#'in the meantime enjoy having the weirdest magic name ever'

[egophiliac]

another one that I'm not super happy with, but continuing to mess with it isn't going to help! so here he is! 🦇 there was a lot I was trying to get across in this one, so uhhhhh hopefully it reads.

we're almost out of unique magics now...just Ace (and maybe Grim?) left!

[alovesongshewrote]

They’re So Pretty, It Hurts | Zoe

Plot:  Several minutes of the reader being a disaster

Word Count: 1,870

Warnings:  Pining.  So much pining.

A/N:  it’s woman loving hours, lads.  

Tags: @yagirlcheesely @moppetwithamanbun @tales-of-hisirdoux @blixeon

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Sometimes, you go to a bookstore, and you see a pretty girl.  You make eye contact, and it’s only for a second, but it still takes your breath away.  Her eyes are just so blue, the colour of the sky when the sun is finished rising.  You could get lost in them, you wanted to get lost in them, but instead, you look away almost instantly because being perceived is Not Fun.  Still, your cheeks are warm, and you’re desperate to steal another glance at her.

This is one of those times.  Except you worked at the bookstore, but that didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.  Bottom line, you’d made eye contact with a cute girl and instantly fallen in love with her.  It be like that sometimes, but we manage and move forward.  You managed and moved forward by hiding behind one of the shelves.  You were not the best at managing and moving forward.  You may have actually gone backwards, I’m not sure.  Either way, your heart was racing, practically beating out of your chest.  It felt you couldn't breathe, like oxygen was made of cute girls, which sounds nice but is, in practice, really impractical and very suffocating.

“Uh, (Y/N)?  You good, mate?”

“Hhjkjadfhkaljdfhakhfd-”

“Oh, fuzzbuckets.”

Your lovely, lovely coworker, Hisirdoux Casperan, had noticed you hiding behind the shelf, which wasn’t difficult at all, really.  You didn’t care though, you were mostly hiding from the cute girl.  Literally, anyone and everyone else who entered the bookstore could see you, but that didn’t matter.  As long as she didn’t see, everything would be fine.  Douxie, however, thought you may have had a stroke.

“(Y/N)?” he gave your arm a little poke, “(Y/N)?  (Y/N) darling, are you-”

“Alkjdhfalksdhfajlksdfhakjf, yeah, sorry, I just-” you didn’t finish your sentence.  You just kind of floated away into the void, attention stolen again by the cute girl.  Her hair was pink, her clothes very punk-rock.  Yeah, yeah, you were a goner.  God, she was pretty.  Oh.  Oh, fuck, she was coming this way.  

You jerked your head to face the books you were hiding behind (something about true crime?  It looked cool, but now was not the time,) while Douxie faced the cute girl head-on.  You would never know where he found the confidence, but you respected it.

“Zoe!  This is (Y/N), she’s the new one I was telling you about.”

Zoe.  Zoe.  You liked it.  It was pretty, like her.  Oh, god, she was talking to you.

“(Y/N), huh?  Cute name, it suits you.”

If you could think coherently, you would have been wondering if that meant she found you cute, but you couldn’t think coherently.  At the moment, your thoughts were mostly “AKJKDSFHKJHG,” and “KSHFJAHFKJHAKDFHKALDFHLAJSDFHKLJADSHFKLHASKDJFHKALS,” and you still couldn’t breathe!  It was very valid of you, to be honest.

“Uhh, thanks.  You too.”

Good, good, that was what a normal person would say.  This was a normal, average conversation.  You definitely didn’t have a huge crush on her or anything, nooooo-

“So, uh… true crime?”

You blinked a few times in confusion before realizing that she was referring to the shelf you were leaning on.  Oh, yeah, true crime.  Oh, god, she was looking at you, they were both looking at you, QUICK THINK OF SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT TRUE CRIME.

“Uh, yeah, I like… crime.”

Oh, wow that was dumb.  I mean, it wasn’t the worst thing you could have said, but you would always remember that one of the first things you said to Zoe was “I like crime.”

She raised an eyebrow, “You… like crime?”

Too late to back out now, “...Yes.  I’m…  I’m good at crime.  I enjoy arson.”

It was stupid.  Really stupid, like, you didn’t even know where that came from.  But it made her laugh.  And you knew at that moment that you would do anything to make her laugh again.  Her smile was a blessing that brought light into your world, and you wanted to see it every day if she was okay with that.

“Ah, I like you, you’re cute.  Anyway, I have to get back to work, but I’ll see you later.  And you!”

You were trying to recover from the first six words of that sentence, but now she was pointing at you!  And looking!  Eye contact!  Ah!

“Stick around Arcadia, ok?  I wanna see you again.”

“I-I um-” you were straight-up dying now, ok, “Well, you know where to find me!”

Her smile was the most important thing in the world and you would die to protect it.

“Aight, I’m out!  Bye guys!”

“See you, Zo.”

“B-bye!”

As soon as she was gone, you collapsed against the bookshelf and buried your face in your hands.  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, WELL, that could have gone better, but it didn’t go worse, and for that you were thankful.

Douxie stared at you for a second.  He’d seen friends in this state before, as often as the night prior, actually.  Zoe had had the same reaction when she first saw you that you had to seeing her now, and he’d promised to introduce you.  She’d been so calm earlier because she’d been practicing what to say in the mirror for, like, a day.  You, on the other hand, had not prepared for this.  It was finals week and you had not studied.  Shit, you hadn’t even known about finals week.  Your friend had just devised this gay little plot and it left you a flustered mess with no study materials.  There were no cue cards in this world, only pretty-girl-panic and fits of uncontrollable blushing.

He knelt down to get on your level, “You okay?”

“Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

“Understandable.  You wanna chill in the back for a minute?”

“Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

It wasn’t a verbal confirmation, but you nodded, and he took that as a yes.  He helped you to your feet and led you to the back, which was technically his house, but whatever, semantics. 

“Here, I’ll just let you chill for a bit.  I’ll be back soon, please don’t die.”

“I won’t!”

He smiled at that and walked back into the shop to continue dealing with the public.  F in the chat for Douxie.  In the meantime, you just curled yourself into a ball on his couch and made a low humming noise.  Man, were you bad at… everything or what?

“Mrowr?”  You looked up to see a familiar mass of black fur, his head tilted in curiosity.  

“Ah, hey Arch.”

“Mrp.”

“You know you don’t have to do the whole cat thing with me?  I know you can talk.”

“Well, it’s nice to pretend sometimes.  Besides, we don’t know when that door’ll open again or for who.  It’s best to stay inconspicuous.”

You let a small laugh escape you as you started to calm down, your lungs finally getting the oxygen they’d so desperately missed, “I mean, that’s fair.”

“Mrpt?”  which, in cat, meant, “So, what’s up?”

“Well, it’s this girl.  Zoe.  Pink hair, blue eyes, the most gorgeous human being I’ve ever seen.  I just… she’s really cute and I made an absolute fool out of myself in front of her.”

“Mrooooooooooooooooooooow,” meaning, “(Y/N), dear, I know this Zoe.  She’s friends with Douxie.  The bar for general foolery is pretty high.”

“You really think so?”

“Mrow!”  “(Y/N), I know so.  If you like her so much, you should talk to her more!  You’re a nice person, I’m sure she’d like you!”

“Thanks, Arch.”

“Prrbt,” “You’re welcome.”

“Well, I should probably get out there.  Go be a functioning member of society.  Thanks again, bud,”  you gave the cat-dragon a little scratch behind the ears, smiling again at how he stretched up to meet your hand, “See ya around, cat man.”

“See you, (Y/N).”

You gave the familiar one last grin before you slipped out the door, glad that you could breathe, finally.  And then that was ripped away from you by a cute pink-haired lady in the middle of the bookstore.

“Oh!  Zoe!  Hi!”

“Hey, (Y/N)!  I just realized I uh, sort of forgot what I came here for.” 

“That’s understandable!  It happens to me all the time!”

“Heh, yeah,”  she stopped talking and just stared at you for a second.  You did the same before remembering that she said words, and that meant something.

“O-oh, yeah.  What is it that you were looking for?”

“Oh, just,” she pulled a post-it note out of her pocket and handed it to you.  Her finger brushed over yours and you could almost feel a spark there, “Just this.”

“C-cool!  Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, I’ll be right back!”  you gave her a quick nod before running upstairs to grab the book.  While you were distracted, Zoe had her own little meltdown, but she composed herself as soon as she noticed you coming down the stairs.

“Aight, so here you go,” you handed her the book, fingers brushing hers, electricity running through them.  Literally, there was electricity.  You waved it off though.  It was a magical world, and this wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen today (nope, that little award went to “I enjoy arson.”)

“That’ll beeeee, nothing.  Take it.”

“Wait, that’s-that, why?

“I mean, it’s not something I’m allowed to do but, eh, you’re cute.  And I told you I enjoy crime, didn’t I?”

“I’m-”

“Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it,” you said, immediately losing any cool persona you may have had.  Zoe didn’t mind.  She thought you were cute no matter what you did.  That in itself was made evident by the blush on her cheeks.

“O-oh.”

You smiled a little.  You did that, you were the cause of it.  You could only hope that she was also okay with this.

“Well,” you bit your lip.  The longer she stayed quiet the more you doubted your flirting skills, “I’ll be seeing you!”

“Wait!”

Your head shot up, eyes immediately focused on her, ready to hear whatever she had to say.  Man, you were a simp.

“I uh… I was wondering if I could get your number?  With this?”

You were pretty sure you died for a second, but when you recovered, you stuttered out a, “Yeah,” and quickly wrote your name and number on the post-it note she’d handed you.

The smile she gave you when you passed her the note was quite possibly the best thing you’d ever seen in your life.

“Well, I’ll call you!  Or text you, or whatever…”

You couldn’t help but laugh at how nervous she was, because that was a solid mood, “I look forward to it!”

And with that, she was gone, but she couldn’t stop thinking about your laugh, and how she’d do anything to see your smile again.

Inside, you were thinking the same, or you were until Douxie re-appeared from wherever he'd been hiding.

"Congratulations!"

You jumped an entire foot in the air, something you didn't really think was possible until right then, "Jesus Christ, Casperan!  Don't sneak up on me like that, God.  That's the seventh time today, we need to get you a cowbell or something, my Go-"

"So, did it go well?"

Your satisfaction painted itself on your face, "Yeah," you hummed, looking out the window, "It went well."

[ancient-trees]

So, tell me about your fictional children! I like hearing about people's characters! ^^

Thank you for asking! Putting this under a cut because it’s really long. Includes minor spoilers, especially for Tamuran, but nothing earth-shatteringly major unless you haven’t read the comic.

tl;dr:Varony: monster nerdEffire: snarky cobra nerdMath: grumpy old man nerdEmmie: +10 EPIC NERD also the best grandma

Versinthenet: dragon nerdRathe: swordie nerdPerrath: overly helpful nerd (w/ bonus cool doggo)Sukah: Gandalf is on strikeAleoth: the angstiest nerd

and Artreias: mostly an asshole (secretly a huge nerd on the inside, don’t tell anybody)

NERDS ALL NERDS.okay, read on:

I’ll start with Tamuran - I assume that’s what most people are following me for:

Varony you know if you read the comic - he’s the guy in my Tumblr icon. He belongs to a race of big arboreal predators that live deep in very dangerous forests, but for now he’s (sort of but not quite voluntarily) bound in the form of a big gangly human. For the most part he is okay with this arrangement (all except for the new “possibly permanent” aspect - see recent events in the comic). He’s endlessly curious, and he thinks humans are the weirdest, most bewilderingly fascinating things he’s ever encountered. He’s been human-shaped for (most of) about six years at this point - shortly after he was changed, he was found and taken in by a clan of traveling merchants, who taught him language and basically How To Human. They became a second family to him, as have the Ragtag Band of Adventurers he’s currently found his lot thrown in with, but sometimes he misses the trees.

Uh, stuff that I don’t think has been covered in the comic already: Back home, Varony (or Hhr'skhygh - approximation of his *growly-noises* real name) lived with his pack, which included his mother and three older siblings. His sister’s pretty cool, his brothers are jerks. He’s a good hunter, but his pack always saw him as something of a weirdo - asks too many pointless questions, wants to know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING. When he was little he used to love listening to his grandfather tell his people’s folktales, and legends about the outside world. And yes, he’s officially ace/aro, species notwithstanding. Humans just complicate it even more - his people’s mating rituals are pretty straightforward, while humans’ involve all sorts of flirting and bizarre games that catch him off-guard (and have gotten him into a few ..uncomfortable situations in the past, if you want to know what the deal was with him freaking out on poor Jadsira in chapter 14).

Effire is a Morphus - one of the magical, long-lived Tu Naul race who was born with shapeshifting abilities. All Morphyx get bound into a single animal form and magically bonded to a “worthy” human (for the duration of the human partner’s life) as a sort of cultural exchange/community service. Effire was never too keen on that idea, especially after he found out his partner would be a Zharus Guardsman, and ESPECIALLY after his own bonded form turned out to be a cobra. But after getting used to one another, Effire found that his partner Morgen was a dreamer and idealist with a brain that never stopped - far from the meatheaded soldier-for-hire he was expecting. After their Zharus Academy training was complete, they were hired by the Patriarch of Tamuran to work palace intelligence and security and to keep an eye on the Patriarch’s elder sons as part of their personal guard (much to Prince Johlan’s irritation).

Effire tends to be cynical and sharp-tempered, but he means well. He would do anything for Morgen, whom he loves fiercely. He’s always liked exploring, especially poking around in places he’s not supposed to be. His favorite animals to turn into before he was bound were falcons, swallows, and other quick, agile birds - it was a pretty big blow to be stuck in a form that doesn’t even have limbs. Being part of a prince’s royal guard at least means he’s gotten to travel from time to time, and between Morgen and palace goings-on his life is seldom boring… though the way things have gone lately, he’s starting to really wish for boring…

Mathim hasn’t shown up in the comic yet - the Atriand-side plotline follows his story. He’s a former colonel in the Atriand army who was discharged early for an injury that never healed right, and at this point he’s retired to a town out in the wilderness, a cantankerous old bastard who spends his time drinking too much and cussing out the neighbor kids. His troublemaking teenaged grandson - the only living family he isn’t estranged from - disappeared about a year ago without a trace, though Math’s suspicions lean toward sorceric activity. When strangers pass through town bringing odd rumors, it might finally be the key Math needs to find the kidnappers. But Math has secrets - he was born with a forbidden form of magic, a dangerous, volatile power that has terrified him all his life. The same power that he passed on to his grandson, the power that made the boy a target of sorcerers in the first place. And now Math is going to need to unlock that power if he wants to have any hope of saving his boy…

Emianna was supposed to be a minor character, but she insisted on becoming a lot more important than we’d planned (and I’m glad she did). She’s Math’s wife, who died a few years before the comic story but still plays a big role in it. She was a huge nerd and avid naturalist, though poor health kept her working in libraries rather than pursuing science in the field. The daughter of a prominent Atriand military family, she used to pretend to be a bit daft at her family’s social functions, so that ambitious suitors would focus their attention on her sisters and leave her alone. At least until a shy young officer in search of a restroom literally stumbled over her reading in a closet during one of those parties… 

Emmie likes: books, books, and more books, SCIENCE, yaoi. And also being Gramma Emmie to her family - she’ll make you some amazing cookies, but you might have to pry her out of her lab to do it.

Novel characters: From several books, which are intended (if all goes well) to fit together like puzzle pieces and thus are sort-of in development at the same time (in other words, my notes are a mess).  Standard disclaimer that nothing is 100% canon till the books are finished.

Versinthenet is a dragon. In my setting, dragons are features of the landscape - half-physical, half-spirit beings that come into existence in places where intense magic pools and snags, and serve to tie Magic to the physical world. They can’t physically travel far from their magic “nodes,” but they can use the tides of Magic to communicate with other dragons and watch events as they unfold elsewhere in the world and also stupid cat videos.  Most dragons are located far from human settlements, but some of the ones who do live near humans use their influence over local magic to become patron protectors for their area, and in return the humans see to any physical-plane needs they may have. Verse (don’t call him that to his face) was one of these - fairly young as dragons go, he calmed the seas, quelled storms, and ensured good fishing for the people of his island. But centuries of watching human conflicts and atrocities, capped with events involving the death of his closest mentor, have started him questioning whether these people deserve his help after all. Then an idiot wizard shows up with the audacity to try to bind him and use his magic. The binding attempt goes horribly wrong - the wizard dies and Verse finds his consciousness pulled into the wizard’s body, while the rest of his Dragon self, mindless, flies off to wreak havoc, pulling frayed Magic into a hurricane around itself as it goes. Now Verse has to figure out how to set things right, while being blamed for the actions of the wizard who made this mess… before the dragon unleashes its wrath upon the whole island, or the islanders find a way to destroy the revered protector who has betrayed them. (Beyond all that, the consequences of such a tear in the network of magic may be farther-reaching than anyone is prepared for…)

So yeah, he’s not having a very good day.

Rathe is quick, athletic, great with a sword, and wants to be a hero like the ones in the storybooks. Unfortunately, she’s the daughter of a highly-respected family of scholars in a society that abhors all forms of violence and prizes learning and tradition above everything else. Events conspire to lead her away from home and into the life of adventure she’s always craved… but when her wizard traveling companion goes and does something really, really stupid, she’ll find out that heroing is a lot more complicated than she expected… especially when it involves facing personal secrets she thought were buried in the past.

Perrath has had a magical gift since he was a child - the ability to mend things that are broken - and a passion for helping people to go along with it. Unfortunately, one night a mysterious storm blew away all the magic in his village, including his innate talent, and he’s been searching for it ever since, with a sole still-functional(?) finding charm leading the way and his dog at his side (whom he talks to. A lot). He misses his magic, but he’s found that in the meantime he really enjoys a life of wandering - going wherever his finder points him, meeting new people and exploring places he’d never heard of, using his mundane skills to repair people’s things in order to get by. Until he finds himself in a sticky situation out in the uncharted wilds, and learns that promising to fix something for malevolent shadow-demons is maybe not a good idea…

Sukah is a semi-immortal guardian mage, bestowed with certain powers and nobly tasked with the protection of humanity. Only it’s hard to do your job when your partner has long since disappeared, halving your power, and nobody wants your help or even listens to your advice anymore. So he’s watched history unfold from the sidelines, telling himself that if people want to make a huge mess of things that’s their business.  A crisis involving two worlds and the fabric of magic itself, along with the reappearance of someone he’d thought long dead, might be enough to convince him to dust off his old magic and get back in the fight, but by then it might be too late…

Thanks to a valiant sacrifice-beyond-hope made by the parents she’s never known, Aleoth supposedly harbors within her the soul of a great evil… and no one has ever let her forget it. Stifled and stigmatized by those who were supposed to be her protectors, she runs away and takes up with a band of notorious brigands. But whatever she does, she can’t escape the unnerving creature that has haunted her dreams all her life, or the disasters that seem to follow her steps.  When [plot happens] and events begin to come crashing in around her, she’ll have to figure out who and what she is and what she really stands for.

{Bonus shoutout to my college D&D character Artreias, a sorcerer/planewalker from Sigil who got stuck in a shit-ton of trouble thanks to his sketchy mage father’s sketchy past and even more sketchy friends. Treias was a minor noble on his mom’s side, well-to-do and highly educated, but he acted like he was from the streets since all the nobles he ever met were twelve kinds of terrible. He’d do just about anything to protect his family, though (blood family and family-of-choice), especially his younger sister, and including Infuriating Sketchy Dad, whom he loved anyway. Unfortunately the rest of the party characters hated him, since (thanks to the mysterious circumstances that got him thrown into the campaign events) he had a “trust no one” attitude and could be kind of a jerk about it.}