#Frost Incineration

[viaphni]

ELEIX AND DAMIENNNN‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️🔥🔥🔥🔥

🌀Lost Transfiguration 🌀

Idk what to say here I'm just gonna post this before I go insane with my finals

[bamboozledbird]

IGNITE: A Teen Wolf S1 AU // Chapter 1 / Next

Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Sheriff Stilinski, Reader (You) Pairing: Eventual Stiles x Reader, but man are we talking slow burn Word Count: 4.8k Warnings: Canon typical gore/violence, parental death (rip to your fake mom), descriptions of burning, depictions of depression (apathy, dissociation, 'numb little bug' vibes) Tags: Canon has been lovingly scrapped for parts, author is a chaotic bi and it shows, prolific overuse of the em dash, the slowest of burns i fear

Summary: You can always smell ash long after the fire is gone. Perhaps, that’s why you still can’t breathe without choking on the past. It’s been four years since your mom died. Four years since she burned alive. For years since you didn’t. You survived, but they must have buried your heart with her because you feel like something halfway between a ghost and a lamb for slaughter. 

You can’t wash the smell of hospital out of clothes, not really. Maybe, that’s why death and disease follows Stiles wherever he goes now. It’s been eight years since his mom died. Eight years since he didn’t. Eight years since he decided that he wouldn’t let anyone he loved die ever again. He survived, but Scott’s new-found abilities and the murky world they’ve been dragged into is making it pretty damn hard to keep his promise. 

Time never stops turning. The grief never dissipates. Children soldier on—but in a town where all the monsters under the bed are real and old family skeletons rattle in every closet, how long can two fragile, breakable humans survive? 

Maybe, the real question is how long will they want to? Chapter Summary: After your annual interrogation with Sheriff Stilinski, you meet his son who turns out to be very handy with jumper cables and incoherent babbling.

A/N: Does this look familiar? It should lmao. I gave into the peer pressure. All the messages and requests were too powerful. Here is a reader version of my ofc season 1 fic. Obviously some things have been removed to get rid of specific names/descriptions, so you want to read the full thing you can read the og version and check me out on ao3 (dork_knight)! For the sake of not clogging tags, I'll probably just do my reader version on tumblr and the full oc lore version on ao3 from now on. xx

Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.

Before your mother’s death, you would have picked fire. Every single time. 

You never liked the cold; never really had to get used to it growing up in central California—but the crux of your argument, the twisted logic behind it all, was that most burn victims died from suffocation before they felt the flames. A small mercy, really, in the face of unspeakable tragedy. 

In the end, however, statistics were just numbers, your mother didn't die from smoke inhalation, and there was no mercy in burying a parent before you were old enough to have children of your own. Nothing ever ended poetically off the page. Death was just death, and it was always ugly. Someone should really tell that to Robert Frost, you mused, biting at a raw hangnail.

The medical examiner said the actual cause of death was pulmonary edema; at least, that was his best guess based on the state of the body. He didn’t say that she felt everything, her skin peeling back into her flesh, her flesh liquefying into fuel, her joints flexing into contorted pleas until the fire incinerated her last nerve ending. He didn’t have to; you connected those dots all on your own. You’d been twelve at the time, not an imbecile. 

“I’m sorry to drag you through this all again.”

You flitted your eyes away from the flickering lightbulb above Sheriff Stilinski’s head and met his gaze; it was nauseatingly sympathetic. Your responding shrug was a small, little thing—more like a twitch in practice, “Not your fault.” 

Your yearly visits to Sheriff Stilinski’s office were solely your father’s doing, even if no one wanted to admit it to your face. Most mayors would use their political power to get their child out of a police station, not into it, but perhaps he stopped being your dad somewhere between the funeral and now. 

“If you could start—”

“From the beginning,” you smoothed your thumb in small circles over the armrest of your chair, attentively tracing patterns into the polished wood, “I know.” This was, after all, the fourth anniversary of your first interrogation. You’d become somewhat of an expert at being a useless witness. You picked at your uneven cuticles before continuing, “Mom put me to bed around 10:00—which was kind of late for a school night, honestly, but she let me stay up to finish another chapter anyway.” The right corner of your mouth twitched for a brief moment, “Nancy Drew: Password to Larkspur Lane. I told her that forcing someone to go to sleep in the middle of a mystery was specifically forbidden in Geneva Protocol II.” Your mom had been far too indulgent of your lip on most occasions, but that night she didn’t smile at your snarky aside. She let you finish the chapter because she was too tired to argue; you could tell. At the time, you saw it as a victory. Now, it kept you up at night, the drooping lines of your mother’s mouth spilling over the pages of whatever book you were trying to read.

You bit down on your tongue when a stray splinter snagged against the soft pad of your thumb, “Dad was out of town, so it was just the two of us. Mom always put me to bed when Dad was gone; said it was the only way she could get to sleep. Had to make sure my window was locked.” You paused for a long moment: everything went dark after this. Your mother kissed the top of your head, murmured, ‘Love you,’ turned out the light, and then that was it. You woke up in the hospital, and your mom was dead. 

A bead of sweat dripped onto your top lip. The air in the Beacon Hills police station was, without fail, sticky with heat and body odor—and it wasn’t just the oppressive Californian sun. Even in the winter, a person could choke on the stifling warmth. Idly, you wondered if it was a matter of interrogatory tactics or budgetary constraints. 

“And then,” Sheriff Stilinski prompted gently, though you both knew how the story went from here. You had told it to him and a dozen other officials at least a hundred times in the last four years. 

You bit down on your thumbnail and winced when your teeth snagged on the tender nail bed, “And then nothing. I opened my eyes, and a nurse said that you found me on the front lawn.” 

“You don’t remember how you got outside?” 

You shook your head, staring past the Sheriff's shoulder. Large pieces of dust floated through the air, highlighted by the slivers of light trickling through the blinds. Suddenly, you had a newfound appreciation for the lack of fans in the room. 

Sheriff Stilinski cleared his throat and rubbed his hand over his jaw, “You don’t remember saying it was an angel?”

Blinking slowly, you looked at the grim line of the Sheriff’s mouth and gripped your knees tightly, digging your fingers into fragile skin until your wrist cracked, “I should, right? I was twelve. I should remember something—that’s what everyone thinks. That’s what my dad thinks.” Your eyelids fluttered to a tight close, and your voice went so quiet you could barely be heard over the hum of the copier outside the door, “He thinks it was me. That’s why he makes you question me every year.” Copper flooded your mouth as the soft lining of your cheek split under the brunt of your teeth, “He thinks you’ll finally figure out how I did it.” 

You were scared to open your eyes as the silence stretched between the two of you. You’d danced around the subject before, hinted and spun around the heart of it, but you’d never truly discussed how it looked from the outside. Sheriff Stilinski had been kind enough to give you a few different excuses over the years: trauma, head injury, oxygen deprivation, just plain ol’ grief—but whatever caused your temporary amnesia wasn’t so conveniently explained. In fact, currently, you had no explanation at all. When you finally peeked through your lashes, clumped together with frustrated tears, you couldn’t quite figure out what expression the Sheriff was making. He leaned back in his desk chair and frowned, “I’m sure he doesn’t—”

“He does,” you cut him off. Your eyes went flinty, irises darkening to something far more ashen with the resolve of your anger. You never had any trouble reading your father’s face; the disgust was thinly-veiled between the flickers of fear. 

Sheriff Stilinksi leaned forward so that you had no choice but to look him in the eyes. They were kind—more tired than usual, but still kind. They always were. That was one thing you remembered from that day, waking up in the hospital to Sheriff Stilinski’s kind, watery blue eyes, just before the entire world fell apart. His voice was gentle, but firm, when he finally spoke, “I don’t.” 

You nodded numbly and pulled at a fraying string on the hem of your denim skirt until the thread snapped. 

“I mean it, kid. They couldn’t identify the source of the fire. They couldn’t even find an origin point; no twelve-year-old could pull that off.”

You chewed on your bottom lip, “Could anyone?”

Sheriff Stilinski’s brow furrowed, and his mouth screwed up into a crooked line, like he was chewing on his words and deciding if he should swallow them or spit them out. “I wish I had all the answers for you. I really do. Not knowing, it’s worse than any truth.”

You blinked up at him for a moment, once again taken aback by his raw sincerity, and swallowed hard. He wasn’t the one who was supposed to have the answers; he was the one who was supposed to ask the questions. There was one failure in his muggy office, and it wasn’t the Sheriff. “It’s okay,” you said quietly. “Not your fault.”

He looked like he wanted to argue the point, but whatever he wanted to say was interrupted by the sharp ringing of the phone on his desk. “I have to take this, but if you remember something, or if you just need to talk—”

“My dad spends a small fortune on a psychiatrist and a behavioral therapist for that,” you stood up quickly, shouldering your bag. You forced the corners of your mouth into a small smile, tight at the edges like a sheet that had been stretched too thin, “But thank you. For everything.” 

The Sheriff’s gaze darted to a framed photo on his desk. You had seen it before, on one of your many visits to his office. It was of a boy—his son, you assumed—he looked like he was around five or six at the time. He was grinning, wide enough to show off his missing incisors, and his fingers and wrist were stained cotton-candy blue from a melting popsicle. You must’ve been that happy once, right? In the beginning, everyone was unencumbered by the weight of imminent mortality. Maybe that’s what Sheriff Stilinski was thinking, too. He looked away from the photo and gave you a small smile, “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

You gave a half-hearted wave before wrapping your fingers around the strap of your backpack and walking to the parking lot. 

Outside, the sky was grim, a mocking reflection of the dour expression on your face. The spite in your eyes hardened when big, fat raindrops splattered against the apples of your cheeks. For a moment, you just stood there, glaring at the rain and cursing the cosmos for their utterly unamusing sense of humor.

A jeep pulled into the parking lot, and the squealing engine startled you back into reality. The search for your car keys was, of course, a considerable endeavor. Nothing could be easy. Not here. Not today. Not ever, you thought. A bit melodramatic maybe, but the weather was certainly ripe for a bit of self-pity.

You stacked your textbooks and binders onto the hood of your sedan, haphazardly throwing your jacket on top of the pile to protect your painstakingly penned Kafka essay from the rain. By the time your fingertips brushed against the cool metal of your car keys, your hair was damp and curling at the ends. 

The momentary relief was short-lived when you pressed the unlock button five times and the accompanying beep didn’t sound, not even once. For an absurdly long minute, all you could do was rest your forehead against the driver’s side window, breathing heavily until condensation gathered next to your mouth and the drizzle speckled dots onto the sleeves of your thin cotton shirt.

“If you’re trying to charge the battery through osmosis, it’d probably be more effective to smash your head against the hood.”

You jumped, and then flinched again when your keys clattered against the ground. You caught a glimpse of the phantom speaker in the side-view mirror; bizarrely, he looked just as surprised as you felt. You turned around, trepidatiously—objects may be closer than they appear n’all—and tried to swallow your rapidly rising heart. 

“Sorry,” the boy pulled the hood of his sweatshirt down and had the decency to look contrite, “big mouth.” He rubbed a hand over his chapped lips. “It’s a real problem. It’s so big, actually, that my foot just slides right in there like…all the time,” he gestured animatedly with a flat hand, a quick sliding motion, like a fish through water.

You blinked at him, slowly, and bent down to reach for your keys, “Might wanna see someone about that. Sounds unsanitary.”

“Eh, it’s hardly the worst thing I’ve put in my mouth,” he said, eyes widening into horrified round circles the second he stopped talking. A faint flush creeped up his neck to his ears, and your heart dropped back into your chest. Slashers and ax murderers didn’t blush. Probably. You hadn’t ever met one, but it seemed like sound logic.

“Choking hazard,” you hummed, leaning back against your car. Your fingers traced a small dent in the door, the cause long forgotten, “It’s definitely still a choking hazard.”

The boy grinned before fixing his expression into something on the cusp of severity, “I’m about 95.7% sure that anything bigger than a fist is completely mouth-safe.” He held up his fist and nodded sharply, “Make that 98.3% sure.”

“98.3?” your brow arched.

“Maybe even 98.9.” 

The buzz of a lamp post hummed above your heads as you stared at each other with little smirks until the quiet made you sink your teeth into your bottom lip and big-mouth drum his fingers against his forearm. 

“So,” his sneakers squeaked against the slick asphalt as he shifted his weight, “you need a jump?”

You pursed your lips and ran your eyes over the front of your car, “I might give osmosis another shot. 30 seconds is hardly a fair trial.”

“Of course,” he hummed, “you gotta be fair.”

“We are in front of a police station.”

“Well,” he scratched his cheek, “it’s not a courthouse.”

“Technicality.” You were slightly horrified when you finally noticed that you were smiling. The sensation felt like it had escaped straight out of the uncanny valley and latched onto your face like a parasite in need of a host. It only took two weeks for muscles to atrophy; years must have completely decimated the fibers in your cheeks. “I guess I could use a jump. If your offer was an offer and not a hypothetical.” 

“Smart choice.” The boy rapped his knuckles against the hood of your car and said, “Steel’s probably pretty low on the permeability scale.”

“As opposed to a skull.”

He snorted and then nodded towards the large lump of books and papers covered by your freshly dampened jean jacket, “You should probably move your stuff. Y’know, ‘cause of the very un-permeable battery.”

“There’s that,” you sighed and started stuffing your things back into your backpack, shaking it violently until your notebook finally slid past your chemistry textbook, “and flunking English isn’t high on my list of things to do this weekend.”

His gaze flickered back and forth, rapidly cataloging every corner and crevice of your face. You tilted your head, brows pinched, and stared back at him with your arms crossed tightly over your chest. His eyes, you noticed, became a peculiar shade of brown in the yellow glow of the setting sun and the fluorescent light of the lamppost. More like honey, you realized, more like honey than irises. Something finally clicked behind them. "You,” he pointed aggressively, “you go to Beacon Hills.”

You pushed his finger away from your face with your own, “Safe bet, considering there’s exactly one option for the next 2,000 square miles.”

“You’re kind of a smartass, you know that,” he muttered. He struggled with the trunk of the jeep parked next to your car, cursing under his breath until he finally wrenched it open with an almost guttural grunt.

Your lips parted briefly, and then you grinned drolly. It was refreshing, not being treated like some fragile little creature who would buckle in the knees—or possibly set something on fire—at the slightest confrontation. “Kind of?”

“Total.” He nodded decisively before sticking his head and torso into the depths of his trunk. “Completely, entirely, and wholly a smartass.” There were various clanging sounds until he re-emerged with a pair of jumper cables, “Never noticed that in class. You don’t really…say anything.”

You bit back the snark poised on the tip of your tongue. When people looked at you, the only thing they saw was the worst thing that had ever happened to you. You were the daughter of the woman who burned to death on Cedar Street; your mom died, and you were there. It seemed like that was all you would ever be in Beacon Hills. 

In the grand scheme of things, it was better to be no one. 

High school had been your chance to slip into social obscurity—more kids, more drama, less discussion of homicide by arson—so you took it, wholeheartedly. You kept to the corners of classrooms, away from extracurriculars, and your mouth resolutely shut. 

“I try to exclusively bring the smart and leave the ass at home,” you finally replied.

The boy’s eyes drifted downwards for a moment, and his voice did a funny, squeaky thing when he said, “I should give that a go sometime.”

“10/10 would recommend. No one bugs you—and teachers never throw erasers at your face.”

“So you do remember me,” he grinned a little and rolled up the sleeves of his sweatshirt before unlatching the jeep’s hood and propping it open.

Slanting your head, you watched his profile. There were moles scattered across his cheek and neck, and his angular jaw clenched as he struggled with the knotted cords in his willowy fingers. “Vaguely,” you said faintly. It was coming back to you in pieces. That was life after twelve for you: bits and pieces. Everything was made up of the disquieting moments when you surfaced from the haze and into the present. It should’ve felt like a lungful of air, but it didn’t. It always felt like choking. 

He wiped his grease-smudged hand on his jeans and then extended it towards you, “Stiles.”

You took his hand, despite the strange formality, and shook it—mainly because of the black streaks staining his pants. “Y/N.”

His fingers twitched a few times when he connected the clamp to the coordinating battery terminal, and your eyes widened. You held your breath in your sternum until you registered that he hadn’t been electrocuted. He was just naturally tweaky, you concluded. It was either that, or he had jumped one-too-many engines in the last 24 hours…unless it was hidden option C, and he was actually tweaking. Unlikely, given he was on his way into a building teeming with cops, but far stranger things had happened in Beacon Hills.  

You sighed a little as you listened to the rain patter against the asphalt and the roof of your car, rubbing your palms over your arms until the goosebumps prickling along your biceps receded into your skin. Stiles looked back at you again, and his mouth wormed its way into a little frown. His head disappeared into his trunk, and after a moment a lumpy maroon mass hurtled towards your face. You caught it before it could smack into your nose, and you clutched at the soft material until you realized that the projectile missile was actually just a sweatshirt. 

Stiles was staring at you when you looked up from your hands. A small, unsure…something squirmed over his face, and you felt a little stupid, just standing there, hoodie limp in your arms. It happened a lot—more than it should after so many years. The invisible quicksand materialized in the strangest, most insignificant moments. You blinked, completely brainless, at simple questions, stared aimlessly into your closet until your second alarm startled you into snatching the first shirt you came across—clasped at a stranger’s hoodie until the rainwater pooled on your lashes dripped into your eyes.

Robotically, you thrust your arms through the sleeves and tugged it over your head, “Thanks.” The sweet scent of grass clung to the fabric, and there was something earthier underneath it, something like evergreen. You smiled slightly, combing your baby hairs behind your ears, “I guess I forgive you for attempting to blind me in the process.”

Stiles’s shoulders unwound as he scoffed, “That was an excellent throw. First-line material, honestly.”

You looked at him and tilted your head, eyebrows crawling towards your hairline, and Stiles sighed loudly, “Okay, so I’m not an ‘athlete’ or whatever—but I’m working on it. You’ll see—you’ll all see.”

You hummed softly, unconvinced but grateful enough to not comment further. Another bout of silence fell between you, but it wasn’t so restless this time—even after Stiles torpedoed his body through his passenger seat. He fought with his keys for a while until the correct one slid into the ignition. 

The jeep’s engine hummed pleasantly in the background as you let out a soft sigh, dropping your head back against your car window. The rain had stopped somewhere between trying to unlock your car and now, but you couldn’t quite recall when. The chill wasn’t so bad, you realized, without your foul mood casting a shadow over your head.

Stiles landed back on his feet and leaned against the jeep. You could feel his gaze on you again. A tickling sensation trailed down your spine as you fiddled with your keychain. You took a step backwards and bit your bottom lip, “I should probably try start my car…y’know, before you throw something else at my face.’”

He nodded, taking a step towards his jeep, “Solid plan. A tire iron was next.”

You slid into your car and stared at the steering wheel, forgetting to laugh at his joke. You wrapped your fingers around 10 and 2 and silently called upon every deity you’d ever heard of to end your suffering. Stiles seemed nice enough, but you seriously doubted your smalltalk capabilities were up-to ‘ride home’ standards. Perhaps, you should revisit your resounding dedication to atheism, you thought, as the engine sputtered in protest a few times and then came back to life. 

Stiles flashed two thumbs up through the window. The smile on his face was positively goofy, but his dismount from the jeep was somehow even goofier. He stumbled over his large feet a few times before regaining stability. You bit back a smile when he shot you another thumbs up, this time through the dash as he removed the jumper cables from your car’s battery.

He wiped his hands off on his jeans again; at this point, you were convinced that they were beyond saving, but Stiles didn’t seem concerned. He tapped against your window before stepping around the open door, “You should probably let it run for a while. Take the scenic route home; enjoy all the Beacon Hills hotspots open past 8:00 pm on a weeknight. I personally recommend the Rite Aid or Walmart.”

You snorted, “Maybe I’ll swing by the Preserve. I hear the woods are especially beautiful in the foreboding darkness.”

“Don’t.” Serious was an odd look on Stiles’s face. You decided that you much preferred the goofy grin. “Don’t go anywhere near the Preserve. It’s officially cordoned off—totally locked down, quarantine-zone-central. Something about flesh-eating, parasitic plant life.”

“As completely real and unobtrusive as that sounds,” you drawled, “don’t worry about it. Literally every single person in town knows about the body they found in the woods.” It was bound to happen, small town and all—and ‘woman dies in deadly animal attack’ was the most interesting thing that had happened in Beacon Hills since the intersection got a Target two years ago. “I’ve seen every installment of Friday the 13th and The Blair Witch Project. If I’m going to be murdered, I refuse to also be humiliated by a cliché C.O.D.” 

The manic expression on his face softened to a relieved smile and then again to a little smirk, “So what’s a certified fresh murder, then? Not that I doubt the depths of human depravity, but I think society killed off originality a few centuries ago.”

You thought back to a house fire with no origin, accelerant, or discernible cause. Apparently, not. “You know what they say,” you sighed, “life finds a way.”

Stiles tilted his head, “And death.”

“And death,” you agreed, staring at a small chip in your windshield. The cracks had just begun to spiderweb out from the pit. 

Stiles looked like he wanted to say something, and he looked so much like the Sheriff with his face twisted around thoughtful contemplation that you couldn’t believe it had taken you this long to make the connection. The boy in the photo had grown up. How unfortunate for him. Stiles swallowed whatever it was that was lingering on his tongue and shut your door. He leaned his elbow against the window frame and cocked his hand in a stiff little wave, “Seeya at school. I’ll bring something fun for target practice—maybe grapes. You like grapes? Don’t answer that—I’ll surprise you.”

You put your car in drive once Stiles was safely a few feet from the wheels and gave him a dry smile, “The anticipation is killing me.”

What a scary place to be, you thought as you watched Stiles disappear in your rearview mirror. Anticipation. Hope. Life. You were chronically good at surviving; cockroached your way out of every horrible thing life squashed you with. Lately, all you could do was cling to your heartbeat and the warmth of your skin, until you were barely more than roadkill. A walking carcass was a far cry from living, but death would not stop for you, so you stopped looking for him. You kept treading water, took your pills, stopped existing—you were a lot like Schrödinger’s cat that way: too stubborn to live, too stubborn to die. You didn’t know what to do if someone unsealed the box and forced you to choose. That was the trouble with possibility; it required far too much uncertainty.

Your dad’s SUV was parked in the garage when you finally pulled into your circle driveway. It was a rare sight; your dead battery had disrupted your usual routine. You were supposed to be safely tucked away in your room after an early dinner—take-out usually, sometimes a quesadilla if you were feeling exceptionally inspired—by the time your dad got home from work. It was dysfunctional in every sense of the word, but it was the only way you could function in the same space. 

He used to stare at you from the other end of the dinner table: not eating, not speaking. The only way you knew he was alive was the slow rise and fall of his chest. After a while, he moved dinner to his office. ‘Working dinner,’ he’d say in passing, ‘budgets are due.’ Eventually, he stopped coming home altogether. It was better that way, you thought. You loved each other better from afar, where the power of nostalgia could cloud all the present unpleasantries. You wondered what he saw when he looked at you now. You wondered, and you desperately didn’t want to find out.  

You shouldered your backpack and made sure your car lights were off twice before quietly creeping into the mudroom. You could hear the buzz of the microwave as you toed off your sneakers and tried to discern the smell emanating from the kitchen. Something with garlic and tomato. Bona Vita, probably. Your dad loved their al pomodoro. 

You tried to make yourself as small as possible as you skulked into the kitchen, shoulders hunched to your ears and grip tight around the strap of your backpack. Your dad’s back was to you; you could see the wrinkles in his collar from where he tugged at it when he was agitated. He stopped stirring his pasta once you reached the island. 

“Did…” your dad trailed off for a moment, still facing the kitchen counter, “did everything go alright with the Sheriff?” 

You shrugged even though he couldn’t see you, “I guess.”

“It’s just,” he rubbed at his jaw and looked down towards the oven, “it’s almost eight. I was wondering…worrying.”

He still wasn’t looking at you. You stared at the back of his head and sucked your bottom lip between your teeth. Look at me. Your brows pinched, and your back molars ground together. Look at me. 

“I called him. Sheriff Stilinski. He said that you didn’t speak for long.”

“Didn’t have anything new to say,” you shoved your hands into hoodie pockets, realizing belatedly that you forgot to give Stiles his sweatshirt back. Another problem for another time. 

“That’s not what I—” your dad grasped the lip of the counter and hung his head like it suddenly weighed too much for his spine, “I was wondering what happened to you.” 

“Oh,” you shifted your weight onto your other foot, “dead battery. I think it was the door light.”

Your dad nodded a little, “Do you need someone to pick up your car?”

“Got a jump from a friend.” Not a friend, not really, but you supposed it was the closest you’d come to one in the last four years. That was just a little too sad to say out loud. 

“Good.” He nodded again, “Good.” 

You nodded because it seemed like the only thing to do and slipped towards the hallway. You’d taken no less than five steps out of the kitchen when your dad said, “You could call me. Next time, you could call me.”

Maybe. Maybe you could if he would look at you.

[themadauthorshatter]

Lucky through out Finding Frankie:

"Yeah, I'll play this game, I earned it."

"HOLY SHIT! ... Okay, BYE, BITCHES, I'M OUT!"

"The other contestants mysteriously died! Not sure how that happened! Oh well, at least you're still here!"

"Yaaaay, I love being surrounded by CORPSES."

"How many circuit breakers does one trampoline and water park NEED? If it's this many, can't I just WORK HERE? You guys get any new employees or are they also rabbit food?"

"(Hiding) please don't see through mesh. Please don't see through mesh. (Frankie leaves) Okay, so the floor is lava. Or just a no-go unless I want to die slowly and painfully."

"Made it! And no- WHAT THE SHIT!?(As Frankie crawls by) ... I'm getting that 5 mil. I'm buying this place, and setting it on fire with that abracadabra looking asshole inside."

"GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY FROM ME! WHO PUTS LOGS ON THIS STEEP OF A SLOPE AND HAS A MAN EATING RABBIT CHASE YOU!? I THOUGHT THIS PLACE WAS ALSO DESIGNED FOR KIDS!?"

"Aw, ducky. (Gets pecked) FUCK YOU TOO. Gonna play nice or do I need to throw you again?"

(Encounters Henry)

"... Do I still want that 5 million? We'll, I can't have if I'm dead. ... Alright, away we go."

"WHY IS THERE NO LIGHT IN YOUR AREA!? WHY ARE YOU FRIENDS WITH A CARNIVOROUS RABBIT!? ... (Inhale) Okay. I can handle the giant man eating rabbit. I can handle Talking Telephone man that keeps trying to strangle me. I can handle the fucking duck. I can handle this stupid costume and the fact that I'm surrounding by decaying bodies in this hellhole. But I DRAW THE LINE AT FUCKING BUZZSAWS! WHO'S IDEA WAS THIS!?"

"... Really? You guys have an incinerator? So what's paying this place? All the circuit breakers or this incinerator?"

(Encounters Real Frankie)

"... what... What the fuck?"

(Sees Henry die)

"WHAT THE FUCK!?"

(Gets help from Real Frankie)

"Thanks. Please don't tell me this will come back to bite me later."

"Again with the buzzsaws! In a WATER PARK! ... At least the circuit breaker won't get wet."

"Aw, noob noobs. (Explosions) Sorry, got a game to win and money to collect."

"Oh, hey, a chat board. ...'Boring?' I resent that. Raise the 10k to 30. I'm living and I'm going to buy this place and turn it into a hotel. Frankie's broke ass won't be able to stop me. ... Wait, did someone bring up lava?"

"Frankie's Frosted peak. Just get to the top. Easy. (Slime gets released). SCRATCH THAT! CHANGED MY MIND! I'M BURNING THIS PLACE!"

"I'm never using a buzzsaw again in my life."

"Hey, uh, Frankie, can you help me out? I'm... I'm stuck. (Gets shut it) ... Thanks a lot. Dick."

"STOP MESSING UP MY F*CKING GAME SHOW!"

"SO TRYING TO KILL ME WHEN I'VE ALREADY WON, BITCH!"

"NOOB NOOBS! Wait. OH, SHIT! NO!"

"Surprise, mother fucker. Give me my five million in cash."

"... (Sigh) Fine. *One more season.* But no buzzsaws, no slime, and no fucking corpses scattered all over the place like the Black Plague hit this place. We have an incinerator to play with."

[nostalgicfun]

Love is stored in the food.

My dad always made a huge deal about my mom's cooking.

He would come to see us for the weekend and she'd make him lunch and dinner, he'd bang his fist on the table, he'd make comical MMMMMMs like he was in a commercial (albeit a very corny one), and declare that he was taking home the leftovers so nobody could have seconds (which was, of course, a joke, and he'd actually encourage everyone to eat more).

As I was growing up, if I didn't like something we were having for dinner, he'd tell me "Did I ever tell you what I ate in the Gulf War?" or "Did I ever tell you I carried one spoon for six months in my sock?" and, in a nice, fun, dad-like way, tell me I should appreciate my mom's cooking.

One of the last times I saw him, I made a joke that I could make him spaghetti, but it wouldn't be as good as my mom's because I didn't have the practice.

He told me that of course it would be just as good, because he loves me, and therefore he loves my cooking, and he would take all the leftovers home and eat all of it even if I made him weeks and weeks of spaghetti and it all turned green.

I believe him.

I got older and got my own place, and began cooking for roommates and friends and coworkers and significant others. I wasn't a very good cook because I didn't have any experience at all outside of boxed macaroni and spaghetti since my mom didn't allow me to cook—which is another story of its own.

So yes, I started cooking and baking, and no, I wasn't good at it. Many of my meals were (and, let's be real, still are) "flops." I'm notorious for burning—incinerating, truthfully—things, overcooking things, adding too much or too little seasoning, yada yada. That doesn't stop me from loving cooking and baking, though.

But there's a problem, and there has always been a problem since I started using a kitchen of my own, that what I make goes to waste. Entire cakes sit in their cake-keeper until they mold. Leftovers of dishes I made for other people turn to liquid in their containers. Brownies turn to gray rocks, spaghetti turns so green not even my dad would have touched it.

Shortly after I got my first apartment, I lamented this to my father, who was by then living overseas. I told him that I had, like my mother, love to bake, but no one to feed it to. Even with roommates, it rotted. I couldn't eat two dozen cupcakes myself.

I received a phone call a few hours later.

It was from my dad's best friend.

He drove an hour for cupcakes. I'd never seen him smile so broadly as he did when I went running out to his truck with a big container of cupcakes in my hands. They were pudding-filled, I told him, something I'd never tried before. Yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting and vanilla pudding. Boston cream cupcakes.

My dad's friend came back once a week until he moved a short time later. He posted pictures of my "delicacies" on Facebook. I made him cheesecakes, cupcakes, quick breads, muffins.

And of course, spaghetti.

And he told me about the spoons he and my dad carried in the Gulf War.

Years went by and I got better at cooking, but there was still something wrong. My food—homemade food—wasn't eaten unless I put it right in front of a person and basically said "eat." If I set my food out at a work potluck and left the room it would go untouched. My family scoffed (and still scoffs!) at anything I make for them for reasons unknown to even me. My friends and roommates ate what I put in front of them, but left overs never got eaten of their own volition, cookies continued to mold in their tins.

I stopped baking.

Later when my dad returned to the country for a funeral, he went straight to my mom's house. She made him coffee and cheesecake and spaghetti, and he raved and raved and raved about all of it just like he used to.

We stood outside that night while I let the dogs run around.

"She makes terrible coffee," he told me unprompted. "Bitter. But she always had it ready for me. I never asked for that. She just started doing it one day while I was getting ready for work. I'd never had that before. It was the sweetest thing ever, back then."

Her cheesecake was too sweet for him sometimes, too. And she made her chili, one of his favorite dishes right up there with spaghetti, too spicy for his liking.

But she was cooking for him. She was doing this for him. And his reactions made her so happy. My mom loves when people enjoy her food, everyone who's ever met her knows this. "Even when she made absolutely rancid stuff, which she does sometimes," he said, "she's doing it because she loves us. And we love her, too. So I drink the coffee."

I took up my dad's mantle of "theatrics" at the dinner table for my mom. She smiles the same every time.

I've become a much, much better cook as I've gotten older.

I've also, with age, learned the difference between selfish love and unselfish love, and how you can so easily tell this difference when you make someone food. Empty compliments made in hopes it'll win the compliment-giver brownie points (pun not intended but appreciated). Say it's good, but the leftovers are molding in the fridge and the muffins are untouched in the break room, still. My family who side-eyes my dinner contributions with thinly-veiled distaste.

I started making friends recently. New friends from new places, friends who aren't anything like me.

I joined a writing club, too.

On a whim, I baked cupcakes for our meeting.

When the meeting was over, arguments ensued over who got to take the cupcakes home. I handed out paper plates and cling wrap. Everyone left smiling. Everyone left with a cupcake (or two) in their hands. Each time we meet, now, they ask me when I'm next bringing cupcakes.

A coworker came to sit in my office the other day. She's new here. She lamented not having a Red Lobster in the area, that she craved their biscuits because she and her mom used to go get Red Lobster on Thursday nights.

I went home and made her Cheddar Bay biscuits. We sat in the break room eating them and laughing and making up stories about people we saw from the window below. When lunch was over, she took her biscuits home in an ice cream box we found in the freezer.

I started dating a new guy last year. My dad introduced us on his most recent visit. I was smitten. He was smitten. We did the silly little activities kind-of-young people do while dating: walks in the park, going out for ice cream, watching a movie, attending a trivia night.

I don't remember now how it was relevant to the conversation at the time, but at one point it was mentioned that neither his mother nor his father nor his step-mom ever cooked. The whole family always ate out. At home they'd have chicken tenders and Hungry Man dinners.

The next week, I invited him over for dinner. I was nervous, super nervous. I was so scared it would go the way it always goes, with no comments at all other than "thanks it was good," which almost always means, in the experiences I've had, "that was mediocre but nice of you I guess."

I made him a big rack of ribs. I called my mom to make sure I was doing it right, like, three times.

When I put the ribs down in front of him, he was smiling a familiar smile. A "did I ever tell you about the spoon I carried" smile.

He took one bite.

He set down his fork.

He got out his phone and video called his dad to show him the dinner.

I haven't stopped cooking for him since.

When he has to leave after a weekend together, he goes to my fridge and rummages through the leftovers not unlike a racoon and asks "can I have this?" "are you going to eat this?" "can I take some of this home?"

He always leaves with a Walmart bag full of little Tupperware containers, and hot coffee made without asking.

And when my dinners are "flops," when they come out burnt or too salty or not salty enough, he doesn't lie or give me beloathed empty compliments.

"The worst dinner from you is still better than the best dinner from Door Dash."

I bake him cakes. He sends me snapchats of him eating them. I make him muffins, and he takes them to work in a lunch box and taunts his coworkers with them. He arrives to my place in the wee hours of the morning and asks "what did you make for dinner tonight, is there any left, and how fast can I microwave it?" We go to a social potluck at the place where we met and he points to the banquet table and says "look, that guy's getting some of your meatballs. I bet they're almost all gone." A friend's wife puts one of my cookies on her plate. He points at something behind her that isn't there at all and steals the cookie off of her plate. He smiles at me.

Love is stored in the food.

[gifts-of-heimdall-runes]

An infographic of the Nine Realms for those that love Norse mythology. It is an abstract representation that is designed to show the realms in a way that closely resembles the descriptions of the Eddas. Each shows some features and inhabitants that make the realm distinct, and it shows how the realms connect to each other and Yggdrasill. In reality, all realms would be nested within each each other and fit somewhere on our planet (either in a physical location or in an invisible spiritual location).

Heavenly Realms (upper level):

_____________________________

* Ásgarð - Home of the Æsir. Each God rules over a kingdom and has his own palace within Ásgarð. Óðinn rules the realm from his high throne. The Einherjar make the palace of Valhall their home. 1/2 of the greatest slain warriors are chosen by the Valkyries to join Óðinn's army and await their final battle against the invading armies of Giants at Ragnarok.

(In this image you can see Óðinn standing at the entrance of Valhall, monitoring the training of his warriors)

* Vanaheim - Home of the Vanir. Once enemies of the Æsir, but now their tribes have been unified. Freyja rules over this realm and other half of the Einherjar join Freyja in Fólkvangr where they train until Ragnarok.

(In this image you can see Freyha and one of her cats leading her warriors in drills)

* Álfheim - Home of the Álfar (Elves). Noble nature spirits that are allies of the Æsir Gods. Elves have dominion over nature and inhabit sacred hills, streams, or groves where they keep the land healthy and prosperous with their magic.

* Gimlé - In Ásgarð nearbye Álfheim exist other minor heavenly kingdoms, like Viðbláinn. Here a palace sits high in the mountains called Gimlé, where the souls of the righteous go after death. It is also where the last surviving Gods will seek shelter from the fires of Surtr in the final days of Ragnarok.

* Bifröst - The Rainbow Bridge. This brightly colored bridge provides a path for the Gods to quickly travel from Ásgarð to Miðgarð. It burns with magical flames that will incinerate any Frost-Giant or Hill-Giant that attempts to invade the home of the Gods. But the Sons of Múspell are immue to the flames, since they are Fire-Giants, and will collapse the bridge as they charge over it to destroy Ásgarð during Ragnarok.

_____________________________

Yggdrasill:

_____________________________

* Yggdrasill - The World Tree. This mighty Ash has roots that run far and wide, connecting all the realms. Yggdrasill also houses a pair of humans that will emerge and repopulate the world after Ragnarok. Long ago, Óðinn hanged himself from this tree to learn the secrets of the magical runes

* Urðarbrunnr, Mimisbrunnr, & Hvergelmir-

Yggdrasill stands next to the Urðarbrunnr (well of Urð. Urð is the eldest sister of the 3 Norns, Giantesses that weave the strands fate into an intricate tapestry, which reveals the destiny of all living things. The waters of this well have healing properties and the 3 sisters anoint the roots of Yggdrasill daily to stave off decay.

(In this image the 3 Norns can be found standing beside the Urðarbrunnr)

One of Yggdrasill's primary roots travels into Jotunheim, where it drinks from the Minisbrunnr (Mimir's Well). This is the well where Óðinn sacrificed his eye in order to gain his great wisdom by drinking from the well.

The final primary root of Yggdrasill runs into Niflheim, to the Hvergelmir. This well of boiling water is home to numerous serpents and the terrible wyrm, Niðhoggr. These beasts gnaw upon the root, slowly killing it with their venom.

* Hraesvelgr, Ratatoskr, Niðhöggr, Veðrfölnir, & Eikthyrnir - These creatures live in or near Yggdrasill and interact with each other and the world's -

Hraesvelgr sits high in the top-most branches, flapping his broad wings to create the winds. Veðrfölnir is a hawk that sits between the eagle's eyes and he may act as an informant for the eagle, like Huginn & Muninn.

Niðhöggr periodically travels to the opposite shore of the Hvergelmir, near Helheim. This shore is known as Náströnd (the Corpse Shore) and while there the wyrm drinks the blood of the newly arrived damned souls (oath-breaketlrs, adulterers, and murderers).

Ratatoskr is a squirrel that runs up and down the roots of Yggdrasill, so he can relay hateful messages between Hraesvelgr and Niðhöggr.

Eikthyrnir is a stag that feeds upon the leaves of Yggdrasill above Valhall. Dew gathers on his antlers and drips down to the Hvergelmir where it becomes the source of many rivers. In some accounts there are 4 stags, but this may be a later alteration to the story.

_____________________________

Mortal Realms (middle level):

_____________________________

* Miðgarð - The realm of men. The Gods frequently travel to Miðgarð to entertain themselves, influence humanity, or slay invading Giants. Thór, the Bane of Giants, is the protector of Miðgarð.

(In this image you can find Thór, the protector of Miðgarð, has just made his way across the Bifröst)

* Niðavellir - Home of the Dvergar (Dwarfs). These magical beings are nature spirits, related to the Elves, but not divine like their cousins. They shelter under the earth where they are safe from the deadly sunlight and craft marvelous magical weapons and tools for Kings and Gods. Sindri, the most famous of Dwarfs lives in this land.

* Svartálfheim - Home of the Svartálfar (Dark Elves). These Elves are craftsmen like the Dwarfs and are frequently identified as Dwarfs due to their similar appearance and lifestyle. The most well-attested Dark Elves in the Eddas are the smith brothers, onown as the Sons of Ivaldi.

* Miðgarð Sea - This vast body of water surrounds Miðgarð to protect the world from the vicious Giants on the other side. Jörmungandr, the World Serpent, makes this his home after being tossed into the water by Óðinn. Over the centuries he has grown so large that he now encircles the entire world. Beneath the waves lay Rán's Hall, the Goddess of the sea makes ready her home for the poor souls that drown at sea.

* Jötunheim - Home of the Hill-Giants. The Kingdoms of Útgarð (King Útgarða-Loki) and Thrymheim (Skaði) are found here. In the Eddas we hear how Thór and Loki have travelled to Jotunheim many times seeking adventure or revenge.

_____________________________

Primordial Realms (lower level):

_____________________________

* Ginnungagap - In the beginning there was a vast yawning void, a featureless plain standing in the darkness, and absent of life. From this land emerged 2 realms: Múspellheim to the south and Niflheim to the north.

* Múspellheim - This volcanic realm is home to the primordial Fire-Giant, Surtr. His army, the Sons of Múspell, is the most powerful and destructive army in the world. Surtr patiently waits for the day he is destined to lead the invasion of Ásgarð. After the world was created, the Gods and Dwarfs gathered sparks and embers from Múspellheim and used them to craft the Sun, Moon, and stars, so that the sky would be illuminated and men could track the seasons.

* Niflheim - This frozen realm is the home of the dead. All humans that are not granted access to one of the other realms to live out their afterlife are destined to reside here. Hel was banished to Niflheim, where she rules over these damned souls. But she was not the first ruler of this realm. In the beginning, the enormous Frost-Giant called Ymir became the first living being to inhabit the world. He would father the tribes known as the Frost-Giants and Hill-Giants, but he was slain by Óðinn, Vili, and Vé. These 3 brothers re-purposed his massive corpse, fashioning it into Miðgarð.

Source: Aaron Chapman (2023)

From: Everthing Norse & Vikings Culture [Facebook]

[nerevar-quote-and-star]

Meet me at midnight to see how dark we can take this crackship

Only, not as dark as I thought it could be? Oh well, @elder-dragon-reposes REALLY liked it! I mean really.

ao3 | masterlist

Her footsteps on the stair were not the first inkling he had of her presence in his tomb.

There was a shift in the air, a whisper through the stagnant corridors hissing of a presence that had not been in the halls of Forelhost since the Traitor was a young acolyte in the Order. But as alike as her presence was to that lir, there was something light that was entirely this being, this volaan that was all her own.

He would handle her. Did he not handle the Nordic invaders long ago?

"You know how you dealt with the last wave of volaan."

Froda's ghost sneers in his hollow ear, a draft that persisted in invading his chamber even after millennia. He snarls into the darkness, and silence falls again.

Tremors worble through the air, sometimes brushing the stones and at others, pressing against his ears. The volaan's encroachment into the catacombs was neither explosive nor vivid. If he weren't so attuned to the wards and runes of Forelhost, he would not have known she was there until it was too late.

Time passes. It creeps forward, frost covering the ground with the advancing winter. A chill curls down his withered spine, coiling in his chest with the harshness of a cold drake. He could taste the blizzard building in the air the closer the volaan came. He would last through her winter, just as he did others before.

"You call this outlasting the winter? It has broken you, wuth jul."

The whisper dissipates, but the growing chill does not. It permeates the stone so that frostbite threatens the dead nerves of his skin. The temperture continues to drop.

Hours pass.

Then, with a gust of icy wind, the doors open. The volaan arrives.

"Will you kill her, then?" Yes. "What a shame."

He prepared to rise, to release the ward sealing his sarcophagus, and burst into the room in a blaze of glory. But then Froda's words touched him. Why was it a shame?

Power coiled in the air, the crick shrrr hiss of ice crystals drifting through the air and shattering on the dusty stone. Dusty stones in a broken temple at the heart of a fallen city, dedicated to dead gods and a forgotten religion. Long ago, was Forelhost not the last remnant of the Dragon Cult's power? And now what was left, but dust and bone and shattered stone? Yes, yes, it would be a shame. It would be a great shame to meet such power, only to incinerate it.

Rahgot would not join the ashes on the altar to his god.

He feels her skirt the room, her chill pushing back against the heat of his wards. Closer and closer she came to him. What to do when she arrived?

Her hand on the lid was a shard of arctic ice. In life, he was familiar with the clever men and mages' magic lurking under their skin, leaving tell tale signs of each person's strngths--and weakness--in the arcane. But hers was not subtle; it was a raging storm.

IF he concentrates hard enough, he can recall a similar potency in the Traitor's presence, electric and biting in its intensity.

Both are a storm.

Dovahkiin . . .

His whisper is kiss of warmth through the coolness. He can feel her hesitate above him, and he thinks he moved in error. She was leaving. He should have remained silent.

But then the lid is sliding, solid and heavy, to the floor. Snowflakes flutter into his sarcophagus, and Rahgot sees the Dovahkiin for the first time.

He is struck by her resemblance to the Traitor, chestnut curls framing an almost golden face, wherein sat a pair of eyes so blue that the sky would weep with envy.

But yet, there is a softness in her face that wasn't present in the Traitor's, a light in the eye and draw of the mouth that spoke of exhaustion and perseverance. Where the Traitor was full of pride, this woman, this fahlil was patiance.

Where the Traitor came and went with the flash of a summer storm, hers was the long cold that seized Atmora and threatened to outlast the world.

"She'll outlast you."

But Froda's warning goes ignored.

Her hand is on the staff. Though he has not wielded it since beyond the reach of mortal memory, its heart of flame still burns like an inferno. Her mouth purses when her hand grips the stave, its heat daring to thaw the permafrost under her skin.

It is as she draws her hand back, steam curling around her finger tips, that he takes the staff in familiar hands and rises from the grave.

The Dovahkiin stumbles back, her ring-clad hand held to her chest as his presence looms before her. He can taste the power trailing from his staff to her hand.

It is quick. It is almost easy. Vahlok did not have such a fortunate confrontation. Rahgot is up and over her in a vengeful blaze.

She drops to the floor, not in defeat, but to escape his fire, and Rahgot descends--

--but she is not there. In a whirl of smoke, he turns to find her poised on the side of his coffin, ice gathered in her hands. Her face is hard, her eyes frozen.

YOL TOR SHUL! "FO KRAH DIIN!"

The songs of fire and ice meet and burst against each other, dousing the chamber in a blanket of steam. He hears her gasp at the heavy air.

But a lich does not need air, nor does he need to see.

As she stumbles backward into his sarcophagus, Rahgot falls on her, a smothering shadow. She screams when his spidery hands find the collar of her armor and the pillar of golden skin above it.

"FEIM—"

But his hand crushes her windpipe, silencing the Thu'um in her mouth. Her eyes are blown wide, sightless in the dark.

How simple, how exquisite it was to have a creature so full of power within his hands.

She is bound up in a hard shell of silver ice, but Rahgot would see to that later. His hand still on her throat, he traces the other over her face, cresting over sharp elven bones and soft mannish cheeks. He reaches her ear, and feels a tremor in her throat when his finger catches on the leaftip.

Long ago, they said Traitor's power was born from dovah sos in his veins. At the time, Rahgot did not, would not believe such a blasphemy to the gods. But over the long ages in rumination with nothing but Froda's ghost and the mountain winds to haunt his ears, he pondered the possibility of a true Dovahkiin.

Now he believed, and now he holds one in his hands. A goddess in a mortal's skin. The power of the gods could be, would be his!

"You are a fool, Rahgot."

His hiss is ghastly, banishing Froda's ghost to the fringes and washing over the Dovahkiin's face in a cloud of decay. She gags beneath him. In retaliation, he pinches her ear between two bony fingers, and she chokes, gasping.

But it wouldn't do to kill the goddess of his new religion before he's preached his message. He would seal her in his own coffin as he prepared his ascension to a new priesthood.

His wards hold the lid in place, sealing the Dovahkiin without suffocating her. He would return for her soon, but first—

There is a gasp, a brush of frost, and then from the confines of the coffin, a whispy voice Shouts, her Thu'um penetrating through stone and death.

Rahgot rounds on the tomb, pivoting from his place on the stairs from his funerary dias. But it is too late. The Shout has burst from the air into the bones of Nirn itself.

"OD AH VIING!"

Odahviing tugs at a distant thread in the long tapestry of Rahgot's memory with the strength of iron tongs pulling teeth.

Odahviing. His old master.

But how did—?

"You've sworn fealty to your own doom."

Froda's taunting voice dances in his ears as thunder rumbles in the distance. The sarcophagus on the dias is still, but dust and debris fall from the ceiling like rain. Rahgot draws back, his staff raised to meet whatever new being threatened his sanctum.

"You know what's coming."

There was a crack! followed by a heavy crash. Dust choked the air, bitter in the cold and lingering smoke steam. Then, early morning light filters in, thin and golden. In its midst is a horned head and sharpened claw. Claws that would destroy Forelhost.

"Rahgot, mey! My teeth to your neck!"

THe roof was gone, and morning sun flooded the chambers, catching on the dust motes like magicka in the air. The smoke and steam dispersed quickly, and Rahgot, for the first time in nearly five thousand years, saw his god face to face.

Of all the dov, Odahviing was always a fierce and active ruler. Always quick to action and swift to speak his thoughts. Rahgot always knew his recklessness was why he fell in the war with the Nords. But before, Odahviing was a stalwart supporter of Alduin Thuri. His priesthood followed the example set by the High Priests in Bromjunaar. He sent lesser dov to heed Alduin's call against the Traitor.

Yet here he was, heeding the call of a weak fahlil with the blood of the gods. Why—?

But Rahgot could not ponder it any longer. His master was in the chamber. A large, brilliantly formed dovah, Odahviing's size forced Rahgot to sweep back across the cracked floor, all too aware of the heat and strength of a dragon's body. But his god did not look at him.

Odahviing's claws were prying open the lid. It fell away and he lowered his snout. Rahgot could just see small golden hands grasp at the crimson scales.

"Odahviing, I can't breathe—"

Her voice, faint, speaks a language Rahgot doesn't know. But whatever she says to the dovah turns the horned head in his direction. Odahviing is snarling.

"Mey lir, Rahgot! Ruth hi!" Odahviing, thur—

But the jaws are on him. As his bones are broken by his god's teeth, Rahgot sees the Dovahkiin sitting up. in his coffin, her arms draped over the side as she tries to catch her breath. Her hair is a whirlwind and her eyes crystal. What a ravishing goddess she would have made!

Her eyes catch his through the slits of his mask. Her face is as green as the cold orichalcum. But then her mouth turns up, a sneer, and she resembles the Traitor so utterly that Rahgot, for the first time in countless ages, grew truly cold.

"Save his mask for me, won't you, darling?" "Geh, Judsedov."

Rahgot doesn't know what the Dovahkiin says to Odahviing, but his god calls the fahlil the Queen of the Dov. The Queen.

His last thought was that she was already a goddess, and Odahviing, a god in his own right, was her loyal priest.

Froda's laughter is the last thing Rahgot hears over the rumble of the dovah's throat and the crunch of his own bones.

When the mask falls to the floor, bereft of its priest, it is several long minutes before Leara can muster the strength to retrieve it. Even then, Odahviing offers his head to help support her, and he guides her across the floor.

Picking it up, Leara fingers the cold orichalcum, tired.

"What happened?" "Well . . ."

She trailed off, warm and comfortable against Odahviing but embarrassed to continue. At Odahviing's gentle huff, she relents.

"He caught me off guard. I tried to stand on the coffin for leverage, and then the bloody lich tripped me up." "Lech." "What was that?" "Nothing, Kunziiyol."

Sighing, Leara turns her face into the warmth of Odahviing's snout.

"Let's go home."

Guiding the Dragonborn to the safe hollow at the base of his neck, Odahviing takes flight, leaving the ruins of Forelhost and the Dragon Cult behind.

"Drat, I forgot about the Word Wall!" "Ruth, vahdin."

fin

[hmshermitcraft]

Tango loves all the hermits and Jimmy he knows they all really want to try decked out 2 especially Jimmy but given how tango has seen Jimmy play out in the life series…he’s reasonably concerned and when he mentioned to Grian he was gonna let jimmy play it Grian just froze for a solid ten minutes before telling tango he’s only gonna be allowed the first level right?…Right?!

Well nope! Turns out jimmy asked for the hardest level out the gate. And on one hand most of the other hermits were amused to see both Tango and Grian running around like headless chickens panicking but on the other many of the other hermits who were apart of the life games very much understood their concerns for jimmy. And all the more so when not a week earlier Joel showed them all a video of Jimmy losing a fight to an axolotl over a hamburger now Tango was only panicking more!

So some of the hermits pulled Jimmy aside and explained to them that Tango is sorta having a major freak out over his safety. And Jimmy understands he’s clumsier than a greased up chicken but he wants a chance to experience decked out like everyone else! And when it was time to let Jimmy have a run he went in and hoped for the best!

And by whatever god hasn’t forsaken the hermitcraft server yet he survived!…Well after almost getting skewered, incinerated, ravagered, and winning a fist fight with a warden of all things! He came out alive albeit slightly cooked and Tango was just speechless before Jimmy said “So? How’d I do?” at which point Tango fainted on the spot.

Rando anon

Tango gave Jimmy a deck he thought would be fair for the harder difficulty, with advice from some of the other hermits. Zed even did a test run or two to see if it was possible!

They still didn't expect Jimmy to do it. They didn't even expect him to reach the third floor. Grian guessed he'd die on the first floor, feel horrible embarrassed, and start doing runs on easy like a normal person.

He guesses his mistake was thinking Jimmy is in any way a normal person that thinks thoughts using logic. Because he's not. He's an idiot. But even worse, he's their idiot and he's in mines and somehow he's surviving.

It takes a while to believe Tango didn't manipulate the game for him to survive. Jimmy got out the game and got confused when the frost embers took a while to come out. He didn't even realise he could buy things in the shop! How did he survive that?!

He's an enigma. And now he's using the fact he survived to demand attention from anybody he wants.

They can't really say no after that performance, can they?

[godzilla-reads]

🥶 The Iceland Wyrm by Ernest Drake/Dugald Steer (Dragonology Pocket Adventures #1)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

In Dragonology Pocket Adventures, YOU are the hero, an intrepid dragonologist sent on a variety of dangerous quests. Read the story and make choices that will lead to FAME, GLORY, and the conservation and protection of dragons- or perhaps a FIERY end. You decide!

Mission: A rogue frost dragon known as the Iceland Wyrm is devastating Iceland and blasting everyone in its path. Investigate AT ONCE and take all necessary action!

This one was so fun. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure story and I only died 5-ish times before I managed to complete the mission. My ship sunk twice, I was blasted with air, I was incinerated by lava, and trapped forever in a cave, but all in all, I DID end up helping a frost dragon on my sixth life.

[help-an-alter]

hi, i’m a fictive alter (i think) whose looking for help finding my identity. my believed source is dabi from my hero academia, and some general ‘keywords’ are fire, blue, burnt/burning, frosty (in a weird way?? i can’t really explain it) and just kinda darker vibes. i hope that’s enough explanation.

thanks in advance

heyo anon !! we'd be happy to help :D we'll give some names, pronouns, genders, and potential interests

everything is under the cut just to make the blog easier to navigate for followers (as it'll be quite the long post)

Names

blue themed ,,, (these are taken directly from my last post)

Cobalt, Periwinkle, Oxford, CornFlower, Cerulean, Sapphire, Alice, Bleu, Maya, Tiffany, Blizzard

burnt / burning themed ,,,

Blaze, Flame, Fire, Alight, Incinerate, Match, Ardent, Ignited, Kindling, Ash / Ashe, Smolder, Glow, Flash, Flicker, Scorch, Flare

frost / frosty themed ,,,

Ice, Crystal, Verglas, Hoar, Rime, Frigid, Arctic, Wintry, Bitter, Cool, Chilly, Rimy, Icy, Glacier, Glacial

darker vibes themed ,,,

Raven, Damian , Lilith / Lillith / Lilithe / Lillithe, Branwen, Darcy, Cain, Adrienne, Blake, Blaise, Draco, Ebony, Morticia, Amaris, Arachne, Salem, Delaney, Bellatrix, Narcissa / Narcissus, Dusk

pronouns

blue themed ,,,

blu/blue ,, teal/teals ,, ind/indigo ,, aqu/aqua ,, cy/cyan ,, cy/an

burnt / burning themed ,,,

haze/hazey ,, swirl/swirls ,, explo/explosion ,, boo/boom ,, ars/arson ,, arson/arsonist ,, fla/flare

frost / frosty themed ,,,

fog/fogs ,, mi/mist ,, silver/silvers ,, ice/ices

darker vibes themed ,,,

nyct/nycto ,, dark/darks ,, hor/horror ,, death/deadly ,, null/nulls ,, null/nullify ,, bo/bones ,, bone/boney ,, merci/merciless ,, peril/perish ,, peril/perilous ,, peril/perils ,, reap/reapers ,, tomb/stone ,, cof/coffin ,, grave/gravestone ,, grave/graveyard ,, grave/graves ,, gra/graves ,, gloo/glooms ,, gloom/gloomy

potential interests (not separated by theme, rather separated by type of activity)

Research topics ,,,

The Salem Witch Trials ,, Wicca, Witchcraft, or Paganism ,, History of Lobotomies ,, History of Asylums or Mental Institutions ,, Serial Killers ,, History of Cannibalism ,, History of Cults

Movies ,,,

Rise of the Guardians (2012) ,, A Christmas Carol (1938) ,, Original Home Alone Series (1990, 1992, 1997, and 2002) ,, Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children (2016) Paranormal Activity Series (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, and 2021) [rating from my mum : its just freaky shit that happens - she has apparently never seen any of them, though] ,, The Grudge (2004) ,, Talk to Me (2023) ,, The Others (2001) ,, Burning (2018) ,, Backdraft (1991) ,, Money Train (1995)

TV Shows ,,,

Supernatural (2005-2020) ,, The Original Addams Family (1964-1966) ,, Wednesday (2022-current with a new season confirmed) ,, Stranger Things (2016-current with a new season confirmed coming out in 2025) ,, Peaky Blinders (2013-2022)

Books ,,,

Wheel of Time Series (Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson) ,, Children of the Night (Dan Simmons) ,, Mortal Instruments Series (Cassandra Clare) ,, Miss Peregrine Series (Ransom Riggs)

Games ,,,

Life is Strange (Square Enix) ,, Fran Bow (Kill Monday Games) ,, Little Nightmares (Bandai Namco Entertainment) ,, Little Misfortune (Kill Monday Games)

Please search for trigger warning for any and all media recommended !! /lh

[genshin-impact-updates]

"Windblume's Breath" Version 3.5 Update Details

Dear Travelers,

Below are the details of the Version 3.5 update "Windblume's Breath" and the update compensation.

〓Compensation Details〓

Maintenance Compensation: Primogems ×300 (60 Primogems per hour the servers are down)

Issue Fix Compensation: Primogems ×300 (please refer to the relevant compensation mail for more details)

〓Scope of Compensation〓

Maintenance Compensation: Travelers who reach Adventure Rank 5 or above before 2023/03/01 06:00 (UTC+8).

Please claim before the end of Version 3.5.

Issue Fix Compensation: Travelers who reach Adventure Rank 5 or above before 2023/03/01 06:00 (UTC+8).

Please claim the compensation mail before 2023/03/04 06:00 (UTC+8).

Our developers will distribute compensation to Travelers via in-game mail within 5 hours after the update maintenance is finished. The mail will expire after 30 days, so don't forget to claim the attached compensation in time.

〓Update Schedule〓

Update maintenance begins 2023/03/01 06:00 (UTC+8) and is estimated to take 5 hours.

〓How to Update Game Client〓

PC: Close the game, open the Genshin Impact Launcher, and click Update.

iOS: Open the App Store and tap Update.

Android: Open the game and follow the directions on-screen.

PS5™ and PS4™: Highlight Genshin Impact from the Home Screen, press the OPTIONS button and select "Check for Update."

Please do not hesitate to contact Customer Service if you encounter any issues installing the new version. We will do our very best to resolve the issue.

〓Update Details〓

I. New Characters

5-Star Character "Flame-Mane" Dehya (Pyro)

◇ Vision: Pyro

◇ Weapon: Claymore

◇ A member of the Eremites, a mercenary organization that roams the sands of Sumeru. Valiant and powerful, she enjoys great fame amongst her fellow Eremites.

◆ Elemental Skill: Molten Inferno

◆ Dehya's Elemental Skill "Molten Inferno" has two parts to it. "Molten Inferno: Indomitable Flame" deals AoE Pyro DMG and creates a Fiery Sanctum field, while "Molten Inferno: Ranging Flame" recreates said field at a new position after dealing AoE Pyro DMG, which will inherit the remaining duration of the previous field. When an enemy within a Fiery Sanctum field takes damage, the field will unleash a coordinated attack. In addition, active characters within the Fiery Sanctum field have their resistance to interruption increased, and when such characters take DMG, a portion of that damage will be mitigated and flow into Redmane's Blood. Dehya will then take this DMG over a period of time.

◆ Elemental Burst: Leonine Bite

◆ After casting her Elemental Burst "Leonine Bite," Dehya retrieves the Fiery Sanctum on the field and enters the "Blazing Lioness" state, which increases her resistance to interruption. In this state, Dehya uses her Flame-Mane's Fist and Incineration Drive to deal Pyro DMG to enemies. When this state ends, a Fiery Sanctum field will be recreated at her new position, and will inherit the remaining duration of the previous field.

● The 5-star character "Flame-Mane" Dehya (Pyro) will be available in the standard wish "Wanderlust Invocation" in the next Version.

4-Star Character "Coordinates of Clear Frost" Mika (Cryo)

◇ Vision: Cryo

◇ Weapon: Polearm

◇ A young knight born to an ordinary family. He serves as a Front-Line Surveyor in his Company. He is a low-key and cautious character.

◆ Elemental Skill: Starfrost Swirl

◆ After using his Elemental Skill "Starfrost Swirl," Mika uses his crossbow to attack, granting all nearby characters in your party Soulwind. When characters in the Soulwind state are on the field, their ATK SPD will be increased. When tapped, Mika fires a Flowfrost Arrow that can pierce through opponents, dealing Cryo DMG to enemies it comes into contact with. When held, Mika goes into Aiming Mode, locking on to an opponent and firing a Rimestar Flare at them, dealing Cryo DMG. When the Rimestar Flare hits, it will rise before exploding, launching Rimestar Shards into a maximum of 3 other opponents, dealing Cryo DMG.

◆ Elemental Burst: Skyfeather Song

◆ After using his Elemental Burst "Skyfeather Song," Mika derives the ability to spur his teammates on from the recited prayers of the knightly order, regenerating HP for all nearby party members. This healing is based on Mika's Max HP and will grant them the Eagleplume state. When the Normal Attacks of active characters affected by Eagleplume hit an opponent, Mika will help them regenerate HP based on his Max HP. Characters affected by this state can only regenerate HP in this way once per short interval of time.

II. New Equipment

New Weapons

Beacon of the Reed Sea (5-Star Claymore)

After the character's Elemental Skill hits an opponent, their ATK will be increased by 20% for 8s. After the character takes DMG, their ATK will be increased by 20% for 8s. The 2 aforementioned effects can be triggered even when the character is not on the field. Additionally, when not protected by a shield, the character's Max HP will be increased by 32%.

◆ During the event wish "Epitome Invocation," the event-exclusive 5-star weapon Beacon of the Reed Sea (Claymore) will receive a huge drop-rate boost!

Mailed Flower (4-Star Claymore)

Within 8s after the character's Elemental Skill hits an opponent or the character triggers an Elemental Reaction, their ATK and Elemental Mastery will be increased by 12% and 48 respectively.

◆ Mailed Flower (Claymore) and its refinement materials can be redeemed in the event "Windblume's Breath."

III. New Main Story

1. New Archon Quest

Archon Quest Chapter III: Act VI "Caribert"

Permanently available after the Version 3.5 update

◆ Quest Unlock Criteria

• Reach Adventure Rank 35 or above

• Complete Archon Quest Chapter III: Act V "Akasha Pulses, the Kalpa Flame Rises"

2. New Story Quest

Dehya's Story Quest - Mantichora Chapter: Act I "Lionsblood"

Permanently available after the Version 3.5 update

◆ Quest Unlock Criteria

• Reach Adventure Rank 40 or above

• Complete Archon Quest Chapter III: Act V "Akasha Pulses, the Kalpa Flame Rises"

3. New Hangout Event

Hangout Event: Faruzan - Act I "A Confounding Conundrum"

Permanently available after the Version 3.5 update

◆ Event Unlock Criteria:

• Reach Adventure Rank 40 or above

• Complete Archon Quest Chapter III: Act V "Akasha Pulses, the Kalpa Flame Rises"

• Complete Tighnari's Story Quest "Vulpes Zerda Chapter: Act I - The Unanswerable Problems"

IV. New Enemies

Abyss Herald: Frost Fall

◇ An Abyss Order monster that uses a dark power to command ice and frost in battle.

Some of its attacks decrease the Stamina of characters while dealing DMG against them.

Black Serpent Knight: Rockbreaker Ax

◇ This seems to have once been a trusted guard of high standing in some land who wielded the power of Geo.

Its attacks become stronger and fiercer when they hit shielded characters, at the cost of its own health.

V. Other Additions

New Recipes:

○ Sumeru NPC Enteka: Tulumba

○ Sumeru NPC Azalai: Gilded Tajine

○ Dehya's specialty: "Goldflame Tajine"

○ Mika's specialty: "Surveyor's Breakfast Sandwich"

○ Obtained From Event Mail: Super Magnificent Pizza and Minty Fruit Tea

New Cooking Ingredient:

○ Sumeru NPC Enteka: Coffee Bean

New Achievements added to the "Wonders of the World" and "Memories of the Heart" categories

New Namecards:

"Dehya: Purifying Flame": Reward for reaching Friendship Lv. 10 with Dehya

"Mika: Index": Reward for reaching Friendship Lv. 10 with Mika

"Travel Notes: Artful Intent": Reward obtained via the BP system

Adds some prompts for loading screens.

Added Set 21 of "Paimon's Paintings" chat emojis.

The gadget "Festive Drum" can now be purchased from Mikoshi Genichirou, the owner of Inazuma's Netsuke no Gen Crafts.

"Genius Invokation TCG" Gameplay Update:

New Character Cards: Eula, Sangonomiya Kokomi, and Kujou Sara, and their corresponding Talent cards.

New invitation duels and guest challenges added to the Player List.

New Equipment Cards: Ornate Kabuto and General's Ancient Helm

New Furnishings: Leisure Device: Bouncy Tubby and Leisure Device: Bouncy Chubby

You can directly teleport to the Mansion's location within the Serenitea Pot using the Map.

A guide to Archon Quests will be added to the "Adventurer Handbook: Guide" page. For each Archon Quest Act completed, Travelers can claim the corresponding rewards on this page.

Spiral Abyss

Floor 11 Ley Line Disorders changed to:

• All party members receive a 75% Pyro DMG Bonus.

Updated the monster lineup on Floor 11 of the Spiral Abyss.

Updated the monster lineup on Floor 12 of the Spiral Abyss.

Starting from the first time that the Lunar Phase refreshes after updating to Version 3.5, the two Lunar Phases will be as follows:

Phase I:

Determined Moon

After a character's HP decreases, all party members will gain a stack of Implacable: DMG dealt will be increased by 8% for 8s. This effect can be triggered once every 0.3s. Max 4 stacks. Each stack's duration is counted independently.

Phase II:

Incisive Moon

When a character's HP decreases, release a shockwave at the current active character's position, dealing True DMG to nearby opponents. This effect can be triggered once every 3s.

※ The above Spiral Abyss update will take effect from March 16 at 04:00 (Server Time).

〓Adjustments & Optimizations〓

● System

On the Weapon and Artifact enhancement interface, you can now hold and scroll/swipe to select multiple Artifacts and Weapons that you want to consume.

On the Destroy interface, you can now hold and scroll/swipe to select multiple Artifacts and Weapons that you want to destroy.

On mobile, when the interaction key in certain gameplay modes is not available, it is now possible to touch the corresponding area to adjust the viewing angle.

Optimizes operations and interactions on the Weapons and Artifact interface, and fixes some issues:

In Controller Mode, once Weapons and Artifacts have been enhanced to their maximum level, or when Weapons have been refined to their maximum level, you can now return to the previous page via the "Back" button.

In Controller Mode, the Weapon/Artifact Attributes on the right side of the Weapon/Artifact Enhancement page can now be toggled up and down with the right joystick.

In Controller Mode, when opening the comparison window in the Artifact Interface, the same button can be pressed again to close the window.

Fixes an issue whereby under certain circumstances, the names of a small portion of Artifacts in the Artifact Enhancement menu were abnormally obscured.

Optimizes the movement effects of the list of Artifacts or Weapons when selecting Artifacts or Weapons in the Character interface.

● Audio

Optimizes the sound reverberation effects for certain indoor settings.

Optimizes the sound performance of certain interfaces.

Optimizes the Korean, English, and Japanese voice lines of some characters and fixes some voice-over text errors.

Optimizes the Korean, English, and Japanese voice lines for some quests.

● Genius Invokation TCG

Adjusts the interface performance for the dice rolling phase of Genius Invokation TCG.

Optimizes the refresh logic for the number of times the Summons and Team Combat Statuses can be used in Genius Invokation TCG. The number of Usages will take the highest value.

Example: Suppose that the default initial number of Usages for a Summon is 2, and that Summon is already on the field and its current available Usages is at 4. Before the optimization, if that Summon is created again, the number of its available Usages will be updated to 2. After said optimization, the maximum number of available Usages will be 4.

● Other

Optimizes the visual performance of certain scenes.

Optimizes the source description of the Traveler's Constellation activation material.

Adds a path on the map to a cave entrance in the Qusayr Al-Inkhida' area of the Desert of Hadramaveth (only adds an icon on the map, the terrain remains unchanged.)

It is no longer possible to use the "Treasure Compass" gadget in the Eternal Oasis.

Adjusts the display order of the achievement "The Dirge of Bilqis" in the "Sumeru: The Gilded Desert - Series II" achievement category.

Adjusts the name of the namecard from "Achievement: Sandstorm" to "Sumeru: Sandstorm."

Adjusts the category names of some items.

Adjusts the category of some enemy drops to "Character and Weapon Enhancement Material."

Adjusts "Talent Level-Up Material" to "Character Talent Material."

After defeating bosses, the names of some Character Ascension Materials obtained by using Resin are adjusted from "Character Level-Up Material" to "Character Ascension Material."

Adjusts the "Gadgets" obtained through the Crafting Bench to "Consumables."

〓Bug Fixes〓

● Quests

Fixes an issue whereby a Korean voice-over in the Story Quest "Kaeya's Gain" was abnormally interrupted.

Fixes an issue whereby an inner monologue sound effect in the Story Quest "The Rumored Alchemist" would not play.

Fixes an issue whereby certain chests could not be unlocked in the Domain of the World Quest "The Rhythm that Reveals the Beastly Trail" under certain circumstances.

● Enemies

Fixes an issue with the boss "Perpetual Mechanical Array" whereby when it splits, there was a small probability that it would abnormally take DMG.

● Characters

Fixes an issue whereby after either Xingqiu, Thoma, or Yelan uses an Elemental Burst, if the currently active character switches to the Traveler due to cutscenes or dialogue, the effects of said unleashed Elemental Burst would be triggered abnormally.

Fixes an issue whereby after disconnecting from the server, the elemental application frequency of Xingqiu's Rain Swords would be abnormal.

Fixes an issue whereby there was an incorrect transition time to the sprinting movement, where Yaoyao could sprint immediately after launching a Plunging Attack.

Fixes an issue with Yaoyao whereby after casting her Elemental Skill, if you switch to another character while summoning Yuegui, the White Jade Radishes that Yuegui throws at the character would have a small probability of having an abnormal trajectory.

Fixes an issue whereby under certain circumstances, the size of the special effects of Cyno's "Endseer" state was abnormally displayed.

Fixes an issue with Eula whereby a bug resulting from performance optimizations after Version 3.3 would cause abnormalities in the timing for holding her Elemental Skill to deal damage after obtaining the Grimheart effect.

Fixes an issue whereby after either Xiangling, Yun Jin, Rosaria, Thoma, or Shenhe obtains an elemental infusion, when performing a Plunging Attack, they would abnormally apply elemental effects when descending.

● Audio

Fixes an issue whereby some music would trigger abnormally in some environments.

Fixes an issue with Yelan whereby when her voice-over is triggered after reaching Friendship Lv. 2, there was a small probability that the voice-over would encounter an error.

Fixes an issue with Kuki Shinobu whereby when her voice-over is triggered after reaching Friendship Lv. 2, her voice-over would not play properly.

Fixes an issue whereby Paimon's English voice-over tip "How about we explore the area ahead of us later?" would be missing.

Optimizes an issue whereby open world BGM may not play properly after the game is loaded when logging into the game.

● System

Fixes an issue whereby wishes for the Beginner's Wish could not be performed normally when the number of remaining Wishes was less than 10 (after the fix, this event wish page will vanish after a ten-pull).

Fixes an issue whereby Alhaitham's voice line "Opening Treasure Chest: III" could not be displayed properly in the Profile > Voice-Over interface.

Fixes an issue in the Serenitea Pot whereby some of Raiden Shogun's bubble text would display abnormally under certain circumstances.

Fixes an issue whereby when you perform a Mystic Offering at the Crafting Bench, the selection status of your selected Artifact would display abnormally under certain circumstances.

● Genius Invokation TCG

Fixes an issue in Genius Invokation TCG whereby there is a localization error in Japanese for the Combat Status "Sparks 'n' Splash" created by the "Klee" Character Card.

● Other

Fixes a text error in the Item "Jeht's Letter."

Fixes an issue with the abnormal placement of a Sacred Seal in the Desert of Hadramaveth.

Fixes an issue with abnormal collision size in some environments.

Fixes some textual errors in 15 languages and optimizes text. "Note: Related in-game functions have not changed." (Travelers can view the changes in different languages by going to the Paimon Menu > Settings > Language and changing the Game Language.)

Text-related fixes and optimizations in English include:

◆ Optimizes Oz's description on Fischl's Talent Card.

◆ Optimizes Kaeya's voice-over regarding Fischl.

◆ Optimizes instances of a term from "Hydro Crystal Chunk" to "Crystal Chunk."

◆ Optimizes instances of a term from "Coral Pearls" to "Sango Pearls."

◆ Optimizes instances of a term from "Ravioli" to "Pierogi."

◆ Optimizes Bennett's skill description.

◆ Fixes a few errors in Archon Quests, Story Quests, and World Quests.

*This is a work of fiction and is not related to any actual people, events, groups, or organizations.

"PlayStation", "PS5", "PS4", "DualSense", "DUALSHOCK" are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc.

[vilesmolpuffpastry]

Italian environmental gothic

It is chilly this morning. You'd like to complain but you wonder if you'll ever see this kind of weather again.

it is chilly this morning. Your auntie posts on facebook that they're called "i giorni della merla". If it's cold, then spring will be warm. If it's hot, then spring will be cold. Your car has a layer of frost on it. this does not bode well for you.

you're driving home. Perhaps it is the burning hatred for your exploitative job that summons that violent gust of wind. it blows a night made of dust in front of your windshield. You're blind for a second. Not long enough to be a problem. What is a problem is the violent rain that follows - it is a disturbing amount of water for such a dry July. You stop and for a while you're safe. You post a video online and experts tell you - that looks positively tropical. You have to take a detour home - a huge tree has fallen. You slalom around the debris. You don't think too much of it.

it has now been a couple of years since then. such instances are more and more common. you try not to think too much about it.

it is raining today. You'd like to complain, but you are secretly glad because you hope there won't be any talk of droughts this year

You're on the beach of a crystal clear river with your lover who says "sometimes it feels like all the water is going to stop" and you agree. You guess you're too used to water coming from a faucet. Years later, this sentence pops in your mind every time you eye the dry bed of a river.

it has been raining a bit too much. It doesn't seem it's gonna stop. You eye the nearby riverbed with apprehension.

You have recently discovered that flash floods have that name for a reason. The entire first floor of your house is submerged in dark, muddy water, and you dread the thought of what it could be hiding.

The dark, muddy water is not retreating. You have discovered that animals are much more resourceful and adept in swimming than you previously thought. However, this is not the case for all animals, humans included. You are in deep grief. Meanwhile, the local government doesn't seem to think that pumps to drain some of the water is an urgent investment.

you purposefully don't look up the proper flowering time of certain flowers you see in colder months. Your brain kind of knows, but you don't really want to know.

When the sun is out, you forget the meaning of cold. In summer, when the sun is out, you understand why certain societies worshipped the sun with blood sacrifices. It is unstoppable. It finds you everywhere. You hide from it, from the burning. It wants your sweat. It wants to burn you. It wants to incinerate you. You cannot conceive of its hunger. "it's just the sun" you think. And yet it hungers.

[peridotglimmer]

Hi Hitman fandom I'm too tired & sick with the flu to write this fic but I needed to get it out of my system so here, have the general idea/outline. Content warning for extreme fluffiness and Absolution being canon. Like, seriously, it's so sweet even G seems too harsh a rating.

--

47 is staying at Diana's for some reason. The reason doesn't really matter. Victoria is there too. He's up early in the morning. It's snowed and there's frost on the windows. Diana is still asleep because she went over files and floorplans until the early morning hours. Handler stuff.

47 gets up and heads into the living room. He's reading a magazine or scientific article or something (no tv or music so Diana can sleep in) when Victoria approaches. She's up early too. #JustCloneThings She's never seen snow before and also could 47 please make her breakfast?

47, having no idea what kids like, makes her like a protein-rich oatmeal or something, but she likes it anyway. Then she says she wants to go outside and make snowmen like she's seen in movies. 47 being a good assassin puppy goes with her, after making sure she's dressed properly for the weather: with one of his scarves wrapped around her neck nearly swallowing her whole.

He helps her build the snowman and just when he wants to head inside to go look for a carrot for the nose Diana is standing in the doorway. She's brought a carrot and also one of 47's ties. It got slightly damaged on his most recent mission so it was on the 'incinerate' pile but Diana drapes it around the snowman's neck. "Our private protector, even when you're off working." Then they head inside and have hot chocolate. And 47 ends up with the sniffles because he was so focused on keeping Victoria warm that he kind of forgot about himself.

[bamboozledbird]

IGNITE: A Teen Wolf S1 AU // Chapter 1

Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Sheriff Stilinski, Original Female Character Pairing: eventual Stiles x OFC, but man are we talking slow burn Word Count: 4.9k Warnings: canon typical gore/violence, parental death, descriptions of burning, depictions of depression (apathy, dissociation, 'numb little bug' vibes) Tags: canon has been lovingly scrapped for parts, author loves lesbian poets and it shows, prolific overuse of the em dash, the slowest of burns i fear

Summary: Four years ago, Drea Dickinson's entire life fell apart. Her mom died, her best friend replaced her, and all she could do was watch listlessly while everything else burned down around her. All she wants is to forget and maybe get through her sophomore year without flunking chemistry and completely unraveling at the seams—a seemingly impossible task with the sudden appearance of ghosts from her mother's mysterious past and a hair-raising beast ripping people apart all over town. It would be easier to pretend if she hadn't accidentally entwined her life with the most interrogatory bastard in town. She could have gone her whole life without meeting Stiles Stilinski, and she would've been perfectly fine, but now she's stuck knowing that she's made her bed in the fragile, breakable bones of the boy with all the answers. Chapter Summary: After her annual interrogation with Sheriff Stilinski, Drea meets his son who turns out to be very handy with jumper cables, poetry recitation, and incoherent babbling.

A/N: This is an entirely selfish project. This rewrite has been so incredibly nostalgic, and I may or may not have cried a few times because the TW era was such a special time of my life. To be 17 again, sigh. I wrote a very bad version of this in 2014, and I cannot believe it has been 10 years!!! I'm almost 30! Impossible! The 10-year anniversary is entirely coincidental but still a wonderful, serendipitous happenstance. I'm re-watching the entire series with my little sister, who is coincidentally 17, and good god I just miss the TW, TVD era. Bring back the cheesy teen monster shows that give perpetual fall vibes PLEASE. You can also check me out on ao3 (dork_knight)!

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

Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.

Before her mother’s death, Drea would have picked fire. Every single time. 

She never liked the cold; never really had to get used to it growing up in central California—but the crux of her argument, the twisted logic behind it all, was that most burn victims died from suffocation before they felt the flames. A small mercy, really, in the face of unspeakable tragedy. 

In the end, however, statistics were just numbers, her mother didn't die from smoke inhalation, and there was no mercy in burying a parent before you were old enough to have children of your own. Nothing ever ended poetically off the page. Death was just death, and it was always ugly. Someone should really tell that to Robert Frost, Drea mused, biting at a raw hangnail.

The medical examiner said the actual cause of death was pulmonary edema; at least, that was his best guess based on the state of the body. He didn’t say that she felt everything, her skin peeling back into her flesh, her flesh liquefying into fuel, her joints flexing into contorted pleas until the fire incinerated her last nerve ending. He didn’t have to; Drea connected those dots all on her own. She’d been twelve at the time, not an imbecile. 

“I’m sorry to drag you through this all again.”

Drea flitted her eyes away from the flickering lightbulb above Sheriff Stilinski’s head and met his gaze; it was nauseatingly sympathetic. Her responding shrug was a small, little thing—more like a twitch in practice, “Not your fault.” 

Her yearly visits to Sheriff Stilinski’s office were solely her father’s doing, even if no one wanted to admit it to her face. Most mayors would use their political power to get their child out of a police station, not into it, but perhaps Mayor Dickinson stopped being her dad somewhere between the funeral and now. 

“If you could start—”

“From the beginning,” Drea smoothed her thumb in small circles over the armrest of her chair, attentively tracing patterns into the polished wood, “I know.” This was, after all, the fourth anniversary of her first interrogation. She’d become somewhat of an expert at being a useless witness. Drea picked at her uneven cuticles before continuing, “Mom put me to bed around 10:00—which was kind of late for a school night, honestly, but she let me stay up to finish another chapter anyway.” The right corner of her mouth twitched for a brief moment, “Nancy Drew: Password to Larkspur Lane. I told her that forcing someone to go to sleep in the middle of a mystery was specifically forbidden in Geneva Protocol II.” Her mom had been far too indulgent of her lip on most occasions, but that night she didn’t smile at her snarky aside. She let her finish the chapter because she was too tired to argue; Drea could tell. At the time, she saw it as a victory. Now, it kept her up at night, the drooping lines of her mother’s mouth spilling over the pages of whatever book she was trying to read.

Drea bit down on her tongue when a stray splinter snagged against the soft pad of her thumb, “Dad was out of town, so it was just the two of us. Mom always put me to bed when Dad was gone; said it was the only way she could get to sleep. Had to make sure my window was locked.” She paused for a long moment: everything went dark after this. Her mother kissed the top of her head, murmured, ‘Love you,’ turned out the light, and then that was it. Drea woke up in the hospital, and her mom was dead. 

A bead of sweat dripped onto her top lip. The air in the Beacon Hills police station was, without fail, sticky with heat and body odor—and it wasn’t just the oppressive Californian sun. Even in the winter, a person could choke on the stifling warmth. Idly, she wondered if it was a matter of interrogatory tactics or budgetary constraints. 

“And then,” Sheriff Stilinski prompted gently, though they both knew how the story went from here. She had told it to him and a dozen other officials at least a hundred times in the last four years. 

Drea bit down on her thumbnail and winced when her teeth snagged on the tender nail bed, “And then nothing. I opened my eyes, and a nurse said that you found me on the front lawn.” 

“You don’t remember how you got outside?” 

Drea shook her head, staring past the Sheriff's shoulder. Large pieces of dust floated through the air, highlighted by the slivers of light trickling through the blinds. Suddenly, she had a newfound appreciation for the lack of fans in the room. 

Sheriff Stilinski cleared his throat and rubbed his hand over his jaw, “You don’t remember saying it was an angel?”

Blinking slowly, Drea looked at the grim line of the Sheriff’s mouth and gripped her knees tightly, digging her fingers into tawny skin until her wrist cracked, “I should, right? I was twelve. I should remember something—that’s what everyone thinks. That’s what my dad thinks.” Her eyelids fluttered to a tight close, and her voice went so quiet she could barely be heard over the hum of the copier outside the door, “He thinks it was me. That’s why he makes you question me every year.” She pulled the sleeves of her jacket over her fists and gnawed on the soft lining of her cheek, “He thinks you’ll finally figure out how I did it.” 

Drea was scared to open her eyes as the silence stretched between them. They’d danced around the subject before, hinted and twisted around the heart of it, but they’d never truly discussed how it looked from the outside. Sheriff Stilinski had been kind enough to give her a few different excuses over the years: trauma, head injury, oxygen deprivation, plain old grief—but whatever caused her temporary amnesia wasn’t so conveniently explained. In fact, currently, she still had no explanation at all. When she finally peeked through her lashes, clumped together with frustrated tears, Drea couldn’t quite figure out what expression the Sheriff was making. He leaned back in his desk chair and frowned, “I’m sure he doesn’t—”

“He does,” Drea cut him off. Her eyes went flinty, deep brown darkening to something far more ashen with the resolve of her anger. She never had any trouble reading her father’s face; the disgust was thinly-veiled between the flickers of fear. 

Sheriff Stilinksi leaned forward so that she had no choice but to look him in the eyes. They were kind—more tired than usual, but still kind. They always were. That was one thing Drea remembered from that day, waking up in the hospital to Sheriff Stilinski’s kind, watery blue eyes, just before the entire world fell apart. His voice was gentle, but firm, when he finally spoke, “I don’t.” 

Drea nodded numbly and pulled at a fraying string on the hem of her denim skirt until the thread snapped. 

“I mean it, kid. They couldn’t identify the source of the fire. They couldn’t even find an origin point; no twelve-year-old could pull that off.”

Drea chewed on her bottom lip, “Could anyone?”

Sheriff Stilinski’s brow furrowed, and his mouth screwed up into a crooked line, like he was chewing on his words and deciding if he should swallow them or spit them out. “I wish I had all the answers for you. I really do. Not knowing, it’s worse than any truth.”

Drea blinked up at him for a moment, once again taken aback by his raw sincerity, and swallowed hard. He wasn’t the one who was supposed to have the answers; he was the one who was supposed to ask the questions. There was one failure in his muggy office, and it wasn’t the Sheriff. “It’s okay,” she said quietly. “Not your fault.”

He looked like he wanted to argue the point, but whatever he wanted to say was interrupted by the sharp ringing of the phone on his desk. “I have to take this, but if you remember something, or if you just need to talk—”

“My dad spends a small fortune on a psychiatrist and a behavioral therapist for that,” Drea stood up quickly, shouldering her bag. She forced the corners of her mouth into a small smile, tight at the edges like a sheet that had been stretched too thin, “But thank you. For everything.” 

The Sheriff’s gaze darted to a framed photo on his desk. Drea had seen it before, on one of her many visits to his office. It was of a boy—his son, she assumed—he looked like he was around five or six at the time. He was grinning, wide enough to show off his missing incisors, and his fingers and wrist were stained cotton-candy blue from a melting popsicle. She must’ve been that happy once, right? In the beginning, everyone was unencumbered by the weight of imminent mortality. Maybe that’s what Sheriff Stilinski was thinking, too. He looked away from the photo and gave Drea a small smile, “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

Drea gave a half-hearted wave before wrapping her fingers around the strap of her backpack and walking to the parking lot. 

The sky was grim, a mocking reflection of expression on her face. The spite in her eyes hardened when big, fat raindrops splattered against the apples of her cheeks. For a moment, she just stood there, glaring at the rain and cursing the cosmos for their utterly unamusing sense of humor. A jeep pulled into the parking lot, and the squealing engine startled her back into reality. 

Unfortunately, the search for her car keys was a considerable endeavor. Typical. Drea stacked her textbooks and binders onto the hood of her sedan, haphazardly throwing her jacket on top of the pile to protect her painstakingly penned Kafka essay from the rain. By the time her fingertips brushed against the cool metal of her keys, her hair was damp and curling at the ends. 

The momentary relief was short-lived when she pressed the unlock button five times and the accompanying beep didn’t sound, not even once. For an absurdly long minute, all she could do was rest her forehead against the driver’s side window, breathing heavily until condensation gathered next to her mouth and the drizzle speckled dots onto the sleeves of her thin cotton shirt.

“If you’re trying to charge the battery through osmosis, it’d probably be more effective to smash your head against the hood.”

Drea jumped, and then flinched again when her keys clattered against the ground. She caught a glimpse of the phantom speaker in the side-view mirror; bizarrely, he looked just as surprised as she felt. She turned around, apprehensively—objects may be closer than they appear n’all—and tried to swallow her rapidly rising heart. 

“Sorry,” the boy pulled the hood of his sweatshirt down and had the decency to look contrite, “big mouth.” He rubbed a hand over his chapped lips. “It’s a real problem. It’s so big, actually, that my foot just slides right in there like…all the time,” he gestured animatedly with a flat hand, a quick sliding motion, like a fish through water.

Drea blinked at him, slowly, and bent down to reach for her keys, “Might wanna see someone about that. Sounds unsanitary.”

“Eh, it’s hardly the worst thing I’ve put in my mouth,” he said, eyes widening into horrified round circles the second he stopped talking. A faint flush creeped up his neck to his ears, and Drea’s heart dropped back into her chest. Slashers and ax murderers didn’t blush. Probably. She hadn’t ever met one, but it seemed like sound logic.

“Choking hazard,” Drea hummed, leaning back against her car. Her fingers traced a small dent in the door, the cause long forgotten, “It’s definitely still a choking hazard.”

The boy grinned before fixing his expression into something on the cusp of severity, “I’m about 95.7% sure that anything bigger than a fist is completely mouth-safe.” He held up his fist and nodded sharply, “Make that 98.3% sure.”

“98.3?” Drea’s brow arched.

“Maybe even 98.9.” 

The buzz of a lamp post hummed above their heads as they stared at each other with little smirks until the quiet made Drea sink her teeth into her bottom lip and big-mouth drum his fingers against his forearm. 

“So,” his sneakers squeaked against the slick asphalt as he shifted his weight, “you need a jump?”

Drea pursed her lips and ran her eyes over the front of her car, “I might give osmosis another shot. 30 seconds is hardly a fair trial.”

“Of course,” he hummed, “you gotta be fair.”

“We are in front of a police station.”

“Well,” he scratched his cheek, “it’s not a courthouse.”

“Technicality.” Drea was slightly horrified when she finally noticed that she was smiling. The sensation felt like it had escaped straight out of the uncanny valley and latched onto her face like a parasite in need of a host. It only took two weeks for muscles to atrophy; years must have completely decimated the fibers in her cheeks. “I guess I could use a jump. If your offer was an offer and not a hypothetical.” 

“Smart choice.” The boy rapped his knuckles against the hood of her car and said, “Steel’s probably pretty low on the permeability scale.”

“As opposed to a skull.”

He snorted and then nodded towards the large lump of books and papers covered by her freshly dampened jean jacket, “You should probably move your stuff. Y’know, ‘cause of the very un-permeable battery.”

“There’s that,” Drea sighed and started stuffing her things back into her backpack, shaking it violently until her notebook finally slid past her chemistry textbook, “and flunking English isn’t high on my list of things to do this weekend.”

His gaze flickered back and forth, rapidly cataloging every corner and crevice of her face. Drea tilted her head, brows pinched, and stared back at him with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. His eyes, she noticed, became a peculiar shade of brown in the yellow glow of the setting sun and the fluorescent light of the lamppost. More like honey, she realized, more like honey than irises. Something finally clicked behind them. "You,” he pointed aggressively, “you go to Beacon Hills.”

Drea pushed his finger away from her face with her own, “Safe bet, considering there’s exactly one option for the next 2,000 square miles.”

“You’re kind of a smartass, you know that,” he muttered as he struggled with the trunk of the jeep parked one space to her right until he finally wrenched it open with an almost guttural grunt.

Her lips parted briefly, and then she grinned drolly. It was refreshing, not being treated like some fragile little creature who would buckle in the knees—or possibly set something on fire—at the slightest confrontation. “Kind of?”

“Total.” He nodded decisively before sticking his head and torso into the depths of his trunk. “Completely, entirely, and wholly a smartass.” There were various clanging sounds until he re-emerged with a pair of jumper cables, “Never noticed that in class. You don’t really…say anything.”

Drea bit back the snark poised on the tip of her tongue. When people looked at her, the only thing they saw was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. She was the daughter of the woman who burned to death on Cedar Street; Drea Dickinson’s mom died, and she was there. It seemed like that was all she would ever be in Beacon Hills. 

In the grand scheme of things, it was better to be no one. 

High school had been her chance to slip into social obscurity—more kids, more drama, less discussion of homicide by arson—so she took it, wholeheartedly. She kept to the corners of classrooms, away from extracurriculars, and her mouth resolutely shut. 

“I try to exclusively bring the smart and leave the ass at home,” Drea finally replied.

The boy’s eyes drifted downwards for a moment, and his voice did a funny, squeaky thing when he said, “I should give that a go sometime.”

“10/10 would recommend. No one bugs you—and teachers never throw erasers at your face.”

“So you do remember me,” he grinned a little and rolled up the sleeves of his sweatshirt before unlatching the jeep’s hood and propping it open.

Slanting her head, Drea watched his profile. There were moles scattered across his cheek and neck, and his angular jaw clenched as he struggled with the knotted cords in his willowy fingers. “Vaguely,” she said faintly. It was coming back to her in pieces. That was life after twelve for Drea Dickinson: bits and pieces. Everything was made up of the disquieting moments when she surfaced from the haze and into the present. It should’ve felt like a lungful of air, but it didn’t. It always felt like choking. 

He wiped his grease-smudged hand on his jeans and then extended it towards her, “Stiles.”

She took his hand, despite the strange formality, and shook it—mainly because of the black streaks staining his pants. “Drea.”

Stiles’s brow wrinkled, “I thought it was Andy.”

Drea hadn’t been Andy for what felt like a very long time. Four years, in fact. There were several reasons: her mom called her Andy, and she wanted to become someone else, anybody else—but ultimately the deciding factor was ‘Andy Arson.’ The nickname stuck around far longer than she thought it would. With a last name like Dickinson, Drea really thought the tweenager taunting would go in a different direction, but thirteen-year-olds had a knack for latching onto a person’s deepest-seated insecurities. Middle school, she mused, was a tragedy all on its own. 

“Nope. Just Drea.”

Stiles examined her face, and she saw that flicker in his eyes again: the light of recognition. “Well, Drea’s cool, y’know, in comparison.” His fingers twitched a few times when he connected the clamp to the coordinating battery terminal, and Drea’s eyes widened. She held her breath in her sternum until she registered that he hadn’t been electrocuted. He was just naturally tweaky, she concluded. It was either that, or he had jumped one-too-many engines in the last 24 hours…unless it was hidden option C, and he was actually tweaking. Unlikely, given he was on his way into a building teeming with cops, but far stranger things had happened in Beacon Hills. 

The longer she remained silent the more parts of his body started to move. Stile squeezed and unsqueezed the black clamp in his hand and drummed on the side of her car with his unoccupied fingers, “Like, Andy—no offense—doesn’t exactly strike fear or confidence in the heart. I mean, I wouldn’t trust Officer Andy to save my ass in a shoot-out, and I definitely wouldn’t trust Dr. Andy to cure my unknown, incredibly rare, incurable disease.” 

“No one could cure your incurable disease. That’s quite literally the entire definition of the word.”

“Sure,” Stiles connected the last clamp and glanced at her over his shoulder, almost checking himself in the chin with a large shrug, “but I’d buy that Dr. Drea could.”

Her mouth parted for a second, and then she closed it before she could say something impulsive. “That’s not even how it works; I’d be Dr. Dickinson.” 

Stiles winced, “Brutal.”

“Yeah,” Drea sighed and rubbed her palms over her arms until the goosebumps prickling her biceps receded into her skin.

Stiles looked back at her again, and his mouth wormed its way into a little frown. His head disappeared into his trunk, and after a moment a lumpy maroon mass hurtled towards her face. She caught it before it could smack into her nose, and she clutched at the soft material until she realized that the projectile missile was actually just a sweatshirt. 

Stiles was staring at her when she looked up from her hands. A small, unsure…something squirmed over his face, and she felt a little stupid, just standing there, hoodie limp in her arms. It happened a lot—more than it should after so many years. The invisible quicksand materialized in the strangest, most insignificant moments. Drea blinked, completely brainless, at simple questions, stared aimlessly into her closet until her second alarm startled her into snatching the first shirt her fingers came in contact with—clasped at a stranger’s hoodie until the rainwater pooled on her lashes dripped into her eyes.

Robotically, Drea thrust her arms through the sleeves and tugged it over her head, “Thanks.” The sweet scent of grass clung to the fabric, and there was something earthier underneath it, something like evergreen. She smiled slightly, combing her baby hairs behind her ears, “I almost forgive you for being a dick about my name.”

Stiles’s shoulders unwound as he scoffed, “At least people can say it without seizing.”

Drea looked at him and tilted her head, eyebrows crawling towards the bridge of her nose.

Stiles waved his hand in the air and extrapolated, “My full name is—just trust me. Dick jokes aren’t the worst thing in the world.”

“No,” Drea chewed on her lip, “they aren’t.”

There was a moment in middle school where she was tempted to plant the seed of something incredibly stupid and irresistibly raunchy, something like, ‘Andrea wants ‘Dickinsideher,’ because even that was better than a name with matricide as the punchline. But it didn’t take when Jared Cartwright soft-launched it in PE, so Drea seriously doubted it would ever catch-on from the target herself.

She cleared her throat, “But they are almost as bad as stye jokes.”

“Uh, absolutely not. Eyesores are nowhere near as gross as dick’n nu—” Stiles coughed, throat bobbing as he swallowed, before finishing his sentence with an audible question mark, “…phallic imagery.”

Drea pursed her lips, “Pus beats penis on the ick meter by at least 23 points.”

Stiles’s eyes glimmered in the fading light, “23?”

“Maybe even 24.”

Another bout of silence fell between them, but it wasn’t so restless this time—even after Stiles torpedoed his body through his passenger seat. He fought with his keys for a while until the correct one slid into the ignition. 

The jeep’s engine hummed pleasantly in the quiet as Drea let out a soft sigh, dropping her head back against her car window. The rain had stopped somewhere between trying to unlock her car and now, but she couldn’t quite recall when. The chill wasn’t so bad, she realized, without her foul mood casting a shadow over her head.

Stiles landed back on his feet and leaned against the jeep. Drea could feel his gaze on her again. A tickling sensation trailed down her spine as she fiddled with her keychain. It was old, a gift from her parents on some birthday she couldn’t remember. Paint had chipped off in most places after thoughtlessly throwing her keys every time she came home, but she could still make out the M and Y of the orange ‘Mystery Machine’ logo.

Stiles hummed for a moment and then said, “I’m Nobody. Who are you?”

Drea stared at him and waited for the punchline. It didn’t come. Instead, he shifted from one foot to the other and fumbled over each following syllable. “You know, like…Dickinson,” he waved his hands around, seemingly searching for some sort of cosmic relief. “I thought it would better than a dick joke, but upon some seriously belated reflection, I realize that you’re probably tired of corny assholes qu—”

“How dreary,” Drea interrupted, quietly but loud enough to be heard over the rumbling jeep, “to be Somebody.”

Stiles’s jaw snapped shut; it was his turn to blink at her stupidly. He smiled a little and ran his hand over his buzzed head, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t know what she was agreeing with, only that she wholeheartedly did.

“I forgot that part.”

Drea clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shook her head, “It’s the best line.”

“It might have something to do with my species landing somewhere between microscopic bacteria and radioactive cockroach on the high-school social food chain,” Stiles said dryly. His face remained impassive, like he was talking about something benign as the weather. 

Drea tilted her head a little and a timid smile unfurled over her face in time with the swell of familiarity blooming beneath her ribcage, “Then there’s a pair of us.”

His cheeks dimpled when he smiled back at her, “I do remember that one.”

“Well,” Drea slid her hands into her back pockets and shrugged, “it is the best part.”

Stiles squinted at her and then laughed.

Drea felt a bit like laughing too, so she swallowed thickly before she could choke on the impulse. She took a step backwards and curled her fingers around her keys in her back pocket, “I should probably try start my car…y’know, before you start reciting, ‘I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain.’”

He nodded, taking a step towards his jeep, “Solid plan. ‘Because I could not stop for Death’ would be next.”

Drea slid into her car and stared at the steering wheel, wrapping her fingers around 10 and 2 and silently calling upon every deity she’d ever heard of to end her suffering. Stiles seemed nice enough, but she seriously doubted her smalltalk capabilities were up-to ‘ride home’ standards. Perhaps, she should revisit her resounding dedication to atheism, she thought, as the engine sputtered in protest a few times and then came back to life. 

Stiles flashed two thumbs up through the window. The smile on his face was positively goofy, but his dismount from the jeep was somehow even goofier. He stumbled over his large feet a few times before regaining stability. Drea bit back a smile when he shot her another thumbs up, this time through the dash as he removed the jumper cables from her battery.

He wiped his hands off on his jeans again; at this point, she was convinced that they were beyond saving, but Stiles didn’t seem concerned. He tapped against her window before stepping around the open door, “You should probably let it run for a while. Take the scenic route home; enjoy all the Beacon Hills hotspots open past 8:00 pm on a weeknight. I personally recommend the Rite Aid or Walmart.”

Drea snorted, “Maybe I’ll swing by the Preserve. I hear the woods are especially beautiful in the foreboding darkness.”

“Don’t.” Serious was an odd look on Stiles’s face. Drea decided that she much preferred the goofy grin. “Don’t go anywhere near the Preserve. It’s officially cordoned off—totally locked down, quarantine-zone-central. Something about flesh-eating, parasitic plant life.”

“As completely real and unobtrusive as that sounds,” Drea drawled, “don’t worry about it. Literally every single person in town knows about the body they found in the woods.” It was bound to happen, small town and all—and ‘woman dies in deadly animal attack’ was the most interesting thing that had happened in Beacon Hills since the intersection got a Target two years ago. “I’ve seen every installment of Friday the 13th and The Blair Witch Project. If I’m going to be murdered, I refuse to also be humiliated by a cliché C.O.D.” 

The manic expression on his face softened to a relieved smile and then again to a little smirk, “So what’s a certified fresh murder, then? Not that I doubt the depths of human depravity, but I think society killed off originality a few centuries ago.”

Drea thought back to a house fire with no origin, accelerant, or discernible cause. Apparently, not. “You know what they say,” she sighed, “life finds a way.”

Stiles tilted his head, “And death.”

“And death,” Drea agreed, staring at a small chip in her windshield. The cracks had just begun to spiderweb out from the pit. 

Stiles looked like he wanted to say something, and he looked so much like the Sheriff with his face twisted around thoughtful contemplation that she couldn’t believe it had taken her this long to make the connection. The boy in the photo had grown up. How unfortunate for him. Stiles swallowed whatever it was that was lingering on his tongue and shut Drea’s door. He leaned his elbow against the window frame and cocked his hand in a stiff little wave, “See ya in English, Dickinson—both of you.”

“Awful,” Drea’s nose scrunched as she buckled her seatbelt, “terrible, dreadful. A solid 25 on the ick meter.”

Stiles grinned and held up his hands, “I’ll think of something better by Monday, promise.” 

Drea put her car in drive once Stiles was safely a few feet from the wheels and flicked her damp hair over her shoulder, “I dwell in Possibility.” What a scary place to be, she thought as she watched Stiles disappear in her rearview mirror. Possibility. Hope. Life. She was chronically good at surviving; cockroached her way out of every horrible thing life squashed her with. Lately, all she could do was cling to her heartbeat and the warmth of her skin, until she was barely more than roadkill. A walking carcass was a far cry from living, but Death would not stop for her, so she stopped looking for him. She kept treading water, took her pills, stopped existing—she was a lot like Schrödinger’s cat that way: too stubborn to live, too stubborn to die. She didn’t know what to do if someone unsealed the box and forced her to choose. That was the trouble with possibility; it required far too much uncertainty.

[cloud-ya]

1 (18.25-ounce) package chocolate cake mix 1 can prepared coconut–pecan frosting 3/4 cup vegetable oil 4 large eggs 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 3/4 cup butter or margarine 1 2/3 cup granulated sugar 2 cups all-purpose flour Fish-shaped crackers Fish-shaped candies Fish-shaped solid waste Fish-shaped dirt Fish-shaped ethylbenzene Pull-and-peel licorice Fish-shaped volatile organic compounds and sediment-shaped sediment Candy-coated peanut butter pieces (shaped like fish) 1 cup lemon juice Alpha resins Unsaturated polyester resin Fiberglass surface resins and volatile malted milk impoundments 9 large egg yolks 12 medium geosynthetic membranes 1 cup granulated sugar An entry called: "How to Kill Someone with Your Bare Hands" 2 cups rhubarb, sliced 2/3 cups granulated rhubarb 1 tbsp. all-purpose rhubarb 1 tsp. grated orange rhubarb 3 tbsp. rhubarb, on fire 1 large rhubarb 1 cross borehole electromagnetic imaging rhubarb 2 tbsp. rhubarb juice Adjustable aluminum head positioner Slaughter electric needle injector Cordless electric needle injector Injector needle driver Injector needle gun Cranial caps

(:(*):)

/|\

to the aperture science emergency intelligence incinerator with you

[sculptorofcrimson]

Hollow

You shall be the shore upon which dreams of grandeur shall shatter, you shall be the fortress where no mortal will chart, where no scion of flesh and bone dares to revere. You shall be the endless wall, the patient watch, the bridge between the earth and sky. 

You shall dream of my words, and yearn for my eye. You shall weep for my wishes and die for my dreams. You shall do this willingly, with loyalty in your hearts and frost in your rage. You shall exalt in all there is to sanctify and bathe crimson all there is to earn my ire. You shall rage, and you shall roar, and you shall trample those who have strayed from my dream beneath armored boots and crimson dirges. 

Your dreams are not your own. They are mine to mold. Your flesh is not your mother’s, nor your bones your father’s, you have sprung from nothing more than wretched flesh and bone sculpted into perfection before my blade and scalpel. Your life shall be mine, you shall live by my glory and die for my embrace, you shall do this willingly, without pain, without conquest. And you shall take no pride nor arrogance in it, for it shall be within your very nature, sculpted into your very bones itself.

Forget your past. It shall be incinerated in the heart of a dying star, your flaws will be sanctified in my image and sculpted by my hand, your sins utterly and irrevocably wiped away like dust upon a grave. Forsake your dreams, your future, they have been torn from your chest, no more than empty howls upon the wind. Abandon your pain, your dread, your fear, and let them be burnt. Joy, fear, hunger, love, all will be unto cinders before the Master and the Lord.

You will be the first of ten thousand broken, glorious angels, and you shall be without heart, nor soul, nor honor save that of your master’s. Your life shall be empty, devoid of horror, pride, greed or fear. You shall no know fear, and fathom no betrayal. You shall be my empty servant, and I shall fill you with glory. 

You will be Constantin Valdor, and you shall be mine.

[theluckywizard]

Chapter 34: The Shattering of Things Part 2

Chapter 34 of my long fic In the Shattering of Things featuring Rose Trevelyan/Cullen and Rose/Hawke. Read on AO3.

Chapter 34: The Shattering of Things Part 2

Summary: Rose must steel herself for war, for pain she could never have imagined as four thousand templars arrive to eradicate the Inquisition, incinerating the hope she'd only recently reclaimed.

CW: child death (off screen, but bodies), canon typical violence

Illustration by me!

Excerpt below:

I notice them from the forge– Cullen and the man he’d called Samson, circling one another widely, moving slowly closer, meeting one another commander to commander where the soldiers' tents had been. The red templar leader is brazen enough to go without a helmet and I can vaguely see him addressing Cullen who I’m relieved to see is hidden behind his face shield. But it feels like a preamble to death, and my chest is strangled with anxiety, my throat too dry to swallow. Maybe he feels honor bound to face the man having once known him, but I am not about to lose him tonight if I can help it.

“You could still join us,” calls the massive red templar lightly, as if Cullen might take him up on it. He’s a surprisingly sickly looking man, but built bigger than Blackwall in a hulking set of plate. “We were friends once.” How?

“You’ve always been delusional, Samson,” shouts Cullen. He’s crouched back on his heels, shield up, sword ready, determination and fury compressed into his stance, ready for the inevitable strike. 

“Always been a lapdog for the Chantry. Shame you still are,” taunts Samson, drawing a massive crimson greatsword from his back, holding it forth with two hands and then he surges at Cullen with baffling speed, his blade shrieking against Cullen’s shield, forcing him back in the slippery snow nearly all the way to Haven’s steps and then onto the ground. I’d seen Cullen fight dozens of times, practically skimming across the ground with uncommon lightness of foot yet always forceful enough to push back against the largest opponents. But he’s crushed into the snow by the man with the strange red sword who counters every escape Cullen attempts. 

Panic creeps in around the edges as I watch Cullen strain under the impossible weight of his former friend. I hurry closer, trailed by my companions, hoping to put an end to this encounter somehow. Cullen would want to fight his own battle, but I pull an arrow back so deeply that my back is ablaze, train it furiously on Samson’s face and let it loose. I’m far enough away that the arrow flies just right, whistling past his nose as he crushes Cullen into the slush. Samson turns his head sharply my way with a sneer on his face, giving Cullen the opening he needs, drawing his feet up to forcefully kick him off of him, sending him only a few paces backward. But I don’t want him to fight. I want him to run, sure that whatever this red lyrium is, it’s giving Samson unbelievable power, an unnatural advantage.

“Cullen, go!” I cry, begging. He glances in my direction from inside his helmet and seems to acknowledge me, looking back at Samson like there’s temptation there but I’m hoping he recognizes he’s outmatched. He stumbles up to Haven’s gate, summoning me with a wave of his arm. I watch as Samson takes in a frost spell from Solas and it almost looks like the armor eats it, the spell dissipating as if it never was. Dorian attempts a panic spell, a bright violet chain massing into being and then again being absorbed into the armor, fully negated. Whatever the man is wearing, it’s clearly powerful. Bull sprints from behind me toward the man in a brutal charge, axe brandished, the only one among us who might hope to counter the hopped up brute. If magic won’t work, perhaps the force of my strongest warrior could.

“Herald!” cries Cullen with his face shield up, grappling me around my waist to pull me through the gate as I watch Bull make contact. Samson holds his footing against him, the shaft of Bull’s greataxe bowing slightly against the impossible force of the enemy’s sword. “Come on. Come away,” he says in my ear. With Varric and Sera training their arrows upon Samson, Bull is relinquished and they all turn to follow Cullen and I back through the gate. Samson stands there where our encampment had once been, shaking his head with an unsettling smile twisting one corner of his mouth. He leers at us, and lifts his eyes to the sky as the dragon loops around for another blistering pass. Then he casually reaches into his pocket, withdraws a sizable vial of red liquid, uncorks it, and tosses it down his throat. Cullen and Blackwall push the gates closed, my view of Samson disappearing as the opening narrows and Bull lifts a timber into the heavy iron brackets.

And when we turn, we’re met with total wanton destruction.

Tagging DAFF crew!

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