#I CANNOT WAIT THAT LONG THIS SUBJECT WILL BE MY DEATH | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

221bshrlocked · 21 days ago

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i. When Darkness Spoke

Pairing: General Marcus Acacius x Fem!Reader Words: 2893 Warning: None. Chapter Summary: Death was too easy for him and you would fight the gods themselves if they didn't grant you a chance to make him suffer as you have. A/N: There's a slight change in the last act of Gladiator 2. This will be a slow burn so buckle in. Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think! Cheers to a New Year everyone.

Next Part // Series Masterlist

“The best revenge is to become unlike the one who did the injury. I have made myself unlike your father. He spoke of dreams, I speak of truth. And the only truth in my Rome is the law of the strongest.” Macrinus stalks closer to Lucilla, his eyes never faltering once as he speaks with a quiet anger, a simmering rage that was finally reaching its zenith now that he had everything he ever desired within reach. She looks at him with unshed tears, her spirit recognizing the proximity of her end as understanding dawns on her, as she unintentionally accepts her fate, and that of her land.

The sun rays beating through the small window within the wall cast more shadows across the room, silhouettes of threats that have long chased her but never quite reached her. Until now. She can do nothing except study her adversary as he eats with ease, silently mocking his power and her fall.

“I was owned by an emperor. Now I control an empire. Where else but in Rome can a man do that?” The declaration is strange, and Lucilla maintains her gaze on the man in front of her, the man who she should have known hated her for decades but was too distracted by the vision of her son to notice. He reaches for his tunic and tugs it down, and only when Lucilla views the brand on the dark skin does she truly understand, and begin to accept, the inescapable fate she was intertwined in.

“Do you recognize your father’s mark on me?” She says nothing, not because she does not know what to say, but because she knows there is no reason to part with words of pleading and apologies. Men like him did not care for empty promises and begging sentiments, men like him merely wanted what they set their hearts on: immense power.

“If there is anything you need…in these last hours, we will provide.” Macrinus nearly smiles at her, but he does not think it necessary to uphold the facade any longer, and he proudly fixes his riches on his way towards the iron bars of the cell. He turns around one last time, wanting to fill his eyes of the revenge he has reached following years of patience, waiting, and opportunity.

“Your death will clear my path to the throne. Tomorrow, there will be games, and at them, I will prevail.” He bows down, and she watches in despair as the iron gate closes shut, leaving her in the warm cell with nothing but the sun to keep her company.

If only she waited, if only she did not act with haste as Acacius recommended. Was the life of her son more valuable than the whole of Rome? Was it worth more than her loving husband, the man that did everything in his power to keep her safe for all those years?

The answers did not matter, not now, not when she would breathe her last when the sun rises again. She wipes the tears away, knowing that she was to blame for everything that has transpired. What she would give to have one last chance at making amends.

“It is an offense to speak so possessively of a land that will eternally control her subjects while lacking the voice to utter her own name.” A soft voice breaks through the hopeless air of the room, and Lucilla turns around quickly in confusion, wondering how and when the owner of the comment entered the cell. Her eyes are glossy, and as she studies the shadows lurking in the corner of the room, she cannot help but attempt to place the woman accompanying her now.

“I know your face.” She breathes as she approaches the figure slowly, and only when she is close enough that they cannot be seen by the guards do you finally make yourself known. As you step out of the shadows, you glance to the barred door to ensure you are not to be interrupted. Satisfied with the silence of the dungeons, you circle around Lucilla and seat yourself in front of her, waiting for her to approach you once more before breaking the silence.

“Only a man can hold such vanity, and in doing so, constructs the very scaffold of his downfall.” You shrug your shoulders when recognition crosses Lucilla’s features, ignoring her inquiries in hopes of illustrating to her that time was of the essence, and was certainly not on her side.

Either of yours.

“You are Leta’s serva. How- how were you allowed here?” You shake your head at the inquiry, patting the seat beside you in an attempt to soothe her worries, mind racing with the thought of finally having what you prayed for ever since you learned of the truth.

“How fortunate for you, domina, that Macrinus’ self-righteousness holds the key to your future.” Your smile is hopeful, and only then does the daughter of the previous Emperor understand the gravity of her situation, and the sheer good fortune of your presence. You look between her eyes and breathe in slowly, reaching for her hand and clasping it tightly to offer her a sense of relief.

“If I were to tell you I could grant you your heart’s desire, right this moment. What would you say?” You do not break her gaze, wanting her to see the truth of your question, and the ease with which you can grant her the one hope you are positive she will answer with.

“I would tell you that I am…weary. Death has finally caught up to me and I care not for your faux care. Why are you here?” She slips her hand away from you, standing and walking towards the opposite wall, beneath the cold air unlit by the planet setting in the horizon.

“What do you want most in the world, mistress?” You ask again, strutting towards her until there is barely any space between the two of you. She has her back to you, and you suspect it is not out of distrust but hopelessness.

Good.

“Peace.” The one word is breathed in sadness, and you shake your head at her response, stepping away from her and disagreeing until she allows her attention to drag towards you again.

“No, you misunderstand. Your Roman status wants peace. Would does Lucilla, daughter of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, want? What is Lucilla’s deepest desire?” You slip a grape between your lips, circling back towards her as a wolf would when he toys with a helpless doe. She narrows her eyes at you, watching as you infect her with excitement, until only one answer storms your mind.

“I- I cannot have what I want.” She struggles to say, and you smile then, knowing you have her right where you want.

“I disagree.”

“My life ends here. What does it matter what my heart wishes to have?” Her voice rises and you soothe her with your hands, grabbing her shoulders and forcing her to memorize your features until she is no longer distracted by her reality.

“Humor me, domina.” The honorific triggers a stream of fresh tears, and you hum in kindness, drying her rosy cheeks until she can reevaluate her mind’s thoughts.

“Acacius. I want Acacius.” The name sends a shiver of disgust and victory down your spine, and you mask your gladness with confusion, not wanting her to see through the cloak of lies you have chosen to wear for decades around her.

“How strange! I would have thought you would ask for Maximus?”

“Maximus was never mine.” The answer is swift, and you raise an eyebrow at her choice in words, wondering how such a sentiment is true when you have born a child from the gladiator.

“And Acacius was?”

“His love, yes.” The prospect of being at the receiving end of that man’s affections sets your heart on fire, and you repeat her words to ground yourself, afraid you would give up the charade then and there before you can reach your true wish.

“His love…”

“Then ask.” The command is whispered, and your eyes lock on hers, encouraging her to reach the conclusion of what you are asking her to do, what you are willing her to understand about your true nature.

“Give me Acacius.” She reaches out to your hands then, and your lips turn up as you reciprocate her affections and clothe her with a sense of peace.

“And what would you give me in return?” You hold her hands and bring them to your lap, wanting her to be as close to you as possible so she has no doubt of what you are capable of.

“Anything.”

“No, that is not your truth.” You refuse her desperation, wanting her to be more specific for the sake of your future, and his.

“A life for a life, mistress. A life for a life, as the fates decide.” You elaborate on your question, and watch as understanding dawns on her. Her attempts of pulling her hands away are crushed down when you kneel at her feet and push your own hands into her lap, giving her the power she craves even when she is so close to her demise.

“The gods require a soul in return. But unlike the gods, I offer you a choice.” The glimmer of hope you have given her seconds ago is replaced with suspicion, and she furrows her eyebrows at you, dreading the answer to the question she is yet to ask.

“A choice?” Her voice is barely louder than a whisper, but you school your features until she sees nothing but tenderness, a sense of peace she has only ever imagined in her dreams.

“Yes, a choice. Your choice of the future.” The curiosity that washes over her makes your heart race with ambition and you nod at her, waiting for her consenting words before you can reveal her choices.

“Tell me.”

“What are you willing to surrender? Your son’s life, your own, or mine and truth.” You speak slowly, wanting her to truly think over the solution you are presenting to her on a silver platter. When she frowns deeper, you soothe her worries with an embrace, pulling her with a patiently urgent command.

“Choose wisely, domina.”

“What do you mean ‘yours in truth’?” Before she can finish her question, you are shaking in denial, reminding her that she is not allowed to ask for anything more.

“You know I cannot answer. It is as I said.” You prompt her with a look, pursing your lips as she comes to understand why she cannot ask for you to elaborate, or better yet, why you are unwilling to detail her choices and the consequences to follow.

“He gave up his life for Lucius’...and I finally guarantee his safety.” She speaks more to herself than you, and you nod comfortingly, watching as her guarded walls fall brick by brick until nothing but the spirit of a brokenhearted woman lingers.

“Make your choice.” You urge further, tightening the hold you have on her hands until she looks into your eyes once more.

“I do not understand, your life is not mine to wager. Why would you ever give up your own life for my happiness?” You had not expected her to ask such a concern, and for a brief moment, you feel for the woman, knowing that her life was filled with nothing but sorrow and worry.

But so was yours.

“It is as I said.” Your reply is unwavering, tone nearly softening were it not for the memories of your own burden.

“There will be consequences for each?” Her voice is growing steadier with each question, and her hands begin to feel cold in yours, as if her body was slowly preparing to accept the second chance it so craved.

“Undoubtedly.” You affirm, spirit nearly jumping with ecstasy as you feel her coming to a decision. When she remains quiet however, you taunt her with a vision, knowing she is too weak to turn down such knowledge.

“If you wish, I can tell you of your future when the sun rises.” Her brow furrows at your remark, uncertainty clouding her expression as she glances away before returning her focus on you once more.

“An arrow will pierce your heart as your son battles to save you. But he will not be defeated following your death. On the contrary, he will take the throne and become the Emperor of Rome.” Your words carry an ominous weight, but you applaud her for not flinching at hearing of her death. Her hold loosens, as if touching you burns her hands, but she does not pull away, asking the ultimate question to be certain of her desires.

“And if I choose your life for Acacius’?” Her voice trembles with barely contained anguish at bringing her husband back from the dead, only to lose him again.

“Whoever you pick will be fairly traded, that I can promise you. You need only speak the name.” Your tone is sharp but honest, and you watch as her lips quiver at finally finding the peace she so craved, not for her, but for those she held most dear in her heart.

“I-”

“Speak the name, mistress.” You know you have her, and you press further, voice commanding and piercing her tempest of thoughts.

“I choose you.” You almost sigh in relief at the words, but you remain steadfast in your spirit, knowing that vengeance is now not too far from your reach. As a testament to her decision, you give her a moment of respite, not to make her feel safe, but to feel your chest jump with pride at the knowledge that she will understand and weep of your offering in the near future.

“Your husband will rise before the sun, and his resurrection will prevent your death. He will be reconciled with Lucius, and you will restore Rome to her former glory.” You nod in appreciation, smiling at the desperate consolation that tightens its embrace around her.

“And what of Lucius?” She asks, excited at the prospect of having both her son and her husband.

“He will become Emperor, still.” She is relieved at your words, only for worry to etch itself on her expression when she gazes upon you and sees you as more than a mere servant.

“And…what of you?” A flicker of regret colors her words, but you shake your head, standing to your height and warning her not to worry of your service.

“I am not your concern, mistress.” You reply curtly, bowing your head as you make your way towards the corner of the room from where you appeared.

“But-” She protects, her hand reaching for yours once more. You allow her to touch you, but when she attempts to grow closer, you pull your skin away and refuse her worry again.

There was a time for such sentiments.

And it has long passed.

“Had I been, my name would not have been uttered by your lips.” Your tone leaves no room for argument, and you will her to see that you are not afraid of the choice she made.

“Nulla rosa sine spinis, domina.” You breathe softer, more wistful, and notice the single tear she sheds. You hope it is not for you but for herself. You pray it is not for you, but for her own heartbreak, the one that would be shared by those around her.

“The next time you grace me with your presence, Lucilla, it will be with the fruits of your desires firmly held in your grasp. I offer you one law: do not breathe a word of this to a living soul. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.” She nods, wiping the tear slipping down her cheek as she steps away from you.

“Bene, I urge you to rest. You shall need it for tomorrow’s affairs.” Offering her one last bow, you blow a kiss her way and evaporate into thin air, watching from your urn of water as she rises from the pillows she has slept on and study the air of the cell around her. You see her wonder whether she has dreamt it all, and you solemnly stare at the reflection gazing at you, no longer caring for how hateful it shines as it returns your attention. You swipe your hands across the water, walking away from the altar in search for the comforting light of the sun.

“Flectere si nequeo superos, acheronta movebo.” You breathe in the jasmine scent of the flowers all around the room, watching the afternoon crowds as they come and go, completely oblivious to the events that are soon to unfold.

“You will pay, you will all pay for what you have done.” The anger you have kept so long in your heart threatens to make itself known in the form of a rainstorm, but you silence your mind, forcing yourself to forget the young girl’s laughter, the one you were sure to hear again when Lucilla’s desires bear fruit,

“And I shall begin with you, Acacius.” A thin smile curls at your lips, and you pause in thought, returning to the altar with haste in preparation for the ritual to come.

“I promise to make a game of your life.”

Translations: -Nulla rosa sine spinis. // There is no rose without thorns. -Flectere si nequeo superos, acheronta movebo. // If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell.

#marcus acacius #marcus acacius/reader #marcus acacius x reader #general marcus acacius #gladiator 2 #gladiator #gladiator ii #pedro pascal #marcus acacius slow burn

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lamemaster · 10 months ago

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The Curse of Bloodlines (Epilogue 😔)

Request: For the annon who sends me this request every day. You know who you are and you have my respect fellow gremlin.

Pairing: Thranduil x Reader

AN: I never wanted to write this. But alas for those who cannot live without a happy ending go thrive. Please no more requests for this AU after this.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Epilogue |

"Atyo!" You peel Celegorm's hands off Thranduil's throat. At once your uncles are at the task of taking him to another room as you follow them. Not daring to look back at him. Too scared that you might not be able to leave if you do.

Perhaps it was the fear of finding the same disdained look you had witnessed in Arda. The fear of being subjected to it had left your eyes anywhere but, Thranduil.

So you focus all your attention on your father, who almost escapes the grasp of 4 of his brothers, including Uncle Maedhros, who towered over the majority in Valinor.

"Ata, not now," your voice cuts through the din, surprisingly firm despite the tremor in your heart. Your father's face contorted in a snarl, but something in your voice, perhaps the raw emotion, caused him to pause.

"Let me go!" he roared, his voice thick with fury. "I won't be mocked by that… that…" he trailed off, his tongue failing him to find an insult that wouldn't ignite another confrontation.

You shake your head and lead him out. "Let's leave. Grandfather is waiting."

You clenched your jaw, the weight of the situation pressing down on you. This meeting, the one you'd dreaded since your days in the Halls of Mandos, had been a disaster. And the worst part? It was just the beginning.

Meeting your father was something you had wished for forever. An unfulfilled yearning you grew up with. The same yearning Legolas grew up with. Absence of a bond that made the entirety of an existence.

Settling in his arms was a comfort unknown to you in life. Death had been kinder in many ways.

The agony of right and wrong seared on both you and your father. Ignorance of the bond that is most priced above any other. Blood that had cost you the love of your husband and the chance to watch your son grow.

But things that once shredded your heart into pieces now were distant worries. The sting of betrayal and the ache of lost years paled in comparison to the warmth of your father's embrace. His tearful apologies, whispered promises of redemption, were a balm to your wounded soul.

You met then, your uncles, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, An entire clan doomed in the halls of death. And so the task of stitching back together the House of Finwe began.

From uncountable days spent sharing stories by the pillar of your Grandfather, Feanor's firey pillar, to bringing along the souls of your troubled cousins Aegnor and Maeglin. Finweans started healing.

And you became the princess of Noldor. A title that came with a hefty price.

Legolas' friendship with Finrod wasn't a surprise. Both, you realized, carried the weight of a love lost to time – a grief you could never fully understand or soothe.

Legolas, however, found solace elsewhere. Celebrimbor, with his gentle spirit, became his closest confidante. He regaled Amrod and Amras with tales of Middle-earth, earning their playful grumbles about being called "grandfathers." Feanor, a name whispered in legends, became a complex figure he learned about through stories and perhaps, even fleeting glimpses of him to and from the forge.

Your interactions with Legolas were tentative at first. You were a stranger to him, a face from stories whispered in hushed tones. He longed to know the woman who carried him.

Awkward silences hung heavy in the air, punctuated by whispered stories of his life in Greenwood. He spoke of Thranduil with respect, but a flicker of sadness lingered in his eyes. He spoke of a man named Estel, a human who had become a dear friend, a story that filled you with bittersweet joy.

Then came the inevitable – a meeting with Master Gimli. Their shared tales of their unlikely friendship brought laughter to the once desolate House of Feanor.

Finally, after much coaxing, you managed to convince Legolas to attend Oropher's feast. You knew a march to invite the entire Noldorian royal family was a tad excessive, even by his standards.

Noldor marching was almost always was a perilous idea.

"Apply this twice a day," you mutter, handing him the small vial. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, you allowed yourself to meet his gaze. "For the bruises," you clarified, pointing to the dark marks of your father's grip on his throat.

A flicker of surprise crossed his face, then settled into a mask of stoicism. His eyes, those same eyes that once held the warmth of a thousand sunrises, seemed distant, etched with the weight of untold ages. They held an emotion you couldn't quite define - a far cry from the hatred that burned in them during your last moments together.

His hand brushed against yours as he reached for the vial, sending a jolt through you. The grief that had settled between you, heavy and suffocating, felt like a tangible presence in the air.

"I apologize for my father," you began, your voice barely a whisper. "He is…"

"Troubled," he finished the sentence, his voice surprisingly gentle. "As are we all."

A heavy silence descended upon you once more. He spoke, breaking the quietude, his voice laced with a weary resignation. "I do not know what penance I shall bear to ever right the wrongs I have committed. I have searched for ages, scouring the world, but I cannot find a path back to the past I crave."

"I do not know what repentance I shall bear to ever right the wrongs I have committed," he continued, his voice barely above a murmur. "This yearning for what we once had consumes me, yet I detest it, for I do not believe I am worthy of it." His voice cracked, and for a moment, the once proud king you knew of was now stripped bare, revealing an elf consumed by regret.

The air around you seemed to crackle with unspoken apologies and unspoken yearning. You gathered your courage, forcing the words from your lips. "I do not know much of right or wrong," you began, your voice surprisingly steady. "Neither do I understand the intricacies of penance or forgiveness. Yet, from all I have learned in this strange realm, one thing resonates."

He averted his gaze, his back turned to you, his broad shoulders slumped in defeat. All the air seemed to have been sucked from the room, leaving a hollow ache in your chest.

Your mind raced, searching for the right words. "No act is set in stone. No grievance can hold its power over the relentless march of time. My kin, they wronged many, yet even they found a measure of peace." You thought of your uncles, of your father, finally released from the burdens of their choices.

"They were able to return to the light of Aman because they allowed themselves to seek forgiveness," you continued. "Beyond mine or Legolas', it is your own that you require the most." You reached out then, your fingers brushing against his cheek.

"We have all the time in the world." You leaned in, your lips brushing against his in a whisper of a kiss. A flawed marriage, a flawed separation, and a flawed reunion, yet, nothing had managed to make it any less sweeter.

#the hobbit #the silmarillion #tolkien elves #noldor #thranduil x reader #Feanorian reader #celegorm #angst #middle earth #thranduil x wife #thranduil #Istg I will not write this ever again

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kittenintheden · 21 days ago

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Silver Swords & Dragonfire

It's been fifteen years since the Battle of Baldur's Gate and the fall of the Absolute. Lae'zel joined forces with Orpheus and has been plotting Vlaakith's downfall. They will travel to the githyanki city of Tu'narath in the Astral Sea and they will slay a lich. But Lae'zel's story does not end there. She will have her red dragon. She will have what she is owed.

She will ascend.

This piece was originally written for @bg3womenswrongs, which will be available for free in March 2025. I highly recommend checking it out -- the art and the written work is an incredible tribute to the ladies of Baldur's Gate 3, who get far from their due. Let them be a little evil, as a treat. Enjoy <3

Rating: M Characters: Lae'zel, Ascended Astarion, God Gale, Orpheus, Tav, Vlaakith Word Count: 1,960 Content: Canon-typical violence, regicide, everyone being sort of terrible (but also kickass), post-canon

AO3 Link

***

The atmosphere around Créche K’liir is cold. Full of silver-white moonlight and crisp as night sky in midwinter. There’s always warmth to be found in the inner chambers of the asteroid, but the starsong beckons the githyanki to the surface to search for what is lost. To answer a call.

As Lae’zel steps foot onto the extraterrestrial surface of Tu'narath, The City of Death, she feels that way again. It’s been fifteen years since the Battle of Baldur’s Gate, fifteen years since she walked on the shores of the Astral Sea.

The nebulae whisper of history immemorial. A promise of eternity. Her birthright.

Vlaakith’s tomb.

Castle Susurrus towers high overhead, dark spires shrouded in fog, unchanged for millenia. Sharp, blackened edges cut across a sky otherwise filled with the gentle light of creation. Lae’zel stands with a stance straight as the silver sword she holds in one hand, fingers wrapped round the hilt with the care of a protective lover. Dark blood runs rivulets down the shining metal of the blade.

A drop shivers at the point and falls, floating lightly in midair before it descends to splash against the rock.

Lae’zel’s other hand is slick with gore of a different sort. There, she grips one tentacled mandible of a ghaik head, its eyes vacant and lifeless, its mind whispering no more. The purple flesh has gone gray and dull with unlife, the black blood long since crusted over.

A moment, not long past, rises in her mind’s eye.

The illithid to whom this head belonged stands at a war table, discussing strategy. It is a position her foolhardy younger self would never have occupied, but she is no longer young, nor blindly devoted to a queen on a stolen throne. The rightful heir, Orpheus, walks a circle around the table, reviewing their plans.

“A clever assault,” he says. “Albeit more subject to the whims of istek than I’d prefer.”

“We agree, my liege,” Lae’zel says with a deferential nod. “But my allies, while flighty, are nevertheless bound by their oaths to me.”

Orpheus searches his First Commander’s face and finds her truthful. “As you say. The plan is set, then.”

Lae’zel waits until the prince leaves the room before she dares look to their sole ghaik ally. On cue, they wince and close their eyes, putting two fingers to their temple.

“It pains you?” she asks.

After a moment, the illithid drops their fingers and glances her direction. In her mind, she hears them respond, “It does. Every day, I lose more of myself. That is why you must end me before it is too late. I will make a fine offering.”

Lae’zel leans heavily onto the table, hands balled into tight fists. When she looks to her friend, it is with bitter sorrow in her eyes. “I cannot,” she whispers.

The companion she once called Tav replies, “You will. You must.” They put a hand over hers. “It has always been your destiny.”

What good, this heart of stone, for it to be shattered? Good enough to take up the shards and shred Vlaakith’s regime. A new monarch will rise.

And so she stands with a sword in one hand and her dear friend’s skull in the other, waiting for the allies who promised their aid. Every guard that met their end on her blade lies slaughtered at her feet. At last, a portal glows violet and two men step through. The first gleams with the silvered skin and brilliant eyes of a newly-minted god. Lae’zel stops herself from curling her lip.

The second is all angular features and oppressive finery, peering down his nose at her with ruby eyes as he wipes blood from his hands with a handkerchief. Lae’zel stops herself from sneering a second time.

The God of Ambition and the Vampire Ascendent make powerful allies and unbearable conversationalists. Strange, that she once thought of their weaker forms as friends. That moment is past. That was a time before life went hard and unforgiving for them all.

“I’ve cleared the entry hall for you,” Lord Ancunín says, voice distant and disinterested. “Do keep in touch if you manage to stay alive. We’ll have much to discuss about the future of our respective realms.”

As if she would share her eternal glory over the immortal plane with this coward-turned-little-lord of Baldur’s Gate. Her sights are much higher.

Lae’zel nods nonetheless.

The god once called Gale of Waterdeep gives her a condescending bow. “May you achieve the outcome you seek,” he says, words echoing. “And recall who blessed you on this day of your rebirth.”

Astarion tosses his stained handkerchief to the ground with a scoff. “Years ago, I promised you a favor in return for your assistance in helping me become…” He inhales deeply through his nose and gestures down the length of his body. “... this. That favor has been called in. Do not darken my door again unless you bear gifts. Enjoy your own… ascendence.”

Lae’zel tightens her grip on the tentacle and waves her sword in Gale’s direction, jerking her head toward the palace.

“Your favor remains unfulfilled, my friend with a foot in the divine,” she says. If he notes the underscore of disdain in her tone, he doesn’t acknowledge it.

With a wave of his hand, he opens a second portal. For a moment, his expression goes almost sad. “Arrogance makes enemies of us all,” he says. “For both our sakes, may we never meet again.”

“My thanks for honoring your bargain,” she replies, tucking her chin and glaring. “Now go. This victory is mine.”

He laughs, bitterly. “Vlaakith gha'g shkath zai.”

Then he is gone.

In the distance above, red dragons lock claws and battle in midair. One bears Orpheus as a rider, his war cry lost to the stars. The atmosphere around Lae’zel is calm. Quiet.

She tears her eyes from her prince and enters the portal left for her, never looking back.

True to his word, the Ascendent left the hall decorated with corpses, their blood going tacky beneath her boots as she strides toward a barred door many times her height. Black obsidian, chipped and carved over years to depict githyanki knights crushing their ghaik tormentors underfoot. In the center, a vermillion dragon roars, mouth open wide.

Lae’zel pauses and reaches out, marveling at the smooth glass beneath her fingertips. A scene older than she can comprehend. A promise, ready to be fulfilled.

She hoists the illithid head into the dragon’s mouth and lets the ancient magic take hold. Once, in the days of Orpheus’ mother, the gith earned their knighthood by offering a ghaik’s head. A final test of mettle. Through all Vlaakith’s misbegotten lifetimes, the lich queen could never unravel it completely.

The dragon’s eyes glow, the skull withers and becomes dust, and blessed strength flows through Lae’zel’s veins. She puts her hands to the massive bar keeping her from her quarry and throws it aside as if it weighs nothing more than a harpy feather.

As the door swings open wide, she locks eyes with a usurper, a thief, a charlatan.

Vlaakith stands from her throne, her sharpened crown rising high over her brow and her expression filled with hate.

“Impossible,” the false queen hisses.

Liquid gold flows beneath Lae’zel’s yellow-green skin, lighting her up from the inside out. She broadens her stance, wrapping both hands around her sword and holding it steady at her shoulder.

“The only impossibility here is that you live longer than I will it,” Lae’zel calls. “Die as you lived – wicked and alone. Mha stil'na forjun inyeri.”

Her once-queen hisses and enters a battle stance, her movement rusted over with time and disuse. Far from the gith she rules so stringently, her deathless form has become hollow, weak. It takes no time at all to get a blade to her throat.

Vlaakith’s mouth twists with hate as she glares into Lae’zel’s unwavering eyes, the flesh of her palm cut to the bone as she holds the silver sword by the blade.

“Your suffering will be unending,” Vlaakith snarls. “I shall keep you shivering on the edge of death for an eternity, your body and spirit broken, your tongue a shredded ruin behind your shattered teeth.”

When the lich begins an incantation, Lae’zel lashes quick as lightning and forces two fingers into the queen’s mouth all the way to her gullet, pinning her tongue and causing her to gag and cough, the spell lost. Lae’zel gives a miniscule shake of her head.

“None of your witchery,” Lae’zel whispers. “You will fight as githyanki are intended, or you will not fight at all.”

A resounding crash fills the space as a hulking form crushes its way through the stone wall. A dragon with glittering scarlet scales towers taller than any Lae’zel has ever seen, its throat glowing from within with deadly fire. Its teeth are opal daggers, a shining threat. Below Lae’zel, Vlaakith is brought to her knees, frantically gripping the warrior’s forearms and biting down on the fingers holding her tongue. Lae’zel does not yield.

In the ancient language of dragons, the one she was never taught until she taught herself, Lae’zel says, “Stay your claws, King of Flame, and you will be beholden to Vlaakith’s madness no longer.”

It is a long, tense moment, during which the dragon’s golden eyes search between the blessed newcomer and his longtime queen. At last, he inclines his head and waits. Strength is a ruler he knows.

An unholy, garbled wail rises from the lich’s throat as Lae’zel’s attention returns to her.

“Perish without honor, hshar'lak,” Lae’zel says.

Githyanki silver sings as Lae’zel withdraws her hand and ends it at last. The head of Vlaakith, Last of Her Name, rolls across the finely tiled floor, her face forever in torment, soul long destroyed. Lae’zel drags the tip of her blade behind her, letting it shriek across the stone until she can kneel and pluck the crown of twisted black glass from the rapidly disintegrating skull.

The room fills with the sound of claws scraping and victory cries. Her prince calls an ancient victory cry, his cohort responding in kind.

Lae’zel does not turn, not even when she senses Orpheus near.

“Well done, Baht D’Orpheus,” he says. “We are free. Your victory will be forever written in the stars.”

“Yes,” Lae’zel whispers, her face upturned to the millions-strong starlight filtering through the red-stained windows above the dark throne. “It shall be.”

In one swift movement, she whirls, blade flashing, and runs Orpheus through with her silver. She holds his eye as his expression turns from surprise to betrayal to fury, hands scrabbling uselessly at the sword he himself bestowed upon her. She does not look away.

Profound silence fills the air.

“I will not ask for forgiveness,” Lae’zel says softly, pushing the blade still deeper. “But you will understand that there is no force on this plane or any other that will ever bend my knee again.”

She withdraws her blade, a line of lifeblood painting a slash across the tile. Orpheus, once the Prince of the Comet, falls to the floor with a gurgle.

Lae’zel raises her head to the gathered warriors and their mounts, her face defiant, victorious. When one soldier makes to stand against her, Vlaakith’s former steed produces a burst of flame in their direction.

She sheathes her blade and lifts the bloodied crown over her head. When she lowers it to her brow, a drop of blood courses down her temple and she hears the myriad echoes of the githyanki. All who ever were, and all who will ever be. She moves to the dais and lowers herself to the throne, looking out over the beginnings of her kingdom.

All kneel before Queen Lae’zel, First of Her Name.

#lae'zel #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fic #women's wrongs zine #bg3 character study #bg3 #kitten writes

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slaaverin · 15 days ago

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To hell and back

This post is very difficult to make for me. This is not about BTS, or about fandom, but about mental health, and my personal story. I never really opened up about it anywhere except in a few facebook groups. But today is the day I decided to speak about my story.

It is surely more for me than for you.

Very few people in my friends and family can really understand what I have been going through, because it is a topic so complex that even I have trouble understanding it sometimes.

Well, firstly, I am schizophrenic. At least according to science. If you asked me though, it would be a different answer.

The truth is, I became spiritual again when I was 25, not long after discovering BTS. I took on a meditation practice and grew my consciousness very quickly.

Someday, I had an idea on how I would be able to help the collective, and I thought about becoming clairaudient (hearing the other side). So, I "hear voices". I followed my intuition on how to achieve this, and after some time it actually worked, I could hear.

So this ability to hear was totally consented on my part, I wanted this from the start.

But yeah, according to science, when you can hear anything, they put a schizophrenic label on you. I think it's mostly that they are in over their head with this kind of subject, and they simply don't understand everything enough to really be able to help anyone, except with medication.

Unfortunately, the universe is bigger and more nuanced than a label, so I never really got help from psychiatrists. I had to navigate through this on my own.

Everything was going fine at first, I was learning how to use this ability, and things were going well.

But someday, everything went to shit.

I won't go into that much details, I'll spare you, because it is pretty horrific. But long story short, I made a trip to "hell". Literally.

Of course, I myself do not believe in the christian hell. I've studied spirituality enough to understand it is not that literal, and there are many realms with different purposes.

But there are some dimensions that are close enough of what we would imagine hell to be like. And I have gone there.

I spent 2 weeks in 2 dimensions at once. In my physical body, but also in this dark dimension.

It's not really important to believe in this, or to argue whether it was real or not, because the thing is, my experience, impressions, feelings, all of it, were real to me. It felt real. It felt tangible. The mechanics does not matter, what matters is that I experienced it, and the trauma from it was real.

It was the most horrific, the darkest, the most twisted, so terrible that words cannot even give it justice. It is an experience that I felt somehow was a glitch in the matrix. Like we should not be able to experience something like this, it should not be allowed.

But it was. And no matter how much I cried for help, prayed all the gods, begged, no one came to save me. I could not sleep, did not eat, and barely functioned during those 2 weeks.

I felt left there, abandoned, alone, helpless, in total despair and horror, and with a pain that was so profound that I thought it would kill me. I was patiently waiting for death to take me, in how much my heart was broken into a million pieces.

I got annihilated entirely by the end. No emotions, no thoughts, no personality, no beliefs, nothing that made me me, was left.

I was gone, an empty shell. I had been entirely destroyed. A metaphorical death.

But something was left. A tiny flicker.

It was the light of my consciousness, my divine spark.

I understood then that even the worst darkness that exist would not be able to destroy my light, and that I was eternal.

So all of my fears vanished. I began clinging to that light and use a strength I didn't even know I posessed to crawl back from the pit of my own hell.

I had PTSD for years after this experience. And it was not truly over. I was still plagued by many interferences, trickster energies, evil things.

But over time, I healed, and brought back the pieces of myself that were scattered, and my psyche, even with PTSD, began to mend.

But now I had to learn how to play "the game". How to not get tricked, how to keep my internal balance despite being surrounded by nothing but darkness.

Some day the darkness put so much pressure on my being that I thought of ending my life. And that's not really like me, because I'm really pro-life.

But it's like I've been through some fucking intense internal military-like training, with no rest, with no pause, and no mercy. Ever.

It pushed me to my limits.

So of course I transformed. I became stronger mentally, I learned discernement, I took my power back, literally my entire being was totally refined.

I mastered "the game" of darkness, outsmarted them, mended every breach of my psyche, moved past all my fears, and my mind became as cutting and sharp as a knife. It took me years, but I learned the lesson. And I can say that darkness was my greatest teacher. The wisdom I gained, there is really no price for it. In the end I saved myself.

Today, I am good. I work very hard to keep my internal balance, to remain optimistic, to keep spreading love around me.

If you saw me you wouldn't tell I have any particularity lol

But to say this whole process has been hard is a understatement. It is SO FUCKING HARD like it's so hard and complex and layered that's it's really a bit ridiculous?

Sometimes I feel like I'm in a very bad movie, so I guess the universe and my higher self really have a weird sense of humour. But I laugh it off too because it's better than crying about it.

I know we are never alone, and that everything supports us, but the illusion that we are is really strong sometimes. Almost no one would be able to understand my experience, without having lived it, so I feel like I'm bearing this cross on my own.

But you know, all of this really puts things into perspective. The fact I have been in a place such as this, survived, and came back, makes every other little problems in life feel truly trivial.

I don't know what your faith is, it is not really important. What I learned in my studies is that most people who actually go to those places had things to learn, it's never "some punishement". It's clearly not because I deserved it.

But I did my share of learning indeed. Today I feel like I am a better version of myself thanks to this experience.

I believe it was for my highest benefit, because I can't reconcile senseless pain and hurt in my mind with a loving god. I know things aren't random.

It all began because I wanted to help. So in sharing my story, I want you to share a message of hope.

The deepest pain, the darkest fear, nothing that is abyssal and scary and any emotion you might feel, none of it will actually hurt you. You cannot be hurt. You cannot be destroyed by anything, ever. We just think that some emotions will kill us, so we avoid to feel them. We fear, so we flee.

If you actually embrace your fears, it won't kill you. It will liberate you. Nothing else will happen.

You know why we come to earth to have crazy experiences and we don't mind the trauma and the pain that come with it? Because our souls know that we are not taking any real risk in the first place.

Your light is deeper than the deepest fear, largest than the most painful hurt, and you are safe at all time, even if it doesn't feel like it.

So please, rest easy, don't take life so seriously, it's all going to be ok. We will all wake up from this dream someday and go back to love, and it will only be a memory, a blip in our eternity.

We are safe & loved.

I think I needed to get all this out of my chest.

(Please don't feel the need to psychoanalyze me or feed me religious doctrines, I had years to process and really understand the mechanics of everything that happened to me so far, but obviously I didn't want to turn this post into a million words so many aspects are left out.)

Thank you for reading my post and take care💜

#mental health #personal share #feels weird to talk about #please be kind

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azdoine · 3 months ago

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Whenceforth art thou, Hell?

Nona the Ninth appears to confirm Abigail Pent's suspicion that the River has been deliberately broken or sealed, per the comments of Varun and Alecto:

The Captain’s voice was like old teeth. “He left them too long—you left them too long, my salt thing.” ... Afterward Alecto went down to the ship and stood before John, purposing to travel through the River, and was grieved to find it yet dead.

However, a common thread of discussion I see in theorycrafting goes that if John has closed whatever gates may lead beyond the River, then his actions here are somehow for the sake of sustaining necromancy as an institution - as if, at the eleventh hour, we'll learn that all magic has somehow been fueled by burning through God's giant Philosopher's Stone all along. I cannot accept this interpretation. To me, it raises an infinite regression: how could John possibly have used necromancy in order to invent necromancy?

Moreover, this kind of plot twist disregards the internal logic and deflates the significance of TLT's social critique. The Tower doesn't need to be a secret hydroelectric dam in the River for converting human damnation into worldly power, because the engine of suffering has been in the real world the entire time, and it's just called colonialism. The price to be paid for working necromancy is a price to be paid overtly and in this life, either by the coin of explicit necrocapital or by the coin of grief.

If the path to a hypothetical River Beyond has been closed, I think it's for a much more banal psychological reason: John is a mission-oriented avenger who refuses to accept any check on the reach of his judgement.

“There can be no forgiveness for those who walked away,” he said. “Just as there can be no forgiveness for me—even though I rip the very fingers from my hands … throw them into the jaws of the monsters who hunt me … as I run from them across the universe, end to end. Something will satisfy them eventually, but nothing satisfies me. Nothing.” He drew his gaze away from her—his black-and-white, chthonic stare—and looked out over the dunes. He said, “But that’s the grace of it, Harrow. If I’m God, I can start over. The flood, you know? You can wash things clean. That’s all the end of Earth was … making things clean. It gets dirty again, you clean it again. Like those old power-washing ads. Spray and walk away, right? Sometimes I think the only reason I haven’t done it already is that I can’t bear the idea that I wouldn’t be able to touch them—that they’d still be out there…"

People regularly overlook the psychological significance of John's long reach in the context of understanding his behavior. Death and physical distance are no escape from a sufficiently powerful necromancer, because his enemies can be summoned out of the River - which bridges locations across unimaginable gulfs of space - and subjected to further torments in person.

(this is another reason I don't believe that John's expansionist project is being carried out in order to hunt down and slaughter the resettled generational descendants of the trillionaires; based on what we've read, John simply shouldn't need to settle for such a pointless blood feud, let alone carry out his revenge-by-proxy in the physical world. however it came to be that the dead are trapped within the River, everyone who lives is certain to enter his kingdom of death eventually, to sit and wait for him to sieve them from the waters.)

From here, it also makes sense on John's part to arrange for a specific place for the interment of problematic souls. He has to be able to keep some people pinned in place in the palm of his grave-dirt hand - otherwise he leaves a potential attack surface for anyone to try to summon the dead as their witnesses and ask for incriminating information about the King Undying. John certainly admits to deliberately leaving many souls on ice in proportion to their moral desert, for which Harrow accuses him of malfeasance:

"We’ll get them all back … some of them, anyway … or at least, the ones I want to bring back. Anyone I feel didn’t do it. Anyone I feel had no part in it. Anyone I can look at the face of and forgive. And my loved ones … The ones I left, I’ll bring back." ... "I want to know how many of the Resurrection are left, and how many you began with, and what the discrepancies are. I want to know where you put them. They didn’t go into the River. I want to know why she was angry … and why you were terrified."

Alecto The Ninth is set to invoke the harrowing of hell, but I still think we have to be very careful not to overstate these mythological allusions or buy into John's mystique here. The Locked Tomb is a setting with an intensely organic and visceral metaphysics, where the embodiments of the divine - Alecto and John, John's hands and gestures, the human soul itself - are "merely" congregations of smaller powers. "God is a dream, Harrow, and you all dream me together" - the secular minutiae of life and magic are divine only where we remember they're worth deifying!

As John's godhood was once demystified to expose him as an oversized Lyctor, if I want to understand the nature of Hell and the Tower in advance of Alecto, I think I have to let go of my assumption that the answers to all of these questions isn't hidden in plain sight, that there must be a dizzying twist. Let's assume a man did it, and not a god; and ask, how would any man go about trapping ten billion souls or damming the River?

#the locked tomb #alectopause #alecto the ninth #tlt meta

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simp-ly-writes · 11 months ago

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Chapter Six: Heavenly Stars

Can be read as a standalone: Personal Hell Series (pt.7)

Pairing: (Hazbin Hotel) Lucifer Morningstar x demon overlord!Reader

Summary: You wanted to be alone, to hatefully survive in the hole you found yourself in but when answers come knowing at your door, will you listen to their call even when it goes against everything you have established for yourself in this home?

Warnings: 4864 words, mentions of blood, gore, injury, metal health subjects, drowning, death, and emotional angst.

A/N: Apologies for the wait my Lucifer darlings! But *rubs hands together* we gain answers now.

Masterlist | Taglist | edited.

Hazbin Hotel Masterlist

The grandfather clock ticking away down the hall is the only sound found within the home besides your paint strokes against the canvas. You are multicoloured, covered in paint from head to tone in various shades and hues as you step back and observe the piece you had been working on.

How long have I been here for? You think to yourself, muscles sore as you stand and move to get a new cup of water for your paint brushes. Since your time in the Gardens and you haven’t been able to sleep since, you cringe while catching a glimpse of your reflection in a window. The usual ringing in your head was all long gone from your past days without rest now your body feeling more energized than ever as you kept yourself busy with old hobbies in this newfound time.

The sink whines open, a few droplets drip once you close the tap and find your way back to the balcony, overlooking hell's outer rings. That once cure you had found eons ago had come to fruition, now a vast scape of rolling hills and mature trees breathed with life as you felt jealousy stir within your bones, outlining another tree to your composition. Only accompanied by seemingly endless amounts of time, you felt more and more lost in this old and empty house. As if being sat with your old self that stared you down through each object left for dead in this place. It was equally comforting, being near death’s door again, that old self, but that cold loneliness haunted you more than the screams that plagued the back of your mind.

Just know that when you wish to dream- you will find me here… waiting. Shaking your head of these thoughts you pack up your supplies and go to the kitchen in search of sustenance. A bowl of pristine red apples glowed in your face, begging for attention, for you to take a bite as you stuck your head into the cabinets and finished out the supplies to make a fresh loaf of bread.

In between paintings and trying your hand with an old shotgun to hunt for food, you would be found harvesting the overgrown crops of your greenhouse. It felt connecting, taking the time to watch your harvest grow, you had forgotten the wait, the patience of it all in recent times, just observing before going in for the grab. You had started journaling once more, keeping track of your sanity, allowing yourself the possible freedom of finally letting it all go….

You wipe the sweat from your forehead, setting the bread to rest on the windowsill as you look out towards Heaven and its sun-like quality in the red sky. You still do not feel tired, the wood of the structure groans, begging for you to rest like a casket but you clutch at the walls, silent tears falling but you cannot escape. You are forced awake, you cannot dare to dream of a life outside of this, finding yourself wearing the same clothes, his jacket resting against your body, a ghost of a hug that has your heart aching no more than your desire to finally burn that bridge for good.

His voice haunts you. You can imagine his comforting words, his touch, the ghost of his breath falling upon your neck as your hands trail the various seams and buttons along the coat. You do not realise yourself to be smiling through these tears. You do not know yourself to be in the right or wrong- just horridly conflicted with past and present, vice and virtue. Morality calls to not be in vain, you grip your hair, immortality is a silent scream much to your own, crying out for you to be more. I just can’t seem to find a place to start…

After an awkward call to heaven, Lucifer leaves the hotel with a seedling of hope that has yet to be watered. A few guards bow to him as he passes down the mirrored maze of hallways and never ending staircases towards your office where he throws himself to the floor. His breathing is ragged, he watches possible futures flicker through his eyes. Blood and tears mix between songs as he brings his knees up to his chin.

Throwing off his hat, he listens as the gold of his crown scrapes against the hardwood floors before the snake slithers its way over to him, wrapping its way around his throat, he reaches upwards to it, begging for it to release as his body directs him towards the shattered crown before him. He shakes his head, boots scraping against the floors as voices yell out from behind the closed doors.

In a few hours, Charlie will be in Heaven, in another few days, your general will still not be there, The King thinks to himself as he cries, forcing himself to stand and lean against your desk as his hands grasp over the various maps and journals. The snake slowly lessens its grip as he takes in deep breaths, trembling fingers drifting over your handwriting.

He feels pathetic, smaller than he knows himself to appear. His mind keeps flickering to those last few moments with you, holding your hand, voicing his love for you to only watch you disappear and be set with the ghosts of you in these rooms and down these halls. He swears to hear your feet are running up to him with grand news or a mere correction to the weather report but nevertheless he ears strain to remember you voicing his name once again- to know that you call out to him. Yet he fails to dream any further as he sips cold tea and places signature after signature on the various reports left unfilled.

A tapping at the window has you falling off the couch as your hands feel under the coffee table for your shotgun. Bringing the handle up to your chest, you stalk your way around the archway and make haste towards your front door. Looking through the peep-hole, not a single soul is present- your shoulders only tense as you raise the barrel and twist the door handle. Rushing outside as you check every corner only to hear a squawk, eyes darting downwards to see a Raven dancing its way from being stepped on by your black boots.

“Shit,” you whisper to yourself, the bird flies up, resting on the barrel as it presents a wax-sealed envelope with your name written in glitter. Shaking your head, the raven transitions itself onto your shoulder as you take the letter from its beak and drop your gun on the coffee table once more, knocking over a stale cup of coffee as it stains the recent newspaper you snuck out to steal from the nearest village.

The bird chirps in your ear, presenting its neck for a scratch as its wings flutter happily to your physical praise. Filling a bowl with water, you tip your shoulder down to the counter and watch as the raven dips itself inside and takes a drip. Ripping open the letter using a claw, your fingers trace over the Princesses signature, resembling much of the same qualities of her father. A common pattern of letters that you forged oh so many times in Hell's past.

Your eyes drift over the shaken handwriting as concern etches its way into each wrinkle upon your face. The paper is stained with tears and a droplet of golden blood that has you seeing red- motherfuckers, you spit out, flipping to the next side that houses a simple request. “...I don’t know where else to go, but I need to be away from everyone, could I come stay with you?”

Obvious wear of the page signifies that this sentence had been scrapped and rewritten a multitude of times as you hum out in thought. You saw echoes of yourself in her words and actions, taking the chance to run for a moment, to find freedom from all the decisions that wear a person down overtime. The raven’s eyes pearce through your own that have started to shimmer a yellow hue in the moonlight. You rip a page from one of your journals, listing a simple yes with a request that the bird be the only one who shows her the way here.

You open the kitchen window, watching as the bird flies up, becoming a mere black speck in the bloodied sky as you lean against the counter, observing your home and omitting a sigh, looking down to your hands. With a singular clap you listen as each scattered object finds its place upon shelves or in the sink beside you. Shoes walk their way towards the closet as your shotgun polishes itself back into its display. Small golden specks flicker and fall towards the floor, lost without a trace alongside the dust between the floorboards, the magic you used now settled as your blood becomes warm- happy that you made use of it.

You can only roll your shoulder, the jacket appearing to dwarf over your frame as you shimmy it off, resting it against the back of the couch as you make your way upstairs, fighting mentally to come up with a nice outfit to greet the Princess with- Charlie with, your brain corrects you. Hands fly to button up a new shirt as you iron your pants and choose a clean pair of workboots and gloves. You bring up a bottle of wine from the cellar, eyeing the date with a laugh, gods I really am ancient. You think to yourself, this bottle was practically double Charlie's age and you could only reminisce of the sentences Husk would string together at the mere mention of such a luxury bottle of liquor.

Popping off the lid, you lean your head back on the white jacket, an arm falling onto your shoulder as you swirl your glass, watching as the liquid falls from the walls, clashing back into itself. You can imagine these waves roaring, clashing and becoming one in the end- a pointless battle in the grand scheme of things to only be interrupted by the ringing of a doorbell as a distressed blonde collapses into your arms, their black mascara staining your fresh white gloves as you cradle their head.

Charlie's glossy red eyes peer into your own as you still, at a loss for words. You had never seen Charlie so down, so utterly miserable as you squeezed the girl that bit harder and picked her up. Flicking your hand for the door to be closed behind you both and led her towards your living space. She looks up as you place her on the couch, conjuring a fresh plate of tea as you extend your hand, offering physical support as she latches on, nails digging into your palm as she sobs out, tears and snot choking her next words as you lean in to hear better.

“I-I was so excited and then… it all goes to shit. I should have listened to everyone, to you, my dad… my mother…” You open your mouth, about to comment before she continues, eyeing up your glass of wine. “I understand the pain my father went through, now more than ever.”

“Charlie…” you breathe out in concern as you pull the hair from her tear stained cheeks, offering her your handkerchief as she dabs her eyes, looking up towards your vaulted ceilings. “I should have never gone to heaven, held these ‘loft dreams,’” she quotes in her fingers, dropping your hand as she exhales frustration, going to grip her hair, head falling between her knees. “I wanted so much then and now I feel the consequences. Vaggie is not the person I knew her to be- she's an angel and to even think that I admired heaven when these are the tricks they pull!”

“Charlie-I-”

“No! It's not fair, and now that motherfucker Adam!”

“Language,“ you state as Charlie flips you the finger, “okay dad/mom,” she states back, picking up her head and showcasing an eye roll as you pull her closer to you, resting her head under your own as you breeze past the title. “I remember Adam,” you state as Charlie looks up at you curiously, “did he declare to come and kill you first too?”

“Actually-” you start to say while scanning through your memories.

“You’re joking,” Charlie deadpans just as you shrug your shoulders. The Princesses face falls again soon after as she picks at her nail polish, “I am just as bad as the cruelest list of overlords in hell-”

“No you are not!’ you stand, anger filling your voice as shadows soon emerge from the floorboards before you gain a hold of yourself witnessing the terror starting to rise in Charlie's eyes as you drop to your knees and apologise. “You are not cruel Charlie, you are kind as you are strong. Any overlord in hell… misses those feats,” you state, wrapping her fathers jacket around her frame and pressing a cup of tea into her hands.

“Now I know better than anyone that all these thoughts lead to nothing but more self wallowing,” you say, taking a sip of your drink before leaning against the arm of the couch opposite of Charlie as she raises an eyebrow.

“Isn’t that why you are here?” Charlie questions, sneaking a sip of your wine with a small smile starting to form, knowing she caught you there. “Well as I have stated before, you are better than me in many ways,” you retort, shifting the fabric of your shirt to position itself on your elbows as you lean down to pick up a tea cup.

Charlie laughs out softly, a ping of pride emanates from your chest in managing to cheer her up slightly yet both of your positive reactions soon fall as you summon forth your spear, horns growing out of the top of your head and through your healing hair with the information she presents you. “But that is all besides the point, I need people to fight this battle with me, I need you and I have already made deals-”

“YOU DID WHAT?!” you coldly ask, head tilting, your eyes now slits as you demand answers from the princess. Rank falling from any traditions you held, even with her fathers coat on, you stand at nothing but their utmost safety, even when it comes with disrespect to their pride filled backgrounds. “I made a deal with… well more like through Alastor. He said that I could only accept when I was sleeping so I got him to put me to sleep before coming over to you,” her words come out in waterfalls, spewing at a gallon a minute while you stab a hole into your floors as she continues her story. “A-and I was put in this space with water and a guy who looked a lot like my dad, but he wore these white clothes and called himself the Creator out of all things- I mean I have seen god and god is not him I shall have you know, anyways I-”

“Woah, woah, woah, WAIT!” You comment, racking your brain as horror coats your features, your spear clashing against the floor as you place your hands on her cheeks, moving her eyes to your own as you ensure the seriousness of your next question, “You have met THE god?”

“He was there for my birth and well… the day of your death. I was too young to remember anymore, you would have to ask dad but…” Charlie conines to ramble, you fade out of reality, feeling your socks becoming yet, clouds flickering in Hell's skies before you drop your hands from her face and grip your head with stress. Becoming out of breath, Charlie soon slows her speech as you pick up on what she has to say once more, “...so I made the deal and now I owe him my dreams till Adam is dead.” She finishes as you grip the back of the couch, eyes starting past her head and into the kitchen window where heaven sits gleaming mockingly in your face.

“I think it's time for you to catch some rest, I will be there with you in a moment… there's a few words I wish to share with your dealmaker,” you state with vice as Charlie swallows, nodding her head a few times just as the raven flies in through the still opened window, staring between the two of you before making your way upstairs and showing her to your guest room. Charlie clicks her hands together, suitcase flying its way into the room and on her bed as she yawns out, “thank you for letting me stay here,” she says in a small voice while looking down at her feet.

“Thank you for coming to me when things like this happen,” you reply, pulling her in for one last hug just before you exit your room, once hearing the door close, you exhale a soft breath, a hand of your own trails from your waist, upwards you chest and rests upon your neck- grazing over the golden scar. You step towards your room, hands moving over your journals as you recount each conversation, preparing yourself to enter the dreamworld once again.

You walk towards your washroom and run a bathtub, knowing you would be unable to sleep in normal ways. Your breath hitches as the tap squeals shut, the bird now taps rapidly against the glass window above your head, beckoning to be let in just as you undress, submerging toes to shoulders in water. You watch the water ripple to intake your form, your hands begin to float in the water as you gradually sink your back deeping into the warm waters.

Snapping your fingers, bubbles fill the tub, flying off towards the window, gleaming in Heaven's light, creating the only natural rainbows to be found in hell. Water now just up to your chin, you take in one last small breath before submerging your head. Your body unconsciously kicks, trying to force more air into your system but you stay, your feet twitch, your lungs scream and just as your nails ding into your skin and a droplet of pain enters your system- you are transported to the otherside.

Your body is wrapped in fine cloth garments, silver patterns are sewn into the fabric in waving lines as you stand at the foot of a bed that houses a sleeping Charlie. You start to move to the side of the bed, raising your hand, just hovering over to tuck her in just as a hand is placed on your shoulder. You stand back upright in an instant, hand dropping and becoming covered in your robes once more as you face forward. Staring off into the horizon as sunlight fades and blues arise from the sea, coating the sky.

Greetings, the deity calls to you, you feel the warmth of their breath on your skin as it crawls into your ear, making a home in your senses as you become senseless to their powers taking over your form just as the last. Why have you come to the Creator on this fine evening? A smile starts to form across their features, their rosy cheeks taking over your eyes as they expand to hold every pointed tooth in your eyes.

Why speak, why even think if you already know the answer? You strike back, a hand of theirs now drifting from your shoulder down to your back as they lead you away from Charlie, your feet moving on their own as they spread the very water before you and towards a tea set primed for the occasion. A singular snake following in your robes, teeth latching on to a sleeve as it becomes lost under the waters. You feel its tug but cannot look back as you take your seat beside the deity, their hand now on your knee as they pat it thrice in contemplation.

Where is the fun, immoral one when another can already speak for me? You roll your eyes in response as the snake now catches the corner of your eye. Its white scales disappear in your garments but hiss towards the man beside you, warning of what you have yet to discover. A question for a question, both never to be answered, you say, gaining control of your head the longer you sit in the waters. The deity still faces forwards, watching Charlie breath, your heart slows realizing the water had been rising but you kept on breathing.

A choking sound can be heard, you feel yourself thrashing in the bathtub just as Charlie emits a silent scream in her dreams. Stop this, you state, the snake now slithering to rest its head in your hand as your knees begin to shake, you have to stand but their hand still rests on your knee. Their eyes flicker to gold coins, a scoff coming up from the back of their throat. It does not serve you well to beg, dearest, they tut out towards you just as your body shakes in anger.

You will stop this cruelty this instant, she is young, unknowing in many of the wicked ways we have lived through. You speak, starting to stand, pushing up against the currents as fish swim around our eyes, finns swatting in your face. And just how would you know what I have lived through? They deity questions.

How do you know yourself to be the Creator when Creation itself happened to make you? You question back, their head tips over to you, neck cracking as the night had finally come, the once rosy pinks and orange waters now rich blues mistaken to be black and soulless. Bubbles rise when they laugh, they create waves as Charlie uses these air pockets to breathe. Her arms reach out to you even when she is unable to open her eyes. Her fingers flex and bend in search of comfort and you become distracted. The snake bites into your skin as you hiss out in pain, droplets of gold now rising towards the unseen surface, it glimmers in contrast to the depths of the ocean.

The snake bites you again, more droplets emerge as they rise above your head and they sliver away with them. Looking upwards, you watch as the snake curls into itself before bursting into the brightest light yet, the supposed god cowers in the display. You take a deep breath in at the sight of the patterns that your blood has created in the darkness you once emerged from. Constellations shown from earth's surface come into view, Orion’s sword and shield fall from the sky and into your hands as you slam the two together. The deity flies backwards from the impulse as you sprint before extending your legs, jumping and crashing into their awaiting fists as the water parts, Charlie falling behind you as she chokes up water.

Her eyes open, she screams out in warning as the brother rushes up to you, clouds now battle axes as each connection of blades groans on impact. Your muscles ache, your lungs filled with frustration as you fight. Blood drips from their teeth, your smirk seeing their pain as Charlie stands back in horror seeing you so far removed from yourself. She thinks back to the tales her father told her, the depictions of the townsfolk when their version of self emerged in protection of her mother, her father, and now… her.

Charlie ducks as an axe swings over her head, she watches as your back dips, the blade caressing your chin just as you kick his knee, making him tumble for balance as you place a cut to his arm and later to his chest. Gold pours out in vats as you cry out, cutting through fabric and skin down to bone. Exposing the dead-skin that laid underneath yet you paid no mind to it, even when an emptied hand came to hold your chin as your blade rests under their own.

You are stunning like this dearest, a true waking dream, their last word echoing as the sky crashes down upon you, sun rises and drying any trace as the ground begins to crack- a desert forming in response to your aching bones as they lay before you, barely able to move. Charlie views the grey skin you had unleashed to the sky, it is a mere replica of the ground she now walks upon, removed of any prior life as fish flap around helplessly at her feet.

You continuously speak about creations, fate, and now dreams. What are you, for the only object I see now is failure before me. Their eyes close, basking in the light rays just before golden eyes sparkle on their own. They do not show any greed, and promise for truth yet their lips move on their behalf, “I am the spirit of dreams, a heavy branch from the father himself. I twist fate in the most gorgeous of affairs, I bend time on a whim just as I destroy. I can revoke happiness, I can tempt death, I can so I do… until now, until you…”

Your blade still holds strong against their throat, itching to make the same cursed line to match your own, their hand still rests upon your face, that once comforting feeling now a hollowed caress as they hum out peacefully in thought of their next words. “I have called myself the Creator so as to not confuse you with the many renditions you were before this. We have had a long relationship, a changing one two, you were once my greatest friend, a confidant and even lover…”

A sickness plagues your mind, you don’t recognise the plethora of visions that coat your memory, not feel as your blade shatters against the ground as Charlie moves to hug you, pleading for your return as you stare lifelessly off into the horizon.

You wake in a distant memory. You find yourself in similar robes as you walk along the cosmos, galaxies are your furnishing as they are your being, you drift between them with grace as the stars twinkle and black holes bend to make way for your presence. A hand emerges from the darkened veil of space, a white glove pulls you through and into a home lost to time as a grandfather clock ticks in the background, the hands left unchanging yet it sounds just the same. Teeth smile into your neck, their hands on your waist as you drift between one another and you awake once more.

“NO…” you state, coming back to cruel realities as you hold Charlie's head, comforting the girl by unknotting her hair with your claws as you yourself need to be grounded in some semblance of the current life you live. “Your greatest dream was to always have more time, dearest and I could never deny you of anything in my power. I paused the clocks as long as I could before father came knocking at my door and when the earth went to dream again, I didn't have you to join me. In this all, I had yet to discover my hatred for my brother truly, it was only when I saw you with that ‘King of Hell…’” he speaks the table to such spite as his wounds begin to heal and he stands to full height, hands extended towards you as Charlie blocks their touch with her body. “...I grew that hatred, that jealousy and revoked his dreams. I pleaded for your return and even when I received it… Lucifer always found a way to claw you back into hell, he gave you that extra time when I was unable to...”

“You twist your words…” you say, shaking your head in disbelief as the Spirit of Dreams smile fades to that of a smaller one as their hands drop. “Only when I must, but now I see that there is no longer a need for me to do so,” they say as their eyes drift over Charlie's blonde hair.

Your eyes begin to feel drowsy as you emit a yawn, feeling exhausted for the first time in weeks and cannot help but feel giddy at the feeling. You watched relaxed as his robes drift off like clouds in the sky once more as a sunset rises from behind you all, an array of reds reminding you of Hell. They chuckle out lightly, their eyes flickering knowingly to your current state as they speak in mere whispers, your eyes fluttering closed. “You are due to wake up any moment now dearest.”

He nods once towards Charlie, her eyes soon closing once again as she lets out a peaceful sigh, resting on your shoulder. “I am sorry for not dreaming enough for the two of us…” You shake your head at this, starting to fall slowly back into the tub as their voice softly shuts closed their domain.

Hazbin Hotel Masterlist

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thesiltverses · 1 year ago

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I don’t know who types up the ask answers on this blog but to whoever’s reading this: how do you all feel about being alive and sentient? What keeps you going, what purpose propels you through this chaotic void? What do you think (or hope) waits for you after your inevitable end? What do you think constitutes a life well lived?

I'm going to answer this in the most wayward and stupidly overlong manner possible, because the previous ask had me thinking about puppets, and I was already mid-way through writing up a book recommendation that's semi-relevant to your questions.

Everyone (but especially people who've enjoyed The Silt Verses and all the folks on Tumblr who loved Piranesi by Susanna Clarke) ought to seek out Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.

Riddley Walker is a wild and woolly story set in post-apocalyptic Kent, where human society has (d)evolved into a Bronze Age collective of hunter-gatherer settlements. Dogs, apparently blaming us for our crimes against the world, have become our predators, hunting us through the trees. Labourers kill themselves unearthing ancient machinery that they cannot possibly understand.

A travelling crowd of thugs led by a Pry Mincer collect taxes and attempt to impose themselves upon those around them with a puppet-show - the closest possible approximation of a TV show - that tells a mangled story of the world's destruction, featuring a Prometheus-esque hero called Eusa who is tempted by the Clevver One into creating the atomic bomb.

Riddley himself, a twelve-year-old folk hero in-the-making surrounded by strange portents, ends up sowing the seeds of rebellion and change by becoming a conduit for the anti-tutelary anarchic madness (one apparently buried in our collective unconscious) of Punch 'n' Judy.

It's a book in love with twisted reinterpretation, the subjectivity of interpretation, buried or forbidden truths coming back to light (the opening quote is a curious allegory about reinvention and cyclical change from the extra-canonical Gospel of Thomas, which is a good joke and mission statement on a couple levels at once) and human beings somehow stumbling into forms of wisdom or insight through clumsy and nonsensical attempts to make sense of a world that is simply beyond them.

It rocks.

The book starts like this:

On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his rush and there we wer then. Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, 'Your tern now my tern later.'

Riddley's devolved language - a trick which has been nicked/homaged by many other works, most notably Cloud Atlas and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome - is a masterwork choice which may seem offputting or overwhelming at first, but which has its own brutal poetry and cadence to it, and ultimately which makes us slow down as readers and unpick the wit, puns, double-meanings and playful themes buried in line after line.

(Even those first five sentences get us thinking about cyclical change, ritual and myth in opposition to the dissatisfactions of reality, and 'tern' to paradoxically indicate a rebellious change in direction but also an obedient acceptance of inevitable death.)

In one of my favourite passages in literature and a statement of thought that means a lot to me, Riddley has been smoking post-coital weed with Lorna, a 'tel-woman', who unexpectedly declares her belief in a kind of irrational, monstrous Logos that lives in us, wears us like clothes, and drives us onwards for its own purpose:

'You know Riddley theres some thing in us it dont have no name.' I said, 'What thing is that?' She said, 'Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its lookin out thru our eye hoals...it aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and shelterin how it can.' 'Tremmering it is and feart. It puts us on like we put on our cloes. Some times we dont fit. Some times it cant fynd the arm hoals and it tears us a part. I dont think I took all that much noatis of it when I ben yung. Now Im old I noatise it mor. It dont realy like to put me on no mor. Every morning I can feal how its tiret of me and readying to throw me a way. Iwl tel you some thing Riddley and keap this in memberment. What ever it is we dont come naturel to it.' I said, 'Lorna I dont know what you mean.' She said, 'We aint a naturel part of it. We dint begin when it begun we dint begin where it begun. It ben here befor us nor I dont know what we are to it. May be weare jus only sickness and a feaver to it or boyls on the arse of it I dont know. Now lissen what Im going to tel you Riddley. It thinks us but it dont think like us. It dont think the way we think. Plus like I said befor its afeart.' I said, 'Whats it afeart of?' She said, 'Its afeart of being beartht.'

While Hoban is, I think, deeply humanistic to his bones and even something of a wayward optimist, the notion of human beings as helpless and ignorant vessels, individual carriers - puppets, if you like - for an unknowable and awful inhuman power-in-potentia and life-drive that lacks a true shape or intent beyond its own continued survival (even when that means destroying us or visiting us with agonising atrophy in the process) conjures up the pessimism of Thomas Ligotti, another big influence on our work and a dude who was really into his marionettes-as-metaphor.

Let's go to him now for his opinion on the thing that lives beneath our skin. Thomas?

Through the prophylactic of self-deception, we keep hidden what we do not want to let into our heads, as if we will betray to ourselves a secret too terrible to know… …(that the universe is) a play with no plot and no players that were anything more than portions of a master drive of purposeless self-mutilation. Everything tears away at everything else forever. Nothing knows of its embroilment in a festival of massacres… Nothing can know what is going on.

Curiously, both Ligotti and Riddley Walker have appeared in the music of dark folk band Current 93, whose track In The Heart Of The Wood And What I Found There directly homages the novel and ends with the repeated words,

"All shall be well," she said But not for me

These words, in turn, hearken back to Kafka's* famous reported conversation with Max Brod:

'We are,' he said, 'nihilistic thoughts, suicidal thoughts that rise in God's head.' This reminded me of the worldview of the gnostic: God as an evil demiurge, the world as his original sin. 'Oh no', he said, 'our world is only a bad, fretful whim of God, a bad day.' 'So was there - outside of this world that we know - hope?' He smiled: 'Oh, hope - there is plenty. Infinite hope, just not for us."

So, we walk on.

We carry this thing that's riding on our backs, endlessly bonded to it, feeling its weight more and more with every passing day, unable to turn to look at it. Buried truths come briefly to life, and are hidden from us again. Perhaps they weren't truths at all. We couldn't stand to look the truth directly in the eyes in any case.

If there is hope, it's for the thing that looks out from our eyeholes, which thinks us but cannot think like us. We'll never get to where we're going, and the thing will never be born. There's no hope for it. Perhaps we don't want it to win anyway. It's nothing, and the key to everything.

The Jesus from the Gospel of Thomas says:

'When you see your own likeness, you rejoice. But when you see the visions that formed you and existed before you, which do not perish and which do not become visible - how much then will you be able to bear?'

Kafka, writing to his father, begins by expressing the inexpressibility of his own divine terror:

You asked me why I am afraid of you. I did not know how to answer - partly because of my fear, partly because an explanation would require more than I could make coherent in speech…even in writing, the magnitude of the causes exceeds my memory and my understanding.

Kafka concludes that while he cannot ever truly explain himself, and that the accusations in his letter are neat subjectivities that fail to account for the messiness of reality, perhaps 'something that in my opinion so closely resembles the truth…might comfort us both a little and make it easier for us to live and die.'**

It doesn't bring comfort to Kafka, whose diarised remarks both before and after the 1919 letter make it clear that he views his relationship with the things (people) that birthed him as an endless entrapment that prevents him from attaining any kind of self-actualisation or even comfort, since he cannot escape their influence or remember a time before them:

I was defeated by Father as a small boy and have been prevented since by pride from leaving the battleground, despite enduring defeat over and over again.

It's as if I wasn't fully born yet...as if I was dissolubly bound to these repulsive things (my parents).*** The bond is still attached to my feet, preventing them from walking, from escaping the original formless mush. That's how it is sometimes.

Samuel Beckett returns again and again (aptly) to this pursuit of a state of true humanity and final understanding that is at once fled and unrecoverable, yet to be born, never to be born, never-existed, endlessly to be pursued, pointless to pursue. From the astonishing end sequence of The Unnameable:

alone alone, the others are gone, they have been stilled, their voices stilled, their listening stilled, one by one, at each new-com- ing, another will come, I won’t be the last. I’ll be with the others. I’ll be as gone, in the silence, it won’t be I, it’s not I, I’m not there yet. I’ll go there now. I’ll try and go there now, no use trying, I wait for my turn, my turn to go there, my turn to talk there, my turn to listen there, my turn to wait there for my turn to go, to be as gone, it’s unending, it will be unending, gone where,where do you go from there, you must go somewhere else, wait somewhere else, for your turn to go again

I’m not the first, I won’t be the first, it will best me in the end, it has bested better than me, it will tell me what to do, in order to rise, move, act like a body endowed with despair, that’s how I reason, that’s how I hear myself reasoning, all lies, it’s not me they’re calling, not me they’re talking about, it’s not yet my turn, it’s someone else’s turn, that’s why I can’t stir, that’s why I don’t feel a body on me, I’m not suffering enough yet, it’s not yet my turn, not suffering enough to be able to stir, to have a body, complete with head, to be able to understand, to have eyes to light the way

From Thomas' Jesus:

When you make the two one, and you make the inside as the outside and the outside as the inside and the above as the below, and if male and female become a single unity which lacks 'masculine' and 'feminine' action, when you grow eyes where eyes should be and hands where hands should be and feet where feet should stand and the true image in its proper place, then shall you enter heaven.

Tom's Jesus makes a particularly Gnostic habit of both insisting that the hidden will be revealed and demonstrating the impossibility of attaining a state where the hidden ever can be revealed. Contrary to C.S. Lewis, we will never have faces with which to gaze upon the lost divine and the mysteries that shaped us, and crucially, as Christ puts it, we would not be able to bear the sight of ourselves if we did.

We will never become the thing that's riding on our backs.

Jesus again:

The disciples ask Jesus, 'Tell us how our end shall be.' Jesus says, 'Have you found the beginning yet, you who ask after the end? For at the place where the beginning is, there shall be the end.'

The Unnameable:

I’ll recognise it, in the end I’ll recognise it, the story of the silence that he never left, that I should never have left, that I may never find again, that I may find again, then it will be he, it will be I, it will be the place, the silence, the end, the beginning, the beginning again, how can I say it, that’s all words, they’re all I have, and not many of them, the words fail, the voice fails, so be it

The final passage of The Unnameable, which often is hilariously shorn and misinterpreted as an inspirational quote about how if you don't succeed, try again:

all words, there’s nothing else, you must go on, that’s all I know, they’re going to stop, I know that well, I can feel it, they’re going to abandon me, it will be the silence, for a moment, a good few moments, or it will be mine, the lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts, it will be I, you must go on, I can't go on, you must go on. I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know. I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on. I’ll go on. †

We bear this thing that's riding on our backs. We'll never get to where we're going, and the thing will never be born. If it was born, it'd be too terrible for us to bear. There's nothing riding on our backs.

It will never speak us into being.

We keep on calling out into the silence, we keep trying to explain or understand the thing that's riding on our backs, searching for a way to birth it before we die. Our words about the thing are crucial, and they're meaningless, and they're all we have, and they're nothing at all. We cannot name it and we cannot express it, but we cannot stop trying, and we will keep turning back to our words about the thing, obsessing over them, tearing them to pieces, putting them back together.

I'm fumbling at something I can't think or say, but fumbling is all we're capable of. There could be beauty and meaning and comfort in the fumbling, but it's also vain, and foolish, and pointless, and we're lying to ourselves about the beauty and the meaning and the comfort, and we're indulging ourselves pointlessly by going on and on about the pointlessness of it. Nothing can know what's going on. We will never get close enough to understand without being destroyed.

Thomas' Jesus again, warning those who seek to reveal what's hidden:

He who is near me is near the fire.

Riddley Walker, reflecting on the Punch puppet's inexplicable desire to cook and eat his own child:

Whyis Punch crookit? Why wil he al ways kill the baby if he can? Parbly I wont ever know its jus on me to think on it.

If you got to the end of this, congratulations: but the above is honestly the most appropriate patchwork of what I believe, what propels me, what I feel.

As for what comes after life, I think it's fairly straightforwardly a nothingness we are tragically incapable of fully knowing or accepting - it's Beckett's unimaginable and unattainable silence, a silence that his characters' voices keep on shattering even as they cry out for it.

-Jon‡

*I can't remember if Kafka makes prominent reference to Czech puppets in his work, which is interesting in its own right given the thematic relevance (the protagonist in The Hunger Artist is perhaps a kind of self-directing puppet show?).

However, Gustav Meyrink - who some unsourced Google quotes suggest was pals with Czech puppeteer Richard Teschner - did write a strange little story, The Man On The Bottle, about an audience watching a 'marionette show' who are too wrapped up in performances and masks to interpret the reality that they're actually watching a human being suffocate to death.

**Thomas Ligotti: "Something had happened. They did not know what it was, but they did know it as that which should not be.

Something would have to be done if they were to live with that which should not be.

This would not (be enough); it would only be the best they could do."

***Beckett's Malone Dies actually kicks off with a related sentiment:" I am in my mother’s room. It’s I who live there now. I don’t know how I got there...In any case I have her room. I sleep in her bed. I piss and shit in her pot. I have taken her place. I must resemble her more and more."

† I don't necessarily align myself in humour with Ligotti on a lot of this stuff but I imagine he would recognise both Beckett's writing and Kafka's frustrations re explaining the causes of his hatred for his father as sublimation: finding artistic and philosophical ways of sketching the inexpressible horror and uncertainty of our existence in order to reckon with it at a remove without destroying ourselves. A higher form of self-deception, but self-deception nevertheless.

‡Muna's more of an anarcho-nihilist, I think.

#long fucking post just to say 'i don't know'

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idliketobeatree · 6 months ago

Text

prompt: mindreading

pairing: crystal/niko (heavily implied, but can be read as one-sided pining if that's your jam), ficlet, 700~ words, T

———

"Wait, you want me to read your mind? You're not scared of someone taking a peek into that brain of yours?"

Maybe it's because of her own peculiar experiences with... not exactly unwanted, but genuinely huge mistakes of wanted guests in her head. But Crystal cannot fathom the idea to voluntarily make anyone privy to your thoughts, on a whim. She's done it enough for other people, sure; usually under the disguise of a case and protected by the motives, but she still had a preference of simply talking to people, hoping for the best that they would disclose the necessary information. Her budding empathy clashes somewhat with her psychic powers. There was a time she vaguely remembers, where she wouldn't bat an eye at using them for her advantage, even if it meant stepping on a few heads. Well. Not anymore.

It made something in her chest feel noble; a sensation she was not used to.

With great power comes great responsibility, et cetera, right?

Nevertheless, the casual allowance of Niko to make herself comfy in her brain, with no specific time slot seems intimate down to a T. Something you would allow under very specific circumstances, preferably after thorough discussion with the subject. A life or death situation, perhaps. It would be reserved for the closest bunch of people, unless your poor judgement decided to omit the jarring red flags and said, you know what, my scarlet matches your ruby.

There are choices you cannot go back from, as she is painfully aware.

In her lap, Niko brushes two fingers along Crystal's knuckles, from where she is cradling her palm. It feels strangely precious, encased in the softness of the other girl's hand. Crystal's gaze glides over to the intricate rings matching the long, beautiful pastel nails, decorated with small pearls and tiny ribbons. The touch brings dual sensations: there are the pads, soft like a cat's and similar to it, the sharper points of the nails leave blunt dents on the top of her palm. She belately realises, I wouldn't mind if you pressed harder. Make me feel it.

Crystal's gaze snaps back upwards, guiltily. She almost regrets it. The way Nico's face twists into a shy smile, Crystal feels the touch spark through her hand and race towards the chest like a livewire, a pulsing need. "I have nothing to hide from you."

"That's not true. Everyone has secrets they want to keep," she protests weakly.

"I promise to keep it G-rated," Niko laughs, and Crystal is lightheaded from it, glad she is already sitting down, because hey, did she just—

"Crystal. You need to see the bird."

Before she can cut it short, Niko lifts the hand she so generously cradled up to her forehead— in a mimicry of the main guy from— uh, was it the X-Men movies? Like she believed touching the temples while mindreading was essential to the process. Crystal's powerless against the flutter of her eyelashes when she's trying to focus and relax at once, the slightest of frowns gracing her forehead.

Her fingers are being gripped harder, determined. She wants to keep her there.

Crystal debates on whether it would work anyway, because how could she think about some stupid bird, when Niko is right there? An open, well-loved paperback, ready to fill you with strange images of her own design.

She gets hit with a memory like a pop-up ad, but without the surge of overwhelm and annoyance, the part where she's prying open inside smoother than anticipated.

The sight comes with a filter of pure admiration and some childlike wonder. The edges of the vision are swimming in bright, peak summer hues, teal sky and rich green bushes with pinkish yellow sparkling in the heat. Niko must have watched the scene from a sidewalk, and she had to be pretty close to see so clearly. The crow inside the memory drops a walnut from its beak right before a car drives over it, cracking open the hard shell, and the bird dives precisely half a second later, catching the remains of the nut in mid-air. Show off, Crystal snickers to herself. Surprisingly, she finds a familiar, amused chuckle reverbating around her temple. It's strange enough that Crystal gets thrown out of the vision far too quickly. She pushes the need to stay, down.

Niko cracks open one eye, apparently much too excited to keep going. "Did you see that? Did you see?"

"Uh. Yeah. I did." It's a tiny shock, to come out of the vision. "That was..."

Unexpected. Amazing. If I saw the world through your eyes, I wouldn't think it's genuine shit all the time.

"...nice."

#wlw pining my utter beloved #niko sasaki #crystal palace #palasaki #twirls my hair and giggles #crystiko #dead boy detectives #ficlet #dbda #dbda fic #snippet #dead boy detective agency #marcela writes #inspired as always by the Loveliest Bunch of People from the DGD server chat 💕

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firendgold · 13 days ago

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What a fun ships ask game <3 can I ask about Timetravel AU harrydore 🍩 🚗 🏝 💌

You sure can!

🍩 - their favourite snack to eat together? I can see them eating sherbet lemons together! The candy has been memed to death in fanfics, but in canon I don't think Harry ever actually has any of it—he just uses it once as a password in Chamber of Secrets. It's kind of funny to imagine Harry either introducing Albus to sherbet lemons unintentionally or being offered one by Albus and having a private laugh about "he still likes these!".

🚗 - which one drives and which one picks the music? Harry is definitely the driver and Albus annoys him to DEATH switching stations from offbeat song to offbeat song every three minutes.

🏝 - their ideal getaway? I actually have two answers for this.

You know that one scene in Goblet of Fire, where Harry's just had his first Voldemort-dream and he's wondering if he should write Dumbledore, and he imagines that Dumbledore is on vacation at a beach somewhere rubbing suntan lotion on his nose? That beach. That's where they go.

I think deep down, a part of Albus would love to go on the World Tour he never got to take. There's actually a non-time-travel harrydore fanfic which has Harry and Albus do this called A Moment's Surrender by inarticulateimbecile. (If you haven't read it, it is perfect and I highly recommend it!) Ever since reading that I have been even more convinced that this would be Albus' dream vacation. Ideally I think Albus would love it if he could travel as just another person, not as Albus-Dumbledore-Who-Will-Be-Stopped-Every-Five-Minutes, but eh. Priorities. Meanwhile, Harry seems to thrive in the midst of adventure, and as far as we know, he's never left Britain; so I don't think he would say no to a world tour either, especially with someone he trusts and respects so much.

💌 - a love note from one to the other? OOOH. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

Dear Harry,

I hope you will excuse my forwardness in broaching this matter in this manner, but I have wrestled for some months now with a tongue that will not obey me when I try to bring this up in person. Too, I hope you will forgive my cowardice in waiting until I was a country away to send this letter with Fawkes. Between us, you were always the much braver man.

I must confess that I

Harry I

In the ten months I have been privileged to know you, you have overcome challenges I have seen devastate lesser men. More than that—you have never hesitated to stretch out your hand to help others less fortunate than you. You are kindhearted and compassionate, and your determination to do what is right is inspiring. Without your aid—and without your harsh words, which I admittedly did not react to well—I could never have taken the steps which were most necessary to secure your safety. Your happiness. Both of those things, your safety and your happiness, are very important to me. Even my cowardice is nothing in the face of disappointing you—though it rules me still, sometimes.

It is why I am writing you this from just beyond the borders of Germany—a mere Portkey away from Gellert's hidden stronghold. I know it may anger you to read this, to know that I have broken our promise and departed without you—but the thought of willingly subjecting you to Gellert Grindelwald gave me such nausea as I have never experienced before. Despite your magical power, your courage, your strength, your moral compass... you would be no match for Gellert and his machinations. He would observe you—he would realize your importance to me in an instant, and he would kill you.

Harry, I cannot bear to live in a world where you are killed because of me. Where you are dead at all.

I have no hope that you will listen to me, yet still I must ask: stay in Britain. Stay at Hogwarts, stay in my chambers for as long as you desire. No one will deny you your place, not after all you have done for them. Do not follow me; do not throw your life away.

Stopping Gellert from destroying our world is my penance; it has been my burden to bear for longer than we have known one another, my chicken finally coming home to roost. It is also my gift to you: A peaceful world, where you might find someone who will appreciate your hot head and your good heart as much as I have. Although... I must also confess to a good bit of arrogance. I do not believe there is anyone in the world who appreciates you as much as I do.

Harry, I have not left you with nothing. There will be a magical safe under your bed when you wake. Open it by tapping the left side twice with your wand, pausing for four seconds between each tap. The key to my personal Gringotts vault lies within. There should be more than enough gold to take care of you well into your dotage.

(Please do not give the money to Aberforth. He will swear at you, curse you, and then spend the lot on trifles out of spite. He has his own vault and is quite protective of what few belongings our family has left to us. I have already sent a separate letter to him asking that he treat you more kindly than he would me.)

Why do I tell you these things? Ah, because it is the only way I may work up to what I truly wish to tell you.

You must stay in Britain, Harry, where it is safe, because I love you most desperately, and the only way I can keep going is if I know that you are as safe and comfortable and happy as I can make you from afar.

Ah, Harry, it is easier to write after writing it once. I love you so. Even in this hellish place, the thought of you is making me smile. I have been fond of you since the moment we met, but now I cannot imagine life without you. I refuse to imagine such a thing. Thus I risk your fury, your disdain, even your disobedience—yet all those possibilities pale in the face of your possible death.

I will not ask you to return my feelings, or to wait for my return. Gellert and I are evenly matched, and you know the weapon he wields. It would be cruel to give you false hope that I might survive the coming conflict. But I will beg you: do not throw away your safety and anonymity for me. It is my intent to take him with me, and I would prefer not to find you waiting for me should I leave this earth.

Gellert's guards draw near, and I must seize the opportunity to catch them unawares. I must close this letter, much as I dread doing so.

Farewell, my love. Live well, my love. All I do, I do in your name.

Yours,

Albus Dumbledore

#fireandgold #thanks for the ask!#fireandgoldposts #time travel harrydore #albus dumbledore/harry potter #albus dumbledore #harry potter #pukfromwinter #glad you have been enjoying the blog so far! I appreciate you!#ship ask game #ask game #fanfiction #a moment's surrender #inarticulateimbecile #prompt fill #(because the last answer turned into a whole-ass mini fanfic lol)

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superm4ks · 2 years ago

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Do you maybe have like max x fernando lore? Love them and love ur blog!! <33

Max is Nandos favorite nephew and also his psychosexual angel of death in this essay i will

ok so before we get into max and nando lore we need to establish some CRUCIAL Nando Alonso historical context. When max got called up to f1 Nando had already been racing f1 cars for 14 years which first of all.😐 And like I think its fair to say the last .. umm lets be kind and say, 6 he was literally going thru like the 7 circles of hell. Ferrari had just finished doing their ✨thang✨ ((completely obliterating a drivers soul)) to the point Nando was like 'remember that team that kickstarted my descent into madness and, aha, coincidentally, the unstoppable success of the kid who beat me his rookie year and that I literally tried to snitch on and had like a spanish spy stay wid me in the garage because I was SO normal about it and hinged and not at all very um , racially threatened. Yuh ok lets try that again. Oh and its their first year wid Honda too thats PERFECT yes thats exactly what I need I'm a GENIUS'. So in 2015 he signs wid Mclaren and literally during TESTING gets fucking zapped by his own car, allegedly, c0nks the f out and swerves that mf right into the wall. We're talking testing.

Listen. Im trying to establish that by the time our fav anti christ gets to the big show Nando has been going thru it for a minute. His teams consistently fail to deliver, nothing ever goes his way, his car is trying to kill him, and like, cannot stress this enough, lewis hamilton is very successful. Lew hammy is so successful he might become thee most successful. Nando is normal about that.

So here comes the babbiest of all evil babies and nobody knows what his deal is, he talks funny and hes weird and has no regards for his public image. But he's promising. So promising in fact that he could threaten afore mentioned most successful random individual who beat Nando his rookie year. And Nando is like. vengeful adoption. Vengeful child care. Nando's imprint on baby Max is both a long term evil plan and also just like. Immediate realization that Max is different like he's different. ((Not like Lewis is different but lets not get into that rn lmfao)) Max isn't gonna be a media darling. Max isn't gonna be a celebrity. Max is gonna be an f1 champion. And Nando has spent 14 years subjecting himself to cars far below his skill so he can keep being an f1 champion. So while somebody like Seb vettel is like 'why that baby aint got no coat on' ((for two minutes before the baby bites him and hes like no fuck this baby)), Nando is like, somebody give that baby a gun. Nando gets asked about Max's readiness for f1 and says, 'I think before we say anything we should wait to c what he does'. And then when 'what Max does' turns out to be like, borderline crime, in many occasions, actual crime, Nando is still like see, he's perfect ☺️

Like for example spa 2016, Max pulls a defensive move on kimi that has people calling for his teenage head for like the 3948th time that season and Nando straight up says no he didnt do anything wrong. And bro pulls out receipts he explains that shit wid the usual Nando rulebook rizz. For max. A teenage war criminal.

Lets talk Spain 2016 tho. Spain 2016 is actually super important for max/nando lore. Max's first race wid red bull-- and his first win. Start of something new. Inevitable. He absolutely packs Seb on turn 3, same exact way Nando had 3 years before. In 2016, though, Nando's far away from Ferrari and a race winning car. Honda PU gives up and he DNFs. Still hauls ass to congratulate the kid

Its very sweet and kinda tragic and a perfect reflection of their careers at that point. Max bursting on the scene wid the potential of a thousand suns, Nando basking in the sunlight from his place on the sidelines. Its not enough but its still good because its Max and Max is his guy.

They also play soccer together once for that charity match thing in Monaco and Nando kinda stunts and yk frustrated soccer drop out max must've felt some type of way about that.

These are from hungary 2017 and I have no idea whats happening or why they're in a bean bag enclosure but I think they're important

On Max's side of things, I think Nando's camaraderie must've caught him off guard. Getting into f1 at 17 ur not really expecting to make any friends lmfao. But Nando had his back from day one, and loudly, too, and I think for somebody like Max, who was raised on loyalty and commitment and respect from an overwhelming paternal figure that gave him everything except stability, that must've meant a lot to him. Especially because it was Nando like. Max oozes respect for that pensioner bro, in a way that I dont think he does for anybody else in the game. His rookie year Max said Alonso was his biggest inspiration because he kept at it despite not having the car. Yk Max didnt have the car for a few years either. He sees Nando as somebody whos been to battle, just like Nando saw a lil soldier coming into f1.

When Nando had his nicki minaj brb moment in 2018 Max said he regretted never having the chance to race against him. He'd raced against Lewis and Seb, but never Nando and Nando was the one he used to watch on tv racing those two. Meanwhile old man is giving interviews telling people Max is the the best driver in f1 and the only reason he bothers put on f1 those days is to watch Max. ((😐))

2021 is the apogee of many things and one of them is definitely max/nando lore. Nando is back. Max has the car. And Nando will be seated. And he will watch. And when Max does win, Nando calls it 'justice'. Its so fucking intense and deranged but rn we're just focusing on the narrative and appreciating it for what it is: Nando couldnt do it, but he knew Max could, and Max did. His guy did.

I swear they've been honeymooning for almost 2 years now. Nando stopped giving a fuck a long time ago but lately hes literally like this is a Max ONLY event fuck the rest of yall. First Max's 2 titles are worth more than Lewis' 7 because something something deranged pensioner noises. Then Max has talent that you cant teach and hes always been like that since go karts and he's going to be one of the all time greats. Also we're both villains and we're not politically correct ((white men are insane)). And then Max is like yes Nando is my good friend and he talks to me and I like to ask him about stuff and I take him on my plane to races and we get on well despite our age difference because age doesnt matter. 🙂police.

Also literally one of the most important gifs of all time from last year when Max won the wdc shut the fuck up thajnk you

Which brings me to one of the most important podiums of all time. Like the lyrical poetry of this shit are u joking

This gonna be the longest season ever and who knows if it’ll happen again already in Baku or whatvr maybe it won’t but like. We’ll always have Australia 2023.

Also in the post race presser there was such a quintessential max/lando moment I need to break it down to finish this and like go jump off a building lol

youtube

So here u have classic old heads + verstappen post race presser where they get to gentle bully sweet boy until he blushes. This time it’s like Nando talking some shit about how he has to leave because he’s annoying and lewis kinda joins in like ‘he’s still talking’ and Max is all squinty and ekfkwmdk it’s fucking cute ok whatvr. But what I really love about it is that Nando interrupts Max and gives him shit but then makes sure to put his arm behind Maxs back like. Don’t get it twisted. Hes my boy. He literally does the ‘this is a pro max post’ banner irl

Anyway here’s a cute compilation bye

#ask #love u .. 🌷 im. sorry #😐😐😐😐😐😐#Imma just post this and go because theres no excuse #like I didnt even know I was so invested in them #long post

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bright-thehawksflight · 5 days ago

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2024 reading review

I was tagged by the ever lovely @ninadove and finally this is one I can actually do (I haven't been ignoring your tags, it's just that 2024 was the year I started working full time and I just did not write)! Anyway!

In 2024 I met my modest goodreads goal of 30 (scaled down from my usual 50 bc of work) and here are the highlights:

Storia del Mare by Alessandro Vanoli

Una storia del mare. Che racconti la geologia, gli uomini delle coste, le scoperte, le navi, le guerre, i miti e i sogni. Ma anche e soprattutto i pesci e gli altri esseri marini. Una storia insomma che tenga assieme tutto, uomini e animali. E naturalmente un viaggio del genere non può e non vuole essere una cronaca minuziosa di fatti e cose. Piuttosto, intende essere un racconto, fatto di volti, immagini, suoni e colori, con la speranza di restituire un po' di quello stupore che gli abissi ci hanno sempre dato.

To my knowledge this book is not currently available in any other language so this is mainly for the benefit of my Italian-speaking mutuals. I loved this book so so so much. It keeps the perfect balance of informative and fun, and the subject matter is so varied that on a very deep level it feels like those encyclopedias for kids that we'd read so proudly and then recite random facts out of for months. Best book of the year, 10/10, no notes.

The Secret Garden by F. H. Burnett

Mary Lennox, a spoiled, ill-tempered, and unhealthy child, comes to live with her reclusive uncle in Misselthwaite Manor on England’s Yorkshire moors after the death of her parents. There she meets a hearty housekeeper and her spirited brother, a dour gardener, a cheerful robin, and her wilful, hysterical, and sickly cousin, Master Colin, whose wails she hears echoing through the house at night.

This was, I believe, my third re-read of this book in the original English (I cannot for the life of me count the times I read it in Italian as a child). It's a comfort read of mine, so full of hope, warmth, and whimsy! Also, I may or may not be working on a retelling... 👀

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare includes two quite different stories of romantic love. Hero and Claudio fall in love almost at first sight, but an outsider, Don John, strikes out at their happiness. Beatrice and Benedick are kept apart by pride and mutual antagonism until others decide to play Cupid.

Idk why I waited so long to hop on the bandwagon, but this skyrocketed straight into my top 3 Shakespeare comedies DESPITE having the least funny comedic subplot ever (scholars don't @ me I hate the constables, it's 100% personal), so it must be good. I've read it twice, seen it 4 times.

The Ill-Made Knight by T. H. White

The goodreads summary sucks so here: it's book 3 of the once and future king and it's all about our boy Lancelot! Ugly French child is starry-eyed and has a puppy crush on the king, ends up his best friend (read entangled in a messy homoerotic relationship with him) while also madly in love with the queen. It all hurts exquisitely. Also, we all should say thank you to Mr White for giving us the delicious image of thee king Arthur, kneeling on the ground, strapping on Lancelot's greaves so he can go and rescue queen Guinevere. What's more polycule than that.

And that's all folks! Thanks Again Nina for the tag. I'm curious to know what @mlem-wooloowoo @automatisma and @flussoperpetuo have been reading (no pressure tho!)

#lisa says the things #tag game #tag #tagged #books #read in 2024 #reading #bookblr

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mslanna · 1 year ago

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Imagine telling Raphael that you’re not worried about the final battle because Tav don’t die in real life and all of this is just a video game 🤣

Raphael existential crises

I must preface this: I am horribly bad at keeping the prompts as given. Apologies. (The first try went off completely because I didn't even read the idea right. May do something with that some other day.) Anyway, here goes: unkillable Tav in Raphael's hands...

"How many?" Raphael asks again.

"Thousands." Tav shivers despite the heat of Avernus, the huge fireplace, and the devil at their side. "I remember thousands of deaths. Everything that could have gone wrong. I remember how it did."

"And yet you live."

Tav pulls their feet up to the seat of the chair and puts their head on their knees. Is it really life, when all you remember is death? They remember Lae'zel running them through with her sword. Astarion, overtaken by the euphoria of the moment draining them dead. Gale, friendly fire of one of his potent spells.

"I guess," they finally squeeze out.

"That is quite the advantage, my dear." Raphael leans in and puts an arm around his favourite client. "You are the one that always gets away. The on that lives – wins."

"But I feel myself dying all the time," Tav whimpers and presses their face into the offered shoulder. "I walk into a fight and even as I stand unbroken, I die. Pieces of me shelve off and fall dead. I remember dying by Haarlep's hand several a dozen times. Not all of them fighting."

As much as Raphael wants to prod that specific subject, he lets it go for now. "Are you dying right now?" he asks instead. And breathes a subtle sigh of relief when the human shakes their head against his arm. "Because I will not hurt you, little mouse."

For a moment, Tav relaxes, then their body tenses again, fighting demons Raphael cannot see. He needs to get through to them somehow. A factually immortal Tav will win the Crown of Karsus. It needs to be for him. But a technically immortal Tav has much more potential. A knife to cut through the hells with.

"What is it?" he asks as gentle as he can, wondering if putting a wing around the human would help or hinder. "Are you not safe here?"

"I remember when you killed me," Tav whispers almost inaudibly. "So angry."

"Why would I be angry at you?"

"Took the contract. Took the hammer. Took Mol's contract." Tav hiccups. "Not mad for killing Haarlep. You heartless cunt."

"They are a gift from my father and I cannot touch them." The words come out harder than planned. "But I did not kill you, little mouse. You did not do those things. We are good."

"Could have. Maybe thought about it," Tav admits.

Raphael leans back and forces Tav to look at him by taking their chin in his hand. "Thoughts are not deeds. There is no thought police, no thought crime, and I will never even think about punishing you for a thought. Do we understand each other."

Tav nods. Of course Raphael won't kill them. They're the one that lives. Always. Maybe, if they just antagonise him enough now, Raphael will be the exception. Maybe, this could be the end. They lean against the cambion as soon as he lets go of their head. A part of them didn't and falls into the fire heavily a few heartbeats later.

"You will be alright," Raphael assure them uselessly. But he does wipe at the tears falling from Tav's eyes so that is something. "Take as long as you need and know I am always here for you."

There are appointments in his day, deals to be finalised and clients waiting, But what rests in his arm right now, is worth more than any of those.

#bg3 #bg3 raphael #raphael x tav #bg3 fanfiction #anon ask #anon answered #mel writes fanfic #sleazy second-hand car dealer

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dcbbw · 8 months ago

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WIP Update 5.27.24--Holiday Treats Edition

Hi-de-ho, tumblrs! It is Memorial Day Weekend here in the US, and I am spending the beginnings of the last day of a 3-day weekend posting WIPs for the first time in what seems like forever!

And I have a lot of WIPs for you today; however, half of them DO NOT HAVE WORDS. I’ll make that up to you by posting extra-long snippets of the ones that do. It’s gonna be a mixed bag, with the majority of these stories being ideas I am unsure popped in my brain or shot themselves out of my ass.

If you have ever read at least one of my WIP updates, you know the drill: all works are in very rough draft and a state of flux; published/posted works may vary. No promises on when anything will be posted, but everything is in an extremely active state of progress.

Everything is below the cut; please enjoy!

Rating is M for Mature because it's me

9 Days a Queen: Based upon the painting The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, and a crapton of historical dramas, this is the story of the brief yet impactful reign of Queen Riley Brooks of Cordonia.

Object of Affection, Chapter 9: Hard Day’s Night: The Mermaids are on the comeback trail!

Untitled KTAW fic: The suitor from House Theron takes a meeting with the Duke of Ramsford.

The Real Housewives of Cordonia: Lorelei and Hana: The RHOC will be a once-in-awhile series that will focus on a pivotal moment in the lives of the mother/mother-in-law and daughter/daughter-in-law of the ladies of my favorite gang. Except they’re in Cordonia, Connecticut. Once completed, this will be my #HLAW submission.

Dolos: This fic is inspired by my absolute LOVE of Homeland, a now-defunct Showtime series. The subject matter may be triggering to some, so reader discretion is advised. FYI, Dolos is the Greek God of deception, craftiness, and treachery:

“Except one player is notably absent. King Liam of Cordonia,” the host replied.

The visitor slowly lowered his fork. “You have power players such as the United States, Britain, Canada, France … Cordonia will hardly be missed.”

“You’re either stupid or think I am,” the host retorted with the slightest edge to his tone. “Cordonia is in the middle of this maelstrom and trying to play neutral. Which they cannot.”

“You’re still not explaining why I am here with you.”

“King Liam is half Auvernese, his bride is Hidaran. He will have to enter the fray, and when he does, he will be on the wrong side of history. There is a … faction that is willing to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

“Terrorist cells are forming a dime a dozen. It would seem to me that they would jump for joy at a wealthy country financing the winners.”

The host pushed away his plate, his eyes staring into mirrored lenses. “There are no winners here. It’s a complete suicide mission whoever enters the fray; the death of the Supreme One illustrates that. The fact is Cordonia will back the aggressors, regardless of how they spin it, and they have the money and resources to ensure both wars continue for years.”

The visitor lifted his teacup. “And?”

“While this is quite the distraction, other wheels are already in motion that need to be addressed now. In order for that to happen, funding must be cut and diverted. Already, the first-world countries are scaling back. There cannot be a fallback to take their place.”

The visitor sat his cup down, and leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “What are you saying?”

“King Liam must be assassinated; the faction is offering $50 million US dollars to make it happen. Do you want the job?”

This Little Life (Versions Edit): Leo Rhys has died, and his wife and lover finally have the confrontation they’ve waited 20 years for:

We’ve spent the last two decades as an unassuming family living a quiet life in the town of Rury, located in Duchy Krona. When we were looking for a place to live, I argued returning to my home country of America, but Rury was my husband’s mother’s birth town and seemed the perfect place to escape life in the royal limelight without changing continents.

Yet another compromise I made in the name of our relationship.

Leo spent the first half of our marriage fulfilling his motocross passions and rebuilding with his love, all while using me as a depository for his seed when things went sideways with the one who held his heart. I was essentially a single mother who had hit the child support lottery. I suggested several times we divorce; those were our worst arguments.

When Asher was three, my husband agreed we needed to settle down and focus on raising our family.

We purchased a large farmhouse that sits on the banks of Kingsman River. He used his savings to buy a local farm and construction equipment company that serviced all of Krona and Valtoria to save it from being sold to developers. With his charisma and leadership skills, he was the boss everyone wanted to work for.

I’m Vice-President of Commercial Acquisitions for Cordonia Commerce, the nation’s largest financial institution, a position I was promoted to five years ago.

We were both active in our community: volunteering at local food banks, and participants in the Krona school system: book drives, bake sales, pestering neighbors and co-workers when it came to fundraisers, coaching soccer and track & field.

There were family dinners and vacations, Sunday feasts, road trips, and pizza nights.

We have four children: twin girls Hope and Joy, who are 19; our son Luca, 15; and our youngest, Asher, who is 13. I love each of them a little harder, hug them a little tighter, and kiss their cheeks a little more often, much to their embarrassment. But I can’t help it; all of them were conceived in drunken indifference, my husband pouring his every misery into my waiting womb after arguments and rejections from another.

It's been a good life, filled with care, respect, and friendship. Honestly, Leo was my best friend. But there was no romantic love, no passion.

Because all we had built together as friends and co-parents, he was supposed to have with his lover, not with me.

I fasten my robe more tightly around my waist as I traipse downstairs; in the living room, reserved for company only, I push apart curtains and twist open venetian blinds. I frown at what passes for dusting in Luca’s world before moving on past the family room where we binge television shows and celebrate holidays.

I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.

Finally, I am in the kitchen, the heart of our home. Arguments, homework, meals, birthday celebrations … they all happen here. I brew a single cup of the coffee my husband loved; it’s a dark roast from Comery Isle with hints of praline and coconut, which I douse liberally with sugar and cream.

Breakfast will be simple: slices of fried ham; tomatoes, eggs, and yesterday’s rice; yogurt; fruit. I begin pulling dishes and pans from cabinets, food from the refrigerator; my body is rigid, my movements almost robotic. I silently count eggs as I place them in mixing bowl.

Routine, routine, routine.

But suddenly, I can no longer do anything, and I feel the bowl of eggs slip from my hands; I hear it crash against the hardwood flooring.

Grief for so many things overwhelm me, and I slide down a cream-colored wall to the floor, my eyes flooded with tears.

I’m not ready to say goodbye.

Stormholt: Based upon Saltburn. That is all:

My orgasm erupts from the engorged head of my dick like creamy lava from a pornographic volcano. Ropes of seed spurt into the air only to splash back against my member and increasingly sticky hand. My hips thrust against air one last time, and I feel my body shudder.

If you knew Jesus, you wouldn’t be doing that!

Riley’s voice in my mind pushes the last vestiges of the sexual fantasy that awoken me away; with still- closed eyes, I try to calm my labored breathing.

My eyes open, and I study the intricate canopy above my four-poster bed while I lay still. There’s nothing on my agenda this morning except be rich, look good, and suntan: breakfast, workout, pool.

This is the life of the Lord of Stormholt Manor.

The semen and lube are beginning to congeal on my hand, and the tip of my cock feels gummy resting against my thigh. I sit up and shift to the side of the bed; I frown at the sight of sunrise coming through closed, sheer, crimson-colored curtains.

It’s the color of fresh blood.

With the slightest twinge of guilt, I stand and push the drapes open with my clean hand before lighting a cigarette. I stare out the window, seeing my friends and lovers below. There’s Riley and the baby; Maxwell; Constantine. Regina is in the great room; she enjoys the view of the south gardens from the windows there.

My eyes fall on HIM; anger still roils my stomach at what he did to me.

Betrayal.

I turn away from them; I may or may not stop by to say hello. I begin heading into the bathroom, not bothering with the bed sheets; Gladys will change them. The house is quiet, but that’s to be expected. It’s only 7am; the day officially begins at Stormholt in exactly one hour.

I make short order of my morning’s hygiene; my outfit today will be robe and swim shorts. I’m fastening the sash on robe as I make my way down an immense, window-lined hallway that is in serious need of dusting.

Doors are half-open to bedrooms that currently sit unoccupied. I give cursory glances inside them: beds neatly made, light coatings of dust on furniture, bloody light leaking through closed curtains. Photographs sit on night tables and dresser tops, faces frozen in time. Their eyes look into nothingness, and their lips smile into emptiness.

Tagging: @mom2000aggie @kingliam2019 @bebepac @angelasscribbles @charlotteg234

@tessa-liam @twinkleallnight @indiacater @lovingchoices14

@umccall71 @busywoman @beezm @mainstreetreader

@walkerdrakewalker @superharriet @choicesficwriterscreations

In case you're interested: @lizzybeth1986 @daily-haley

#dcbbw writes #all the wips #trr au fanfic #writer on tumblr

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