into the Cliffs Keep, revealing a dead end. Realizing it’d been a trap, before the Sheikah could fully turn, the gates slammed shut behind them.

The enraged eyes of a cornered animal met with a dark grin. The two men flung at one another, daggers in hand. But Ghirahim felt weakened – the magic holding this form together barely persisted through its many cracks, and it was slowing his reflexes. To save himself some power, he dismissed the false cape, at once revealing the web of deep black fractures spreading across his skin. 

This staggered the Sheikah for a moment, but baited him all the same. Daggers crossed, he lunged forward, and drove the tips towards his core. They tangled, tipped over, and landed in the sand, Ghirahim pinned between steel and soil.

For all this man knew, this was how a Sword Spirit died. The daggers sank into his chest, and Ghirahim let the illusion crackle into shards with a pained groan.

But not before leaving his parting gift. The Sheikah choked out a breath, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks. Ghirahim had driven a dagger right into his side.

He didn’t have the privilege to see if this caused his opponent to collapse or not, for his eyes caved into dust soon after this deceitful blow. Then followed the rest of his body, leaving only a cackle to fade on the wind.

Deep black turned into an outrageously bright light. With a gasp, Ghirahim came to, finding himself held up by Zant’s arms. Never before had he felt this unsteady on his feet, this jittery like a newborn foal. His shadowy double was gone, which left him to deal with the dizziness of returning to his body. How convenient that this animate coat rack of a man was there to assist him in doing so.

Ghirahim patted Zant on the sleeve, wobbling to righten himself. “Deliciously dramatic timing, Twilight King.” 

“Thanks. I thought so too.”

Zant laughed, patiently assisting Ghirahim through the last seconds of his vertigo. Once Ghirahim collected himself, Zant parted from him, again turning his gaze meditatively to the skies. “We shall let them struggle with this predicament for a little while. Then, I will take your place on the battlefield, Ghirahim-ili.”

The battle unfolded just about how they expected it would. The gates they so merrily left open were breached by opportunistic troops zealously at first, but with the imprisonment of their Sheikah general, anxious caution took the wheel. Nevertheless, critical movement took place: Lana, who had been moving through the desert, succeeded in capturing the Northern Oasis; while Link, having first guarded their home base in the Bazaar, crossed the southern sands to attempt a rescue mission. 

This was their cue. While their demonic troops clashed against Link’s brigade, Zant hopped back on his feet, extending his hands.

“Care to assist me once more?”

Locked again in dance, they watched as a shadowy form knitted into being by their pedestal. The illusory shape of Zant, darker and more muted than usual, readied itself for its host. Much to Ghirahim’s chagrin, Zant was clearly more adept than he at shifting his consciousness, as his double was up and moving in mere seconds.

“You close your eyes too, Ghirahim-ili.”

“Then who will keep watch of where we’re putting our feet? Moron.”

Ghirahim jested, but nonetheless allowed himself a brief respite, and did as he was told. Behind his darkened eyelids, he saw (though subtly) the world through the eyes of Zant’s shadowy double. He briefly worried if Zant had been spying along with him, too. Then, he felt some smug satisfaction in the knowledge, as he thought he’d made for a riveting battle just then.

Not a second longer did Zant let his puppet stick around and promptly sent it away. Just in time for Ghirahim to spin the both of them around and prevent them from tumbling off the altar.

Ghirahim’s impressions of this battle were vague, bestowed upon him in flashes through Zant’s incomprehensible sense of sight. The world was a blur of overly saturated colors in the Twili’s eyes, splitting into sharply defined contours at every moving object. Of course, the rapidly approaching emerald green and blue was then clear as day, as was the glowing blade that cut through the air towards him. 

But Link could not land a single hit on the Usurper’s false shape. Zant blinked himself across the sand and clapped his hands pompously, a playfully mocking tribute to Ghirahim’s favored spellcasting. At once, every gate in the battlefield slammed shut, isolating the three generals in their own death traps.

Wrathful Gerudo, Bulblins, and Stalfos poured from whatever crevice they could force themselves through to descend upon the now-isolated warriors. Whether they would surpass the Hyruleans in martial prowess remained to be seen, but surely, they’d leave not a shred of their morale untouched. 

Yet Zant led the Goddess’ little hero away from the onslaught, seeming to prefer a one-on-one duel, though there’d be nothing honorable about it. This battle was an absolute waste of time, drudging Link along through the scorching desert to chase after his constantly teleporting apparition. Even if his opponent couldn’t hear it, Zant couldn’t help but giggle. With such a jovial mood, one would expect victory, but aside from Zant’s violent retaliations, his health rapidly failed him. Not only was his double on the verge of collapse, but nearly every hack and slash it endured bore down on its host. Dancing with a smile, blood gushed from Zant’s nostrils with every hit he took. Ghirahim doubted whether the desperation on his double’s part was an act –  it contorted, stomped, flailing its arms and hurling wild bolts of magic at whatever blue banner-bearing shape it could see. But Zant seemed at peace, even as his puppet raised its arms to ready a bomb of pure, hexing shadow, only to find itself ran straight through by the Knight’s holy blade.

At once, the tether to their puppet was gone.

“... That’s it… Our first ruse is up,” Zant mumbled, before slumping forward, just barely caught by Ghirahim’s frame. The blood trickling from his nostrils was worrying still, so Ghirahim allowed him to collapse, lowering him carefully to sit at the edge of the pedestal. Yet, Zant declined any fussing over him, preferring instead to retreat into his mind again and survey the damage they’d done. With his ‘death’, every single gate in the battlefield flew back open – save for the Temple complex. Sitting side by side, Zant relayed what he saw through the eyes of his countless insect servants. Among the Hyruleans, there was relief, rallying cries spreading through the battlefield as they once again rushed forth to seize new territory. Their own forces still held fast. The defeat of their Lieutenants sowed seeds of anxiety, which their captains and commanders did not allow to sprout among the common infantry. Though the full plan of today was relayed to very few, every officer of repute knew not to lose hope when all seemed over. 

They’d seen the captured beasts in their chains, after all, and had yet to see them surface in this battle.

One unexpected problem remained. When the gates to the Sheikah commander’s imprisonment were opened, he was already long gone. The trail of blood scaling the cliff wall toward the Temple clued them in where he could have gone. He was trapped in here with them, somewhere. Zant seemed to take nothing but amusement in that thought.

Now, there was nothing to do but wait. Wait for a surge in confidence among the Hyruleans that would raise their might and lower their guard. If this took mere minutes or hours, then the blood spilled to tip the scales would simply have to be an acceptable sacrifice. Time ticked away mostly in silence. On occasion, Zant orated an update from the battlefield with his vacant, manic gaze. Ghirahim stared at the man beside him, bloodstained as he was, and wondered how far the gray blight had crawled up his arms today.

Zant perked up sooner than Ghirahim expected and turned to him. “Their bases are almost settled. They are transporting their goods. Now is the time, Ghirahim. Will you do the honors?”

Ghirahim grinned. “Gladly.”

Within a blink, Ghirahim disappeared from the Arbiter’s Grounds and materialized far below the earth. Deluge streams of sand poured down from above – he found himself in an underground cave, discovered long ago by the Gerudo when digging for water reservoirs. Quicksand pools from above fed this ever-filling chamber with gold, like an hourglass that would never tip. Behind him was a nearly-buried gate leading to the old waterways. In front of him were cages. He didn’t want to keep the beasts inside waiting any longer; he’d kept them unfed a little too long. They frothed at the sight of him, spurred on by Zant’s blood caked into his suit. 

“You’ll find something far tastier on the surface, my dears!”

One, two, three showy snaps of his fingers, and the chains bearing the monsters down disappeared. With a flex of his hands, his fist cloaked itself in glowing, purple magic. He took a running start, heading straight for the back of the cages (where the monsters’ eyes hungrily followed him), and launched himself at the massive lever that stood there. With one solid punch, the old mechanism screeched back to life, and past all its rust, the switch was flicked. A rattling that could only be produced by a machine at the end of its life echoed throughout the room. Tugged upwards by heavy chains, the cage doors were lifted, and out stormed their inhabitants. 

But before they could make for the little creature that stood antagonizing them, a cascade of sand cued them in on the blue skies above. A ring tunnel of diamond magic pried open the quicksand pitfall in the ceiling and allowed these beasts the first glimpse of sunshine they’d seen in weeks. 

Not to mention, the smell of fresh carcasses. 

The Manhandla, a four-headed, man-eating plant; threw itself against the wall and clambered up through its web of roots. The Molduga, the very giant sandworm Ghirahim had stolen away scarce a month earlier; took to the skies and flew through the opening. The Lanmola, a cyclopean centipede; swam up the stream of sand.

But that was merely the first wave. This was the Southern Desert’s treat: the North would get its very own collection of nuisances. His next teleportation took him to the mesas in the northeast, where six pairs of eyes furiously eyed him down from within their cave prison. The caverns in these rocky mountains were straightforward tunnels, opening right into the deserts. After opening the cages, all he had to do was give them an incentive to break free.

So, naturally, he brought the entire cave to a collapse. As soon as the beasts panickedly rushed out of their prisons, Ghirahim snapped his fingers and perched himself on the Mesa’s edge, overlooking the monsters’ exit holes. 

The first to break free were the two Dodongos, bulky, rock-clad lizards; curled up and rolling, shot out like cannonballs. Then came the Helmaroc King, a giant prismatic bird; shrieking wildly and leaving a storm of feathers in its wake as it beat its wings and flew off. Finally, poking out one head after the other, came the Gleeok, the three-headed dragon; with stout little legs and clumsy, serpentine necks, it sauntered to the mouth of the tunnel somewhat timidly. But at the first sight of prey below, it roared viciously and spread its draconic wings, and set off in pursuit of violence.

Ghirahim returned to his post at once, finding Zant just as vacant as he’d left him, but with far greater amusement sketching his face. The Twili didn’t appear to notice him as he sidled up next to him, hands in his sides. 

“Satisfied by my handiwork, Twilight King?”

“More than, Yima Zeeioitneit,” he responded. Zant had cleaned himself up a bit in his absence, but was looking no less gaunt. “Would you like to see the fruits of your labor?”

“Gladly, I would,” Ghirahim said, keeping his apprehension about Zant’s intrusive, meddling magic to himself. 

Zant shook himself out of his daze, at once standing with his eyes bright and glowing. “Then allow me some time to recuperate. I will share my clairvoyance with you in the meantime, Ghirahim-ili.”

Before Ghirahim could utter a word of questioning or protest, Zant’s shape turned pitch-black, becoming no more than a silhouette with shining eyes. A rustle sounded as the shade before him ducked down and turned into nothing more than a smudge, and, shockingly… Melted into the floor. Just like that, Zant seemed to have crawled into his shadow. There was the alarming presence of magic, certainly, but otherwise, he felt not a thing of it. At least, not until Zant fulfilled his promise. Ghirahim then learned, intimately, just what he meant by ‘clairvoyance’. 

A sudden burst of droning visions took over his sight, shaking him into an unsightly stumble. Each flashed by for mere seconds before Zant flicked him over to the next, all blurring into the same haze. Only after sitting there, hands in his hair and groaning audibly, did he piece together just what he was looking at. It seemed that Zant had planted more of his Shadow Insects on the skulls of their monsters, and thus, allowed the both of them front-row seats to each individual rampage. 

To the north, the Helmaroc crested to dizzying heights, carefully eyeing its companions. Yards below it, the Gleeok was circling the desert, scarcely avoiding flurries of arrows from piercing its wings. It found its point of interest in a line of provision wagons, which already had its many hands full with the giant lizards besieging it from both sides. Claws extended, it swooped down in an instant, plowing through the line of them with its razor-sharp talons. 

Now out of a meal, the twin Dodongos sought their fortune elsewhere. They turned straight to the oasis, where they expected to rake in the biggest rewards, only to find the place heavily guarded. Grimoire in hand, Sorceress Lana nervously eyed down the two approaching beasts. She was a nimble woman, swiftly evading raking claws and blazing fire, but she did not take well to being surrounded. From the eyes of this Dodongo, she swooped in dangerously close. Just as the massive reptile thought to swallow her down in one gulp, a large, translucent cube was lodged in its gullet, and with the touch of the Sorceress’ hand, electrified. It shrieked and convulsed, reflexively clamping its jaws hard enough to crack its teeth, and just like that, collapsed.

This Dodongo was down for the count. But before its Shadow Insect died with it, it captured just a few more seconds. From the sound of blazing fire and the screams of their opponent, the beast’s twin appeared to hold fast.

The southern desert was similarly infested. The Manhandla had dug its roots throughout the sand, sprouting additional heads across the desert to drown it in a poisonous haze. Soon, only the dead could wander here, and the very bold. Those who dared approach the floral menace disappeared quickly past its massive teeth. Monitoring this monster led the pair of lieutenants to begrudgingly note that one of its four heads seemed to have gotten hacked off somewhere along the way. Though, they doubted they minded. If the victory was all too crushing, there would not have been any honor in it. Much less satisfaction. 

This next vision was fully dark, until it burst with sudden light. How the fragile insect managed to cling on to this creature through all the sand was a mystery. From the shrill bellowing, these could only have been the sights of the Molgera, soaring through the skies in pursuit of prey. And what a target it had chosen! Skidding away from the sandworm, bow and arrow boldly drawn but visibly alarmed, was their favorite green-clad menace, his blue scarf long lost in the scuffle. He had felled the Lanmola in record time. From the look in his eyes, that wouldn’t be his only trophy of today. Whether he would fulfill that ambition was another question. The Molgera roared and dove for him, but shrieked when an arrow pierced it someplace unseen, and veered off course. It burrowed beneath the sand once more, plunging their vision in darkness. Through the roaring of sand surging past the giant beast, there was a sound; footsteps, hurrying away. The Molgera homed in on its source and launched for the surface. 

It breached, it opened its maw. A scream was heard, then muffled by the resounding clap of the Molgera’s jaws snapping shut. As the Molgera twisted itself through the air, not a trace of the Hero of Legend remained.

Cackles and shouts of triumph and astonishment echoed through the Arbiter’s Grounds. Had the Twili stood beside him, rather than lie hidden in his shadow, Ghirahim would have embraced him and thrown him around the arena for good measure. What an undignified end for the little Hylian! Ghirahim was ecstatic. Already he swell with pride over the thought of informing their Master of this victory. The pair of them sang praises of this magnificent sandworm. Even after they’d treated it so cruelly, it hadn’t let them down in the slightest. Whether it could hear their words conveyed through the Shadow Insect, wasn’t their concern. 

Amidst their celebration, the Molgera suddenly groaned. Shuddered. Slowed in its flight. It contorted itself, squeaking in pain, until it tore its mouth open in a shriek. The Shadow Insect lost all functionality. Its host could only be dead.

What happened? It was in the air – how had it perished!? 

Zant apparently had the same questions. He frantically browsed through the Insects still alive, until he found a proper view of the events through the eyes of the Manhandla. The Molgera fell from the skies, its spiked belly slit wide open. A rain of blood and guts splattered onto the ground before its multi-ton body hit the sand, sending forth an explosive dust cloud to shroud the battlefield from all.

Surfacing from that shroud, visible through the makeshift sandstorm by a glowing silhouette, was a newcomer to today’s battlefield. Fi, doll-faced as ever, but her blue gemstone surface now tainted with viscera, had surfaced from the Hero’s blade, and freed her ‘Master’. Offering her wing, she stuck herself halfway into the Molgera’s eviscerated stomach to pull Link free, soaked in mucus and blood. The morbidity of it all seemed completely lost on her gentle smile, as she stood watching him gather himself.

Ghirahim grit his teeth. “It seems they’ve taken a page out of our book, Twili… They’re hiding commanders!”

“And where there is one, there may be more. They think they have us for fools.”

With the appearance of Fi, a Hyrulean war horn sounded in the Southern Desert. The troops in the North responded. Surfacing from Lana’s shadow was none other than Midna, who immediately clenched a keratin fist around the head of an ambushing Bulblin commander. A sense of fury bubbled forth from his shadow, and lingered somewhere in Ghirahim, too. But as much as the arrival of the Twilight Princess spelled trouble, something about her appearance soothed Zant’s mood into a bubbly giggle. 

She was an imp again.

The war horn sounded in the North. Two responded; one from the Western mesas, and one from the South. Through the eyes of the Helmaroc King, a far more alarming sight poured into the desert. The troops they had fought so deftly to thin out were filling their numbers again. Vast swathes of Zora and Gorons arrived through glowing portals and raced to assist the overthrown Keeps. Only to then clash against equally large numbers of frothing demon forces, pushing each other back and forth past a faultline of trampled steel. This visceral desperation of gnashing teeth and battered armor only left the frontlines in stasis for so long. The Zora Princess, her arrival announced by a tidal wave sweeping along her own troops in massive schooling, forced an opening through the simple measure of washing away everything in her path. She came out the other end of the first line of infantry clad in silvery armor, spear in hand, looking back at the dizzied and drowning mass of demonic forces behind her. This very measure would carry her to the northern desert, where she quickly joined Lana’s side. 

Lana startled when the Dodongo just in front of her was sucked into a maelstrom and launched across the sands. When she turned to find Ruto, some sort of sentimental conversation was surely being carried out. Watching from the Gleeok still soaring above the keeps, neither Ghirahim nor Zant cared to hear it. Their despairing, confused prattles were far more interesting.

The Gleeok swept in closer, ducking out the way of an impending lightning bolt sent from the Sorceress’ grimoire. 

“I don’t understand, Ruto,” Lana cried. “Ghirahim and Zant were defeated, but their armies haven’t slowed down whatsoever!”

Ruto intercepted an incoming belch of fire with a watery shield, bursting it apart in glittering projectiles as she dismissed it. The Gleeok shrieked when one of its many eyes was pierced. “Desperation, it must be. It takes a pair of cowardly men like them to rig such posthumous traps!”

“Are we sure it was really them Sheik and Link defeated?” Midna cut in, surfacing from Lana’s shadow to glare down the limping Dodongo in the distance. “Like you said. They’re cowards! I’ll bet my entire treasury that the foes we saw were nothing more than illusions!”

A troubled expression dawned on Lana, which soon turned to anger. She burst out in front of the Zora Princess, spellbook at the ready, and sent out another burst of lightning. Though, this one was different. It broke apart like fireworks, each spark lighting its own deadly branch, that darted in zig-zags through the air. The Gleeok, hopeless to dodge such a flurry, lost one of its wings to countless tears and perforations and then crashed to the ground. 

Before the beast could stomp its way inside the keep, Lana blocked its entrance with a crackling barrier and whipped around to look at her companions. “Then- The real Ghirahim and Zant… They must be hiding somewhere, commanding from afar!”

“Oh, they can’t be that far. Those two draw to carrion more than a common fly,” Midna grimaced, squinting to peer out into the scorching desert. “Just so happens, I got just the trick up my sleeve to get to the bottom of this. Ruto! Cover me!”

Ruto nodded, readying her spear to join Lana’s side. Lana’s barrier did not hold much longer. Every passing second, the Gleeok was driven to madness by two voices balking commands into its triplet minds, and could only think to throw itself at the magical wards harder. Finally, it burst through, and wasted not a moment to start snapping at the two warriors in its way. Lana fought grimoire in hand, turning scattered parchment into razor-sharp projectiles, while Ruto threatened every impending bite with a thrust of her spear. 

While the Gleeok was rapidly losing scales to the combined assault, Midna stretched out her hand, readying a spell amidst the chaos. A gap tore itself through the fabric of reality, manifesting as a spreading shadow on the ground, soon thrumming and glowing with runes.

Stepping out of the shadows was a little girl, no older than eleven, who curtsied under the protection of her parasol. “Agitha has waited patiently as you ordered, Miss Kitty! How can she be of assistance?”

Lana was almost as disturbed by the girl’s appearance as Ghirahim and Zant, but clearly for different reasons. “A-Agitha? But… The two of you can’t just go out there alone. There are still giant monsters alive!”

The Zora Princess glanced over her shoulder, the second of distraction nearly costing her a fin to the jaws of the Gleeok. “Sorceress, if you wish to accompany them, We will hold down the Oasis.”

“Ruto, are you sure? In this weather, the Zora-”

“Do not doubt the resilience of Our people,” Ruto interjected, jabbing her spear between the plates on one of the dragon’s jugulars. “We know where their limits lie. Place your trust in Us. Now, go! Waste no precious seconds!”

“My, what a shame,” a voice echoed from the dragon. “They’ve become aware of our little plan quicker than expected.”

Zant figured to broadcast his mockery through the Shadow Insect still perched on the dethroned creature. Bleeding heavily from one of its throats, its still-living heads contorted their faces into toothy grins, the Gleeok puffed out its chest and stanced imposingly. The spread of its wings blotted out the sun above the keep, casting it in shadow.

Ghirahim found it a fine idea. “Then let them come find us! We’ll finish them off right away!”

Thus, precious seconds were wasted. By some incomprehensible measure of lollygagging, Midna stuck around while Lana and Agitha made for the desert. The pair of girls slipped past the Dodongo only thanks to Midna’s uncouth taunts, who sent wolves yipping and nipping at its front legs. A little of Zant’s own hatred for the Twilight Princess must have leaked into it, then, because the beast took the bait hook, line, and sinker. So focused it was on the hounds and the woman cheering them on behind them, that it failed to notice its remaining surroundings. Its maw opened wide, readying a blazing inferno, and aimed straight for its annoyance. 

Only for said target to dodge out of the way at the very last second, dragging the Zora Princess out of the trajectory along with her. Instead, the hellfire launched across, square into the chest of the already wounded Gleeok and melting everything in its way. A weaving path of coarse glass glittered in the sand, tying the two monsters by a thread of aggression. Their dragon could not resist retaliation and lunged for its treacherous comrade.

Thus, in the Oasis, two of the beasts were tearing each other down. In the sand wastes, one last beast made itself useful. The King Helmaroc, contrary to its name, was an obedient creature, and soared as high or hovered as low as they needed it to. Through its eyes, they saw Midna had joined the pair a little after her charade of chaos. 

From this vantage point, Ghirahim and Zant quietly observed their desert trek. At least, until Zant clicked his tongue, seeming annoyed. “I see now why they brought the girl. I should have expected this.”

“Somehow, even when we share the same thoughts, you manage to puzzle me. Get to the point.”

“Look closely. They have a Goddess Butterfly. It will lead them straight to us, and the labyrinth will not keep them.”

Once again, silence fell between them. Less time wasted in the labyrinth meant fewer opportunities to whittle down their strength. With this many enemy commanders, such a head start was crucial.

Even so, the thought of their plan failing ever so slightly, filled Ghirahim with a strange sense of excitement. “An unfortunate twist, but… Frankly, I was getting bored. I’m itching for a fight.”

Then, as if Zant had taken note of his excitement, he felt the warmth of a smile inside his mind. “Ghirahim-ili… When they arrive here, let us fight our hardest.”

Of course, the Helmaroc understood nothing at all of such banter. It was far more focused on the triad of two-footed creatures zipping through the sand sea. To a bird, this entourage of warriors must have looked awfully like a line of ants. 

It dove down for them, talons outstretched, as if they were. 

The first to react was not the Sorceress, nor was it Midna. Instead, the young girl turned a pouting face to the sky and popped the cork off a glass jar.

In an instant, a massive, emerald beetle appeared from thin air and swung its horn full-force into the Helmaroc’s gullet. Their eyes in the sky shrieked. An explosion of feathers obscured their vision as the panicked bird flailed its wings, knocked entirely off balance by the throttling of this massive bug. Zant’s quiet marvel for the adversary’s familiar was drowned out entirely by Ghirahim’s rage. How preposterous! This massive bird of prey, knocked out of the sky by a mere insect!? He took the reins immediately. 

The beetle now dismissed, the Helmaroc King chased after the girls on foot, pouncing at them with its claws and jabbing with its beak. But just as it started to get the drop on the group, the Temple complex was in sight, and the doorway they slipped through would never fit their bird.

When the Helmaroc was left behind them, squawking and pacing indignantly at the gate, the trio chased the little glowing insect through the Temple’s ever-twisting halls. Following this journey proved to be a pain. Zant had only set up Shadow Insects in so many corridors, and tracking their trajectory was a dizzying flurry of different angles and crowding soldiers. Yet, Zant managed to follow them in glimpses. Hyrulean and Demon soldiers alike had swarmed the place, fighting pointless battles in corridors leading nowhere. Undead gaolers were already scavenging the heaps of dead and injured, either locking those still breathing in chains, or ripping the bones from the freshly deceased to replenish their own limbs. Thus, the pair of women led a child over this carpet of corpses. The girl’s fighting ability mattered very little here – they were under the protection of Midna and her wolves, but even then, little ‘Agitha’, as they’d called her, looked too stunned to do anything but keep running. 

Along the way, found tearing the talons of a Dinolfos to replenish his throwing needles, was the Sheikah warrior. He had forfeited his turban to use it as a makeshift bandage for the wound in his side. The group swiftly urged him along. Striking down whatever station guards stood in their way, they reached the deeper bowels of the temple, where lines of defense grew more and more scarce.

The three eldest of the company grew more skeptical with each step. Midna leaned closer to Agitha, whispering something the Shadow Insect could not perceive.

“The Goddess Butterfly is never wrong, Miss Kitty,” the young girl assured. She seemed to have full confidence in the butterfly’s sense of direction, and faltered not even a second in chasing after it. And that confidence was well within her right, for Ghirahim recognized these corridors. They would reach their location in no time flat.

Soon, the ground beneath the group’s feet turned sandier and sandier, until the stone tiles were completely covered. They reached a dark chamber, lit only through the cracks of ventilation slits above the massive stone door across them. The butterfly fluttered across without a care, landing on the dusty surface of the door, and fanned its wings in rest. Agitha was about to tromp right after it, but the Sheikah stopped her with a firm hand on her shoulder. He pushed her back, right into Lana’s protective embrace. 

Painfully slow, annoyingly cautious, the Sheikah inched into the clearing of the room step by step. He could check for traps, he could listen for mechanisms and dowse for curses or enchantments, but he would find none. Instead, something found him.

A stinger, tall enough to almost scrape past the ceiling, shot out from the sand, and jabbed at the intruder. Its menacing needle missed only by the grace of the commander’s reflexes, pushing the tail out of its trajectory with a talon dagger, but failing to crack carapace. Shaking itself out of the sand, the final bastion had revealed itself. The Moldarach, a massive scorpion of centuries old, screeched and chittered a word of warning. Its pincers snipped menacingly, tendons tight and fierce. Yet, under the threat of its lightning-fast stinger, the little girl was least afraid of them all. 

Agitha looked up at the Moldarach in awe and rummaged in her basket, not taking her eyes off the creature once. “Ohh, I’d hate to hurt such a beautiful bug… I’m sorry, li’l one! But I don’t have a big enough bottle to keep you in!”

From it she retrieved an armful of glass jars, brandishing them as if they were explosives. Her entourage backed away hastily, clearly knowing far more about the contents of those jars than the Moldarach could. She tossed the jars with a sweep, racking them on the scorpion’s hard carapace at first impact. Out swarmed dozens of glowing, spectral butterflies, that headed straight for the first sign of soft flesh they could find: the Moldarach’s eyeball. The beast recoiled, pawing at its face in an attempt to shake the pests off, but it was fruitless. It could now only depend on the eyeballs hidden within its pincers, but in doing so, it revealed the soft tendons holding its claws together. Midna and the Sheikah exchanged a look, seemingly sharing an idea. 

Getting up close to this creature proved to be a challenge. Lunging in to take out its claws also meant being subjected to the monster’s lightning-fast reflexes, and Midna found herself trapped in its clutches soon enough. It squeezed, digging the teeth of its claws into her flesh dangerously. They hardly even needed the Shadow Insect for this – they could hear her cries of pain through the door. A little more and it might have killed her, had the Sheikah commander not severed the tender meat in its other claw. Its grip on the imp loosened in its distress and she managed to slip away, evading its gaze long enough for it to lose sight of her. The clash of claw, stinger, and blade continued, though the Moldarach grew more fatigued by the minute. Butterflies continued to eat at its face and attached themselves to whatever nerve opening they could find. Thus the creature slowed, its jabs and lunges losing their accuracy, until at long last it ceased its attacks altogether. They saw no use in waiting until the monster fully died; their little band of foils took this earliest opportunity to flee and push through the door.

The door slid open, grinding down coarse sand of centuries old as it slotted into the wall, and allowed the quartet of Hyruleans into the Coliseum. In the center they saw Ghirahim, lounging atop the Keep’s crumbling walls and examining his nails. 

Midna scowled, her fangs bared. She felt at the wounds on her chest, already scabbed over – so quickly? – and glanced to her side, where the child stood waiting expectantly. “Great work, Agitha. Now get out of here.”

At this command, Agitha looked to the Sheikah man with big, glittering eyes, smiling when he met her gaze with a nod. She curtseyed – if Ghirahim didn’t know any better, he’d think it was at him – and, with a dainty clutch of her frock, hopped down a Twilit portal.

“There you are, Demon!” Midna turned to foul, biting language the moment less-matured company was out of earshot. “Just you, huh? Go on. Cough it up! Where’s Zant? I don’t believe we got rid of him back in the desert. Not one bit!”

Ghirahim laughed, once again donning his gloves. Now more appropriately dressed, he hopped down from his perch and landed with a feathery flourish. Now that he seemed to be alone, and outnumbered at that, he decided he could afford a bit of taunting. He hummed, tapping thoughtfully at his chin with a wildly exaggerated gesture. “Oh, who can say? You make such a poor host out of me. All these questions, yet I’ve no intent to answer them!” Resting his hand on his cheek, he turned to Midna with a grin. With a puff of diamonds, he vanished, then reappeared before Midna, leaning down to glare at her with one pair of big, buggy eyes to another. “Say, I have one of my own. You look different. New haircut?”

Midna bared her teeth in a snarl, the fist at the end of her ponytail balling tightly until its fibers threatened to give. She lunged for him, the massive orange hand open and clawed. When his defending sword caught on the curved metal of her bangle, she leaned in with a grin. “Real jester you are! I take it this was your idea, then? That gaudy-masked imp told me to send you its regards.”

Majora. Ghirahim winced. It was getting a little too quiet on the Arch Demon’s front, he’d thought. But to rear its head again and mess with the Demon King’s enemies… There was no telling of its little plans. He turned his blade with a flick of his wrist, threatening to sever her hair at the shackle, and forced her back. “If I wanted you to be cursed, I’d ask someone more reliable.”

His eye flicked to the ground. Where he stood now, the low angle of the light stretched his shadow to that of the Keep’s walls… 

Zant emerged from the shadows in an instant, mere inches behind Midna, and swung at her like wings on a windmill. She shielded herself with the hair-clad hand of her ponytail, only to realize within a split second that the Twilight King’s new blade cut right through it. Ducking quickly out of the way, she spun through the air, launching herself to stand closer to her two companions. 

“It is a shame about your plight, Twilight Princess. I would have preferred to fight you in a more dignified form.”

When Midna forfeited a reply to glare him down, he laughed, turning to the altar behind him. “Nostalgic, is it not?” Zant waxed, his arms spread as he spun himself to the center of the coliseum. “The birthplace of our people. And perhaps, where the last of us will meet our end.”

Midna then made the grave mistake of taking his poetics as an opening and launched for him, the hand on her ponytail outstretched. The giant fist clenched around empty air when Zant promptly warped out of her way. Placing himself beside her momentum, he swung his scimitar down like a cleaver.

In an instant, magical wards were shattered. Showered in a foreboding glitter of gold, Midna cried out and smacked to the ground. But before Zant could lift his blade again and cleave her in half properly this time, the Sheikah dashed in to intervene. Only to then, himself, be driven to his knees by the daunting force of the Twilight King’s blade. It was two against one; each time Zant had subdued the one foe, the other would step in to try and take him out through his flanks. But Zant was too quick, his blade too sharp. Screeches rang out when the scimitar coursed past the edges of the Sheikah’s daggers, filling their cutting edges with worrying chips. Then, the first of them shattered to pieces completely.

Amidst it all, Zant cackled maniacally, madness tugging at his sweat-drenched brow with each swing of his sword. “Witness me, Ghirahim! We are unstoppable!”

But Ghirahim had very little time to witness. Lana had chosen him as her opponent and did everything in her power to keep him from uniting forces with his co-lieutenant. Frankly, he was a little amused that the Sheikah had not dared to face him a second time. But moreso, insulted, that the Demon Lord was not deemed a terrible enough foe to require backup to challenge. Tongue lolling from his lips in mockery and Annihilation in hand, he decided to make the Sorceress severely regret underestimating him.

Scratches tore through his robes and the strikes that hadn’t broken through his leather mail had surely bruised him, but Zant didn’t seem discouraged by injury whatsoever. Instead, he pushed through, seeking risk after risk and tearing through everything that opposed him. Soon, that boldness was awarded. Midna held up her hair-clad fist to defend herself, and Zant carved through two of its fingers as if it were made of wet paper.

Zant screeched with delight. “Your weeks of bedrest have atrophied your skills, Princess! While you lay there rotting in your own misery, I have gotten stronger!”

Midna growled, ducking behind the Sheikah to conceal herself from his bloodthirsty glee. Ghirahim, though, could see everything. Portals appeared in the shadows and from it surfaced a trio of wolves, each raising its hackles before bursting past the Sheikah and charging at the Usurper.

“Such cheap tricks will not work a second time,” Zant clicked his tongue.

Then, with a gust of wind, he launched himself backward and well out of range of the two warriors. With a single twirl, he drew a circle in the sand with his feet, and raised his arms to the skies. When he parted his lips to speak, every shadow stilled at once, slithering beneath the feet of each combatant, turning the air thick and heavy.

The air grew heavy, stopping every warrior in their tracks. A pale blue light shone from above, but none dared take their eyes off him to look for its source.

One by one, limbs limp and gangly in their descent, three creatures fell from the sky. Upon hitting the ground, their bodies contorted as they rose, each more bizarrely and stiffly than the next. They were massive, gray things, fitted with stone masks upon their faces and a mass of wet, slithering tentacles pouring from their faces.

Without even having to command them, the monsters galloped on all fours to throw themselves at the hounds. They entangled in a mess of rune and shadow, tumbling through the dust in a bestial scuffle. Midna looked on with horror.

Her companion had different concerns. Distracted by the sounds of magic, she whipped around. “That spell… How does he know that spell!?”

Just as Lana yelped, beset once more by the Demon Lord’s blade, Zant scoffed. “Did I not say I have gotten stronger!?” he taunted, knocking another brittle dagger out the hands of the Sheikah.

“Stronger!? And yet you rely on them?” Midna shouted, hurtling herself past her fellow commander to throw herself at Zant in a raging flurry. Where Zant could not parry her, he settled for shooting her from the air at point-blank with his projectiles. “How dare you utter even a word of affection toward our people, when you force their mutilated bodies to fight for your own gain!”

“Make your dogs stop attacking them, then,” Zant said, thoroughly nonplussed. At last, he forced both combatants off of him with a resounding shock wave, rattling even Ghirahim’s core where it rested in his metal.

When the ringing in his mind subsided, a different, familiar sensation took over Ghirahim. A blinking sound deep within him, imperceptible before, now alerted him to the presence of his kin. Fi – and by extension, most likely the green-clad knight tagging along – was fast approaching. “Oh, thank Our Lord, your cavalry is arriving. I was worried it would get a little too easy.”

Lana fell to the ground as Annihilation jabbed into her ribs. Its point bounced off stronger wards than he’d been met with before, and though Ghirahim didn’t exactly break skin, she clutched her chest with a groan either way. All three of their opponents exchanged a worried look, doubtlessly contemplating how to best gang up on them as they were bound to do.

Just as each of the Demon lieutenants took a step forward, deciding whose head to lop off first, new presences made themselves known. Pointing the glowing Goddess Blade forward in dowsing, Link entered through the stone gate, with Fi soon joining by his side. This second of distraction, a spark of hope for Hyrule, was just enough for the lot of them to scramble back to their feet and cluster into tight formation.

“Everyone, watch out,” Lana shouted, grimoire at the ready. “Only those with the Triforce can wield that magic!”

“He still has it?” Midna asked, eyeing Zant with her fangs bared.

Not expecting that reply, Lana turned to Midna, eyes wide with shock. “Still!?”

“Oh, so you remembered,” Zant chimed, making his way to the clustered group without hesitation. “Our Master is quite generous with his gifts. A small piece of that power is all I need to decimate the lot of you, who now have none at all. You would do better not to underestimate us!”

Midna’s eyes darted between her companions. A heaving, determined sigh tore through her. Then, her enraged expression twisted into a malicious grin. Her arms raised, she placed her hands on either side of her helmet. “Doesn’t matter. I could best you then, and I can do it now!”

The Coliseum was bathed in shadow. Midna drew darkness to her like a cyclone. Where Zant’s shadowy magic was warm and suffocating; a pulsing, all-consuming parasitic disease, hers was an eerie chill. From the pitch-black surrounding her feet, three ancient stone artifacts, the Fused Shadows, surfaced and encased her like a tomb.

When the first spidery legs burst forth from the bottom of the Twilight Princess’ stone-hewn armor, Ghirahim found himself beset by his own opponents. Link, drenched almost completely red with monstrous blood, ran for him, aiming right for his chest. Disappointed, almost, that the boy had learned nothing, he took hold of the blade with his bare hand, flicking it aside just in time to be able to step out the way of Fi’s impending kick. They were teaming up against him again, just as their other, more wounded companions were now piling on Zant. Where worry once would have possessed him, Ghirahim was now buzzing with nothing but thrill. The boy was already exhausted. He would get to tug the cords of his life from him strand by strand, and he hardly had to break a sweat to do so.

With that ever-lasting nuance and his dancing blade demanding his every second, Ghirahim couldn’t spare a glance at his battling compatriot. Not even as tendrilous arms, gnarled and glowing like smoldering branches of wicker, scampered around this battlefield, their incessant thumping shaking the rubble off the walls. Dust and pebbles rained down from above, only to be meticulously carved into halves by his sword. Some time ago, the duo of Link and Fi had bested him. 

But back then, he didn’t have this blade. Annihilation soared and carved, striking hard enough to make even the stone-faced Goddess Blade wince as he parried her swinging legs. With this power, enemy numbers didn’t matter – he would win.

A twinge of anxiety simmered in him nonetheless. While he could indeed not spectate the battle behind him directly, he caught impressions from the piece of himself, wielded by his co-lieutenant. A screech of metal, a beast recoiled. Hair-coiled fists he so easily carved through minutes past now felt solid as rock. Midna could not find a way through his defenses, and the ground shook as she struggled away from his offenses. Those that dared to try left a taste of blood upon his blade, however slight. Weapons crashed into each other in such a cacophony he could no longer distinguish the flashes of light in his own battle, from the ones imposed on him by Zant’s hands. To any mortal, such a barrage of violence would render them collapsed in the confusion, but to Ghirahim, it was Paradise.

Yet, this could not last long. Caught in bladelock with Link, he swiftly kicked the boy off of him when an alarming sensation overtook him. The part of him resting within the Demon Scimitar overloaded him with visions. With the uttering of strange words, Lana had bypassed Zant’s wards. Metal groaned eerily, then exploded, shrapnel shooting into the sand. An inky-black fist clutched around an equally black steel javelin, then threw it whistling through the air. But Midna didn’t aim for the now staggered Zant – she aimed at the ceiling. Chunks of stone and wispy sands rained down, blinding all who waited below, until the dust cleared. Zant noticed it before anyone else, and burst out into a shriek when sunlight flooded every corner of the Coliseum. 

They hounded him like a pack of starved wolves. More blinded than ever and his skin blistering, Zant couldn’t defend himself from the Sheikah’s assault, nor Link’s, nor Lana’s, all the while Fi kept Ghirahim across the arena. His guard dog, forced away from its flock. With every second in the sun, Zant was weakening. He simply couldn’t keep up, not while blinded and in agony like this. With desperate flings of their sword, he only barely managed to deflect the blows that would have otherwise sliced his head off. Blood stained the sand around him as strike after strike tore through his armor like it was no more than air. When his weapon finally fell from his hands, Midna took it as a sign, and grappled his battered body with a tendril for each limb. When he lifted his face, his stare was aimless, but full of malice.

“Sheik, now!”

Lana commanded, desperately eyeing the still-bleeding Sheikah commander. He complied with a nod too serene for such a boyish warrior. A glow gathered in his palms, abstract and foggy at first, until he grasped it, held it before him, and drew the string. Fuzzy sparkles shed from the light-made object, revealing its true form.

A bow. With a single blink, the Sheikah’s eyes turned from red to crystal blue.

It was the Princess! Ghirahim’s body froze over. In Zant’s current state, that single arrow would be fatal. What could stun their Master was deadly poison to his underlings.

An inhibition, once hard-coded into every fiber of his being, now shattered. Annihilation felt feather-light in his hands but crashed into Fi with the force of a stampede. A single facet chipped off her core, and would still be floating in the air when Ghirahim bolted to the center of the arena. Step, after step, after step, pummeling the sand into craters. The arrow nocked and braced, was then released. Ghirahim disappeared. A whistle, fletchings quivered in the air. Ghirahim burst into view in the middle of the Coliseum, arms outstretched. He grabbed Zant by the shoulders, and with a chime of diamond magic, they were gone.

The arrow pierced into the Keep wall. A piece of Fi’s core fell into the sand. Out of the five warriors present, none of them had been able to prevent their escape.

He needed shadows. There was only one place that would suffice. Around them, the world turned monochrome. With the Twili tucked carefully in his arms, he set his sights far beyond the labyrinth and took them both to the Palace. Nowhere would be darker than the quarters of the Twilight King.

Sheets hastily ripped off, bedding drenched in darkening blood. Zant lay stiff and unmoving, gasping like a fish, struggling none as Ghirahim ripped his clothes from him. A decorative fastening pin flew and clattered across the tile floor. Zant’s portrait above them looked on with a smirk.

Hyrulean weapons had gone right through his armor. He was a mess of red-stained wool and torn leather, gaping wounds pulsing fresh blood. Far too much of it. Ghirahim ripped the cork off a potion bottle with his teeth and shoved the glass opening to Zant’s lips, who coughed and sputtered as the thick liquid gushed down his gullet. 

“Just this- Just this, and you will be alright. Stay with me,” Ghirahim hissed, keeping a close eye on the Twili’s battered body. Wounds closed up, but too many remained raw and open. Cursing under his breath, he snipped his fingers, keeping one hand – glove bunched underneath his grip – pressed heavily to a gash on Zant’s thigh. And what a useless measure it was. This wound was just one of many that needed his attention. The sheets he tore from the cupboards, drenched in water from his nightstand washing table and spilled bourbon, soon lost their white cleanliness to deep, deathly red.

Needle and thread summoned themselves with a snip of his fingers. Sewing implements, but Ghirahim had little else in his reach. Zant cried and whined when the makeshift gauze was now pressurized by a knee, Ghirahim’s hands too occupied with the needle. Bent into a rounded angle around his finger, sterilized with a flame. He thread the needle and set to pushing it through flesh.

“I’d say your crying brings me misery, Zant,” he grinned, an expression creeping on him purely from his nerves, “but do not stop. At least then I know you are alive and conscious.”

Pierce, tug, tie, and snip. Rhythmic and perfect, Ghirahim mended wound by wound. He knew how to carve flesh, so too, did he know how to sew it back together. Each wound bled with different severity. His midriff, his legs, his chest. There, he’d been carved down to the rib, surrounded by irritated flesh and glowing veins. The body tormented by these injuries cried and cried, but had not the strength to even writhe. As focused as Ghirahim was, his eyes still strayed and flicked to his right. Zant’s naturally pallid complexion helped him absolutely none in telling how much time he had. But his fading patterns did. Their teal glow almost ceased. Another potion. This time, he poured some of it directly on the still-opened wounds, hoping their sizzle would burn the veins shut. Zant was awake enough to swallow the rest of it, but not to protest against the drops that snuck into his windpipe. Only when Ghirahim had turned him on his side to tend to his back did the healing liquid’s magical effect rejuvenate him enough to rasp and hack it up. He shrieked immediately when the sudden jolt caused Ghirahim’s needle to stick him.

“Keep whining, please,” Ghirahim muttered. “If you have enough energy to act childish, then…”

Zant hissed, growled, snarled, every tug of the thread now an affront. His toes curled and his fingers dug in the sheets, weakly, but characteristically, either way. When every wound he could see was stitched, Ghirahim took the cords of lacing out the loops at his back and rid Zant of his final layer. Red, white, black; teal slowly returning, if it wasn’t simply the phosphorescent glow of the room around them. In a few days, this body would be a rainbow of bruises. Should he last that long.

Only then did Ghirahim allow himself to draw breath. Not as a necessity, but as a soothing tic, to come back to his senses and for a second empathize with a mortal man. He slumped onto the bed, his head resting on Zant’s chest. It was in this rest that the full gravity of the past minutes reached him. Rather, it jumped full force onto his back, its weight forcing him into immobility and sinking him into the bed. Ghirahim couldn’t recall when he started weeping; he’d been on auto-pilot from the second Zelda nocked her arrow.

Zant’s heartbeat thumped against his forehead, hard and heavy as it would whenever the Twili had a lump in his throat. Its pace quickened when Ghirahim spoke. “I almost lost you.”

Zant’s hand raised, then dropped onto Ghirahim’s back. Cold fingers stroked him softly. “You may still, Oibedelrik, Yima Daegge Esweteli,” Zant whispered hoarsely, forcing his words out with the nigh manual contracting of his rib muscles. “Odowuni kem idzidiy Iya, ee Iya-” he murmured, his eyes rolling to the backs of their sockets. His eyelids fluttered shut, then shot back open, revealing darting pupils as if he’d just remembered where he was. “I am not yet bandaged,” wheeze, “and when my blood returns to me,” wheeze, “I may yet fall to fever.”

“Shut up.” Banish the thought. As if he would be so negligent! A doctor, he was not, but as much as he could bring death, he could also spot its tellings, and he did not intend on letting it rear its head again. Ghirahim closed his eyes, listening intently to his pulse – as if it would slip away if he turned away for even a second – then raised himself to finish the job.

He had to go back to the battlefield. There was no telling whether all their beasts had been defeated or not, or whether they even had a chance to take down Hyrule’s commanders. He would return, alone if he had to, Ghirahim decided as he stroked a warm, wet cloth along the dried blood on Zant’s torso where his stitches did not taint him. But he’d only leave when Zant was stable. 

In his spiraling, Zant’s hand had found its way to his hair, running its fingers through the strands. For once, Ghirahim cared not how bloodstained he would get. Zant’s weak voice muttered, slipping between heaving breaths. “All of them, at once… I foresaw many, but every caste and clade…”

“I know, I know,” Ghirahim responded, wringing the blood from the reddened cloth. “But the more we whittle down today, the less prepared they’ll be when Master strikes.”

“There is no ‘we’, Ghirahim. I cannot fight like this. I was bested once again.”

“I will take care of it,” Ghirahim muttered, a frown on his brow. He thought it ripe time to change the subject. “The Princess, disguising herself as a Sheikah... I’d almost say she exceeded us in trickery today.”

Zant sighed, his arm quickly becoming deadweight in his hand as Ghirahim took it for bandaging. That strange gray on his skin had spread almost no further. “Posing as a substitute for General Impa, I reckon.”

Ghirahim left Zant to his musings and grew oddly giddy with his own. The thrill of battle and clawing his companion away from death’s door scalded him from within, filling him with an inexplicable well of energy. 

“But if the Princess is here… That’s good news, wouldn’t you say?” Ghirahim began to prattle, a manic tug at his brow as he pinned the last few bandages in place. “Fewer commanders are guarding the palace than we expected. If we hurry and inform Master Ganondorf, surely–”

“Ghirahim–”

But Ghirahim did not hear him. Whatever he said then, he could not even recall himself, so thoroughly he was caught up in a whirlwind of plans.

“Ghirahim, stop.”

The pair met eyes in silence, one still wearing a bewildered grin, the other lying grim and pale on what was almost his resting place. “There is no point. Your revelation will fall on deaf ears. We were never meant to leave this desert.”

Ghirahim’s expression dropped, managing only a slight grin in his confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Master sent us here to die.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ghirahim frowned, fighting off a pit of dread in his gut. This was just his usual delirium, he thought. The same madness shaken into him by fear and injury, like it had Volga.

Zant, however, did not take his struggle kindly. He frowned at him indignantly. “You call me ridiculous? You deceive even yourself. Face it, Ghirahim. We are two against seven of Hyrule’s finest commanders. This was a suicide mission from the start, as I suspected Death Mountain must have been, too.”

“... But-” Ghirahim struggled, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Zant was a liar, he knew this. But now? To him? About something like this? Neither possibility, not Zant deceiving him so brazenly, nor being abandoned by his Master, computed in his mind. “We were- What could I have done to displease him to this degree? Why would he want to be rid of me? You speak nonsense!”

“You did nothing, Ghirahim. You are perfect. Your sole crime was associating with me. For me, it was only a matter of time until he did away with me. He is unworthy for the throne, and, one way or the other, I would have stopped him from seizing it.”

Ghirahim froze. Pieces fell on the ground before him but he didn’t dare to watch them assemble. Something hot and furious was starting to thaw the ice of his shock from within. “What?”

“Your surprise tells me he did not even bother to confirm his suspicions before abandoning you.” With a huff and groan, he shifted, trying to prop himself upright on his pillow. The grimace he pulled in his pain remained in his face, molded from rage and hatred. “I detest him, Ghirahim, and finally he has noticed it. He must have known I wished for his death, and that I intended to follow through.”

Ghirahim staggered away from the bed as if pushed. An instant revulsion forbade him from staying anywhere near the wounded man before him, and in his disgust, he willingly followed this instinct. He scowled at him, wide-eyed and vicious, tongue lashing and drenched with venom. “So your title was given to you for good reason. I cannot believe my ears. Immature little boy, you are! Our accursed usurper, unable to keep his grubby claws off any throne when he grows the slightest bit displeased. You ungrateful wretch!”

“Ungrateful? You know not what you speak of,” Zant scowled right back, tears of rage welling up in his eyes and his teeth bared. The Lord of Twilight turned to him unflinchingly, hunched like a pouncing beast as if his drive to convince him had filled him with fresh vigor. “In my time, Ganon was to me what Demise was to you. My God, I adored him,” he waxed, hands covering his face in grief. “I did his bidding. I worshiped him, freed us both from our decrepit prison. Yet, when I gave my life for him, he broke his promise to me. Instead of freeing my spirit to rule by his side, he took everything I ever worked for. And then- then-” Zant paused, hands falling limply into his lap. “When defeated by his little foil, when the strings of his soul dared touch upon mine to beg for my assistance, I denied him.”

Zant’s eyes turned to him again. The first hints of a smile pulled at the corner of his lips. “You understand, don’t you? It was no hero, no princess, who slayed the Demon King in the age of Twilight. The one to deliver the final blow, was me.”

That very second, a little part of Ghirahim’s world shattered. When he realized the consequences of plotting alongside a man so treacherous, the rest shattered with it. Right under his nose, Zant had made an enemy of his Master, and by extension, of Ghirahim. There were questions he wanted to ask, insults to be hurled. He could only think of one question, that bubbled to the surface of his heart like scum in a boiling pot. “How long have you plotted this?”

Zant lowered his gaze, for as far as the stare of a near-blind man mattered. “From the very start,” he admitted, sighing. “After such a betrayal, to awaken to another manifestation of my tormentor, and have him once again demand my services… He may as well have spat in my face. Though, I admit, for a little while, I buckled. Somewhere, I must have loved him still, drawn to his power and our shared hatred for Hyrule as I was. I wanted to see if I could trust this version of him, who seemed so noble. But after your stories, Ghirahim, how his incarnations cast you aside so carelessly… I made up my mind. Ganondorf does not change.”

“So then all of this was just a lie, part of your plans?” Ghirahim asked, his voice quaking. He didn’t care for Zant’s excuses, not when they pulled every minute he spent by his side into question. Not when they sabotaged everything he’s ever stood for. “I, too, just a little scheme for you?”

Zant gasped, inching closer to the edge of the bed to look at him in pleading. “No, Ghirahim. How could I have foreseen this? I came to you seeking an ally, and I found a new reason for my heart to beat. For every lie I have told you, I have spoken to you as many truths tenfold, in how I’ve grown to love you. It is only because of you I have made it this far. You’ve given me peace, soothed my soul when I threatened to bubble over. And, more importantly, Ghirahim-ili, you have made a warrior of me.” Zant urged, attempting a smile, his hand outstretched. “Which is why I ask you to join me.”

Ghirahim was too stupefied by his words to answer. So Zant took advantage of his silence to continue. “You know now of my hatred, my every motivation. Yet you stay loyal to him, even if you must know he will not spare you. He has not spared you, for he resigned someone so loyal to him to the same fate he did a traitor.”

His arms snaked around himself, his nails digging in the false skin of his arms. Ghirahim took another step back; the Twili’s presence alone made it feel like insects were crawling inside his steel, tunneling through him like termites. His mind hit a roadblock, reached a final terminal, and the logic Zant asked from him sat horizons away where his tracks would not reach. “... Then if Master wills it-”

Zant shot up in his seat, snapping at him before he could finish his sentence. “Do you know how it hurts me, Ghirahim? To see someone so precious to me tear himself apart over someone who would shatter him on a mere whim? After all you do for him, he denies you at every turn and punishes you for the barest things. It has taken every shred of composure I had not to tear into him when he threatened to hurt you. If I had not hated him before, the way he treats you would have convinced me to.”

He’d avoided his eyes up until then, but Ghirahim now shot his gaze straight at him. They exchanged a scowl, each gnashing teeth, one from hatred, one from love. Desperation seized him and sharpened his edge. 

Ghirahim made for him and pushed him back into the pillows. “You know not what you ask of me. To think I would care what hurts you now, after what you’ve told me! You speak of whims? You’re asking me to abandon my every purpose for something as small as your mortal love. My purpose is all I have. It is me. To ask me to betray Demise is to doom myself to scrap, Zant.”

Zant had refused a squeak when he was shoved. With tears in his eyes, he simply laid there, glaring at him. He cradled a freshly ruptured suture through its bandages. “You are not yourself when you speak of him! Listen to the words you spew! Scrap!? So highly you think of yourself, you carry yourself as the priceless artifact that you are, yet when around him, you are degraded to the ranks of mere tools.”

Ghirahim gripped his hair in wild frustration. “Because- I am precisely as perfect as I am because of Him! Without Him, without a hand to wield me, I am nothing.”

Zant stared at him, perturbed, before groaning in his agony and sinking into his pillows. For a moment, he wilted again, speaking bitterly as he resigned himself. “Then you have been, and will be nothing, for a very long time.”

In an instant, his vision went red. “How dare you!”

Ghirahim pounced him, hands outstretched and clawed, landing square upon his chest, ignoring the grit of Zant’s teeth, his squirms, his pained squeaks. All he paid attention to were his wide-open eyes and the fear he could milk out of them. He gripped him fiercely by the shoulders and shook him as he spoke. “It’s all your fault, isn’t it!? Why he would not wield me! Why I could not gain his trust!? All because of your greed, he now sees me as a conspirator to your rotten betrayal.”

His hands found Zant’s throat and squeezed. Ghirahim leaned in close, fangs bared. Zant did nothing. Just the sight of those glowing pupils fueled the fire of his rage. “A thousand miserable years I’ve waited, working hard to see him again. Do you have any idea what I’ve been through? Your puny, mortal mind could never comprehend the lengths I’ve gone to!”

He reared back his fist, and still Zant did nothing. “Now I can wait thousands more, and he will never wield me again!!”

Ghirahim panted amidst his accusations, tears streaming down his cheeks the second they beaded in the corners of his eyes. He scanned the Usurper’s eyes for substance, for anything that wasn’t pity. When he didn’t find it, he snapped. Before he knew it, his fist connected to Zant’s cheekbone. Crack. “How could you do this to me? We were going to win!” Crack. “I would finally have been happy, after I’ve been alone for so long, and you RUINED everything for me!”

Crack. Snap. A whimper. There wasn’t an inch of Zant’s face untainted by blood and bruising, and still, that horrible fool did nothing to stop him. “I should kill you!”

He sent Zant’s head twisting left to right, right to left, with each punch. His heart had broken twice over today. First, shattered to pieces from all hope of becoming his Master’s blade. Then, its shards were trampled by the very man below his relentless assault, who had punished him so severely for daring to open himself to that mortal love. What a complete and utter fool he’d been. He should have expected to be punished like this, for entering a world he didn’t belong in.

And still, past the swollen, blood-smeared skin, Zant did not take his gut-wrenching eyes off of him, trying to fool him into loving him again to save his own measly life. It was an outrage! A betrayal this massive, and Zant had the gall to try and garner his sympathy. To assert they were alike in fate. There was only one who had lost everything, whose prospects were null, and who was only living on borrowed time. Only one banished from his home, his every goal snatched from before his nose. Only one whom his Master truly abandoned, to never be forgiven.

… No.

There were two.

Before his fist could crash into him once more, a convulsion tore through Zant’s body below him. Within the blink of an eye, he changed. His skin lost all color, turning a deep, shadowy black, while his patterns dimmed, and his hair bristled into a brittle white, like spider’s silk. 

Zant was dying.

The ties to the Demon Scimitar pulsed in his chest. There lied that rebellious little dagger, the one that thumped against the walls of his core whenever this wretch would look at him in his strange ways. Did it not feel good? Its little voice whispered in his mind. Even if it was such a small piece of you in his hands, did it not fill you with joy? Master will not wield us, and this world has so few who are worthy of us. Is it not better to rest part of you in capable hands, than in nothing at all?

Ghirahim clutched his head, begging for silence. He could not handle even a second of doubt, of weakness. If this man were simply dead, everything would be so much easier. If he were the one to kill him, Master would forgive him. But are you ready for him to die? 

He was. He would have to be. He wanted to be. It would be so simple. He just wanted to be wielded. To be held in someone’s hands, to be part of something greater.

He wanted to be loved.

Please, help him.

Oh, God. What has he done?

He detested the despairing little squeak behind him as he walked away from that deathbed. Even more, he reviled himself, for glancing behind and allowing the teeth of guilt to sink into him at the pitiful sight of that beaten creature. 

What he hated most was how he’d been convinced to return after his brief departure, healing elixirs in hand, and seeing tear-drenched eyes looking at him with a bloody smile. 

Don't look at me like that, you horrible man. You’ve ruined my life.

But that pitiful part of him felt relieved how Zant could smile at the sight of him still. How Zant was glad to see him, even after attempting to take his life mere seconds earlier. A withered hand shook as it reached out for him. Ghirahim took it and squeezed.

The room was silent as Ghirahim nursed Zant back to health. Far, far into the desert outside, chaos was unfolding. The few remaining giant monsters were now surely being slaughtered, and their troops would have to cherish idle hopes of succeeding in their reign of terror, in their commanders’ absence. Deep, deep below the ground, Gerudo and Bulblin who could not fight were taking shelter in the dungeons, waiting for the pounding footfall to fade away and leave them in peace.

Neither side knew they were here. They would sit in this room, disturbed only by the glare of Zant’s portrait, judging this pathetic display. Zant strained to breathe. His complexion had inverted almost to its original colors, while his hair returned to its original, rosewood shade. However, some strands retained that ghostly white from before. Ghirahim hoped it would be permanent. He hoped he would remember this accursed day every time he was confronted with his reflection. 

Never before had shadows bothered him. Now, in the deep darkness of Zant’s bedroom, it suffocated him. Neither of them said a word. There was nothing to say, but in this stifling pit of nothingness, he began to crave the slightest noise. He wished he could go back to a time when this dark was comforting, to be filled with nothing but idle chatter and the grappling of their bodies. Like this, through noise, through touch, Ghirahim could only think to hurt him.

So, Ghirahim seized the bridge of Zant’s nose and cracked what cartilage he hadn't shattered back into place. He took hold of his jaw, counted to three in his head, and popped the crooked thing back in its sockets. If Zant had cried out in pain at any of this, he wouldn't have noticed. The ringing in his ears was just too loud. His handiwork now finished, he trusted the potions to do the rest. 

Then, he waited. For anything, really. For the battle raging outside to dissipate. For their forces to come bursting through the castle gate cheering with glee, or for the enemy to come raid it of every worth and woman inside, and drag the two of them to the gallows, while they were at it. But mostly, he waited for any change in Zant. 

Look at him. He cannot even raise a finger to hurt you. You could end this right here, right now, Ghirahim thought to himself. Yet he sat and did nothing. When his eyes met the ones that stared glossily back up at him, filled with agonized gratitude, that thought snuffed out, and its wicker would burn no longer.

Ghirahim swallowed his apprehension, inhaled sharply, and sighed. “What will you have me do?”

Zant opened his mouth to speak, but the shards of crumbled teeth fell into his throat as he uttered his first syllable. Ghirahim sat and watched as he choked and spat them out on his pillow.

“We are to wait out the right time to strike back for the throne, but today, we cannot. So we will have to fool them with one more ruse. Return to the battlefield, Ghirahim,” he wheezed, swallowing the blood from a dry throat. “Strike at whoever is closest. Be vengeful. Be fierce. You must fight like you never have before.

Zant breathed deeply. With each chug of air, another wound closed up, though their scars and deep black bruises remained. “You are to disappear with me. They must be convinced that I succumbed to my wounds.”

You should have.

“And, to their knowledge, you will take to the grave with me. Come closer,” he said. His hand searched beside his face on the pillow and retrieved a shard of tooth, long and pointy, almost complete. With a tiny crack, he then reached over, and fastened it to Ghirahim’s earring, to an empty link remaining there. “A memento, to convince them of my death.”

Ghirahim rose again in silence. A little piece of bone so small dangled from his ear, but the weight of its burden could tip him over. Zant continued to speak as if this was the simplest matter in the world. “Take our blade. My power rests within it, still, and it is all the help I can afford you.”

Listlessly, mechanically, Ghirahim rose from his seat before Zant even finished his sentence. The sword lay by his bedside, hastily thrown to the side along with Zant’s armor. He picked up that shard of himself and apologetically wiped it of its grime. 

A roar reverberated from outside, echoing past the sands and through the castle walls. Zant called to his attention again with his glowing eyes aimed straight at him. “The Gerudo are innocent in all this. The least we can do is scare this vermin away from their homes. I trust you to have tricks up your sleeve, Yima Mionaida.”

Despite it all, his little nicknames stirred in his chest. Ghirahim clenched his fist harder around the grip of the Demon Scimitar, as if to smother it. His Diamond. The miserable, manipulative cretin that he was. And Ghirahim was doing all his bidding. 

Just before he could turn his back to leave, he was halted one last time. “Ghirahim,” Zant started, but he knew saying his next words would only draw his ire. His face said every letter anyway. I’m sorry.

Ghirahim ran. Within a flash, he was back in the sweltering heat of the desert, bolting from the Temple Complex and kicking up sand trails in his escape. He tore past keeps, the slain corpses of their monsters, and field battles still unfolding between forces too stubborn to believe the war was won. Those who dared bar his way were dealt with swiftly, their heads rolling. He left the perfect trail like this. A pristine white lightning bolt with a sword sharper than the cruel edge of time, such a description could only fit one man. The eyes he sought snared onto him. Enemy commanders, skeptically scouring the desert and leaving not a stone unturned for a trace of Ganondorf’s finest. Now, they found him and were giving chase just like he wanted. 

Blood and plate mail carpeted the vast sands racing below his feet. Rock outcroppings raced past; trampled patches of desert scrub – Safflina and a type of sagebrush. The smell of drying vegetation filling the air was the same as when Zant held sprigs from them up to his nose for inspection – and, finally, the gate to the bazaar, zipped past him. Almost, he, the false deserter, had gotten away with leading the lot of them out into the wider desert, until a familiar rumble ripped him from his concentration. 

Ghirahim swerved to the side, narrowly avoiding a boulder that barreled past him. It skidded to a halt before him and unfolded, though he didn’t have to see that transformation to know what nuisance stood before him. There was, once again, Darunia, Chief of the Goron Tribes.

“Not one step further, Pebble.”

The sight of him was enough to startle even Ghirahim, though he was too jaded to find any delight in it. Darunia’s torso was heavily scarred, and his right arm, gone. In its place was a jumble of machinery, with pistons and gears whirring noisily to heave the weight of a massive hammer at the very end of the prosthetic limb. Beyond a solid steel helmet, the Goron Chief wore a wide grin, though one less eye stared back at Ghirahim than last time.

“Thought to slip by us, did you? All on your lonesome?” said the Goron Chief, brandishing his weapon. “I wasn’t looking forward to facing off against that nutcase anyhow, but a lil’ something tells me my siblings took care of that for me…”

Ghirahim looked back. The peaks of Gerudo Palace were no longer in sight. For whatever chaos he would unleash… This would have to be far enough. All he had to do was stall for time until the rest of the Hyrulean commanders caught up to him.

“You truly wish to keep me? Very well,” Ghirahim replied, holding the Demon Scimitar up to the sun. Sand powdered his bodysuit from top to bottom, crusting gray and gold in every crease. But their blade remained immaculate. Its silvery edge still shone into his pupils, like teeth flashing in a hungry grin. “Make this worth my while.”

Darunia’s hammer pounded into the ground fiercer than ever. The springs on his arm, hefty as it might have been, gave him untold speed and force with each swing. Ghirahim couldn’t stop the speed of that hammer anymore – where there were once bulging veins now sat machinery, forged from a steel he dared not chip the Demon Scimitar on. So, he had to settle for the rest of this massive creature. They clashed like this for what felt like hours, neither showing any signs of tiring. The resounding clanks of the warhammer striking upon resonant steel had surely deafened them both, and everyone daring to come near them. It was thoroughly inelegant. Ghirahim hissed, roared, lunged at him with wild swings wielding a sword leagues to big for his frame. Such wild desperation hampered him as much as it worked in his favor. A grief-stricken foe was always quickly underestimated. Even with his new accessories, Darunia would not leave this battlefield unscathed. A blade made from the heart would know how to find another without effort. As he riddled the Goron’s bulging ribcage with scars, a foreboding chime in his core once again alerted him of his pursuers. They were getting closer. He could feel it. 

Then, for a second, he could feel nothing at all. A split second of distraction cost him dearly, when it allowed for Darunia to come within arm’s reach and drive his hammer straight into him. The flat of the giant hammer drove into the side of his head with such a deafening impact he thought his head might snap clean off. Instead, he remained intact, launched across the bazaar to tumble through ruined market stands and trampled carpets. When he came to a halt, all he could see was dust, the approaching Darunia not more than a shadow in the clouds of sand. Ghirahim stood up, a hand to his wounded cheek to find it just that – wounded. Through his false skin, he could feel chips taken out his face, like little razor-sharp dimples on his cheek.

The rest of them were approaching now, right outside the gate. Ghirahim found the least he could do was give them a proper welcome spectacle. Concealed by the dust, he launched forward at the shape of the Goron Chief in ambush. Its wicked, curved tip aimed at the jugular. Darunia staggered away, but every twitch of movement just made the scimitar slice him deeper. With just one more stumbling step, Ghirahim got the vengeance he wanted. An arc of blood gushed from the Goron’s collarbone, splattering to accessorize Ghirahim’s wounded face. Clutching his bleeding wound, Darunia thrust his metal arm forward to push the Demon away from him and hobbled back into the dust. 

Ghirahim gave chase until he remembered his task. Wind whipped through his hair and took the sands with it, revealing at last his surroundings to him. Standing in an arc around him, barricading his way to the desert, stood the mightiest of Hyrule’s army. There was nowhere left to lure them, this would have to be his final stand. He could not fight all of them at once – not Link, not Fi, not Zelda, not all of the other pompous royals gathered here. But he could make them see. The blade, the tooth dangling from his ear. Now, he would make them witness his sorrow. To their knowledge, it would be grief for a fallen friend, but in the depths of his core, he felt nothing more than disgust for obeying the word of another.

Tears gushed from his eyes. He was doing this – he was betraying his Master. Ghirahim (was he even worthy of a name?) contorted his face into a maddened grin. The carnage, the destruction, the pure, unfiltered chaos this final gambit would unleash might have pleased Him, but it would not be in His name. It was moot! He should have accepted his fate in the Arbiter’s grounds. He should have stood patiently waiting in executioner’s row, to be pierced by the very same arrow that he saved his conspirator from. If his Master willed him to shatter, to turn to dust and forgotten in the eyes of history, then that was to be his fate, and nothing more. 

Instead, the Sword Spirit glared down the approaching Hyrulean commanders with the same manic grimace, and readied his spell.

“Šamu dullu-ya, Majora! Bēlu ellāmu-adāni, Lā Naparkû Umṣu! Anāku bussuru kâti bursaggû, naqrabu napištu. Banû annûm āra-šu ašītu, baqāru tidintuka!”

He danced and danced through the sand, flickering himself atop every surface he could find to evade the grasp of his assailants. Midna and Lana were the first to stiffen, to call for someone to put a stop to this, but none of the arrows sailing past could hit their mark. Every word drained more and more energy from him. This was a true summoning, a bargain driven. Within the first uttering of the Arch Demon’s name, he could feel it watching, stalking around him like a wolf with gnashing teeth, licking its lips until it found his offer sufficient. 

He would have thought it an infernal illusion, ripping him to some other plane of existence, did he not notice the straw hat atop the mask and the blue sky expanding behind it. The Skull Kid floated before him upside down, looking him dead in the eye. With a single tap on the nose, it shook him out of his paralysis.

“Took you long enough. Don’t let me get bored again, Ghirahim-ili!”

It mocked, it shrieked with laughter, and it rattled its mask. Arms to the sky, it hovered squeaking and groaning with strain, and then with the same great effort, swung its clawed little hands down as if pulling a massive lever. Then, it waved cheerfully and disappeared within a blink. 

Silence. Nothing at all. The commanders still around him stood waiting with caution, alarmed by the Arch Demon’s arrival, and just-as-sudden departure. Only when a rumble shook the pebbles on the bazaar grounds did they think to look up.

Not Ghirahim. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the skies for even a second. He saw it the second Majora disappeared. A small dot, a mere speck in the endless blue of the cloudless heavens, approaching rapidly. The Moon was falling down on Gerudo Desert.

Cries of panic, of retreat. Chimes of magical transportation rang around him. Hyrule’s commanders were fleeing en masse. Perhaps he would not strike his intended targets, but he didn’t care. This battle would find no spoils or prisoners. Nothing but a wasteland would be left, leaving not the slightest bone for the vultures to scavenge. Swirling clouds of condensation shrouded the Moon in its rapid descent. It was hypnotic, almost, Ghirahim thought, standing in the center of its massive shadow. He considered then what would happen if he simply stayed here. The clouds dissipated as the Moon crossed their threshold. By all means, he was insane for dawdling here, and yet he took the time. 

Head cocked curiously, but eyes blank, he peered up at a giant visage that scowled back. Like it challenged him, almost. He was forged to survive any impact, surpassed only by weaponry that rivaled him in magic ability. But he’d never been hit by a meteor before. Would it shatter him? Did that matter? Oh, how tempting the thought was. He was a dead man walking either way. Where would he go if he survived such an impact? Master would break him. 

Ah, his trump card was getting a little close for comfort now. He could feel the heat of its approach on his skin, its tremors shaking the ground beneath his feet. There were mere seconds between this moment and the inevitable crater the Moon would leave. He turned his stare away from the skies and turned to look around. Not a soul remained in the bazaar, but the soldiers that fled – be they friend or foe – certainly weren’t far enough to escape the blast radius. They’d be dust soon, blend in with the sands.

Playtime was over. He’d fantasized plenty. Zant was waiting for him; whether he’d find him succumbed to his wounds, or in a prime state to kill him himself, he’d have to see when he got there. Whether he’d have the guts to see him to his end…

Now, to get out of here. 

[marvelmusing]

Deserve You

Pairing: Aleksander Morozova x Corporalki!Reader

Summary: After surviving the Fold and the violence of the First Army, you and Aleksander are reunited, though he still struggles with his own monsters.

Warnings: brief mentions of canon level violence

A/N: the comfort fics have begun! This fic contains very minor spoilers for season two (no plot points, just the general background that has been seen in the trailers and promos)

My Masterlist

Aleksander knows you are tired. The past few days have been trying for you both.

The memory of your reunion, you crushing yourself against his chest, tears soaking into the fabric of his kefta, is at the forefront of his mind as he makes his way towards his rooms.

As he thinks of you, the scars on his face twinge. He knows you had done your best to heal the damage, as well as tailoring it away into thin black lines over his features.

Over the last few days, Aleksander has seen your fingers flexing in a familiar motion, easing the pain throbbing at your temples after another sleepless night. Eyes aching after a bought of tears that you had hidden from everyone else - even him.

He can only hope that you hadn’t waited up for him tonight, though he is half expecting to see you sat at his desk with a book in hand like usual.

He didn’t mind it when you could curl up by the fireplace in his study at the Little Palace, or one of the armchairs tucked away in the corner of his war room, as you waited for him to return from overrun meetings or training sessions.

But here, in this abandoned old estate where he and his Grisha have been forced to take refuge in, he knows you will struggle to find such luxuries. He hopes to find you comfortable in bed, perhaps even already asleep.

Instead, Aleksander finds you curled into a ball on the old armchair by the fireplace in his study. The firelight flickers over your face, features softened as you dream. Neck at an odd angle, your head is against the armrest, face nuzzled against the swaddle of dark blanket you had bundled around yourself.

He knows from experience that the armchair you’re sleeping on is rather uncomfortable. The cushioning is well worn, providing little protection from the hard wooden base, and the fabric is fraying at the edges.

As he steps towards you, quietly in an attempt at not disturbing your rest, he realises it isn’t a blanket draped over your frame. It’s his cloak.

Tears gloss in Aleksander’s eyes at the thought of losing this - losing you. The rest of the Grisha fear him, even those who are loyal to him feel unsettled by the unnatural power he had gained but had yet to use in their presence.

The bone rattling ache that reverberates in his very soul at the creation of his creatures is enough of an incentive to use this power only in times of great need.

Only once had the nichevo’ya slipped from his control, when he had found you in one of the First Army prison camps.

Hands bound to prevent you from using your power, you had been helpless to stop the Sergeant that grabbed you during the commotion of Aleksander’s attack.

At every camp he liberated, Aleksander had searched for you, desperately hoping you were alive and unharmed. When he found you, knife at your throat, being used as a bargaining chip for some pathetic solider, the shadows had spilt out of him, vying for blood.

That uncontrollable burst of power had formed into a creature that tore through the soldier, flinging you to safely before it mauled him to a painful and grisly death.

Wide eyed, a shallow cut against your throat, you had stared at Aleksander as he rushed over to you, dropping to his knees to assess the damage. He had summoned the Cut instantly, shattering your shackles and guiding your hands to your wound, however minor it was.

Once you were healed, he finally gained the will to withdraw his monster from the body of the soldier, studying your expression all the while.

When you had reached for him, concerned about the visible wounds left by the volcra instead of asking about his abominations, he had been surprised.

Even now, despite everything, you still consider him your safe space - gaining comfort from his cloak when he could not be here to hold you himself.

Knowing you will be uncomfortable when you wake if he does not move you, he bends down to rouse you gently from your slumber. His breath catches at the sight of your lashes fluttering delicately as you slowly pull yourself away from sleep.

Then you tense, eyes widening and body backing away into the seat of the armchair. He shushes you softly, saying your name in a low voice and ignoring the spike in his chest at your fearful response.

“Only me,” he assures you.

The ache only alleviates once you relax, which happens instantly when you recognise his presence. Mumbling his name sleepily, you reach towards him, closing the already limited space between you.

The proximity allows him to see the cloak better, curled purposefully around your shoulders with the excess bundled against your chest. Then he notices the mud on the hem by your bare feet. He frowns.

“Is this the cloak I wore to Ryevost?”

At his question, you glance down, running your fingertip over the edge of the soft lining that had been keeping you warm as you slept.

“The new ones don’t smell like you.”

“This one smells of horse,” he counters with a teasing arch of his brow.

“Horse and you. But mostly you.”

He hums, disliking the thought of you using something dirty. In Aleksander’s opinion, you deserve to lie on the finest silks and beneath the softest of blankets. Instead, you’re making do with his travel worn clothing.

“Perhaps I could select a cloak solely for indoor use, which you could steal from me instead of this one.”

“Or maybe one of your keftas?” you suggest, avoiding his eyes.

In response, he hooks a finger beneath your chin, tilting your head back to meet his gaze. A heat fills him, his lips twitching into a smirk as he adds his own suggestion,

“Just the kefta?”

Warmth spreads over your cheeks, as a long unseen mischief fills your eyes.

“Perhaps on special occasions.”

He hums approvingly, leaning forward to kiss your lips.

It’s only once he moves to lift you into his arms that you pull away from him, shaking your head and assuring him hurriedly,

“No, no. I can stand.”

He pauses, staring into your eyes. The concern there tugs at his heart, soothing the burn of his pride at the nervous edge in your voice. Ever since his return, you’ve been afraid of the damage his survival did to his body.

“I’m not fragile,” he states firmly, resolve hardening as he pushes the cloak from your body, revealing your night attire as he wraps his arms around you.

Scooping you up against his chest, he swallows down the small tinge of pain at the effort as he moves towards his bedroom.

“I’m not saying you are, Sasha. But you shouldn’t exert yourself.”

He lowers you at the foot of the bed you share, pressing a tender kiss to your forehead. As he backs away, you frown and add,

“You should get some rest.”

As he opens up a drawer to retrieve his night shirt, the corner of his mouth curls into a half smile, one that only you can bring out of him.

“As should you.”

Straightening slightly, you watch as if you’re waiting for him to return to his study. He knows if he did, you would pull on his bathrobe and join him as he worked.

“Not without you.”

He nods in assent, gesturing towards the head of the bed with his shirt still in hand.

“I’m joining you. Please, get comfortable.”

Following his order is easy enough for you, pulling back the covers and sliding your bare legs against the chilly sheets. He watches you shiver lightly as he shrugs off his kefta, tossing it aside before he removes his cotton tunic as well.

Aleksander feels your eyes on his bare chest as he tugs on his grey sleep shirt. He knows you are looking over the scars that litter his body, both new and old, the faded white, fresh pink, and inky black. Plenty of them had been healed by your own hand.

As he pulls his trousers down and changes his underwear, you lie back against the pillows, subconsciously nearing the centre of the bed to be close to him when he arrives.

Aleksander joins you, as promised, sliding beneath the covers to lie on his back and welcome you into his arms. He remains still, allowing you to shift yourself into a comfortable position around him.

Nestling into the side of his body, half draped over him, you press a kiss to the spot between his neck and his shoulder. Aleksander shivers, tightening his hold on you as the chilly tip of your nose brushes over his skin.

Then you settle further down, resting your head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat as the world goes quiet.

He murmurs the admission that has been weighing him down over the last few days, saddened words against your hair as he brushes his lips over the crown of your head.

Even as you’re half asleep, you pick up on his distress, lifting your head slightly,

“Sasha?”

He knows you will pick up on his heartbeat if he lies. The self loathing that has been festering under his skin urges him to repeat himself, in the hope that you will finally see sense and flee from him.

“I don’t deserve you.”

Instead of responding, you burrow further into his arms, curling your own protectively around his waist and the back of his neck as you press your body over the top of his.

As your fingers thread lightly through his hair, his eyes flutter closed. He feels something inside him shatter as you place a kiss against his neck, where his heartbeat is the strongest.

“It doesn’t matter,” you say quietly. “This is what I want to give you.”

He feels your fingers tighten in his hair and the fabric of his shirt. The concept of anyone giving Aleksander something with no expectations is foreign to him. Everyone wants something.

Though all you appear to want is him.

Not the Darkling who can summon creatures of shadow. Not the General who offers you protection. Or the amplifier that could give you the strength to perhaps rival the sun summoner. Not even the boy, Aleksander, who learnt cruelty from his mother’s knee.

All the fractured pieces of himself, hardened and lost and twisted by time and suffering. Aleksander can never deny you what you want, but he never imagined you could want him so much, in spite of everything he has become.

His dark eyes fill with tears once again, the reclined position of his head causing them to spill out, casting wet streaks over his temples.

“Whether you deserve it or not, this is what I want. I want to love you, Aleksander.”

-

marvelmusing Tag List: @dreamlandcreations @blanchedelioncourt @idaofinfinity @slytherheign @ellooo0ooo @vixenofcourse @dumb-fawkin-bitch @jane-arthur @ilikefictionmen @budugu @watersquirtpewpewboomm @mysweetlittledesire

Aleksander M Tag List: @nyctophiliiiiaaa @jazmin2211 @wooya1224

BB Characters Tag List: @rachlovesactors @noortsshift @aikeia @weallhaveadestiny @two-unbeatable-beaters

[mysaldate]

Vil's agency and my worries for the upcoming event

Alright, time for another analysis, once again centered on Vil. Disclaimer to start with because people love to take what I said out of context: This post will have my worries about the upcoming Halloween event (Playfulland) which comes out in two days. It is entirely possible that I am wrong about what I'm going to say here but as I will hopefully explain in this post, there is a disturbing pattern regarding Vil and his agency as a character going on in the game which makes me worried this event will fall into the same routine. I am not claiming this event will absolutely 100% do what I outline here and I am not saying the event is bad before it even came out.

Side note before we delve into this, I already do not like this event visually, I find the style tacky and cheap and all over the place. However, I recognize some people enjoy it. This post is not about that, I will not be trying to make you dislike the event, and I expect the same respect back. Now, onto the analysis.

When seeing the previews and plot synopsis for the new event, something felt off to me, uncomfortably so. As some of you may already know, I am fairly sensitive to loss of agency in canon, especially for characters I relate to, because it reminds me of my own history of abuse. "Turning the characters into puppets" seems like a premise ripe with loss of agency and the wording of the synopsis as well as the promo video did little to elevate these concerns. Specifically when it came to Vil.

Now, I probably don't have to explain why the idea of Vil getting indulgent and forgetting about the real world and ending up a puppet of his desires goes against his entire character. Then again, the event isn't out yet so I can't tell for sure if that is what's going to happen. The synopsis seems to hint at it and given twst's past events, the ones to snap out of it will most likely be the SSRs or, at most, the story sr, which is Floyd. Then I began to think back on other events and cards Vil has and I came to a very disturbing realization: Vil gets punished for showing agency and rewarded for not having any. Allow me to elaborate.

In many of the stories Vil shows up in, we see a strange push to punish Vil for being active and taking charge of events or we see Vil being passive and reactive and getting rewarded for that. In the Sunset Savannah event, Vil doesn't want to go originally but is convinced and dragged along by Leona. He doesn't join the event because he wants to but because he's bribed to. During the event, he shows more agency and begins to be more active – which then results in him getting his ankle twisted. This isn't a one-off situation either. In Beans Day, Vil is very active and shows off his leadership skills as well as his amazing planning and prediction abilities. How does this pay off? Rook shows up out of nowhere and captures him, putting him out of the game. Once again, Vil had agency and then got punished for it. During Vargas Camp, Vil is once again on top of things. He is a leader, he is a wonderful outdoorsman, and he shows lots of agency. How does the game treat this? He is forced to forfeit his agency for weeks to Azul because we are meant to believe Vil and Trey – two of the most competent mages at NRC – would not be able to get by without Azul's help. Azul is the R in this event.

But it's not event SRs either. I have already talked about Vil's labcoat story previously but looking at it from the perspective of Vil's agency reveals something I didn't realize at first. By the time the game came out, Vil's foundation of the Film Research club was one of his biggest acts of agency we were directly confronted with. In Vil's labcoat story, he exercises further agency by going out of his way to prepare for an important shooting. How does the game treat this? He is gaslit and made to feel insecure by Rook to the point where he begins to skip meals. And how does he get out of this state? Does he do an introspection and realize Rook was just trying to manipulate and control him? Does he ask someone for a second opinion? No. He is approached by Trey who then convinces him to eat cake with him. Vil is not only punished for showing agency but also rewarded for giving his agency up and just doing what people tell him to.

Well, maybe that's just his SRs though. Surely in his SSRs where he is meant to be the main star, this isn't the case, right? Well... His dorm uniform story is about a magazine wanting an interview with him. Right off the bat, Vil is the reactive element here. Vil then puts together new schedules and begins to get his dorm in an even better shape – which gets him complaints and grumbles from everyone. He is punished for showing agency even though it is to the other students' benefit. Vil doesn't let up and exercises further agency by adjusting the meal and exercise plans to be personalized – and he gets Rook telling him that nobody cares anyway and he is just wasting his time. Yes, the dorm members quietly change their opinion of Vil but they never tell him. The only feedback Vil has is from Rook who is, once again, punishing him for having agency.

Vil's Scalding Sands SSR card doesn't have a story but that doesn't stop it from taking away any agency Vil might've had. Not only did he not actually visit Scalding Sands, he wasn't even the one to obtain the outfit. Rather, Trey brought it to him as a gift because Kalim's parents just gave it away. Mind you, this note was completely unnecessary. The only purpose it serves for Vil is making sure he doesn't have any agency at all after already taking away what could've been an interesting story.

And then we get to Halloween. The first Halloween event was a huge breath of fresh air for Vil. He is very active and shows tons of agency. Vil is part of the Halloween committee, he oversees costume themes and makeup, he is one of the key pieces of the plan to scare away the Magicamonsters, he shows more agency than he did in the rest of the stories altogether. What is the outcome of all this? Well, he is promptly kidnapped the following night, possessed by a ghost, and made to act shamefully in front of his friends. Wow. Complete mind-control and erasure of any hint of agency specifically for the reason of him having agency in the first event.

But I hear you, all of these are just events or cards, someone else might be writing them. There's no way this is how he's meant to be seen in the main story, right? Well... Not exactly. And to make one thing clear, I am not caught up on every single tweet Yana Toboso makes. I know people have been saying for months now that Vil is Yana's favorite character but I have yet to see any proof of the claim. It started around the time Vil's Scalding Sands SSR dropped and most of it back then read as jealousy. Whether or not that was the case, I cannot tell. If this is the treatment Vil gets as a favorite character, I just hope Yana never takes a liking to me (this is a joke).

The first time we really meet and interact with Vil in the main story in any sort of meaningful way and without him just being lumped up with the rest of the dorm leaders is in Book 2, and he is quickly ridiculed and mocked for showing agency in caring how he will look during the Magift tournament. And yes, I know the novel made tweaks to this set of scenes, the novel isn't canon to the game and it showed so on multiple occasions. So right off the bat, not a great start for Vil's agency as a character.

We barely see him after that up until Book 5. Now, I have a whole post about the meaning of Vil's overblot that you can read here but this time, I want to focus on something else about this chapter. This chapter is a masterclass on how to punish a character for showing agency. Vil is painted as unreasonable and over the top from the start, be it in providing legitimate criticism to the VDC tryouts or in getting upset at his agent for violating his boundaries and signing him up for roles he explicitly doesn't want to play. Both of these are treated by the story as flaws and issues when neither of them really is. Vil being strict with the other VDC group members is for their good as well as his own. And Vil setting up boundaries over which roles he is and isn't willing to take stems from his history of being typecasted and dehumanized for his casting (I go deeper into this in the other Vil analysis post). Both of these are healthy displays of agency, yet the main story frames them in a way that makes Vil seem unreasonable for doing these things.

Vil's agency brings him a temporary reward but that is immediately taken away when during the preliminary tryout performances, he is overtaken by an objectively mediocre performance. All his hard work, all his agency, is immediately thrown out the window for the sole purpose of making him feel miserable. Once again, he is punished for exercising his agency. What he does next and his overblot are exceptions to this as Vil used his agency to do something objectively bad and the resulting overblot is more of a natural consequence than a punishment (albeit I have my gripes with how the overblot was handled as well). The final nail in the coffin in book 5 came after the overblot when Vil, once more, exercised his agency to push through his pain and still perform. Not only was he punished for his efforts by losing the competition but he was then further berated for the overblot yet again (as well as being gaslit once again by Rook, this is nothing new).

I've heard some people say that Book 6 is good in this regard, that it gives characters agency and character development. I disagree with this claim. Vil, together with the other overblotees, is kidnapped and locked up, then used as test subjects. This is about as far removed from them having agency as can be, except perhaps the ghost possession plot earlier. There is some vague talk about having to sign a consent slip but 1) this is already ridiculous after having abducted them with the use of excessive force, and 2) we are never given any reason to believe signing was their choice and not something forced out of them. They are then experimented on and that's a whole mess that removes any and all agency from everyone present. The issue with Vil specifically is that in Vil's case, this has been a pattern for a while at this point. And then we get to the Shroud brothers overblotting... Saving the world because you would be one of the people dying if it ended is not agency and it is not character development. I know the chapter tried to give Vil and everyone else a "reason" to stop the overblot but that doesn't erase the fact that if they didn't, they would die. This isn't agency, this is having a sense of self-preservation. Even if some other version of them would get to live happily and get everything they ever wanted handed to them on a silver platter, it would not be them, and they would still be either dead or erased from existence altogether (this is a side note but how exactly would resetting the universe even work? Nothing else anywhere in the franchise suggests this is even an actual possibility. Even Malleus, one of the top five mages in the world could only lock away one island by using so much magic he overblotted. Book 6's plot breaks the worldbuilding in so many ways- but that's a tangent for another time).

The one and only moment of Vil having agency in book 6 comes when he jumps in to save Idia's life. And while Idia, who has been under the influence of Tartaros for way longer and spent so much more time in it, is perfectly fine, Vil gets "aged up" a hundred years. This is not only bad writing which makes no sense but also a tremendous punishment for Vil as someone who relies on his looks for several of his jobs as well as being someone who puts so much effort into his appearance. Of course, that is not even mentioning that the supposedly older version of him looks nothing at all like Vil, has a completely different body type and face structure, and is a nod to magical transformation and not aging. Vil showcased his agency and immediately got punished for it in the most horrendous way for the character. How does Vil get out of this situation? Does he utilize his vast knowledge of potions and magic to revert himself back? Does he figure out a way to curse himself to turn back to normal? Does he seek council with a powerful or knowledgable mage, perhaps a teacher? No. He cries at the beach and doesn't do anything and then Malleus comes around, snaps his fingers, and returns everything back. Vil is not only punished for showing agency, but he is once again actively rewarded for not having any.

So, why do I believe this event will involve loss of agency for at least some of the characters? Because Vil is involved and twst has made it a pattern to rid Vil of agency. Why am I worried about this event? Because every time Vil becomes active, he gets a slap in the face for his efforts and sometimes is even rewarded for just sitting there and looking pretty. This is not what I want from a character like Vil, or from any character really. At this point, Cinderella and Snow White from the original Disney movies had better agency than Vil because when they showed agency and took active hold of their parts in the story, they were adequately rewarded, not slapped in the face for it.

Now, I am sure this leaves you with some questions, so I will try to answer those I could come up with myself here. Why do I only mention Vil when other overblotees lost their agency in book 6 and had their agency treated as wrong in their books? Because none of them were quite like Vil. None of them got punished in a twist of bad writing for saving someone's life. And their negative agency was things that were actively harmful to others such as Riddle being an unreasonable tyrant kicking people out to sleep outside, Leona trying to murder people, Azul enslaving others, etc. Vil's negative agency throughout the chapter was setting boundaries for himself and expecting people to work for the money they hoped to win.

Why am I not talking about the other characters who got possessed? Because, for the most part, it was a once-and-done deal. Yes, some of them are now showing up in Playfulland (Cater, Jade, etc.) but these characters don't have a pattern of having their agency taken away or punished at nearly every opportunity.

Why do I harp on Rook so much? Because he's the textbook definition of a gaslighter, he constantly puts Vil down, he's often used as a tool to punish Vil's agency, he actively tries to isolate Vil from other people and make him doubt his own perception, and because he thinks it is his place and his place only to judge and punish Vil for whatever he deems incorrect. And just in case I need to stress this, which I shouldn't, I am an abuse victim. I went through literal decades of gaslighting paired with other types of mental and physical abuse. Rook's wording, actions, and general patterns of behavior, are all things that hit so close to what I experienced that he used to be a legitimate trigger for me, and still makes me incredibly uncomfortable. This is, of course, not to say you cannot like the character. But denying what he does and mocking abuse victims for speaking out about their experiences isn't the same as enjoying a problematic character. The way Rook is brings active harm both to Vil as a person and to his agency, which is to be expected of a character like this.

I would like to close this up by saying that I am aware these may be conscious choices to showcase how resilient Vil can be, how he never gives up in the face of adversity, and how he perseveres in spite of all these horrific things happening to him. But at some point, it gets tiring to see your comfort character get beaten down on every turn. It gets depressing to see him never succeeding and always getting hurt or abused for just being active and taking charge of his own life. There are ways to show resilience that don't involve punishing every time a character shows agency. There is also no reason to punish that but then reward loss of agency. When Vil gives up and stops trying, that should not be the moment things start going well. Malleus shouldn't have to swoop in and magically restore Vil's youth when Vil just passively accepted that he is just going to look like this now and, if the accident truly aged him and didn't just transform his body (which would make a lot more sense), possibly die within the next few weeks or months.

Ultimately, I do not like how twst treats Vil. I hope to see this improve but I wouldn't count on it. It's not so bad that I want to leave the game over it but it is a part of what worries me about the stories to come, especially with the new event and book 7 and what they probably have in store. For now, I will remain cautiously optimistic and hope it at the very least won't be as bad as book 6.

If you've read this far, thank you so much, I appreciate you, feel free to let me know your thoughts, preferably in a polite and civilized manner. I'm down to discuss many parts of this but there are also a few that I don't see myself budging on (such as gaslighter Rook). For the most part tho, I am always happy to talk to people about my analyses and takes on things pertaining to my fandoms. Thank you again for your attention and I'll see you next time something gives me this much of a brainrot.

[kumoriyami-xiuzhen]

Hakuoki Drama CD - Shimabara Disturbance Track 1 English translation

Happy new year everyone! I know it’s kinda late to be saying that... but whatever. Decided that I’ll only be translating track 1 this month and then not doing anything else until after February 22 since I need to study like 700 pages of text.... sorry but not really sorry? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (committing to writing my exam has cost me +$1000 so yeah.)

Anyway, in regards to the Hakuoki dramas that I wanted translated, this one probably ranked first or second, right next to Shinsengumi Oni-tan... but it was too much work to go look up the sections that were missing from the tl I found for the longest time.

As a warning, I HIGHLY ADVISE AGAINST READING THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED THROUGH THE SHIMABARA INFILTRATION MISSION FROM ZUISOUROKU (specifically Saito’s route, and I’m going stress the fact that this is NOT my bias speaking, and that this is a recommendation being made based on the drama itself, though it should probably be fine if you’ve watched the Hakuoki Sekkaroku anime...? Probably? Well, assuming that’s the one where they go to Shimabara since there are some spoilers for it too?).

Also, the promo video for this has been posted to my video blog if anyone wants to watch that. 

enjoy!

Hakuoki Drama CD - Shimabara Disturbance Track 1:  A Man Without Greed

Translation by KumoriYami

Hijikata: Thank you for all your hard work, Saito. It really was the right choice to leave capturing all the ronin at the inn to your Third Division.

Saito: Please don't say that, however, Vice-Commander, what is this money for?

Hijikata: It’s a bounty, a bonus for doing especially hard work. 

Saito: But, I was merely accomplishing my duties as a member of the Shinsengumi. How can I accept a bounty for it? Furthermore, this is too much.

Hijikata: I knew you wouldn't accept it. Forget it, I don't want to force you into accepting it because I often send you on difficult missions. If I give you the occasional reward, you shouldn't decline, and just accept it.

Saito: I understand, then I'll gratefully accept it.  

(Saito leaves the room and starts walking away)

Saito: A bounty...?

Saito: I can't betray the Vice-Commander's kindness, so I need to think about how to use this.... how should this best be used? Since there was so much of a bonus, it shouldn’t be spent all at once... In this case, exactly what should I do?

(sound of fighting from the dojo)

Saito: Hrm? It’s quite noisy in the dojo. is someone training the troops? I’ll go observe the situation..

Souji:  No good, no good~ your sword is too slow, your footwork is sloppy [or steps taken are too small. reword later?], and there are weaknesses everywhere! There are too many flaws, so if you don't want to die, you better work harder.  

Warrior:  Yes...

Saito: Hrm.

Souji: Areh, Hajime-kun, when did you get there/here? What's wrong? You look like you have something to say.

Saito: You’re still conducting harsh training as always. It’s fine if you train the troops, but there’s no point in causing injuries before they can become more useful. . 

Souji: Is that so? I’m already very gentle~. If this sort of attack killed someone, they'd immediately get cut down in real combat when fighting ronin~

Saito: Although that's true...

Souji: Anyway, would Hajime-kun like to have a match with me? That just now wasn't training for me. I'd be very happy if you were my opponent.

Saito: No, my apologies, but I have something I need to think about.

Souji: What's wrong? You aren’t speaking clearly.

Saito: I have abrupt question for you, Souji.

Souji: It's rare for Hajime-kun to consult me. What is it?

Saito: If you were suddenly given a lot of money, how would you use it?

Souji: Me? In that case... I'd buy some candy and share/eat with the kids living nearby.

Saito: Ah.... I see....

Souji: Isn't it rude to sigh/seem so disappointed after hearing someone else's answer? Speaking of which, did you receive a lot of money again?

Saito: Well....

Souji: That's why you should use it and not worry about it. It’s a luxury to worry about how to spend money.

Saito:.....

Souji: Just spend it however you want. Dignity and standards don't matter, regardless if that's in the eyes of Hijikata-san or anyone else.

Saito: If I was able to do what you suggested, I wouldn't have asked you.

Souji: Seriously? Hajime-kun, you really have no desires...

Saito: It’s true that I have no desires for material things. 

Souji: I think it’s just that you’re not materialistic. Well, my opinions won’t matter anyway. Besides snacks, all I can think about are the caltrops I bought and scattered in Hijikata-san’s room. 

Saito:....I’ll head back to my room to think about it again. Excuse me then, Souji.

(Saito walks away)

Souji: Huh... it’s a problem too be so rigid. 

-------

Saito: Then, what should I be doing? There’s nothing I need to buy right away, and I don’t want to spend money on food and drink either...

(sound of running then a door slides open)

Shinpachi: Yo, Saito! Excuse me!

Saito: Shinpachi? Sano and Heisuke, what’s wrong?

Harada: Hehe, I heard about it, Saito. You received a large bonus, right?

Saito: That is the case. Why do you know that?

Shinpachi: Well, in any case, that doesn’t matter right? You're so serious, so even if you got a huge sum of money, you probably wouldn't know how to spent it, right? We just came over to give you some ideas!

Heisuke: Hajime-kun, how is that going? Have you made a decision on how to spend it?

Saito: No, not yet.

Harada: Let me ask you first, is there something that you want?

Saito: There's nothing I want in particular.

Shinpachi: If it's like that, then just go to Shimabara!

Saito: Shimabara?

Shinpachi: That’s right! Enjoy the company of geishas is the way to go, right?!

Saito: I'm sorry, I'm not interested.

Harada: Well, Saito is the same as always. What about getting a new katana?

Saito: Unfortunately, the blade was sharpened recently, and it is a Kunishige...

Heisuke: Ah~ I get it, I get it! Speaking of which, does Hajime-kun have any interests?

Saito: An interest? Why are you suddenly asking me this?

Heisuke: Generally speaking, people spend money on the things they like. I've never seen Hajime-kun spend money on his own interests.

Harada: That’s true. Do you have one?

Saito: An interest...? I appreciate katana and other things... 

Sano: No need to continue, I get it. 

Heisuke: That’s right... even when he has time off, Hajime-kun is still working...

Harada: This is a rare opportunity. Why don't you try something that you haven't done before?

Saito: Haven’t tried before?   

Harada: For example... reciting haiku like HIjikata-san. 

Shinpachi: That's true... you'd be very suitable to reciting haiku. So if you were doing that with HIjikata-san, it'd go like...

~~[this is being imagined]~~

Hijikata: It's become warmer, 

more recently it feels that, 

spring's finally sprung. [yeah that matches the 5-7-5 stanza haiku syllable count... why the hell did I try to match that?]

 How about it, Saito? Try composing a haiku about spring. 

Saito: Yes.

The warbler is perched [more literally it’s on a branch... but w/e]

It chirps again and again

It cries are ceaseless

Hijikata: Oh~ that wasn’t bad! Although it's very straightforward, it's very easy to understand.

Saito: I’m honoured to receive your praise. I will continue to improve from now on.

Hijikata:Ooh, the journey to learning haiku is long and hard, do your best.

~~~[end of imagination sequence]~~~

Shinpachi: No, it shouldn’t be like that... 

Harada: No, not like that. 

Heisuke: Anyway, it doesn’t cost money to compose haiku. At most, he could buy a few collections. 

Harada: That’s right, the purpose is to spend money.

Shinpachi: So, what about buying some delicious food? We could find out which store has the best dango and eat them all one by one. 

Harada: Why don’t you replace the dango with something more expensive? Like with sake to go drink.

Saito: Go drink?  

~~~imagination sequence~~~

Saito: Store owner, is there anymore sake left?

Owner: I'm terribly sorry, that was all the sake in the establishment

Saito: No, wait, the sake on the shelf over there hasn't been served yet.

Owner: Th-That's not for sale. It's a specialty sake from my hometown.

Serve it. I won't stop drinking until I have all the sake in the store. If you don't serve it...

(unsheathes blade)

Owner: Th-That sort of thing...Please wait!  Okyakusama!  Okyakusama..!

~~~[end of imagined sequence]~~~ 

Shinpachi: Is going out for sake supposed to be like that? 

Harada: No, it isn’t. 

Heisuke: Furthermore, that's what Sano-san wants to do right?

Harada: Then what ideas would you propose, Heisuke?

Heisuke: Eh: In... in that case... a show house [ 見世物小屋 is the word here in Japanese... Wikipedia says the term “freak show” is used overseas. had to get the audio as text because I wasn’t sure of the word I had used originally].?

Shinpachi: A show house? It's true that tickets are expensive so that might not be bad...

~~~[imagination sequence]~~~

(crowd going ooh)

Saito: Come one, come all Regardless of how ridiculous the order is, I will obey it without fail. I am the legendary dog with a human face [or human dog... I guess].

(crowd clamor)

Saito: Vice-Commander, please immediately give me an order. 

HIjikata: Saito! Apprehend Souji, who scattered caltrops around my room!

Saito: Understood! No, wan! Dog with a human face, going forth!

(crowd clamor)

~~~[end of imagined sequence]~~~ 

Heisuke: Why is Hajime-kun working for the show house? That would be for making money, not spending it!

Harada: And isn’t the dog with a human face just like the usual Saito? He’s someone who called a human with dog like traits.

Shinpachi: But with so many options, there should be something you're interested in. How about it, Saito?

Saito: No, I’m sorry, but I can’t accept any of these proposals you’ve given.  

Harada: Well, that’s how it is. 

Shinpachi: Sure enough, it’ll just be going to Shimabara. Occasionally, you do go drinking together with us! 

Harada: Can't you say anything else? He said it already that he wasn't interested.

Saito: But, it might not be bad to spend this money on someone else. I'll need to think this over again.

Heisuke: For someone else...?

Saito: Heisuke, what is it?

Heisuke: Eh? Ah, it’s nothing! 

Harada: Then, we’ll take our leave now. 

Shinpachi: Tell us when you figure out how to use it! If you decided on going to Shimabara, I'll approve of that!

(door slides open, Shinpachi and Harada leave)

Heisuke: Then, I’ll be going too. 

Saito: Wait, Heisuke. What was it that you were going to say? Your expression is strange. 

Heisuke: No, I was just a bit envious of Hajime-kun.

Saito: Envious?

Heisuke: If I had a lot of money, I would give Chizuru a beautiful kimono.

Saito: A beautiful kimono... like the clothes she wore when she infiltrated Shimabara?

Heisuke: That’s right, Chizuru was so cute then... No, uh, she was very happy!

Saito: Yukimura at that time... The day I infiltrated Shimabara, Yukimura, who had been disguised by Osen, seemed shy to show herself. I probably won't ever forget how she looked then. Her appearance wasn't changed at all, she simply wore a beautiful kimono, combed her hair, put on some hair pins and make-up, that's all it was. I couldn't even look directly at her. That's how beautiful Yukimura had become then...  

Heisuke: Hajime-kun! Hajime-kun! Hey Hajime-kun!

Saito: Uh.... Ah! What is it, Heisuke? 

Heisuke: What are you doing? Why are you suddenly dazed? 

Saito: No, it’s nothing. Sorry, what did you say?

Heisuke: I was just talking about giving Chizuru a beautiful kimono to wear! But that's impossible. How would hear wearing a woman's kimono be allowed at headquarters?

Saito: Nn, that’s right. 

Heisuke: Kodo-san is still missing, so I really want to do something that will help cheer her up.

Saito: Is Yukimura very depressed?  

Heisuke: It's not like that, but she might be forcing herself to smile. 

Saito:  That’s right...

Heisuke: I really want to do something for her. 

Saito: Ah...... But would she want to wear a woman’s kimono again? Or is it that I want to see her dressed up like that again? No, even though she’s usually wearing men’s clothing, it’s to be expected for her to want to dress up a woman. No, but... 

Heisuke: Hajime-kun. Hajime-kun. Hey~ Hajime-kun! Hah... he’s like this again... would it be better to just leave him be for a while?

---to be continued---

....in february. unless it’s fine to post track 5 and 6. since those are done while track 2 is incomplete.

[writersdare]

Need a Hug | Changbin 창빈 Drabble

Pairing: friend!Changbin x Reader (she/her) x friend!Hyunjin

Summary: Changbin, who had a little crush on Y/N, was desperate for her attention.

Warning: fluff, mentioning of food

Word Count: 416 (drabble)

Author’s Note: The other day I saw a gif I attached in the end of the drabble, and this cute idea came to my mind. Backstory: Y/N worked in JYP Entertainment, the guys were her good friends. I hope you'll like it! ♡

“Y/N! Give me a hug!” Changbin’s loud voice sounded across the room.

Y/N, however, was so busy with the album promo that she had to work during her lunch break. The girl barely payed attention to the guy, it didn’t mean, though, Bin was ready to give up so easily. 

“Y/N!” he gave her a cute smile and stretched the arms, approaching the girl’s table and expecting her to stand up and cuddle him. 

“Binny, I’m really busy right now, let’s do later,” she said quietly, taking a bite from tuna onigiri — that’s the best what she could get from a local store downstairs. Her eyes were still running through the papers and it seemed like if Changbin put a piece of plastic in her palm, she’d still eat it.

“I want a hug though,” he moaned, jumping in place as if he was two years old. “I’m going to throw a tantrum!” 

“You do realise tantrum is something uncontrolled, so you can’t warn her about this?” Hyunjin chuckled, entering the room. Everyone was slowly gathering for a meeting.

“Hyunjin, give me a hug,” Changbin asked quickly, turning around and stretching his arms towards the friend.

“What is happening here?” he cuddled Bin awkwardly and looked at Y/N, who stayed in her own world.

“She doesn’t pay attention to me! I wanted her to hug me,” Changbin kept complaining in a funny manner.

“Are you still working on this?” Hyunjin looked at all the papers on the table, being surprised, and touched Y/N's shoulder. “You really need a rest.”

“I’m almost done, guys, just don’t disturb me now, please? Five minutes,” she sighed, glancing at the documents and her laptop screen back and force. However, once she was done, Y/N stood up from the place and approached the guys. She wrapped them both in a warm hug and rested a head on Bin’s shoulder.

“What for?” Hyunjin smiled and looked at the girl.

“Compensation for ignoring you,” Y/N smiled back and left two short kisses on the guys’ cheeks. She didn’t notice, but Bin’s face immediately turned red. 

“We ordered you a proper meal, by the way. Should be in a minute. You’ll eat, and then we’ll start the meeting,” Hyunjin warned and glanced at Changbin, who still, apparently, didn’t recover from the friendly kiss.

“You’re the best, thank you,” she pouted her lips and stayed in Bin’s arms, while Hyunjin went downstairs to pick up the order. 

– photos and a gif aren’t mine and belong to the rightful owner, gif found here @leenope –

taglist: @yukichan67, @laylasbunbunny, @skz-streamer

© writersdare | all rights reserved

All stories are original and written by me. Do not copy, trace and post anywhere without permission and credit. The stories are fictional, they do not correspond to reality and written just for fun ♡

Main Masterlist | K-pop Masterlist | Taglist | Prompt List

[rivangel]

God damn, is there a reason why Wit Studios cut so much from the Uprising arc? ; - ;

There’s so much stuff happening in there that’s just watered down or straight-up removed it hurts my soul

i really honestly don't know!!! :((( as a result re-watching the uprising arc is always a bit disappointing because it feels more barren in comparison?

i don't approve at all the way wit stripped EVERYTHING down. ik ive been posting about levi a lot, but it's really most everyone. levi's character, mikasa's character, historia's character, even kenny and erwin.

did you know that historia actually has a reason to punch levi in the manga? it's because he was rough with her during that confrontation where he told her she had to be queen, and reeves told her to get back at him when she IS queen.

i understand why wit would cut out sannes' torture scene. but we learn so much more about why the MP do what they do to quash rebellions and such in extended monologues

everyone is mad at levi after he was rough with historia, and mikasa was the only one who defended him.

there's an important scene in the manga where (during the part where armin and jean are pretending to be eren and historia) armin is basically violated by one of the captors. later he tells armin that he used to be normal, but now that he knows armin is a boy, it's his fault that he's perverted. when he's already perverted for violating what he thought was a young girl. that's a major tipping point pointing to as to why in my mind armin had the guts to kill a person, and come up with a disturbing plan to get the wall citizens on their side during the revolution

kenny and levi have a longer conversation during the chase scene where they end up fighting in a bar. kenny talks about how they're both alive because they found something they "like to do". kenny has nothing against levi, but they took different paths in life. this adds IMPORTANT nuance to their relationship in my opinion

oh my god all the funny cute moments :(( like hange's knitting comment, mikasa getting snippy at armin because "i didn't raise you this way", the experiments with eren's titan had a part where he built a cabin in titan form just LOOK

erwin's conversation with nile where they talk about how important risking all their lives are. erwin saying how making gambles are the only thing he's good for, nile disagreeing because he values his family the most, the reveal that erwin DATED nile's now-wife but "he chose titans over marie"

AND JUST... THE ICONIC "MAYBE I AM" SCENE IN THE FOREST INCLUDES MORE IN THE MANGA AND ITS SOOO....

god i know im biased but im so mad that wit cut out SO MUCH levi content in the anime. this is a MAJOR supporting character (so much so hes usually included with EMA on merch and promo material) and now the time has come where we learn how he, hange, erwin, all ways the "old generation" thinks, as that's a MAJOR theme with the progression of the story. the young paying for the older ones sins, the young making better choices (how hange and levi are willing to brutally torture a man with the 104th readily against it; levi willing to be violent with historia if it means it'll save their world when he's arguably wrong for forcing that).

but also, COMPLETELY remove the fact that these inclusions would've made every major character amazingly complex and more interesting, levi specifically. levi is unarguably a popular character, but SO MUCH was cut. why NOT include more of him for the ratings? i really don't get it.

and i don't get why isayama would sign off on all of these things. ahhhhh i hate it

[beasts-of-jadewood]

Goodbye Volcano High is just a week away! Yippee! To celebrate this occasion I will release GVH protagonist first-date ratings part 2, in which I rate how well my first dates with GVH characters will go based on what I know about them from fandom memes and promo materials. Part 1 can be found here. Contains spoilers for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part 6, and now featuring alt text.

I think Naomi would be the type of person who would provide me with a full list of philosophical personal questions on our first date in order to acertain a comprehensive first impression of me that accurately represents who I am. For example, she may ask me what I would do with an elephant in my possession if I could not sell or give away the elephant, which was apparently a real job interview question someone had. While I would undoubtedly appreciate her hard work, I will not guarantee that I won't accidentally give out a response so profoundly disturbing and strange at some point during the process and possibly make her cry (for example, answering that I wish to recreate Thomas Edison's elephant electrocution procedure just to prove that I can do it better), leading to an overall 5/10 experience.

Much like the Trish date, I suspect that my date with Rosa will take place at an arboretum due to her interests. Because of this, I will likely be reminded of the fact that I once went to an arboretum in China during my childhood, to cheer me up after I completely failed at an extracurricular English speaking competition due to stage fright and the fact that I forgot to study the prompts they gave out before hand. I will then give an extended speech to Rosa about how my years of hard work studying English didn't matter in that moment because I fucked up one high-stakes competition and everyone thought I was a dumbass. If Rosa is able to relate to this as a potentially bilingual character herself, then my date will be a 9/10 experience. Otherwise, it's likely a 4/10 if she got weirded out instead.

Stella's interest in the occult is a major jumping point for my first date conversation with her, as I will use her knowledge of Tarot cards to discuss archetypes in the classic Hero's Journey and possibly analyze how each card's meaning corresponds to their respective Stand user in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. If Stella does not like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure then I will reveal the fact that I do not either and then go into an existential rant on why Part 6's ending retroactively made all the other parts pointless by undermining the agencies of previous protagonists with the idea of Fate being an unstoppable force that pre-determines all actions. Overall, this will be an invigorating discussion if nothing else. 7/10.

I don't know why but attempts at adding Sage's image to this post consistently results in an image of Rosa being added instead. Sage himself does show up on the final post after saving, but during the editing process itself his image keeps being replaced by Rosa. My conclusion from this is that Sage does not want to go on a date with me and may in fact prefer to date his original love interest Leo instead. I respect his loyalty to his lover even after he has been completely cut from the final game and thus functionally erased from existence. Sage is a good boy and I love him platonically. 10/10.

[kitsuneheartreviews]

Scifi/Horror: "Womb City" by Tlotlo Tsamaase

Death has been conquered. Capitalism...has not.

Nelah's current body has come with many downsides. A birth family who is all-but estranged. Infertility which has resisted all treatments, forcing Nelah and her husband to hire a financially ruinous artificial womb. And a criminal history, and the government mandate of constant surveillance, in case her body urges her to break more laws.

And then she does break a law. Vehicular manslaughter, while under the influence.

What follows in deepening danger and gore, as Nelah tries to avoid being found out and sent to an eternal digital hell.

I deeply loved this book, just as much as it disturbed me. But man, what a head trip! You might need to keep a notebook to track everyone, because it does get pretty complex. Since consciousnesses are saved and put into new bodies, making minds effectively immortal, prepare yourself for a knotty set of connections going back literal lifetimes.

Tsamaase took some DELIGHT in the gore. Xe lovingly crafted this whole book, but I'd bet xe spent twice the usual editing time on sections where people were in intense pain. Great job, but brrrrr!

I will say, if you're looking for a pure scifi horror story, this book isn't a good fit. It goes well into fantasy about halfway in. Still enjoyable, and it does ratchet up the horror to have this new, unpredictable element added. It doesn't come out of left field or anything, but most of the reviews and promos I saw for this book didn't really address the fantasy bits.

Christel Mutombo's narration was full of masterful emotion! Nelah's fear, love, betrayal, and horror was always spot-on, and kept me engrossed in the feel of each scene. I'd definitely go for more scifi or fantasy read by them!

Advanced audio copy provided by the publisher.

[cyarsk52-20]

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The 50 most evil songs ever

These 50 tracks – featuring the likes of Rammstein, Slipknot, Mayhem, Slayer and AC/DC – are pretty damn nasty.

November 24, 2020Words:Paul Brannigan, James Hickie, Sam Law, Nick Ruskell, Dan Slessor, Paul Travers, Ian Winwood, Simon YoungOriginally published:In an April 2017 issue of Kerrang! magazine

From serial killers to Satan, we pulled out the ouija board and summoned the 50 most evil songs of all time. Spoiler alert: this gets incrediblygrim…

Mötley CrüeShout At The Devil

The title-track from Crüe’s breakthrough second album caused the kind of controversy that would define the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band. Penned by bassist Nikki Sixx, its lyrical preoccupation with the horned one, coupled with the LA bad boys’ burgeoning mainstream success, meant Christian groups were up in arms. Despite their protestations, the most evil thing about this song was the misguided re-reworking on 1997’s sinfully bad Generation Swine album.

WatainDevil’s Blood

Nothing less than an open hymn to the Devil himself and doing his dirtiest deeds, Devil’s Blood boils with the fanatical delight of those caught in religious fervour. The sheer force of nature of the music is staggering, but it is nothing next to Erik Danielsson’s rabid, demonic vocals as he revels in Luciferian power and living, ‘In the glorious light of the five point star.’ Truly diabolic.

PossessedThe Exorcist

When The Exorcist hit cinemas in the early ’70s, reports of audience members vomiting and losing consciousness circulated. So it’s only right that a song of the same name evokes teeth-chattering terror in those exposed to it. Written from the point of view of the possessed individual, and welded to breakneck thrashing, it was a formative track in the soon-to-be-born death metal genre. Unfortunately, things don’t end so well for the song’s protagonist.

Sonic Youth (featuring Lydia Lunch)Death Valley ’69

The 1980s were the age of the music video, a time of glossy movie-budget promo blockbusters from the likes of Michael Jackson and Prince. Not so for Sonic Youth. As a standalone song, Death Valley ’69 is intriguingly ambiguous, a thing of darkness in which the narrator may or may not have murdered his girlfriend. In the accompanying video clip, never to be played on primetime MTV, the song’s inherent violence is given full expression in a series of explicit images of lifeless bodies covered in gore. A thrillingly subversive dose of yuk.

GhostRitual

If the Devil were real would he be banging his horned head to the brutal death metal of Deicide or sipping a cocktail and twirling an exquisite mustachio to the altogether slicker sounds of Ghost? On first listen this is just one beautiful wash of melodies, but that only makes the lyrics underneath all the more disturbing. ‘This chapel of ritual smells of dead human sacrifices,’ croons Papa Emeritus. The stench of decay has never been sweeter.

The BeatlesHelter Skelter

In August 1969, homicidal cult-leader Charles Manson (you’ll hear that name plenty down this list…) told his followers, known as ‘The Family’, “Now is the time for Helter Skelter,” an assertion that heralded the most infamous mass murders – the Tate-LaBianca murders – in American history. He had become obsessed with The Beatles’ White Album, and with Helter Skelter in particular, the lyrics of which he misinterpreted in bonkers and ultimately homicidal ways.

Aphrodite’s ChildThe Four Horsemen

Greek proggers Aphrodite’s Child – featuring crooner Demis Roussos and Blade Runner soundtrack genius Vangelis – had big ideas for their 666 album: the apocalypse itself. This account of The Four Horsemen’s arrival is amazing, but it could have been improved if surrealist artist Salvador Dalí had gotten his way with the album’s release. He wanted to declare martial law in Barcelona, where swans stuffed with dynamite would be unleashed, before elephants and “Archbishops carrying umbrellas” bombarded the city’s cathedral from the air. Oddly, this didn’t come to pass.

Electric WizardWe Hate You

Electric Wizard’s Dopethrone album bears the striking slogan ‘Legalise drugs and murder’. The Dorset doom misanthropes may have been grouped with the groovy vibes of the stoner rock scene, but lines like ‘So I’ll take my father’s gun and I’ll walk down to the street / I’ll have my vengeance now with everyone I meet’ were a long way away from songs about shagging and cars. It’s a truly nasty sentiment, but as an indiscriminate spray of bile against everyone, this is untouchable.

The Devil’s BloodThe Anti-Kosmik Magick

(The Time Of No Time Evermore, 2009)

“They warned me Satan would be attractive,” quoth Ned Flanders upon being offered legal marijuana. Indeed, at first listen, Dutch diabolists The Devil’s Blood sound like the coolest ’70s-revival band you’ve ever heard. But, covered in blood, treating gigs as rituals and with heavy occult lyrics, The Anti-Kosmik Magick finds them tricking you into loving Lucifer without realising it. Seductive, rather than aggressive, this is temptation and sin presented in all its decadent glory.

AC/DCNight Prowler

On the evening of March 17, 1985, 25-year-old Texan drifter Richard Ramirez broke into the California homes of Tsai-Lian Yu and Dayle Okazaki and murdered both women. Dayle’s roommate Maria Hernandez was also shot in the face by Ramirez, but survived, and provided police with a pen portrait of a young man wearing an AC/DC baseball cap. It would be a further five months, however, before Ramirez, dubbed the ‘Night Stalker’, was apprehended, bringing to an end a 14-month reign of terror in the Golden State during which a total of 13 people were murdered and 11 more sexually assaulted in their own homes.

Ramirez’s childhood friend Ray Garcia subsequently told the authorities that the killer was obsessed by AC/DC, and specifically the creepy, chilling, voyeuristic closing track on the band’s 1979 Highway To Hell album, Night Prowler, leading to sensationalist media headlines such as “‘AC/DC Music Made Me Kill At 16’, Night Stalker Admits.” The Australian band were understandably horrified at the implication, with vocalist Brian Johnson (who joined the band after the song’s recording) telling VH1 television, “It sickens you to have anything to do with that kind of thing.” In the same Behind The Music special, AC/DC guitarist Malcolm Young claimed that Night Prowler is actually about “things you used to do when you are a kid, like sneaking into a girlfriend’s bedroom when her parents were asleep”, but lyrics such as ‘No-one’s gonna warn you / And no-one’s gonna yell attack / And you don’t feel the steel / Till it’s hangin’ out your back’ rather undermined the idea that this was merely a paean to adolescent horniness.

In court, Ramirez played up to his monstrous image, greeting the courtroom with the words “Hail Satan” and telling the judge, “I am beyond good and evil. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in us all.” After a four-year trial, Ramirez received 19 death sentences for his crimes, a punishment he shrugged off with the words, “Big deal… I’ll see you in Disneyland.” AC/DC naturally distanced themselves completely from the serial killer, but shaking off the association with what is undoubtedly their darkest, nastiest song would prove impossible.

HellhammerTriumph Of Death

Hellhammer mainman Tom G. Warrior has described his childhood in nightmarish terms. Living in a rural Swiss village with an unfit mother who was frequently absent smuggling jewellery, he started playing music to get away from it all. But imagine if this near-10 minute dirge of funereal guitar was what you did to escape. Every negative human emotion is vomited up in Tom’s strangled vocals, and when a couple of years later Tom asked the lyrical question of ‘Are you morbid?’, his answer was already a horrifying ‘yes’.

DissectionNight’s Blood

When thinking of ‘evil’ the words ‘Satan’ and ‘murder’ come quickly to mind. Put those two together and you stumble into territory Dissection inhabited in the mid-’90s, with band leader Jon Nödtveidt and an accomplice jailed for murdering a man who had allegedly expressed an interest in Satanism. Night’s Blood was given its unholy birth two years prior to that incident, and it’s hard not to feel unsettled by the gleeful bloodlust haunting it.

BehemothChristians To The Lions

Having released seminal albums titled Satanica and The Satanist, you can be fairly sure that everything Behemoth do is pretty damn evil, and mainman Nergal’s abuse of the Bible has landed him in Polish courts on more than one occasion. That being the case, it’s unlikely that this ditty went down overly well with churchgoers. Backed up with the band’s inimitable blackened death savagery, Nergal makes it clear which side of the God/Satan divide he falls on, viciously celebrating the death of the former and rise of the latter.

DarkthroneIn The Shadow Of The Horns

A Blaze In The Northern Sky marked a dark watershed for the black metal genre. Eerily pre-emptive of the spree of church-burnings that would go on to hallmark the genre it might’ve been. But Darkthrone’s second LP was, in actuality, fixated on the primal evils of the past. Its howling second track would prove definitive. Seven minutes of defiant lo-fi production, frostbitten purpose and blunt-force simplicity, In The Shadow Of The Horns still sounds like “abyssic hate” incarnate.

Cradle Of FilthDeath Magick For Adepts

Always ones for adding theatrics to their music, here Dani Filth paints a picture of a Sodom and Gomorrah scenario with no small amount of skill. But how to really bring out the hellish chaos erupting all around? You get one of Hell’s stewards to lend their terrifying voice to the track. That is to say, Hellraiser actor Doug Bradley, whose performance makes you worried to look out your window, lest you see Hell emptying itself onto the lawn.

Guns N’ RosesLook At Your Game, Girl

(The Spaghetti Incident?, 1993)

There aren’t many songs that have been released in order to help pay for the legal defence costs of its author who is facing a multiple murder rap. Originally written in 1967 and released on the album Lie: The Love And Terror Cult, Look At Your Game, Girl is the work of Charles Manson. Twenty-three years after its original 1970 release, the always provocative Guns N’ Roses placed the song as a hidden track on their covers album The Spaghetti Incident?. “People are trying to paint me like I worship Charles Manson,” said Axl Rose in 1994, “but it’s exactly the opposite of that.”

AkercockeOf Menstrual Blood And Semen

‘Blast For Satan’ ran the slogan on Akercocke’s shirts. It was a statement that summed up the intensity of both their music and their allegiance to Him downstairs. With their Savile Row suits and mysterious manner, they gave the air of men who actually dabbled in the black arts, something reinforced by their instruction to ‘drink of the chalice of ecstasy’ here. This furious concoction is as intense as metal gets, while also revelling in the decadence of the band’s beliefs.

BathoryCall From The Grave

Across their first trilogy of albums, Sweden’s Bathory redefined just how evil metal could sound. Crudely welding the darkness of Black Sabbath to the roar of Motörhead, the sound mainman Quorthon came up with could freeze blood, and nowhere more so than on Call From The Grave. With all the atmosphere of a freshly-dug burial site at midnight, the diabolic, two-chord riff and Quorthon’s demented vocals make this a haunting paean to all things evil and hellish.

DeicideOnce Upon The Cross

As you would expect from a man who once branded an inverted cross into his forehead, Deicide’s Glen Benton has no problem with blasphemy. Here, he mocks Jesus Christ’s struggle as he dies on the cross, which tied in really well with album Once Upon The Cross’ original artwork, which features Jesus with his insides on the outside. Oddly, this was considered too salty for the public.

Jimmy PageLucifer Rising

So obsessed was Jimmy Page with occultist and ‘Wickedest Man In The World’ Aleister Crowley that he bought the Scottish residence, Boleskine House, where the magician had attempted (and failed) to perform a six-month long magic ritual. The Zeppelin guitarist was therefore the perfect choice to soundtrack Lucifer Rising, a Crowley-inspired film by occult director Kenneth Anger. When after years, Jimmy’s contribution was still incomplete, he was acrimoniously removed from the project. Regardless, this bizarre music remains the most unsettling the man has ever created.

Big BlackJordan, Minnesota

Tiny Midwestern town Jordan, Minnesota entered the national consciousness in the U.S. in the mid-’80s when a number of school children claimed to have been ritually abused and to have witnessed multiple murders perpetrated by more than 20 townsfolk. The hysterical media coverage prompted Big Black’s Steve Albini to write this disturbing, pitch-black indictment of small-town corruption and perversion, complete with heavy breathing and lyrics such as, ‘This is Jordan, we do what we like.’ Ultimately, the accusations were dismissed as pure fabrication, but the song remains a horrifying and sickening dissection of humanity’s darkest impulses.

Robert JohnsonCross Road Blues

Legend has it that Cross Road Blues is about a highway intersection in the city of Rosedale, where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his musical talent. While this classic song’s lyrics make no mention of this shady Faustian pact, the song – most likely about making the choice between good and evil – fuelled the myth of the Delta blues legend, who made references to the Devil during many of his songs. Plot twist: Robert died under mysterious circumstances aged just 27 years old.

Alkaline TrioThis Could Be Love

While many other popular punk bands of the time were singing songs about farting and penises, the always cut-above Alkaline Trio cast their gaze on darker matters. This Could Be Love is a tale of murder, the twist in which lies in the fact that it is told from the victim’s point of view. It’s grizzly stuff, too, with soiled beds, scenes of torture, delirious joy at acts of violence and the arresting image of a crazed lover washing blood from her hands in the waters of Lake Michigan. As audio-nasties go, this is a superior offering.

CarcassCadaveric Incubator Of Endoparasites

Dying sucks, but Carcass have done a bang-up job of making you hope to be vaporised at your moment of death by luridly detailing the process of decomposition. It’s hard to compute just how unsettling the Liverpudlian’s lyrics were, and it’s safe to presume that someone with delicate sensibilities raised on a diet of Madonna could well be revisited by the contents of their stomach after exposure to this belch of aural horror.

Nine Inch NailsPiggy

Despite appearing on The Downward Spiral, an album chronicling the destruction of man, Piggy isn’t necessarily evil in and of itself. It’s the context in which the song was created that makes it truly unsettling.

In 1992, Trent Reznor scrapped his original plan to record the follow-up to Nine Inch Nails’ debut Pretty Hate Machine in New Orleans, decamping instead to 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles’ Benedict Canyon. It was here in 1969 that actress Sharon Tate (the pregnant wife of director Roman Polanski) and four others were brutally murdered by the Charles Manson ‘family’. Although Trent suggests he only discovered the address’ grisly history after he’d decided to record there – claiming it was chosen for the suitability of the space – he subsequently read up on the incident, suggesting ‘The Tate House’ “didn’t feel terrifying as much as sad.” Despite the sense of melancholy, Trent would use it to record 1992’s Broken EP, The Downward Spiral and Marilyn Manson’s debut album, Portrait Of An American Family, which Trent produced.

The song’s title has been the subject of speculation. Former live guitarist Richard Patrick, who would later form the band Filter, has suggested he was once given the nickname ‘Piggy’, while The Beatles’ song Piggies was said to have had considerable influence on Charles Manson. Despite Trent redubbing the address ‘Le Pig’, a reference to the word that was written in blood on the front door by the murderers – and The Downward Spiral also featuring a song called March Of The Pigs – Trent denies either was directly related to what had taken place at the site of their makeshift studio.

In a sobering postscript, Trent ended up meeting Sharon Tate’s sister. She asked him about whether he thought he was exploiting her sister’s death – an encounter Trent admits caused him to breakdown, having suddenly seen things from her perspective.

Cannibal CorpseFrantic Disembowelment

No-one pens gleeful murder and mayhem anti-anthems like Cannibal Corpse, and those taking the time to read the lyric sheet often wish they hadn’t eaten beforehand. Famously stirring up controversy with both their lyrics and artwork in the late-’80s and early-’90s, CC have never once modulated their approach to making horrifying music, and Frantic Disembowelment has to stand as the pinnacle of their nastiness. What’s it about? The title makes it pretty clear, and nowhere will you find a more graphic description of innards becoming ‘outtards’.

Jane’s AddictionTed, Just Admit It

The track opens with a quote from American serial killer Ted Bundy (a man who kept severed heads as trophies), recorded shortly before his 1989 execution and wrapped up in off-kilter jazzy beats. “There’s gonna be people turning up in canyons, there are gonna be people being shot in Salt Lake City. Because the police there aren’t willing to accept, what I think they know. And they know I didn’t do these things,” he claims. The rest of it is hardly easy listening with frontman Perry Farrellintoning ‘Sex is violent’ over and over again like a man possessed.

SlipknotIowa

How do you end one of the most bleak albums in history? By recording a 15-minute doom jam that hints at necrophilia. Corey Taylor – who describes the Iowa album as the “darkest fucking period” of his life – explores the mind of a man who finds himself alone with a corpse: ‘You are mine / You will always be mine / I can tear you apart / I can recombine you.’ And to really get into that fucked-up mindset, he sang naked and cut himself with broken glass. The screams you hear on the song are quite real.

BlasphemyRitual

There are many rumours about Canada’s Blasphemy, none greater than the ones concerning their activities in Alberta’s Ross Bay cemetery. A place with a long history of satanic goings on, legend has it that the band carried out satanic rituals, desecrations and headstone theft on the site (supposedly the stone was returned after guitarist Black Priest Of The 7 Satanic Blood Rituals suffered demonic attacks). It would certainly explain Ritual’s suffocating darkness.

AbruptumObscuritatem Advoco Amplecetere Me Part 1

Euronymous from Mayhem once described Sweden’s Abruptum as “the audial essence of pure black evil”. As 20-ish minutes of raw, evil noise rather than a song, Obscuritatem… is certainly dark. Especially considering that the screaming sounds you hear are apparently band members IT and Evil violently torturing one another. True or not, this is diabolic stuff.

Alice CooperI Love The Dead

In his time, Alice Cooper caused outrage with the theatrics of his live show and songs like this tender track about stiffs. ‘I love the dead before they rise / No farewells, no goodbyes / I never even knew your now-rotting face,’ he crooned, prompting calls for a UK tour to be banned. MP Leo Abse accused the singer of “peddling the culture of the concentration camp”, adding, “Pop is one thing, anthems of necrophilia are quite another.”

Mercyful FateMelissa

The character of Melissa was a witch who was burned at the stake. She appeared a number of times throughout Mercyful Fate’s career, but here, on the metallers’ debut, it was to inspire her lover to seek out satanic revenge. The initial inspiration for the song came from a skull that frontman King Diamond (more on him soon) ‘acquired’ from a medical school. It had suffered a brutal injury, and the name Melissa came to the singer as he stared at it. Melissa also formed part of the stage set until she was stolen at a gig.

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Morbid AngelBleed For The Devil

If that title doesn’t tell you what side death metal legends Morbid Angel’s bread was buttered, how about the photo in the Altars Of Madness album sleeve of guitar wizard Trey Azagthoth shredding while bleeding profusely, looking as though he’s playing for the Great Horned One himself. Or you could just listen to the demented musical maze with lyrics literally attempting to summon Lucifer, and realise that whatever Morbid Angel were doing in the studio, they did not learn it at Sunday school.

Ozzy OsbourneMr Crowley

When Ozzy Osbourne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, many wondered whether he’d be able to muster the same dark magic again. Just a year later, people got their answer in the form of debut solo album Blizzard Of Ozz. Mr Crowley, its second single, refers to legendary occultist Aleister Crowley, who founded the religion of Thelema and considered himself a prophet. Dramatic stuff; so it’s a good thing it’s got a grandiose organ intro – and guitarist Randy Rhoads on monumental form.

MisfitsMommy, Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight?

We’d love to hear Freud’s take on Glenn Danzig’s colourful relationship with his mother. Before the diminutive behemoth’s maternally-titled solo smash he penned this ditty for the Misfits about a student driven to homicidal mania by his playground tormentors. But only if ‘Mommy’ says he’s allowed, obviously. Captured raw, the serrated tape-deck live recording only adds to the unhinged bloodlust. And packed like a meat locker with lurid promises to ‘rip the veins from human necks’ we can’t see how Glenn’s old lady could’ve possibly refused…

CovenSatanic Mass

Released in 1969, the same year U.S. occultist Anton LaVey published The Satanic Bible, Coven’s Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls album was the perfect soundtrack to the hippie movement taking a step down the left-hand path. Following nine tracks of Satan-themed psych, it closes with this, an actual satanic mass, conducted by the band. Even if you think it’s hokum, it’s hard to get to the end without feeling weird.

VenomBlack Metal

These days somewhat overlooked, more than any other band Newcastle upon Tyne’s Venom were the chief progenitors of metal’s most bloodthirsty subgenre, thrash metal. Couplets such as ‘Freaking so wild / Nobody’s mild’ may suggest the aid of a rhyming dictionary, but either way Black Metal would prove to be wildly influential on a range of young American musicians with a taste for the extreme. The track has been covered by no fewer than 11 different bands, and is loved by musicians as disparate as Dave Grohl and Kerry King.

Judas PriestBetter By You, Better Than Me

Can a cover of a bouncy ’60s pop song really be evil? According to a couple of grieving parents and their lawyers it can, and in 1990 Rob Halford and the boys were hauled into court over it. With hidden, subliminal messages allegedly buried in the song, which supposedly inspired two fans to shoot themselves, the trial itself was quickly sensationalised by the media. Though the charges were ultimately dismissed, the judge insisted there were such messages on there, though not necessarily powerful enough to incite suicidal actions. Stealth evil, maybe?

Celtic FrostProcreation (Of The Wicked)

Easily one of the most evil bands of their time – and essential to the evolution of extreme metal – Celtic Frost could conjure images of the Devil with a single chord. However, never did they sound more monstrous than on this brutish tune. Lurching along on a hulking riff and with twisted lyrics that scare Christians and excite all those who reject religion (‘If God raised the abyss, you’d procreate your own / Abolism of death is abolism of life’), this is music gloriously devoid of anything that could be considered ‘good’. Sepultura’s take on the track also stands amongst the best metal covers ever.

Killing JokeExorcism

This is a piece of ritualistic industrial-metal primal force that was recorded in the Great Pyramid Of Giza after Killing Joke allegedly bribed the Egyptian Minister For Antiquities for access. “Our engineer fell asleep in the King’s Chamber,” frontman Jaz Coleman told Kerrang! of the sessions. “He suddenly had some vision, sprang up, banged his head and ran out screaming. After this he said he’d never go back in again. He said there were thousands of alien eyes staring at him, and after that he had a stroke. It affected him, the place…”

King DiamondThe Family Ghost

King Diamond is no stranger to strangeness.

“I’ve had a ton of supernatural experiences. I feel like I brought something back with me from the operation [a triple heart bypass in which he nearly died] but I was having supernatural experiences long before that,” he says.

Many of these real-life experiences have been channelled into his music, both with Mercyful Fate and his self-named outfit. The Family Ghost might just be the only song to have incorporated an element of the supernatural into its very recording, however.

The song is a crucial part of King Diamond’s classic horror concept album, Abigail. The story for the album, which involves murder, possession and dark family secrets, came to King in a dream on a suitably stormy night.

“I woke up during a thunderstorm in my haunted apartment in Copenhagen and I had this story in my head. It was also influenced by my own family history. My mom told me how she was left on someone’s doorstep and she later found out she was the child of a professor’s son. He got my grandmother pregnant and she was sent away to have this child. That was all sort of wound into this story,” the singer explains.

On The Family Ghost, protagonist Jonathan La’Fey is warned by the ghost of his ancestor that his wife is carrying the vengeful spirit of the stillborn Abigail and that he must kill her in order to stop the rebirth.

Even spookier than the story is an unexpected and unexplained addition to the recording that may or may not have originated from somewhere beyond the grave.

“There’s a vocal part on The Family Ghost that I never recorded,” explains King. “It’s a part that goes, (adopts bestial growl) ‘Ohhhh damn,’ and we couldn’t find it on any of the tracks anywhere. I have no clue what it was, but it’s certainly not the only weird or even seemingly impossible thing to happen to us.”

Sunn O)))Báthory Erzsébet

What could be more evil than a song jointly inspired by black metal progenitors Bathory and the 16th century serial killer Elizabeth Báthory – who reputedly bathed in the blood of virgins – from whom they took their name? Perhaps one that also consisted of 16 minutes of tortuous drone and bleak lyrics like, ‘Decompose forever, aware and unholy, encased in marble and honey from the swarm.’ Oh, and legend has it the band locked claustrophobic guest vocalist Malefic from occult metal act Xasthur in a casket to make his performance more anguished.

DanzigMother

‘Mother…’ Don’t warble it, we dare you. Glenn Danzig’s post-Misfits mega-hit has gained such ubiquity, it’s easy to overlook its evil underpinnings. Peel away a million hoarse-throated rock club sing-alongs, however, and it’s still devilishly apparent. A tongue-in-cheek cautionary tale targeted squarely at Tipper Gore, the (parental advisory committee) PMRC and 1988’s other moral crusaders, its promise of a scene ‘not about to see your light’ pierced the mainstream like a sacrificial dagger. Chuck in the MTV-banned music video (animal sacrifice and inverted-crosses smeared bloodily onto nubile torsos = bad press, apparently) and we’ve got probably the most subversive song of its era.

SlayerAngel Of Death

Given that their entire oeuvre revolves around war, murder and general unspeakable wickedness, finding evil Slayer songs is hardly difficult: in fact, it’d be significantly more of a challenge to identify songs by the LA thrash metal pioneers that aren’t rooted in despicable, debased acts of inhumanity. That said, while the likes of Dead Skin Mask (based on the exploits of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein), Jihad (‘Fuck your God!’) and Necrophiliac (erm…) are gruesome and terrifying in equal measure, it’s the notorious opening track of the masterfully malevolent Reign In Blood album which will forever remain the Californian band’s most noxious and black-hearted artistic statement.

Perhaps the most chilling aspect of Jeff Hanneman’s lyrics detailing Nazi physician Josef Mengele’s abhorrent experiments on patients at the Auschwitz concentration camp (‘Burning flesh drips away / Test of heat burns your skin / Your mind starts to boil / Frigid cold, cracks your limbs / How long can you last in this frozen water burial?’) is the fact that they’re so clinical, unemotional and detached, leading to accusations that the band were glorifying the horrors. The controversy actually led to Columbia Records, the distributors for producer Rick Rubin’s Def Jam label, to insist that the track be removed from the album, a demand which both the band and their label boss flatly refused. Ultimately, the label washed their hands of the release, leading Rick to take it to Geffen Records instead.

Jeff always denied accusations that the song exhibited Nazi sympathies, calling it “a history lesson”. “There’s nothing I put in the lyrics that says necessarily he was a bad man, because to me – well, isn’t that obvious?” he stated, not unreasonably. His guitar partner Kerry King was even more brusque, saying, “Read the lyrics and tell me what’s offensive about it?” The band’s lack of repentance is understandable, but it’d be a dead soul indeed who can listen without flinching at the visceral horror.

Diamond HeadAm I Evil?

‘My mother was a witch,’ barked Diamond Head frontman Sean Harris in 1980, lighting a fire under the fledgeling NWOBHM genre, ‘She was burned alive!’ Fusing the occult themes of Black Sabbath to the ragged energy of early punk, the Midlands metallers laid a proto-thrash template that’d be picked up by Metallica (who famously covered the song as a B-side for Creeping Death), Megadeth and Slayer. For all those bands’ stadium-packing pedigree, though, there’s still something untouchably (im)pure about the original. ‘Am I evil?’ came Sean’s immortal question. ‘Yes I am!’

Iron MaidenThe Number Of The Beast

It seems strange to recall, but in the U.S. in the 1980s heavy metal often found itself under assault from religious groups convinced that the genre served as a Trojan Horse for the enslavement of the nation’s youth in the name of Satan. Few songs fostered this misbelief as resoundingly as The Number Of The Beast. Iron Maiden helped fan the flames of the song’s reputation by reporting various strange goings-on in the recording studio, while protests and album burnings greeted them when they headed Stateside for a 1982 tour.

RammsteinWeiner Blut

Rammstein have always courted controversy, and 2009 album Liebe Ist Für Alle Da proved to be no exception. It was initially added to Germany’s Federal Department For Media Harmful To Young Persons index, partly for the sadomasochistic song Ich Tu Dir Weh. The real darkness, however, can be found in Wiener Blut. The song is a first-person retelling of the evil perpetrated by Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned and abused his daughter in the basement of their home for 24 years. That’s all you need to know.

Black SabbathBlack Sabbath

Bassist Geezer Butler once painted his home black and hung inverted crosses and pictures of the Devil on the walls and claims that he saw a “black shape” by his bed after reading a book about witchcraft. The incident inspired one of metal’s most potently evil songs, which opens with a thunderstorm and ominous church bell and is propelled by that tritone riff – a collection of notes named diabolus in musica – which guitarist Tony Iommi describes as “really evil and very doomy”. Indeed, this six-minute song birthed an entire genre. Thanks, mysterious intruder.

MayhemFreezing Moon

By the time Freezing Moon was released on the De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas album, Mayhem’s legacy was already the darkest of any group in history. Two people were dead, one by his own hand, while a third person was serving a 21-year jail sentence for the murder of the other. Late Mayhem guitarist Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth had often spoken about the need for greater extremity and more evil in black metal. At great expense, he got it.

Two versions of Freezing Moon exist. The first remained unreleased for years, and was one of only two recordings of vocalist Dead (Per Yngve Ohlin), a young Swede who had moved to Norway to join Mayhem. A depressive boy who often spoke of a near-death experience as a child, he would talk about suicide in disarmingly casual tones. For early gigs, he would bury his stage clothes underground and smell dead birds in plastic bags. His lyrics for Freezing Moon were unsurprisingly morbid – ‘Everything here is so cold / Everything here is so dark… I remember it was here I died’ – while his vocal performance was unhinged and chilling.

He would never see it released, however. On April 8, 1991, aged just 22, Dead took his own life in the house he shared with the rest of the band. Euronymous, discovering the body, took photos and collected skull fragments to send to friends as necklaces, before calling the police.

Work continued on what would be Mayhem’s debut full-length, with Burzum’s Varg Vikernes enlisted to play bass, and a Hungarian singer, Attila Csihar, drafted in to replace Dead. Following the recording in early ’93, Attila returned to Hungary. What he would next hear from Norway was unthinkable: in the early hours of August 10, 1993, Varg stabbed Euronymous to death in his apartment. He was arrested and sentenced to 21 years.

The song itself, with its chilling, minor-chord intro where icy notes hang like corpses in the gallows, its scything main riff and demonic atmosphere, already showcased perfectly black metal’s musical abyss. But with so much genuine darkness behind it – killer and victim playing together, despite Euronymous’ parents’ request that Varg’s parts be wiped – it now stands as a chilling document of perhaps the most horrifying time in the history of music.

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The 20 greatest Nine Inch Nails songs – ranked

Check out more:

Nine Inch NailsSlipknotGuns N' RosesIron MaidenRammsteinGhostBlack SabbathMisfitsSlayerBehemothMötley CrüeAC/DCElectric WizardThe MisfitsMayhemWatainHellhammerDanzigPossessedDiamond Head

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[mermaidsirennikita]

so i know the globes are no longer relevant (or at least they shouldn't be) but i will still be asking for your thoughts on the nominations.

Hahahaha thanks for your consideration!

Best Picture--Drama: I'm so glad to see Past Lives nominated! It was really gorgeous and made me cry and was touching in a way I didn't expect.

Oppenheimer obviously was going to get nominated. It's probably my favorite Nolan movie besides The Prestige (which SLAPS) so I'm fine with this. It is very impressive, even if it's a sausage fest per Nolan and it probably runs too long and has some issues (the depiction of women).

Kills of the Flower Moon... is one of my favorite movies this year. I will acknowledge critiques from Osage people noting that it is a white perspective, which I agree with; I also agree with the comments that it is the best possible perspective someone like Scorsese could offer. The acting is phenomenal across the board, the visuals are stunning, it actually EARNED its runtime, and the writing is really strong. Fantastic movie, should win this category in my opinion.

I haven't seen Maestro but based on the various issues I'm seeing surrounding it and Bradley Cooper doing... the most... for promo, I'm very turned off by it right now. I will see it in order to critique it honestly, but I'm not super thrilled to see it here.

Haven't seen the other two. This will be a battle between Oppy and KOTFM imo.

Best Picture--Musical/Comedy: I don't see a world where Barbie doesn't win this. I thought Barbie was a lot of fun, and Ryan Gosling was fab. But I don't really fully subscribe to the hype.

I'm excited for Poor Things but haven't seen it; I love Yorgos's eye and I think he and Emma do make a great team, even if I'm meh on her in general.

The Holdovers I haven't seen and don't super want to see but my brother says he's forcing me to see it so I guess I will.

May December is a great movie. It's not a comedy in any way, shape, or form. But this category usually does that so I'm not surprised. This is a dark, intense, heartbreaking, tragic movie. It's deeply disturbing. I love it, but it's not a comedy.

Haven't seen the other two.

Best Director: Again, BCoops is being insufferable and I generally dislike everything I'm hearing about this. Sorry you didn't get an Oscar nom for ASIB my guy, get over it.

I knew Greta would be nominated and I will say that I love the visuals of that movie, but I think the visual greatness of Barbie is super dependent on the production and costume design, so... I'm not saying it isn't deserved, but I'm not in love with it.

Again, haven't seen Poor Things by Yorgos is fab.

Nolan was a foregone conclusion, I think the movie does look great and is very interesting.

Scorsese should win, sorry, he put his heart and soul into that movie and you could tell with every bit of it. Listen, people can dog this man out all they want, but he is THAT GUY and I consider him one of the last Truly Legend Status directors working right now, so. I think this will go to Oppenheimer, but. Meh.

And again, I'm happy to see Celine Song nominated! Past Lives had a really unique vibe to it and I think she offered a film that we don't see as much of anymore.

Screenplay--Based on what I've seen on this list, should be KOTFM, I can see it going to Barbie. Oppy being written in the first person might woo some people, though.

Best Actor--Drama: Should absolutely be Cillian, he carried that movie and it wouldn't have worked without him. Just a fabulous performance. I can see Leo maaaaybe edging him out? He was really good in KOTFM. It is truly wild to me that Barry was nominated, lol, I haven't seen a rush of buzz for him in Saltburn though he is the best part of the movie. I don't think it was his best work, compared to Banshees.

Best Actress--Drama: If this isn't Lily Gladstone I'll screech. Incredibly moving, and another movie where this thing would not have worked if anyone else had played that role. I don't see this category being super competitive against her.

Best Actress--Comedy/Musical: I can see them giving it to Margot for the press. I think Emma has had the strongest buzz of this category, but Fantasia could totally dark horse it.

Best Actor/Comedy Musical--I have no opinion on this, but I'm going for Jeffrey Wright because he's generally so good.

Best Supporting Actor--Charles Melton DESERVES this, people. He's amazing in May December. Heart crushing. An absolute breakout revelation performance.

One person I could see him giving him a run for his money is De Niro, because he was also amazing in KOTFM. Absolutely loathsome. I can also see them giving it to RDJ, because he is entertaining in Oppy, and I'm getting "it's time" vibes, which I hate... but Charles has also been cleaning up with smaller critics' awards.

Best Supporting Actress--Da'Vine is getting some great reviews, I feel like she's got a really good shot. Julianne is very good in May December, but she's also a very decorated actress. Um, sorry, Emily Blunt was not anything special in Oppy and if she gets this I'll be so baffled.

Best TV Series--Drama: I can see this going to Succession or possibly The Last of Us. Succession has the final season going for it, and it was actually amazing. TLOUS has fandom hype going for it, which the Globes likes. The Diplomat won't win, but fwiw I liked that show a lot.

Best TV Series--Comedy: Abbott Elementary better win is all I'll say. The Bear and Barry shouldn't even be in this category lol.

Best TV Actor--Drama: I feel like this will be a duke it out between Jeremy and Kieran. I'd be thrilled with either winning, but Jeremy's already won and Kieran has an "it's his time" vibe, his last shot to win with what may end up being the defining performance of his career. Brian Cox is such a dick for submitting in this category and the awards shows are such dicks for nominating him, lol.

Best Actress--TV Drama: If Sarah Snook doesn't win I'm burning this city to the ground. Why is Emma even nominated lmao. I do love a Keri Russell, but nah man, nobody here compares to Snook.

Best Actress--TV Comedy: Tbh I think Elle gave the best performance in this category.... easily.... but Quinta is great and I'd love to see her win, too.

Best Actor--TV Comedy: I don't care for any of these nominees. Nicholas Hoult outsold everyone here, bummer that he doesn't have a nom.

Best Supporting Actor-TV: I'd love for Alan Ruck to pick something up, but Matty Mac did once again obliterate lol. Askars was amazing but I don't think he had enough PUNCHY moments.

Best Support Actress--TV: Elizabeth Debicki was great but didn't have the material, imo. Christina Ricci would be my pick here, but I feel like it's gonna go to Hannah Waddingham because last season and all that.

Best Limited Series--Beef is easily the best one here, but the horrible way that the casting controversy was handled may have ruined their shot. In that sense, I think Steven gave the best performance but it could go to Matt Bomer or Jon Hamm. For actress, I would've picked Ali Wong but.... Also, I will say, nobody saw Dead Rings but me apparently but I'm so glad Rachel Weisz got nominated here because she was INCREDIBLE. Will probably go to Brie Larson knowing my luck, though I don't think Lessons in Chemistry made the impact they thought it would.

Best Supporting Actress--Limited: Glad to see Carla here, she was great. I have no idea who this will go to but it probably won't be here lmao. Also, The Fall of the House of Usher should've gotten a nom for best Limited, but c'est la vie the awards shows hate horror. Also, I don't know if this is controversial but brave... I would've nominated Bruce for Best Actor. That could be my weird attraction to him in that role speaking, though.

[televisionpromos]

Kung Fu 3x06 "Rescue" Promo - A HEARTBREAKING DECISION AND AN UNEXPECTED REVEAL — Nicky, Henry, Ryan and Pei-Ling try to make sense of some disturbing information they’ve learned about Xiao. Althea and Dennis help his sister after she learns that money has gone missing from their family’s charitable trust. Elsewhere, Mei-Li is forced to make an impossible decision. Tzi Ma, Gavin Stenhouse, Yvonne Chapman and JB Tadena also star. Kristin Windell directed the episode written by Matt Young. Original airdate 11/9/2022.

[thereisonlymaul]

IT HAS BEEN SO LONG AND MY PATH HAS BEEN SO DARK…                           DARKER THAN I EVER DREAMED IT COULD BE.

• RP ACCOUNT FOR MAUL OF STAR WARS • INDEPENDENT. PRIVATE. SELECTIVE. CANON-DIVERGENT. • WRITER HAS 10+ YEARS OF RP EXPERIENCE • MULTIVERSE AND OC FRIENDLY

[kyberborn-aa]

tags 01

☆ somebody has to save our skins! ➵ mun post

☆ we’re not alone. good people will fight if we lead them. ➵ ask memes

☆ I find your lack of faith disturbing. ➵ asks

☆ be careful not to choke on your aspirations.  ➵ wishlist

☆ i am a jedi like my father before me.   ➵ saved

☆ i’m one with the force. the force is with me.  ➵ promo

☆ you can’t stop change any more than you can stop the suns from setting.   ➵ muse bios

☆ help me obi wan kenobi, ur my only hoe.  ➵ ooc post

☆ luminous beings, we are. not this crude matter.  ➵ self promo

☆you’re gonna die here you know. convenient.  ➵ starter call

☆ so this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause.  ➵ open starter

☆ now be brave and don’t look back.   ➵ queue

[thereisonlymaul-s]

IT HAS BEEN SO LONG AND MY PATH HAS BEEN SO DARK…               DARKER THAN I EVER DREAMED IT COULD BE.

• RP ACCOUNT FOR MAUL OF STAR WARS • INDEPENDENT. PRIVATE. SELECTIVE. CANON-DIVERGENT. • WRITER HAS 10+ YEARS OF RP EXPERIENCE • MULTIVERSE AND OC FRIENDLY

[kyberborna]

tags 01 (mun) 

☆ somebody has to save our skins! ➵ mun post

☆ we’re not alone. good people will fight if we lead them. ➵ ask memes

☆ I find your lack of faith disturbing. ➵ asks

☆ be careful not to choke on your aspirations.  ➵ wishlist

☆ i am a jedi like my father before me.   ➵ saved

☆ i’m one with the force. the force is with me.  ➵ promo

☆ you can’t stop change any more than you can stop the suns from setting.   ➵ muse bios

☆ help me obi wan kenobi, ur my only hoe.  ➵ ooc post

☆ luminous beings, we are. not this crude matter.  ➵ self promo

☆you’re gonna die here you know. convenient.  ➵ starter call

☆ so this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause.  ➵ open starter

☆ now be brave and don’t look back.   ➵ queue