#Cadaver the dark urge

[lorithescrump]

It ain’t sexy, it’s man dinner🤌

A digital redraw of a silly little comic I made of Astarion and my Durge, Cadaver. I know damn well this has happened to these fools at least once you cannot convince me otherwise.

[lorithescrump]

You know I had to do it to ’em.

Featuring my Durge Dude, Cadaver.

Tav/durge and Batstarion fr

[animentality]

Gortash always disliked when the Dark Urge brought home corpses or toyed with bones and other remains. That's disgusting, he'd say, just bury it. It stinks, it's rotting, it's dead and gone and it should be put in the ground and forgotten. Why are you so attached to things that died long ago?

Ironic, because when they come back to him, wearing the face of his old friend, he joyously welcomes them back, claims he's missed them, and insists they can be what they used to be.

Without realizing that his Dark Urge rots beneath the city, never to leave the temple of Bhaal, and what they had is a lifeless, fetid, decomposing carcass, long dead and gone, and better forgotten, but he can't let them go.

Why can't you let a dead thing go, Enver? Is it because you never allow yourself to mourn?

The Dark Urge always said, that he could never appreciate the beauty of obliteration. Maybe he just doesn't know a cadaver when he sees one. Maybe that's why he doesn't realize the next one will be his own.

[aliasknives]

i did it :) new bg3 fic is up on ao3. this one was just incredibly fun to write

Named Dark Urge/Enver Gortash - 3.7k - M

cw for canon-typical durge content, ritualized cannibalism, religious fanaticism, autopsy, blood/gore, reference to past child abuse

excerpt under the cut

This house wishes to be forgotten.

It may have been charming, once, in a sad sort of way. The detailing on the doors and window sills is all dark oak, and clearly built with care. Now, it is only fit to function as someone’s storage space. Given the bloody scene he’s walked into, and the stench of fresh death, it is also someone’s tomb.

Ahead, he can see the Bhaalist crouched over what was once a kitchen table, surgical tools in hand. Dappled light illuminates her shape through the boarded kitchen window. In the plainclothes she wears, she could easily blend in with the rest of the city. Hells, with some polishing, she could almost be an Upper City socialite. He tries to imagine it: the heir of murder draped in finery, in silks and furs and gold. He could buy her jewels. Something red and sanguine. Ruby. Garnet. Carnelian.

Red is the only color she seems at home in.

There would be the matter of the blood to attend to, however. It has soaked through sections of her white shirt, likely ruining it entirely. Despite the gracefulness of her movements, she makes no effort to roll up her sleeves. It should be an unnerving sight, finding her like this.

“You’re a difficult woman to track down,” Enver says, supporting himself on the kitchen door frame.

Elbow-deep in a cadaver’s ribcage, Isoldt doesn’t even look up to face him. She’s tied her hair back in a clear attempt to keep it clean. A nice enough thought, but already a failure–plenty of strands have already come loose and dipped themselves in blood. It is especially noticeable where her hair is a white shock, but even the black has garnered a reddish sheen.

“I’m hardly hiding,” Isoldt replies. “I lit a fire and everything.” She gently pries the heart from its place in the chest cavity. When it pops free, she cradles it in both of her hands and carefully lays it on the table, just next to the body.

She is humming a song to herself as she works, but it does not sound like any ballad Enver has heard.

[glaciiermonarch]

reverb.

A Vain Rogues show becomes drinking a bit and hanging out with Aang, the band, and some friends; which becomes drinking more and dancing with Aang; which becomes driving the van—the back full of expensive equipment, drum kit included, to a secluded spot to make out with Aang like teenagers; which becomes turning up at the diner at some odd hour for breakfast food, already a bit hungover but still buzzing with all of the positive energy from the past several hours. With access to an overflowing bank account, Aang wants for naught materially alongside Taka; so what the two crave most is experiences, and experiences are what Aang receives for his birthday, hours of laughter and pounding eardrums and kisses and spilled drinks.

The sun is due up in an hour or two when they pull back up to the mansion, ready to crash in the bed they now share, both cleared of most responsibilities for the next day—save for a late afternoon class that Aang doesn't really have to make. The lights beneath the kitchen cabinets greets them as they stumble in and take off their shoes next to the door; Takaharu sheds their dark denim jacket, protection against the chilled night air over their mesh crop top, worn for their performance hours previously. They're greeted by Nayu, whose anxious Italian greyhound energy isn't unexpected; but she dances and paces around them, whining and snuffling. 

With tired eyes, Taka notices the trail of dark pawprints behind her. Something feels wrong. “What’d you get into while we were gone, girl?” Taka murmurs, leaning down momentarily to give her a scratch behind the ears; and then begins following the trail.

“T? What's wrong?” Aang calls after her, on her tail after scooping up Nayu.

“Look at the floor,” Takaharu responds, not even looking back, and following the trail upstairs. 

“That's odd, the house was clean before we left, there shouldn't have been anything for them to get into?”

But Takaharu's stomach churns with something other than the after-effects of drinking, or the diner food. His vision is a lot better than his boyfriend’s, and he has a feeling of what the prints are made from. What if one of the other dogs got hurt, and this is their blood?

Despite their aching back and knees, Taka hurries up the stairs and into their bedroom, door ajar. The other dogs are sitting on the center of the bed, huddled together, and there are lots more blood tracks on the bedding—but Ine, Mifu, and Zenki all look fine from first glance. The blood tracks are darker near the French doors to the bathroom.

Taka doesn't know what it is that draws him closer to the bathroom, some primal base urge to see for himself, maybe; but he barely registers Aang trailing behind him, or Aang's gasp at the scene of blood trails around the dogs. She opens the doors to the bathroom further and flips on one of the lightswitches—one on a panel of several in the opulent bathroom—and feels her stomach fall out of her ass.

A cadaver has taken up residence in the large bathtub; it takes several long moments for Takaharu to register anything beyond it just being a cadaver. Desperately hoping it isn't someone he knows, he studies the face—the recognition makes them nauseous. Adisorn Tayen, missing person, model with whom Taka had previously worked. God, how could he forget? The two of them had butted heads in their limited time together on set; but Taka's image and reputation had been damaged irreparably in some circles once Adisorn had reported Taka being a coke fiend, a spoiled asshole, an entitled jerk, and too demanding (and perhaps those statements had been true at the time, but his name still carries that weight on some tongues, even years after growing up).

And now, here lies Adisorn, the source of the scathing profile, and the clear source of the blood tracked through the house—also smeared on the black and white tiles on the floor and the pristine white ceramic of the tub—and they're clearly not alive.

“Taka? What's going on?” comes Aang's voice, hardly stronger than a whimper, when he comes to check out the bathroom too, Nayu now deposited in the bedroom.

“Aang, don't—”

But it's too late. Aang spots the cadaver in the bathtub, the same one where he's run and prepared baths for Takaharu many times, the same one he's bathed the dogs in after they'd made messes in the mud outside. His eyes widen, and then he bolts for the water closet within the bathroom, throwing it open and immediately throwing up into the toilet.

Tearing their own eyes away from the lifeless body, Taka goes to comfort their partner, kneeling on one knee next to him in the tight space and rubbing his back.

“Taka— what's happening?” Aang raspy, throat already sore from vomiting, tears spilling down his cheeks from being forced out from the action. They meet eyes, Aang searching Taka's for answers; but Taka doesn't have them.

“I don't know, babe,” she answers honestly, feeling raw too; she pushes her boyfriend's hair back off his face, feeling the clamminess from throwing up. She squeezes her eyes shut, feeling overwhelmed by the helplessness overtaking her, and presses her forehead to Aang's. They haven't felt this fucking lost in a long time. “I don't know,” they repeat, even quieter, the closest to a whimper that would ever come out of them.

Dazed, they both reenter the bedroom—but not without Taka casting another glance towards the lifeless body—and Aang collapses on his knees next to the bed, holding his arms out for the other three dogs, who rush to him. A draft hits Taka’s skin, raising goosebumps under their mesh shirt, and they find that the French doors leading to the balcony—the one they use to smoke cigarettes instead of doing it inside—are still slightly ajar. Probably the entry point. 

“We need to…” Takaharu mumbles, trailing off, as she fumbles through her many pockets for her cellphone; she isn't keen to having cops in the house for several reasons, starting with ACAB and continuing with the amounts of cannabis stored away, and her close affiliation with the Bastards.

She knows that she and Aang will be the first persons of interest; but it's still wholly unpleasant to be loaded into the back of a squad car together to be carted down to the station for questioning once the scene has been locked down. They're given the concession of taking the dogs with them so the animals will be out of the way of the CSI unit; but the couple are split up into separate rooms and have to divide the dogs down the middle too.

Twenty years in this country, no, I'm a permanent resident, not a citizen, there's a difference—years of hooliganism and skating past law enforcement and this is the first time Takaharu’s ever been involved in something like this. Their jaw clenches as they stare at the blank wall ahead of them, exhausted and already hungover, cradling Ine in their lap with Zenki pacing the room, waiting for whatever local yokel chucklefuck is coming next to question them, and wondering how Aang, Nayu, and Mifu are doing in their room.

The connection between Taka and Adisorn is brought up, and Taka poorly holds back a scoff. A beef between working models as the motive, seriously? That isn't the type of shit worth risking a cozy life with Aang for. People have killed for less, sure, but fucking murder is totally uncharacteristic of Takaharu's phlegmatic nature. Gritting his teeth, Taka moves surfing vacation with Aang further up on his mental to-do list, once all of this is over with. They both deserve it now.

Logically, they were both seen by many people last night, Taka literally performing in their band, which undoubtedly had people recording on their camcorders; and they're both caught on surveillance outside the bar and at the diner, so they both have alibis except for that blip in time that they'd had alone in the van elsewhere, mouths attached to one another, fingers clutching at clothes and hair, fogging up the windows of the vehicle—private time off the grid. Still, though, there's not enough to arrest either of them over; and they're let go for the time being.

Except—they have nowhere to go, since the mansion is now an active crime scene; so Taka is left having to pull a bunch of strings and find a hotel room on such short notice, and then get the dogs checked in to the kennel when the only choice they're left with is a pet-free room.

With early afternoon sunlight pouring through the blinds of the sterile room, they stumble in with nothing but the clothing on their backs and their wallets and phones and each other; and they collapse on the bed in silence, clinging tight to one another, as it feels as though the world around them has now collapsed too.

[dead-set-goat]

I had three strange dreams last night, but one in particular stuck out to me.

I came into consciousness at the top of a giant skyscraper alongside two women, we were sightseeing I supposed. One of them looked like an angel, with neat hair tied in a ponytail, but the other was unremarkable. Her hair was messy and dark, partially covering both her eyes, and her dress was the color of dried blood on cloth.

On top of the skyscraper there was a beautiful, sprawling garden, with hills, peaks and valleys. I wouldn’t have known this was at the top of a building if my first glimpse of this dream was the opening of elevator doors. Anyway.

In this garden there grew flowers of all kinds, but mostly red and white flowers. The trees and bushes were trimmed neatly and were all of the same healthy green, little variance in hue. There were also great fountains the size of swimming pools and also rivers, winding alongside a multitude of red brick paths that cut through mowed grass. Golden ornaments, lamps, guardrails peppered the scenery. There were also a lot of birds flying around and singing, and the air was so fresh, like that of the mountain countryside...

As I got closer to the edge of the roof, I felt a strong sea breeze, and as I looked over the edge I saw before me a thousand more buildings with immense roofs covered in bot only gardens, but forests, and villages, and cities. I could spot highways on some. On the roofs with the small cities, red cars were moving at fast speeds as the length of the streets allowed. Some of these buildings before me were much bigger than the one I was on. I was in awe. The angelic lady leaned over the guardrail and looked at me and said, “Isn’t it beautiful? Remember this.” or something of that sort. I took a photo and I thought, “I ought to show this to my parents”. Then the messy lady said, opposite of the angelic lady, “I want to show you something too”. And I followed her back through the garden, as did the white lady.

We reached the elevator I got off, but instead of taking it, we went through the door next to it, we took the stairs. As we climbed down, it started to get darker and darker and the breeze of the sea and the fresh air got fainter and fainter until they turned to a moldy, sharp smell.

I was trailing behind the two, who seemed to pick up speed the more we descended. Sometimes it felt as if we went up, not down, but then up again, like a perpetual sine. The neat walls of the building became distorted, wet and slippery. The clean metal stairs seemed to rust. The space around us compressed until it looked as if we were in a calcareous cavern or some kind of sunken ship at the bottom of an abyss. We kept descending.

I front of me, the two seemed to move more erratically as time passed by. Sometimes I could catch glimpses of their hands and arms twisting around each other, like tentacles, but then I’d blink at they’d walk alongside each other like any human being. And sometimes one or the other would look behind, to see if I’m still following. Both their faces seemed to be stretched in an uncanny, playful grin.

At some point I started to smell a deep rot, and not soon after, on the next floor, I a bunch of cadavers, the sources, twisted inside the walls and floor, covered in chalk and clouds of mould could be seen… We pressed on. The next floor was the same. And the next. And the next. But gradually more bones and less flesh appeared to fill the rooms.

At some point, I tire and fall, I couldn’t keep up with them, who were jumping up to 4 stairs at once. I lay on my knees on the slippery stone to catch my breath. Right next to me there lay remnants of a skeleton and I feel a sudden urge to pick up it’s ribcage and hold it up. Conveniently, a bright yellow beam of light strikes through the room, revealing billions of spores and specs of dust. As if commanded by me it falls on the ribcage revealing it’s grime. It looked so old and eroded, algae and mold seeping through it’s cracks, might’ve fallen apart in my hands.

As I mean to lay it back down, I see the lady in the dirty-looking dress appear in front of me out of nowhere. The beam of light stroke her right in the eyes, yet they stayed dark. Like the dark spots on a sun.

She was looking straight at me as she slowly spread her arms to embrace the room. After a short pause (long enough to feel the the shiver rolling down my spine, tip-to-tip) she opened her mouth and said with the same uncanny smile she wore through this descent:

“This is what beauty is made of.”

[And I wake up]

[kidakumajodevil]

Shadow of the Vampire Review

As a die-hard fan of both versions of Nosferatu (and the trailer for the latest rendition had me slobbering), I’m rather ashamed to admit I’d never seen Edmund Merhige’s 2000 Vampire Film, Shadow of the Vampire. I was aware of the fact that the movie is a “what if?” scenario; one that assumes the popular urban myth that Max Schreck (the eccentric actor who played Count Orlock in the original 1922 version) was actually a Vampire, is true. But for a reason I can’t really remember, I never had the urge to watch the film. Woe and behold, that turned out to be a grave mistake on my part, as Shadow of the Vampire is actually an amazing experience.

As I mentioned before, the movie follows the historical production of Nosferatu: starting in Germany, and then Czechoslovakia, when the crew begins filming on site. Our “hero” is F. W. Murnau (played fantastically by John Malkovich) : a tyrannical film director (which is quite removed from the real Murnau, who was by all accounts a demanding, yet fair leader) who does things like drug cats, and demeans his cast and crew with his barbed pretension. The man is immediately shown to be willing to do anything for his art…but the depths he’s willing to plunge into truly known until they begin filming at Orlok's Castle by night, and do the famous scene in which Gustav von Wangenheim (played by Eddie Izzard in a surprisingly short, yet rather hilarious role) ascends the ruin, and the mysterious “stage-actor” Max Schreck reveals himself from the shadows of a hallway, and beckons him inside with his bony finger, in an absolutely terrifying sequence. Immediately afterwards, members of the crew begin disappearing one by one. While I would be remiss not to mention the intriguing contemplations and criticisms of filmmaking that make up the film’s themes, to me “Schreck” completely eclipses everything else about the movie. Played by the legendary character-actor, William Dafoe, there’s a reason why he was nominated for an oscar: this is - in my opinion - his best performance bar none. His vampire absolutely oozes that existential dread of a forsaken immortal being; one so ancient he doesn't even have his memories anymore to comfort his loathsome existence. “There was a time when I fed from golden chalices.” And yet there’s also a glimmer of sarcasm and very dark humor present in his rotting cadaver (helped by Dafoe going absolutely ham with the role). He somehow manages to balance both being pathetically sympathetic and inhumanly monstrous (similar to Count Dracula’s depiction in Werner Herzog Nosferatu the Vampyre), the best type of blood-sucker in my opinion. And the absolute heart of the film.

Production wise, the movie is really good: the crew did an amazing job, sparing no expense (thanks Nicholas Cage!) transforming the sets into beautiful gothic scenery. The movie was filmed in Luxembourg, Germany; so the castle’s we see are real ones (though they sadly didn’t get to shoot some scenes at Orava Castle; the one used in the original Nosferatu), which add to the visual flair. We have shots of beautiful European landscape; silent movie studio sets; train stations; rurals towns; and, of course, crumbling fortresses. The gothic works; which also include a suitably atmospheric soundtrack, excellent performances by the entire cast, and a brilliant usage of light and shadow to enhance the delicious gothic ambiance. A +.

Ultimately, Shadow of the Vampire is absolutely worth watching (I'm kicking myself for not seeing it earlier; don't make my mistake). While William Dafoe's excellent depiction of the Nosferatu overshadows the rest of the movie; that movie is damn good in it's own right too. It made me think a lot of about the parasitic, undead nature of film-making that's actually inherent to the genre, and the atmosphere it presents itself is both chilling and delicious. It's joining the list of great Vampire movies I can binge endlessly. With no reservations, I give it my bloody recommendation.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hi lovely! I was wondering if you have any fics where Sherlock buys John gifts? Maybe a new coat or something adorable and thoughtful? Anything really! Gift giving is my love language so would love to see it with my favourite couple!

Hey Lovely!

AHH it's mine too! I love making people happy, so it hits right, hahah :)

Ah, ones I can immediately think of:

Sibling Rivalry Or Fighting Over John Watson By Jessa7 (T, 8,085 w., 1 Ch. || Romance / Humour) – Mycroft is just as much of a genius as Sherlock is. He keeps randomly kidnapping John for chats, and the locations get better. Cue Sherlock’s younger sibling complex rearing up and jealousy ensues.

The Devil You Know by PipMer (T, 9,300 w., 1 Ch. || Jealous Sherlock, Romance, Friends to Lovers)- Mycroft flirts with John. Sherlock gets jealous. John’s just along for the ride.

Licence to Kiss by fellshish (T, 13,739 w., 4 Ch. || Post-ASIB, Sort-Of Bondlock, First Kiss, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Angst and Humour, Bed Sharing) – Sherlock loves John, and John loves... James Bond. He only made Sherlock watch every single film. Tedious. And now John's birthday is coming up. Sherlock can't tell him how he feels, but he can organise an amazing gift: John's very own spy adventure. Sherlock begs Mycroft for a real case with some extra gadgets. And perhaps some actors pretending to be criminals. What could possibly go wrong?

Our Enthusiasms Which Cannot Always Be Explained by withoutawish (M, 32,961 w., 1 Ch. || Christmas, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Post-TRF, Case Fic, Mild Gore, Sherlock Whump) – The list that is tacked haphazardly on the refrigerator of 221B reads, ‘Kidney(s), and/or a full cadaver (preferably male, late 30s, under six feet tall), bag of fresh toes, sixteen cow’s eyes (corneas retained), dual exhaust hand –held flame thrower, an unopened first edition copy of Joseph Conrad’s 'Heart of Darkness', and no less than ten abhorrently gruesome murders in the upcoming month.” The one neatly hanging next to it simply reads, “Sex.” One of these lists is not John Watson’s. If John Watson were to put what he really wanted in list form, to live in a land somewhere beyond ‘almosts' now that Sherlock Holmes has indeed returned to him, he would never be able to look his flatmate in the eye ever again.

The Wedding Garments by cwb (E, 105,390 w., 36 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Alternate Future AU || Alternate First Meeting, Dating / Arranged Marriages, Romance, First Kiss/Time, Heavy Petting, Cuddles, POV Sherlock, Virgin Sherlock, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn / Falling in Love / Dev. Rel., Nervous/Anxious Sherlock, Jealous/Cranky Sherlock, Hiking, Vacation Homes / Honeymoon, Sherlock’s Family, Horny John/Sherlock, Patient John, Massages, Hand Jobs, Assassination Plots, Oral Sex, Case Fic, Emotional Love Making, Bath Time Fun) – This is the story of a young consulting detective who wants nothing to do with marriage and an army doctor who wants to find true love. It's 2020 post-Brexit England and the British government is encouraging arranged marriages. Candidates meet through state-run agencies and date in hopes of finding love (and tax benefits). Sherlock doesn't need or want a spouse, at least not until John Watson shows up. Hesitant to give in to his more carnal urges because of the way they derail his mind, how will Sherlock progress toward the more intimate aspects of a relationship? The answer lies in a very special wedding gift.

------

Ah, you can also probably check out these few lists that will obviously have gift giving:

Christmas Fics (Dec. 2017)

Christmas: Oblivious That One or The Other is In a Relationship

Christmas 2019 Part 1 (All Bookmarks XMas and New Years)

Christmas 2019 Part 2 (Marked for Later)

G / T / K+ Rated Christmas Fics (Dec. 2018) (Updated Dec 2021)

Community Recs: Christmas 2020 (Updated Dec 2021)

Birthdays

I know I'm missing a TONNE MORE, and I know I've read some and can't remember what they're called... so if anyone can add some more, please do, because I would love to add them here!

[jellymellydraws]

Masterlist ~ <<Previous Chapter ~ Next Chapter >>

Astarion x Dark Urge Chapter 06 Rating: E Tags: Angst, Fluff, hurt/comfort, slow burn, two guarded people fall in love so hard it makes them stupid

Chapter Summary:

Gale has some choice words for how Nettie handled their delicate tadpole condition. Rath, another druid, pulls Rose aside to ask for a favor. A lighthearted camp dinner is interrupted when Zevlor and Arabella's Parents approach with a costly request on their lips. The day's events start to weigh on Rose's thoughts.

“I can’t believe she poisoned you!”

The conversation with Nettie hadn’t quite gone as planned. ‘As planned’ being the greatest understatement of the day. Just about every plan Rose had was slowly uprooted because of this damned grove. The dwarven healer masked a poisonous root as a cure for the tadpoled party. Apparently her ask for help meant ‘kill me now, we’re doomed beyond saving.’ Thankfully, no one got hurt-- not really. Nettie felt guilty when she realized they were being sincere with their plight, and handed them the appropriate antidote. 

Even though Rose was the one who was poisoned, it was Gale fuming after the dwarf left them alone.

“Gale--” Rose tried to interject.

“Tried to put you down like a dying dog-- without as much as a whisper of consent!” Coming from Gale, she was taken aback. Rage, fear, all emotions that she saw very clearly in the others, but not yet from the wizard.

“Yeah, not really what I was expecting from a healer ,” if she couldn’t calm him down, she could at least engage and sympathize with his outburst, “at least she saw reason. She would’ve been long dead, otherwise.”

“A kindness she didn’t deserve, I assure you.” He spat as he paced in front of the lab’s entrance, “how dare she snuff out life with as much thought as snuffing out a bloody candle?!”

“Gale,” she spoke slowly, calmly, despite her brows being raised in surprise, “are you okay ?”

“OfCourseI’mNotOkay!”

The sudden lash of his words surprised the whole room, leaving only his echo behind. His face was red, dangerously close to turning blue at this rate. Even Astarion, who usually had a quip ready for their mage, was tight-lipped (even if those lips were also trying to restrain a grin in the process).

“I just-- it’s fine,” he finally sighed, running a hand through his hair, “ we’re fine, you handled it.” Another deep breath, “We live to see another day.”

“Yes, we do,” Rose nodded slowly, ensuring the movement matched the pace of his breathing, “And, we still got valuable information,” she put a gentle on his shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze, “I’m fine , Gale. Let’s get back to camp, Lae’zel needs to know what we learned here.”

“Right, thank you.” The color didn’t leave his cheeks, but his breathing calmed.

Gale left the lab with Wyll, who insisted on joining the worked-up wizard as they left the sanctum. Rose turned her attention to the table of notes and jars that Nettie left behind, seeing a buffet of information that she could take with her.

“He looked like he was about to explode,” Astarion finally released a fit of snickers.

“Let’s go easy on him for the rest of the day, hm?” Rose suggested as she plucked papers from the table and stuffed them into her bag.

“Oh, but now it would be more fun to do,” he pouted.

“How about you tease Wyll, instead? He’s new,” she smirked, looking back at him with a wink, “should be fun.”

“You’re awful , I love it.”

She rolled her eyes, returning to the contents of the lab that were interesting to her. In a jar was a parasite much like the ones they had wriggling behind their eyes. This had to be the specimen that crawled out of the Drow’s skull. She carefully placed it in her bag, ensuring it was padded on all sides to prevent damage. Once the desk had been cleared, her eyes scanned over the cadaver on the slab beside her. Nettie told them the drow was slain when Halsin realized they were being followed. They took the body back to check for signs of ceremorphosis. So, their belongings had to be somewhere nearby. If this was a scout, there had to be other information hiding on his person. After rounding the slab, she found it-- the pile of clothes gently folded and placed on a stone chair. Her fingers made quick work of the apparel, dipping into pockets and procuring a folded note.

Footsteps approached the lab, giving her a short moment to stow the parchment and stand up straight. Astarion, who she realized was standing by one of the bookshelves, also shifted his stance to a more natural pose, hiding a book behind his back. Rath appeared in the doorway, peering into the room as if looking for something before his eyes settled on Rose.

“I was asked to escort your group out of the inner sanctum,” Rath said, “is everything alright in here?”

“We were just admiring the scenery,” Astarion answered cooly, “stone gray is a bit overdone, but I think you druids make it work.”

Astarion with the quips again, well timed at that. She casually walked around the slab and approached Rath, not resisting the request to leave. She had everything she needed, and it seemed her elven friend got a parting gift for himself. As they crossed the atrium, Rose noted the child’s body was no longer on the ground. She wasn’t sure if they buried the remains as Kagha ordered, or if they returned the body to the parents. Part of her desperately cared about the answer, the other wanted to ignore it entirely.

In the interest of keeping her stomach from launching itself from her body, she chose to ignore it.

Once they cleared the stone door and crossed around the ritual circle, Rath slowed his pace. Rose did the same, glancing at him curiously, but cautiously. He was up to something. She let him guide them further away from nearby druids— away from listening ears. Something troubled him, judging by the furrow of his brow.

“If you have something to say, make it quick,” she whispered, keeping her eye on their surroundings for onlookers. Astarion, keenly aware of the situation, stood nearby as a discreet lookout, pretending to look at his nails and only turned his head if he made a face that implied he thought someone called for him.

“Look, you saw what happened in there,” Rath finally whispered, “Kagha is out of her mind . Halsin wouldn’t have let this happen.”

“Halsin isn’t here, he left her in charge,” she reminded, “if the goblins got him, he’s long dead.”

“Please, if there is even a chance that he’s still alive, find him.”

Rose took another glance at their surroundings, checking for prying ears or nosy critters. No one seemed to be paying them any mind, good. She crossed her arms over her chest, watching the desperation in Rath’s eyes as he pleaded with her. She wouldn’t answer him so quickly.

What were the facts; what did she know?

According to Nettie, it was Halsin who had been studying the tadpoles closely. There were others who had been infected, long before the nautiloid crash. In this case, Nettie was classified as a reliable informant. She had no motivation to lie to them that Rose could surmise. Supporting this, she knew a normal mindflayer tadpole would have transformed them, but they had remained unchanged. The other subject, somehow, gained powers from their tadpoles. Whatever power this was, it seemed to vary. The question then remained: why hadn’t her camp been gifted with any such powers? 

On one hand, these questions added complications to their problem, but if the subjects were tadpoled for weeks prior to their crash, then they had more time to save themselves. Hopefully.

Rath was beginning to shift uncomfortably under the unmoving, unblinking, gaze Rose held on him as she ran through everything. Finally, she closed her eyes and breathed in heavily.

“I’ll consider it,” she answered.

“You said the same to Kagha,” Rath muttered.

“Because I have other things to consider before accepting every quest presented to me. If you’re eager, you can do it yourself.”

“No. I-- okay, when can you give me an answer?”

“Tomorrow, before we leave the grove.”

“Thank you,” Rath nodded.

He continued to lead her and Astarion towards the entrance of the sanctum, where a tiefling couple shouted to the approaching trio. Rath sighed heavily, walking right up to them. Rose examined the two tieflings, who she realized bore a resemblance to the dead child. Her insides felt cold as they closed the distance. Why hasn’t anyone told the parents yet?!

“Somebody tell me what’s going on! Please!” the mother cried, “where is Arabella?!”

Rose turned her face away, hiding the involuntary wince. The unnamed discomfort she felt was harder to push away when she knew their name. Arabella. She remembered the look of fear in her eyes, when they looked at each other for a brief moment. What happened after that? Between their eye contact and her heart stopping? Her stomach turned. No, she couldn’t think about it. She wouldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Rath’s voice was small, “there was a terrible accident.”

“What do you mean, an accident?” the father asked with an arm around his wife’s waist, holding her hand tightly.

Rath hesitated. God damns he hesitated, and she couldn’t stand the silence.

“Arabella’s dead,” Rose stated, finally facing them when she delivered the news. They looked at her with widened eyes. She pushed through everything within her that froze, every desire that wanted to keep her from saying anything further, “there’s no other way to put it.”

“No...” the mother whispered, then sobbed, “that monster!”

“You’re a monster!” a bloody face flashed in front of her, tears running down a different face. Curled strands of hair sticking to her brow. The smell of murder in the air.

Rose blinked the image away, faced with the tiefling mother in mourning again. The lump in her throat choked her, she couldn’t stay here. Without another word, she continued past the grieving parents, taking hurried steps up the path, hurrying to camp. But the images followed her.

A tiny dagger, grasped in a similarly small hand. The woman screams before the knife slashes her throat. Sputtering. Choking. Silence. Blood.

No. She forced the images away, buried them further into the depths of her mind-- likely to the same place her missing memories were hiding. She couldn’t let herself get lost in these thoughts. Couldn’t bear to see anymore. She needed a distraction, something— Astarion! In her haste, she didn’t realize he kept up with her. Small talk could help, she decided. Something. Anything.

“What kind of book did you grab?” she conjured up her half smirk, tilting her head towards the elf who walked beside her.

Astarion hummed as he inspected the cover embossed in the fine red leather.

“‘Disorders of the Nerves and Mind: A Treatise of Information,’” his nose wrinkled more as he read each word, “wouldn’t have been my first choice, it’s what I grabbed when the damned druid interrupted us. Buuuut if it’s all I have, it will have to do.”

Astarion extended the book to Rose when she held her hand out, letting her flip through the pages. A medical journal of sorts, written by a single cleric about their various treatments on the mundane and magically insane. What a cruel joke the cosmos must have been playing, to put such a thing in her path. She passed it back to him when she was done skimming.

“Let me know what you think of it,” she casually commented, “I might be interested in reading it when you’re done.”

“If it’s as boring as its title, you’ll be reading it long before I’m done with it.”

The view from their camp was perfect. High enough above the grove to see into the inner sanctum, part the tieflings’ refuge, and the immediate wilderness outside the gates. Very few opportunities to be caught off guard. Shadowheart did well to find this spot, she commended. 

As expected of someone who was a trained warrior, Lae’zel set up the new tents and supplies perfectly. She even set up a ‘command center’ for Rose to review their travel plans. It looked like a tiny war camp. Rose could work with this, easily.

Gale was eager to show off what he could do when he had more than fish on the menu. The ingredients from the storehouse were appreciated and quickly being cut up for dinner. While the stew cooked over the fire, Wyll regaled the camp with his monster hunter stories, acting out climatic battles that he effortlessly won. 

Shadowheart and Lae’zel were with Rose, going over the map, notes, and information that they acquired throughout the day. The information, she knew, was going to be outlandish and hard to swallow, but Lae’zel listened. Closely. Concerned. The gith’s brows furrowed as she scanned her eyes over one of the druid’s research journals.

“Modified Ghaik tadpoles,” Lae’zel bristled, “all the more reason we need to get to a creche.”

“So they can strap us to tables and run their own experiments on us? You would suggest that,” Shadowheart baited, smiling smugly when Lae’zel snarled at her.

No, not tonight. They needed to focus .

“You said there’s protocol to this sort of thing-- what do you suppose protocol for an abnormal tadpole would be?” Rose redirected the conversation, needing to keep things productive. Her eyes were fixed on the map, considering the other quests put in front of her that day-- like potentially rescuing the druid, Halsin.

“Normally protocol calls for immediate purification using a Zaithisk,” she paused, considering something. Her face twisted with discontent as another option occurred to her, “or they would eradicate us. It would be too risky to leave us alive without knowing how to purify these new tadpoles. Especially if there are more out there. Tsk’va.”

Tsk’va, was right. Rose drew a circle around the Selune Temple’s location.

“We can’t go walking up to a group of gith with an unknown threat, not without information they could use,” Rose determined. She tapped the end of her charcoal stick to the newly circled spot, “this is where Halsin went to get more information about the tadpoles. His notes indicate that there are probably others with the same tadpoles in this camp. We’ll pose as one of their own and see if we can speak to anyone in charge-- someone who could have answers on where they are coming from and what we can expect.” 

Lae’zel glared at the map, glancing between the Selune Temple and the last known location of her kin. Behind that hardened face, she could see the growing fear. Rose sympathized with the warrior. Thrust into unknown situations, with even fewer known circumstances before them. While the human may feel alien to her past, Lae’zel was simply alien to this world. It had to be a lot to take in.

“The way I see it, we have few options,” Rose concluded, her commanding voice relaxing slightly as she spoke directly to Lae’zel, “knowing more about what we’re dealing with is the only advantage we can give ourselves.”

Lae’zel cursed under her breath again, turned on her heel, and disappeared into her tent. If that flap was a door, Rose would suspect it’d be slammed shut.

“It isn’t too late to abandon her,” Shadowheart suggested, adding a mark to her map-- likely matching the one on the table, “let her go search for her kin if that’s what she wants so badly.”

“No, she’s upset about this fucked up situation the same as the rest of us. She knows as well as you and I that we’re better off working together,” she gave the cleric a stern look, “I don’t care what you have against the gith, we need each other. Understood?”

The half elf pursed her lips, but nodded quietly. 

“Good.”

Lae’zel didn’t emerge from her tent until Gale called everyone for dinner, which featured a hearty meat and vegetable stew.

“My compliments to the chef,” Wyll declared, clapping a hand to the wizard’s shoulder. The stew almost sloshed out of his bowl from the impact, but he still grinned appreciatively.

“Well go on then,” Astarion smirked, stirring his bowl, “give him your compliments.”

“Ah, it’s a figure of speech, my very literal friend.”

The smirk on Astarion’s face said it all. He was playing with the Blade. Oh wait, she did tell him to tease the new guy didn’t she? She grinned mischievous watching the show unfold.

“I had hoped you could come up with something better than ‘compliments to the chef’ after the way you tell your stories. No worries, I can show you how it’s done,” the elf leaned towards the two gentlemen, “Gale, darling ,” his smirk widened, flashing a hint of teeth, “the stew smells divine , were you a professional chef back in Waterdeep?”

Oh he was good . The wizard flushed, chuckling bashfully. Wyll chuckled, then cleared his throat for the challenge before him.

“Gale, this stew can find itself in a king’s banquet,” the Blade grinned towards Astarion, seeking his approval of his performance.

“Not bad, getting better,” Astarion hummed with amusement, “but I’ll say this stew is so heavenly it can resurrect the dead.”

“If you’re all going to start inhaling each other’s mouths, please use one of our new tents,” Shadowheart’s teased, feigning disgust on her face.

Gale’s entire face was as red as the stew. Wyll and Astarion had a good laugh, seeing him shrink between them. Rose couldn’t help but add to the laughter filling the camp. The atmosphere tonight was vastly different from their first night at camp. Maybe it was Wyll bringing a burst of optimism to the group, or maybe it was the relief that they haven’t shown any signs of sprouting tentacles from their maws. Regardless, it was welcomed.

Dinner continued with more conversation, sharing what everyone did back in their respective homes. Wyll, the Blade of Frontiers. Gale, a prodigal wizard of Waterdeep. Lae’zel of Creche Kliir. And now, she knew Astarion was a Balduran Magistrate. Rose wasn’t feeling in the sharing mood, not if it risked worrying the whole group about her lost memories. Not tonight. She made an excuse to go back to the command tent, but encouraged the rest to keep enjoying their night. Astarion gave her a knowing look as she walked around his side of the fire. A look which she ignored.

Rose sat in a stool by the makeshift table. Perfect spot to view the entirety of their camp and write in her newly acquired journal. There was a lot running through her mind after this day. Between the death of two innocents, tadpole revelations, and even more disturbing visions, she finally had a moment to process it all. The thoughts flowed from her head onto the page. The approaching sound of footsteps didn’t stop her from writing, she could tell exactly who it was from their gait.

“Not up for telling the camp about the life you were ripped out of?” Rose asked.

“Not particularly,” Shadowheart answered, grabbing another stool to join her, “seeing as you slinked away, I figured you would understand privacy.”

Rose hummed thoughtfully, continuing her writing. Shadowheart watched the others share stories and laughter from the campfire. At some point Gale’s voice could be heard enthusiastically explaining the difference between wizards and sorcerers. The tidbits that she picked up on seemed to bring a small smile to the half-elf’s face. Perhaps she wanted to share more than she admitted, but for one reason or another she was holding back. Rose wondered if it was a matter of trust, caution, or necessity. 

Well, now was as good a time as any to test that out, wasn’t it?

“It’s not so much that I’m trying to be private,” she broke the silence between them. Shadowheart looked over to the human, her face begging the question without needing to utter a single word. Rose continued, “I just couldn’t share anything if I wanted to.”

“How do you mean?” Shadowheart pressed.

“I don’t remember my life before this. Can’t really share something I don’t know anything about.”

For a moment, Shadowheart fiddled with her hands, circling a spot in her palm with a thumb. Rose noticed a small scar, a perfectly round mark. A note was marked in a different page of her journal.

“Seems we are in the same boat— well, camp, I suppose,” Shadowheart finally said, “I…was on an assignment from my goddess. There were more of us, but I’m the only one left. This mission was crucial, so we volunteered to have our memories suppressed.”

“To avoid compromising your mission and anyone involved in your organization,” Rose commented. Not a question. An understanding. She closed the journal and turned her full attention to the woman beside her, “does this mission have anything to do with that prism you grabbed from your pod?”

Shadowheart nodded, hesitantly. Still looking at the other campers.

“I won’t pry. I…have a sense that I’d be the same way, if it was that important,” she promised, “hells, maybe I’m on my own assignment and I’ve just…forgotten.”

Shadowheart scoffed, finally looking over to Rose who chuckled at her own misfortune.

“You’re turning out to be an understanding ally…in time, I might be willing to tell you more,” Shadowheart smiled, turning her nose to the air in her usual attempt to seem holier than thou. But the sincerity was still there.

Even surrounded by walls and guards, there was wisdom in being cautious. The conversation around the fire was beginning to quiet down. Watches were being decided for the night. The tension between the druids and tieflings warranted that much. Speaking of tieflings, a small group of them approached the camp. Zevlor, leading the charge, with Arabella’s parents following behind him.

‘And there goes the lighthearted atmosphere.’

“Zevlor,” Rose nodded to him as he approached. She stood up as a sign of respect, speaking to him across from her ‘desk.’

“Rose,” he nodded back, briefly nodding to Wyll and the others who started to gather around, “I hate to ask more of you, but, we’ve been put in a rather…uncomfortable position,” Zevlor sighed. The parents behind him clutched each others’ hands.

Rose understood immediately, this had to do with Kagha. What else? She grabbed the journal off the crate and opened to one of its marked up pages. The list of favors, requests, and hopes were growing. Another one was going to be added.

“Kagha has gone too far,” he began. Yep, there it was, as she guessed. “She killed a child— “

“She needs to pay .” The mother’s words spat with venom. Her husband rubbed her arm, trying to soothe her.

“Where am I fitting into this picture?” Rose asked, lowering her journal to maintain eye contact with the other leader.

“You were able to get close to Kagha. No other outside has managed that. It’s a lot, I know, but it would be a great service if you could convince her to stop the ritual.” Zevlor kept his composure before her. One commander to another. Business. This type of engagement suited her, she realized.

The mother glared at Zevlor’s back, but she held her tongue. Interesting. 

“She’s given your people a tenday before the ritual is complete, that gives you time to prepare,” Rose informed, ignoring Wyll’s expression of distaste at the cold deadline. Heroes can be so hasty, it seemed.

“As long as those goblins are a threat, we won’t make it far. Most of the people here are not fighters, they are civilians. ”

“How many could there possibly be?” Astarion asked, hand on his hip and hand circling the air, “a couple dozen, surely, you can handle?”

“An army.” Zevlor deadpanned, “Could be over a hundred.”

“A hundred?!” the elf shrieked.

Rose pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing with frustration. Gods he was right. Her group was already having issues in how they were going to resolve the goblins for the sake of travel. An army? They weren’t equipped to handle an army.

“If you can convince Kagha to stop the ritual, we would be indebted to you. More than we already are,” Zevlor continued without missing a beat, “we need to stay here until it’s safe. Whatever means is necessary to fulfill that arrangement.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she promised, jotting the new request along with the others.

Briefly, she gauged the reaction of her camp. Lae’zel and Shadowheart held stone faces, not reacting in any obvious way to the conversation. Gale and Wyll looked concerned, with the latter holding a pleading look in his eyes only a hero could have. Astarion winced, his face twisting like a piece of lemon was pressed to his tongue.

Zevlor nodded in thanks and turned to leave. The tiefling parents followed after him.

Rose took a seat, reviewing the growing list from her, adding additional notes as she considered each one’s prospects. Desperate footsteps quickly approached. A small pouch fell onto her journal with a metalic thud.

“Kill the bitch and it’s all yours,” the mother, standing over the crate with a fire burning in her eyes. Her husband was quickly running up behind her.

At the other end of camp, Zevlor was still leaving. Smart man, wanting no part in this. A conspiracy to assassinate the current druid leader in this already tense climate? He’d be a fool to suggest a thing. Rose wondered if the parents were invited to join him when he walked to her camp or if he simply allowed them to follow.

“You can’t be serious,” the husband turned his wife to face him, “that is all we have.”

“It doesn’t matter! Nothing matters! Not without our little girl.” Her voice began to quiver.

Rose quietly poured out the contents to count them as the parents bickered. Did she have parents back home who would throw their entire worth at a stranger to avenge her death? Was there anyone who missed her back home— wherever that was? Was the woman she thought of earlier her mother? Was that her hand, holding the knife? Gods, she hoped not. As the questions stirred within her head, not a single piece had counted.

Arabella’s eyes flashed at her from the shine of the coins. The argument continued, but their voices began to fall away as Rose focused on those scared little eyes.

The child shaking with fear as the snake’s tongue tickled her cheek and slithered down from its perch. Taunting the child. Daring the child. Rose smirked, an idea forming. She glanced at the exit behind her, slightly blocked by her own form. Ah, well the tiefling was a small thing, she’d only need a little bit of wiggle room to get her hopes up. Smoothly, she shifted her weight, giving her that bit of space. The child noticed, innocent eyes widened, tears ready to fall. Ever so slightly, Rose tilted her head to the opening.

‘Go on,’ her mind whispered.

No.

‘It’s okay.’

Stop!

‘You’ll make it.’ 

It’s a trap!

‘If you can outrun the viper, that is.’

The stool clattered loudly behind her. All conversation, silenced by Rose, who now stood with her fists closed around the pile of a mothers’ desperate plea. Her head pounded, stomach twisted. All at once, the world threatened to fall away.

“Keep it,” Rose swiped the coins back into their pouch and pushed it to the other end of the crate.

The mother fell to her knees, hands clasped together desperately. She refused to look at her, focused more on  steadying her breathing and keeping her eyes closed to help with that. The mother’s voice hitched.

“Please—“

“I’ll handle it,” Rose interrupted, darkly. She opened her eyes when her impending tears were contained. With resolve, she turned her sights to the pleading woman. Then, she looked to the husband, and nodded to them reassuringly, “Go. This conversation never happened.”

The mother opened her mouth to speak, but Rose raised her hand. Eyes narrowed, warningly. The message came across, no words were spoken, but the thanks read clearly on their faces before they took their coin and fled the camp.

The silence weighed heavily in the air. No one dared utter a word. No one dared to breathe. 

Not until Rose did first.

“Shadowheart.”

“Yes?” The cleric stood from her seat, instantly.

“Names and descriptions of everyone who are loyal to Kagha,” she turned to a blank page in her journal, slowly uprighting her stool as she sat back down. Charcoal pressed to the page. “now. ”

Next Chapter >>

[lorithescrump]

This is genuinely the best screenshot I’ve ever taken from bg3

I have no words. None at all.

Why tf is Cadaver taking to Gortash the thing that makes Astarion this anxious like what is bro so nervous and/or worried about???

[precious-bhaal-babe]

with the hate of some other man's belief

Read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54371851

Word count: 3843

Warnings: descriptions of violence, blood and gore, body horror, medical horror, dehumanization

It wakes with an ache in its head and a hunger deep in its bones.

It wakes with an ache in its head and a hunger deep in its bones.

The pod hisses open and it stumbles, knees cracking against the ground and chin hitting hard enough for its teeth to clack, movements infuriating in their sluggishness. A body out of step with reality, slowed in a mire of putrid muck, nerve endings snap snap snapped until they are useless. Tacky half-dried blood smears down its face, unhealed bones grinding as it flexes its hands into the familiar shape of fists, tender flesh where fingernails have been ripped off meeting rough calloused palm. There is the acrid tang of smoke fouling the air, the heady taste of blood and bile on its tongue, the crackle of flame licking at its ears.

And there is the writhing. An aching, pulsing, squirming within its head, a vile parasite nesting in the shredded ruins of its brain, burrowing past splintered bone to make a home amongst rot. It can feel the intrusion. Lacrimal, ethmoid, sphenoid. Behind the eye, past the bones, into the brain cavity, swimming amongst the grey matter, prefrontal cortex, latching to the optic nerve. Extraction risks optical impairment.

The words exist, darting in and out of understanding, tiny minnows flashing under the surface of water. Images of bone shards, sliced organs, gutted cadavers come to its mind. Knowledge best learned from the touch of a scalpel, not the ink of a tome. But then just as readily drawn into the aching cavern of its memories. A void of nothingness. What is it? To know such things and little else?

Another thought, dragging through the sick offal of its mind, buried under skin and muscle and bone. The Dark Urge. It knows this, and yet it knows nothing. It is the Dark Urge, the twisting of the gut when the knife is stabbed through, the wrenching of the heart when the poison reaches, the gurgling spew of blood when it coughs up the throat. And yet there is no knife in its twitching hand, no poison hidden away in its pocket, no blood but that which pounds pounds pounds behind its eyes.

What is it when it has nothing?

There is no time for such frivolities. The hunger in its bones demands blood, retribution, for the pain it suffers. If it has nothing, then it has nothing to lose. It staggers to its feet, shivering and shaking like the most piteous of victims, and takes stock of its situation. The aching of its body sharpens as it moves, but it knows with a deeply rooted surety that hesitation will equal a worse fate. Rags for clothes, no protection against attack or weather; no shoes, the balls of its feet already raw; not a single weapon or personal effect on it, it will have to make do without; a pain in its fingers, fractured bones — phalanxes, distal intermediate proximal — will make fighting its way out more difficult; a kink in its tail — mid-distal caudal vertebra — that makes its balance harder to keep.

Alive, is the conclusion. Just barely, but alive.

A glimpse through a gaping hole nearby reveals more of its predicament. Hundreds of feet above the ground, a flying vessel of organic material, carving a path through air that tastes of fire and brimstone, overhead the armies of devils. One of the hells, a fitting enough backdrop. It searches the odd veinous room it awoke in and finds other pods like its own, most empty and cracked or filled with the lifeless remnants of those with worse luck than it. There is nothing useful to pluck from their corpses, but the sickly sweet stench of their gore and the glistening of their blood is enthralling, a siren song luring it in, until all else fades away and only the hunger remains.

Something outside rocks the vessel, throwing it off its feet and wretchedly tearing it from the draw of mincemeat. Right, a sign to get moving. The next chamber is little different, cavernous and pulsing with a life that it wishes to tear into. A dead goblin here, some creepy discs that push recorded memories into the emptiness of its mind, a plethora of glowing tanks that enrapture it. But there is nothing useful to be found, and it is about to continue on before it hears a voice.

Here. We are here.

The voice pushes into its head, rattling around in the echochamber of its empty mind; not something heard but felt. Its stomach roils with the invasion, the unwanted shard of awareness within its own meager sanctity of mind, that vile brain worm squirming as if in excitement. And yet the sharp pain does little to abate its own curiosity, and it finds itself clambering to a higher platform.

A torture chamber, something achingly familiar even when it cannot recall why. There are brains floating in luminescent jars and bodies strapped down in chitonous chairs, limbs bound even when none of them so much as stir. A thrill runs down its spine, the itch to continue the abandoned work making its fingers twitch. The tools left behind are unfamiliar but it doesn’t need familiarity for this sort of bloody work; a blade to cut, a hand to snap, what more does it need?

Upon closer look, the work done in this chamber is pointed and not the sort of exploration it would enjoy. No damage to the main body, only a single continuous cut laterally along the skull — frontal, parietal, occipital — and exposing the delicious grey mass of nerves beneath. All but one of the immobile flesh sacks have had their brains neatly removed, and it is the last quivering bundle that speaks to it once more.

Help us. Please.

Help? What an odd request to make of it, a creature that remembers nothing but the shearing of skin beneath blades, the grind of bone pinned by fingers, the slick of blood under nails. The Dark Urge. That is the title that its mincemeat mind has recalled, that is the looming presence beneath buried memories. It does not remember a life before this awakening, but it feels with clarity that it has never been the sort to help.

But. There is a curiosity here. A tempting morsel of a brain, exposed and speaking with the worm in its own cranial cavity. Surely, it would be a waste to not take this opportunity, to not reach into this sorry cadaver’s skull and pluck pluck pluck the unusual organ out.

“Hello,” it speaks, for the first time in its — new? prolonged? second? — existence, the simple word grating out of its throat like it has never exercised its vocal cords before. Or perhaps it has exercised them far too much, and the soreness comes from screaming. “What are you?”

The thing tells it. An intellect devourer, though the term brings no new understanding. That matters little, as it has already decided it will assist the creature, if only to get its eager fingers in its soft folds of skin.

As it reaches for the brain, it notices something; cerebral edema, swelling of the tissue, pressing the sides of the organ against the remaining skull. Good, then, that the upper portion of the skull had already been removed, otherwise the creature could have drowned in its own cerebral juices or some such. Its careful as it pushes its fingers down into the cranium, alongside the temporal bones, until they wrap around the bottom of the brain and tug. The brainstem detaches with a squelching noise, and then it is left with the odd quivering brain resting in its hands.

The urge exists to drive its fingers into the slimy soft folds of the cortex, tear and gouge and rip holes into the creature the same as has been done to itself. It wants to, vibrates with the want, it needs to. But nevertheless something stays its hand. The intellect devourer sits there, trembling and weak and trusting, in its grasp, and that complacency draws forth…what? Hesitation? Warmth? Tenderness?

It doesn’t know. The brain leaps from its hands and claims its own footing before it can make a different decision. Perhaps that is a mercy; perhaps it is sheer luck. It learns to call the brain Us, that it is currently in the realm of Avernus, and that it has been brought aboard this ship to become the next of the sorry corpses to pry walking talking brains from. Though it doesn’t think its own brain would be of much use to the owners of said ship, given the state it’s in.

Us doesnt ask for its name back. It doesn’t mind. It doesn’t have an answer anyway.

But Us does bestow upon it something different from a name. A title, not unlike the somber Dark Urge lurking in the peripheries. Friend, Us calls it. It’s never had a friend before; or, at least, it doesn’t think it has. It finds it enjoys the cheerful tone Us uses, in that odd multi-faceted voice. Maybe it doesn’t regret not shredding the damn thing, it’s entertaining at the very least. And helpful, as Us knows the way to the helm, where perhaps it can seek the retribution its pounding blood demands.

So the amnesiac and talking brain begin their trek to the heart of the vessel, and it finds that maybe it enjoys the company. It has been drowning in its own bloody, gorey thoughts, but with Us it can chatter aimlessly about the weird architecture of the ship and the bad smell of Avernus and the sheer joy at seeing real life dragons flying around outside. The odd brain makes for a decent listener, for all that it lacks ears. And it makes for a decent chatterer, for all that it lacks memories.

They go unconfronted by the plethora of other walking brains — though the things stop to tell it that it is beautiful, which is an appreciated comment, as it has no idea what it looks like — and it is not until they are traversing a walkway that has been torn open by dragon fire that something pounces.

Twist of flesh, flash of steel, and then a blade is pointed right at its chest. Steel greatsword, double-edged, made for the cleaving of skin from bone. The interloper — tall, wiry, solid stance — has the advantage. A fight would be dangerous but oh what a glorious corpse the warrior would make, eviscerated by their own blade, sickly hot innards becoming outtards. A flood of information spills over in its head. Githyanki — be wary of psionics; fearsome warriors but highly structured, move unpredictably to throw them off; limbs suited for astral plane, use gravity and mass against them.

The new being calls it an abomination and states it must die. Which may be true, it doesn’t know either way, but is still quite rude. Before either of them can make a move, that damned brain worm writhes and then it’s no longer in its own head, she’s somewhere else. In a pod, a ghaik tadpole being forced into her, seeing the kith’raki soar past to attack the nautiloid, escaping her pod and mowing her way past vile intellect devourers, spying a scrawny half-dead looking abomination and readying to strike.

And then it’s back to the emptiness, the ache, the hunger.

They stare at each other, both disoriented from the sensation of being other, and it finds itself grinning at the new warrior. She is fierce and violent and rude. It decides that it likes her, finds her fascinating, perhaps even moreso than a corpse. Much the same way it likes Us. If Us so readily called it friend, perhaps she would too.

The githyanki scoffs at it, interrupting its attempts to chat, but provides it with the words it has been lacking. Ghaik is the word her people use, mindflayer is the common term, for the tentacled creatures that kidnapped them. A tadpole swims in its brain juices, and the vessel they’re on is a nautiloid. The knowledge doesn’t change their predicament, but it supposes it’s nice to know the right targets for the rage pain fury that pounds in its blood. It will get its retribution from the vile squid faced creatures.

Its new companion insists they work together to reach the helm. Lucky, then, that they have Us to lead the way, though the githyanki doesn’t seem to like the suggestion. Any further conversation is thwarted by a swarm of imps blocking their only way forward.

All at once, something clicks into place. A return of awareness, a sharpening of the senses, a deeply rooted familiarity where previously none existed. The battle pans out before it, a cataloguing of each opponent’s movements. Imps are pack creatures, they attack in droves; crowd-control is vital, do not allow a flanking; their fires are hot but short-lived; scapulae are fragile, snap the wings at the base.

It’s moving before it even breathes. Grabs the first imp by the wing, shatters the scapulae with a swift jab. Second tries to flank, thwart the move by hurling the first in the way. Third begins a fire incantation, block by shoving a fist in the mouth and breaking the jaw. Strangles the fourth, snaps the spine of the fifth.

The fight ends as abruptly as it began, worthless little imp bodies littering the stained floor. Its hands are coated with a pleasing layer of fresh blood, and beside it the githyanki has a newly blooded sword still drawn. Us is quivering at its feet, though the brain seems more pleased than afraid. The githyanki regards it again, something more wary or perhaps respectful in her stern gaze. They both are capable killers. A fortuitous partnership, for now.

Us continues leading them to their shared goal and, while the githyanki is resolutely quiet save for the occasional scoff, it resumes its pleasant conversation with the intellect devourer. They traverse through the next few chambers uninterrupted, stopping only to loot a corpse here or there, though the pickings are slim. It manages to find a handful of gold coins and a rough iron dagger. It’s fairly certain mindflayers have no use for gold and the dagger is possibly even less effective than its bare hands, but it pockets the meager findings in a patchy bag.

The next chamber brings it pause. Us proceeds unfazed and the githyanki scowls mightily at the assorted illithid contraptions. But its focus is only for the bodies strapped to operating tables, chests moving with breath and yet their eyes are glazed with lifelessness, the precursors to those sorry flesh sacks that it pulled Us from. It shouldn’t care, the familiarity of torture makes it assume it’s seen plenty of wretches in such condition, and yet. Something wrenches in its head, not the tadpole but a piercing ache, and it pictures itself on some such table, strapped down and barely alive, cut open and gutted, someone else’s little science project.

A muffled pounding breaks it from its awful visions, and it shakes its head to abandon the images and turns instead to another unlikely survivor. This one — half-elf, better resilience than humans but worse stamina than full elves, plan to outlast — is still trapped in their pod, desperately beating their fists against the glass like structure. A futile effort, the half-elf doesn’t seem to have the strength to truly crack the pod, though it wouldn’t mind watching them bash their fists bloody against it, maybe make use of their skull until it splinters under the force.

The half-elf asks it for help. Pleads. The githyanki scoffs and says they shouldn’t waste time with stragglers. But it thinks of Us, the odd little brain that had asked it for help, that had called it a friend with no hesitation. It thinks of that unusual tenderness that had throbbed in its chest upon befriending Us, a stark counterpoint to the vile wretched hunger deep within. Perhaps another friend would not be so terrible. And certainly another person to assist their escape plans would be beneficial. After all, it doubts its own half-dead self, a brain, and a single githyanki with only a sword between them will have much luck against mindflayers.

It says it will help, to the relief of the half-elf and the annoyance of the githyanki. The words feel foreign on its tongue, it wishes to gouge and tear and kill instead of help, but that bloodlust has not provided any use so far on this nautiloid. Us directs them to a side chamber, lined with countless pods. How many sorry fools have met their end here? How many more would? How glorious that scale of death.

There’s another filled pod before them, though this victim is not half so vivacious as the half-elf, and it watches as something triggers a change. The human contorts, bones crack crack cracking, eyes rolling to show bloodshot whites, limbs spasming, the jaw unhinging as tentacles rip forth in a spray of gore. Until there is no human left, just a newborn mindflayer. A shiver runs down its spine. Not of horror, no, of excitement, of understanding. As if in answer, it feels its own bones and muscle shifting under skin. It’s empty but it’s also too small for its casing, seams bursting at the edges from all that is squashed into itself. It shouldn’t be what it is, it should be something more, like the mindflayer that surged forth. How awful, how glorious. To be born from death, crawling out of the husk. And, oh, to be the hand that serves the wretched mindflayers their next death. Would something again burst forth? The next phase of their pathetic lives? It will learn, once it kills the remainder of the vile creatures.

They find a device that allows them to free the half-elf, and when the latest addition to their band staggers to their feet, there is again that pulse of connection. She’s made it out, the mission a success, now her and her squad just need to make it back to Baldur’s Gate, but then they’re downed one by one, she’s the only one remaining, and she’s waking up alone and captive, pounding and screaming for someone anyone to show mercy.

The separating of their minds back to themselves is no less unpleasant the second time, and it comes to shaking in its own empitness once more. Do other beings all have so much? Their heads are crammed with memories and thoughts and feelings. It knows nothing of such things. It has the ache. It has the hunger. Symptoms of lacking something.

She introduces herself as Shadowheart. She doesn’t ask for its name. It still doesn’t have one.

Shadowheart retrieves an odd shaped device from her pod, but she doesn’t much appreciate its curiosity surrounding the little thing. A shame, as something within it calls it closer.

Us assures them the helm is nearby, not much further now, almost to their shared goal of retribution and freedom. Words that taste sweet on its tongue, like fresh blood and offal. The brain and the githyanki and the half-elf have proven sufficiently interesting enough to be more interesting than corpses, and its bloodlust is a sharpened knife aimed at the mindflayers. It will rip their tentacles from their faces, gut them and drown them in their own blood, crack their heads open and make soup of their brains.

When they reach the helm, it is already in chaos. Mindflayers are swarmed by hellish imps and winged beings — cambions, highly resilient to fire, bound to the same lawfulness as devils, fighting dirty will enrage and distract them — while githyanki dragons tear at the nautiloid, shaking the entire structure beneath their feet.

Once again, that hyperfocus overcomes the pain in its head. It falls into the achingly familiar rhythm of battle without needing to even consider it, directing the other three to remain nearby in a formation. If any of them wish to survive, it will need to be together. Shadowheart provides a ranged support, while itself, the githyanki, and Us tear through the stream of hellish enemies pouring in.

But it’s not enough. Not enough. It needs to tear, rip, gouge, kill. It needs them all dead, until not a single heart flutters with life. Its eyes lock onto the mindflayer that had given them orders. But it will not tolerate following orders from the vile wretches that ruined it, that left it confused and empty and so so hungry.

It breaks from the others. They can get their escape, their freedom. It wants only for blood, for death. Launches itself at the mindflayer’s back, ripping and tearing into its thin slimy skin. A fist wrapped around tentacles, a foot planted on the thing’s head, pulling pulling pulling until the skin gives. Cave the skull in, crush the fragments of bone into the soft meat of the brain, dig its grubby little fingers in and pull out the strings of nerves. The cambion is next, none to be spared its fury. Dodge a cleaving cut from a greatsword, duck up into the winged creature’s space, a mollifying punch to the throat. Wrap an arm around the neck, swing the body around, use its weight to land on the scapula and snap the wing joint. Sever the head with a flaming greatsword.

Someone is yelling, even while it is pulling entrails from bodies, and it’s not until a particularly violent jolt dislodges it that it finally looks around. Shadowheart is calling for it across the chamber, her and the githyanki still deep in the neverending swarm of pitfiends. Its rage still simmers, its hunger lingers, its aching remains. But it picks up the flaming greatsword from the mutilated corpse of the cambion and rejoins the fray, slicing skulls from spines and flesh from bones and wings from backs. Dancing in a bloody fray alongside the half-elf and githyanki until there is nothing but blood and meat and ash.

Amidst screeching imps and dragon’s fire, it manages to be the first to reach the control panel. It doesn’t have a single clue how to fly a nautiloid, but a plucking of linked nerves gets them rocketing through a portal and careening through a sky that at least doesn’t smell of fire and brimstone. Another jolt has it losing its footing, crashing against the wall with the sickening crunch of a broken rib. Before it can even regain its awareness, a gaping hole in the side of the vessel tears open, and it’s pulled out into the open air.

falling falling falling

The wind sucks the air from its lungs, black spots dancing over its vision. It imagines its body hitting the ground, the splintering of bone right through the skin, the squelch of blood spraying out, the immediate relief of no longer feeling the ache and the hunger. The mindflayers that ruined it are crashing and burning, they will rot just the same as it. A pyrrhic victory.

It finds it doesn’t mind that.

[sephiratales]

Naxxar Thornstar’s quest : Blood for Blood (TW : gore)

Contrary to a Dark Urge’s playthrough, Naxxar kills random NPCs and not Alfira. The corpses are found near the last spots of your long rest. 

You and the rest of your party begin to notice that he does not follow you immediately after a fight, but he admires the cadavers. You can choose to talk to him or ignore him. 

If you gain enough approval, he tells you about his urges and you basically have a reverse scene where you support him. 

Bad ending : Orin abducts him even if he’s in your party. Once you reach the center of Bhaal's temple; there is a cutscene where Orin tells you “My brother will kill you all”. She has a dangling arm and her gut presses through her armor. Suddenly, she is torn in pieces as her armor flies to Naxxar and he wears it. He is in front of the altar, covered in blood. The only thing he says is “You talk too much, sister”. 

You fight and kill him

If your party dies, you unlock a cutscene of the Victory of Bhaal.

Good ending : He sides with you against Orin. After her death, he fears he cannot fight his urge and choose to sacrifice himself. With enough approval, you can have a persuasion check to save him. 

[killerwhalethings]

自家製レッドソースパスタ

I imperturbably poured the cold cheese and mixed it with amachi's tomato sauce to make the red sauce pasta I used to eat on campus.

Once a friend asked me why I keep writing sad things, like pretending my life's a mess, that I'm emotionally unstable and reckless, urging the world to soak in my loneliness.

My ankle hurts. Someone I used to know from my childhood has given up on cancer. There was a funeral. And I sat at home streaming Fuji Kaze, caressing my aching ankle.

I haven't bathed my dog yet. He runs his stinky face by the corroded bars and keeps staring at me, lying in his own filth, seeking answers for my current indifference.

There was a cadaver exhibition at my alma mater. They said it was a man, with his left leg amputated and his insides flushed out. I wanted to see it more than anything. In fact, people had lined up in front of the library for a mere glance.

The evening sun puts a playful show by running its ephemeral beams across my room, highlighting parts of my room that lies in the dark, dusted and unbothered.

So you need patterns, predictability, and patience. I could cut myself into pieces and preserve them like marmalades in salted water. I could think of unimaginable things and put them in your stolen wallets. Would you believe me if I say it's just words, that they have a life of their own, that I'm just a medium for its transport? Would you press your ears to the pulsing ankle and listen to words being carried by proteins?

[lady-of-the-lotus]

Essential Saltes - Ch. 2/6: Vermont

Song Lan is about to overcome his natural reticence and drag Xingchen out of the farmhouse when Xingchen speaks again.

“Why did you ask us here?” he demands. “It wasn’t just to gloat about getting away with murdering Mr. Chang.”

Xue Yang sighs. “A terrible tragedy, that. Did you hear about how they found the body?” 

xuexiao - M -  AO3 - Tumblr: Ch. 1  Ch. 3 Ch. 4 - Lovecraft au but no real Lovecraft knowledge needed

Chapter 2 - Vermont

Arkham Advertiser 

May 5, 1926 

MURDER SUSPECT WALKS FREE   

Released from custody this afternoon was Mr. Xue Yang (20), the Miskatonic undergraduate implicated in the brutal murder of Mr. Chang Ping of High Street. Mr. Chang’s body, discovered by a housemaid on the morning of May 3rd, was described by witnesses as “partially stripped of skin and flesh, as if by a skilled butcher.” 

Miskatonic student Mr. Song Lan (24) reported his suspicions of Mr. Xue’s involvement shortly after the arrival of police. Following Mr. Xue’s arrest on the afternoon of the 3rd, Mr. Xiao Xingchen (24) bolstered Mr. Song’s testimony. Mr. Xiao, said to be a close personal friend of Mr. Xue, refused comment when confronted outside the police station by your intrepid correspondent. 

Witnesses are urged to come forward so the culprit can be brought to justice. 

  Xue Yang stabs the newspaper, burying the blade deep in the tabletop.

The table is one of the few things left in the small white farmhouse.  

The subterranean lab, empty. The library shelves, bare. The urns of essential salts and reams of notes and priceless Necronomicon... 

All gone. All confiscated by Mr. Wen during Xue Yang’s time at the police station.

Mr. Wen’s note had been short and to the point.

Time and time again you have proven yourself a liability. As proof of your success has arrived safely in Providence, I will uphold my side of our bargain, but going forward, all ties are severed. Your accounts are frozen and university enrollment terminated. 

Do not attempt to contact me again. 

So Mr. Wen had gotten him out of that police station. So what? Throwing him away like so much trash now that, after years of research, he’d succeeded where everyone had failed!

Xue Yang tugs the knife from the wood and slashes at the paper, ripping the words “Xiao Xingchen” from the page.

Traitor. Traitor! Betraying him to Song Lan, of all people—haunting Chang Ping’s house together, waiting for him—

He picks up his chair and smashes it into the wall. It disintegrates in an explosion of splinters that spray the room like shrapnel. 

Xiao Xingchen. The one person he’d thought had never used him—didn’t have it in him to use him—

Stupid. Stupid stupid  stupid—

They’d made eye contact at the police station, just for a fraction of a second. Xiao Xingchen’s face had been as white as a cadaver sheet, eyes rimmed with red but dripping with disgust.

Xingchen,  repulsed by Xue Yang, when the good doctor was the one who had betrayed him— 

He punches the window, shattering it in a shower of glass and blood.

Liar, traitor,  hypocrite—

Had he been running back to Song Lan every night, repeating everything Xue Yang had confided in him as he lay beside that killjoy priest in their dark bedroom? Sneered at him together as they held hands over candlelit dinners in their cozy little attic?

At least Song Lan had the integrity to show his dislike.

But Xiao Xingchen—

For all his talk of ethics, for all his pretending to care about Xue Yang, in the end he was just as two-faced as the rest of the world.

He takes the Charleston Chew from his pocket. Its cheerful yellow wrapper is smeared with blood. 

He picks up a pen.

* * *

“Let me burn it, Xingchen.”

Xiao Xingchen stares at the invitation spread on the bed beside him. He hasn’t said a word to someone who wasn’t a police officer since the night of the murder.

Song Lan holds out his hand for the letter. "Let me have it."

“No.” Xingchen looks up. His face is deadly pale in the grim morning light. “I’ll go.”

“We’ll go together,” says Song Lan after a moment's hesitation. He knows there’s no use trying to talk Xingchen out of this, no matter how foolish this is.

More than foolish.

Downright dangerous.

Xingchen turns his attention back to the letter. “Tonight.”

“Not at night.”

“We can't go in the day. I missed too much time at the hospital these past two days, and you have your duties.”

“Xingchen—”

Xingchen stuffs the letter in his pocket and rises, reaching for his hat. “I’ll meet you at the clock tower at six-thirty.”

Song Lan knows it’s useless but he can’t help at least mentioning what a terrible, terrible idea this is. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea to go to a murderer’s house after dark, Xingchen. A secluded farmhouse miles from the nearest neighbor…”

Xingchen opens his coat. Tucked inside the inner pocket is an old-fashioned silver revolver inlaid with ivory carved with snow flowers, the one thing of value he owns. Miss Baoshen had gifted it to him when he’d left her Vermont mountain for Arkham. Song Lan had only seen it once before.

“You’re not going to—” Song Lan hesitates. “You aren’t going to do anything rash, are you?”

Xingchen opens the door.

“Xingchen!”

Xingchen glances over his shoulder, looking just past Song Lan. “I promise I won’t do anything without you there.”

And Song Lan has to be satisfied with that. There’s no one whose word he trusts more than Xingchen’s.  

Xingchen is waiting for him at six twenty-five that evening. Without a word they turn down University Street, crossing the Garrison Street bridge and continuing up the street until it turned into Pawtuxet Road outside the town. They walk in silence along the rutted country road, passing the old sanitarium and the weed-choked road leading to Meadow Hill and the witch-haunted ravine on its other side. Trees crowd Pawtuxet Road, ancient, twisted trees that seem out of place on the New England coast. They compress the air, making it difficult to breathe, as if something dwells in the trees and exerts a malign influence.

A malign influence. What would Dr. Wallace say about that? If there’s one thing Song Lan is not, it’s fanciful. His belief in Xue Yang’s supernatural evil has surprised Song Lan more than anybody.

But no matter how many times he’s told himself that he’s overreacting, that his wilder fancies are fueled solely by his natural protectiveness of his naive friend, he hasn’t been able to shake the bone-deep conviction that there is something wicked about the black-clad young man with the demented grin and sharp black eyes.

Xingchen rubs at his necklace as they walk, the only thing betraying his nerves.

Song Lan wishes he wouldn’t. There’s always been something unsettling about the old talisman, a vague unease he can’t quite explain. The talisman, coupled with Xingchen having been found on the streets of Kingsport, makes him think his friend’s father had been a sailor, bringing the likely pagan talisman back from some godless South Sea island.

Twilight is spreading over the overgrown fields surrounding the old Curwen farm as they approach their destination. It’s smaller than he’d expected, an old-fashioned white farmhouse half-obscured by clinging, thorny vines and grasping trees.

Xue Yang is waiting for them in the doorway. He’s in his shirtsleeves, his right hand crudely bound with a bloody bandage torn from one of his black shirts. A grin splits his face as he waves them into the farmhouse. Aside from the dark circles under his eyes, he looks as spruce and lively as ever, an unnerving lack of spite in his gaze.

“Glad you could make it, gentlemen,” he smiles at them. “Step into my parlor.” He gives a little laugh, as if this is a joke. The front door opens straight into the kitchen, a far simpler room than Song Lan had expected given the rumor of his being backed by the wealthy Mr. Wen. Illuminated by the eerie glow of a small storm lantern, the only visible furniture is the table, with no chairs or pots or pans or plates or cups or curtains.

Xue Yang hops up onto the counter, smiling across at them almost benevolently.

“Thank you for coming, my friends,” he says. “It’s nice to have visitors.” 

Song Lan looks at Xingchen. He’s staring at the smarmy little devil's bloody hand with more than professional interest. Never good at hiding his feelings, there’s a blend of vindictiveness and concern on his face.

Song Lan isn’t sure which one worries him more. “Why did you ask Xingchen here?” he asks Xue Yang. "Speak your piece so we can go."

Xue Yang spreads his arms, drumming his heels on the wooden cabinets. “What piece? I figured he would want to apologize.”

Xingchen looks up. “Apologize?” 

Xue Yang tilts his head at him. “So the good doctor speaks.”

“Apologize?” Song Lan repeats.

“I missed four classes thanks to your fairytales.” Xue Yang sighs regretfully. “You took an ax to my grade point average, my friend.”

“Xingchen, we’re leaving.”

 “Wait!” Xue Yang rolls his eyes. “You have no sense of humor, my friend. It’s a wonder the good doctor hasn’t slit your throat in your sleep these past six years.”

Song Lan has no response to that. Were these the kinds of sweet nothing’s he’d whisper to Xingchen? Was Xingchen deaf?

Xue Yang is still smiling at him, waiting for him to take the bait. Unable to bear the sight of the satyr’s grin any longer, he looks away, eyes falling on one of the blood-smeared papers Xue Yang has almost intentionally left on the table.

His blood runs cold.

The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated. 

Song Lan is about to overcome his natural reticence and drag Xingchen bodily out of the farmhouse when Xingchen speaks again.

“Why did you ask us here?” he demands. “It wasn’t just to gloat about getting away with murdering Mr. Chang.”

Xue Yang sighs. “A terrible tragedy, that. Did you hear about how they found the body? Mangled like a chicken put through a cotton gin.”

Song Lan starts for the door. “I’ve had enough of this!"

“Alright. Alright! Step this way, gentlemen. I have something to show you.” Xue Yang hops off the counter and beckons them after him into the bedroom, a small room containing only an old-fashioned wooden bedstead stripped of all linen. He crouches beside the bed and pulls open a trapdoor Song Lan hadn’t noticed until it opened.

“After you, gentlemen. Alright, after me,” he sighs when Song Lan raises an eyebrow.

Song Lan has no choice but to follow Xingchen down into the trapdoor. They descend into the root cellar and from there down a spiraling staircase hidden beneath a cistern set in the wall. Xue Yang’s storm lantern casts long shadows on the stone walls, walls that seem far older than the farmhouse itself.

Song Lan feels a chill that has nothing to do with the dampness.

A stomach-curdling stench wafts up as they descend deeper and deeper into the earth, but it’s not chemical, as might be expected from someone with Xue Yang’s interests, or even rotting vegetation or meat. He swallows vomit and breathes through his pocket-handkerchief, the flesh-melting reek gripping his throat like a living thing, crushing his chest, making it a struggle to expand his lungs.

He'd ask what the smell was from, but something tells him it's best not to know.

Logically he knows the staircase can’t go much lower than a root cellar, but his legs are aching by the time they step out into a long, crypt-like chamber with dripping stone walls and black door-like alcoves set in the walls.

Xue Yang lifts his lantern, as if wanting to show things off.

There are…chains welded to the walls of the strangely-carved alcoves, with circular grates, much like manhole covers, sunk in dozens of places along the floor of the long low hall.

Rising from inside the grates are grotesque scratching sounds, like dozens of razor-clawed beasts are flopping against the walls, frantically leaping towards the light, desperately trying to claw their way up out of the wells.

But that would be impossible… 

Song Lan takes a step back, but Xingchen doesn’t move. He appears to be in shock.

“What’s down there?” Song Lan demands.

“Pets, I guess you can call them.” Xue Yang raises his gloved hand, wiggling his fingers in stiff little jerks. “Ever wonder what happens when you raise an incomplete body from the dead? No, of course you haven’t. You’re about as imaginative as a dead fish. Well, you get those.” He jerks his thumb at the grates, seemingly the source of the noxious foeter. “I’d let you shoot me with that gun in your pocket if you promise to raise me from the dead and keep me as your pet, doctor. Would you like that?”

Xingchen doesn’t respond to Xue Yang’s repulsive wink. Song Lan isn’t even sure he heard the other man.

Xue Yang makes a slight face, as if annoyed that he only has half an audience. “So nobody is impressed with what I’ve done? Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. Borellus was right—you can raise the dead from their ashes, if the ashes are prepared properly—distilled into the essential salts, as he calls them, and I, Xue Yang, a nobody, was the first to—should I just start from the beginning? What’s with these blank looks? Hill and Krogh and Meyerhof and all the rest of that lot would be on their knees!” 

Song Lan stares at him. “Are you expecting praise?” 

“I am the first person to discover the correct formula for the essential salts. I deserve a Nobel Prize!” Then he laughs. “As if a Nobel Prize meant anything next to what I’ve done.” He glances at Xingchen again, the faintest hint of a frown flitting over his face, then turns and leads them down the hallway, threading around the grates where the hideous slapping, scrabbling sounds waft up on the waves of unbearable reek.

Lining the hallway are numerous doors, all a bit too low, reminding Song Lan of the doors of the colonial houses on the west side of the city and the sagging hovels along the waterfront.

How old are these tunnels? 

They pass a room with a table bolted to the floor. In the brief glimpse Song Lan snatches before it’s plunged back into darkness, he makes out several scientific apparatuses attached to the stained tabletop and catches a faint sour whiff of chemicals that cuts through the smothering reek of the grate-topped wells.

Xue Yang stops before a dark doorway and ushers them in with all the joviality of a sideshow huckster. 

“Step right up, step right up! You’re going to love this, I promise you. Take a look around, gentlemen. Soak it all in, revel in the experience, open yourself up to the wonder of it all.” He lights an old-fashioned oil lamp welded to the table and gestures at the walls. “Mr. Wen took most of it, but he missed one.”

“What is this place?”

“The beating heart of it all, my good priest. Imagine the shelves full of urns, candles lit, and me in a black hooded robe, chanting like the dickens. The robes were originally whitish-yellow—I don’t know what Xue Chonghai was thinking—but I set that right immediately.”

Song Lan thought he was beyond horror, but he goes cold as he gazes around the room. Lining two opposite walls are empty shelves, one side labeled “Materia” and the other “Custodes.”

The third wall contains a row of empty pegs. The wall’s large damp stones are thickly carved with mystic symbols and clustered groups of words that don’t appear to be Latin or English or even Mandarin, a language he knows Xue Yang is fluent in. 

Xiao Xingchen’s attention is riveted on the fourth wall. Or rather, what’s set up against the far wall.

It’s a wooden bed, almost like a dentist’s chair, with straps where the arms and legs would go. A series of wheels are attached to the side, with dark stains marring the ancient wood—

A rack. A medieval rack. 

There’s also a rack of whips and other torture devices Song Lan doesn’t recognize, but it’s the rack that makes him want to grab Xingchen and flee past the scrabbling horrors in the wells and up to the fresh air, flee across the overgrown fields and through the grasping trees lining the roads, flee until they reach the bright lights of Arkham.

But Xingchen is rooted to the spot, and he can’t leave without him.

On the table are more bloodstained notes, as if Xue Yang had tried to recreate his notes from memory while his hand was still bleeding. Song Lan catches a glimpse of one in the bright light of the oil lamp.   

Do not call up any that you can not put down…Have the words for laying at all times ready, and stop at once when there is any doubt of whom you have. . . 

“Nice of Mr. Wen to leave me some toys to play with, no?” Xue Yang jerks a thumb at the rack. “Guess they were too hard to get up the stairs. Not sure why they left the pets, but hey. Their loss is my gain. Alright. Enough talking.” He sets something that looks like an Ancient Greek urn on the table and uncorks it with a flourish. “Come along, gentlemen. The main event is about to begin.”

He passes through a low door in the far wall and into a cavelike space held up by raw stone pillars. Xingchen drifts along after him as if in a dream. In the center, set inside a pentagram carved into the floor, is a raised stone altar surrounded by standing stones reminiscent of Stonehenge. Engraved on the altar are images so terrible Song Lan has to look away.

Xue Yang hops up the stairs to the altar and grins down at them. “Now, I’m not entirely sure who’s in this jar, as the label went missing in the purge, but I think that adds to the excitement, don’t you?” He tips the jar’s chalky green powder out onto the suspicious brown stains on the stone, stains that run over the edges of the altar in dried-up rivulets. “Try to look more enthusiastic, gentlemen." He shoots Xingchen a sharp look. "I know you aren't as small-minded and hidebound as he is, at least."

Xingchen doesn't seem to hear him. Shaking his head, Xue Yang hops back, seemingly at home in these dreadful, blasphemous surroundings, and begins to chant.

“Y’AI ’NG’NGAH, 

YOG-SOTHOTH 

H’EE—L’GEB 

F’AI THRODOG!!!” 

And he laughs as a cold wind sweeps through the subterranean chamber, as the wind extinguishes the glass-walled storm lantern on the floor and whips the green powder into the air. Smoke billows from the altar, thick greenish-black smoke that brings with a stench so unbearable it overpowers the reek from the wells.

It’s almost too dark to see, the only light coming from the oil lamp in the torture chamber, but Song Lan can just make out a towering black form rise from the smoke.

Xue Yang’s laughter breaks off abruptly.

Instead of clearing, the smoke billows in thicker and thicker clouds, obscuring all but glimpses of the creature as the scene descends into one of chaos. 

A winding tentacle, grasping through the smoke. A fanned wing, a starfish-shaped head. The sound of high thin piping as the tentacles flail out—

Xue Yang is laughing again, a hysterical giggle far more terrifying than the inhuman piping. “So that’s what that was—”

Shouting incomprehensibly, Song Lan grabs at Xingchen, trying to shield him, but something slashes at his face.

Everything goes dark.

A pile-driver to the chest, sending him headlong into the profane standing stones, and distantly, as if from deep underwater, he hears Xingchen shrieking something he can’t make out.

Frantically he tries dragging himself towards Xingchen’s voice but he can’t move, can’t see—

Gunshots. The sound of flesh tearing. Xue Yang’s voice, sounding almost wet, as if choking on blood—

“OGTHROD AI’F 

GEB’L—EE’H 

YOG-SOTHOTH 

’NGAH’NG AI’Y 

ZHRO!!!” 

A hideous slapping sound, like flailing tentacles lashing at pooled blood. 

A blast of frigid air—

Song Lan passes out.                                    

 * * * 

Song Lan doesn’t remember much before they arrive at Miss Baoshen’s Home for Indigent Boys.

Or much after, for that matter.

All he has are vague impressions.

Something binding his eyes, something pricking his arm. The rocking rush of a train, a distant steam whistle. The sensation of being lifted…

He tries to speak, tries to move, but is frozen, a prisoner in his own body.

Panic seizes him as consciousness returns. He to thrash, to cry out, but all he can to is twitch feebly and rasp, “Xingchen—where’s Xingchen—” 

A woman’s voice. Xingchen’s worried tones. The creak of stairs.

Dogs barking, snarling, howling.  

Another prick.

The sensation of time passing, and then a jolt lances through him, jerking him into full consciousness.

Despite the inky blackness, he has an impression of being deep underground, the air cool and damp as it caresses his cheek.

And then the buzzing starts.

After hours—days? Weeks?—of hazy drifting between waking and nightmare, he at first thinks the buzzing is his imagination. A horrible dream filled with repulsive, inhuman buzzing in a grotesque imitation of human speech.

Then he hears a human voice and knows if it’s a nightmare, it’s a waking one.

The faintest brush of material slipping off his face.

Buzzing. More of the pestilent, detestable buzzing— 

Losing consciousness comes as a relief.

* * *

The world is no longer dark when he next opens his eyes.

He’s lying in bed in a small, pleasant room with frilly curtains framing a window overlooking a shady farmyard with a rough gray cliff rearing up from behind a barn. A doily-covered dressing table is pushed up against the wall, needlepoint hangs on the wall, and a framed photograph of two smiling women sits on the dressing table beside a china dog and folded fan. A cozy rocking chair covered in a quilt drowses in the corner and a fluffy blue rug covers the floor. 

A woman’s room.

He closes his eyes, listening. In the distance, he hears trickling water as if from the hidden brooks and streams, faint children’s voices, and the occasional chirp of a bird and bleat of a farm animal.

Pleasant. Normal…

Wincing, he sits up. He’s in a pair of pajama bottoms and nothing else. His middle is wrapped in bandages and his left arm is in a sling.

He’s looking around for a dressing gown when the door opens and a small face peers inside.

It disappears. The sound of thudding feet and a little voice squealing, “He’s awake! He’s awake!”

A dozen faces appear at the door, goggling at him in a Rockwellian tableau of freckles, missing teeth, and cowlicks.

Song Lan grabs the blanket and holds it up to his chest.

“Boys!” A familiar woman’s voice. “Is this how we behave in front of guests? Shoo! Back to your chores!”

The children scatter. A plumpish middle-aged woman enters the room with a tray. “Sorry about that, Mr. Song,” she says, setting a tray of oatmeal down on the dressing table. “We don’t often get visitors. Here.” She hands Song Lan a pajama jacket and then the tray.

“Where—”

“I’m Miss Baoshen. You gave us quite a scare, my young friend.” She gestures to her name on the sharpshooting award hanging beside the door and settles herself in the rocking chair and watches him benevolently while he eats. “How do you feel?”

“Alright. Thank you.”

“If I were a betting woman, I would guess that you were lying, so it’s a good thing there is no gambling in this house.” She takes his pocketwatch off the dresser and begins to wind it. "How is the porridge? The boys made it for you. They're delighted to have a visitor."

"Fine, thank you," he says mechanically. So this is Miss Baoshen. His mind’s still fuzzy, but he thinks he’s already formed a pretty good picture of Miss Baoshen, supported by years of Xingchen talking about her: kind, maternal, but unmistakably unwilling to stand for any nonsense.

“Where is Xingchen?” Song Lan asks after he’s eaten enough to feel his stomach again. There’s cream and honey in the oatmeal, and even though he prefers his plain he scrapes the bowl as she responds.

“Xingchen returned to Arkham. I was against it, but he had some loose ends to tie up, having to come away so quickly. At least he agreed to take Jim with him.” She gives Song Lan a keen look wrapped in motherly concern. “How much do you remember, son?”

“Not much, ma’am. I remember a—” He stops, the sunlight pouring in through the window taking on a sudden ominous aspect, the cheerful trill of the songbirds becoming horrible. Even the painted flowers at the bottom of the bowl have assumed a sudden terrible look, the twining vines almost like tentacles—

“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing at all. I must have had a concussion…”

A concussion. Could that be true? Nothing but jumbled fantasies spawned by his dislike of Xue Yang and too much time reading accounts of medieval demon possessions…

Then his stomach jolts at the mere memory of the stench, jaw clenching in disgust at the memory of the hideous buzzing, and he knows that his mind is not playing tricks on him.

Or else he has simply lost his mind altogether.

“Nothing at all?” she presses. “Xingchen was as reticent as usual. Told me you had been injured in an accident…”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I truly remember nothing.”

She sighs and turns back to his pocketwatch. “We’ll see if he’ll give us more information upon his return. Blood from a turnip, I’m guessing, but we can try.”

“When will he be back?” He tries to sound casual, as if monsters didn’t roam the earth, as if magic weren’t real, as if he weren’t losing his grip on his sanity.

“Less than a week. I would have gone with him, but we couldn’t leave you and the children alone.” She seems to want to say more but keeps herself in check. “I laid out some toiletries in the bathroom across the hall, and you’re welcome to join us for lunch and supper if you feel up to it.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

She nods, rising and handing him a cup of cold tea and setting his pocketwatch on the nightstand. The familiar tuck-tuck sound is soothing, making him feel almost at home. “Now, drink this, my young friend. Xingchen promises it will help reduce inflammation.”

He’s not sure if the tea has sedative properties but he finds himself dozing, dreaming of grotesque tentacled monsters with starfish heads and buzzing voices. He wakes in a cold sweat and drags himself across the hall, where he clumsily bathes and shaves with his good hand and changes into the clothes Miss Baoshen has laid out for him.

He peers closely at himself in the mirror as he tries to put on his tie with one hand.

There’s something different about his face.

He stares at himself for almost a half-hour, trying to figure out what it is.

He’s thinner, as expected after a convalescence (how long has it been, exactly—?), but that’s not it.

No. It’s something about his eyes…

A little boy finds him wandering the halls of the large, cheerful farmhouse and calls for Miss Baoshen, who fixes his sling before inviting him outside for some fresh air. He sits and watches her put the children through their shooting drills, something he doesn’t fully see the point of but seems to be a way of life in the country. They’ve held off these past few days to avoid disturbing him and are eager to show off before their guest.

He tenses at each crack of the rifles, brought back to the nightmarish subterranean crypt, the thrashing tentacles, the gunshots, the unnatural, inhuman tone in Xue Yang’s voice as he chanted the banishing ritual—

He closes his eyes. 

Dinner is hearty farm food—ham, mashed potatoes, blueberry pie. He sits opposite Miss Baoshen at the end of the long wooden table and forces himself to choke down the food, the memory of the wet scrabbling from the wells and the stench from the tentacled starfish creature pushing the food up into his throat.

Was it better to know such monsters existed, or to accept that he's going mad?

If only Xingchen were here. 

He tries to insist that Miss Baoshen return to her room that night, begging her to allow him to take Xingchen’s old bed, but she claims to find the downstairs couch more comfortable than her bed and threatens to sleep in the barn if he doesn’t return to his room.

He’s up late the next morning. He eats a quiet lunch alone in his room before an excited little boy shows him around the farm. He’s most interested in seeing the room Xingchen grew up in, but he settles for being shown the barn he’d milked cows in, the enormous police dogs he’d played with, the kitchen he’d cooked in.

“We’re not allowed to come here at night,” his guide whispers confidentially as they enter the forest glade he guesses is the one Xingchen would go to to be alone. “Or go outside when there’s no moon. Are you allowed to leave the house at night in Arkham?”

Despite everything, Song Lan has to smile at that. “Things are different when you’re a grown-up.”

The little boy strips off his shoes and socks and splashes in the stream running through the clearing, squishing the mud between his toes. “Miss Baoshen doesn’t go outside when there’s no moon, either. Not outside the fence, anyway. The Old Ones come to her, the other boys say. Though I don’t believe them because they’re just trying to scare me because I’m the youngest. After all, she went outside after you came and was gone for hours…”

A sick sensation creeps over Song Lan, not just at the sight of the oozing mud. “Did you see where she went?”

“I don’t know. She and Xingchen both took the truck up the mountain, up where nobody ever goes, even in daylight.” He bends down, letting the water run between his fingers. “We were all afraid, but Bobby sat up with his rifle till dawn and told us he’d shoot their heads off if they got close, and Miss Baoshen let two of the dogs sleep in the upstairs hallway.”

Song Lan has to look away. It’s too much to hear these words coming from such a cheerful little face.

His gaze falls on a footprint in the mud, and he wishes he'd kept watching the boy.

It is not a human footprint.

Nothing close.

It’s more like a giant crab claw than anything remotely shoe-shaped, a monstrous imprint in the soft mud of the streambed.

“Come on back to the house, Sam.” His voice is strained. “It’s almost suppertime.”

After supper, he sits in the parlor with Miss Baoshen as she goes over the household accounts. She asks him about his studies, his dissertation on medieval cults, and his volunteer work at the church, subtly turning the conversation to his future plans with Xingchen.

“Has he been happy?” she asks casually, not looking up from her notebook. “He writes every week, but I only get to see him over his breaks…so delightful to finally meet you, by the way. Did Xingchen convey my many invitations?”

Song Lan stops rubbing at his itchy sling. Wonderful as Miss Baoshen is, he’s wondering when she’ll let him return home to Arkham. The farm has grown increasingly claustrophobic since he’d found that inexplicable footprint, as if the surrounding mountains and ancient forests are closing in around the farmhouse. It’s like the sensation he had on the road to Xue Yang’s house, but this time it feels as if the wrongness isn’t just around him, it’s inside him, a part of him, drawing the terrible presence that permeates these remote mountains to him like a smothering magnet.

“Are you alright, son?”

He looks up. “I had charity missions and volunteer work over the breaks, ma’am. But yes. Thank you.”

“Ma’am. So formal.”

“It’s how I was raised, ma’am.”

“Xingchen mentioned something of the sort.” She casts a rueful look at the stairs leading up to the dormitory. “I could use a nun or two around here, though I do my best. Tell me, Zichen—may I call you Zichen?—has Xingchen ever seemed a bit…” She hesitates. “How often does he go down to the seashore? I know he has a fascination with the sea…It will be a relief when he comes home for good.”

Song Lan isn’t sure why she assumes Xingchen will come home for good, especially given their plans to open a boys' home in a city, but he doesn’t press. “He likes taking walks along the shore and the pier whenever he’s upset.”

“Is he often upset?”

Song Lan feels like he’s stumbled into a trap. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. If anything, lately…” He stops, uncertain of whether or not to tell her about Xue Yang, tell her how much time Xingchen had spent with him up until the murder.

He decides against it. He doesn’t want to admit how happy Xue Yang had made Xingchen, and now Xue Yang is either dead or as good as dead to Xingchen.

“Has Xingchen been eating properly?"

“His usual. He’s been eating out more often.”

“Ah, yes, he told me about his new friend.” She pauses, waiting for Song Lan to fill in more information about Xue Yang, but he pretends not to pick up on it. “He looked fine when he was here, but he wasn’t here very long. But he looked about the same, from what I could tell…does he still have that necklace his mother left him?”

“Yes.”

“I never should have let him keep the cursed thing…” She trails off, as if unwilling to ask or say what she truly wants, and shuts the book of accounts. “I think it’s time you were getting to bed, my young friend. It’s getting quite late.”

She helps him up the stairs, again insisting he take her room, to his embarrassment. He’s brushing his teeth in the washroom across the hall, nerves jumping at every rustle of treetop and trill of a nightbird, when he hears an automobile drive up.

Nobody should be stopping for directions, not on a deserted country road at this time of night.

He peers out the window. By the waxing moon’s light he can just make out a parked auto and a man limping past the police dogs chained up in the yard. They snarl at him but let him pass. He thinks he hears a distant trill of a familiar bird, but if so, it’s swallowed up by the dogs’ growling. 

The sound of a door opening and closing down below.

Voices. The man’s voice, and Miss Baoshen. He can’t make out words but she seems pleased to see whomever it is.

He winces slightly and hopes it’s her brother or nephew. He can’t bear to think that his benefactress is one to entertain late-night visitors of the opposite sex in a house full of children.

None of my business, anyway. 

He finishes preparing for bed and crawls into bed.

He leaves the light on.

He’s just drifting off when there’s a tap on the door and Miss Baoshen’s face appears. “Oh! I beg your pardon. I saw the light under the door—”

“I’m awake.”

“I have a visitor for you. A classmate from Miskatonic. He heard you were injured and came all the way here to see what he could do to help. A delightful young man.”

Smiling benevolently, she steps aside.

Xue Yang limps into the room, hands thrust deep in his pockets, a grin plastered over his face.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding yourself, old friend,” he says.

“I’ll give you boys some privacy,” beams Miss Baoshen, and closes the door behind him.

 Xue Yang canonically finds getting arrested hilarious and it's no different here (up till he sees XXC, but that's after he's got his fill of police station entertainment)

The boys make a new friend

[austajunk]

Game of Despair (fic)

Chapter One: Despair Gamer

Summary: Surviving through her massive injuries following the ending of the Despair Arc, Chiaki Nanami has fallen after her fellow classmates have become Remnants of Despair. However, when altercations with a certain Servant brings up the chance to find a special person that she lost once again, Chiaki and the aforementioned problematic Servant have no choice but to traverse the apocalypse to bring Izuru Kamukura back to the light of Hope…maybe!

Rating: Mature (because duh)

Warnings: Gore, death, general manipulation and Remnants of Despair Shenanigans

A/N: Hey there. Originally this was a fan comic on tumblr that I did, but due to the scale of the project, I decided it would work better as a fic. The introduction to this fic is different from the fan comic just so I could keep things fresh to write. Please enjoy! You can also find this fic on AO3 if you prefer to read there. I’ll link later.

Games were supposed to be fun. Anyone could play them and they could be played together. It didn’t matter if it was a bad game or if the person you were playing with had any talent whatsoever. It wasn’t the point. The point was to get closer to another person.

At least, that was the philosophy Chiaki Nanami once went by. Games were something that made her happy, but another thing that chained her down at the same time. By being the Super High School Level Gamer, she was locked to her beloved talent and didn’t see any way to open herself to others. That was until she met Hajime Hinata and her teacher, Chisa Yukizome, had showed the strawberry-haired gamer that it was possible to form all the connections she wanted in her life through her talent. For the first time in her life, she had started to feel complete at Hope’s Peak Academy. She was the Class Representative of a band of Ultimate students who were anything but normal... but she loved them with all her heart.

Until the claws of Despair ripped everything away from her, that was. Chiaki Nanami was now a shell of her former self, but that was okay. With her mind filled with nothing but an urge to induce chaos, she couldn’t feel anything for the person she once was. If she couldn’t remember that person, what were they really worth?

—

The fiery skies poured overhead and mixed with the blackness of the night. There was no possible way to see the stars anymore at this point so deep into the end of the world. The only light that could be seen was from a small Nantendo game screen flickering. A girl with pink hair and discolored pink and red eyes leaned against some wreckage, watching as several people ran from demolished buildings and screamed in anguish for their loved ones. Children, women, and even grown men sobbed as a waterfall of bullets cascaded down on their bodies from above.

“You’re losing, you know?” The gamer sighed, twirling a small finger around some of her peach-tinted hair.

On her game screen, a hoard of bullets were raining down on a mass of zombies, massacring them on her side of the screen. The zombie side was fading pitifully fast, their organs squishing from the onslaught of shots.

Beside Chiaki, a man was trembling with the Nantendo in his hand. Sweat was pouring down the front of his head and his breathing was heavy. It looked as though the pale-faced man was going to pass out at any moment. His eyes were blood shot. He had been at this for hours, all to keep the game going and going and going... but it felt like one big, mad, never-ending spiral. He just wanted to drop the game, but all his hostages and prizes were dying all around him the moment he showed any weakness. A large black collar around his neck was tightening every time a point fell from his score. His throat was so constricted that his lips were starting to get purple.

Oh well, Chiaki thought. She was starting to get bored of this anyways. It was really sad though. For a few sweet moments, she had felt an exhilaration like no other. Her entire body had tensed, heat caking her cheeks. She wanted to drop the game and throw herself at the poor man beside her, to rub her curvaceous body against him until she got off on human contact alone when his score had gotten ahead. But alas, that sort of contact had started to wane on his score... and Chiaki’s interests.

“This is disappointing,” said Chiaki, obliterating the rest of the man’s score. Her side of the screen flashed WINNER in big bright red letters and the man beside her squealed in terror. He started convulsing and screaming, the air in his lungs dissipating fast until he seized over and fell over. His eyes bulged from his skull and his neck was bruised and purple until a satisfying crack sounded from his neck. Well... as satisfying as Chiaki could imagine it anyways.

Watching the man’s corpse go limp, she dropped her handheld game console beside him and simply fished another one from her black and white bear-shaped bag. She tapped the screen to life and began to jab at the buttons as though she wasn’t lying beside someone's corpse on top of a bunch of debris underneath a smoke-encrusted sky of darkness. But that was just the world.

Shrieks and screams of agony littered the sky, joining together to create a chaos-induced despair. It was probably the biggest death count Chiaki had earned so far. Her victim, to his credit, had lasted a total of thirteen hours before his score declined and Chiaki’s interest dropped. It was pleasurable until he waned. Now Chiaki was content to just let the cries in the night be silenced as the conclusion of their game (with real human casualties) and to just get up and leave. She did so, leaving her purple game console with the man’s corpse as memento and something of her personal signature. All the world would know where to find the person who could bring the greatest challenge of a killing game to them and that was what she wanted.

The gamer longed to find someone who could beat her and make her feel alive again. Or to feel anything at all. Even if Chiaki knew that she was nowhere close to feeling anything anymore. “My purpose... is Despair,” she uttered to no one in particular, merely touching her forehead as though to remind herself of that fact. It was foolish to stray, foolish to want or desire anything in such a world. Something like that almost seemed like a spec of Hope was left in her heart... which was impossible once the legendary Junko Enoshima snuffed it out.

Thanks to Junko, all the games in the world would not suffice to bring Chiaki Nanami back. One by one, she had been forced to watch her classmates fall into Despair, to watch them torture, massacre and rape others in Junko’s image. Chained to a wall, she watched for over a year as blood sprayed across a dingy massive screen that Junko had left her to view the carnage. She had been tormented and stuck in Hope’s Peak Academy until the last inch of Hope was executed from her body, until she finally wavered and gave into Despair. With the last specs of good will drained from her, the chains around her neck slipped off and she was allowed to walk free in this ruined world... where it felt entirely purposeless to live. But that was the point.

Everything was ruined. Her life was only good for making everyone else experience her own personal Despair. And Chiaki had set to it.

And as far as she was concerned, games were meant to be shared with everyone. Even the bad ones…

—

On the eastern side of a Towa city, a dingy and caved-in subway had been remodeled into a small chamber for the Despair Gamer. She always returned there to rest or to just recollect herself whenever she was bored or wanted to avoid the other Despairs. A bunch of pillows were tucked together for a makeshift gaming chair that she was slumped over, absorbed in one of her prized Nantendo titles.

Only the soft clinking of chains from behind roused her attention ever so slightly.

“Ah… that guy from before didn’t keep you occupied for long, did he?” Said a carefree voice behind Chiaki as she played. “For a moment, it looked like he was really doing it for you.”

Chiaki tilted her head, sinking back into her cushioned gaming chair. It wasn’t hard to figure out who the other presence in this fortress of death was, so she didn’t bother to look at him as he went to work on disposing of the body. What she didn’t notice however was that her Servant wasn’t empty-handed. He had entered the chamber with a large burlap sack… one that was squirming eerily.

Nagito Komaeda. To say he gave into Despair wasn’t quite so accurate. Hope would always win in the end… but it had to be challenged, cultivated… yes, becoming Despair was only meant to encourage Hope. And that was why he belonged to the other Remnants of Despair. He was theirs to use as they saw fit, but he just could not help returning to her again and again. Chiaki Nanami was like a serial killer by now… one complete with a soft, pudgy face and wide, innocent eyes. Utterly fascinating that one so lovely and gentle could rip apart so many people. Despair really had power over others… an alluring, undeniable, sick and twisted power… all Servant wanted to do was be there to witness Hope shatter the monster before him that Despair had created.

But until that happened… oh, how thoughts of Junko Enoshima made the heat swell through every inch of his body…

As if craving her attention, Servant spoke to her again. She could practically feel the grin etched on his face. “Have you gotten so used to the stench of death, Chiaki? You’re actually letting the corpses decompose around you now…” He nodded his head to rotting cadavers left at the back of the room. Perhaps Chiaki had forgotten they were there?

Chiaki’s lips twitched into a small frown, more so from being interrupted. Servant was a strange one. He had something familiar about him, like someone she should remember but it simply did not occur to her to try and do so. If he caused no reaction in her, then that was all there was to it whether she recalled him or not. The pale-haired boy seemed to follow her about like a puppy-dog, sometimes aiding her in procuring or disposing of victims whenever they met up. Chiaki had considered simply killing him, but something in her intuition told her that playing a Killing Game with the likes of him simply wasn’t a wise choice. And straight up slaughtering him was too kind, too merciful. How was she to invoke Despair in the name of Junko Enoshima if she simply hacked up his body?

And so, Chiaki found herself lifting her head at the jostling of chains behind her, watching the metal links swing side to side from around the Servant’s neck. He had a large grin painted on his face as he always did, taking a seat across from her in her little chair. “I guess the smell of death caught me off guard last time,” she mused thoughtfully to him, uncaring if he was really here for conversation or not. He did as he pleased and proved to be quite the clingy individual. But so long as he did the dirty work, Chiaki didn’t mind occasionally indulging him.

“It made me sick... but... now I don’t smell anything. I wonder if I’ve destroyed my sense of smell. Or my brain simply cares less and less each time...” Chiaki said with sigh, curling up in her chair and reaching for her games again. “Why did you come back?” It was really annoying when Chiaki was content to be left alone with her games for the rest of eternity. Alas victims were hard to come by in the apocalypse. Something about people wanting to salvage their lives. She couldn’t understand that. People were going to be slaughtered en masse either way, so shouldn’t they be trying to find the best way to have fun?

That was what Ultimate Despair Gamer was for. To teach others that life was just one big game and if they weren’t having fun, well... their lives didn’t amount to much, did they?

Servant tilted his head at her, his green eyes holding her emotionless gaze for a moment. “Oh, yes! I actually brought you another gift. I don’t want to be too optimistic, but…” He gestured to the struggling brown sack beside him. “I think this may really be the one. If he can’t satisfy you a little more than your usual prey, then I’ll take full responsibility…”

“Hm?” Chiaki stood up and slowly drifted over to the squirming sack that the Servant had left in the middle of the room. A gift? For her? A light blush crept onto her cheeks as she approached the bag and knelt down to pull it back. As soon as she saw the victim awaiting her, a jolt of electric joy shot through her. She gasped lightly and watched as the person’s light chestnut hair spiked up into her view. This was... No... why was the sight of the person’s hair inspiring such a range of emotions on her face? Her eyes lit up and a shudder ran through her body. She wanted to pull the captive close to her already.

Lightly, she pulled the gag from his lips and let him cough and sputter. He wanted to scramble away from the bizarre Gamer, but she quickly grabbed ahold of his shoulders and urged him closer to her. Her breasts rested against his front and she nuzzled him almost affectionately. Startled by the cute girl’s sudden comforting presence, the man didn’t want to feel at ease, especially with her twisted smile flashing down upon him. But at the same time... she seemed harmless. Perhaps a little deranged? But soft and pretty enough... He shakily steadied her against him, wondering if she was the prisoner of this strange, messed up death chamber just like he was. He barely took notice of the boy behind her with the manic grin and kept his eyes trained on her.

“Wh-Where am I...?” The chestnut-haired student asked her. At least, he appeared to be a student with his plain white uniform and dark trousers. A pair of glasses rested askew on his nose. “Are you a prisoner too?! Did that guy kidnap you?”

Chiaki couldn’t help but to tense at the guy’s caring voice, the way he put concern for her before anything else. Even himself. It felt so familiar and she was melting on the inside. Her face became more twisted, more heated and aroused. This was the one! He had to be the one! He was going to play with her until she could finally lie down and let the cold grip of death eclipse her. A final game where she could be happy, fulfilled, complete—

“What’s your name?” Chiaki asked him lightly, trying to hide the frantic blush on her cheeks. This was so embarrassing. Her heart was fluttering for him.

“Ahhh? Oh... Um, Yusuke?” The man responded, looking around. “Look, why don’t we try to find a way out of here before that guy shows up again? That mastermind!”

“Hm?” Chiaki crossed her legs. “Oh... him. He doesn’t matter. What matters is... well... do you like games, Yusuke?” Her soft voice almost held a low purr to it.

Suddenly, there was a sense of unease in the air. Yusuke blinked and pushed up his glasses. “Um...games?”

—

A small tear trickled over the pale, dead face of her latest victim. After hours and hours and hours of gaming, Yusuke had simply crumpled over. All throughout the week, he had kept Chiaki occupied. Even when he sobbed to her and begged her to let him go, Chiaki was completely enthralled with him. Not a single one of her victims had been so satisfying. He must have truly adored her to keep up such a unique concentration to whatever game she picked out for them to play. He cared for her... he must have loved her to play with her all this time. But then... it was as though his body simply gave out.

Now Yusuke’s corpse decorated the floor of her room, his body still warm from how hard it had worked to bring her even an ounce of joy. Chiaki lingered beside him, her face twisted with what could truly be called Despair. It wasn’t fair. He loved her. Why did he break under all the gaming? She could go forever...

Servant watched her from the corner of the chambers, a small sigh leaving his lips. Something about her actions had slightly disturbed him. For close to a week, he had watched Chiaki become truly elated. It was like she was a different person. And now the young man he had offered up to her was nothing more than a body getting colder by the moment. She drained every last agonizing bit of life from him. It was so thoughtless, so empty…

“I wonder why you don’t just let them rest…” He said, stepping forward as if to pull Chiaki away from the body. “Oh well. I’ll find you a new toy. That will satisfy you!” What hollow words. There was nothing out there that could satisfy the monster before him. That was probably the most horrifying thing about her… but it made him utterly enthralled with her.

“...It’s never going to be enough...” Chiaki said solemnly as she heard the rustling of chains clinking in the background. She knew Servant was behind her, waiting for the body to be disposed of, but Chiaki didn’t want to let it go.

“This was the... the best one... and he wasn’t even enough. Nowhere close... He was like a barrel of love... and I need an ocean... I...I...” She trembled, stifling a sob. Even as a Remnant of Despair, it wasn’t like she lacked feelings... even if they were only centered on herself and self-preservation.

She sighed a hollow bitter sigh and stood up, giving Yusuke’s body a savage kick with her boots. After watching the dirt from her shoes smear his cheek, she turned around and walked past Servant.

“The person you’re searching for… he doesn’t exist anymore…”

Chiaki suddenly clutched her chest tightly as though she were in pain. There was an unbearable pounding in her head. Make it stop… it had to stop… why couldn’t she ignore it?

“I’m not staying here. I’m... I’m going to leave. I want to find something else...something I lost.” The words left her lips before she even realized it. She could almost envision that person with the same chestnut hair and soft, sincere smile. But she didn’t remember his name... not a bit…

Just as she headed to the entrance of the chamber that Servant was leaning against, a foot suddenly kicked up to block her exit. She stepped back and looked at Servant, a frown working onto her gentle features.

“Ah… I thought we may hit this little snag,” Servant said, his smile fading slightly. “You’ve lost a lot of things. It won’t help you to search for all of them! More than likely, you’ll never find anything!” He put his hands together, pleading. “Let me find you another toy! The next one will satisfy you for sure.”

“What..? I…” Chiaki blinked and rubbed her eyes. Those words were making her feel just a tad woozy.

“There, there,” Servant cooed, entwining his arm with hers to lead her away from the door. “Won’t you stay here with me, Chiaki? Just for today… don’t look for what you can’t find. Just stay here today.” Forever. He intended to keep her as long as he could. Hope had to be protected.

And the person she wanted… that same person lit up his entire world as well. The thoughts of that person…

“Chiaki, just stay here… ah, I know,” said Servant behind her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, “let’s play a game together. You and me. If you win—“

“Then I leave,” muttered Chiaki. Then she blinked again in realization.

The smell of this chamber was starting to get to her. Perhaps it was because the last toy truly was something she did like. She couldn’t stop playing with him until he broke. But Chiaki wasn’t looking at the remnants of her beloved toy anymore. Instead, she peered at the filthy walls and floors of her game chamber. Decayed bits of body parts were strewn about across the floor and the stench was starting to become invasive again.

How long had she been in these chambers? She couldn’t remember when she had first entered, only that soon after, the Servant had appeared. He would scavenge for food and toys for her, to keep her occupied and “satisfied” with any new playthings he happened to procure. Chiaki groaned, her head feeling a bit heavy. “Ungh...” She clutched her face, trying to ignore the stench of death wafting in the air. Something about the charming spell of this place was starting to wear off fast and she quite despised it.

Chiaki shook her head, trying to brush off the sickening realization that she just didn’t know how long she had been in a chamber like this, playing games with toy after toy after toy. How many had she killed? Well... they existed to please her, so it didn’t matter. But... when had she last stepped outside? When had she tried to leave? Every time she had risen from her chair to peer out into the world, the Servant would give her a friendly wave and insist that he would go out to bring her food or more toys. It was all just too irksome.

She turned back to Servant. “I want to leave.”

“Of course. If you’re ready, you’ll win,” said Servant cheerfully, waving his obscured hand. “But if I win… hmm… how about this? For every game you lose against me, I’ll alter your appearance just a little…”

“Alter my appearance…?”

Servant nodded, motioning for her to take a seat back in her Gamer chair.

“That’s right. For every game you fail,” he said, letting his voice trail off just a bit, “I’ll remodel you to look a bit more like Lady Junko Enoshima each time.”

“Of course, are you really sure you want to play?”

[lorithescrump]

Dude is lost in the sauce

((Featuring a cameo of my Dark Urge guy Cadaver))